Wraith, page 19
With a jerk of Gia’s head, I indicate the sharp stick clenched in the mastin’s fist. ‘There are other means to enter the lion’s den, human, but the first approach must be made by the lambs — and the lambs alone.’
‘Wolves,’ Nuriel rasps, turning her own burning eyes on Shaun, her dark hair streaming and writhing about her face like a snarl of living serpents. ‘Wolves dressed as lambs.’
My own laughter is harsh. ‘What else to take down the lion of the world? He will expect pleasure and receive only suffering. It is fitting that we two be the fork in which he is caught.’
Gia sinks to her knees suddenly, and the breach between this world and the next becomes a howling gale that pulls at me. She is at breaking point. As am I. I cannot stay.
I have difficulty focusing on Nuriel’s heartbreaking face above us as I say, ‘It will not be long, my love. I will be with you, when it is time. Trust in that.’
Nuriel grips Gia’s fingers harder, but I can already feel the bonds between Gia and me loosening.
‘You know that we may not survive this.’ Her words are bleak.
‘I know it,’ I say, as Gia closes her eyes, ready to step back into the river and release me; release herself.
‘Wait!’ the mastin, Daughtry, shouts, moving closer.
I focus on him with difficulty, as if I am in the midst of a sandstorm.
‘How will I find you, wraith,’ he thunders, ‘in order to strike at the Devil? I can only find a person in this world whom I have first read. Someone I have known from something of theirs I have placed my hands on. You have no substance, you have no possessions; you cannot be known, you cannot be read. Nor can the Devil! Without me, your chances of success are so much less. This —’ he holds up the sharpened stick in his hand, ‘can dispatch wraiths and demons to Azraeil’s demesne, almost as well as you can. You know what my kind can do. You need me by your side.’
‘And me.’ Shaun’s dark gold gaze is feverish where he stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the mastin. ‘You forget that Gia will be with you. And the man who hurt her badly will be there. Gia will be among monsters. She is the vessel that will hide you. Who will protect her?’
I turn my head to look at him and the man, Shaun, shrinks back as my searing gaze rakes his face.
I feel it then — his absolute love for Gia.
An emotion as constant and hopeless as the love Ryan once felt for me.
So.
She does not know it; nor will he ever willingly tell her.
It is a complication I do not need at this — the eleventh — hour.
Daughtry makes a hypnotic figure of eight in the air between us with the weapon of worn but polished wood in his hand. ‘All I know, wraith — all I have ever known since once I walked the bloodstained fields of Lisieux and Bayeux in times past — is to send the dead and demonic back to where they can do no harm to the living. It has been my life’s calling. Let me help you.’
‘Let us,’ Shaun adds fiercely. ‘We will be the element of surprise no demon will see coming.’
I pull away from Nuriel’s grasp then, and instantly the sounds of the black river rise up, shrieking, in my ears. And the world is all light, or I am, and my voice is the world, shaking them all in this room to their bones.
‘You wish to read me, Gatekeeper? You wish to know who I am? By this, will you know me, and find me — wherever I may be. You will be marked forever, Knight. But then, you already were.’
I step out and away from Gia’s body so that, for a moment, I am revealed as I am now: a tall and shining wraith with hollow eyes, as insubstantial and silent, as deaf and dumb, as air. Without weight or substance. An imprint of someone who once lived, breathed, loved. A ghost girl.
Without Gia, I am a spent breath, a silent movie, a memory; nothing more.
I see the woman, Bianca, mouth Mercy — recognition and fear in her dark eyes as they lift up and up, to take me in. I see the remaining eye of the young woman, Jamie — who speaks with Death himself, who loves the shining Prince of All Souls with a devotion as deep as it is hopeless of ever being returned — go wide with awe.
I see the man, Shaun, catch Gia’s unconscious body before it falls to the ground, cradling her tenderly against his broad chest. So beloved, in a way I will never again be in this world.
My pain and my sorrow rise and rise.
My love, I scream in a voice that only Daughtry can now hear, Where have you gone?
Daughtry stands tall and unafraid, as I flicker and burn before him in my true form, raising his hand confidently, palm outward as if he would meet mine and I were still human, and capable of common touch.
His dark green eyes are wide and fascinated as they gaze on me, for I am beautiful in a way that is now, and will forever be, elemental.
He steps forward and I smile, raising my own hand, whispering for his ears alone, ‘By this, Knight, shall you know me,’ and I plunge — straight through him.
He is that howling, jetstream, raceway tangle of skin and bone, nerve and muscle and blood that all humankind is. I read him and know him the instant he knows me. We meet at the core of us, and I am burning him alive with the knowledge of who I am.
You will never forget me now, my words echo inside his mind. You will never forget who you are in this moment. Wherever I am in this world or the next — you will find me.
The mastin shudders, caught in the weave of me, his green eyes stark with pain.
If I were archangel still, or demon, Mastin, I add, a touch of acid in my voice that licks along his already convulsing nerves like fire. You would already be dead.
Then I am through and out, and I am gone.
***
I wake to the feel of Bianca stroking my hair, the tears that are falling from her eyes wetting my face. Her long dark hair is a warm, scented curtain around me, but I can feel all of them leaning in close, watching me with concern: Tommy and Shaun, Jamie.
My friends.
For a moment I close my eyes, aware of how much it is I have to lose now.
‘Where is the angel?’ I gasp finally, re-opening my eyes with difficulty because all I want to do is sleep. ‘The warrior?’
But the words come out strangled and strange. I sound like I’m drowning, not speaking.
Bianca puts her fingers against my lips to quiet me. It is an effort even to breathe. Everything burns from the inside out.
‘They’re gone,’ she sobs. ‘I’m not sure how I’m going to explain it to my security detail, but Cibyyl — I mean, Nuriel — and Daughtry just vanished.’
‘That stick,’ Jamie adds in an awed whisper. ‘After Mercy broke up into all these tiny pieces of…light, Daughtry opened some kind of hole in the air with it and then he and the angel just stepped through and —’
I roll my head sideways with difficulty, looking to Shaun — the eternal sceptic — for confirmation. He nods reluctantly to say it’s all true.
***
I don’t remember much of the journey back to Jamie’s place.
I know I’m lying across one of the seats and Shaun’s in the car with me because my head is — inexplicably — cradled across his denim-clad, muscular thighs. And he’s stroking my hair — the biggest hard-arse street fighter in the western world is stroking my hair. And even more surprising is that I’m letting him. I don’t have the energy to even come up with my usual defensive Don’t touch me.
I close my eyes, knowing that Jamie, Tommy and Bianca are sitting beside each other, across from us. Talking in low voices.
All the people I like best, in one place.
I sigh, or imagine I do. Everything hurts.
The town car moves again, fast, then slowing to a stop-start crawl. Tilbury Docks is miles from anywhere, but it feels to me as if the driver is following the entire course of the River Thames in getting back. There are so many turns and switchbacks that I think that I doze. Waking, then dozing, for what feel like hours.
Finally, I hear Tommy ask to be let off at a hotel in the heart of the West End — his spiritual home when he’s in London. ‘This isn’t goodbye,’ he warns everyone angrily as the door opens to let him out. ‘And don’t you dare say another word, any of you, or I will howl.’
I get a sense of his cologne around me, then a warm tear falls on my cheek that might be his — I can’t be sure — before the door slams shut. I’m too spent to open my eyes, even though it might be the last time I ever see him.
I feel regret; I think I sleep.
Sometime later, the car slows abruptly and Bianca barks through the intercom, ‘What’s happening, Jean-Michel?’
‘Les journalistes,’ the driver’s disembodied voice replies in disgust as he gives three blasts on his horn, steering slowly through what must be a thick press of bodies outside. I hear open palms slapping the surface of the car. I know from having lived through situations like this before that we are walled in by a crowd of eager men and women clutching cameras and microphones.
It’s so familiar that I murmur, ‘Irina.’
Bianca’s answering laughter is curt and unamused.
‘They’re camped out on your doorstep, Jamie,’ I hear her say. ‘You can’t go home now — you won’t even make it to your front door! They will tear you apart for an angle. Baring your face to the world was extremely brave, but it’s made you notorious.’
Jamie’s reply is harsh with fear. ‘I have to get home, Bianca! It’s the only place I’m safe. My things are in there. My entire life is in that house now.’
The car rocks as people start bashing on the windows. ‘Jamie Suggitt! Jamie Suggitt!’ is repeated over and over.
‘We know you’re in there!’
‘Care to comment?’
‘Who’s with you?’
‘What’s caused you to break your silence after all this time?’
‘Do you think his sentence was too lenient?’
‘What are your thoughts on chemical castration?’
‘Give us a picture, love! We know you want to!’
Jamie lets out a long, low, wounded moan through the hands covering her face.
‘Stay with me,’ Bianca insists in a low voice. Maybe I’m the only one who really hears the deep loneliness and uncertainty in her words. ‘At least until all this blows over?’
‘What have I done?’ Jamie whispers, appalled, as the noise outside grows more deafening. The car comes to a complete stop, unable to move forward anymore.
‘Jamie, love,’ Shaun says, still stroking the side of my face absently as if I’m a house cat, ‘being with Bianca right now might actually be the safest place for you. She can protect you around the clock.’
‘But my things,’ Jamie chokes as the car rocks on its tyres, axles protesting.
‘Mademoiselle?’ Jean-Michel’s voice interrupts tersely through the internal speaker. ‘I can go no further. I need instruction.’
‘I’ll bring them all to you,’ Shaun insists, leaning towards Jamie over my prone body. ‘Anything you need, whatever you want — I’ll bring it over. Nothing’s going to stop me getting through all that. They don’t care about someone who looks like me. I’ll just bum-rush them and they’ll go flying like skittles.’
The driver gives another three sharp blasts on his horn, but the pummelling of fists on the windows, on the sunroof, the shooting-star flashes of light and shouting only grow more intense.
‘Bianca’s rich,’ Shaun adds. ‘She’ll have people, walls, things to keep you safe that you won’t have at home. If you insist on being home those reporters outside will try to take your windows out of their frames to get at you. They will disable your alarm and surprise you in the shower. I’m telling you, go to Bianca’s if you know what’s good for you. You’re a sitting duck here.’
‘It wasn’t supposed to be about me,’ Jamie whimpers.
‘She couldn’t have done it without you,’ I try to say from where I’m lying, but none of them hear me. Being close to Jamie’s peculiarly human, wounded energy enabled Nuriel to be almost human, just for a while. It enabled Tommy to take a usable picture. I try to tell them all this, but the words won’t come out.
‘I will take care of you, Jamie Suggitt,’ Bianca says fervently. ‘I’ll see to it that you get strong again — that you are yourself again. Whatever it takes. I promise you, you will be safe while you are with me.’
Her words have the sense of a vow.
‘All right,’ Jamie says finally. ‘Just for now. Just till all this attention…blows over.’
I dimly register Bianca’s instructions to the driver, the feel of the armoured town car reversing back the way it came, away from the feral tabloid press pack, before I am lost to the night.
21
The car stops again and one of the windows of the town car slides down. Cold night air streams into the vehicle. I shiver fitfully where I’m lying curled up, my knees almost touching my chest, facing into Shaun’s big body.
‘I’m seeing a residential London street with a boom gate on it,’ Shaun whispers down at me in tones of fascination. ‘Crash barriers. Guards with guns. We’re in the beating heart of the city, right? But it’s like Bianca lives in a different country.’
‘Good evening, Miss St Alban,’ a clipped, male voice states from outside the car. The speaker leans in through the opening, bringing the smell of damp wool and aftershave with him. ‘I’ll need the names of the four individuals with you. Are they all proceeding to your address directly?’
‘Yes, Dennis,’ I hear Bianca reply. ‘I’ll get my security team to contact you as soon as we arrive with all the relevant details.’
There’s a brief pause, then the man outside asks more gently, ‘Will you be requiring me to call for any…medical assistance?’ I feel his eyes on me.
‘I have a personal physician on standby,’ Bianca says smoothly, her tone broaching no further enquiries. ‘He assures me he can be here in under ten minutes, at any time. Have a lovely evening, Dennis.’
‘And you, miss,’ the man replies, a tinge of doubt in his hard voice before the window of the town car slides up almost soundlessly and the car moves forward again.
‘You live in Kensington Palace Gardens?’ Jamie’s voice is as accusing as a pointed finger. ‘Houses here cost upwards of fifty million pounds.’
‘We picked ours up for significantly less,’ Bianca demurs. ‘Papa bought ours in a divorce-induced fire sale.’
‘You’ve got your own personal security post at the end of your street?’ Shaun sounds impressed despite himself as he twists to look back out the rear window at the way we’ve come.
‘Both ends, actually.’ Bianca’s reply is distant, as if she’s lost in thought. ‘Diplomatic protection is required for the Israeli and Russian embassies, not to mention the Czechs and the Slovaks. I forget who else. But not for me, specifically. I’m just a private citizen.’
The car stops again to accommodate the opening of another set of heavy iron gates. I hear more male voices outside the windows, someone conversing with the driver of our car before we proceed.
Shaun whistles as the car rolls to a stop. I feel his entire body shift as he cranes his neck to look out the window.
‘I can’t repay you,’ Jamie mutters as the two passenger doors simultaneously swing outwards from the middle and a blast of night air forces its way into the car. ‘My entire home would fit inside your gatehouse. I’m here under protest.’
‘You’re here as my treasured guest,’ Bianca replies carefully in a neutral voice. ‘The family’s rarely here — the run of the house is entirely yours, Jamie; treat it like your own. The staff are paid to practise discretion. Nothing they see here will get out into the public domain; you’ll have complete privacy, time to rest and heal. And there’s an indoor pool, gym, sauna, a theatre. Computer equipment.’ She dangles the last two words casually.
Jamie’s tone is mutinous. ‘I want my own gear.’
Bianca replies soothingly, ‘Let’s get Gia off to bed and then I’ll show you where everything is and how it all works, all right?’
I feel Shaun slide across the leather seat towards the open door, taking me with him. He lifts me easily as he stands, holding me against his broad chest and I could be a little kid again. I have a faint memory of one of my foster mums lifting me out of her hatchback after a visit to a friend’s farm, late one night. I must have been about four or five — back when I was cute and small and did what I was told. That phase hadn’t lasted for long, but that feeling of being safe, of being cherished, is what I’m feeling now. It hasn’t happened so often that I can afford to be blasé about it and I stir fitfully in Shaun’s arms. In wordless reply, his hold on me tightens.
As Shaun strides across a cobbled driveway with me tucked up against his chest, he whispers, ‘You should see this, Gia. The…house is four storeys high — eight windows on every floor! — with an extra set of dormer windows set into the roof and at least six chimneys. It’s a fucking palace.’
I crank open my eyelids, just for second, seeing from a crazy, tilted angle the storybook façade of a huge red-and-white brick Queen Anne-style manor house with a slate tiled roof and so many sash windows I can’t count them all. The bit of front garden I can see surrounding the circular front drive, a whopping great ornate cast iron fountain in the middle of it, is mathematical in its neatness and precision.
‘How many bedrooms are there?’ I croak through parched lips, and Shaun relays the question to Bianca who is striding ahead up a sweep of stone stairs leading to a door surrounded by a carved stone door case.
‘Eighteen,’ she says over her shoulder as the door magically opens of its own accord to let the five of us inside.
‘One of the smaller places, then,’ I murmur with a touch of acid that’s lost on everyone but me as the world slides back out of view.
