Shit.
Limehouse, London
Claire Sullivan was lying on top of the bed, curled up on her side. The drapes were drawn, and the ‘am’ after the number ‘2’ on her alarm clock was her only way of knowing whether it was day or night. Next to the clock, propped onto its side, her cellphone was buzzing. She wondered if it was Mike again. She knew her brother was worried about her. She’d always been the stronger twin, always bailing him out when things got too tough. Now, he was coming over every morning, making strong tea and watching her eat a piece of toast. He didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t talk to him. She couldn’t talk to anyone.
The phone had fallen silent, but now it buzzed again. She sighed and squinted at the display. At first, she thought she was seeing things, but then she sat up, staring. The display wasn’t showing the name of the caller, it was just flashing the same words, over and over.
Pick up, Claire. Pick up, Claire. Pick up, Claire.
She reached out a shaking hand and picked up the phone.
“Yes?”
There was no answer. There was no one there. She put the phone back. That’s when she heard Mike’s voice. In her head.
“Hey, Sis, don’t panic. I’m about to appear in your room.”
Claire pulled herself into a sitting position against the headboard. She could feel her eyes begin to fill with tears. It seemed that, on top of the panic attacks and depression, she was going to start hearing voices, too.
At that moment, her brother Mike appeared out of nowhere, sitting at the end of her bed. He was smiling the same careful, gentle smile she’d seen every morning for the past few weeks.
Hearing voices and experiencing hallucinations, then. Unless the sleeping pills were finally kicking in and this was an incredibly vivid dream.
“It is,” said Mike.
“It is what?” she croaked.
“An incredibly vivid dream. It’s also a healing dream. Tomorrow morning, you’re going to start to get better.”
“I am?”
“You are.”
Claire frowned. “Why do you sound American?”
“It’s a dream. Weird stuff happens. Now listen, Claire, you need to be strong now, for this to work.”
Claire didn’t like the sound of where this dream was heading.
“Strong how?” she said, suspecting she already knew the answer.
“You’ve locked away a memory so you never have to think of it again. But that’s what’s making you sick. You need to remember, Sis. Remember what happened that day.”
She sobbed then, and tried to slide back down the bed, curl up, ignore Mike. He came around the bed and stroked her face. His touch felt so real.
“I’ll make you a promise, Sis. You trust me, right?”
“Of course,” she said, crying.
“Ok. Good. You just need to remember for a second. Like opening a box, looking inside, then shutting the lid. And here’s the good part.”
“There’s a good part?”
“Really good. Once you shut the lid, it’ll disappear forever. You’ll never think of it again. It’ll be gone.”
Claire sat up again then. She looked at Mike. He would never lie to her. Not even in a dream.
“Promise?” she whispered.
“Promise,” he said.
She reached out her hand, and he took it. She squeezed tightly and shut her eyes.
She opened the box.
The bald man on the gurney was unconscious. There was a suspected fracture of one cheekbone, which was already beginning to show bruising. They had ripped open his shirt to get to the most serious injuries, only to find a pockmarked bulletproof vest. The bullets had flattened against the metallic mesh, their kinetic energy dispersed across the man’s chest.
Dan had bandaged the wound on the patient’s leg. It was messy, but not too serious. There was some damage, but the bullet had passed right through. He was lucky. He’d be walking without a limp in six months.
Dan held out a hand, and Claire passed him the syringe. They’d been working together for seven months, and rarely needed to ask for what was needed in an emergency. They’d been sleeping together for nearly three months. Hospital policy dictated they shouldn’t work together, but, so far, they had neglected to update their managers on their new relationship status.
Dan winked as he prepped the syringe. That’s when it happened. The patient sat up and opened his eyes. He looked at Dan, then at Claire. He was completely calm and, seemingly, fully functional. There was none of the confusion Claire saw time after time in the eyes of patients who had been attacked. This patient was different. He looked like he was thinking, making some kind of calculation as he surveyed his surroundings.
Dan put a hand on the man’s arm.
“You’ve been hurt,” he said. “You’re in an ambulance. We’re taking you to hospital. Everything is going to be all right. I just need to give you an injection to help prevent infection, ok?”
The bald man didn’t answer. His right arm moved in a blur of speed, and suddenly Dan was on the floor with the patient standing over him. Claire opened her mouth to scream, but a strong hand clamped over her lips, and cold eyes looked straight into hers.
Claire had once given CPR to a man born with no eyes. The glass eyes filling his sockets had been wide open as she had re-started his heart, and she’d been slightly freaked out by his empty stare. This felt similar until she felt a cold stab of fear. Something far worse than emptiness lurked behind this man’s dark gaze.
He gagged her with bandages, then tied her hands together, attaching them to the top of the gurney. Next, he turned away from her and rolled Dan onto his back with the tip of one shoe. He stripped Dan’s unconscious body to his underwear, then stripped himself and swapped their clothes. She watched him pull off his jacket and saw raw-looking red patches on his chest. Four of them. So, he was human after all. Not some kind of demon. Even the latest bulletproof vests couldn’t completely dissipate the energy of a point-blank shot. She hoped he was in pain.
As if he had heard her thought, the bald man looked at her. Next, suddenly and horribly, he put a hand behind his back and pulled out a gun. He grabbed a pillow from the gurney and held it in front of the barrel, swinging it round to point at Dan. Before firing, he smiled, and Claire had the awful realization that the screaming siren of the ambulance would cover up the sound of what he was about to do.
She shut her eyes after the first shot. Three more shots followed. Then there was a sickening crunching sound.
Everything fell into darkness for a while. It might have been seconds or minutes. When Claire opened her eyes, she was still in the ambulance, the siren was still screaming, and Dan was dead on the floor. The empty-eyed man was looking at her. She looked away. He slapped her across the face, and she looked back. He spoke without emotion.
“Contact the hospital, tell them the patient died. Four gunshot wounds. When a patient dies in the ambulance, do you go straight to the morgue?”
Claire hesitated, desperate to find some way of escaping and raising the alarm. He slapped her again and raised the gun, pressing it lightly against the side of her head.
“Claire Sullivan,” he said, reading her ID badge. “We have very little time. I have killed a great many people. I am the most dangerous person you will ever meet. If you defy me in any way, I will hunt down your family, your friends and your colleagues and I will kill them. Is that clear?”
She nodded. He removed the gag and untied her. She buzzed the driver on the intercom.
“Harry? Straight to the morgue. We lost this one.”
“It’s not protocol, Claire. We should take him in, get him pronounced properly.”
Claire couldn’t bring herself to look at the killer beside her, but she could feel his cold gaze.
“No point, Harry. Multiple gunshot wounds. Blood everywhere. Half his chest missing. There’s not much of a heart left to try to start.”
The pause that followed seemed to
last an hour.
“All right, love. Sounds nasty. I’ll swing us round the back. Two minutes.”
The bald man rolled up the bottom of the pants he had taken from Dan, who was six foot two in his bare feet. Under other circumstances, Claire would have thought he looked ridiculous. As it was, she was focusing purely on not hyper-ventilating. As soon as the ambulance stopped, the man crouched by the doors and motioned Claire to be silent. After about thirty seconds, they heard Harry’s voice.
“You two all right in there? Or has he come back to life again?” He was chuckling as he opened the door. Harry didn’t see the punch that felled him. It was carefully placed, and he dropped like a stone. The bald man jumped out of the back, and dragged Harry’s unconscious body into the ambulance. He motioned Claire to lead the way, and, sobbing, she rolled her lover’s body out of the rear of the vehicle, the wheels dropping down from the gurney as she pulled it out. She took the front and was about to enter the building when the bald man pulled back and stopped her going any further. She looked at him.
“Your colleague punched the driver, then ran off. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“Remember what I said, Claire Sullivan. Think about your family,” the bald man said, before turning his back and walking briskly away.
Claire wheeled the gurney to the morgue.
“Multiple gunshots,” she said and signed the form the young porter put in front of her.
“Bit of a mess, ain’t he?”
She took one last look at Dan. His face was unrecognizable, where the sole of the man’s boot had crushed bone.
She didn’t vomit. She didn’t cry. She walked round to her station and told her supervisor that Dan had lost the plot and punched Harry. She said she was going home. She started walking.
“Claire?”
Claire looked at her twin, standing next to the bed. She felt drowsy. She pulled the duvet over her shoulders. She was struggling to keep her eyes open.
“Mike?” she murmured. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m not here,” she heard as sleep finally claimed her. “It’s just a dream.”
It wasn’t until she was in the shower next morning that she realized how good she felt. She thought about the day when she’d walked out and could remember nothing after their last call out to a gunshot victim in Docklands.
She emailed the hospital to let them know she’d be back on Monday. She was just leaving the house when Mike walked up the path.
“You’re going out?” he said, unable to keep the surprise from his voice.
“Got to pick up some food,” she said. “I’m starving. Fancy coming with me? We could get a coffee somewhere.”
He smiled broadly. “Fantastic.”
44
Innisfarne
The days were colder now, and fires had been burning in the Keep’s various grates since the first week of September. Mee was already convinced she could feel the bite of winter in the wind that harried the island as twilight deepened into darkness.
Mee hunched her shoulders against the chill and, after checking that McG—the Houdini of the goat community—was securely barricaded into his shed, she completed her routine with a quick check of the chicken run before heading to dinner.
This was traditionally a quiet period for Innisfarne, and only three visitors occupied the rooms scattered among the outbuildings. They were all female, all referred by health professionals because of psychological, and physical, trauma suffered through domestic abuse. Of all the safe houses offered to women in such extreme circumstances, Innisfarne was often the one which felt ‘safest’ to them in the shortest time, due partly to its remote location. The quiet acceptance of the community, which never asked questions, was the other—hugely important—contributory factor in allowing healing to begin.
The community itself was down to its lowest numbers for a while. A large family group had departed just two days previously after their regular summer and autumn stay. Now, just Kate, John, Mee and Joni remained in the Keep, along with the three visiting women.
There was one more occupant on Innisfarne, an old man, but he was staying in the crofter’s cottage at the northeast tip of the island. Mee’s suspicions had immediately been aroused when she learned of his presence - after the events in Docklands, she couldn’t help herself. Kate said he had arrived the day after she left for London. Mee had even watched him through binoculars to put her mind completely at ease. A strong-looking figure, his long gray hair and beard gave him the look of an Old Testament prophet as he strode along the beach. Kate said he had told her he had enough Manna reserves to feed himself for months. Days, then weeks passed, with the old man showing no interest at all in changing his solitary routine. Finally, Mee was able to relax. Under other circumstances, she would be more curious about the enigmatic, powerful character she was sharing the island with, but as soon as she had reassured herself that he was no threat to Joni, she barely gave him a thought.
The rest of the visitors ate together in the smaller dining room. When Innisfarne was busy, the larger hall would be used for meals, but it was costly to heat, so Kate kept it shut up and cold during the quieter winters.
Joni thanked Kate as the older woman passed her a bowl of lentil soup and some crusty bread. Reluctantly, she put down Odd’s letter so that she could eat her supper.
“I have to say, I love the fact that he writes you actual letters,” said Kate. “I’m old enough to remember what it felt like to receive a physical letter, to recognize the writing on the envelope and feel the excitement of opening it for the first time.”
Mee smiled while Joni refolded the letter. “You’ve got a racy past you haven’t told us about, Kate?”
“Maybe,” said Kate, sitting opposite John. John and Kate, much to Mee and Joni’s surprise and delight, had finally—years after everyone who knew them had seen the obvious spark between them—struck up a more intimate relationship. Joni and Mee’s news about attempted killings, meeting a living software version of Seb and Mee’s shooting of a deranged psychopath had seemed somehow less exciting when they had realized John hadn’t been sleeping in his own room since the night Mee had left the island.
Joni tucked the letter into her pocket. She would re-read it later. Odd’s inimitable style of speaking the English language lent his letters a charm she found irresistible. A month earlier, with Sym’s help, he had found his brother, Anders, and they were setting up a small clinic that treated the injuries of Manna and non-Manna users alike. Anyone who needed them called a number and were directed to a neutral meeting place where they could be helped. Sym had provided a piece of software which traced each call and ensured the brothers weren’t being led into a trap by the police, or anti-Manna groups. Over the weeks, a few cops had been saved by the brothers’ use of Manna, and Odd hoped this would slowly start to change minds and hearts. I still have hope, he had written.
He was planning a visit over Christmas. It seemed a long way off. Joni was still a little cautious about her feelings toward Odd, but she was glad of the opportunity to get to know him again slowly, using the antiquated technology of pen, ink, paper and the postal service.
At the next table, Sarah and Laura were speaking to each other in hushed, hesitant whispers. Sarah had finally left her husband after he punched her repeatedly in the stomach after she told him she was pregnant. She’d lost the baby and had been talked down from a bridge by a police officer who knew the right social worker to call. Laura had been stabbed three times by a jealous boyfriend.
The two women had found common ground and were beginning, slowly and tentatively, to open up to one another. Kate and Mee had seen this happen before and knew they needed to give them the space to begin the healing process together.
Sian—who was still taking meals in her room—was a different story. The terrible bruises on her face were fading now, five days after her arrival, but she still walked with a stick, in obvious pain, and the extent of her injuries was unk
nown. She wore sunglasses outdoors and in. She had yet to speak. To anyone. Too frightened even to let them know where she was from, or the name of her referring doctor, she seemed to exist in a personal bubble of torment. She had written down her name when she arrived but had been reluctant to write much more, only emerging from her room on the second night.
John had carefully kept his distance after inadvertently coming face to face with Sian in the garden. She had bolted like a rabbit at the sound of a shotgun. He was acutely aware of being the only male presence in the Keep and tried to speak more softly when Sian was in the room.
The only one of them who had made any headway at all with the traumatized young woman was Joni, who had coaxed half a smile out of Sian when she brought her the occasional cup of tea. Sian wore her long black hair in such a way that it often obscured her features. Joni was making an effort, very slowly and carefully, to gain trust and Mee watched her daughter with pride as she did so.
She’s going to be a fine woman.
Joni herself had shown a great deal of resilience considering what she had gone through. Soon after their return to Innisfarne, Joni, Mee, John and Kate had sat down together, and Joni had told them the whole story. When she’d come clean about her reason for leaving the island, Mee had started shaking. Joni had described everything. The shooting from the boat, the madness in Adam’s eyes, the antique knife.
“You mean, in some parallel reality, we died on that beach?”
“If that’s the way my ability works, I suppose that must be true. But you’re alive, Mum. Here. Now. So am I. So is Uncle John. It’s all that matters. We can only deal with what’s right in front of us.”
When did she get so bloody wise?
45
London
In a rundown hotel whose rooms were also available by the hour, the proprietor, one Albert Potter, stared blankly at the unlikely sex act being performed on his computer screen. A spider obscured his view for a moment and he swatted it away, not noticing that the insect had attached itself to his finger before sinking into his skin. He twitched, then looked back at the screen, shaking his head.
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