‘Ask your doctor,’ came the faint answer. Then Leoni was swept away and the Angel was gone.
The return journey through the tunnel was much faster than the outbound trip. In fact, it was a bit like being flushed down a gigantic toilet. After some final nauseating swirls and a long drop through empty space, Leoni found herself back in the emergency room, hovering near the ceiling, as light and transparent as a soap bubble once again. Her first thought was that this was so much better than being marooned in a world with horrible tree-sized birds of prey, and she was filled with an ineffable sense of joy and a tremendous surge of light and restless energy.
A quick glance at the monitors. Hooray. Her ECG wasn’t flatlining any more. The docs were still working on her, though. Hmm, one of them – in his mid-thirties, really good-looking – was charging up the paddles of the electric-shock machine … Wham! As her meat body writhed and jumped she sensed its breath and warmth and felt its pain.
Leoni recoiled in surprise and flew straight through the wall of the emergency room, down a maze of corridors, and found herself in what seemed to be the main reception area of the hospital. There she dodged behind the desk, obeying an irrational desire to hide, and floated a few inches above the floor. She noticed that the receptionist, a model of efficiency in a severe charcoal business suit, was wearing incongruous orange sneakers with striped purple and green laces.
Whoomf! The doc must have zapped her with the paddles a second time and she was impelled back to the emergency room where she hovered right over her body.
She could hear the high-pitched tone of the electric-shock generator charging up and then wham! – another painful jolt – and she was back inside her body, like a fish returning to water.
Her eyes fluttered open. ‘Hello, Leoni,’ she heard the doctor saying. ‘Welcome back to the land of the living.’
She examined his face and tried to speak, but her voice was slurred, as though she were drunk. She tried again: ‘The land of the living?’
The doctor’s soft brown eyes turned quizzical: ‘Yes?’
She was bone weary. ‘You’re not going to believe me,’ she said, ‘but five minutes ago I met an angel who called it the exact same thing.’
Chapter Seven
As Grigo, Duma and Vik continued their slow and undignified descent of the hill, the Uglies lost interest in them, reassembled and resumed their march. Ria followed Brindle as he shuffled over to join the column and fell into step beside him.
She had no particular plan. Probably she’d head home soon. She just needed to think a few things through first.
She glanced at the huge shambling creatures marching all around her. They’d been heading roughly west and continued to do so at a faster and more urgent pace than before. Now it was obvious who the leader was – the giant yellow-toothed male who had rescued her in the valley. His grey hair and grizzled white beard marked him out as an elder, although he had the knotted muscles of a brave in his prime. He radiated fierce physical power but it was coupled with the same gentleness and delicacy of manner she’d found in Brindle.
Ria decided the Uglies made a poor first impression because of how they looked and smelled. But, once you saw past that, they were, in fact, quite amazing.
She’d never paid much attention to the outlandish claims put about by Murgh’s faction. She knew from her own (very infrequent) encounters with Uglies on her – very frequent – rabbit-hunting trips that there weren’t many of them around. Certainly not thousands of them as Murgh claimed. She knew they weren’t wiping out all the game. She had never known them to be violent or in the least bit threatening, even when she’d once passed a big male in a remote spot where he might easily have attacked her. And for all these reasons, though she had no proof, Ria was also sure the Uglies weren’t bloodthirsty cannibals who relished human flesh. It was just another phoney excuse for murdering them and stealing their hunting grounds.
She had forgotten that Brindle could read her mind, but now he replied to her thoughts with a great wave of anguish: ‘You know truth! So why do you accept? Why let Clan murder Uglies?’
Ria was quick to object: ‘Hold on, Brindle. What just happened this morning? I saw three of my Clan trying to murder you and I stopped them. Remember? I risked my life to stop them. You told me I was a hero for doing that.’
Brindle looked contrite: ‘Yes. You are hero. Very sorry. What you saw with own eyes you stopped.’ Then he frowned: ‘But I mean why stay silent when you know Clan are killing Uglies – not just one Ugly, but every Ugly they find? Why not stop that?’
‘Because I can’t stop it, Brindle. I’m female and sixteen. No one gives a fuck what I say about anything.’
When Brindle made no reply Ria returned to her thoughts, and to the second problem that was bothering her, namely Sulpa.
He was an outlander for sure, so how had he gained influence over three high-ranking youths of the Clan?
With Grigo involved it was a safe bet that something underhand was going on. And Grigo’s mission to kill Uglies made it very likely the whole thing was also connected to his father. It was well known that Murgh had challenged the traditional leadership of the assembly of elders. Could his son’s loose talk of Sulpa hint at an alliance with another tribe – not only to kill Uglies but also to snatch overall power within the Clan? With men like Murgh and his thugs, Ria thought, the possibility of such treachery couldn’t be ruled out.
She had to get back to camp and tell Hond and Rill what she suspected.
The Uglies were streaming along the floor of a glen she’d never explored before, reminding her she was getting further away from camp with every step. She checked the sky. High sun had already passed. She was about to tell Brindle of her decision to turn back – although of course he knew all her thoughts – when he put a warning hand on her arm and pointed to the ridge line a few hundred paces above them.
Two savage-looking men stood there, huge and naked, with shaggy shoulder-length hair. Ria saw both of them were smeared with fresh blood and knew from their pale skin and strange weapons they weren’t from the Clan or from any of the neighbouring tribes.
Were the splashes of gore glistening on their hard muscular bodies from Grigo, Duma and Vik? The three youths had been hobbled and defenceless, Ria reflected. They would have been easy to kill.
In a smooth whirl of motion one of the bloodstained men unslung a wooden baton and a bundle of short spears hanging across his shoulders, locked a spear into the baton, drew back his right arm, rolled at the hips and launched the missile down the slope of the valley. It made an eerie whistling sound as it flew. Tipped with a heavy flint spike it crunched with horrible force into the side of a big Ugly in the third rank of the column, passed straight through his body amidst gouts of blood, and lodged itself deep between the ribs of the brave next to him.
Both Uglies went down, dead in an instant, and the entire column stopped in its tracks as though stunned.
Taking his time, looking relaxed and confident, the second naked warrior on the ridge line unslung his own baton and spears and coiled his muscular body to throw.
Chapter Eight
When Leoni spoke of the Angel she thought she saw a strange expression cross the doctor’s face; it lasted a few seconds before he got it under control. ‘I do believe you,’ he said, ‘but right now you need to take it easy. We nearly lost you in here …’
‘I died and went someplace else …’
‘It was touch and go, Leoni, but you’re a fighter and we got you back.’
She smiled and suddenly sleep stole up on her, overwhelming her like a superior force.
The next twenty-four hours passed in a blur as Leoni progressed through the recovery and critical care units and thence into a plush convalescent suite overlooking the leafy gardens of the hospital. If Mom and Dad had spent any time at her bedside right after she came out of the ER she hadn’t noticed them, but now a smiling middle-aged nurse brought her the happy tidings they were on their way.<
br />
Leoni felt physically sick at the prospect. In the days leading up to her overdose she’d been in turmoil over what to do about her father. The big question was … had he really raped her – repeatedly – when she was eight, and again, inexplicably, when she was twelve? It had always happened in the dead of night, and on each occasion he had snatched her without warning out of deep sleep. Before her thirteenth birthday the attacks had stopped as suddenly and mysteriously as they had started, but she had been tortured ever afterwards by night terrors and dreamlike memories of these ordeals.
The last time she’d plucked up the courage to accuse him was a couple of years ago. But, as always, he had denied everything, told her she was an evil liar, and claimed the rapes had only happened in her overactive imagination.
He made her question her own sanity.
He made her wonder whether the blood she recalled trying to scrub off her sheets after each attack could, after all, have come from some sort of self-harm.
For a long time he had kept her quiet with such brainwashing. But, in recent months, the horrible and disgusting memories had come flooding back – no longer as dreamlike sequences but shatteringly graphic, specific and real – and Leoni had regained some certainty that it was not she but her father who was the evil liar in the family.
That had been her state of mind when she’d quarrelled with her parents yesterday afternoon, and she could see with new insight how her incredible rashness and stupidity with the OxyContin tablets had been directly connected to the rage and hate she felt towards her dad.
So far, so bad … But now, after her brush with death, there were other, even more agonising and confusing matters to ponder. Although she didn’t understand the mechanism, she had somehow witnessed Mom admitting, in a very horrible way, that she’d known about the rapes all along. And there had been the strange talk about someone called Jack, and clearing up the dead wood – whatever that meant.
This was all new and worrying, but what made it more problematic was the peculiar way Leoni had come by it. Was her out-of-body eavesdropping just a hallucination cooked up in her druggie mind, or had her mother really known about the rapes when they were happening? If she had known, and encouraged them, then what kind of set-up was that?
And who was ‘Jack’?
Leoni had asked for a sketch pad and half a dozen Magic Markers when she’d been moved into the convalescent suite, and now she was sitting up in bed, her back propped against a pile of pillows, working on a drawing of the Blue Angel. She was struggling to get the likeness of that perfect face, the high cheekbones, the almond eyes, the indigo skin, when her parents appeared in the doorway. For some reason she felt guilty and closed the pad, sliding it beneath her covers as they advanced.
To her irritation, they had brought Adam the miracle child sulking in tow. The obnoxious ten-year-old scowled a reluctant greeting, made a beeline for the sofa by the window, switched on his Nintendo and was soon slaughtering aliens in Metroid Prime.
Mom and Dad settled in the armchairs on either side of Leoni’s bed. No one spoke for some minutes, and the tension in the room began to rise.
Finally Mom leaned forward and hissed: ‘Adam knows you overdosed. He couldn’t miss it. It’s been all over the TV news. I need you to apologise to him.’
Leoni’s blood boiled: ‘Apologise? To Adam? What for?’
‘For the distress and embarrassment you’ve caused him at school.’
‘Well, maybe he’d be even more distressed and embarrassed if I told him where I got the OxyContin tablets I overdosed on …’
Dad cut her off: ‘Let’s not talk about your drug habits today.’ He flashed a warning look at Mom. ‘This is just meant to be a nice family visit.’
‘Nice for who?’ Leoni retorted. ‘Nice in what way?’ She lowered her voice to a whisper: ‘Would it be so nice if Adam knew what you used to do to me?’
Adam had ears like a bat and was curious about ugly, disturbing and contentious matters. ‘Dad,’ he asked. ‘What was it you used to do to Leoni?’
‘Nothing, Adam,’ Dad snapped. ‘Leoni’s suffering from an illness. It’s called false memory syndrome …’
‘Fuck OFF!’ Leoni screamed, ‘I’m up to HERE with your bullshit. My memories aren’t false. It really happened …’
‘But WHAT happened, Dad?’ wheedled Adam. ‘I wanna know.’
‘You wanna know?’ mimicked Leoni. ‘OK, spoilt brat, I’ll tell you. Dad used to get into bed wi—’ THWACK! Stunned, she realised that Mom had just slapped her face – hard – and now stood over her, panting and flushed. Leoni’s right ear was hot and ringing where the blow had struck. At once her anger brimmed over and she bellowed: ‘You KNEW about it, Mom. You even ALLOWED it.’ She saw that this accusation had hit the mark. Mom’s face fell and, just for an instant, before she got herself under control, she had a hunted, almost frightened look in her eyes.
Leoni pressed home her advantage: ‘You BITCH. You DID know about it. You KNEW!’ She lunged forward and tried to claw her mother’s face but her father got between them, shouting: ‘This is madness, Leoni. Stop it! Stop making things up.’
Leoni wasn’t about to stop anything: ‘Oh yeah?’ she shrieked. ‘If I’m making things up then how come I know about JACK?’
The startled expression on both her parents’ faces told her once again she’d scored some sort of point. That was when the good-looking doctor who’d saved her life in the emergency room walked in.
Dad and Mom jumped back and the doctor strode across the floor to stand at the foot of the bed. ‘What’s going on here?’ he demanded.
Mom gave him her constipated-gorilla look: ‘Who’s asking?’
‘Dr Bannerman. I attended Leoni in ER.’
‘Well, Dr Bannerman, we’re Mr and Mrs Watts, Leoni’s parents, and we’re having a private family discussion that’s none of your business. OK?’
‘No, Mrs Watts. It’s not OK. I heard the shouting halfway down the corridor, and I also think I heard somebody getting hit.’ He paused, seemed to reconsider something he was about to say, and added: ‘But let’s not go there right now. Your daughter is my patient. My responsibility is to ensure she makes a proper recovery and she isn’t going to do that if she has to deal with this kind of … “discussion”. Please just leave at once and let her get some sleep …’
‘You’re telling us to leave?’ screeched Mom. ‘You don’t have the right. We’re her parents. We’re paying her bills here.’
‘As it happens,’ said Dr Bannerman, ‘I do have the right, and I don’t care who you are or what you’re paying. The patient comes first and this patient needs peace and quiet.’
Mom turned to Dad: ‘Herman! Didn’t we give a big capital gift to this hospital last year?’
‘You bet we did. Five million dollars for the building programme.’
‘There!’ yelled Mom. ‘And it’s not the first time. Check it out, doctor! How do you think Chancellor Edelman will feel if we withdraw future support because of your behaviour? WE’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE.’
‘I’ve had enough,’ said Bannerman. ‘I’m calling security.’
Mom glared at him as he moved to the bedside to pick up the telephone. He had already started dialling when Dad capitulated. He marched over to the sofa and grabbed his son’s hand: ‘Come on, Adam, time to go home. Come on, Madeleine. Let’s get out of here.’
For a moment Mom was speechless. She had been defeated! Something she could not abide. As the three of them headed in disarray towards the door she looked over her shoulder and flashed the doctor her poisonous-lizard look: ‘There’s going to be consequences’ she said. ‘You’ll be hearing from our attorney.’
In the last second she turned her eyes on Leoni and beamed rays of hatred at her. Then they were out of the room and marching down the hallway under a barrage of shrill questions from Adam.
Chapter Nine
‘MOVE, YOU IDIOTS!’ Ria screamed, startling the Uglies out of their inertia and sendi
ng them running in all directions as the second spear came whistling in. It shot past her and buried itself in the face of an old hunched female in the seventh rank, dropping her in a heap.
Still nobody seemed to know what to do. Ria sought around, found that Brindle had stuck close to her, and pointed to the men on the ridge line three hundred paces above. ‘WE’VE GOT TO CHARGE THEM,’ she yelled in out-loud speech – there was no time to risk thought-talk not working – ‘CROWD THEM. GET THEM OFF THE HIGH GROUND OR THEY’LL SKEWER US ONE BY ONE.’
She’d already snatched a jagged stone out of the sodden earth and was sprinting up the steep side of the glen. She could see one of the attackers aiming a shot at her, waited until he let fly and threw herself to the ground. The whistling spear missed her by a hand’s breadth and as she sprang to her feet twenty Ugly braves pounded past her, their heavy footsteps shaking the earth, roaring incoherent defiance at their attackers.
More spears smashed into their ranks, bringing down four more Uglies with horrific injuries. Blood spurted, bones broke, there were cries of pain and shock, but still the tough uphill charge didn’t falter. The big yellow-toothed leader was ten paces ahead of everyone else, waving a massive war axe, but before he reached the ridge line Ria hoped to kill one of the spearmen herself. Her grip tightened on the stone she’d picked up. It wasn’t of ideal size and weight. But it would do. She was less than fifty paces away and already drawing her arm back to throw when the spearmen turned and were gone. By the time she reached the ridge line they were nowhere to be seen, as though some sorcery had concealed them.
Ria didn’t believe in sorcery.
The men were there, slithering on their bellies like snakes through the bracken, gorse and tall tussocky grasses packing the downslope below.
‘Put your guys out in a long line,’ Ria yelled to Brindle, still using out-loud speech. ‘Beat the bush. We’ll find them.’
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