by Louise Cole
She wasn’t wrong – the Cadaveri did seem pretty evil but they must gain something from stopping this reading. And Ella clearly didn’t want to tell me anymore which set my radar whirring. Maybe it would become clear when I understood how the reading worked.
“So I do what with this thing? Curl up in an armchair with a good book and put the world to rights?”
Ella grinned. “No. We go to an appropriate place, and you read it aloud. Think of it as performance art.”
I heard the crunch of tires on gravel outside. I shrank in my seat. I wasn’t ready to face Jace. I briefly thought of apologizing to him, but I’d have to cough the words out like little pebbles. My head spun with all of the stuff Ella had told me, but beneath the dizziness, a core of hot anger and distrust still burned.
Ella put her hand on mine. “It’ll be fine.”
The back door swung open, and Jace strode in. Before I could speak, he thrust something at me. “I retrieved that last night,” he said.
It wasn’t until then that I realized what my hands had been lacking. As the book nestled back into them, I relaxed properly for the first time. It took a second to remember where I’d hidden it.
“Oh God, you—”
“Don’t even start with me, woman,” said Jace. “I didn’t put it there.”
***
The Cadaveri hiked across the empty fields. A scout had found a remote farmhouse which was abandoned, but it had water and shelter. They had also managed to acquire two old vehicles which would carry at least twenty of them if they needed to move fast. Cyrus stopped and rubbed his leg. The pain was exquisite. He sank his fingers into the muscle and winced as the nerve screamed. His face relaxed even as the leg throbbed and almost buckled under him.
He took a breath and straightened, tuning into the steady throb of blood in his injured thigh like a mantra. It stilled his mind, helped him to focus. The farmhouse looked adequate, too far from civilization for them to accidentally aggravate the local population. On the other hand it would make supply runs longer.
“Anything?” he asked the Seer who was walking along with his eyes half-closed and his senses wide open. The old man flinched.
“The Reader’s gone. She floats in clouds.”
“Clouds? What the hell is this?”
Another answered, “We think they are cloaking her sound somehow.”
The Seer capered. “Like the sun. In and out, in and out of the clouds.” He fell to his knees, arms raised to the sky like some ancient mystic. “It burns us all,” he whispered. “It never stops burning.”
***
“We’ll go by your house and pick up your things. It’s best if you stay with us until the reading.” Ella shouldered her bag.
“Whoa, hold on a minute.” I pushed my chair back. “I’ve already been away for a night. Dad will be frantic.” Or furious. Or maybe, I thought bitterly, he hasn’t even noticed I’m gone. “And I have school next week. I feel like I’m being railroaded here.”
“I’ve already taken care of your school, Callie. You have a few days’ leave. This is more important.”
“No. You can’t just do that. You can’t swoop in here and abduct me and tell me I can’t go home any more. I have a life.” I realized I was gripping the book tightly in both hands. I looked down at it. “I have a choice in this.”
Ella set down her bag. “Yes. I suppose you do. You can do a reading and avert international catastrophe, or you can go back to school and to your studies and watch the world go to hell. Watch your friends drafted into conflicts they never imagined in their worst nightmares, and cower under the kitchen table while nuclear missiles rain down, and hope, if you survive, the water’s still fit to drink. So, yes. You have a choice.”
“Ella.” Jace’s voice was quiet.
“No, J, she needs to realize what’s at stake here.”
“Why now?” My voice was so small. “Can’t I have some time to think about this?” Sure, I wanted to stop the war. Of course I did. But I didn’t trust this yet. I didn’t trust them. My father always used to say: when something seems too good to be true, it usually is. And saving the world simply by reading from a book definitely fit the too good to be true category.
“This is moving faster than we thought, Callie, and we’re already behind schedule. India and Pakistan are on the brink of war. Emergency peace talks are being held in London in three days. Both are nuclear powers. Once they declare war, no one will be able to stay out of this. We’re not talking individual war zones anymore—we’re talking World War III. Unless someone can stop it. Stop it all.”
She stepped forward and closed her hands over mine. Over the book. “Callie, we thought we’d have longer to prepare. Those talks must succeed. You can make that happen.”
My mind reeled. I had to buy some time, find some space somewhere. I believed this book had power. It would have been an easier choice had I thought Ella was telling me a tall tale with no substance. But thinking she wasn’t lying about everything was still a long stride from trusting her to run my life. No way was I going to let her just abduct me from my dad, my home, my friends.
“OK, but a few conditions. First off, I’m not living here. I’m staying at home. I’m staying at school. If I work with you, that’s one thing, but you are not taking my life away.” Mr. Patterson’s words echoed in my head. You can’t stop living.
Ella opened her mouth to protest, but Jace stepped in. “Give her a day.” He glared at Ella. “Give her a day to think. I have a relief now. We’ll guard Callie’s house.”
“She can be tracked too easily.”
“We fitted a white noise box to the side of the house, in case she went back there. Just like here. They won’t hear anything.”
Ella turned away. “OK. For now. But this conversation isn’t done.” She picked up her bag. “I’ll be outside. And another thing. No more squabbling. From now on I want nothing but calm.” She looked at us both. “Got it?”
I heard the door close. “Thank you,” I muttered to Jace.
“Sure.”
There was an unearthly scream. We both bolted to the front door to see Ella glaring at the front of her Porsche. “I’ll kill him. The son of a b—”
“We’ll take my truck,” said Jace quickly.
We’d been driving toward Lifley for a few minutes, me in the back seat and Ella in the front, when I said, “What do I tell my dad?”
“Nothing,” said Ella.
“I mean about where I’ve been.”
“Lie.”
I remembered her comment last night about having lots of practice at cover-ups and stories. It seemed darker now than it had then. I wasn’t close to my dad, but I didn’t lie to him.
“Who did you tell him I stayed with?” I asked.
“A girl called Amy?” Ella glanced at Jace for confirmation.
I shivered but not with cold. I made a swift decision. “I don’t want to go straight home. I need to go to my friend’s house first.” Amber might think I was dumb, but she’d help me. I knew she would.
“Callie, is this really the time?”
“Yes,” I said. I set my mouth in a firm line.
We pulled up at Amber’s. The door was rarely locked. I called hi to Mrs. Wentworth, and she stuck her head around the corner of the kitchen door, giving me a pale smile. Bands of dark gray shadowed her eyes. “Upstairs, Callie,” she said.
I dashed up to Amber’s room.
“Hey, Callie. What’s up?”
“Listen. I don’t have long. I need your laptop.”
“Whoa. Hands off Buffy, Electra.” Amber snatched the laptop out of my reach.
I looked at her in disbelief. “You call your laptop ‘Buffy’?”
“It’s the most powerful thing I have.”
I shrugged helplessly. Yet another of Amber’s cultural references which rolled right off me.
“My God. You have no respect for the classics,” she said. “What do you need, little Philistine?”
I gave her the fas
test précis of events I could. “I need you to google this Order. See if you can find any reference to them anywhere. Oh, and Cadaveri.”
“How do you spell that?”
I gave it my best shot.
“OK, secret orders . . . oh, fifty-two million, three hundred thousand results. Where do you want me to start?”
“What comes up top?”
“The Illuminati, Knights Templar, the American Order of Clansmen. There’s some seriously weird stuff here. But I don’t see any that look like your guys.”
“Try Order of Sumer.”
She tapped away and then shrugged. “Zilch.”
“How about Cadaveri?”
She typed it in and then scanned the screen. “Closest translation I can find is ‘the dead’ or ‘bodies.’ Nothing that talks about real creatures called that. They aren’t zombies, are they?”
“No. They’re alive. They magnify all your worst emotions. The closer they are physically, the more it whacks you out. Apart from that . . .” I shrugged.
“You reading this book is meant to change how we all feel? Like mind control?”
“No!” I exclaimed. “Don’t be daft. It just . . . stops the violence or something.” I put my head in my hands. “I need you to find something, Amber. I don’t know what I’m getting involved with.”
“Then don’t.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“It is. Come on, Callie, how do we know this isn’t a crock?”
I thought for a moment, trying to put into words exactly why I believed Ella. “Because . . . because when I read that book, weird things happened. Seriously weird. In my room, in that god-awful barn. There’s some kind of power in it, Amber. I felt it.”
She chewed her lip. “You said some of it in the barn?” she asked, her brow furrowed.
“A little bit. Before I forgot the freaking words.”
“I think I heard it,” she whispered.
“Well, yeah. You weren’t that far away.”
“No.” She shook her head urgently. “I don’t mean it like that. I heard it in my head. I was so angry, Callie, and desperate, and I wanted to run so badly, but I wouldn’t leave you and . . . then there was this . . . music. Just a few bars of this incredible music. It cut through the fear. I felt . . . inspired.” She gave a short laugh. “I’ve never used a welding torch in my life, but somehow I knew it would work. Knew how it would work.”
I digested that for a moment. “So you think I should do this?”
Amber shot off the bed like fire had erupted from the sheets. “Hell, no. So it’s powerful. So’s a gun. Doesn’t mean you start firing.” She leaned against the window frame, blocking the sun from my eyes. “We don’t know anything about these people except they’ve brought you a world of hurt. Callie, you need to tell them to go away.”
“If I do I might be sending away my only protection against these walking dead guys.” I hesitated. “There’s more. Apparently, my mother was a Reader.”
“Wow.” Amber sat back down, momentarily speechless. “Family legacy, huh?”
We sat in silence for a moment. It felt like I hadn’t seen Amber in days, so much had happened. She gazed pensively out of the window at Jace’s truck.
There was one thing I’d left out of my litany of attacks and abductions. “You’ll never guess who showed up on my doorstep last night,” I said.
She glanced at me briefly then said, “Alec.”
“How did you know that? That’s not fair.”
“One,” she said, “the look on your face. Two, I’ve been waiting for him to turn up like a bad penny. Men hate it when you don’t grieve for them.”
I sat back, deflated. “Well, anyway, he told me something awful, but you can’t tell anyone. Promise?”
“Spill.”
“He said he wants to be with me, but he’s with Jessica because she can get him essential worker status. No more draft.”
“Callie, that’s horrible. Poor you. Not that you’d want a jerk like that.”
“Poor me? Poor Jessica! He’s using her.” I refused to feel anything for Alec anymore. Bastard.
Jace hit the horn.
“I have to go.”
Amber walked with me to the door. “I’ll keep looking for stuff that might help, but . . . Callie, listen. Please, think about this. These people are the very definition of dangerous.”
As usual, she’d nailed it. But my decision couldn’t be that simple. That selfish. “What if I can save the world?”
She looked at me for a moment. “I can see that. But Callie, what if they can’t save you?”
Chapter 9
Predictably, when I got home, Dad was in the kitchen, marinating meat. He barely glanced at me when I entered, busy wiping his hands on a cloth.
“What time do you call this?” he said.
“What have I done now?” I don’t know why I was surprised. Why I thought coming home would make everything OK.
“Never, ever do that to me again,” my father said, his face reddening with fury. His knife chopped down into the meat. “I get a call from some complete stranger—”
“That was Amy’s mum,” I protested, wincing at the lie as I told it.
“What do I know about Amy’s mother? I’ve never heard of an Amy. If you want to go somewhere, you tell me in advance, understand? You do not gallivant off at night and then have some stranger ring me to tell me it’s all right.” He softened slightly. “I need to know you’re safe.”
“Oh, please, what’s unsafe in Lifley? The criminals are too bored to stay.” Another lie. I wasn’t safe, but that didn’t make him right.
“Don’t be fatuous, Callie. There have been burglaries all over town, and two boys were attacked in the High Street just yesterday.”
“Really?” We’d never had crime in Lifley.
“Don’t you pay any attention to the news?”
“Well, in that case, I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
“Why couldn’t you have phoned me yourself?” he said, ignoring me.
Ah. Yeah. We hadn’t had that conversation yet. “I broke my phone,” I said quietly.
“Oh, Callie, come on. What is that, three this year?” He threw his hands up, flecks of meat spraying off the blade.
“I’m not asking for another. I’m using an old one of Amber’s, and I’m paying for the calls.” I realized too late that undercut my story. “I’ve only just picked it up from her,” I added. This is why I hated lying—it got more complicated every time I opened my mouth. Well, that, and it felt horrible.
He gave me a withering glance. “Just go to your room.”
Gladly. I paused in the doorway, half afraid I’d see the dark-clad bodies staining the floor. But my room held no horrors, except that someone had piled my books into tottering mountains in the corner.
The conversation with Dad didn’t matter. He didn’t know anything about my life.
Apparently neither did I anymore. It had all changed. Not because of the Cadaveri or the book, or Ella and Jace. Because of my mother. I needed to know more about her, who she had really been, and what she had faced.
If I did read then from the book, all this madness might go away, no one would try to kill me, and we wouldn’t have to go to war. I’d know my mother in a way I never had before. I’d have shared something with her, finally.
Maybe I’d be able to forgive her.
I picked up the first few books and slid them under my bed. My hand touched something cold and wet, and I reeled back, thinking for a moment it was blood. It was only water. I pulled the books back out and made a makeshift disguise around the stacks with draped towels. Dad would know what they were, but at least it wasn’t like I was shoving my little library in his face. I kneeled down again and gingerly felt the rug. God, it was sopping. What had Jace done, hosed it down? Well, there was nothing I could do without drawing unwanted attention to it. It would just have to dry on its own.
My top drawer was slight
ly pulled out with a pair of white lace knickers hanging like a trophy from the handle. I shoved them back inside and fell on the bed, exhausted.
***
Wulf dropped lightly over the six-foot trellis, tugging impatiently at the pocket of his jacket as it snagged on a bent nail. The fabric ripped. So he’d get a new one. That’s what supply runs were all about. He didn’t bother to hide but strolled down the center of the garden, hopping from one little red stone to another across the rockery, ducking under the dusty remains of the wisteria which hung in dormant coils from the arches. Some of the others still cowered and lurked in shadows and alleys, racing in and out of doorways like rats in a granary. He despised them for it. What did it matter if they were caught? Their assailants would either weep and soil themselves, or, maybe, just maybe, one of them would have the guts to do what Wulf himself couldn’t.
The idea of dying for some groceries and new clothes made him smirk. Whose life was worth more? He’d had dreams once. Plans. Ambitions. He couldn’t remember what they were. Cyrus and the others believed there was something worth salvaging, that this sweet delusion people suffered was somehow to be envied. Wulf knew better. The Cadaveri hadn’t been corrupted: they had been enlightened. This world was a rainbow of pain, stretching horizon to horizon, the soft violet of melancholy escalating until it bled crimson across the sky.
The Order had shown him that life was nothing. He wouldn’t forgive them. He would help find the book, or kill the Reader. But for vengeance, not salvation.
He stepped through the unlocked back door into the kitchen. The old lady was barely a challenge, although he admired her spirit. He slouched against the wall, head cocked to one side, and lazily let his essence fill the room. He didn’t need to try. He ignored her yelling and watched as the fear and doubt seeped into her, her eyes widening, and her pulse ratcheting up. Her body would start sweating and her heart laboring to pump enough blood to her limbs, so she could fight or flee.
She did neither, placing herself valiantly before her grandson, breadknife in hand. It took forty-five minutes for her to succumb. The child screamed, snot-nosed and beetroot red, the knowledge it would die alone lodged more firmly than love had ever been in its little soul. Its anger and hatred was hot and viscous, and by the time the old lady’s blood had pooled around her slashed wrists, the kitchen felt like a forge, the air burned and tainted with iron.