Chapter 42: The Consequences - The Night Market

The machines hummed quietly beneath the low lighting of the Hemotheca, casting a sterile, bluish glow over the polished floor. Quinn Cavendish sat slanted on a stool, gum cracking between her teeth, one booted foot tapping idly against the chrome stem. She eyed the technician beside her within a sea of black eyeliner, who worked in silence, dropping one measured dose of reagent after another into a series of dark, sludgy vials. Each responded differently – some hissed, some bubbled, some did nothing at all. He paused and cursed under his breath when one of them failed to react entirely.

‘I’m sorry, miss,’ he murmured, struggling to make eye contact.

Quinn’s eyes didn’t leave the vials. ‘That’s disappointing. Run the next batch as soon as you can,’ she said. ‘We might get lucky.’

The phone in her jacket buzzed, muffled beneath the heavy layer of leather. She pulled it out, flipped it open, and listened. Her face remained expressionless as she leaned against the steel counter.

‘Actually, you’re wrong,’ she said plainly. ‘I can absolutely believe it. I’m in the Vault. Come up.’ And she hung up.

She slid the phone back into her pocket, told the technician to keep her informed and stepped out into the expanse of the Vault’s main chamber. Archivists moved silently across the suspended walkways above like shadows in an old cathedral, recategorising records and amending huge tomes post-disaster.

Then the great doors of the Vault rumbled open.

Swan walked in with the quiet steel of a man still stitched together by pure will. A black bandage wrapped around one eye. A gash still healing traced his jaw. He didn’t speak.

At his side walked Pepper Montgomery.

Her expression was composed, but Quinn saw the flicker – just the flicker – of hesitation. She was holding herself tightly, but not from fear. Something else. Maybe guilt. Maybe shame.

‘Seems like another one who made it through the commotion,’ Swan said quietly, eyeing Quinn. ‘Hopefully she won’t be the last.’

‘Here’s hoping,’ Quinn muttered. Her gaze traced Pepper up and down, still chewing her gum. ‘And there we were thinking you’d been killed by Horus’s rabble. But look at you. Still kicking. Welcome back, Pepper.’

She didn’t wait for a reply. ‘Leave us,’ she said to Swan.

He gave a subtle bow, threw Pepper an unnervingly long look, then turned and disappeared down the long hall.

‘I’m sorry for your losses,’ Pepper said softly.

Quinn raised an eyebrow. ‘You don’t know our losses. Or do you?’ She turned and began walking deeper into the Vault. ‘It’s hard to say. Our home was infiltrated. Many were slaughtered, the innocent and our own. And a couple of weeks later, you come walking right through my door like it didn’t happen . . .’

‘I managed to escape,’ Pepper replied. ‘But I was clearly targeted by Horus’s people. I went into hiding and figured things had calmed down enough to return.’

‘Did you now?’ Quinn said without looking at her. ‘You could have let us know.’

Pepper revealed her phone, its façade covered with spiderweb cracks.

‘My phone got broken in the scuffle to get out.’

‘So I see. There’s a convenient trickle of staff who have been returning. Ones who we thought snuffed it, turn up out of nowhere. As you can imagine, suspicion is quite high. Horus managed to sow plenty of doubt among us.’

They passed into the Ossuary, where priceless bones lay behind reinforced glass cases. The room smelled of chalk and age. Quinn walked slowly between the displays, the obscure arrangement of jutting bones staring back with hollow sockets and frozen agony.

‘What actually happened?’ Pepper asked, more hesitantly now.

‘Horus revealed his hand when he and your brother had their little dick-waving contest. Turns out he wasn’t just feeding discontent, he was bloody stockpiling it. Collecting angry, aimless vampires who were pissed at the world and wanted to get something done about it. Then he made his move . . . right under all our noses.’

Pepper swallowed. ‘How many were—?’

‘Killed?’ Quinn stopped walking. ‘Too many. We still don’t have the total figure and I’m not holding my breath. Nor do I look forward to it. The damage was substantial. Let’s not talk about the hit on our reputation. He’s taken residence in the Odes’ home, along with his outcast rabble, vowing not to stop until the Families are finished. My parents are discussing the situation with the other Families. What comes from that will be anyone’s guess, but I can promise it won’t be pretty.’

Pepper’s voice cracked. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Yes. You’ve said that already.’ Quinn turned sharply, eyes narrowed, cracking her gum once more. ‘After the smoke cleared, we started the investigation as to how this happened. Sought out the holes in our defences and whatnot. Security faults. Who went missing. Who may have turned. That sort of thing.’

Pepper’s throat tightened. ‘Did you find anything?’

‘Plenty.’ Quinn took a step closer, eyes unblinking, wild hair bouncing on her turn. ‘So, let me ask: why’d you come back, Pepper? You could have vanished. Stayed gone. Nobody would have known.’

‘I . . . I have a duty to the Family,’ Pepper replied. ‘That hasn’t changed.’

‘A duty? That’s what you call it?’ Quinn hissed. ‘You walk out there during the fight and whisper some words to your brother, and suddenly he goes apeshit. His second comes out to play and wrecks the joint in the process, sparking an insurrection! And you call that a duty, do you?’

‘I had to tell him something important,’ Pepper stammered. ‘He took it badly.’

Quinn was on her in an instant.

‘He took it badly, did he? Hm.’

She slapped Pepper so hard she spun against the wall. Her fingers clenched the collar of her coat and slammed her back against the reinforced glass. The bones behind it didn’t stir, but the rage on Quinn’s face was primal. She spat the gum free.

‘You wound Laik up like a FUCKING TOY, igniting an already dangerous scene, and walked away to do what? Get a cup of tea? Sit down somewhere to watch it all unfold with a smile on your fucking face? No, I presume you did something else. I think you took the east stairwell up to the lifts, took said lift to the Vault, walked into the Relic Gallery with a fake in your pocket and switched it with the Eternal Rose! Then you walked right out the front door with the panicked masses while our people were getting murdered and your brother lay dead on the ground! Do you take me for a FUCKING FOOL, Miss Montgomery? Did you not have the slightest idea that maybe, just maybe I knew exactly what you had done before you waltzed on in here?’

Pepper stammered and shivered in dread at Quinn’s previous madness forged into determination. The heir was furious, and while her words were violent, it was her fangs that Pepper feared: they had been extended in rage and were so, so close. At any moment Quinn could rip her throat out for this deception. And she would be right to.

Pepper whimpered. ‘Laik is . . . Laik is dead?’

Quinn’s face broke into something halfway between fury and heartbreak. ‘What the hell did you expect to happen? Who knows, maybe we could have saved him if we had the Eternal Rose in our possession! But that chance is long gone!’

Tears welled in Pepper’s eyes. ‘I’m sorry, okay? I’m so sorry! I needed it, I needed it for my sister. She was dying, and I had to save her somehow. I had just one chance to save her life, and I took it. She’s my only family . . . I know what you and Canis are like, you would have done the same if the situation was reversed!’

Quinn’s jaw tightened. ‘I wouldn’t have thrown people to the wolves! I wouldn’t have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds!’

‘No . . .’ Pepper squeaked. ‘But your brother would. He’d raze the city to the ground if it meant protecting you. I see how you are. And I know that he would understand what I did.’

Quinn’s face crushed up.

She let go. Pepper crumpled to the ground, coughing and clutching her neck. She wiped at her eyes and dared to look up.

Quinn stood a few paces away, silent and still in the Ossuary’s glow. The overhead lights caught on the metal accents of her imposing look, thick leather trousers wrapped in buckle straps, a heavy chain hanging from her hip like a war trophy. Her black jacket was covered in patches and subtle glyphs that had been etched into the arms. The Quinn Pepper used to know looked like she caused the chaos. This iteration was seemingly home slap bang in the middle of it.

‘Get up,’ Quinn demanded.

Pepper obeyed, limbs stiff, breath shaky.

Quinn turned and walked to a reinforced security door set flush into the Ossuary’s wall. Without a word, she withdrew a key card from her jacket and pressed it against the reader. The lock shivered with a pulse of green. The mechanism clunked hard inside the wall, and with a sluggish groan, the door slid open.

A wave of warmth hit them immediately, heavy, humid and unnatural. Pepper followed as Quinn stepped inside.

The corridor beyond was dim, walls lined in sleek panelling. The air felt thick, as though it had to be chewed before breathing. The further they walked, the more oppressive it became.

Quinn removed her leather jacket, revealing the black ribbed vest beneath and a fresh tattoo down her left forearm. A spider with long, delicate legs crawled in fine ink toward her elbow, its body marked with a blood-drop red symbol. A thread of silk ran from its rear, tracing the roadmap of veins to her shoulder. Pepper wasn’t certain, but it seemed to shimmer faintly in the heat. Beneath it, bizarrely, in stamped gothic lettering, was the name MR WIGGLES.

‘You’ll want to ignore the temperature,’ Quinn said. ‘It’s deliberate. Helps keep the seals tight. You’ll see why.’

Pepper shrugged off her coat and draped it over one arm.

At the end of the corridor, the space opened out into a wider chamber. The floor dipped slightly and was lined in red-painted metal plates. Two Enforcers stood on either side of the farthest door: Duncan and Reese.

They snapped to attention the moment they saw Quinn, but when Pepper followed a few steps behind, their expressions turned cold and dangerous.

Reese’s fangs slid down, lips pulling back as she stepped in front of Pepper like a guard dog off the chain.

Quinn didn’t flinch. ‘Out of the way,’ she ordered.

Duncan looked to her for confirmation. Reese didn’t budge for a moment longer before she finally stepped aside, though her glare was chilling.

Quinn exhaled. ‘Can’t say I blame them,’ she muttered. ‘They know what you did. They know what it cost.’

They passed through the chamber, the heat now oppressive. Beads of sweat rolled down the back of Pepper’s neck. At the far side was another door – thicker, heavier, reinforced with criss-crossing steel bars. Along one wall beside it, a long, narrow window ran horizontally, tinted red.

Quinn stopped and gestured toward the window. ‘We put him in here for safety.’

Pepper stepped forward cautiously.

She peered into the room beyond.

Inside, bathed in the low crimson light, hung a single figure suspended by chains against the far wall. His arms were draped above him, wrists bound by heavy cuffs etched with silver symbols. His black shirt hung exposing skin cracked with soot-black veins.

‘Laik . . .’ she whispered, before blurting. ‘You said he was dead!’

‘Look closer,’ Quinn insisted.

Pepper leaned to the window and pressed her hands to the glass.

Smoke curled softly from his limbs, spiralling off his shoulders and ribs in wisps.

At first, the figure didn’t move. But then, ever so slowly, his head rose. Golden light gleamed behind his eyes like molten metal. He looked directly at her, expression hollow. The smoke around him pulsed in rhythm with each breath.

Pepper staggered back from the glass, hand over her mouth.

Quinn, still behind her, finished the sentence.

‘As I was saying. We put him in there for safety. Our safety,’ she said, her voice cool. ‘It would seem a little matter like dying was enough for . . . this to happen. I don’t know if what we’re looking at is Laik, or the Sins themselves, but I suspect some twisted amalgamation of the two. Maybe it kept him alive in his last moments. Maybe Laik is in there somewhere. Maybe he’s lost forever. We don’t know. The tests have been difficult to perform on account of his . . . unpredictability . . .’

Pepper wiped her eyes. Being responsible for his death, whatever the reason, was difficult enough to accept, but this? This seemed so much crueller.

Laik, or whatever he was now, eased his head down, hair falling over his face.

‘But what I do know,’ Quinn said, looking to the woman, ‘is that my brother did say that little box your family was playing about with, the one responsible for all of this . . . has been located. And conversations have been had to acquire it.’

Pepper’s mouth fell open as Quinn took out a cigarette and painted her face with a warm glow in the red ambience.

‘Do you have it?’

‘No.’ Quinn snorted smoke from her nostrils. ‘Its current owners heard about the commotion and weren’t willing to let us buy it outright.’

‘Why would they do that?’

‘Because’ – Quinn tapped ash to the floor – ‘they’re adamant to sell it at the next Night Market.’

Pepper took a sharp inhale, as Quinn bared down on her.

‘And you . . . You couldn’t live with such uncertainty hanging over you. You had to be sure there were no loose ends. Well, there is. A big one. I watched you make your moves, paint your lies, pretend to play nice with my Family all under the pretence of robbing us, knowing all too well what was transpiring. It was never a secret. You never hid your intentions well enough. Especially since I knew you before you even stepped foot in my home. By setting you on your path to discover the existence of us in the first place.’

Pepper’s eyes snagged on Quinn’s arm as she spoke, tracking the sweep of motion: the vast tattoo of a black spider sprawled across pale skin, legs extended as if they were probing. It was large enough that the shading looked almost like living shadow.

A spider.

Spinning silk.

Up her arm.

Tracing her—

Then Pepper recoiled as if the air had been punched from her lungs, a cold shock cutting through her fear. The Night Market. The lure had been there all along. Hints deposited by some mysterious individual across shadowy internet message boards, tempting her deeper with every click, every late-night scroll. Those long, drunken nights when Claire was slipping away, and she was desperate enough to chase anything that might lead to a cure. Step by step, they’d led her straight to the truth. Straight into them. The anonymous hand guiding her through the dark wasn’t anonymous at all. It was a perverse boast. The revelation landed horrible and neat, making an ugly, distorted sense that cleared everything into focus at once.

‘SilkVeins? No, no, no, no! That – that person who told me everything about the Night Market? The Eternal Rose? That was you?’ Pepper cried out. ‘You did all this, you . . . you sent me the messages, you did the . . . you did all this? You tricked me?’

Quinn tilted her head back, saying nothing.

Because that was just the start.

From that first night they met, the lazy smile playing at Quinn’s mouth when she’d mocked Pepper’s squeamishness and joked about her being ‘the one’, even suggesting that she would replace Viola, as if it were all terribly amusing. The flattery and teasing were meant to disarm her victim. Pepper had laughed then, grateful for the opportunity of being allowed to penetrate a place so trusted in their Home. Only now did she grasp what that moment truly was: an induction to Quinn’s own game.

And the things Quinn had said afterwards, those strange, half-cryptic remarks that had once felt like provocation or eccentricity, shifted in her memory, rearranging themselves into a complete, damning picture. Even penetrating the Vault no longer felt like chance. Quinn’s talk of Laik, of fascination and frustration and being trapped despite all the wealth of the Family, had seemed like rare honesty then. A glimpse behind the performance. Pepper had believed she was trustworthy, her own deception paying off. But Quinn had manoeuvred herself in a position where she was not only manipulating affairs, Pepper was welcoming them. Conversations had been secret suggestions, deceiving Pepper into believing that she had stumbled upon sought answers of her own accord. Puzzle boxes, Quinn called her and Laik. Things to be twisted and turned until solutions presented themselves.

And then there was the confrontation with Horus, the only time that seemed like when the mask truly slipped. The fury in Quinn’s voice. The ownership. This one is mine. I had plans. Not concern for Laik’s suffering. Not outrage at his cruelty. Just rage at the interruption, of something precious mishandled before its purpose had been fulfilled.

Pepper hadn’t found her way through the last few months by bravery or cleverness. She had been guided on the right path, nudged along with the vain belief she was choosing every decision herself.

She had been played from the very beginning, at every conceivable turn.

Her breathing quickened before she could stop it. Tears welled at the devastating understanding that even standing right here, right now, to face this, had never been a choice at all – but an inevitability.

‘Y-you said before you never got involved in the affairs of others, didn’t you? So why—’

‘These are my affairs, Miss Montgomery. Always have been. They just so happen to involve you. That is why you returned. Your guilt brought you back to us – as I knew it would.’ Quinn sneered. ‘Your job isn’t done, Pepper. Horus has ignited a great upheaval and I need my Enforcer back for what’s to come. But the sins he carries makes him volatile. Unreliable. And I cannot have that. The clock is ticking. And you – you have a responsibility: get them out of him . . . and rid us of your family’s foolishness for good.’

The sentence hung between them like a verdict. Pepper felt her stomach drop as Quinn leaned in, nostrils flared, voice dropping to something intimate and dangerous.

‘I should kill you where you stand for all your transgressions. But it seems fate has other uses for you. After that . . .’

She let the words trail, then gave Pepper one damning look from beneath her hair, teeth dangerous and presented to remind the human of her vulnerability, in case she was stupid enough to have forgotten.

‘No promises.’

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