The Lost: Book Two of The Whitechapel Chronicles

Chapter 34

The one thing that bothered me though was the presence of the firearms. Fenton's people were well armed and clearly well-educated in the use of guns, but having never once seen a gun during my human life - apart from on television and in the movies - I couldn't help but feel a shiver ripple over my flesh every time I saw one of them handling a weapon. Looking at the guns made me feel uneasy, as if they were vipers in disguise and at any moment they would strike, a trigger pulled, a life ended in a blink of an eye.

Walking into the garage above, it was the same such tremor of anxiety that coursed through me when I found Fenton himself, a gun firmly holstered at his side, bending over the bonnet of his car and running his fingers over Harper's handiwork; his name scratched boldly in large jagged letters. He shook his head, his lips curling into a sneer before realising that I was standing there, watching him steadily.

Standing up straight, he smiled thinly. "Going out?" he enquired, almost too politely. I was quite sure he still remembered my words on the night we had arrived here. His eyes remained wary, his posture a little too tense.

"Yes, we won't be long."

"Don't stray too far," he replied stiffly. "My team assures me there's no sign of the Varúlfur in our immediate area, but wander outside the zone and I cannot vouch for your safety." There was something in his tone that made me think he wouldn't mind too much if we did wander outside the safety zone.

"And I wouldn't expect you to," I retorted with a perfunctory smile of my own. "We are quite capable of looking after ourselves." My eyes travelled down to his side, where the gun rested on his slim hip. "Have you always felt the need to use that? It's just Garrick and Harper..."

"Are stuck in the old ways?" Fenton said with a raise of his sculpted eyebrow. His grin widened when he saw my look of irritation and he held his palms up. "Forgive me. There's no denying that they are both masters of the blade and I've learned a lot from my maker when it comes to hand to hand combat, but you know, things have to move on. This is a world at arms. If humans can so freely acquire and use weapons, then why shouldn't we? It's a very logical step forward and one I'm sure even Benjamin would have taken was he still here today."

"I'm not so sure about that." I frowned, trying to picture Benjamin and Edward brandishing guns.

"Why not? Benjamin was a leader and it's every leader’s job to know when to switch tactics to win a war. A Varúlfur has the distinct height and weight advantage over your average vampire. We can win a fight easily when it comes to out-numbering our opponent but you match a single vampire against a Varúlfur and suddenly the odds are not in our favour. Why then should we not take every available advantage to overpower our enemy? We cannot always live in the dark ages."

"I have gone one on one with a Varúlfur and won. It is possible."

His eyes narrowed as if he wasn't quite sure whether to believe me. "Really? Well I'm sure if that were the case, you didn't escape completely unscathed?"

"Of course not, but the point is that I won."

"And my point is, had you possessed a gun, you could have cut the beast down with one shot to the head and not needed to have come to any harm. So, to you, it might seem unnecessary, but personally I would rather have the added protection of this kind of weapon than my put my body within reach of their deadly claws." His hand found the holster and he rubbed his thumb over the snap button on the leather casing.

I shrugged, not wanting to give him the satisfaction that I knew he had a point. Something told me he'd live off the pleasure of my begrudging agreement for days, if not weeks even. "So, what kind of bullets does that carry? Silver ones?"