Chapter 9 - David vs Jackson
It was the early hours of the morning on Monday, 13th February, and everyone at 9 St James Street was asleep. David knew this. He also knew that if he waited until later, he'd never go through with this. So he gritted his teeth and knocked at the door. A minute later, he knocked again, knowing that the occupants had probably not heard the first time.
A light went on upstairs and his sharp ears picked up the sound of footsteps on the landing. He stepped back and waited.
Someone unlocked the door and pulled it open. Jackson Brown, wearing pyjamas and a dressing-gown, and yawning fit to dislocate his jaw, looked at him sleepily.
"Who are you and what do you want at this time?" he demanded, or tried to while still yawning. "Wait - you're one of the teachers at the boys' school..."
"Don't pretend you don't know - or at least have guessed - I'm not who I say I am," David said sharply. "And don't pretend I don't know that you're not who you say you are, Colonel Brown."
Brown woke up considerably. He looked at him through narrowed eyes, then finally stood aside. "You'd better come in, then."
They were met in the hall by Lacey Brown, a rolling-pin in hand, wearing a nightdress and dressing-gown with curlers in her hair. That last detail made her look truly hideous, like something out of what humans called a horror film.
"What's all this?" she said, brandishing her rolling-pin.
"I'm not entirely sure about that myself, yet," her husband said.
Jackson led David into the living room, followed by Lacey after she sent the boys, who had been watching from the top of the stairs, back to bed. The Browns sat down on the sofa; David remained standing.
"Now, what's this all about?" Jackson asked after a moment.
"I know that you are the head of InGEN on Earth. And I know that you have suspicions about me."
"Then would you care to enlighten us about who you are?" Lacey said.
"I refuse to tell you my name, and you have my starship, so you should know what I am."
"Yes, we know you're a Vampiruan. And you must be a criminal of some sort, or at least you annoyed someone. Vampiru is two thousand, nine hundred and twenty-three light years away from Earth. You wouldn't come this far on your own for a holiday," Jackson said.
Lacey brandished her rolling-pin at him dangerously at the mention of the word "criminal", as if daring him to try anything.
"I'm not a criminal. I might be wanted by the government, but I'm not a criminal." David realised with a start that he himself no longer believed what he was saying.
The Browns exchanged glances.
"Would you mind starting from the beginning?" Jackson said. "We're a bit confused."
David obliged, starting from when he had been forced to leave the army to look after his father, the constant abuse he endured (and had endured before that), how he finally had enough and killed him. Then how he had found himself branded a "murderer", and had a price put on his head, and how he had fled, choosing Earth to hide, and then found that another vampire, a real murderer, was also on Earth. He took care never to mention names.
The humans were silent, listening.
"What about your siblings?" Jackson asked when he finished.
This was a question David had been dreading. "What about them?"
"I know that Vampiruan families reproduce asexually, and so can have five hundred or more children. You're not the only one, you said so yourself. So why didn't the others do anything to stop your father?"
"They just wanted to get as far away as possible. One of us had become a smuggler, one an assassin, two or three handlers of stolen goods. The rest were afraid they might be driven to criminal activity too. That's quite common among our families."
Lacey looked like she was about to burst into tears; Jackson was thinking.
"This... other vampire you mentioned. Who is he?"
"She is Lady Terror De Mon."
He frowned. "Never heard of her."
"Then look her up on your records. She's here, though I haven't a clue what she's doing. It won't be anything good, though. Of that you can be sure."
"And what do you stand to gain from telling us this? I doubt you're so fond of Earth you'd be overly concerned if anything happened to it. Or maybe you hope that if you help capture her everyone will forget what you've done?"
This was, if David was honest with himself, part of his motivation, and the slightly guilty look on his face gave him away.
Jackson noticed the look, but said nothing. "Where do you think she is?"
"I've seen her here, but this probably isn't her headquarters. Try Styria or Transylvania, maybe."
This was meant as a sort of joke, but it baffled Jackson. "Styria? Do you mean Syria?"
David rather wished he hadn't tried to be clever. "Styria is where Carmilla is set."
"Oh." Jackson dropped the subject. "We'll look her up on the archives later. Did you come here just to tell us this?"
"Not just to tell you this. I want my starship back, so I can leave Earth and never come back."
A moment's silence fell.
"I'll go and make some tea," Lacey said at last.
Why do humans think tea can cure everything?
After she left, Jackson continued staring at David, something that unnerved the vampire more than he cared to admit.
"No," the human said finally. "We've only heard your side of the story. Maybe you're exaggerating to make yourself look better, or lying completely. If you tell me your name, I can find out how much is truth by looking in the archives. I could probably find it anyway, based on what you've told me, but it would be easier this way."
"I refuse to tell you my name."
"Why?"
"It's my father's name."
"Then tell us your father's name."
David gave him a death glare. "No."
Jackson threw up his arms in despair. "Good grief, all this fuss over whether or not to tell someone a name. Fine, then, have it your way."
"Now will you give me my starship?"
"The answer's still no until I can verify your story."
David gritted his teeth, but had to admit defeat. He couldn't win this fight; they had his starship. "Fine, you win."
At this point, Lacey came in carrying three cups of tea on a tray.
"Where are you living?" Jackson asked David conversationally.
"10 Hunters Court. It's an abandoned house that was near where I landed and since the houses next to it were also abandoned, I decided to live there."
Lacey almost choked on her tea. "What? An abandoned house? In this weather?"
"In all weather, since I came here."
"Well, you won't need to any more. You can stay here tonight." As she said this, she glanced at her husband as if daring him to disagree.
Jackson decided it would be safer not to. "All right. You can sleep down here, on the sofa."
David began to protest, but one glance at Lacey, who was still holding her rolling-pin, quickly ended any opposition.
~~~~
Dani was having a most unpleasant time. It was Monday, which usually meant she could spend the day after school with Ste - with certain people. But she had said she wouldn't speak to them ever again, and she meant to stick to that.
So, she wasn't at all sure what to do. Richard was still at college, studying to be a doctor, and Legina was out shopping. Her parents were visiting her grandmother, who was in the hospital, and Edward was downstairs in the living room, playing one of his favourite video games.
She sighed. Of all her siblings, she had the least to do with Edward, mainly because they had absolutely nothing in common and Edward had teased her a lot when they were younger. But sitting on your bed listening to Icon For Hire got tiresome after a while, especially if you'd heard all the songs before.
Iodine ended, and she leaned over and turned the CD player off. She'd go downstairs and watch a film - maybe a Laurel and Hardy - if she could convince Edward to turn off the computer or at least turn it down.
Edward seemed to be entirely absorbed in his game when Dani pushed open the door to the living room. He didn't even hear when she spoke to him.
"Could you turn that off?" she tried again.
Still no reaction.
Now I know what Legina felt like every time she tried to wake me up and I wouldn't listen.
Irritated, Dani crossed the room and snatched the game controller out of her startled brother's hands. "Will you please turn that thing off? I want to watch something, and I can't with all that noise in the background!"
He glared at her and tried to grab the controller, which she held out of his reach. "Can't I have a bit of peace to do what I want once in a while? Go out with your boyfriends or something!"
Dani's face became a strange cross between white and red. "They were not my boyfriends!"
He laughed. "Oh, look, she's in denial!"
The sound of the slap she gave him echoed through the otherwise-empty house.
"Owww!" he yelled, holding the side of his face. "The hell was that for?"
"You deserved it!"
He glared at her, then suddenly looked sympathetic. "Have you had an argument with your friends again?"
Dani blinked, disorientated by the change. "Yes..."
"What happened?" Edward still looked sympathetic.
Some part of her mind was screaming at her that there was something very, very wrong here, but it sounded very far away and muffled. Most of her mind was telling her that it wasn't good to keep everything she'd heard yesterday to herself. So she told her brother everything, about InGEN, what their purpose was, how they were lying to everyone.
When she finished, she found herself regretting she'd ever said anything. After all, she'd promised.
Edward stared at her for a moment. Then he burst out laughing. "You should be an author, with that imagination!"
A thousand emotions whirled around in Dani's head: relief that he didn't believe her, humiliation, anger, and many others. She resisted the urge to slap him again, spun 'round, and rushed out of the living room and back upstairs.
Edward abruptly stopped laughing and pressed a button on his wristwatch (really a wrist communicator). "My lady?"
~~~~
"You survived a trip to Britain and another trip to America without a scratch, yet you dislocate your shoulder falling down the stairs?" Nightmare asked incredulously.
"It was dark, I'm still not used to this house, and my shoelace came untied so I tripped over it," Abihira replied waspishly. She was feeling rather annoyed with herself for being so clumsy, and her protests that she could fix her arm herself had been ignored, meaning that she had to submit to being touched when Attykcca, who as it turned out was a trained doctor, reset the shoulder.
Nightmare snorted, but said no more. Attykcca shooed her out a minute later.
"Now, you're to stay in bed for the rest of today and tomorrow," she said. "And that mission to China will have to be postponed until your shoulder's better. Sending an injured assassin on a mission is just asking for a disaster."
Abi glared after her, but there was no use in arguing. She knew that everything the other vampire said was true, but she hated being thought of as weak, especially when around people like Nightmare and Grievous.
"You dislocated your shoulder falling down the stairs? You're no less clumsy than you were before, obviously."
She looked round so fast that it was a miracle she didn't get a case of whiplash to go with her injured shoulder.
"Where did you come from?" she hissed, glaring at the latest person to invade her room. Then she remembered what he said and added, "And I was never clumsy!"
"Transylvania," Dracula replied. "And you got caught in your own web in Edinborough."
"That was an accident! I was trapped in spider form and - Oh, never mind. What are you doing here?"
"I did some research on Terror, and she is a maniac, a murderer and a monster on a par with Sycorax. She is trying to take over Earth and is using you to do so."
"I know that," Abi said.
"Orlok wants to find out exactly what she's doing and how big a scale it's on, and he plans to join her to do that. I want to find out the same things, but I have no intention of joining her. So I want you -"
"To be a spy," she finished.
"Exactly."
"So I'd be taking orders from you." She paused. "Is this in any way a sort of vengeance for the Moscow incident?"
Dracula almost winced. "I thought we agreed to never speak of that again. But to answer your question, I didn't intend it to be since I hate thinking about that, but now that you mention it, it could be."
"Ouch," she said dryly. "Since I'm not a fan of the De Mon clan, I agree."