Sanguine

by Carolyn Denman

  I tried to convince Bane to let me at least try to narrow down the search area without getting too close, but he wouldn’t back down. For starters, we were no longer in the sort of place where we could do a casual drive-by without getting noticed. And even if I could narrow it down, how would the sergeant let his fellow officers know where to go without telling them how he knew? At least now the policeman understood the problem we’d been having all along.

  We were going to have to do this with very cautiously controlled help from the police, which meant we all needed to be, if not at our best, then at least functioning at a reasonable level. Bane was beyond being of any use to anyone. Between all the driving, nausea and strain, he had pushed himself way too far.

  With a gentle tug, I pulled the car keys from his trembling grip, and mumbled in his ear. ‘Tim is also on his way, don’t forget. If he’s been driving for nineteen hours straight to get here, then he’ll need tonight to recover too.’ I tried to sound reasonable. Even I could see that getting me closer to danger now would push Bane too far over his limit. I needed him to sleep.

  While Lily sorted out the sleeping arrangements for everyone else, flustering about which bedroom would be the most appropriate to offer a senior police officer, Bane finally agreed to let me lead him down to the cottage. I even managed to convince him to take a quick shower so he could relax a little. He was still so tense.

  A few minutes later he crawled under the covers, the unnatural heat from his body melting my frozen toes in a welcome side-effect of his healing power. He sighed in relief when our skin touched, and drew me close to his still damp chest.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Lainie, that I sent you with the sergeant today. I honestly thought I was doing the right thing. It killed me when I realised I might have put you in even more danger.’

  I tried to stay very still and not give in to the sudden thrill I felt as his arms enfolded me. Somehow I would have to learn to stop following my instincts here. We were playing with fire by sharing a room again, but with the strength of the compulsion Bane was suffering from, there was no way he was going to get any sleep unless he was holding me.

  ‘I wasn’t in any more danger. You have nothing to apologise for,’ I assured him in my best attempt at deception yet, because what I really felt like doing was yelling at him for having forced me to leave him. But that wouldn’t be fair. Not given what I was about to do to him.

  ‘Any more danger,’ he sighed, stroking the mess of wavy hair that I had released from its braid. ‘Any more than you are now. I can’t take this for much longer, it hurts too much, thinking about what might happen to you.’

  ‘So don’t think about it. Think happy thoughts,’ I suggested with a tired smile.

  He rolled his eyes but his frown did relax. ‘I could think about Eden,’ he said. ‘I’ve tried, you know, over the last few years. Wondering what you might have been up to.’ Delicately, he played with my fingers, entwining them in his own.

  I stayed silent.

  ‘I know you can’t tell me anything, it’s okay. I don’t need you to. My dreams were always filled with images of you, laughing and dancing. Safe and happy.’

  ‘So then you tell me,’ I suggested. ‘Tell me what you think Eden is like.’

  He was quiet for such a long time that I thought he’d drifted off, but then he yawned. ‘I imagine that Eden is full of music. And light. Summer all the time. There are flowers there, and birds, and no carnivores. Only soft, cuddly creatures. Obviously there are faeries and unicorns,’ he added with mock sincerity. ‘Definitely no spiders. And everyone there is beautiful like you.’

  ‘No spiders?’ I laughed. ‘Except the sentient ones. And they all have a terrific sense of humour.’

  His eyes snapped open and he searched my face. ‘After all these years, don’t you think I know when you’re messing with me?’

  I said nothing. Just smiled.

  ‘You can’t tell me anything real about Eden, so that can’t be true,’ he argued. His shoulders loosened a little, so I chose to let the matter go.

  After a moment I prompted him further. ‘What do you think the air smells like?’ I asked, thinking of the honey-sweet freshness of my sleeping tree.

  ‘Peppermint,’ he decided, ‘and the water tastes like rainbows, and it never rains.’

  I smiled at how childish it all sounded, even in the mind of a grown man. ‘And what did I do there, in your dreams?’

  ‘Other than dancing? Oh, you don’t want to know. They were dreams, after all.’

  Perhaps not all so childish then. ‘So I take it you were there too?’

  ‘Of course. What would be the point of dreaming if we weren’t together?’ he mumbled, his hands falling slack as his eyes drifted closed again.

  For a long time I watched him sleep, enjoying the way his long eyelashes twitched in rhythm with all my slightest movements. He looked excruciatingly kissable. What I didn’t like was the fact that he was still beset by intermittent tremors that continued to warn him of the danger to me. It was time to refine my half-formed plan. He had two wants, which made things complicated for everyone. He wanted to rescue Tessa and also keep me safe, and he couldn’t easily do both. It was a tricky puzzle. Tessa was compelled to protect Noah, and Bane was compelled to protect me, regardless of the danger to themselves. Both Guardians had some limited pre-cognitive skills when it came to us, but neither Noah nor I could use our really good powers unless we were convinced it was necessary to protect Eden. Nor could I bring myself to put Eden at risk in order to trigger my abilities. Even if I could, there was no magic formula that would guarantee when I would have access to the powers I needed. It all came down to how I reasoned things out—how I articulated my own arguments in my head, and how much I believed them. And with a healthy dose of heavenly grace thrown in. There had to be a way to get through this safely, if only we all worked together. For that to happen, we would all need to be in the right place at the right time. First I needed a few hours of sleep. Then all would be well.

  Chapter 40

  Tessa was woken to the sound of a small engine being revved somewhere in the distance. An alien sound amongst the pre-dawn stirrings of sleepy birds and singing frogs. Was the night ever going to end? She had hardly slept and could feel herself weakening to the point where she couldn’t even find the energy to shiver. Or perhaps she hadn’t actually been sleeping at all, perhaps she’d merely been drifting in and out of consciousness. She needed food and water but couldn’t make herself keep anything down. The same questions burned constantly in her aching skull. The baby. How was he? When had she last felt him moving?

  The timid glow of moonlight was still filtering through holes in the roof and the scent of rust and old wool filled the night air. She no longer felt cold and yet she could see her breath. That was probably a bad sign. At this time of year there was always frost on the ground in the mornings, and the shed was doing nothing to keep out the chill. She couldn’t feel her fingers or toes at all. Her sore back she could still feel, and her hips and knees. She wondered what time it was.

  Outside, the sound of the engine drew close enough to recognise. Someone was approaching on a dirt bike, and it sounded a lot like the spunky little Honda she had inherited when Lainie left. Given how dark it still was, whoever was driving was going far too fast to be safe because they were a long way from any street lights.

  Her captor woke a moment later, sprung to his feet, stumbled, and then reached for his rifle. There was barely enough light to see by so Tess tried to stay as still as possible so he wouldn’t panic. He was becoming more and more unstable.

  The bike came right up to the main door of the shed before the engine cut off. How had they found her?

  ‘Stay where you are!’ her abductor yelled, the anxiety clear in his sleep-dry voice.

  ‘It’s just me. Just Lainie. I’m not armed or anything. I came like you wanted.’
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  The man cocked his rifle and then sidled along the corrugated iron wall to peer out one of the larger gaps. Apparently satisfied that no one else was around, he moved to the door. ‘Put your hands where I can see them and come in slowly,’ he said, making his voice deeper than it really was.

  Tess looked around the old shearing shed at all the other places someone could gain access. Perhaps the bike had carried two people and someone was hiding around the back? She knew Bane wouldn’t have let Lainie come on her own.

  ‘Jake Evans? What the hell have you done?’

  Lainie charged up the two steps to the shed door, sounding exactly like her old self. Tessa groaned, hoping that didn’t mean she was about to rush up to him and slap him on the back of his head. It might have worked in high school, but Jake had changed. He let off a warning shot to prove it, and the sheer volume of it drowned Tessa’s thoughts as she recoiled against her bonds. Lainie stood frozen while it echoed through the valley. There was a new hole at her feet, lined with splintered bits of floorboard.

  Fire burned deep in Tessa’s chest. Lainie was not her charge, and yet she felt torn apart by the need to protect her. That shot had been far too close.

  ‘Where’s Bane?’ Jake asked as he fumbled around in his bag and pulled out the roll of duct tape. He kept the gun aimed roughly at Lainie’s head while he tried to find the end of the tape.

  ‘I left him sleeping. He doesn’t know I’m here.’

  Sure, thought Tess. As if Bane could sleep while she had a gun pointed at her. So Lainie-the-elf-child had remembered how to lie. What was their plan? And how had she convinced Bane to let her do this?

  Jake indicated for Lainie to move to the next post along from hers, but she shook her head. ‘First let Tessa go.’

  His answer was to place the end of the rifle against Tessa’s temple. The scent of its recent blast burned her nostrils and she was so scared she could hardly breathe. Whoever had decided that she would make a good Guardian must be bitterly disappointed in her.

  Lainie took a step closer. ‘Jake, you idiot. That’s a single-shot Ruger. It’s empty now.’

  He flipped the rifle around and started to swing the butt of it towards Tessa’s head. She flinched away, shutting her eyes.

  ‘Okay! Just chill,’ she heard Lainie cry. ‘I’ll do whatever you want.’

  When he taped her wrists together around the post, Lainie’s face took on a shocked, glazed look as if she was watching something scary on TV and was only half paying attention to what he was doing. What did she see as she read him? She didn’t try to resist him at all but caught Tessa’s eye with a desolate look as their nervous captor headed outside to check if she really had arrived alone. This would be the point where Bane came in through the back and rescued them. Tessa glanced around, trying to peer through the icy gloom. Any time now, Bane. Seriously. But there was no movement, and Lainie was chewing the bottom corner of her lip and still looking at her like she’d accidentally broken a window.

  So it was not yet over. Despite the fact there was nothing left in her stomach, it still managed to roil and squirm. A second later when she realised why, her face lit up as she felt the missing piece of her heart return from across the Event Horizon. Then she literally hissed at Lainie.

  ‘Now, Tessa—’

  ‘If Jake doesn’t shoot you,’ she growled, ‘I just might.’

  Chapter 41

  Noah drummed on the door of the sleeping Gracewood farmhouse so hard that dust began to drift down from the lintel.

  ‘They’re close. I can feel him!’ he announced when Lily opened the door in her yellow dressing gown and smiley-face slippers.

  The setting moon had barely given enough light to see by when he’d stumbled from the cave, but his quick glance at the hallway clock showed that it was now already past seven, and the new sun was almost strong enough to be useful. It had been impossible to move through the dimly lit scrub at the pace he wanted without risking injury, and he’d known better than to hurt Tessa like that. Now he could finally get going properly. He pushed past Lily and barged into the kitchen to look for the keys to his ute.

  ‘Why isn’t anyone doing anything? They’re so close! I stepped out this morning to check messages and she was right, I could feel how close they are. Where is everyone?’

  ‘Noah, calm down,’ Lily said, yawning as she poured herself a glass of water. ‘Bane wants to get the timing right, that’s all. They got back from Melbourne after midnight. They’ve been chasing them across the state non-stop since they left you. They were exhausted. They couldn’t risk trying to get her away when they could hardly see straight themselves.’

  ‘Fine. Let them sleep. I’ll go myself!’ he snapped, snatching his keys from the hook.

  But Sergeant Loxwood’s solid frame was now blocking the doorway. He was showered, dressed in his uniform and looked ready to go, and yet he stood with his arms crossed, looking as immovable as city traffic. One thick eyebrow was raised.

  ‘Where exactly are you going, Noah?’

  Noah paused in the face of his calm authority, but bleak determination settled itself around his shoulders within moments. He drew himself up. ‘I’m going to get my wife and son back. Get out of my way, Mick.’ He had no patience for Sergeant Mick Loxwood and his official procedures.

  ‘As I understand it, Mr Ashbree, if you put yourself under direct threat, your wife will be compelled to act. Are you sure you’re willing to risk the consequences of that?’

  Noah’s saw his own disbelief reflected in Lily’s face as they realised the double implications of that statement. He slumped against the wall, despair and stress overtaking all clear thought.

  ‘Lily, would you mind putting the kettle on? I think I’m going to need a caffeine hit,’ the policeman requested as he relieved Noah of his keys.

  ‘Did someone say coffee?’ Tim’s bleary voice called from the living room.

  Sergeant Loxwood turned to Lily. ‘Who is that? I could have sworn there was no one sleeping on the couch when I went to bed last night.’

  Pulling mugs out of the cupboard, she smiled groggily. ‘Tim, get dressed and come in here,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘I’ll make you a cup while you introduce yourself to our local police sergeant. Mick, Tim is one of Bane’s Army Reserve friends. He drove almost non-stop from Brisbane yesterday and he’s only had, what, four hours’ sleep since then? We tried to be quiet when he arrived during the night.’

  Tim yawned as he entered the kitchen, still pulling on his T-shirt. He shook hands with the policeman. ‘Nice to meet you, Mick.’ Then he turned to Noah and caught him in a gruff hug. ‘I’m sorry, mate. I came as soon as I could.’

  Sergeant Loxwood frowned at Lily. ‘I thought I asked you all not to tell anyone other than immediate family.’

  She nodded and smiled sheepishly at him and then in an ironic reversal, Noah saw her put her finger to her lips to warn the policeman not to say too much to Tim, before turning her attention to the steaming kettle.

  The sergeant pulled out a chair. ‘Not that I can condone anyone driving nineteen hours straight on their own; however, in this case I’m grateful you did. Since we can’t make use of my colleagues in this situation, I’ll admit I’m glad of the assistance.’

  Tim looked a little confused by his statement but sat down without comment, cradling the mug Lily handed him.

  Dallmin appeared from down the hall, looking fresh and energetic. He opened his mouth to greet the others but snapped it shut when he saw Tim, who waved politely and generously offered him his own coffee. Dallmin sipped at it, made a sour face and handed it straight back.

  ‘Please,’ Noah begged. ‘I can’t just sit here drinking coffee when I know where they are. I’ll stay out of the way but please can we go?’

  Tim cracked his back noisily as he stood up again. ‘I assume Bane and Lainie are in your cottage, Lily?
Come on, let’s get the lovebirds moving,’ he said before taking a couple of fast, scalding sips from the mug he was leaving.

  Noah looked back at the young soldier in confusion. ‘Wait, you don’t know that Lainie isn’t here?’

  Three mugs halted halfway to mouths.

  ‘What?’ Lily whispered, aghast.

  ‘I couldn’t wait for dawn before checking my phone this morning, and when I did there was already a text waiting. It had been sent at around four am. It just said “It’s time”. Lainie sent it.’

  All five of them rushed for the door at once.

  There was no response to Tim’s polite tap, and Noah wasn’t expecting one.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Tim asked in a panicked whisper as Noah opened the bedroom door. ‘How do you know for certain that she isn’t in there? What if they’re … you know?’

  Noah ignored him and went straight in, and knew immediately that something was bat-crazy wrong. Instead of the note he’d expected to find, Bane himself really was there, dreaming out oblivious relaxed breaths. He shook him hard. No response. ‘This is impossible. He can’t be sleeping.’

  The sergeant pushed his way into the room, inspecting the place like it was a crime scene. ‘Lainie’s boots aren’t here. So either she’s out feeding the chooks, or she put the mojo on him and snuck out during the night,’ the officer guessed, prodding at the sleeping form.

  ‘I have no clue how she did that. It shouldn’t be possible,’ Noah pleaded, feeling as if it was somehow his fault. Both his pregnant wife and his best friend were in mortal danger while he was stymied from helping and Bane slept. It just wasn’t right.

  The sergeant took control. ‘Lily, Noah, Dallmin, let’s get the cars packed with anything you can think of that Tessa might need. Blankets, food, first aid, whatever. Tim, you have to wake him up. Now. Do whatever you have to.’