He eyed her suspiciously. She placed her healing hand behind her back, afraid of what he might do. Kara could feel the coldness prickle against her skin and the blood on her insides beginning to bubble. Concentrate. She had to compartmentalise these feelings, this press of ice and fire. She needed all her wits about her to deal with the danger. Inhaling, she forced her mind to block out the pain, put it with the rest of the things she couldn’t bear thinking about.
‘You nearly took my head off,’ he said, trying hard to control his temper.
Kara took a step back, afraid. ‘Ya. Well. You deserved it.’ She plucked up the courage to continue, forcing confidence into her voice. ‘Now, if you don’t get out of my house, I’m going to call the police. Rosemary will be home any second.’
She wished she’d phoned the police the minute she’d come in the door. Cursing her own indecisiveness, she had no choice but to see this through. She shifted her weight, spreading her feet a little, ready to fight him off if she had to.
‘Give me your hand,’ he instructed, stepping across the hallway towards the threshold of her bedroom.
She scoffed at him: ‘No.’
He held out his hand towards her. ‘Give me your hand.’
The authority in his voice was undeniable. She didn’t like it.
‘Absolutely no way! I’m not giving you my hand so you can stab me or cut it off or whatever it is you’re planning on doing.’ She moved back a step.
The ferocity of her words seemed to stall him for a moment. He paused, reaching into the pocket of his jeans. He took out a short red penknife and flicked the blade.
Kara eyed him silently, assessing her best means of escape and what to do if he advanced any further.
He held out his hand and gestured towards her. ‘I keep telling you; you have something that belongs to me.’
His voice held a slight challenge, as if goading her. Kara wondered, if she scrambled to the window, could she get it open and crawl through before he made it across the room. She didn’t think so.
‘And I keep telling you that I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have anything of yours.’
He raised the penknife and moved into her bedroom. He pointed the shiny tip of the blade towards her. She swallowed nervously.
‘Well, it seems that neither of us had any say in the transaction.’
He flexed his outstretched hand and raised the blade to it. Baring his teeth he cut the palm, on the fleshy bit, just blow the joint of his thumb. Kara winced at the sight of the knife going into his flesh.
This guy was completely mad.
‘Stop it.’ The words escaped before she could help herself. She looked away from the cut as steady drops of blood seeped from the wound, gathering on his upturned palm. He held his hand out for a minute and examined the beads of blood. Kara couldn’t take her eyes off him or the knife.
The cold waves emanating from him were getting stronger; her heartbeat was shaky. He turned his hand over, clenching it into a fist so the blood oozed from between his fingers. She could smell the iron-rich scent and waited for it to spill from his wound on to the carpet. He squeezed for a moment and opened his hand.
The room shrank around them. Kara’s breathing wheezed in and out. She had never had a fear of blood before, but the sight and smell of his made her gasp for breath. Her body seemed to respond with the pressure of heat through her veins. Her traitorous blood wanted to escape her body completely and spill out on to the floor. She looked at the palm of his hand. The cut should have been noticeable and bleeding yet all that remained in his palm was a small droplet of blood.
Kara, despite herself, took a step towards him, fascinated and confused by what had just happened. There was no stain on the carpet, no pool of blood, no medical attention necessary.
He looked at her over his outstretched hand. ‘Do you want me to cut deeper?’
His voice was husky, obviously the cut had hurt.
Kara shook her head. ‘No. Please.’
With a flick of his knife he cut deeper. Kara gasped. This time the cut was at least an inch long and bleeding profusely. She thought she was going to be sick. His breathing was heavy and Kara knew he was in pain. He squeezed his hand into a fist again and a flow of blood dripped down to form a mucus string. It seemed almost solid as it slid like a long web from the palm of his hand. It began to stretch towards the floor, gravity pulling it down. Rationally, it should have dripped into a puddle on the carpet, sending a stain spreading outwards. Kara watched in awe as the string of viscous blood dangled from his palm and, like elastic, sprang back up.
The trickle of blood curled back on itself and into his hand. He held it out to her. She took another reluctant step towards him, peering at his outstretched palm. The fresh blood was retreating into the wound, every single last drop. Then the skin seemed to wrap in upon itself, the layers of epidermis folding together and knitting back to normal as if nothing had happened.
‘How did you . . . ?’ The sentence trailed off.
He held out his hand towards her, demanding, ‘Give me your hand.’
She shook her head weakly, unsure of what she’d just witnessed.
‘Give me your hand.’ His voice was more gentle, but just as insistent.
Shakily she held out her hand towards his. For the first time, he looked directly at her, the blue of his eyes seeming to pierce her with their steady gaze.
‘Don’t look,’ he commanded.
She closed her eyes as he raised the cold tip of the knife and prodded the place where the cat had scratched her earlier. Kara winced.
‘Don’t pull away or you’ll hurt yourself even more,’ he advised.
He nicked the skin where it had knitted together and Kara yelped, pulling back her hand. ‘Ouch.’
He raised his eyes to heaven and muttered, ‘Such a baby.’
Scowling at him she looked at the re-opened cut on her hand. It was small and neat, but he’d made it slightly bigger than before. A bubble of blood was forming over the cut. It slid to the centre of her upturned hand. She looked at it and marvelled at the rich colour.
‘Show me.’
She’d forgotten he was there for a minute. Self-conscious now, she closed her hand, balling it into a fist as he had done, to protect her life force.
‘Show me,’ he repeated.
Kara opened her hand and held it up. He grasped it and turned it upside down. He put his palm below hers and shook her hand till several drops of her blood landed on his palm. The heat was almost unbearable, like holding her palm over the steam of a boiling kettle. Concentrate, fold it away with the rest of the things you don’t want to think about. She took a deep breath. She wondered if her closeness was affecting him in any way? He gave no sign except she could see a sheen of sweat across the bridge of his nose.
She looked down at his hand, at their blood. The droplets were separating.
With a will of its own, half the blood moved towards the almost closed cut on his hand and disappeared into it while several drops lay discarded on his palm. He wiped the remainder of the blood on his jeans, smearing a rusty brown stain across the denim. Kara held up her own hand and moved away from him. The pressure she felt inside her lessened, the heat lowered.
What just happened?
He took a step towards her and the heat began to increase. Particles of her blood began to beat against the walls of her veins and against her body in an attempt to get out of her and into him. He was attempting to suck her dry and he didn’t even have to touch her.
‘Get away from me,’ she hissed. She backed away, finding the solid plaster of the wall all too quickly. If only the room had been ten times bigger. Although it still wouldn’t have been enough distance between them.
He eyed her resolutely.
‘I told you that you had something of mine.’ He smiled unconvincingly at her, taking another step into her room. ‘And I want it back.’
She didn’t understand. Did he want to kill her? Or just
terrify her? Or was he playing some sick game? She looked at him in silence, unsure if she could trust her own voice.
All the while her heart beat in her chest and her blood remained constricted within her. Half her blood was pulsating for release, so it could go back to her stalker. The other half . . . Could you live with only half your blood? The question dominated her thoughts as she gaped at the man standing in her room.
‘When they brought me to the hospital, they thought I was in a coma,’ he began, eyeing her from the opposite side of the room. His hands hung limply by his sides.
‘I just wanted to sleep, to be left alone, but they found me and took me where they thought I would get help.’
As if forgetting she was there, he spoke quietly to himself, bunching his hands into fists. ‘I never understand why they don’t just leave me alone.’
This was the longest she’d heard him speak since their first meeting, but she wished he’d shut up. She didn’t want to hear whatever whacked-up story he was going to tell her; she didn’t want to know. She just wanted him to leave so that her heart could beat normally, so her body didn’t feel as if it was going to explode.
‘They put me in a bed on a ward with other coma patients,’ he continued. ‘And then they stole from me. Because of the card I suppose. My parents wanted us all to have donor cards, especially since I have a rare blood type.’
She stared at him, the words rare blood type making an impression on her.
‘That’s the first time it’s happened. The first time they took something important. I was asleep, of course, couldn’t stop them. But I knew something was missing. You have it.’
His steely blue eyes locked on to Kara’s from across the room.
She still wasn’t following what he meant, still not capable of putting two and two together.
‘I didn’t know how to find you at the beginning, but then I realised I could just check my own records.’
He flashed a self-congratulatory smile at her.
She winced.
‘Blood transfusion for traffic-accident victim. The rest was easy. I just searched the internet, looked you up in the newspaper.’
Kara’s brain finally added all the information together and she gasped. She felt dirty, her skin scratchy. She sniffed at herself to see if she could smell him on her. She knew now what she had that belonged to him and why her veins wanted to pop every time he was near.
She had his blood in her body. It was inside her, mixing with her own. The realisation made her feel ill, more than ill. She bolted past him, pushing him out of the way as she raced towards the bathroom.
She heaved over the toilet bowl. What was going on? The room spun round her as she laid her cheek against the cool ceramic of the toilet. Germs were the least of her worries. She wiped the strands of sweat-drenched hair from her face and held up the palm of her hand. A little pink scratch was all that remained.
She healed really fast, that was something the doctor had commented on, repeatedly, at the hospital.
Every one of them had said it. ‘Oh my, Mrs Bailey, your daughter,’ stepdaughter, she felt like yelling at them every time, ‘has very quick healing powers.’ Or maybe it went something a little different, perhaps it was more like, ‘Oh my, young lady, you seem to have excellent cell regeneration.’
Their voices merged into one in her head, and it ricocheted around in her brain. It was too much. She hadn’t received blood from an ordinary guy, a good Samaritan. She’d got some mutant freak blood that had a mind of its own. And now it wanted to return to its owner, like a lost puppy.
Oh my God!
How much did she have? How much of his blood was in her? She couldn’t remember now what they’d said at the hospital, a pint, maybe two or three. She retched over the bowl again but nothing would come up. Her throat burned.
She clung weakly to the toilet, groaning in misery. Her head hurt, her body ached. She lay her head down on the tiles and counted to ten in an effort not to think about it.
She got to number thirty-seven before a wave of exhaustion took her.
Chapter Twenty-two
Hannah woke, a scream threatening to choke her. She rolled on to her stomach, smothering the noise in the folds of her pillow. She couldn’t risk waking her parents. They were worried enough about her as it was.
Slick with sweat, the sheet tangled around her lower limbs, she waited for her heart rate to return to normal, for the pull of the dream to lessen. It had been three days now. First, a migraine had started, just above the bridge of her nose. She lost sight in her right eye and couldn’t bear to move. Her mother wanted to call the doctor, but Hannah begged her not to, insisting that she would be OK. All she needed was to lie still in a darkened room and count the seconds till the pain lessened. If the doctor was called, a blood sample would be taken and her meds level would be low, arousing suspicion.
She needed to stay away from Dr Morris at all costs.
Earlier she had eaten a small meal, forcing each bite of food into her mouth, chewing and swallowing. It was through sheer determination that she did not throw up all over the table. She smiled quietly at her parents, exchanging meek chit chat, pretending that she was feeling better. The migraine had lessened but then the dreams had come back, worse than ever before.
It was always the same scenario, a person – a man or woman, sometimes a child – gripped in the midst of a paralysis of fear, the smell of it, the sound of it, the taste of it, wrapping itself around the person in her dream, leaking over Hannah as well. There were different scenarios of fear but always the same outcome – a pause towards the end, like the inhale of a perfect breath, then nothing. No more tangle of decisions, no more struggle, no more fear. Just death.
Her epilepsy was like this sometimes. She could feel it creeping over her, a build-up of slick energy, a coursing tsunami of power, as if she had been plugged into the mains for too long, her battery full to overflowing. Then all that energy, all that pent-up power, zapped through her, flinging her to the ground, twitching through her body.
The dreams she could contain, screaming into her pillow at night if necessary, the epilepsy she could not.
This time the dream ended differently. There was fear and death, yes, but instead of nothingness at the end there was a figure, hidden in darkness, and that figure was searching for Hannah, calling to her. He was desperate to find her. She could feel his covetousness. Hannah had something he wanted and he would not stop till he found her.
She looked at her clock: 5.30 a.m. There was no point in trying to go back to sleep. The sun would be up soon. Hannah swung her legs out of bed and shuffled over to her desk, pulling on an oversized sweater as she went. She flicked on the lamp, casting a dull yellow glow over the desk. She could do some study; the thought didn’t really appeal to her.
She took out her laptop, a brick of a machine that had been a second-hand present for her sixteenth birthday. It was clunky and not very impressive to look at, but it worked. She turned it on quietly, pushing the mute button, not wanting any sound to prompt a visit from her mother. Over the last few days she had taken to hovering over Hannah, watching for anything unusual. Hannah knew that Dr Morris’s number was on speed dial.
Glancing at the little desk calendar, she calculated the days till she was of an age to be legally emancipated from her parents. Seven months and twelve days. All she had to do was keep her head down and stay out of trouble.
Hannah wondered what had possessed her to agree to let Kara Bailey sit at her table in the canteen. Never could Hannah have predicted that Kara Bailey was the link to the weirdo. Yes, Hannah knew him, had seen him before, but not the way Kara expected. Hannah had dreamed of him, on more than one occasion.
The first time, his fear was like the other dreams, something to do with his parents, their death, the screaming. Hannah shook as she pushed a button on her computer. Don’t think about it.
The second time was different. It was as if he were two people: there was fear, yes, but
power too, a flooding of energy, as if he was feeding on it, taking pleasure in it. The two feelings, fear and the thirst for power, were overwhelming. She had lost consciousness, awoken on the floor of English class, her teacher bending over her, putting her into the recovery position, shouting for one of the others to get the school nurse. Another epileptic fit.
It was real this time, no dream. He had been waiting for them, had called her Watcher.
Whatever was going on, she was not about to get sucked in. It was none of her business. Kara Bailey was on her own. Hannah stabbed the start-up button on her laptop again. It was being temperamental. There was a niggling thought just at the periphery of her mind. Guilt. The realization annoyed her.
OK, so the girl had saved her from being whacked in the head at volleyball practice and it was kind of nice to have someone to sit beside in class, and eat lunch with, and generally talk to. She liked her.
Hannah punched in the password, stabbing fiercely at the keys. She checked herself just in time as she felt her emotions rising. Stay calm. Stay calm. She repeated the mantra over and over in her head. It was not a good idea to be overly emotional. Yes, she liked Kara and was a little annoyed by this, but it did not change the outcome. Kara was linked in some way to the weirdo and Hannah categorically did not want anything to do with him. And so, by default, Hannah would have to stay away from Kara.
She logged on to the news and scanned the page. A man, an accountant, Mr Saunderson, missing for more than a year. Someone had spotted him recently and alerted the police. There was a picture. Hannah stared at it. She knew this man, this accountant. She had dreamed about him, in a car park, fumbling with his keys, fear clawing its way up his throat, stopping him from thinking, stopping his limbs from working. Too late, he was too slow. The keys would not work. Something gripped his shoulder, the slow turn, then a scream.
Hannah closed her eyes. All these people in her dreams, the fear, the panic welling. And now this newspaper report. The two things had to be connected. The weirdo was the key . . . He was the lynch pin that tied everything together. Hannah had to understand, needed to understand.
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