Walking Shadows. Narrelle M Harris

pain and fear and confusion.

      "Shut up, Thomas." She squeezed her hand into his chest and paused, a vile grin on her face.

      Gary shifted uneasily as though deciding whether to intervene. "Don't do that," he said gruffly.

      "Do what?" But she was smiling.

      "Don't play."

      But it's so much more interesting," she said.

      "I'll remember that, if I ever have to do for you."

      The anger in his voice startled me. More surprisingly, it startled Magdalene. Gary never worried her. Not ever.

      She squeezed her fist and pulled, and Thomas's heart was torn out of his chest with a faint sucking sound. Red-black fluid ran like thick honey back into the hole in his torso. His eyes were wide open, his slack jaw working around sounds that might have been 'please'. She closed her fist and the lump of meat split like rotten leather. She dropped it. In Thomas's body, the fluid began to move and coalesce, and finally ooze out of the cavity and onto the ground. In minutes it had disappeared.

      "He was getting to be a nuisance anyway," Magdalene said firmly.

      "We have to burn the body," Gary insisted. "It's the only way to be sure."

      "You are an obsessive," interrupted Mundy. "That happened once. Only once."

      "Would you want it to be you?"

      "I'll make sure of it," said Magdalene tiredly. She looked meaningfully at the ready-to-hand bonfire of the Gold Bug. She bent, picked up the mangled remains of the heart, and threw it through the open window two floors up, with perfect aim.

      I glanced back at Thomas's body, shrivelling the way spiders do when they're dead. Bloodless and empty, the mummified shell simply collapsed in on itself.

      True death was probably kinder than being a zombie. But that didn't make me feel any better.

      CHAPTER 5

      Between Mundy's severed hand, Thomas's immolation and the attack on the Gold Bug, there was absolutely no doubt by now that Melbourne's vampire community was being targeted. Whoever was looking down the gun sights, I couldn't say I blamed them.

      On the other hand, indiscriminate slaughter was in no way on the list of things I was prepared to put up with. Not even of people I didn't like, and not without a fight. The fact that Gary, someone I very much did like, was potentially on that hit list was absolutely untenable.

      Before I could launch into demands for an explanation, however, Gary remembered our original errand. He pried the blue bag out of my hands - it surprised me how tightly I'd been holding on to it - and held it out to Mundy. Thinking about anything other than Thomas seemed to be high on everyone's agenda.

      "Um. I found this. We packed it. Lissa did. To preserve it. In case, you know, it wasn't too late."

      Mundy took the bag gingerly and did not say thank you. I saw the way the stump of his right arm twitched, as though it was reaching for the zipper. I looked at Mundy properly for the first time. His pale, handsome face still made him look like an evil poet; a Dorian Grey, hundreds of years old, whose corrupted portrait was hidden behind his cold eyes. But now he was lopsided, with the sleeve of his shirt flapping at the end of the stump, like he didn't know what to do with it.

      The absent hand was a shape made of space, and it wasn't cool-tragic like Luke Skywalker, or comic-villain like Captain Hook. It was cruel-horrible, like he was still trying to pick up things with it, only realising at the last second his fingers were no longer there.

      After a moment, he said to Gary, "Still bringing your pet with you, I see." He could still squeeze a lot of contempt into very few words.

      Gary hesitated a moment. "Do you want me to help you open that?" he asked with curious neutrality. "You might find it difficult."

      Magdalene snickered in vile appreciation of the dig and Mundy's expression hardened. There was no suave way to do this, so he put the bag on the ground, kneeled on the corner to anchor it and ripped the top of it open.

      The hand looked terrible when he took it out, withered and discoloured. Mundy's expression was briefly desolate, then studiously bland. He put the arm on top of the tattered bag, shoved his dangling shirtsleeve up over the stump until the ends were trapped under his armpit, then drew a folding knife from his pocket. He had to pry one of the blades open with his teeth.

      Having finally extracted the longest of the blades, Mundy scored a deep cut across the stump of his arm, then another, wincing only slightly as he opened the already mutilated limb. It didn't bleed, of course, but I could see the movement of the thick non-human blood in the cuts.

      Then Mundy picked up what was left of his hand and held it against the fresh cuts. He moved it this way and that, as though it was a piece of a puzzle and only needed the right angle to click it into place. His expression remained set, but the agitated motion of the limb in his hand betrayed him.

      Feeling pity for the old bastard confused me.

      "It's too late, Mundy," I heard Magdalene say, the personification of schadenfreude. "It's too decayed. It won't take."

      Mundy's reply was a strangled grunt. "Look," she continued, "it's closing up again."

      Gary pulled a face of nervous sympathy as he watched. But sympathy of any kind was glaringly absent from Magdalene. She strode over to Mundy.

      "It's a waste of time," she said, snatching the hand from him and, astonishingly, she pitched it with vicious accuracy through the second floor window into the flames of the burning bar. Open-mouthed at the brazen cruelty of it, I studied Mundy's response to this violation. His gaze was fixed on the smoke pouring from the window.

      The smell and the smoke were terrible. They were nothing compared to the stark look on Mundy's face.

      He must have felt me watching him, as an instant later his expression was shuttered. He stood straight, with his back to that awful fire, and directed a glare at Gary. Any trace of vulnerability or loss was frostbitten to death in that look.

      In Gary's current mood a stare-off seemed inevitable, but Gary was suddenly quiescent. I didn't like the change. I was getting well past frightened now. I was far into pissed-off territory and preparing to sign a six year lease.

      "Is someone going to tell me what the hell is going on? Who were those guys? Why are they trying to kill you?"

      In the library, that tone of voice would have got me instant respect, even from the rowdy after-school teenaged boys. Here it earned me a collection of disdainful expressions. I looked defiant daggers back at them. Mundy and Magdalene looked about ready to put in some heavy duty ignoring. Only a cat can ignore a human more efficiently than a vampire.

      Gary wasn't much help, except for the strange look he gave me, mingled with a modicum of concern. I think he was always amazed when I defied vampires who weren't him. If I'd had more sense than indignation, it would have amazed me too.

      "Don't come the snooty King of the Undead with me, you asshat," I said to Mundy. "These bastards nearly killed you, pretty much did for Thomas, and they set fire to the Gold Bug. It looks like they're winning so far, and the two of you are way too calm to know nothing about it. So what gives?"

      "It is none of your concern," said Mundy stiffly.

      "It is if they're going to come after Gary."

      Mundy and Magdalene exchanged looks.

      "She's not his pet, Mundy," said Magdalene, "I think he's the lapdog now. She's keeping him on a blood leash."

      "It would explain much," said Mundy, raising an eyebrow. "Gary is not as he was. He has betrayed so much emotion these past months." He said 'emotion' like Gary had done something dirty.

      Magdalene's lips quirked in derisive humour. "The young ones do sometimes mistake the blood rush for actual feelings. Being such a late starter, he is perhaps more confused than most."

      "What