‘You won’t. I trust you. You’ll do whatever it takes to keep me safe so we can get on with the fun stuff.’
I kissed him then, to remind him of the fun we were aiming towards. He kissed me back far less cautiously than usual, as if he was afraid it might be the only chance he had, rather than just an appetiser. His hand found places on my neck that appreciated his healing warmth more than they should have, while his other arm pulled me in until our thighs pressed together. When his phone bleeped at us, he paused, and I very nearly managed to snatch it before it stole him away from me, only his reflexes were better than mine. I imagined the phone crumbling into a little pile of dust at my feet, but apparently that was beyond my authority. I pulled away with a regretful sigh until Bane hooked a finger into the belt loop of my jeans and pulled me close again.
‘Don’t go. This will only take a moment,’ he said with a grin, but when he glanced at the screen, his smile disappeared.
Chapter 55
I HAV FUND JAK. KOM TOO TH BRIJ. DONT BRIN PEOPLE I CANT TORK UT LOWD TOO
Dallmin’s spelling was woeful, but hey, he’d figured out how to send a text. Clever elf. My addled brain didn’t know whether to giggle or panic.
‘Well, that part was easier than expected,’ I said. ‘I never expected Dallmin to try to find him. What do we do now? And what does he mean by the last part? I told him he can speak out loud to anyone now.’
‘I assume he has something to say about Eden. Or some idea about how to use your power to solve this, maybe?’
‘Great. Let’s go.’ The finger still hooked into my belt loop yanked me back after only half a step. ‘Not the plan, then. Okay. So what’s your suggestion?’ I could see the strain in his face as Bane fought compulsion with common sense.
‘First, we get Dallmin the hell away from him. Then I’ll get the sergeant to bring him in. Once he’s in custody we’ll see what we can do about proving to the authorities how dangerous he is.’ He looked at me apologetically. ‘You were right, Lainie, I can’t protect you if I’m in jail. I’ll be as sensible as I can about this.’
He replied to Dallmin and then texted all the members of his patrol squad, so they were all aware that Jake was likely to be close by. He didn’t call the sergeant. By that I assumed that he intended to at least check out where Jake was, which we both knew the policeman would never condone. Tim, who had been asleep, offered to go with him, but Bane refused and instead made him promise not to let me out of his sight.
‘Wait, Bane, I’m not sure you should be doing this,’ I said. ‘Besides, I thought you weren’t going to leave me alone.’
‘This was your suggestion, Lainie, remember? You’re the one who said we should be proactive about finding him.’
‘Yes, but …’
‘But what? What’s bugging you?’
I crossed my arms. ‘I don’t like being the pathetic princess that gets trapped in the tower for her own safety while you go out and fight the bad guy.’
Bane glanced at Tim, and then his lips brushed my ear as he whispered, ‘More like a carefully guarded weapon of mass destruction than a princess.’
Oh. That did make me feel a bit better, strangely. Then again, 185,000 Assyrians. Maybe the princess option was better after all.
He smiled at me. ‘Look, you asked for three options, remember? Back in the river?’
My eyes narrowed, where was he going with this?
‘So how about this. Option one, we call Dallmin and tell him to come home immediately, and hope that Jake stays where he is until the sergeant can get there with his team to arrest him. Assuming they can find him using Dallmin’s directions.’
Hmm. Finding anything in the bush was tricky, even if Noah and I could stomach staying home while a team of policemen searched around out there.
‘Option two, let Dallmin keep an eye on Jake until the police arrive, and hope in the meantime that he doesn’t do anything unwise, like try to sing his way out of trouble like he did in Horsham.’
Ah. Nope.
‘Option three, I go and check out where Jake is and get Dallmin out of there while you stay here with Tim.’
Why hadn’t I insisted on four options? ‘Bane, I still don’t like you going. Don’t I have a right to feel a bit protective of your safety?’
‘Absolutely. And I’m looking forward to when I come back and you fuss over me and tell me off for taking such risks and dob me in to my mum, but in the meantime, you need to let me do my job, yeah?’
And with that phrase, he won, and he knew it, so I tried to sound as graceful as I could about it. ‘Fussing over you does sound like fun. I’ve never done that before.’
Once my Guardian had given me one last fierce embrace, he headed for the front door, but Tim blocked his way.
‘Promise me you won’t confront him, Bane, not without me.’
Bane glanced my way, and then looked back at his friend. Without a word he unclipped the hunting knife from his belt and handed it to an astounded Tim.
‘No! Now I don’t know if I should hide it somewhere or make you take it back,’ Tim complained.
‘Neither of you seem to believe that I can behave rationally about this and I need you both to trust me. I’ll let you know when I’m ready to take it back.’ Bane pushed past him and headed out the door before either of us could argue.
I watched out the window as his car disappeared from view. This would be the furthest he had gone from my side since I’d been shot three weeks earlier.
‘Tim, did Bane just give you his knife because he doesn’t trust himself to behave rationally?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And also so that you would happen to have a weapon handy in case Jake somehow turns up here while he’s gone?’
‘You aren’t as silly as you sometimes act.’
I let the curtain fall and turned away from the window.
‘So, Lainie-girl, I guess it’s time you taught me how to juggle,’ Tim smiled, slicing open the latest hamper with Bane’s knife and tossing me a few apples. He was a good friend, doing his best to distract me from thinking about what was sure to happen next.
Chapter 56
Dallmin was waiting at the far end of the antiquated timber bridge that crossed the river at the southern end of the state park. He looked, if anything, even more tired and stressed than when he had left.
‘You came on your own. That is well. It is easier for me if we can speak freely,’ Dallmin said as soon as Bane was close enough to hear him over the sound of the water.
‘You want to talk to me? I’m not surprised that you have questions. I’ll do my best to answer them, but first I need to know, is Jake close by? You said you found him.’
‘He was not hard to track. I know how to find people. I have been playing that game for much longer than he has. I will take you there as we talk,’ he suggested, throwing his pack into the boot of Bane’s car and slamming it closed.
Heading downstream, Dallmin led him along an overgrown animal trail that forced them both to duck through tunnels of thick scrub. It felt like boot camp again. Blackberries snagged his clothes every few steps, but ahead of him, Dallmin managed to stride past them all as easily as if he was walking down a bitumen road. Lainie was not entirely wrong when she jokingly described him as an elf. He even managed to chat as he manoeuvred through the tangled bushes.
‘I need to understand Lainie’s job. She will not let me go home because I am tainted. Annie once explained to me that the taint will damage the Life Fruit, and the Trees. But what if I choose not to eat? Will she let me return?’
He was setting a cracking pace and Bane had to scramble a little to keep up. Enforced idleness over the last few weeks had softened him.
‘No, mate, she can’t. She doesn’t have the authority to let you through, even if she wanted to. It’s not her choice to make.’
And yet even as he said it, he wondered. The sword hadn’t flared to life until she had forced Sarah to let her go. While their skin touched it had remained quiescent. Lainie had been adamant that she’d had no choice other than to abandon her to the sword’s judgment, and yet she’d also been ready to take full responsibility for her actions. So which was it? Did she choose or was she forced? There was always a choice, apparently.
Dallmin paused, briefly. ‘She told me that the sword with flames would kill me if I tried to cross, but then I saw it stop moving when Nathaniel was born. The Cherubim have power over the sword, correct?’
‘Actually, it looked to me more like it had power over them,’ he refuted, panting slightly. ‘Noah couldn’t move, remember? Even when his newborn son was struggling to breathe. Not even they understand the sword very well, so I’m afraid I can’t help you much there.’
The man walked on, stooping deftly under a dead cape wattle. ‘I am thinking that perhaps the sword could clean me of the taint. It has great power, and was put there by the Creator. I do not believe He intends for me to remain in this place. Will Lainie help me to see if the sword will clean me?’
Bane stopped dead in his tracks, straightening up so fast that he got showered with crumbly bits of dead wattle sticks. Lainie had only just begun to come to terms with what had happened to Sarah Ashbree. What would it do to her if Dallmin went the same way? He swallowed down the lump in his throat.
‘Please don’t ask her to do that. I know her. If you asked, she would try, but if the sword harmed you she would never forgive herself.’
Dallmin’s closed expression almost made it look like he didn’t believe what he was being told, but Bane knew that was not in his nature.
‘Then I will not ask,’ Dallmin assured him, continuing to power his way through the thick scrub. He didn’t speak again, and his silence felt wrong. The man had been exiled from Paradise, and there was nothing Bane could say that would help him deal with his grief, so he just followed along behind, trying to mimic the way Dallmin moved. The man slipped through the bushes like they were moving aside for him, only to flick back in Bane’s face a second later. It felt like the bushes themselves were grieving along with the elf. And like they wanted to punish Bane for not getting him home sooner.
He should have done better. Three years of training to become the best Guardian he could be, in the fragile hope that he might be offered a second chance, and he’d totally blown it. He’d been warned about the danger. He’d felt it, the day Jake had discovered Lainie was back, and ignored it as an overreaction. It was time for him to get it right. This was his chance. He would find Jake and use the skills he had worked so hard at developing to find a safe way to end the threat. Captain Hughes, his training officer, had been right. The purpose of all that training was so that no one would have to sacrifice themselves for a cause. Heroes were only useful once, and Lainie needed him to stick around because God knew she didn’t always have the most sensible attitude towards her own safety. He would find a way of getting the job done without getting hurt.
A small skink disappeared under a rotten log at his feet, hiding, watching. The whole bush felt like it was watching him. Waiting to see if this time, he would finally get it right.
Currawongs played noisily in the pale afternoon sunshine but no movement came from the lonely campsite. Damp earth reflected the eucalypt scent of autumn. There was a stacked pile of supplies under a tree covered by a blue plastic tarp, and a played-out campfire had a tiny curl of smoke drifting from a dying ember. There was no left-over firewood. Did that mean Jake wasn’t planning to stay long, or was it just laziness? An ominous gloom filled the small clearing that was felt more than seen.
Silently, from the safety of a thick clump of tea-tree, the two men watched in tight discipline for a full five minutes before Bane decided it was safe enough to check under the tarp for weapons. Scanning the trees thoroughly, both high and low, he circled around, staying in the scrub for as long as he could, and then crept into the clearing, keeping watch on the surrounding bush as he lifted the plastic. There were no weapons under it.
Instead there was a compulsion-driven drug-crazed psychopath.
Leaping up towards his throat, Jake roared in livid fury. By ducking sideways as best he could, Bane managed to avoid the blade that was thrust straight at his face, but the guy’s shoulder still took him squarely in the chest, knocking him to the ground. Trained reflexes took over and he rolled quickly towards Jake’s legs and managed to trip him. As Jake fell he put his hands out, screamed again and collapsed, clutching his injured left shoulder in a very satisfying way. Not giving him a chance to recover, Bane punched him full in the face. It only seemed to enrage his attacker further. Like some sort of feral beast, Jake slashed wildly with his switchblade, managing to catch Bane’s forearm. Pain lanced through him and he fought hard not to flinch. Instead he used the snag in the blade’s motion to gain the precious moment he needed to slam his other fist into Jake’s ribs. With a swift motion, he retrieved the blade from his opponent’s sweaty grasp and in another second, he had Jake firmly pinned. The guy spat out a clump of mud.
‘Keep still!’ Bane commanded, holding the point of the blade against Jake’s right shoulder in a threatened replication of his recent injury.
The crazed man just laughed.
Sensing someone behind him, Bane started to tell Dallmin to stay back, but all he saw out of the corner of his eye was a small cast iron frypan swinging towards his head.
Then he saw nothing.
When Bane opened his eyes sometime later, he was lying in the dirt with his wrists taped together around the trunk of a young rivergum. It was raining again and he stared stupidly at the blood dripping from his arm, trying to remember what had happened. There’d been a knife fight, and now he was tied to a tree. That wasn’t right. It must be some sort of new training exercise. Some new trick the Captain and Tim had devised to test him.
The world danced along with the bright spots in his vision, and no matter how hard he blinked, it wouldn’t stop. How had this happened? He never lost when there were knives involved. Someone must have cheated. His head hurt a lot, and the world was spinning worse than if he’d been healing Lainie. Forcing himself to focus, he reflexively felt for where she was.
The moment he did, the sound that tore from his throat sent birds in nearby trees scattering, and should have set the valley on fire.
Chapter 57
Somewhere, inside Bane’s head, an unwelcome voice began to pierce the stifling pain.
‘Oh, so that’s what woke you so quickly! Snow White must have finally succumbed to temptation and eaten one of those bloody apples. I didn’t think it would take this long. I watched the courier deliver them two days ago. I don’t think I ever saw her without one in her hand at school, do you remember? She always ate the whole thing, core and all. I hope she’s the only one in the household crazy enough to do that. Everyone else should be safe enough if they only eat the normal parts … I hope.’ Jake was speaking faster than a twelve-year-old girl, laughing and pacing around the campsite, waving his knife around as if to embellish what he was saying.
Bane blinked dirt from his eyes, trying to focus on the other man in the clearing who was sitting with his back against a tree, hands resting on his raised knees. Dallmin met his gaze with serious dark eyes, and Bane breathed out a single word for a hideous concept. Betrayer.
It was the only word that seemed to be able to cut through the confusion and excruciating pain. Lainie’s raw and desperate need for healing was smashing all other coherent thought to dust and fragile illusion. She was fading so fast. Fragmented senses tried to register the pain from his own injuries, pain that was lost in the tangle of instincts that screamed at him to move, to run to her, to sear away her agony. The savage yell that tore from his throat was that of a wild animal. Wrenching at his bonds, he struggled to get to her but layer upon layer of d
uct tape bound his wrists together mercilessly. Blood flowed everywhere from the gash on his arm and still the tape didn’t loosen even a tiny bit. He tried to sit up to try to reach the knife he had strapped to his calf, and discovered that his ankles were taped together too. The smell of nicotine barely registered, not until he felt the edge of Jake’s blade at his throat. He started to twist, to bite at the hand holding the blade, but had to stop when he felt a new surge of pain. The knife had bitten into his skin. Or was that Lainie’s pain? Or was it just the familiar memory of the last time he’d felt her die, triggered by this new threat? Lainie might not remember what it felt like to have her throat slashed, but he certainly did. It still woke him, gasping, so often that this new experience of it was almost a comfort. It helped to ground him against the backdrop of Lainie’s current agony.
Jake pulled the blade away, laughing. ‘Don’t bother trying to get free, Bane. You wouldn’t make it back in time anyway. This is far better than I’d planned.’
Bane tried to focus on Jake’s face, tried to understand what had gone so wrong. ‘Planned?’ he asked, breathless.
‘Yeah. I’ve been waiting to feel this. To feel her fading … I was hoping to get close enough to watch you work your magic when the right basket arrived—who would have thought you’d be given so many? But thanks to my new friend Dallmin’s suggestion this morning, I have you trapped, so it’s even better. I might even get free from her this time.’ He didn’t seem to have noticed that the bandage on his shoulder was soaked crimson. His shoulder wound had opened again during the fight. ‘She’s pissed me off for so long, but at least I could still function up until recently. But lately? Why her? Why does she have to pull so damn hard all the time?’
Bane froze as he heard himself reflected in Jake’s words, remembering all his anger and frustration at not understanding the reasons for his own actions. He had lived like that for years, and had despised Lainie for it. However, he had no room for pity. Jake had chosen to act on his twisted hatred. Poisoning the apples would have taken planning. The sick bastard had thought about what he was doing and followed through on it, to murder the person Bane loved more than anything in the world.
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