Vigil: Verity Fassbinder Book 1 Read Free

community included those who were still looking for a taste of the old days: feline-shaped
     things who stole breath, succubi and incubi out for a good time, and creatures who swapped their own offspring for babies
     left unguarded in their cribs.
    He gave a grunt that might have been a concession. ‘So, where to? You said you’d got some ideas?’
    ‘I might have exaggerated. I have
one
idea. Let’s start with Little Venice.’
    ‘Probably should have told me that three seconds ago when I couldhave taken the turn-off,’ he said mildly. ‘Now we’re going the long way round.’
    He cut off a dully-gleaming SUV to change lanes. The sun had fled, and as we drove onto the Story Bridge, the lights of the
     city down and to the left, and those of New Farm down and to the right, swam in the blackness. High-rise office towers stood
     out like beacons, standing cheek-by-jowl with the new apartment blocks: all that modern steel and glass juxtaposed with the
     verdigris dome and sandstone of Customs House and the past it represented. During the day, the river would show its true colour
     – a thorough brown – but in that moment it was an undulating ebony ribbon reflecting the diamonds of night-time illuminations.
    ‘It’s okay. We’ve got nothing but time,’ I lied and hunched into the upholstery, thinking about melting ice cream cake and
     kids who wouldn’t ever know what that tasted like.



Chapter Two
    West End was filled with Weyrd.
    Most folk thought the Saturday market’s demographic was a mix of students, drunks, artists, writers, the few upwardly mobile
     waiting for rehabilitated property values, religious nutters, common-or-garden do-gooders and dyed-in-the-wool junkies, all
     mingling for cheap fruit and veggies – or to score weed in the public toilet block in the nearby park. Often these groups
     overlapped.
    But there was also a metric butt-load of Weyrd, who sometimes featured in one or more of the aforementioned groups as well.
     They were mostly successful in their attempts to blend in, especially in suburbs that already had a pretty bizarre human population
     – places where it was difficult to distinguish the wondrous-strange from the head-cases. The old guy who yelled at the trees
     on the corner of Boundary Street and Montague Road? Weyrd. The kid who kept peeing on the front steps of the Gunshop Café?
     Weyrd. The woman who asked people in the street if they could spare some dirty laundry? Well, actually, she was Normal. The
     smart ones used glamours to hide what they were, to tame disobedient shapes and disguise peculiar abilities, but some just
     let it all hang out, not caring if they were mistaken for psychos or horror movie extras.
    They weren’t a disorganised rabble; any minority group keen on survival soon develops its own leadership. The Weyrd had theCouncil of Five, chosen from the old families who’d been in Brisbane since its founding. Convicts, overseers and frock-coated
     men on the make weren’t the only ones doing the invading; lots of folk wanted a new start. In the Old Country – wherever that
     happened to be – the ancient beliefs and traditions still held sway. Normals were twitchy creatures, but they’d only live
     in fear of the dark for a limited time. Eventually they got tired of huddling around fires and being scared. As with anything
     that went on for too long, numbness and fatigue set in, followed by anger, which burned out a lot of the good sense that’d
     brought on the terror in the first place. They got all brave and started charging around brandishing torches and pitchforks,
     striking out not just at whatever had frightened them but at
anything
that was different. Problem was, it wasn’t really bravery, it was still fear – but it was an
enraged
fear, and that kind wasn’t discriminating. As a consequence, the Weyrd – the
different
– from Hungary to Scotland, Romania to Mali, Italy to Japan, the Land Beyond the Forest to several dozen tiny