Blood Entwines

by Caroline Healy

  ‘Can I see you the day after tomorrow?’ She looked up at him, a small crease in the space at the bridge of her nose. What exactly was he getting at? ‘And the day after that? And the day after that?’

  We’re just friends.

  Lab partners, that’s all.

  Ashleigh is going to freak when she finds out.

  Kara’s brain was doing somersaults, mixing past and present, her thoughts jumbled together.

  Ben Shephard had just broken his cardinal rule. He had asked her to be his girlfriend.

  Kara smiled a megawatt smile, so broad that she was sure her back molars must be showing. ‘I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.’

  He kissed her gently on the lips, sending her stomach dropping to the soles of her feet, plummeting as if roller-coasting. ‘Tomorrow, then?’

  ‘Yes.’ She could barely speak.

  And he was gone, turning away from her, walking towards the car.

  That distance between them, the physical separation, allowed her to think, the fog lifting from her brain. She didn’t want him to leave her, but, whatever was happening with Jack, there was no way, no way she was getting Ben involved. He was too important for her to risk.

  She stood at the doorway until his car lights had receded down the drive. Then she turned, squared her shoulders and marched up the steps of number nine.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Mrs Quinn was making vegetable soup. The steam from the pot filled the kitchen and the windows shone with condensation.

  Hannah sat at the table, an orange plastic bowl nestled in her lap. There was a large brown paper bag of potatoes to be peeled. It was her job to get the veg ready. The peeler she was using was old, its blade barely sharp. She pressed down on the utensil, dragging a slippery potato peel from the body of the vegetable. She watched it drop into the bowl. She was thinking about Jack.

  She had dreamed about him several times now. Each time the picture was a tiny bit clearer. She felt his hunger in her dreams, his anger, but also his fear. It was as if he was two people stuck inside one body. It frightened her.

  She’d been in his mind before. She knew it, she just couldn’t think where. He lived on the other side of town. It wasn’t implausible that she had influenced his decision for some reason, followed the thread of his choice through the maze of his mind, wrapping the cord for her own devices. But surely she would remember. She only used her skill on certain people and every one of them she remembered.

  Not everyone was susceptible to her gifts. Her mother, for example, and Ashleigh Jameson – they were all too tight, their decisions unwavering. She had no chance of altering the weave of their choices. And Kara, of course. But with Kara it was different. With Kara, Hannah couldn’t see inside her mind at all, unless the girl allowed her, opening up the doors of her mind for Hannah to access.

  She picked up another potato, peeling it free of its discoloured skin. She had a whisper of a connection with everyone she had ever invaded. She could feel them still, the gossamer of their minds inside her own. Sometimes she would get a flash of a decision they made, like the other morning, Mrs Byrne, her teacher, trying to decide whether to make eggs Benedict for breakfast with or without hollandaise sauce. It was weird. It just happened. Hannah had never actively sought it out.

  She put another naked, freshly peeled potato into the pot of water on the counter. She enjoyed the methodical task. It allowed her to compose her features into a stoic expression and switch her brain to a different kind of activity.

  ‘Can you do the carrots next please, Hannah?’ Her mother’s face was shiny from the steam from the boiling water. She looked tired, old even.

  Hannah nodded, placing the orange bowl on the table. She would need to count out exactly three carrots, one for each of them, choosing the vegetables from the bag whose sell by date was just past. Her mother was a fastidious shopper, their budget for daily meals calculated to the last penny.

  Hannah opened the fridge door, wondering what would happen if she concentrated on the dream that she’d had of Jack. Maybe there was a connection. She reached for the carrots, the same orange colour as the bowl. She concentrated on the thread from her sleep, following its winding weave towards Jack.

  The carrots slipped from her hand, rolling across the kitchen tiles. She screamed, banging her forehead against the edge of the fridge. She wanted to crack her skull open. She wanted to claw her eyes out, anything to stop the images in her mind. She slid to the floor. Her mother knelt beside her, calling her name, restraining her hands, pushing her knee into her back, trying to get Hannah into the recovery position, but it was too late.

  The energy bubbled around her, radiating from her core, spiralling up. In a single breath she was lost, sucked into it, in the cavern of pain and fear and hate. An epileptic fit, as she had never experienced before. She was in Jack’s mind. Only it wasn’t his consciousness with which she was connected. It was someone’s so much worse.

  ***

  Dark, night-time, a street, the sight of a house, the curtains open, lights on. Bright fluorescent light. Two people, a man and woman. He sets the table, drawing the woman in for a quick kiss. She laughs, a throaty sound.

  Then a wave of disgust, detestation at the happiness in the house. There is no fear.

  The crunch of gravel underfoot. The door, unlocked. Walk right into the kitchen. The woman at the counter sipping wine, turning. The man, oven gloves on, about to reach for the casserole. The smell, disgusting. Lunge for the woman, hand on her throat. Fingers closing round her neck, eyeballs bulging, fear pooling, her mouth open, silent scream. The lovely fear, oozing from her, the electronic pulse of it. Taking it all, all of the energy, gorging.

  Insipid man, striking, shouting. Inconvenient. One movement, snap of an arm, the howl of pain. Taking time with this one. Slow, rooting through his mind to find the source of it, manipulating it, teasing it out like a string of pearls until he screams, the fear bubbling in him like liquid energy. Take it all, snap his neck. Full, gluttonously full.

  A boy, sleepy-eyed, coming from upstairs. Play with him for a while. There’s no more room for his fear. Slit skin and make him drink, changing him.

  There is always need for more foot soldiers. He falls unconscious. The blood will get to work. Claim him. He is marked.

  Keep the links strong, the blood as the connector. The blood. Always the blood. It is the link. Except the one that got away. She cannot hide forever.

  ***

  Hannah gasped for air, coming out of her memory as if out of icy water. She spluttered, pushing against the weight on her chest, clawing for release.

  ‘Jack!’ she said, her voice wobbly.

  Her mother released her arms. ‘Hannah?’ She helped her sit up, smoothing hair from her sweat-drenched face. ‘I’m calling Dr Morris. That is the worst one so far.’

  ‘No.’ Hannah crawled across the floor, willing feeling back into her muscles. She needed to find them. She knew what had happened, could feel the connection with him in her head. He was burning up, the mutant blood in his veins about to explode. Whatever had created him, whatever had killed his parents, was about to take over his body, about to engage the blood links. Hannah had to get to him.

  Her mother was picking up the phone, trying to figure out the speed dial, her fingers slow with grease from the oil she used for the vegetable soup.

  ‘No!’ pleaded Hannah from the floor, her eyes wild. There was no time. Kara. She coiled the energy in her head like a tight net and flung it as far as she could, searching for her, searching. Nothing. Maybe if she tried Ben. There was a tenuous connection between them since the night at The Loft when she’d altered his decision. If only she could find him. She reached with her mind, scrunching her eyes, holding her breath, concentrating with all her might.

  There, on the periphery, a decision to stay or go wavering between two states. To stay or go where? Where? Hannah wanted to scream. Then she saw it, the spiral of the decision, the firing of the brain cells,
the discarding of one option and the preference of another. To go home. To go home from number 9 Highbury Close.

  Kara was at Jack’s house.

  ‘Shit!’ Hannah scrambled to her feet. She grasped the phone in her mother’s hand and pulled it free, dropping it into the boiling pot of vegetable soup.

  ‘Hannah!’ her mother called after her, but it was too late. Hannah had made her decision. She stumbled along the hallway, pulling her coat and bag from the hook by the back of the door.

  Something terrible was about to happen. She crashed out of the front door of the house and began to run.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Kara closed the front door behind her, shutting out the chill of the night air. Jack was watching her from his new position, crumpled on the floor at the bottom of the stairs next to a dusty coat rack.

  A flush of pink raced up her cheeks as she wondered how much of her conversation he had overheard.

  She tried to hide the irritation in her voice as she helped him up. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Couch.’ He slurred his words, limping forward, his body swaying. Kara jammed her shoulder under his armpit, taking some of his weight.

  ‘Let me help you before you keel over.’ He mumbled something, but she couldn’t make out what he was saying. She dragged him towards the couch, toppling him into it. She was hot in her jacket and scarf.

  Kara straightened up, looking around her. She shrugged out of her jacket, unwrapping the scarf as she took in her surroundings. She could just make out the battered couch that dominated the centre of the room. Against one wall a ceiling-high bookcase was stuffed with dusty books. On the opposite wall there was a large marble fireplace, with an empty grate. Kara dropped her scarf over a nearby armchair.

  It was getting dark. There was a corner light. She fumbled with the switch. A soft glow filled the dim room, accentuating the subtle beauty, and Kara realised what good taste its owners must have had and how sad it was to see it in such a sorry state.

  She glanced down at Jack. His eyes were closed. Kara wasn’t sure if he was asleep, if she should leave him or try to revive him. She took a step forward and placed her hand gently on his forehead. He was burning up.

  His hand shot up and grasped her by the wrist, pulling her down towards him, his eyes searching, disorientated.

  ‘Ouch, Jack, you’re hurting me. Let go.’ She yanked her hand free, rubbing at the place where his fingers had bitten into her skin.

  She glared at him, concern for his wellbeing completely deserting her. ‘You’re a real piece of work, you know that? Here I am trying to help you and you’re mauling me . . .’ She kicked the corner of the couch to make sure he was listening. ‘I should have left you in the alleyway.’ She stood over him, glaring down, waiting for a response. He looked at her, glassy-eyed, panting for breath.

  ‘He shouldn’t have been there.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ She instantly forgot her irritation.

  He closed his eyes.

  ‘I needed to be alone. I was about to change. I didn’t think anyone would be there. He thought I was going to jump.’

  Kara was paying attention now to what he was saying. The word ‘jump’ always caught her attention.

  His head drooped to one side, like he was in the midst of a deep sleep. His lips were slack, parted, a glob of spit leaking from the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Jack?’ She shook him roughly.

  He mumbled something, forcing Kara to move closer.

  ‘. . . tried to talk me away from the edge, but I could feel the change coming. I could feel my blood turning and I couldn’t make him go away.’ He raised his hands in front of his face, swatting at invisible images.

  He paused, opening his bloodshot eyes.

  Kara took a step back.

  ‘Irritating. Wouldn’t listen. Like you.’

  Kara felt the muscles in her stomach tighten.

  ‘Tell me,’ she whispered.

  ‘That day. The roof.’ His eyes dulled, the pupils turning milky. His face, his skin, had a greenish pallor.

  Kara sunk to her knees in front of him; she gripped the corner of the seat, every muscle straining forward.

  ‘Who was on the roof?’

  ‘Me.’ He hacked a lung-wrenching cough. ‘Your father. The faceless man.’

  She rocked back on her heels. He had said the words and she had heard them, but she couldn’t process them. Was Jack saying her father was a monster? Her father had been alone on the roof before he jumped. They said in the investigation afterwards that the street-surveillance tapes had shown him go into the building alone and nobody else had come out. She didn’t understand.

  ‘I wanted people to be safe. Away. I had to get away. The roof. Quiet. No one there.’ Jack’s words dragged Kara out of her contemplative state; she must concentrate on what he was telling her.

  He coughed again, the noise raking through his chest. She visualised the young man on the roof, perched on the edge, legs dangling, her father seeing him, going up the stairs, trying to talk some sense into him.

  ‘What happened?’ She needed to know the truth.

  ‘I tried to control it. So weak. Couldn’t. He’s coming now. Get away.’

  The insistence in his voice startled her. He half rose from the couch and pushed meekly against her.

  ‘You tried to control who?’ Kara took hold of his shoulders and shook him ferociously, his body jerking backwards and forwards with each movement.

  ‘The faceless man. A monster. He forced me to drink his blood. I should never have . . .’

  Kara didn’t care. ‘But my dad, on the roof?’ She didn’t want to know about anything else.

  On replay in her head was that fateful day, over and over again, her father going to work that morning, stealing a piece of toast from her plate as he rushed out of the door, her laugh floating after him.

  She needed to know the truth.

  ‘What happened? Please, Jack. Please. You have to tell me.’

  ‘Tried to talk. Stay away. I told him. I tried to warn. Wouldn’t listen . . .’ Jack gurgled, the words getting stuck in his mouth. His eyes rolled back in his head, exposing the whites, with lines of red streaking through them.

  With one supreme effort, he shouted at her: ‘He’s coming. Get away!’

  He struck at her, aimlessly flinging his arms. He screamed. His back arched off the couch as if an invisible rope was pulling at his centre, craning him up.

  Kara scrambled back out of his reach. A heavy iron poker lay abandoned on the hearth. She wanted to take it up, to bash him across the head.

  ‘What did you do to my father?’ She came back to him, digging her fingernails into the flesh of his upper arm. Her hand was hot, soaking up the heat of his skin. Her own blood pulsed in her body, concentrated at the contact point between her and Jack.

  He whispered her name, crooning it. ‘Kara, Kara. I’m sorry.’ He was crying silent tears. ‘I pushed him.’

  He hissed, his limbs tightening in wakeful rigor mortis.

  ‘He will rip you in two.’ Jack roared the words at her. She could feel spittle hit her face, the damp droplets on her skin. She wanted to run, could feel the well of panic begin to overflow, his panic and hers intermingling.

  Another fierce howl of pain ripped through him and Kara stared, unable to look away. Jack squirmed on the couch, scratching at his skin, tearing his own flesh for release from the pain. Kara scurried on her haunches across the room till her back hit against the solid brick wall.

  She pushed with all her might, but couldn’t get any further from him. Jack’s back was arched off the couch, his nails dug into the soft cushions, his feet thrashing. What should she do? Kara panted short breaths. She couldn’t move, her muscles refusing to function, her mind slowly blanking out everything, all that pain.

  It could have been a moment or an hour, the only sound in the room a quiet whimpering. The whimpering was coming from Kara.

  Jack had pushed her
father. The truth at last. She had said it all along. Her father would never, never have done that to her. And she was right. But why did it not feel any better? Why, if possible, was the pain worse? She needed to kill him, to kill Jack. Maybe then she would feel an ease of the pain.

  He lay slack on the couch, his head lolling against the tattered cushions, his hands, gripped in a claw-like position, feet and legs stretched at an awkward angle.

  Kara wasn’t sure if he was breathing. She watched his chest for a second and could see no rise and fall, nothing.

  Maybe he is dead? But she would know, surely.

  It was this thought that got her to her feet. She swayed unsteadily, the room moved around her and she gripped the mantelpiece for support. What would happen after she did it? The blood in her veins, his blood too, mingling there. She didn’t care. Revenge. That was all she could think of.

  She moved automatically till she was standing beside the couch. She looked down at Jack and imagined her father’s last minutes alive on earth: his effort to help this kid who he thought was about to jump to his death.

  She remembered the hushed words of the neighbours at his funeral, the word ‘suicide’ at the graveside and the house afterwards. That word nestled in her heart. It plagued her. It mangled its way through her brain as she tried to sleep, echoing, even in her dreams.

  She’d spent so long blaming herself. What if she had willingly given her father her last piece of toast that morning, without calling a rebuke after him? What if she had made more of an effort to get good grades, keep the house clean, be a better daughter?

  Hours, days, weeks had gone by where she analysed and overanalysed each moment she’d spent with her dad towards the end, trying to see if she had done something wrong.

  It all led to this: Jack whose blood had saved her life; Jack who had killed her father.

  He’s coming. What had he meant when he’d shouted at her? The ravings of a lunatic. The ravings of a murderer.

  She opened her hand and held it, palm down, a few inches over his mouth and nose. It would be so easy to press down, to cut short the air, to stop his breath. She felt the blood in her body go fiery hot, pushing and pulsing against her skin. She gasped in pain as a sharp shot of agony raced up her spine. Maybe this was it; maybe Jack was dead and her time was up too.