I’m here, Rachel said with her mind. Try not to be afraid.
It was easy enough to say, but there were two big dogs, straining at leashes that looked set to snap at any moment. The apes had bared their fangs, and one was pinning Carmen to the ground while two others dragged their owners across the cobbles in their desperation to reach the girls. Snakes had begun to coil round the girls’ ankles and there were plenty more wriggling towards them, along with the lizards and scorpions which were starting to slip free from bags and wicker baskets at the edge of the crowd.
Please, help us…
Rachel closed her eyes, emptied her mind and focused. She pictured a thin beam of light: created it in her mind and sent it out. She moved it across the square and wove it around the animals that were surrounding Carmen and Inez. She called them away; called them to her.
The barking and the snarling stopped immediately, then, one by one, each animal turned and started to move. The apes yanked their owners in the opposite direction, as did the dogs. The snakes and lizards slithered and skittered, turning towards the girl standing at the edge of the crowd with her eyes closed.
Rachel drew the circle of light in tighter.
And, as each animal got to within a metre or so of her, it dropped to the floor, as though waiting to be told what to do next. Gasps went up from the crowd as dogs settled on their bellies and began to whimper, as snakes curled up at her feet and as each vicious Barbary ape lay prostrate, its head down and its long arms outstretched.
Rachel waited a few seconds before stepping slowly through the crowd of animals and hurrying across to Carmen and Inez.
“Thank … you,” Carmen stammered.
Rachel nodded. “We need to go.”
She took each girl by the hand and began to back away. They made slow progress. Every face in the square was trained on them and Rachel watched as onlookers stepped aside, lowering their heads and muttering oaths: terrified.
They had almost reached the coach when an old man appeared in front of them and began to shout in Arabic. Rachel heard and understood and, without knowing why, began to slowly raise her hand and turn her palm towards him as he continued to shout.
“The evil eye! She has the evil eye.”
She did not know exactly what was happening. She felt the pain of it, saw the thin ribbon of smoke rising from her hand, but it did not seem to matter. She felt powerful suddenly, enjoying the look of terror on the old man’s face when he saw her palm, then he turned and scuttled away.
Inez grabbed her by the wrist. “Your hand…”
Rachel turned her hand over and stared down at it. The shape had risen up through the skin, burned its way into her flesh: bright red and livid, and still smoking against her pale palm.
“Triskela,” Carmen said.
Some words did not need to be translated.
* * *
In the mobile unit’s office, Clay Van der Zee rummaged in the back of a drawer until he finally brought out the bottle of whisky he’d hidden away. He sat down and poured himself a glass.
Hadn’t he always known it would come to this? After all, he knew what the people who funded the Hope Project were like; what they were capable of.
So why did he need a drink – several drinks – so badly?
He felt the warmth of the whisky spreading through him as it went down, and thought about the conversation with the man from New York. He remembered a day when he would never even have considered … this. When he had been an eager young scientist ready to change the world, every bit as full of fire and optimism as Laura Sullivan.
That eager young scientist would have hated the man he had become.
He took another drink.
You have lots of nice, shiny equipment in that fancy mobile unit of yours, right?
Science could be a ruthless business, he accepted that. He knew very well that sometimes, if you wanted to get anywhere – to make real breakthroughs – then normal rules did not apply. Hadn’t he said more or less the same thing to Laura Sullivan? With an end as … monumental as this in sight, then all means could be justified.
Even hurting children.
Van der Zee looked down at the whisky and realized that he’d finished it. He returned the empty bottle to the back of the drawer and slammed it shut.
The phone rang and he snatched it up.
“Yes?”
“Doctor? Your visitor from HQ has just arrived. Shall I bring him across?”
Van der Zee blinked and wondered what that younger, more innocent version of himself would say.
“Yes, that’s fine. Can you just give me a few minutes first…?”
When he put down the phone, Van der Zee noticed that his hands were shaking.
Rachel, Carmen and Inez hurried back towards the coach. As inexplicably as it had appeared, the mark on Rachel’s palm had vanished.
“Has that happened before?” Carmen asked.
Rachel shook her head. She told them that it had made her feel … powerful. She thought about the group that Gabriel had gathered together, about some of the things she had witnessed, and began to wonder why they all seemed to have different capabilities.
“Why didn’t you do something yourselves?” she asked. “Back there, with the animals? Why couldn’t you make them stop?”
Inez looked a little embarrassed. “I did it once, years ago to a dog that was trying to bite me. But this was different. I was so … scared that I couldn’t do anything. It was like the fear took away the power, you know?”
“It was the same for me,” Carmen said.
Rachel nodded, understanding. It was a lesson she’d need to remember, although fear was not normally something she, or anyone else, could control.
“There is something else you must not forget,” Inez said. “We are not the same as you. None of us are.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We are older, yes, but you are stronger. You and your brother.”
They reached the part of the square where the coach was parked. Carmen squeezed Rachel’s hand. “There is so much more you are able to do…”
Jean-Luc and Jean-Bernard were still busy beneath the bonnet of the coach. Jean-Luc looked up when the girls approached, winked and wiped an oil-stained sleeve across his face.
“More or less fixed,” he said.
“What was the problem?” Rachel asked.
Jean-Bernard raised his head. “Well, that’s the funny thing, because—”
There was a sudden shout from the alleyway behind them. Everyone turned and began running towards it. Rachel led the way. She had recognized her mother’s voice.
She turned into the alleyway and stopped, as shocked as her mother had clearly been to see Mahmoud pressed up against the wall, a knife against his throat.
“Ali, stop!” Rachel shouted.
Ali did not bother to turn round. “Stay out of this.”
“Help me!” Mahmoud said.
Rachel knew that she’d been right to take such an instant dislike to Ali. She remembered what Carmen had said: she was obviously sensitive to such things.
“I’m going to kill him,” Ali said calmly.
Mahmoud pleaded for help again, but Ali only pushed the tip of the knife harder against his neck, drawing blood.
Rachel took half a step towards the brothers, then stopped when she saw Mahmoud knock the knife away and wrestle his brother to the ground. They began to exchange vicious blows, screaming at each other in Arabic, until they reached a deadlock, each with an arm wrapped tight round the other’s neck, their heads pressed together as though they were Siamese twins.
Rachel moved a little closer. “Ali, you need to let go of your brother.”
He shook his head.
“He’s gone mad!” Mahmoud shouted. “He just attacked me for no reason.”
“He’s lying.”
“No, he’s lying…”
Ali turned slowly and looked at Rachel, wincing as Mahmoud’s arm squeezed his neck. “
He has betrayed you.”
“He is insane,” Mahmoud said.
“No. He is the one who has lost his mind.” Ali’s face was twisted with rage and hatred. “He has been trying to keep you here—”
“Don’t listen!” Mahmoud screamed. “He is the one who cannot be trusted. You know me!”
“He is taking money from someone, I am not sure who. He has taken money in exchange for you. For your lives.”
“No…”
“He sabotaged the coach.”
“It’s not true.”
Ali nodded towards Jean-Bernard and Jean-Luc. “Ask them.”
Jean-Luc turned to Rachel. “It’s what I was trying to say before. Someone removed the distributor cap. We had to find a new one, rewire it—”
“Please don’t listen to him,” Mahmoud said. “Haven’t I taken good care of you? I welcomed you—”
Mahmoud was cut off as he was swung across Ali’s back and thrown to the floor. Ali quickly knelt down and grabbed Mahmoud’s wrist, ignoring the squeals of pain.
“There!” Ali nodded towards the tattoo between Mahmoud’s thumb and forefinger. The same tattoo that he had. Ali leant down and spat on his brother’s hand, then rubbed hard at the blue lines of the Triskellion until they disappeared.
Rachel gasped. She had been wrong about Ali.
“You see?” He looked up at Rachel. “You do not have much time. You have been betrayed.”
“Why?” Rachel asked. “Who is it that’s paying him?”
“It doesn’t matter…”
Rachel turned at the voice behind her and saw Gabriel. His expression was blank, but there was something dangerous flashing in his eyes.
“You heard Ali,” he said. “We need to go. Now!”
Half an hour later, the old coach was rattling out of Marrakesh. Ali steered it expertly past the airport and the cluster of tall hotels and through an area of olive groves and small farms that gradually died away until there was nothing but scrub and sky and a long dirt road.
Rachel sat at the front with Gabriel. “Where are we going?”
“It’s a small town on the coast,” Gabriel said. “Mogador…”
“That is its ancient name,” Ali announced. “The name many of us still know it by. We should be there before it gets dark.”
Gabriel stared out of the window. “From there, it’s on foot. Ali knows the way.”
“Trust me,” Ali said. “I’ll get you to the Rocher des Tueurs.”
Rachel understood what the words meant and felt a shudder pass through her.
The Killing Stone.
Ali glanced at Gabriel. “What about Mahmoud?”
Gabriel shrugged and turned away. “He will have to live with himself,” he said. “Provided he does live.”
Rachel looked across at Ali and saw him slowly nod. If there was any sadness on his brother’s behalf, he showed no sign of it.
“I think I know the man he’s working for,” Gabriel said. “And he doesn’t like to leave a mess behind…”
Mahmoud was still shaking from the fight with his brother, though he would have been shaking anyway as he reached for the phone and dialled the mobile number he had been given.
“I couldn’t keep them here,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Mahmoud sat back in his chair and let out a long breath. He could have wept with joy and relief. “I’m pleased that it hasn’t caused you a problem.”
“Change of plan, that’s all. I prefer being one step ahead of them. I’m already here.”
“That’s good,” Mahmoud said. “That’s very clever.”
“Thank you. Now, you look after yourself, OK?”
Mahmoud nodded, saying he would be happy to help if there was anything else he could do.
He looked up when a shadow fell across the table and wondered what the noise was behind him.
It was his last thought.
Adam could hear voices outside the door. When it swung open, he raised his head from the gurney and was pleased to see a friendly face.
Mr Cheung.
“Hi, Adam,” he said.
“Hi.” Adam’s voice sounded strained and weak.
Mr Cheung smiled. “You’ve been one busy guy.”
“You could say that.”
“You OK?” Mr Cheung asked, a look of concern passing over his face.
“I’ve been better,” Adam said, forcing a pained smile.
“OK,” Mr Cheung said. He swung a heavy metal suitcase up on to the steel worktop and opened it. “Let’s try and get this over with as quickly as possible.”
He took a pair of cables and electrodes from the case and attached a couple of clips to the wires. Adam strained his neck round to try and see what the Chinese man was doing. He remembered the sensation from trying to watch the dentist fix the needle and felt the same flutters of panic spread though his stomach and into his bladder.
He remembered what Morag had taught him, when he was having the tracking device cut out. He would need to be brave. To avoid the pain, he would need to go elsewhere in his mind, to create a personal space away from whatever was about to happen.
Mr Cheung took a long pair of forceps and clamps from the case and swabbed them with antiseptic wipes. Adam’s legs began to tremble.
“What are you doing?” His voice was high-pitched and cracked.
Mr Cheung looked at him, the smile gone from his eyes. He pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and switched on a CD player. Light, classical music began to fill the room.
“I’m sorry, Adam,” he said. “I’m afraid I’m not just here to cook.”
The old coach bumped along the narrow, pitted road. The journey was punctuated only by the occasional lorry roaring towards them, or by the overtaking of a solitary donkey cart. Every twenty kilometres or so, they would drive through a one-horse town, where women in long, dun-coloured robes carried baskets of vegetables back towards mud huts and men in shabby clothes smoked idly at the roadside, watching them pass.
Rachel was sitting next to Gabriel. They had not spoken for some miles, their minds elsewhere. The French boys were playfully thumping one another. The others were dotted around the ten rows of seats, enjoying a greater, if less comfortable, degree of personal space than they had on previous legs of their journey. Morag and Duncan were at the back, stretched out on the long bench seat, singing a song in high, Scottish voices: “The wheels on the bus go round and round, all day long…”
Rachel’s thoughts drifted back to the square in Marrakesh.
“Why did the animals attack them?” she asked Gabriel.
“What?” Gabriel had been miles away. “The monkeys, you mean?”
“Yeah, why did they attack Inez and Carmen? Did that horrible guy make them do it?”
Gabriel shrugged. “Why did Adam get beaten up in England? Why were they after you in Spain? It’s always been the same. Some people recognize us, know us by instinct, or from the stories their ancestors have told for many generations. And some species recognize us, like the bees. Others can’t see us at all.”
“What? You mean like the people who don’t notice we’re there, even when we’re right under their noses?”
Gabriel nodded. “And of those that recognize us, some will help us, as they have always done.”
“And the others?” Rachel pressed, already knowing the answer.
“The others want to do us nothing but harm.” Gabriel turned and looked her in the eye. “They just want us dead. And usually, they win.”
Adam walked along the beach. He did not know where he was exactly, but it was idyllic. Fine silver sand stretched out in a long white crescent into infinity ahead of him and crystal-clear water lapped gently at the shore. His feet enjoyed the contrast between the hot, soft sand beneath them and the delicious chill of the cool water that rhythmically splashed over them. It was a paradise where parrots and pelicans swooped and screeched overhead before landing in lush green palm trees which r
ustled in the gentle breeze…
Now and then, the classical music would push through his vision, and the shrill sound of the violins would bring him back towards consciousness. Then Adam would have to fight to return to the island in his mind.
He knew there would be scars – physical and mental – and he knew there would be pain to bear once he was on the other side: once this torture had ended … if it ever ended. All he could do for now, though, was focus and float in his subconscious, above the pain. The smell of singed hair began to bring him back into the room. Adam fought on in his mind … running away across the beach and out into the water, splashing across its surface to where the dolphins were playing.
He dived, deep into the cool blue.
* * *
Rachel was looking out of the window, daydreaming. A beach, crystal-blue water, somewhere nice… Chance would be a fine thing. Maybe one day she would get a holiday in a place like that…
Her reverie was broken as Laura sat down next to her; Rachel resented the intrusion that brought her back to earth with a bump. Gabriel had moved seats. He was talking to Inez and Carmen, who were nodding and smiling at him enthusiastically.
Rachel glanced at Laura.
“Hi,” Laura said.
“Hi,” Rachel responded sulkily.
“I think I’m building some bridges with your mum, Rachel.”
Rachel shrugged and pushed out her lower lip. “You might want to think about building some with me,” she said. “But to be honest, I think we’re past that point.”
Laura looked disappointed. “Rach…”
“Don’t,” Rachel said. “You are nothing but a liar. You just lie and twist and conceal, and you have done from the very moment I met you back in Triskellion.” Rachel was warming to her theme. These were things she needed to get off her chest. “You might be a smart doctor and all that, but you have no real knowledge of what makes people tick. Morag and Duncan have more intuition in their little fingernails than you have…”
Gabriel and the Spanish girls stopped chattering and looked round.
The Burning Page 24