‘At least they aren’t playing “Like a Virgin”,’ said Iffie cruelly.
* * *
While Iffie was buying the murderer a drink, Jack was discovering his father’s body.
‘Father?Father? Father?’ he shook the inert body futilely. There was no response.
‘Tamar! Denny!’ he yelled. ‘Help! Help us!’
Both appeared in the room instantly. Tamar had some rather mysterious goop in her hair and Denny’s face was streaked with something unmentionable looking. Both also looked rather charred. None of this was unusual enough for Jack to comment on, or, in his distressed state, even notice.
Tamar ran to the body while Denny held Jack in a fiercely protective grip, turning his body away from the sight on the bed. ‘Oh no,’ she breathed. She turned to them and shook her head sadly.
‘He’s gone?’ croaked Jack. He bit back tears. ‘I know he wasn’t much of a Father, not after … but he was all the Father I had.’
‘You’ve still got us,’ said Denny.
Tamar came over and put her arms around them both. ‘You’ll always have us,’ she affirmed.
‘Oh, I know I’ve been luckier than most,’ he said. ‘But it still feels bad.’
‘It’s supposed to, I’m afraid.’ said Denny, who had not shed a single tear when his parents had died.
‘What … How did it happen?’
‘Looks as if it was natural,’ said Tamar. ‘I think he just gave up. How long can a broken heart keep beating?’
‘At least the angels took him,’ said Jack picking up a large white feather that had fluttered to the floor. He did not mean it, literally. Faeries were not visited by angels, nor were they taken to heaven. He was referring to an old superstition that says when you find a white feather, it means the angels have visited.
Tamar stared at it.
Denny hustled Jack from the sombre room; this was no place for a child – this horrible chamber of death. As he left his father, he placed the feather reverently on his bed. But, unobserved by him, Tamar picked it up and gazed curiously at it for a long time after they had gone.
* * *
Cindy paced the throne room impatiently. Where was he? He should have been back hours ago. Had he been overwhelmed by the task before him? Was he cowering somewhere, working up the courage to do what she had told him must be done? Had he lost his nerve? Had he been caught?’ Disaster!
‘You’ll wear a groove in that floor,’ said Slick. King of original thought.
Cindy gave him a look. ‘Are you trying to be annoying?’ she said.
‘Don’t you realise what this means? If he’s failed … fallen at the first hurdle, it’s over. If he can’t even do this right, what hope that he can face the greater challenge?’
‘You are asking him to commit a murder. It’s a big deal. ’Specially the first time.’
‘Not for him,’ she retorted. ‘Or at least it shouldn’t be. What has he been trained for, if not for this?’
‘The theory can be a little different from the practice,’ said Slick. ‘Anyway we don’t know that he has failed.’
‘Then where the hell is he?’
* * *
#‘Holiday! Do, do, doo. Shelebrate! ’ Ashtoreth was drunk. Very, very drunk. Iffie was beginning to wonder, for the first time in her life, if she might not have gone too far this time. She was half carrying him as they lurched together down the street. ‘Wanna see my wings?’ slurred Ash. ‘They’re really… cool!’ he dredged up the unfamiliar word with a triumphant grin. Then his face fell.
‘Of course I haven’t really got wings,’ he said, remembering where he was. ‘I wash jush kidding.’
‘Where’s home?’ said Iffie desperate to get him off her hands. ‘Boy when you loosen up, you really loosen up,’ she muttered and suddenly felt terribly guilty. ‘Perhaps we’d better sober you up a bit first though,’ she said. ‘Your mum’ll kill you if you come in like this.’
‘Mother? Hmmm,’ said Ash. ‘Oh God! Oops mustn’t blash… bals … blaspheme.’
‘Right!’ said Iffie distractedly.
But he took this as concurrence. ‘You’re good,’ he said. ‘I can tell.’
‘Look Ash, we’ve just got to get you sobered up somehow.’
‘Or my mother will kill me,’ he affirmed.
‘Probably. Is she a bit of a dragon?’
‘Dragon?’
‘I mean, you know, kind of bossy, always telling you what to do, never letting you have any fun, that sort of thing,’ she explained, realising that he probably had pretty literal turn of mind.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said happily. Then he giggled. ‘Dragon lady,’
‘Yeah, well we don’t want her getting upset then, do we?’
‘Right no, we don’t want that,’ he agreed.
‘Okay, well then we should probably lie low tonight until you’re back to full function mode. We’ll get out stories straight in the morning, okay?’
‘You mean tell lies?’ he was shocked. ‘To my mother?’
‘It’s better than getting into trouble … I mean it’s better than upsetting her,’ she amended.
‘Right, don’t want to upset the dragon.’ he said. ‘She might breathe fire on me, burn my wings – that I haven’t got,’ he added hurriedly.
Iffie sighed. The sooner he passed out the better. At least he was not an amorous drunk. It could have been worse.
‘You are a good person,’ he said to her now. ‘I can tell. I’m glad you’re good y’know. ’Cause I like you. I wouldn’t want to have to kill you.’
Iffie went cold all over. It was a joke. It had to be. Only… it had not sounded like a joke.
‘You have to kill people who aren’t good?’ she asked nervously.
‘Not all of them,’ he said. ‘Not yet, anyway. Later maybe …’ He trailed off smiling, he was thinking, although Iffie could have no way of knowing this, about Slick. He would enjoy killing him.
Iffie started to shake all over – he was a monster. She dropped him in the gutter and took to her heels.
* * *
Cindy was furious. No, more than furious. She was a towering tempest of wrath.
‘Drunk!’ she shrieked at Slick, ‘He was drunk. Not injured, not ill – drunk. I know that look. He was so unfocussed that he didn’t know who I was.’
‘What are you yelling at me for?’ asked Slick mildly.
‘Because he’s lying in his bed passed out and oblivious.’
‘Well, I don’t know what you expected,’ said Slick. ‘You keep him locked up here for fifteen years and then you let him out on his own into the real world for the first time. You should think yourself lucky that getting drunk was all he did.’
‘He said he met a girl.’
‘Did he?’ Slick’s eyebrows went up. ‘Good for him.’
‘Oh, I don’t think anything of that nature went on, he was far too drunk.’
‘Maybe they got drunk after,’ said Slick wickedly.
‘He kept saying she was iffy,’ she said, ignoring this feeble attempt to bait her. ‘What could he have meant by that?’
‘Well, you can’t hit the jackpot the every time,’ said Slick philosophically.
‘Don’t be crude,’ she snapped.
‘From now on, you are to go with him,’ she ordered. ‘He clearly can’t be trusted on his own.’
‘He hates me,’ protested Slick.
‘That’s your problem.’
‘All right, all right, I’ll go along – keep him in line or whatever. But he isn’t going to like it.’
‘And I want that girl found – whoever she is – and killed.’
‘Hold on, that’s a bit strong. He’s a good looking boy, he met a girl and they had a drink. She didn’t do anything wrong you know. And neither did he, for that matter. Ease up off his back, why don’t you? Poor bastard.’
‘I’ll deal with my son as I see fit,’ she said.
‘Okay, fair enough, but no random girls are getting killed C
indy. I’m not sticking around for that. See?’
‘I see,’ she said sourly. ‘Very well, I don’t suppose she’s relevant really.’
‘That’s right. So he met a girl, what can it matter?’
‘He’s probably forgotten her already,’ said Cindy.
The truth was, Cindy was afraid. The second part of her plan was, in many ways, the most important, the most vital. The beginning of the end. If it failed then it had all been for nothing. Nothing must go wrong – nothing.
It would be difficult; it relied on timing and subtlety. Was her oaf of a son really ready for this? Was his loyalty to be depended on? Was he capable? He had proved that he could be easily distracted – after all her training too. If he allowed himself to be distracted now, it could prove fatal to all her plans.
Slick was shrewdly aware of her thoughts.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep an eye on him.’
~ Chapter Three ~
When Iffie snuck back into her room shortly after three a.m. she was shocked to see her dad sitting on the bed waiting for her.
‘Dad?’
‘Good night?’ asked Denny amiably.
‘Not really.’
‘We’ve been waiting for you to come in,’ he told her. ‘Bit of a family meeting. Everyone’s downstairs.’
‘I haven’t done anything – honestly,’ she said automatically
‘It’s all right. You aren’t in any trouble
‘Not even for coming in so late?’ she asked.
‘We’ve got bigger problems at the moment. And if you can’t look after yourself, who can?’
‘What problems? What’s going on Dad?’
Iffie walked into her dad’s study with a nervous smile on her face. It was a slight relief to see Jack sitting there – clearly it was not going to be a telling off. But Jack looked strange, as if he had been crying. Suddenly Iffie was afraid. She grasped at her dad’s hand as she had done as a small child. He squeezed it reassuringly.
Then Iffie saw something even worse. Her mother had clearly been crying too. This was like the end of the world or something – it had to be. (Of course, Iffie did not know that Tamar had faced the end of the world more than once and never cried about it either. It would take worse than that to shake her. This was worse. )
Who died?’ she said in a shaky attempt at levity.
‘My father,’ said Jack.
Iffie’s hand flew to her mouth. She had seen all the people in the room that she had expected to see appropriate to her dad’s description of “everyone”. Finvarra had not even entered her thoughts; no one ever saw him anyway. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry,’ she blurted out.
‘You didn’t know,’ said Jack dully.
So, this clearly was not the time to tell Jack that she had found his stepbrother. She had been having doubts about that anyway, but now those doubts were, for the moment anyway, resolved. Ash was clearly crazy – a real bedbug, in fact. Jack did not need any more trauma at the moment.
She went over to him and put her arms around him, and they sat together in unabashed companionship and silence. Then Jack began to sob, as if her unspoken sympathy had split open the dam that had held back his grief.
Tamar went over to Denny, who put his arm around her, and she laid her head on his shoulder.
Stiles and Hecaté sat in silence too, her head in his lap as he stroked her hair.
And safely enclosed within the love and silent sympathy that surrounded him, secure and unashamed, Jack’s sobs grew louder and louder.
* * *
Crack! Ash gritted his teeth obstinately as the whip whistled down on his back. Crack! Crack! Crack!
He would not cry or flinch. He had never cried in his whole life, and he was not about to start now. He would not give this muscle-bound minion the satisfaction.
‘Enough,’ said Cindy. And that was the part that really hurt. Not that she had ordered this punishment, it was not his first beating by a long way, but that she could stand there and watch its execution without so much as a flicker of emotion. Even the man Slick had flinched and left the room radiating speechless disapproval. At one time, Ash would have taken this as a sign of contemptible weakness. But now he wondered.
Was it really a weakness to despise violence? Even necessary violence. For Ash had no reason to believe that he did not deserve his beating. He had behaved abominably, he might have risked everything. But the problem was, despite the beating, he still wanted to do it again.
But that was wrong, he was weak himself, weak and polluted by evil. One day out in the world of sinners – just one day, and he had allowed himself to fall. Become a sinner himself. His father would be so ashamed.
His mother was only punishing him for his own good. For the good of the cause. She was strong, strong enough to witness his pain for his own sake. But, instead of his mother’s face, which he had always pictured in the past to distract him from the pain, this time, he saw only the girl.
She was smiling at him. ‘Poor thing,’ he heard her say. ‘Let me make it better for you.’ As his mother had used to say. He wanted her now, wanted her to comfort him. Wanted … He did not know what he wanted. But he knew he wanted her.
He despised himself for being so weak.
He fell on his knees as he was unstrapped and his mother dismissed the minion with a curt nod.
‘Get up,’ said Cindy coldly. ‘We have work to do. Fortunately, your little adventure has caused no real harm to our plan … this time. But it must not happen again. Who knows what might happen the next time.’
‘Yes Mother.’
‘Since you clearly cannot be trusted to behave yourself, I have decided to send Slick with you from now on.’
‘Yes Mother.’
Cindy raised her eyebrows. She had been expecting more objections. He must be thoroughly chastened to have accepted this so easily. Good!’
She allowed herself a smile. Ash responded instantly with a tremulous smile of his own.
‘Well, it’s time for the next part of our plan. The rest of them will not be so easy to deal with, as I have told you. The one with the demon spirit, Tamar, has stolen powers that are a formidable challenge, even for you. And the other one, he has a dagger that he stole from a demon. With it, he could take your power from you. You must be careful not to confront either of them directly.’
‘The Athame mother.’
‘I am glad to see you have been paying attention.’
Cindy had been lucky in as much as she had not had to tell lies as such, to her son, only twist the truth. Because of this, there was much literature available to back up her claims. Ash had read of the secrets of the demon Athames and the origin of the Djinn (demons). He had also read about witches and the severely distorted accounts of Hecaté in the Greek legends, where she is described, most unfairly, as an evil witch who lived in the underworld with Hades. Even had it all been true, people can change. There had not been much that even Cindy could say about Stiles. But after all, he had been a policeman. And it is not hard to malign the police. There was plenty of available literature that did just that.
As a result, Ash now viewed the household that he had once been a part of as a veritable den of iniquity.
‘You must be very careful my son,’ she said. ‘These are dangerous people.’
‘I am not afraid of the demon woman mother.’ said Ash stoutly. ‘Good must always triumph over evil.’
Cindy looked properly at her son, so eager for the fray, and decided he needed to be warned.
‘It’s not her I’m afraid of so much,’ she said. ‘It’s him!’
‘Him, Mother?’
‘Denny.’ She nearly choked on the word. ‘He’s far more ruthless than she is. Although he doesn’t admit it, even to himself. I suppose it’s because he thinks he is a good man.’
‘Mother?’
‘He would destroy us without a word, without a thought and without regret, if he felt he had to. But she – ha! She knows she has done s
ome questionable things in her time, and she fears to judge, lest she be judged likewise.’
I see Mother. Then it is he, we should beware of?’
‘Oh, I’d be bloody careful of all of them if I were you.’
‘It behoves us to be cautious when dealing with the devil,’ said Ash, as if he was quoting from somewhere.
‘Indeed, which is why we cannot simply take the fight to them. We must use strategy. The second phase of our plan. Divide and conquer.’
* * *
Denny was reading a book by the light of a standard lamp. It was one of his old, musty books of power and magic, and it was so exceedingly tedious and written with such ignorant pomposity that Denny was wishing that, instead of his library, they had left the swimming pool. Perhaps it was because of this that, try as he might, he could not keep his mind on what he was reading. And that was when he realised, as his attention began to wander, that something was wrong. He felt a kind of creeping horror come over him slowly; the kind of horror that has nothing to do with monsters and demons and has everything to do with the familiar becoming the unfamiliar. They did not have a standard lamp. Denny was sure of this even though he had as little to do with home decor as possible. He rose nonchalantly from his chair and yawned. The feeling of horror crystallised around him, but he ignored it, and as he moved as if to switch off the lamp, he felt the room tense. He snaked out a hand and grabbed the lamp by the pole and shook it, feeling (and looking) like a considerable lunatic. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ve got you now, so let’s have it, who are you?’
Tamar was wandering in the garden when she spotted it; an extraneous statue. She knew it was not one of theirs; it was far too ugly. Rather than confront the situation, as was her usual wont (Denny was the cautious one) she carefully disregarded it and wandered back into the house. ‘Interesting,’ she thought, then burst out laughing.
Despite a complete lack of supernatural powers, Jack Stiles had learned to sense when things were not quite … normal. It just took practice, and he had had a lot of that over the years. It was a natural extension of the almost psychic ability to spot the criminal in the lineup up, that he had always had.
Rise Of The Nephilim (The Tamar Black Saga) Page 3