by Andy Conway
“You sit yourself down with your friends,” she said, “and I’ll bring it right over in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
He turned and was surprised to see Mitch and Mrs Hudson sitting at a table. He hadn’t noticed them when he’d walked in.
Something about Mitch looked vaguely American, but it was nothing in the cut of his Edwardian suit and cravat.
Mrs Hudson smiled warmly, kindly, from under a straw hat. She looked like she was on holiday somewhere and he couldn’t fit the era. It could have been anything Edwardian or even the 1920s. But wherever she was, she was in a much better place than when he’d last seen her, when she’d looked old and about to cark it.
“I can’t stay long,” he said. “Séance.”
“Ah,” said Mitch. “Cheating.”
“I’ve seen what doing it yourself does to you, Mitch. I’ll preserve my energy.”
Renee came over with his cup of tea. “Here you are, bab. This’ll put the colour back in your cheeks.”
Mrs Hudson waited until Renee was back behind the counter before speaking, suddenly businesslike. “So tell us, how is Katherine?”
He took a sip of his tea and savoured it.
“You wouldn’t believe the stories she has to tell, the adventures she’s been on. It really is amazing.”
He caught the wary glance that passed between them.
“Where is she?” asked Mitch.
“Moseley. Almost at the Dovecote.”
“Her touchstone,” said Mrs Hudson.
“There is no touchstone,” said Mitch.
Mrs Hudson waved away his objection. “There is for her. She’s dangerously close to Danny. I’m worried that if the two get together again, their old bad energy may reignite.”
“I don’t think Danny’s a problem,” said Peter. “I don’t think she’s going to find him.”
Mitch nodded. “Danny’s too deeply buried in time. He has no memory of who he is. But it’s coming. Slowly. Soon he’ll know the answers lie in the future, not the past.”
“Should I be paying him a visit?” Peter asked.
“No. We’ve got someone else on that. It’s a long term project.”
“We need you to stay focussed on Katherine,” said Mrs Hudson. “We need you to stop her.”
Peter squirmed. Here was the point on which they might fall out. Like Kath had fallen out with Mrs Hudson. Over Danny. Was he going to do the same? And for the same reason? He shuddered at the thought of what they’d done to Kath. The thought that something similar might happen to him.
“I think she’s ready to come back,” he said. “I think she’s learned her lesson.”
Mitch let out a pfft of irritation. “She doesn’t even remember what she did, so how can she have learned her lesson?”
“She won’t unless we let her learn.”
“You think I’m going to let her back into the circle so she can try to destroy us all again?”
“I thought it was Rachel’s decision. Not yours.”
Mitch folded his arms and sat back, unwilling to talk further.
Mrs Hudson gazed on him with her clear grey eyes. “Have you gone and fallen in love with her, Peter?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“An important one.”
“She’s a succubus,” said Mitch.
“She’s nothing of the sort. That’s mythological mumbo jumbo.”
“She’s a Liderc, she’s Lilith, a Lilin, call it whatever you like, we know what kind of power she has over men.”
Peter felt his hand go numb. The beauty, back at the séance. She was holding on tight. “I don’t think this poor clairvoyant can hold on much longer.”
Mrs Hudson leaned across the table and clasped his hand, keeping him here. “It’s natural for you to feel pity for Katherine. But do remember how dangerous she is.”
“She used to be your friend,” he said. “She was part of this circle. She was one of us.”
“She turned on Rachel,” said Mitch. “She tried to kill her and all her line.”
“She turned on us all,” said Mrs Hudson.
“Do you know how much she’s suffered? Do you even know the hell she’s been through?”
Mrs Hudson stroked his hand, soothing him. “She wasn’t sent there to suffer. She was sent there to forget. She was sent there to keep her out of harm’s way.”
“Well, she’s back.”
“Not yet, she isn’t,” said Mitch.
“Peter. If you suspect even slightly that she’s a risk. Then...’ She glanced across at Mitch.
“What? What am I supposed to do?”
“Kill her,” said Mitch.
He nodded, even though he knew he was going to save her. Someone behind him must have pulled his chair back because he felt himself falling, his legs kicking for balance, his hand clawing to grasp the edge of the table.
And he was back in Madame La Fey’s drawing room.
The beauty beside him collapsed against his arm, fainted. The other two women were whimpering. The man with the red nose was fighting for breath like he’d run up a hill.
Madame La Fey was face down on the table, drooling, Miss Parker crying over her.
He stumbled to his feet and left. There was nothing he could do for them.
He pushed past the boy peering in to see the commotion and staggered down the dim hallway, bouncing off the walls, to let himself out. A blast of cold air hit him, waking him.
He had to find Katherine and save her.
Or kill her.
37
THERE WAS A COMMOTION at the rear as someone pushed his way to the front. He emerged from the wall of men and Katherine knew he was their leader. She had seen enough chiefs and enough cavalry officers to know when she was looking at a man to whom all others gave deference.
This one smiled in triumph and looked her up and down, stroking his moustache.
She was his prize.
He leaned down to the boy and patted him on the head, whispering something to him. The boy gave her one last look and sidled off, through the crowd.
Their leader grinned like a man who’d cornered a bear. Like the men who’d come riding into the camp at Little Bighorn, gleefully ready to massacre women and children, the sick, the old: anyone they thought wouldn’t fight back.
This was what she was to him. Someone who would not fight back.
But she knew from experience that if you killed their leader, the rest of them would disintegrate and scatter, like a hen with its head cut off.
“What do you want?” she said.
“You know what, my dear,” he said. “I don’t even know yet.”
“Then let me go.”
He shook his head and smiled. “Nah, my dear. You see, I know everyone else is after you. The police, that Pinkerton agent, Buffalo Bill himself. And I’m thinking what I always think when everyone wants something so bad. I’m thinking, there’s money in this, Welly Davies. Maybe even more money than that two hundred pounds the yank has promised. And if you get this thing that everyone else wants, Welly Davies. If you get it before everyone else, you’ll be the one making the money. So, I reckon one of my lads here’ll be paying a visit to old Buffalo Bill and asking him how much he really wants for you.”
“He doesn’t want me.”
“Oh, I beg to differ. He wants you bad enough to hire a detective to chase you across Birmingham, and the police, and to put up two hundred quid reward. I’ve seen how much money he’s raking in over Aston way. A damn sight more than that bloody new football team of theirs.”
His men laughed at his joke and she heard a few of them mutter curses and spit on the ground.
“There’s money to be had, girl. And you’re the pawn ticket.” He laughed suddenly, as if someone had told a joke. “Pawnee. Pawn ticket. Get it?”
Anger curdled in her breast. “I’m not a Pawnee,” she hissed. “I’m Lakota, you dumb savage.”
Welly Davies’ smile dropped from his face and she sa
w his menace glint like a knife.
“Right now, darling, you’re nothing but my property.”
She smiled, and saw how it threw him. “Then come and get me.”
He took a step forward, angry, impatient to get it over with now. She saw the intention, as if she could see how those few seconds of what he meant to do were playing in his mind. He wanted to take a few steps towards her and smack her across the face with the back of his hand. She knew it like she was in his mind. And in that moment, she saw all the other women he’d done it to. All the blood he’d drawn. All the tears he’d caused to flow.
He took a step towards her.
And he jerked back.
As if an invisible hand had slapped him.
He tried to step forward again, and stumbled back another step.
The absurd grins on the faces of his gang fell to the floor, replaced by frowns, by doubt, by confusion.
Welly Davies grunted, his feet scuffling a little dance as he tried to press on, going nowhere. He pushed now, like a man heaving against a door, desperate to push through. But there was no door.
Sweat poured down his face.
“You’re bleeding,” said Katherine.
He touched his lips and saw blood on his fingertips, turning bewildered to his men, who gasped to see the scarlet torrent running from his nose. They stepped back as one, uneasy, afraid.
Choking on his blood, he turned to her, rage flashing in his eyes, and leapt like a mountain cat pouncing for the kill.
But it was as if a hunter had shot him from the air.
He yelled with pain and fell to his knees at her feet, gazing up at her, his face lit by an intense light that grew and grew and grew, and she thought someone behind her must be shining the light of a thousand suns on him, because it lit his helpless face and his bright livid eyeballs misted over as the blue of his pupils turned grey and she knew he was blind.
And she looked up to the rest of them, who shrank from the glare. The black alley turned to bright daylight and it fried the eyes of every man there.
And at that moment Katherine knew the light was not coming from something behind her.
It was coming from her.
It was coming from her eyes.
Blind, they turned and stumbled back down the alley, tripping on cobbled stones, and each other. Some of them fell to the ground and others fell over them, screaming in pain as boots trampled them. The cleverest found the wall and skimmed along it, avoiding the crush.
She didn’t stay to see them clear the alley and flee, blinded, falling, crawling, crying, but the one boy who saw it that night spoke of it for years afterwards: the night a gang of Peakies had descended on Moseley to show them what it was all about, and every single one of them stumbling home blind.
38
THE LIGHT FROM KATHERINE’S eyes subsided, and she swooned, steadying herself, holding onto the iron bars of the gate. It was like on the ship that had brought her here across the great ocean, the ground swaying beneath you, your head swimming, lurching.
The power subsided, leaving her raw inside as if she had smoked a pipe and sucked too hard and it burned her soul.
She turned from them; left them stumbling down the black alley. She climbed the gate, pain shooting through her, so tired now, having to pause perched on top of the gate, head swimming, thinking she might just fall down into the churchyard. But she summoned strength from somewhere deep inside and jumped.
Pain shot through her ankles and she crawled up the dirt slope till she could stand, raising herself and taking in the sight.
A graveyard under moonlight, its white stones standing like silent sentries, the church tower looming over her.
The overwhelming feeling of Tiyata was so strong in her now. She was at the centre of this thing she called home. But it was not the tower of her dreams. It was not giving her any strength. Whatever had come from her. Whatever it was that had blinded the Peakies. It had left her old and weak. There was almost nothing left of her to fight anymore.
But there was something near, she could feel it: something close that radiated warmth and protection. The tower she had seen in her dreams. The tower that the man in the library had called a dovecote. If she climbed to the top of this church tower, perhaps she would see it.
She found a wooden door along the side of the church and pushed at it. Heavy and stolid, it resisted her as much as the ancient stone walls of the church. She was a bear cub trying to push over a peikcaka – an American elm.
A small plain-glass window to the side. She hunted among the gravestones for a rock and smashed it straight through. Climbing through the narrow hole, she cried out in agony as a shard gashed her leg.
She fell into the church, a great boom echoing inside the vast open space.
She waited for the reverberation to fade before creeping forward in the dim light that came through the giant stained-glass windows. Their gods stared down at her, eerily moonlit, but they did not stop her.
Perhaps she was not evil after all.
She found a font of water and lapped from it, like a dog, slaking her bitter thirst.
Trailing blood on the flagstones, she stumbled around the pews and came across a door that opened on a stairwell. Up she climbed, winding round and round, breathless, her legs growing heavy. When she reached the top and came out onto a square of space protected by battlements, she collapsed on the stone, wishing only for sweet sleep to take her.
But it was cold and she had no blanket to wrap around her. Better to drag herself up and see what she needed to see, then perhaps climb back down the stairs to find a blanket and sleep in the church.
She pushed herself up against the stone wall and peered over the battlements. Something so familiar about this. Looking down onto that moonlit churchyard below.
Something bad had happened here. She had been standing here on another night, just like this. A man had threatened her. No. Two men. They had thought they might take her, laughing with easy confidence. One of them had climbed the battlements and jumped to his death.
And she knew now. She knew that she had made him do it. She had crawled inside his mind and made him jump.
The other man had had a knife. But it didn’t matter. She had flicked him away like a fly. She had made him disappear in a flash of light. She had banished him.
Just like she had been banished.
It came to her now. The bitter taste of that night. She had killed them both. And on another night, she had flown through the air, like an eagle, swooping down on a couple — a man and a woman who were sitting on a gravestone below — intending to kill them.
But something stopped her.
Some terrible force.
The girl who’d banished her.
This was why she’d been punished, sent out to the plains, with no memory of herself. The winyanpi had been right all along. She was evil.
Bad heart, bad heart.
She wept, turning from the scene, falling to the battlements on the opposite side, bitter tears falling from her face.
“I’m not evil!” she cried to the black sky. “I’m not that person! I’m good! Let me home! Let me home!”
She was startled at an answering call, as if the spirits had called out Tiyata to her. A cry of Home on the night wind.
She pushed herself up, the hard, rough stone scraping her back, which was almost a pleasant pain, and peered to the south-west. There was only darkness there. The faint lights of gas lamps. Nothing she could see. But it had called to her with the voice of a man. A man she knew but could not remember.
Then it was gone and she cried out bitterly again, at the spirits that were taunting her. Why had they called her to this place only to mock her?
And there it came again. The call of Tiyata. Louder this time, and not with the voice of a man. Something unearthly, more like the haunting sound of a wooden flute. She sought it out, its song sailing on the wind to her, and through the blur of her tears she saw it in the distance, over to the south-w
est.
A tower.
Tiny across the way, its red brick glowing in the moonlight. Unmistakable. The tower of her dreams.
The dovecote.
A bat-shriek pang of desire burst in her heart and she felt its power call out to her with soothing warm words, the strength flooding into her legs. She pushed herself up and stood tall. It was no more than a few hundred yards away, just up the hill from the village green.
All she had to do was go back down the steps and walk across to it. She thought wildly for a moment that she might even jump from the battlements and fly to it, such was the strength that coursed through her at the sight of it.
But she wouldn’t do that. The evil spirits could trick a warrior into thinking he could fly. Trick him to his death. She would not be so easily tricked now that she was so close to her prize. She had survived through so much hardship on the plains, through the cold, the loneliness, the hunger, through the Battle Where the Girl Saved Her Brother, and through the Battle of the Little Bighorn, through the bitter trek to Canada and the lonely journey to New York. She had crossed the ocean and worked her way through hundreds of shows with Buffalo Bill, and now this.
She had come home at last.
The night bloomed with golden flowers. From the north. Fireworks exploding in the sky. The pyre she’d passed in the park that afternoon. They were burning their effigy and shooting gunpowder into the firmament.
She turned from the battlements. Just as Calder came up the steps and pointed his gun at her heart.
“Damn it, you red bitch, I’ve got you now,” he spat.
He was swaying, drooling, drunk. The smell of whisky came off him in a cloud. Whisky and hate.
“I’ve been waiting for you all day, squaw. Thought you wasn’t going to make it.”
“Why?” she said.
“What do you mean, why! I’m the man who’s sent to get you and that’s what I’m gonna do, squaw! Can’t you see that?”
“I mean, what is it with you? Why do you hate me so much?”
“It’s nothing personal. I hate all Indians.” He grinned maliciously, cocking the pistol. “But before I shoot you, you’re gonna tell me what happened to him. That phoney reporter. How did he disappear? Was it some Indian magic trick you pulled?”