The darkness of the basement proved no problem for us, and in a split second we were in the coal room, behind the furnace. I forced open the tiny slanted door that led to the driveway and leaped out, turning to give my brother a hand.
And that’s when I felt the gun at my neck.
I turned around slowly and raised my hands. A small crowd of New York’s finest stood there, along with most of the neighbourhood, who had come to watch the manhunt.
Damon and I could, with little difficulty, have taken them all. And it looked like my brother was itching for a fight.
I shook my head, whispering, ‘We’ll draw far more attention resisting arrest right now.’ The truth was, it would be far easier to escape later, when we didn’t have a crowd gawking at us. Damon knew it as well as I did.
He sighed a dramatic sigh and pulled himself out of the chute, leaping neatly to the ground.
An officer strode forward bravely – but only once his men had our arms behind our backs and jostled us a bit, letting us know who was in charge.
‘You two are under arrest for grand larceny, murder and anything else I can find that will have you hanging from a tree in Washington Square for the deaths of the Sutherlands,’ the officer said through even, square teeth.
They dragged us out, pushing more than was necessary. With shoves and a final kick each we were thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, and then the door was slammed behind us.
‘They were good people,’ the chief hissed in Damon’s face, through the bars.
Damon shook his head back and forth. ‘I’ve had better,’ he whispered to me.
Through the bars of the wagon I stared back at the house I’d called home for the past week. Margaret stood framed in the doorway, her black hair stark against the glowing lights of the house. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she said something so softly that even my sensitive ears barely heard it.
‘Whoever did this will pay.’
The New York Halls of Justice and House of Detention was a slablike stone structure that rose heavily from the street like an old tombstone. The interior was a portrait in grey, with grim-faced policemen and haggard criminals.
And us.
Vampires caught in a human system for a bloody crime we didn’t commit. The twistedness of it all was remarkable, but it did nothing to alleviate our current situation.
With our hands tied behind our backs, a young policeman marched Damon and me up several flights of worn wooden stairs and into the chief’s office. He commanded a small square of the larger floor. Sketches of wanted men lined his walls, one man’s eye struck through with a large nail. The chief himself was a grizzled veteran with a full black beard, except where a smooth, diagonal scar cut through his skin.
He looked at our rap sheet and let out a low whistle. ‘Almost the whole Sutherland family? That’ll be in the papers tonight.’
I flinched at hearing such insensitivity coming from the lips of a normal human. What sort of monsters did he deal with that the death of a family was no more than a news item?
‘We didn’t do it,’ I said.
‘No, of course you didn’t,’ the chief said gruffly, running a finger along his scar. ‘No one who ends up here has ever done it. But the courts will get it sorted out, and everyone will get what they deserve.’
We were unceremoniously dumped into a holding cell that was larger than the entire one-person jail back home, where Jeremiah Black spent many a night sleeping off his drunken stupor. I never expected to see the inside of a cell myself.
‘We didn’t do it,’ Damon whined, imitating me and shaking his head as soon as the guard left. ‘Could you make us sound any more ridiculous?’
‘What, are you afraid of us coming off as sissies?’ I asked. ‘Would you rather I just bared my fangs at him?’
A rasping chuckle came from the corner of the cell, where another prisoner sat slumped against the wall. His hair receded from his forehead in a deep V and he had the arms of a dockworker.
‘Nice clothes,’ he said with a malicious growl, eyeing our formal suits and clean-shaven cheeks. ‘What are you in for, rich boys?’
‘Killing a family,’ Damon answered without pause. ‘You?’
‘Beatin’ in the heads of the likes of you,’ he answered back just as quickly, cracking his knuckles.
He took a swing at Damon, but my brother reached up and, with hands faster than the human eye, deflected the blow and pushed the man against the wall with a loud crack.
The giant didn’t so much topple as just crumple straight down, falling into an unconscious puddle around his own feet. None of the officers came running, and I wondered if fighting in the cells was an ordinary occurrence.
Damon sighed as he stepped around the man. He sat down on the floor in a moment of exhaustion that was almost human, almost like the old brother I used to know. ‘Why is it we always end up locked behind bars with each other?’
‘Well, at least this time you’re not being starved,’ I answered drily.
‘Nope. No chance of that,’ Damon said. His eyes surveyed the police standing on the other side of our bars, taking in each person. Then he leaned his head up against the wall and gave the peeling paint a grudging sniff. ‘And I think there’s more than a chance that there are a couple of rats in here for you, too.’
I sighed, sliding down the wall and sitting next to him. I did not understand this new Damon. His shifts in mood were frightening. One moment he was the soulless vampire who killed without remorse, the next he was someone who seemed like my old childhood companion again.
‘What’s the plan?’ I asked.
‘You’re looking at it,’ he said, getting up and indicating the dead man at our feet. ‘Guard! Man down in here.’
When the guard approached and saw the body on the ground he seemed annoyed, but not surprised. The guard didn’t lean too close – he had survived long enough to know not to. But it was close enough. Damon flared his eyes.
‘Forget we were ever here. Forget what we look like. Forget who brought us in, our names and everything about us.’
‘Who’s us?’ the guard asked, hypnotised but slow on the uptake.
‘The man I came in with,’ Damon snapped, pointing at me. The guard nodded faintly. ‘Forget everything about us. And then – send over the other guard, all right?’
The guard wandered back to his post, somewhat dizzily at first, then cocked his head as if he had just remembered something. He went to one of the guards on patrol and pointed at the jail cell. Not at Damon, through Damon. It was as though Damon didn’t exist anymore in his reality.
‘One down,’ Damon muttered. He looked tense. Again I wondered how many people he really could control at once.
The second guard approached. He had a scar across his face that twisted one eye shut, and he smacked his billy club as he walked. But before Damon could compel him, he said the absolute last thing we expected.
‘Your lawyer is here.’
I looked at my brother. He looked back at me in equal surprise. He raised an eyebrow as if to say: Did you arrange this somehow?
I very slightly shook my head. Damon straightened his shoulders as a clang sounded and the door to the stockade opened. The smell of rotten eggs and death filled the room as another man walked in – the lawyer.
He was huge. Larger than the prisoner Damon had knocked out, with long arms and an enormous chest. His hands were monstrous, with stubby fingers that gripped a leather portfolio.