Angels and Rain

“Helaynia...”

“Ryves.”

“Ryves. Okay then.” The pretty black behind the desk smiled and typed something into her computer
with her long, multicoloured nails. “You’re in Room 209 tonight. Any bags?”

“No ta.”

“You’re with me.”

I stifled a scream as all the muscles in my neck contracted over my windpipe.

“Nykolai...”

“Sorry.” He gave a sheepish grin.

“Get away from me!” I flapped a hand at him, as I could only just croak as it was. He mimed trying to
bite one of my fingers.

“Oh, Nyk, that’s not fair! Give her back her hand!” The deskgirl smiled.

He dropped it obediently, grinning. I quickly raised it to my face, but, to my relief, there was no broken
skin. Not even fangmarks.

“So are you gonna leave her alone?”

He leapt back, smiling, covering at least twenty-four feet in a single bound.

She rolled her eyes and leaned across to me. “Look out for him. Vampire or no vampire, that kid’s a
handful.”

“Thanks.”

“Just lock your door tonight.” She winked. “And keep your crucifix on.”

If I was holding something I’d have dropped it. “He bites?” I hissed.

“He’s a vampire, dear, they all bite. Room 209.” She handed me a pair of keys, a small white tag
reading ‘209’ in faded black marker hanging off it. “Second floor by the lift. It’s okay, he’s the floor
above you.” She waved a perfectly manicured hand at Nykolai, who was trying to scale a curtain.

“Is he supposed it be doing that?” I asked her.

“ADHD.” She seemed remotely calm that a mad Victorian teenager was trying to pull down her curtain
display and may as well have got out an emery board and started doing those nails.

“Oh. Can...er, can vampires get that?”

“They’re preserved, if you will, in the state that they died in. He had it as a human, he has it now. Either
that or it’s Bipolar. I’m always getting the two confused.

I didn’t pause to think how everyone here seemed to know so much about vampires, including desk
clerks.

“Thanks. Nykolai!” I clicked my fingers to summon him. He popped up beside me in no time at all, like
a little hyperactive killer puppy.

“Nykki, we’re off. Where the hell’s the lift?”
He flipped his golden curls over his left shoulder. “Down there.”

“Take me?”

He turned on his heel and set off at a jaunty pace, bobbing his head as he went. I followed in a slightly
less seventies way, wearing what I hoped was a I’m-not-with-this-idiot-please-don’t-look-at-me-like-
that-oh-hi-Dave! expression on my face. I don’t know who Dave is or what he does, or even indeed if
he’s here, but it seemed polite to acknowledge him. My little vampy friend reached the lift, opened the
door and stood there waving me through with a pale, sticklike arm like the little exhibitionist he was. I
took it graciously, trying not to look too alarmed.

“This is what used to happen in London.” He told me, “back in the Good Old Days.”

“Riiight...”

“So where have you come from, Helaynia?”

“Er, London too.”

“Where? I came from Whitechapel. Not a nice place. Well, not back then. I don’t know how it’s
changed. Haven’t been there since 1890.”

“Is that when you... er,” I waved an unsure hand about (my hand, not a random hand that was
wondering round the lift at the time.) as the lift dinged to say we were at the second floor. I felt for my
room key in my pocket.

“Became a vampire?” He laughed. “No, no. 1888, that was.”

“Then we’ll have to have a deathday party for you. Excuse me, I leave here.”

I squeezed past the little maniac, trying to ignore the stabbing pain in my throat.

“Night Nyk.” I waved at him and nearly got my hands caught in the closing lift door.

“Nighty Night.”

Nighty Night?.

Room 209 was typically high class, with a large four poster bed, matching drapes and, as I found
out on entering the bathroom, the sort of bath with clawed feet that brides seem to often get bumped
off in. The whole thing looked like what you would find in some kind of large, stately home. And it didn’t
cost a thing. I lay in a position that made me look like a fan purely to see if I could touch all four
corners with my hands and feet at the same time and felt a burning desire to leap in the bath and try
out the shower still fully clothed purely to see what it was like. Wet, was the answer. Shaking droplets
of water out of my hair, I got back into bed and wound myself round inside the inner bedsheet.

I was rudely wakened by Phoenix banging on the door at some inhuman hour. He sounded pretty
excited.

“Layn, are you awake yet?”

“No.”

The knocking stopped, and for a minute I thought I’d fooled him, until he said “You do realise that that
was an amazingly stupid thing to say.”

“No.”

“Eejit. Come on, get yourself up. I have something to tell you all.”

“You’re marrying Nykolai?”

“No Layna, come on. I’ll meet you down there. We started ten minutes ago, you do realise.”

“I didn’t but hey.”

There was one final bang on the door, before retreating footfalls. He was obviously wearing his Doc
Martin’s again. Oh, how he loved them.

I climbed out of bed and into the huge Victorian style bathroom. The shower was attached to the water
mains by a selection of pipes connected to the taps and had to be held by a brackety type thing. It was
a fandango and a half getting this damn thing up, I can tell you, but it was nice to have a proper
shower again. At this rate I wondered if I’d ever get back into my own house again. I hadn’t yet told
Phoenix about the (for lack of a better name) gas masky thing that I’m now going to call Pete, but was
it important? It had been a long day and I was tired... I often imagine things when I'm tired. When I was
six I thought I saw Jack the Ripper at the end of my bed because I’d just watched a programme about
him. Monroeville was the type of place where your imagination could run wild.

I shook my hair violently trying not to think of next doors Labrador who had just sprung to mind and
walked over to the mirror. A tired looking nineteen year old with pale skin and too-long black hair
framing her gaunt face looked back. She raised her hand when I raised mine. She waved when I
waved. Helaynia Ryves now officially looked like an old woman. Ah well, you can’t have it all. This is
where I’m allowed to openly envy people like Feadie and Phoenix, who don’t age like they should nor
get spots in quite the same way I do. At least Feads has freckles. They annoy the hell out of him.

I wrapped a towel round my body and went back through to my room. It looked slightly less majestic in
its slept-in state, but was still nice. I felt a bit like royalty. There was a hairbrush in front of the gilt mirror
on the dressing table and my hair was pretty curltastic and crap. Wishing for a hairdryer, I started to
‘comb’ it (losing many a comb tooth in the process).

“Looks good.”

I whipped round to see a vampire sprawled out across my bed.

“What the... NYKOLAI!” I jumped round and clasped the towel protectively round me. He gave a coy
giggle and waved, the cheek of him.

So there I was, standing there with only a towel preserving my modesty throwing various objects at a
long dead teenager. I have a feeling it would have worked if he hadn’t started jumping about on all
fours trying to catch them and only stopped when one of his fangs pierced a shampoo bottle and
made him look rabid. It was pretty funny.

“You know, Layna,” he said, spitting out Head & Shoulders as he did so, “we started...”

“I know, Phoenix told me.”

“So why are you wasting time throwing shampoo bottles at me?” He asked, a large glob of foam
trickling down his chin. God, I hope I don't have to pay for damages.

I shrugged. “Fun. And what are you doing coming into peoples’ bedrooms while they’re supposed to
be getting changed?”

Hah. Had him stumped.

“...That isn’t the point...”

“No, it’s not, is it?” I said sourly, pulling on my tights and managing to get a foot through them. He
laughed.

“Nyk!” I sent my Special Glare of Incredible Annoyance Reserved Only For Special Occasions beaming
up at him. He looked slightly embarrassed.

“I didn’t think you could see me in the mirror.”

“I couldn’t. Pass me the tights.”

A pair of incredibly holey tights came sailing through the air and hit me on the back of the head.

“Ta. Now bugger off.”

He buggered off.

All’s good.

As old Shakespeare said “All’s well that ends well.”

I finished pulling on my tights, extracted the comb from my hair and pulled down my skirt as best I
could. Didn’t reach my knees.

I grabbed my room key from beside the beside lamp and skedaddled down to the lift. It was pretty
easy to find my way back to the main desk (there were signs) and only got lost once trying to find the
office. All the corridors looked the same, so I was pretty proud of myself.

“Layna! It’s twenty five past nine in the morning and you’re moving about! I was just coming up for you
again. We’ve been waiting for nearly half an hour.”

“Sorry.”

“Come on.” Phoenix caught my hand and led me down towards the office door. Maybe he didn’t trust
me by myself, maybe he was falling in love with me, we shall never know. Well, Phoenix would. And
anyone he told. But not me. Unless he told me. In which case I would.

“We’ve had development on the case. It might be nothing, but still...”

He opened the door to the “Office”, in which I was greeted by the eager faces of three people without
tails. If they had them they’d be wagging.

Phoenix skipped (Yes, I'm scared too.) to a large oak coffee table that I’d never actually seen before
and dragged it to the centre of the room with a squeaking noise. Everybody winced.

“Come on guy, gather round.”

We gathered round.

Phoenix tossed a beigey coloured folder marked ‘DENNINGTON, F.’ down on the table. Who or what
is Dennington F?

He opened it to show three pictures of a small, golden-haired boy with big brown eyes and freckles in
various states of play.

“Felix Alexei Dennington,” Phoenix began, “Went missing twenty years ago at the age of five.”

“Oh the poor child!” Valentiene’s lovely eyes widened and a pale hand flew to her mouth. Phoenix
looked up at her and, I swear, emotion almost showed somewhere in deep in his eyes.

“I know.”

Then, just then, the door swept open with an almighty bang as it hit the chair nearest it. We all looked
over and what I saw nearly took my breath away.

The woman standing there was one of the Visionnaire. No doubt about it. Hair with inky blue roots and
mauve tips, ice white in between and eyes the colour of silver fur. Pale complexion, well dressed and
in one hand smouldered a half smoked cigarette.

“What have I missed?” She threw her arms wide and narrowly missed the lamp.

“Helaynia,” Phoenix turned to me, “this is Pandorra.”

“Oh but, darling, you must be Helaynia!”

Yes, that’s what Phoenix just said.

“I am, naturally, Pandorra le Bonn.”

Good. Glad it isn’t artificially.

“Very pleased to meet you, darling.”

I nodded, noticing the rather annoying way she rolled her ‘r’s to the point where it was almost
impossible to decipher what she was saying.

I saw Phoenix shoot me a pitiful look and pulled a scared face to answer him. To Pandorra, I must
have looked like I’d had a sudden attack of Bells Palsy.

“Pleased to meet you, too.”

I held out a hand to show how wonderful and polite I was.

He took it slowly, as if I may lean over and bite her when she takes it.

Oh please, surely I’m not that threatening. She’s about six feet taller than me as well.

“Charmed. Anyway, judging from the nervously charged atmosphere, something’s just happened?”

Phoenix placed a hand on the folder and whizzed it across the table to her. She caught it in an
elegantly manicured hand.

“We need those notes, Pandorra, please don't lose them.”

She looked up at him and winked. “I shan’t.”

Valentiene caught Phoenixes eye and gave a barely suppressed smile.

“Oh, what a sweet child! Look at his eyes!”

Reminds me of someone...

“He went missing in 1986?” Pandorra’s ice coloured eyes lifted to meet Phoenix’s yellow.

Why wasn’t she wearing contacts?

“Read on.”

“What’s the story behind this, Phoe?” Valentiene was sitting on the far end of the ruined sofa, reclining
like a princess.

Phoenix took a seat too. “In essence, a boy who’s been missing for nineteen years has turned up not
far from here, in Crossgates. Some old bloke found him bound and gagged on Nightingale Lane.
Contacted the rozzers and he’s now back with his family in Alnwick. Can’t read or write, obviously. But
they found this cut into the back of his neck. S’cuse me, Pandorra”

He took the folder from her hands and sifted through various childhood photos until he came across
the one he was looking for. He winced slightly and handed it on to Rowan, who passed it to me.

It depicted a livid red laceration on milky skin, half in the process of healing itself with a yellow scab
covering the majority of the break. The cut itself was curiously shaped, two intricate, interlocking
circles with a strange creature, looking like a two headed snake with a forked tail and fangs that were
at least half the length of the body itself winding its way between the two, heading into the left circle. I
frowned at it and passed the photograph to Valentiene. She screamed and threw it down as if it were
in flames.

“Val?”

I looked across at her, puzzled. She was chalk white

“Val?”

Then Rowan’s eyes widened.

“Oh, shit, Val.” He sat down and put his arms round her. She sobbed uncontrollably into his chest.

“Well, maybe not, love,” Rowan tried to reason with her, “maybe not.”

“Oh, Row...”

I turned my head to Phoenix and mouthed ‘?’ in a confused manner. He waved a hand to shush me.

“Valentiene, look, this could be nothing. Besides, we’re talking nineteen years, here. It’s probably
nothing to do with Feadie.”

I noticed his voice caught slightly when he mentioned his little brother’s name. “It wasn’t even in
Monroeville.”

“You’ll be okay, Val,” Rowan soothed her, stroking her dusty violet hair with a pale hand, looking up at
Phoenix with daggers in his eyes. Pandorra looked pitifully at the scene, as if she were above all this
with the Marlboro still leaking smoke into the otherwise placid air around her. Even Nykolai was quiet.

“Phoenix,” I tugged at his sleeve gently, breaking the silence spoiled only otherwise by Valentiene’s
muffles sobs, “not meaning to sound ignorant, but what?”

“In a minute.” He whispered back at me. “We’ll go to the archives.”

“Okay.”

“Valentiene, the thing you have to realise is that what we’re talking about happened nearly twenty years ago. It’s like fearing the Salem Witches.”

“It’s nothing like the Salem Witches,” she muttered hoarsely, but was drying her eyes now.

“Better?”

She nodded.

“Let’s see,” Pandorra swept in to pick up the fallen photo. She turned her head sharply to Phoenix and
Rowan. “Necromancy?”

“Maybe.”

“Is he available to interview at all?”

“Well what do you think, Rowan? The child’s only just been re-united with his family!”

I widened my eyes at Phoenix in an ‘explain now’ sorta way.

He got the message.

“I’m going down to the archives with Helaynia. Does anyone else want to come?”

People looked at one another and sniffled. Apart from Nykolai, who hadn’t moved

throughout the whole ordeal.

But no-one answered.

“Layna.” Phoenix half whispered and tapped his side as if calling a dog. I followed

him silently out of the room, and only when we were out of the cold stone corridor

leading to our office did I speak.

“What was all that about?”

Phoenix sighed and fiddled with the nearest spike to hand level on the side of his

wacky trousers. “Valentine had a nasty run-in with one of the Formadonis a few years

ago, when she was about thirteen or fourteen. She’s never really got over it.”

“Formadonis? Is that some kind of cult?”

“No, it’s... It’s an animal. Of sorts. A weapon. Formadonis Bestia.”

“Formadonis Bestia...” I said pensively, almost to myself. “That doesn’t sound

particularly threatening. It’s Latin, isn't it?”

Phoenix nodded, hair falling over his eyes. “A rough Latin translation, yes. You can never be sure how
accurate these things are.”

“Meaning?”

“It means Terrible Beast.”

“That bad, huh?”

Although at the back of my head lurked a mutilated, time blackened face. I tried to push it out.

“Although it’s technically not alive. It’s more,” he waved his hand as if attempting to pull an explanation
out of thin air. “It’s more a lump of matter, yet still a functioning creature. It’s difficult to explain. I still
don’t fully understand it, but...” He stopped dead and grabbed hold of my arm. “Don't mention them again to Valentiene. It really is the last thing that you want to inflict on her. Here we are, up here.” He nudged me gently in the direction of a flight of stairs. “Up two if these and left.”

I went up two of them then left.

“Here.” He turned to a huge oaken door that wouldn’t look out of place in a monastery and pushed
gently.

To be perfectly honest, I was expecting a huge cavernous space filled with old scrolls and dusty old
volumes. Instead was a pretty, airy library painted a light mint green with a high, glass domed ceiling.
Particularly un-librarylike.

“Wow.”

“Lovely, isn’t it?”

“Very!” I said, in a voice that sounded like equal amounts of stun and awe had been poured into a
blender with some tequila and ice cubes with lime juice and a little paper umbrella and whisked
about a bit before...

Shut up, brain.

A fresh faced, fair haired woman with a cottage loaf bun and half moon specs was tapping away at the
keyboard of an old Windows 98 monstrosity. She looked up when we walked in. “Morning Mr.
Dylanger,” she said with a smile.

“Good morning Netty.”

She went back to tapping.

“That’s Antoinette McNae. Librarian and leading expert on dragons if you ever need to know anything
about them.” He showed me two crossed fingers “God forbid you ever should. Nasty little buggers.”

“Why?” I asked, suddenly worried.

“Don’t worry about them, Layn. Start looking, it’s under L...”