*****
“Now” says Sara, as she and I are standing together alone, in a small room, just off the main room that we were in. It’s slightly warmer in here, but it’s dark and airless and Sara seems more like a bunch of shadows than anything else, her voice coming out at me from the dark.
“You’re clear what you need to do, right? Just get him to reverse the procedure on the band. Nothing else. Understand? Don’t mention anything about the deals, nothing about The Village, nothing about you. If you need to, tell him that we’re threatening you and unless he reverses the procedure we’ll lock you up forever. Nothing else. You understand?”
I nod. “You understand?” she asks again, and I realise that she can’t see me either. “Yes” I croak.
“Okay. Good. You’ll be alone in the room together. He’s shackled to a chair so he can’t move. And we can hear exactly what’s going on, so you just stick to the script if you want to make it out of here.”
“Just three months?” I ask.
“Just three months” she says. “You have my word. Now go.”
The wall in front of me seems to disappear, and I step into it. And find myself there, face to face with my brother Mike. He gives me a broad smile. “Hello John. Good to see you. Have a seat.”
“It’s freezing in here” I say. The room is small and dank, stone walls with moss growing at the edges, like a medieval prison. There are no doors, no windows, nothing, except for me, Mike, a rickety wooden table and two chairs. Mike’s feet are in irons, tied to the floor underneath the table, and he’s wearing rags, old clothes completely falling apart, and the smell that comes from him, from all around, makes my stomach turn, it’s like sewage. But his skin is brown, tanned, his hair thrown back casually and he’s smiling, looking happy.
“It’s not freezing” says Mike. “It’s one of the side effects of the process I still need to nail down. Sometimes temperatures can seem more extreme than they are, it’s something to do with the body getting used to the new personality. I think it wears off after a few months, but of course we need to check. Have a seat. You’re looking well.”
Tentatively I step forward and sit on the chair opposite Mike. He looks happy and relaxed, not like someone who appears to be a captive. “They can hear everything we’re saying” I whisper, hoping that it won’t get picked up by the microphones. But Mike just chuckles. “No they can’t. They can’t hear anything. That is so easy to control.”
He leans forward. “Do you think I’m a prisoner here? Really? These shackles, I can get out of them anytime I want, they really have no idea.”
“But… then why are you here? How did they catch you?” I say, confused.
He nods his head. “John… it is good to see you, but you were always so slow. I’ll tell you, I’ll explain it to you. But first things first. I just want you to know I don’t blame you, all right.” He speaks softly, kindly to me. He looks down at me, and his eyes are soft, his eyes are clear. There’s some stirring somewhere inside me, some memory that I can’t quite reach, it’s only half there, something about the fire in his eyes and the fear in mine, something I really can’t place, but it’s not there, it’s gone.
“For betraying you?” I ask. “Is that what you mean?”
“Yes of course” he laughs. “You don’t remember do you? That’s another thing, I think, that I’ll need to work on, what’s the point of living forever if you can’t remember anything. And some memories get confused, changed. Things happen and they disappear from your mind, or change into something else. Whole episodes in your new life vanish, or become something different. Let me ask you, do you remember anything? From before, I mean?”
“Well, erm, bits and pieces I guess. And what people have told me. That’s all. Am I really immortal?” My voice sounds hollow, like it’s from somewhere else, like I’m from somewhere else, staring at this scene. Two brothers reunited, sitting in a cold and lonely cell.
“In a manner of speaking. Yes you are. It doesn’t stop your body from ageing, from dying, although it does seem to speed up the healing process significantly. I’m not sure why that is. But it doesn’t matter. Because if your body is dying, your spirit becomes free and you can transfer it to someone else. And their spirit is trapped in your old, dying body. Clever isn’t it?” he winks.
“Oh. Right. Wow. So I can get another body?” I ask, looking down at myself.
“Yes” he laughs, “yes you can, if you want to. Not happy with what you have? Hmmm, I can see that, a bit dull, a bit drab, a bit sensible.”
“Hey” I shout playfully, and for an instant there’s something between us, like some remembered bond, but then it’s gone.
“And you and Marx invented all this? How, I mean, how…”
“Ha! This is Richard Marx.” He leans sideways and spits on the stone floor, then looks up at the ceiling and winks. “It was me, it was all me. Marx tagged along for the ride, thought it would be cool to give us a name, but he never did anything, he never worked any of this out. Without me, he would have been nothing. That’s why I left in the end. I got bored. He was happy with all the pyrotechnics, with all the little stuff, but there was more, so much more. And he didn’t get it. All he wanted was an easy time, all he wanted was money. Well, he made enough, but he never saw the bigger picture, he never saw the scope of what we had, what we could do. For me, it was always so much more than that.”
“But… you made money too. Four Ways West?”
He shrugs. “Well, a man’s got to eat. And it seemed like fun.” Mike sighs, and looks down. “I really don’t blame you. I can understand it. You were the one who always took the crap, you were the one who never really had anything. I don’t blame you for wanting your revenge, for wanting to pay me back.”
“For leaving?” I ask.
“No, not so much for leaving. It was too late then. For everything else. For the crap you took when we were kids, for the beatings that dad gave you, for the way I escaped, for the way that I got everything and you got nothing.” He shakes his head. “I understood, straight away, when you came to see me, that it was a trap.”
“And what happened?”
He nods. “Fair play to you, John, I credit you, you didn’t just jump ship straight away. You’d made a deal and you wanted to stick to it. But we talked it through. I think you understood me in the end.” He shakes his head. “And what were you doing it for? Love? Seriously. I mean, seriously. Granted, Nadia, she had something about her, something, I don’t know, exotic, sensual. And she was kind to you, she didn’t just laugh at you. But what do you do? I mean, yes, it’s easy to make her love you, that’s the easy bit. Just change the way the air flows around her. But you know what would happen? One day she wakes up, and she decides it’s all over, she decides to move on, and it’s like none of it ever happened, it’s like you never even existed. Anything, everything you shared, just gone, she’ll just cast it away, even as it burns inside you. Don’t touch it, John. All it will do is burn you.”
I gulp, suddenly I’m feeling very warm. “She was kind to me?” I ask, but Mike just looks sadly at me and shakes his head. “Forget it, John. Forget it. It’s nothing, it means nothing. You’ll understand eventually. I know it’s hard.” We sit there in silence for a minute. “You understood when we met, John. You got it. You got it then.”
Nadia’s image is somewhere there, in the back of my mind, something, maybe I can hold onto. Maybe. I don’t feel cold anymore, at least. “What happened then?” I ask.
Mike nods. “What happened then is that we agreed you wouldn’t betray me. And we agreed that I would carry out the process on you. You’d return home, and I would have one of my contacts assault you, get you into hospital, which triggers it to start working. I have contacts in the police, too, so it made it easy for them not to follow up on your assault. Then, when you were in hospital, you’d move into the body of someone else, and it would be fine. Then I would come back and tie up loose ends. And here I am.”
I look around. “This is tying up loose ends?” I ask, kind of surprised.
Mike smiles. “Of course it is. You think I got captured by that bunch of losers under that quasi fascist dictator The General, I mean what a name, you think that I couldn’t have escaped that easily. No, of course I could. But I wanted to come back. And I wanted to get close to Marx, and see him through for good. He’s protected quite well, and this was an easy way to get him close to me. And…” he looks down “I wanted to see you.”
Now he glances at me, tentatively. “So, can I ask you something?”
“Sure”
“What’s it like?”
“What’s what like?” I ask, confused.
“To be in someone else’s body. What’s that like, I mean what does it feel like?”
I don’t know how to answer this. I can’t really understand it myself. “Well, it feels… I don’t know. It feels like I’m free, I guess. You know. I don’t know how to explain it, but almost like, I don’t own this body, I don’t need to worry about what happens to it, I can stand back, I can step back, and I can just see things differently…”
He looks at me curiously. “And…” I continue. “there are some weird visions.”
“What visions?”
“Well… there’s this woman. Sometimes I hear her, sometimes I see her, sometimes I just feel her.”
“Oookay” Mike leans forward, attentive. “What does she look like?”
I shake my head. “I’m not really sure. Like she’s on fire.” Mike nods. “You’ll ride the night with her” he says softly. “But… who is she?” I ask. “I think you know” he says, looking down. And we fall into silence for a little while.
And then I smile. “So here we are” I say.
“Here we are” nods Mike.
“Just like old times” I laugh.
Mike joins in. “Yes! Just like old times.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Well, now, we tie up loose ends. What did they ask you to talk to me about?”
I explain about the band, Four Ways West, and the quest to destroy them. And then the plan to hand him over to Marx, and the plan to put me to use as a medical experiment.
“And they want to destroy this band, why, because they write sweet songs?” he asks, confused.
“But it’s so much worse than that!” I say, what I’m saying, not sure why I’m quite so passionate about it. “I mean, listen to some of their lyrics… Look, there’s one that goes
And if ever you find yourself thinking of me
Look up my dear, into the eyes of the sea
Close your pretty eyes and make a wish
And you’ll find me at the end of a beautiful kiss”
“Wow” says Mike, nonplussed. “I see what you mean. That’s bad. I mean, kiss and wish don’t even rhyme. And the word pretty is just, well, horrendous. And they feed this stuff out to young kids?”
“All the time” I nod, sagely. Mike sighs, putting his hand over his mouth, looking at me, thinking. “And this is important to you?” I nod again.
“Well, I guess I could reverse the procedure. It’s bad for business, I mean, I can’t have people finding out that I would do this, but then, I’m thinking it’s time to move on in any case. Okay, you can tell your General mate that I’ll reverse the procedure.”
“What then?”
“Okay, who was with you?”
“Well, there’s the General, Sara Marks and Jason.”
“Right. The General and Marks I know. They’re a waste of space but I’m not really too bothered by them. Except they were going to feed you to the lions, so to speak. I could destroy them if you wanted?”
“Erm, well, no, that’s fine” I say hesitantly. “Just so long as they leave me alone.”
“Yeah, maybe, but then I don’t really want them knowing about me. It can become hard work, everyone thinking that they want a piece of you. Maybe I’ll let him kill this band, then destroy him and Marks. .What about this Jason guy?”
“Jason? Well he was all right, he looked out for me.”
“Okay, well I’ll try and leave him alone. Okay, my friend, you leave now. Tell them you’ve convinced me to do this thing. Tell them I have to be in the room with The General, Sara Marks, Richard Marx and these band guys. No one else. I’ll take it from there.”
“But how will you get round them? Round Marx? He blew up a house, just like that…”
“Marx?” he laughs. “Don’t worry. He’s an amateur. It’ll be fine.” He winks at me, and then lays his head down on the table, closing his eyes. Not knowing what else to do, I get up, and walk back to the wall where I entered.
Kings of the Night Page 40