To my gratification the gate guard doesn’t look up when I walk quickly through the pedestrian gate. He has his nose buried in his western novel, most likely expecting trouble to approach, not leave the estate.
Every moment now I expect to hear shouts ring out behind me but I’ve only the low mourning of the wind shaking the trees as accompaniment, the beefwoods lining the road slithering and fretting.
Marlise is bent over her book, her lips moving slightly as she reads. She starts and almost drops the volume when I rap on the glass, hopping from foot to foot. “Open! Let’s get the fuck out of here!”
She complies, reaching over to pop up the doorknob, her concern at my appearance clear from her expression. “What happened to yo—”
“Just drive!” I fall into the passenger seat, scanning the top of the road for any sign of pursuit.
Something in my bearing succeeds in communicating my extreme urgency in getting the hell out of here because she twists the key hard in the ignition, the car jerking into gear the moment the engine roars into life. She pulls the hardest U-turn I’ve seen in my entire life and we careen down the road.
Only once we’re on Ou Kaapseweg does Marlise ask, “So, what’s happening?”
I keep looking back, checking for any cars racing to catch up with us. Nothing. Satisfied for now, I straighten in my seat. “It’s worse than I thought.”
“What is?”
“We’ve been betrayed by one of our own.” Even as I say the words they seem unreal.
“Who’s betrayed you?”
“Someone I thought was my… A friend.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know. I need to get cleaned up. We need to go into hiding, preferably where they won’t think to look. There’s a chance they may trace your car back to your parents’ house. I want you to come stay with me at Sunrise for a while.”
“Ash, that place is—”
“It’s terrible, I know. But you’re going to leave your car at your parents’ house and you’re coming to stay with me. You haven’t told them where I live, have you?”
“No.”
“Good.” On a whim I flip down the shade on the passenger side and glare at myself in the mirror. Good gods. I really do look like I’ve been worked over well by someone with a unique understanding of how to cause pain. My skin is pale, the day-old stubble dark and the blood streaks its crimson gore over my lips and down my chin. Ashton’s eyes are wide and staring, the eyes of a madman—me.
“Why would one of your own betray the House?”
“She never was all that popular. Siptah brought her into the fold after finding her sometime during Queen Elizabeth’s reign. Meritiset came to House Adamastor with almost all her Inkarna abilities intact, without having been mentored by anyone or belonging to another House. It’s rare, but it happens from time to time, I’m told.”
“What if she already had been with another House?” Marlise asked.
“It’s possible. At the time House Adamastor was a part of House Alba, one of the main Houses of the British Isles. We broke away suddenly during the late seventeen hundreds, quite abruptly, apparently. The House has remained almost invisible since then. Now I know why.”
Although Marlise pesters me to tell her, I refuse to tell her. The less she knows, the safer she is. It makes sense. An elder Inkarna of House Adamastor had possibly gained The Book of Ammit then already, and had sought sanctuary as far as possible from the heart of intrigue. What better place than a far-flung European colony at the tip of Africa?
I wait in the car while Marlise goes inside to talk to her parents, informing them she’s just found out about a weeklong outing for her class and that a friend’s picking her up. It’s a load of bullshit, but we can’t think of any better reason of why she needs to vanish. When she returns with a damp towel for me to wipe the blood from my face, we lock the Toyota and start walking to the train station. She’s packed herself a small backpack, which I pry from her fingers and sling over my shoulder.
Her face is tight with fear and she maintains a death grip on my hand. “What would they do to us?”
“Whatever they’d do it’d involve a lot of pain.” Where do I even start?
“But what can we do?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m thinking we need to lie low for a bit. They don’t know who I am, yet, apart from who I used to be. We need to get out of Cape Town with that thing.”
“The artefact?”
“I need to help you forget about it.”
She looks up at me. “Is that possible?”
“To a degree. It’s impossible to make you forget completely, but we can lock that memory away or disguise it with something else. That book Leo gave you?”
“Yes?”
“I want you to study and practice the techniques in there. They’re basic but important. They’ll offer some protection. They will come for us, of that I have no doubt.”
Am I even doing the right thing, though? What are the chances that I’m being overly paranoid? No one would have thought to take a second glance at Marlise’s car parked down the road. Or maybe they have cameras facing the approach to the gate I wasn’t aware of. That’s just the point. I don’t know. I have nowhere to turn to.
Any way I look at the situation, Marlise is a weak point. They can use her to get at me. If House Montu is worth half its salt, they’d have traced Marlise right now, even if they didn’t have the number plate. There are only so many Toyota Tazzes in Cape Town, especially ones with such idiosyncratic paintwork. Even now they could be running searches. My stomach contracts at the thought.
“We need to leave the city,” I say.
“Ash, we can’t. You’re talking like a crazy person.”
“You don’t understand. It’s not a case of ‘can’t’. It’s a case of ‘have to’.”
“That’s madness! I’m right in the middle of my practical exams. I’ll be starting at a playschool in Gardens soon. I can’t leave now.”
“What don’t you understand about ‘we’re in deep shit,’ Marlise?” I glare at her for a second but keep our pace relentless. “You don’t know what we’re up against. We’re talking one of the big militant Houses that can trace their lineage back to the Eighteenth Dynasty pharaohs. We’re talking a global network that dates back not hundreds, but thousands of years. Some of these guys have been knocking around since before Jesus Christ was even a figment of the Christian imagination.”
She laughs. “You make it sound like the Bavarian Illuminati or something.”
“These guys make the Bavarian Illuminati look like toddlers. This is the real thing, Marlise, not something cooked up by some so-called guru addled on LSD.”
“What are we going to live on?”
“I don’t know, but I will continue with what House Adamastor stands for, which is remaining as unobtrusive as possible. I just wish I didn’t drag you down with me today. I’ve been really stupid about this.”
Marlise stops dead in her tracks, a gasp escaping her. “What am I going to tell my parents after a week has passed?”
Sorely tempted to yank her down the road as though she were a child, I stop and turn, fixing her with what I hope to be the most penetrating stare I can muster. “If you contact your parents, we are both as good as dead. And so are your parents.”
Her bottom lip quivers. “But I didn’t say goodbye to my brothers…”
I feel like saying, Well that’s too bad, but I stop myself in time. “It’s not safe. Not for us, not for your family. We’re going to leave Cape Town, both of us, because I don’t want them to hurt you. And they will use you to get at me. I’m not such a heartless bastard that I’ll just walk away from you. I know of a place where we may be welcome.” At least I hope the Wareing family is still in existence. I’d encountered one of their Blessed Dead once, and the white-haired witch clan seems a slender hope. I purposefully keep the pertinent information from Marlise. Just in case.
In case of wh
at?
The idea that we might be captured and tortured stings. I have some confidence in my own abilities, but Marlise…
“I don’t like all these maybes, Ashton.” She only ever calls me by my full name when she’s pissed off with me. Her nostrils flare slightly, making her look ridiculous.
I tug at her hand and start walking, half-yanking her off her feet. “We must hurry.”
“Ashton!” Marlise gives the slightest bit of resistance then stumbles after me, almost tripping.
Backward and forward we argue until we reach the station where a sullen mother with two kids under the age of five shoots us death glares. Marlise is momentarily distracted by the children, and I’m glad for the relative peace as she engages the mother in conversation. She’s adept at chipping away at people’s ice, and I watch Marlise with half a smirk. Right now I’ve got a short reprieve before we no doubt start arguing again. The woman’s like a bloody pit bull when she wants to be.
What would she be like if she were to come into full Inkarna powers? She isn’t conscious of her power, of disarming people by seeming naive.
While we wait for the train, and the sun sinks lower behind its thick bank of cloud, I consider my angry ghost. Where is he? Has he inadvertently destroyed himself through a massive act of self-sacrifice? That definitely isn’t his style. Perhaps he, too, needs time to gather his strength after creating a physical manifestation.
The Inkarna in Per Ankh can’t punch through to the material realms without some massive expenditure of power, hence the dubious honour of being elected to go through, carrying all the hopes and dreams of the disembodied ones for the next generation.
What happened that day in Per Ankh? There had been talk of sending another, an Inkarna by the name of Besnakt, a taciturn elder who’d never had much to do with me. To say he’d ignored me would be too kind. He unsaw me. But the elders had been in many meetings. It was decided that Besnakt had been in isolation for far too long. Although powerful, he kept himself apart even from trawling the Blessed Dead for news of contemporary affairs.
How they settled on me only Apep knows. Meritiset had been the one swaying the council, I’m sure. For her own ends, no doubt, because there was no way in hell they would let her return. Some of the elders had been watching her closely.
I fought long and hard for you, she’d told me. Only you will have the most up-to-date knowledge of the times. And it is only right that you solve this mystery.
Oh, that I should have seen the barbs in her words then. Me, relatively inexperienced, making that first dangerous journey through the Sea of Nun, to be reborn in a new Kha. What a travesty. And that she had rushed me, come to my sanctuary to all but chase me to the Opal Gate. She must have followed after, using her greater knowledge to somehow shove me aside, sinking me in the Sea of Nun where she’d surely expected me to languish for aeons due to my inexperience.
The horrors of limbo return to me, the endless miasma of Nun, of no form, of no sensation. A terrible fear clutches at me and I moan softly.
Marlise turns to me, frowning. “What is it?”
“I’m remembering something horrid, that’s all.”
Expecting her to turn back to her conversation with the woman, I’m nonetheless gratified when she slips her hand into mine before she natters on to the stranger.
While we ride the rest of the way to town, I try to keep my thoughts positive. We escaped Kakapo Estate. That is a good thing. We’ve made it this far, one of many slipped into the nameless throngs. The day’s headed toward late afternoon. After a good night’s sleep we can pick up and make a dash for it first thing. I don’t have much in the way of money, but we can hitchhike.
I curse the fact that I’ve not yet been contacted by Leonora’s attorneys, but they’ll have Marlise’s cell phone number. But it’s a device we’ll have to get rid of… Damn, damn and damn again. I don’t have their details, either. None of this is going to be easy. What of the stele? Should I leave it where it is? Perhaps. Rather let House Montu think we’ve run with the thing than drag it with us halfway across the country. They’d never think to look in Boomslang cave, unless they catch either of us.
So much plagues me but I’m just tired and bloody relieved when we arrive at Cape Town station. This late in the day the place is almost deserted, crisp packets skittering in the disconsolate wind that raises eddies of chill air.
Marlise has mercifully lapsed into silence and she fits perfectly in the crook of my arm as we make our way through a dead city centre. The few people we encounter hurry past. Above, pigeons flap to roost in eaves, their wings clapping loudly in the stillness. Today Cape Town looks tired and dirty, most of her storefronts covered by heavy metal trellises.
No one gives us any trouble, but then I wouldn’t expect that. The security cameras posted at intervals maintain their vigilance. It would be so like Montu to own shares in the company that supplies these to City of Cape Town. Where else do they have fingers in pies?
They could be watching us now, marking our progress. My gut twists at that thought.
I’d like to think I’m being silly. After all, they don’t know this Akh’s name. They don’t know where he stays. But how long before they do? It won’t take much of a stretch of an imagination to start asking around alternative clubs or poking around assorted social networking sites featuring subcultural haunts. After all, Ashton used to play in a reasonably popular band. It’s not as if it’s going to take much effort to ask enough questions.
And if I can think of these avenues of investigation, it won’t take Catherine all that long to jump to the same conclusions. Either way, my whereabouts will come out.
It being Sunday, however, The Event Horizon is closed, so ostensibly they’d get round to dropping by there only tomorrow. We have so little time, and a knot of constriction tightens around my throat.
Marlise buys us each a box of noodles for supper from the Asian place near Sunrise Lodge. We sit in gloomy silence in the dank chamber I now call home, eating while listening to the incidental sounds of the other inhabitants.
Voices ring out in the passages, and it is difficult discerning from where exactly people are calling to each other in this warren. Marlise hunches over her meal, her eyes darting from corner to corner, as though she expects a spectre to appear out of thin air.
Then again, after all the drama of the past few days, I don’t blame her for coming across so hunted. It’s not liable to become easier, either. She seems to be under the impression that we’ll hide out here for a few days before returning to normal. There is no comfortable normal.
“Ash,” she says. “I’m cold.”
Tonight may be the last night we’ll know any peace and I draw Marlise to me, revelling in the softness of her body. She shivers at my touch, slipping cold hands beneath my shirt. We don’t need words right now. Words just get in the way, leading to discord and, with so much amiss with our lives at present, this physical closeness is a communion of sorts to ease some of the horrors.
Her lips are soft and I taste them, probing with my tongue then planting small kisses down her jaw line so I can nuzzle at her neck, breathing in that underlying mint scent I’ve come to associate with her.
She teases my nipples with her chilly fingers, tugging at the rings piercing the sensitive skin before trailing down my belly, stroking with one hand the hardness of my phallus, which is already straining against the denim.
We push into each other but the cold keeps us fully clothed during most of this desperate dance of flesh. I can never get enough of the fullness of her breasts, so soft, the flesh so pliant in my grasp. And I love the way she moans softly in the back of her throat when I run my thumbs over her nipples, which I tease erect before squeezing hard, rolling them between finger and thumb.
Her thighs grasping mine are a particular brand of hell and, though I want to finish this and gain my satisfaction, I hold back. The sweetest pleasure is the one that is withheld until the final moment, when one cannot conc
eptualise lasting one minute longer without giving in to the impulse.
I find that sweet spot at the apex of her legs, that secret moist cleft that invites me in, and I sink my fingers between the folds, rubbing at the nub. Oh, how glorious it would be to satisfy my entire length, feeling that tight passage clench around me, but not yet. Marlise’s scent is a delicious musk, all but driving me insane with the need to touch, taste and explore.
I enter her with two fingers, feeling the way she contracts at my intrusion. Wildly she clasps at my shaft, trying to unfasten the jeans one-handed, the nails of the other digging into my upper arm. Her hips grinding at me are too much. With a groan I raise myself onto my knees so I can unzip and release myself from the constraints of clothing.
Marlise’s eyes glitter in the dim light and she reaches for me. “Come, put it in. I want you inside me.” She spreads her legs, revealing herself to me in a way she knows I can’t resist.
She is so warm, so wet and tight, and her muscles squeeze pleasantly tight around my shaft when I sink myself into her. Again and again I thrust, every instance building a fierce need to drive in harder and harder. Her legs wrapped around my waist, Marlise raises her hips, deepening her passage and shifting the angle somehow to increase the pressure.
There is something so peculiar and so devastatingly sexy about feeling where my phallus enters her, pulling out far enough to feel the head poised outside her opening before I ease myself back in. All the while I massage her clitoris, feeling how she rises to meet me, faster and more frantic.
And when I spill my seed in her, it is as though all my essence flows into her, the other half of this magical union, to create a sense of oneness. We can take on the entire world, the two of us together. Nothing can stop us. We are two halves of one. With a few final, shuddering thrusts, it ends, and we lie still for a while, a tangle of limbs and half-shed clothing.
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