The lights reflected off the curved walls of Blackwall Tunnel, illuminating everything in stark amber and making me grip the edge of the passenger seat. Amber only reminded me of Brandon and I didn't want to think of him, because I knew he was out there somewhere, the great Vánagandr stalking the streets of North London, his venomous eyes forever searching the darkest of corners for any traces of vampire. For any trace of me and Lucius.
I wondered how long it would take the Varúlfur to realise the vampires were on the move, migrating south of the river, desperately seeking refuge in Greenwich and beyond, anywhere as long as it was away from the slaughter that had plagued the north of the city. Would we ever be able to return to the dark, dismal backstreets of Whitechapel? I had felt a connection with those dangerous alleyways and towpaths. I'd learned to feel calmer as soon as the scent of old blood engulfed me, evoking a strange sense of belonging that I had never felt before, even in my human life. Forever the care home orphan with nothing to her name until Brandon had come along, I'd never felt like I really belonged anywhere. Now I just felt displaced all over again, just as the rest of the vampires were displaced, ripped and torn from their homes, dragged kicking and screaming from their lives in the shadows and thrown out into the open and forced to scurry away, desperately looking for their next hiding place.
And that's what we were doing now; scurrying through the tunnel like the rats we were, only not on foot and not all together.
Harper had decided we would travel separately, travelling in Garrick's small fleet of beat-up cars and any other vehicle we could get out hands on, not that it was easy to find enough to transport close to one hundred and twenty vampires across the river. There had been close to six hundred before the Cleansing had begun and the losses weighed heavily on each and every one of us left, but the prospect of trying to get the survivors to temporary safety in Greenwich seemed far more burdensome. Through his connections, Garrick had been able to acquire some small trucks and it was these we used to pack in survivors like we were smuggling immigrants across the border, leaving at different times so not to attract attention to our strange nocturnal convoy.
Edward's crew and Blaine had been in charge of transporting the survivors, which left Harper, Garrick, Lucius and me. Much to my dismay, Harper had insisted that Lucius go with Garrick and I go with him, asserting that the two of us needed to be apart on the journey just in case of any untoward eventualities that meant we might be captured together. Even though I had to begrudgingly admit he was right, the thought of letting Lucius out of my sight and without my protection sent spasms of panic rippling through the base of my stomach.
Ever since we had left the Mills and I had shot Lucius one last look as we drove away, I couldn't help but feel that deathly touch of apprehension that made the hair on the back of my neck prickle uncomfortably. As soon as the car cleared the end of the tunnel and I looked up to see the great expanse of iron sky above, I exhaled, hearing my breath whistle shakily over my lips and I felt Harper's eyes flicker briefly from the road to me and then back again. I knew that when he was driving, not only was he focusing on the route ahead, but he was also scanning the streets through which we passed, scrutinising each face, always on alert for signs of our enemy. I, on the other hand, couldn't stop my mind from working overtime, flitting from one troubled thought to the next, let alone try to concentrate on keeping an eye out for Varúlfur scouts.
"Did I ever tell you that my father wanted me to be a preacher?" Harper's voice was uncharacteristically soft, just loud enough to hear over the low rumble of the engine but it still made me flinch, having expected the journey to continue in stilted tense silence.
I looked at him questioningly.
He hesitated before he continued, clearing his throat as if suddenly nervous, a small hint of blush tingeing his cheeks. "I mean my real father, not Benjamin."
"You've never really spoken about your real father, except to say he was a preacher himself. Abraham, wasn't it?"
Harper nodded. "Yeah, that's right. Abraham." I noticed how he tightened his grip on the steering wheel when he spoke his father's name.
"What was he like?" I broached.
Harper smiled but kept his eyes on the road. "It would be so easy to tell you he was a cruel man, one of those fire-and-brimstone preachers that the church was keen to cultivate back in those days. You know, the kind that condemn everyone and everything to Hell, while standing high up on their pedestal claiming to be the right arm of God. It would account for a lot, right? But Abraham was none of those things. He was loved by his congregation, well, most of them anyway. He was a good man, a just man. He cared for the community, his wife, his child, but maybe that was his problem."
I wrinkled my brow in confusion. "What do you mean?"
"Because he only ever saw the good in people and when people see that, when they realise how forgiving you are, how accepting you are of their sins, well, they just take advantage."
"And people took advantage of your dad?"
Harper snorted derisively. "Oh don't get me wrong, he wasn't a weak man. I mean, to endure what he had to, to know betrayal in the way that he did and not crumble, to hold your head high despite the talk and gossip, to remain always grateful for your life no matter how shitty life treated you, that's real strength right there. I could never have forgiven her the way he did. I could never have taken my wife into the marital bed every night knowing that she had graced so many other marital beds or wherever the Hell it was that she decided to lay on her back."
"Your mother was unfaithful?" I winced as I said it, feeling a stab of guilt twist in my guts.
His face darkened, his mouth turning up in a wicked sneer. "Darlin', my mother might just have invented the word unfaithful. Dear Martha Cain, wife, mother, whore. Only she never whored herself for money, oh no, she didn't fuck men for money, she fucked them because she wanted to. Because she could. Because it was who she was. Because maybe sitting by her preacher husband every Sunday, pretending to be whiter than white, gave her a little kick of satisfaction. Maybe it made her feel powerful; I sure as Hell don't know and don't care to either."
He laughed then, the sound rippling through the car and sounding so out of sorts with everything he was saying and with the look on his face right then. "You know, when I was a kid, I thought Martha was a witch. She had this effect on people - on men - it was almost like she would cast a spell upon them and they would be completely intoxicated by her. Oh she was a fine-looking lady, trust me, in fact she was beautiful but I never understand why they couldn't see how black she was inside, how ugly she was. Because I saw it. I saw it all the damn time. I would watch her during service and she was totally at contrary to everything my father preached. Vain, selfish, arrogant. And I would see those good Christian men in the congregation, sitting next to their wives and children, clutching their Bibles firmly on their laps to hide the hard-on they got as they watched her. There my father would be preaching love and salvation and she would be preaching lust and desire and betrayal right under his nose."
"And your father knew?"
"How could he not? Sometimes the whispering just gets too loud to ignore and damn did they whisper. Oh he knew, alright. He knew and he did nothing." His face twisted into a bitter grimace. "I could never understand how all those people could still respect him, knowing that he let his wife lay with whoever she wanted, knowing that he sanctioned her behaviour, because it wasn't just our family she poisoned, she poisoned so many others and yet they loved him still."
I stared at him, noting the way his cheek muscles tensed and how the anger emanated from his eyes. "Did you love him?" I said, after a while.
"I loved him more than anything," he replied, without hesitation. "I grew up by his side, watching him work, listening to his sermons and let me tell you, no one could give a sermon like my father could. It was captivating and rejuvenating and I would watch the congregation hanging off his every word. The feelings he could inspire in people was beautiful to witness. Sometimes I'd see people walking into that church, weighed down by the pain of life, you could see it in the way they carried themselves, in the way they would hang their heads and as soon as my father started preaching, they'd sit up a little straighter, their eyes would light up and they would walk out of there grinning from ear to ear. So many stupid goofy smiles but I'd be smiling along with them and he would look at me and wink. And then I'd see Martha sitting there and I'd remember."
"Remember what?"
"That he was a fraud.” He spat out the words, his nose wrinkling in disgust. " That he preached nothing but love and understanding and it didn't mean a damn thing. And he wanted me to be a pastor too, he wanted me to be like him and all I could think was I will never be like you, I will never look into their eyes and make them believe in something as worthless as love. Of course, I never said that to him. Not then anyway. But I did eventually. I did when I couldn't take it anymore, when one evening I couldn't bring myself to kiss Martha goodnight because there’d be yet another scandal, another tawdry fucking affair and getting close to her repulsed me so much I wanted to vomit. He took me to task, you see? Told me I was the one in the wrong. Told me that I was never to look at her in the way I did. We'd never argued before but by God, did we argue that night. And all the while she just sat there, saying nothing. Not that she had to; her eyes said it all. That hateful fucking smirk she wore every time his back was turned told me everything I needed to know and right then and there I decided enough was enough and I let him have it. I opened every festering wound she'd inflicted on him over the years and once I started I couldn't stop. I rubbed that salt in over and over again until he was practically on his knees begging me to shut up."
Stunned, I listened to his tirade and the more he ranted; the more evident the pain was as it raged through him. I'd never seen him display so much hurt, so much anguish and I wanted to reach out and tell him to stop, that it was okay, but something told me that he wasn't done, that his confession was far from over. I wished I could clap my hands over my ears so I didn't have to hear it.
"I killed him, you know," he continued. "I loved him more than anything in the world and I killed him. As soon as I said the words, I realised just why he had chosen to turn a blind eye to her ways: because acknowledging the truth was just too much for him to bear. It never mattered to him what everyone else said, it didn't matter what they'd whisper between themselves in the pews during service. As long as he ignored it, as long as he chose to put his family first then everything would be okay. And I ripped that all away from him. I destroyed the walls he had built around himself over the years. Me. I was fifteen years old and I killed my own father. And what's worse, is that Martha knew exactly what it had meant to him to be able to turn the other cheek, she knew what would happen if I pushed him and I think she wanted it to happen. She wanted it to be me that brought the revered Abraham Cain to his knees."
"But why?" I whispered in horror. "Why would she want that?"
"She'd always resented me, resented our closeness. And I think she enjoyed his pain. She knew that if I ever confronted him, it would be far worse than anything she ever put him through."
I shook my head, confused. "But she was the one that betrayed him?"
"No. I betrayed him. I betrayed him because I spoke the truth and he never wanted to hear it. He begged me, Megan. He begged me not to say it all, but I did it anyway."
I tried to picture the fifteen year old Harper Cain, so full of unbridled hate and fury, even at such a young age, releasing all that frustration and anger on the one person he loved the most and it made my chest tighten painfully and my breath hitch in my throat.
"What happened after that? Did he throw you out?"
"Of course not," he scoffed. "He was all about forgiveness. After all, how could he stand in that pulpit every service preaching to the masses when he had turned his back on his own son? He couldn't do it. I'm not sure whether that made me love him more or lose respect for him altogether. I think part of me wanted him to reject me because it would have proved to me that he did have a backbone after all. Or maybe I just felt like I deserved it, I don't know. But he didn't and so slowly, over time, I rejected him. I stopped going to church, started staying out all night and hanging around with local gangsters. It was just petty crime at first, you know, theft, burglary, nothing too heavy. He knew of course and he hated it, but that just made me want to do it more and as is the way with gangs, the more you do for them, the more they ask of you. And so I let it happen. I think a part of me just wanted to provoke him, you know? But instead he pleaded with me, begged me to come back to the church, urged me to come back to him but it was too late. The more he begged, the deeper in I went. I made a bit of a name for myself, developed something of a rep for violent crime and eventually I began to run with the local Southies."
"What's a Southie?"
"The Irish." He said Oirish, with an accent and a small smile lit up his face. "Funny how it was Martha's Irish connections that got me accepted. I fell under the radar of mob boss Frank Wallace himself and soon moved up the ranks. Turned out I was handy in a fight and was well known for my exceptional knife skills. Who'd have thought, huh?" He winked and I couldn't help but grin at his attempt at humour. "Anyway Frank knew I could handle myself and I was pretty damn ruthless it had to be said, so soon I was put in charge of the bootlegging operation. Made Frank an absolute fortune from all those Prohibition dodgers."
I gasped, staring at him with my mouth open. "Prohibition?" I racked my brains, trying to recall those history lessons at school that I barely paid attention to. "Wasn't that.....um....nineteen twenties or something?"
Harper shot me an arrogant, sexy smile, a mischievous glint sparkling in his eyes. "Look pretty good for my age, right?"
Glancing out the windscreen at the road ahead, my mind flipped over and over as I tried to take in what he had said. “So you were born in….”
“1909,” he said.
“Oh.” And then again. “Oh.”
He chuckled softly and reached out, tugging playfully on a lock of my hair. “Freaking out?”
I grinned but couldn’t help stealing a glance at him as if I were looking at him for the first time. “Yeah, just a bit. I don’t really know what I was expecting you to say, but definitely not that. So what happened with your dad?”
His smile faded swiftly but the anger thankfully didn’t return, instead he seemed almost exhausted as he shifted in his seat and exhaled deeply. “We became pretty much estranged from one another. I waited for his condemnation but it never came and so I threw myself into mob life and tried to forget my old one. He continued as pastor and from what I heard, was still highly regarded in the community despite everyone knowing his only son was a gangster working for Frank Wallace. Even that didn’t dent his halo.”
“Weren’t you ever tempted to go and see him?”
“All the damn time,” he admitted ruefully. “But I couldn’t. Not then anyway. Too much had happened and I guess I wasn’t completely sure how I’d react if I saw him then. I was still so angry, so burdened with hate. I guess that’s why I made such a good mobster; I didn’t give a shit about anyone or anything. If Frank needed something doing, you know, needed someone dealt with, he knew he could call on me and I’d do the job gladly. I was pretty brutal. And I was worried if I saw my father again, that I’d finally snap and kill him for real.”
“You wouldn’t really have killed your own dad though? I mean, you might have been angry with him, but you wouldn’t really have done it, would you?”
We locked eyes for a second and I caught a glimpse of the Harper who had killed me, the one who had sat in the shadows and watched me suffer and in that one second I answered my own question and felt a shiver ripple over my skin, raising goose bumps.
“I did go back eventually though. Frank was killed in the December of Thirty-One, the Italians took over the streets of South Boston and anyone involved in Frank’s gang was being hunted down and killed. I was second only to Walsh who was murdered alongside Frank and I knew the Italians would be gunning for me, quite literally, so I decided to leave the city, but not before visiting the old man one last time.” He hesitated, biting on a bit of loose skin on his lower lip, drawing a few small spots of blood which he wiped away with a slick of his tongue. “You know, I was right never to have gone to see him before. Nothing much had changed. Even after all that time, even though Martha had gone, he still wouldn’t accept the truth.”
“Martha had left?” I raised an eyebrow quizzically.
“Martha was dead.” We had stopped at a set of traffic lights and the red warning light bathed the windscreen, casting a devilish glow across his face. For a moment, I swore I saw his mouth curl into a smirk. “She was dead and still he wouldn’t condemn her. It was like he was still filled with her poison, as if she were still infecting him even though she lay cold and rotting in the ground. He said that it was cruel of me to keep persecuting our family with things that should have been forgotten. But how could I forget? I’d spent seven years exiled because of that woman, everything I had become; everything I had done was because of her. Each time I cut into one of our enemies, every time I carved into somebody’s skin, every time I stuck the knife in somebody’s gut and twisted it and listened to their screams, I imagined that it was her that was screaming, that it was her blood I was spilling. And it was never enough, each death was never enough. What I wanted – no, what I needed – was for my father to accept that it was her that destroyed us, that it was her poison that had killed us, but he didn’t want to hear it. Even after all that time, he wouldn’t hear a word against her and so that was that. I told him I had to leave and that I wasn’t coming back. I told him everything that I had done, I confessed to every single crime, every murder, every terrible thing I ever did to hurt someone and do you know what he did? He kissed me right here on the forehead.” He tapped a finger just above his right brow and then rubbed at the skin there as if he could still feel the touch of his father’s kiss. “Then he broke down and he cried. He was still crying when I walked away. I left Boston that same night and didn’t return until 1939 and by then I had met Benjamin and I was a vampire.”
My throat felt raw as I desperately tried to keep the sadness at bay. I clenched my hands into fists, digging my nails into my palms so that I could focus on anything but letting the tears fall. Somehow I knew Harper wouldn’t appreciate my pity. “You actually went back?”
He smiled sadly. “I was struggling, I felt lost. I couldn’t settle in my new life, I needed something but couldn’t work out what that was. And so I wandered for a while, drifting from place to place and eventually found myself on the outskirts of Boston. I’d been heading there the whole time but it never really registered with me that I was going back until I stood on the edge of the city, breathing in all those familiar smells, hearing all those familiar sounds, only everything was amplified, you know, everything seemed the same and yet completely different. As soon as I realised where I was, I headed straight for the church, only it wasn’t there.”
“I don’t understand?”
“The church was gone and my father had gone with it.” He wouldn’t look at me as he spoke, keeping his eyes firmly fixed ahead. “The big hurricane of thirty-eight destroyed the church building, the roof collapsed, killing my father. And when I returned there was nothing left of him apart from a gravestone. Can you believe they buried him right next to her? I bet she just loved that.” He shook his head in disgust.
We said nothing for a few minutes. I didn’t know what to say. Floored by his confession and confused also, I wasn’t accustomed to hearing Harper being so open and I realised, up until this point, I hadn’t really known anything about him at all. Finally, I spoke, hearing the tremor in my voice because I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear any more, it seemed too raw, too personal, too intimate. But I had to know. I had to know this one thing.
“Harper, why are you telling me all this?”
“Because my father was terrified of the truth, Megan. He let it control his whole life. Instead of confronting it, he spent years building those walls, thinking he could hide from it, thinking if he ignored it, it would just go away. But truth is like a demon and once it has its claws in you it will never let you go unless you stand up and fight. My father wouldn’t fight and in the end, it broke him.”
He looked at me then, dragging his eyes away from the road and fixing them intently on mine and I knew he was right. I was terrified. So utterly, utterly terrified and he could see it, as always his eyes bore right into me, seeing so far below the surface where even I was afraid to go.
“You are so much stronger than you think you are,” he said. “You were made to be strong, you were created for a reason and whatever that might be, you need to hold onto it and have faith in yourself no matter what you might be facing. And you might be terrified right now, but don’t run from the truth and certainly don’t hide from it, because your demon isn’t going to go away. Whether it is Brandon or the Devil himself knocking at your door, open it and face them, show them that you are not afraid, because I’m willing to bet that will be the last thing they are expecting. Accept the truth Megan and I will be with you every step of the way.”
I believed him. I felt his words wrap firmly around me and I couldn’t help but think that Abraham had been right about Harper. In another life, I could see him standing beside his father, reading his first sermon, bringing hope to his congregation just as his father did.
“Did you have a fall or something when I was gone?”
He glanced at me, clearly puzzled.
I raised an eyebrow mockingly. “Maybe you hit your head? Because seriously, this really isn’t the Harper I know.”
He laughed then, his whole face lighting up with mirth. “Well whatever you do, just don’t tell Garrick any of that shit I just said. He’d have a fucking field day.”
“Hey, it might be just what he needs to shake this mood he’s in?” We both laughed then, the sound filling the car and keeping those old ghosts at bay as we pulled up to another set of traffic lights. We were grinning, both of us grinning inanely, stupid goofy smiles painting our faces as we waited for that green light to appear.
I don’t know when we realised those grins had turned into grimaces, like the frozen rictus smiles of corpses. I don’t know when we realised that the lights had turned green and we were still there, waiting, suspended in time and feeling nothing but the hair rising on our necks and our veins screaming in agony from a long nurtured fear that was ingrained within our blood. Slowly, painfully, my eyeballs flickered in their sockets, each movement agonizing as I forced myself to look into the rearview mirror and saw the car that had pulled up behind us.
“Varúlfur scouts. Hold on,” Harper said and floored the accelerator.