They’d walked together to the barn, Leah holding her mother’s hand, Hannah lighting their way with a torch. They found the Ayrshire lying on her side, in obvious distress. Her water sac had ruptured and was hanging outside her vulva, steaming on the cold night air. But they could see no sign of the calf.
Hannah stripped down to her vest, and at a sink in the corner of the barn she washed her right arm all the way up to the shoulder. After pushing her hand deep inside the Ayrshire, she explained that one of the calf’s forelegs was turned back on itself.
By now, the agony of the pregnant cow had reduced Leah to tears. Sitting on the straw, she watched Hannah grasp around inside it, sweating and straining, until she managed to pull out both the calf’s forelegs and attach a set of birthing chains. Steadily she began to pull, until the steaming, mucus-slick newborn erupted onto the cowshed floor.
It lay unmoving. Working quickly, with the Ayrshire twisting her head back to watch, Hannah cleaned the calf’s face of fluid and tickled its nose to stimulate breathing. But its chest remained still.
Leah knew what that meant and began to sob, but her mother bent her face to the creature’s own, covered one of its nostrils and blew air into the other.
And then, suddenly, it kicked out and breathed.
Hannah scooted backwards. She crawled over to Leah and they sat there, laughing and crying, watching the exhausted mother greet the shaky newborn they would later name Henrietta.
Even then, Hannah had been a bringer of life. Even then.
You know what you have to do.
What was the value of one life, against the future of a race?
Hannah had given life not just to Leah, but to all the children who sheltered here tonight, and countless others, far and wide.
Now it was Leah’s turn.
Grimacing against the pain in her wounded leg, determined not to let it fail her here at the end, feeling her heart begin to race in anticipation of the fate she went to embrace, Leah limped towards the creature that had taken refuge in her mother’s form, and offered herself instead.
CHAPTER 54
Interlaken, Switzerland
In a room that seemed to exude darkness and death, it was the most beautiful sight he had ever witnessed. His life had been so empty of moments like this, and now, despite the swirling smoke and the ash and the blood, it seemed to brim with them.
Leah Wilde struggled towards her mother and she seemed to shine: purity personified, leaving Jakab an awestruck observer of the girl’s sacrifice.
So many unusual things he had encountered in these last few minutes; he struggled to make much sense of them. He’d seen Izsák, for a start. The arrival of his younger brother had opened a door in Jakab’s heart that offered him glimpses of memories blissfully free of pain.
And then he’d looked at the woman his brother had come here to kill, and the curtain of revelation lifted higher, and he realised that a family gathered here in the arms of these mountains. A broken family, but a family nonetheless. His family.
Then the lightning came, and the thunder, and that family of five became three, and now it became two.
For years he’d pursued Hannah Wilde; at first because of love – misplaced love, admittedly, rotten love – and later because of hate. But he hadn’t known the truth, of course, hadn’t known. He’d pursued Leah Wilde as well, although that search had borne no fruit until now.
When Jakab thought of the lives he had ruined in pursuit of these two fierce and perfect women, his legs nearly buckled beneath him.
Earlier, he had passed through that hall of masks, had seen the faces of those he’d killed, and had forced himself to meet their eyes, every one: Balázs Jani; Hans Richter; Carl Richter; Helene Richter; Eric Dubois; Charles Meredith; Nicole Meredith; Nathaniel Wilde; Etienne.
And then, of course, there was the last name. Or, in many ways, the first. The girl who had died not by his hand, but had died because of him all the same.
Erna Novak.
Little more than a wisp of memory now, a dream cast into the sky. As ephemeral as rising steam. A fading face. A name.
Earlier, before the tolvaj had taken her, Hannah Wilde had asked him a single question: What do you want?
He had imagined he wanted a hundred things; a thousand. But really, even though he had not spoken his answer aloud, he found he only wanted one.
I want this to end.
Now, as Jakab watched Leah limp towards her mother, as he marvelled at the young woman to whom he was related by an unravelling trail of string, which wound through generations and geography and the ceaseless marching boots of time, he realised that he wanted something else, too.
I want to atone.
He couldn’t, of course. Nothing he did now could atone fully for what he had done. But he could do one thing. Just one.
He had to be quick. Not only because Leah was a handful of steps from her mother, but because if he delayed too long he might lose his nerve, and if he allowed that to happen, if he allowed Leah to sacrifice herself while he was saved, he would be twice damned. Eternally so.
Silent, he moved to Leah’s side. Reached out and gripped her arm.
She turned, face as white as freshly poured milk.
Jakab shook his head. And then he offered her the gun.
In her eyes, he saw his own face reflected.
Leah blinked, her mouth dropping open, and he yearned to hold her and say goodbye. But of course he didn’t deserve that. And he knew she would never grant it.
Leah took the pistol off him and turned it over in her hands, studying it as if it were a piece of alien machinery beamed here from another world.
She looked back up.
‘Don’t mourn me,’ he said. Because it was a joke, a sick joke, and because – at the end – he needed a little dark humour to sustain him.
‘I won’t.’
‘Don’t miss, either.’
‘No chance of that.’
Jakab grinned. Perhaps she was not quite purity personified, after all. He would have liked to get to know her, this strange relative of his.
He turned towards Hannah Wilde and closed his mind to what coiled inside her. She was Hannah. Just Hannah.
His Hannah.
Jakab opened his arms and went to meet her.
CHAPTER 55
Interlaken, Switzerland
When Jakab snagged her arm and held her back, Leah nearly shrugged him away, furious that he should choose to interfere, to mock her like this, so close to the end. And then she saw his eyes and she nearly cried out.
They blazed with a wild beauty.
On two velvet circlets of grey, gemstones twinkled; ferocious sparks of emerald, glinting sapphires, prismatic opals reflecting colours of every possible hue.
During the years he had pursued them, they had comforted themselves with the knowledge that while Jakab could control the contours of his face, he could not control his eyes.
Perhaps, she realised, he still couldn’t; perhaps he wasn’t even aware of the fireworks that danced there.
He handed her the gun, and she accepted it.
‘Don’t miss,’ he said, and she almost laughed. Perhaps it was what he wanted. But she couldn’t. Not at that.
Jakab looked into her eyes a moment longer, and then he turned away. Lifting his head, he walked towards her mother, arms outstretched.
Leah raised the gun.
Jakab closed in on Hannah, and then he enfolded her into his embrace.
Hannah stiffened as she felt him against her and they stood motionless, as if by some night magic his touch had turned them both to stone.
And then Jakab opened his arms and she slumped to the floor, and when he whipped around to face Leah he was Jakab no more, was something immeasurably more wicked.
His lips skinned back from his teeth when he saw her pistol, and he sprang across the floor, so fast it seemed as if some mythical beast charged towards her, one of Gabriel’s Cŵn Annwn, perhaps.
Le
ah pulled the trigger. Felt the gun punch back in her hands. Saw its greedy lick of fire. Saw a bullet take Jakab in the heart. She shot him again. Again. Again. Again.
Bullets ripped though him. Chewed him open. Still he came, a half-dead monster with a blown-out chest and shattered head, and Leah almost stood her ground and let him come, until, with a jolt of horror, she realised what that would mean. Pushing off with her good leg, she dived to one side as Jakab – dead now, irrevocably so, even if the creature behind his eyes was not – sailed past her, out into that vault of darkness and down, down into its throat.
Leah sat up, and found that she was crying. She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands.
A few yards away Hannah lay on her back, gasping. Leah dragged herself over. For a moment she had to press her forehead to her mother’s, and just be close like that.
‘You’re safe,’ she whispered. ‘You’re safe.’
Hannah’s face contorted.
‘Don’t speak. Don’t move. Not an inch, OK? There’s something I’ve got to do.’
She hoped there was still time.
CHAPTER 56
Interlaken, Switzerland
He could do little else, but Izsák could still see. Flame-spawned shadows capered on the ceiling above him and he watched them, transfixed. He felt no pain. And even as his lungs filled with blood and his heart began to labour, even though he felt a curious wetness in the places where many of his organs should have been, the fear he had imagined might grip him at the end felt strangely absent.
He managed to move his head. Saw Leah Wilde bending over her mother. Angled his head a little further. Saw Georgia.
His daughter lay on her back, eyes closed. And it was Georgia now, he noticed, although exactly how he knew that he could not say.
The firelight dimmed, and now a larger shadow became a shadow not at all, but a face. Leah’s.
‘How do I look?’ he asked, and when he spoke he couldn’t contain a cough, and when it came it was followed by a gush of blood.
‘You look like shit,’ she told him. She tried to smile. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
His eyes swung over to the part of the room where Georgia lay. ‘I want to be with her.’
He saw that Leah was about to protest, was about to tell him that he was too weak, that he needed to conserve his strength. And then he saw her change her mind, and somehow, moments later, he was lying beside his daughter.
Izsák coughed again. However much blood he swallowed, there was always more. Georgia’s eyes were closed, but she was breathing, barely. Her face was contorted, a childlike expression of fear. It shattered him, to see that. But at least he was close. At least he was by her side.
Izsák snaked out his arm, amazed at the effort it caused him. His fingers found hers.
At his touch, her breath quickened.
‘You’re not alone,’ he whispered. ‘Georgia, you’re not alone.’
She took another breath, and then her chest stilled.
He wished he could have said more, could have told her he loved her, could have explained to her what had happened, where she’d gone, and where she went now. But perhaps – just perhaps – the few words he had managed were the ones she’d needed to hear most.
Izsák closed his eyes, felt his lungs deflating. How long he had travelled to get to this place.
Nineteen forty-four: that had been the year his wife had died on the floor of their cabin outside Dawson City; the year the tolvaj had visited and spirited away his child.
What year was it now? He couldn’t even say. But finally, the task to which he’d dedicated himself was done.
Peace.
That was what he felt. And then—
Opening his eyes, he saw Leah leaning over him. She had snaked her hands inside his shirt, and where her skin touched his, it burned.
Pale-faced, eyes wide and brimming with compassion, yet lacking any of the teaching that would give her the means to succeed, she attempted to heal him.
He coughed, another thick gout of blood, and shook his head. ‘No.’
She ignored him, and he saw her teeth clench, her chin tremble.
‘Leah, you don’t have the strength.’
‘Then hold on. I’ll get Soraya. My mother. Just hold on, OK? I’m not letting you go. I’m not.’
He reached up, encircling her wrists with his hands, and gently pulled them free. ‘I want this,’ he said.
‘But—’
‘I want this.’
A sob escaped her. She entwined her fingers in his. ‘Are you sure?’
Izsák smiled up at her. He closed his eyes. And died.
EPILOGUE
Interlaken, Switzerland
They made a strange procession down the mountain: an old Volkswagen bus, following the six-wheeled behemoth that was Luca’s Ford pick-up. A black sky above them released a billion white angels to mark their passage.
They’d used the winch on the truck to tow the camper out of the snowbank, and after a rolling start the VW’s engine had fired, surprising them all. If Leah ever managed to trace the man in Menaggio who’d donated it, she would thank him profusely before returning it to his care.
While Izsák had chosen to follow his daughter to that place where souls rest, Luca Sultés, as Leah had known he would, chose to fight. Hardly any life had remained inside him, but what was left stubbornly held on. It took the combined strength of all three of them to bring him back. Soraya shouted worried commands, which Leah and her mother followed as best they could. They nearly lost him twice before his heart regained enough strength to beat under its own rhythm.
They found Gabriel – half-dead – still locked in the back of Jakab’s van. Parked further down the slope they discovered an abandonned Lexus; inside, a driver’s licence containing Izsak’s photograph, and a childseat containing Elijah, Etienne’s son.
In the snow on the lawn below the chalet they found Etienne, still bleeding from the bullet she’d taken from Jakab’s gun, but alive. When Leah saw her renuited with her boy, she failed to hold back her tears. It took them five minutes before they could prise Elijah from Etienne’s arms so that they could begin to treat her wounds.
Wearing gloves, they pitched into the flames the carcasses of the dead ibex that lay on the chalet’s lawn. The likelihood that any of those remains hosted a tolvaj was remote, but they wouldn’t take the chance.
They found Flóra’s body in deep snow. With infinitely more care, they offered it, too, to the fire.
Leah drove the pick-up down the hill, her mother beside her. Gabriel slumped in the back, next to Etienne and her son. Behind them Soraya piloted the old VW bus, Luca hunched over on the passenger seat and the children crowded behind.
They could have stopped in Interlaken. But it seemed, to all of them, far too close. With snowflakes dancing in the headlights and chasing the wipers across the glass, they drove and they drove.
Leah did not know what the future held. Its mysteries were wound too tightly to unravel. But she wasn’t alone. And that was good.
Behind them, halfway up the mountain, flames leaped, fires burned and sparks, like the twinkling miracle of hosszú életek eyes, rose up into the heavens and, winking, disappeared into the night.
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
állj – wait (Lit. Hungarian)
balfácán – idiot (Lit. Hungarian)
Belső Őr – inner guard (Lit. Hungarian) The Örökös Főnök’s personal guards.
capsich – blood-cuff (hosszú életek) A metal instrument used during public executions, in which a hosszú élet’s arteries were severed and held open, preventing the victim from healing and causing death by blood loss.
család – family (Lit. Hungarian)
déjnin – déjnin (hosszú életek) A ceremonial edged weapon. No direct translation.
elég – enough (Lit. Hungarian)
Eleni – Eleni (Lit. Hungarian) The organization, commissioned by the Hungarian Crown, responsible for the hosszú életek geno
cide of 1880.
Éjszakai Sikolyok – Night of Screams (Lit. Hungarian) hosszú életek term for the Crown-sponsored genocide that occurred in nineteenth-century Hungary.
fiú – boy (Lit. Hungarian)
Főnök/Örökös Főnök – leader/eternal leader (Lit. Hungarian) Hosszú életek head of state. A lifetime position, although not always hereditary. With the exception of formal occasions, usually shortened to Főnök.
gyermekrablók – child snatchers (Lit. Hungarian) Little-used alternative name for the lélek tolvajok.
hosszú élet/életek – long life/lives (Lit. Hungarian) A mythical race, mentioned in Gesta Hungarorum, one of Hungary’s oldest historical texts. Known for shape-shifting, extreme longevity and the ability to heal themselves and others.
jövendőmondás – fortune (Lit. Hungarian) Hungarian tarot cards.
kedves – darling (Lit. Hungarian) Term of endearment.
kicsikém – my little one (Lit. Hungarian) Term of endearment.
kincsem – my love/sweet one (Lit. Hungarian) Term of endearment.
kirekesztett – outcasts (Lit. Hungarian)
1. Those banished from hosszú életek society as punishment for criminal acts.
2. Sentence of banishment passed down by the tanács.
kurva – slut (Lit. Hungarian) Vulgar.
lélekfeltárás – soul-sharing (hosszú életek)
1. A means of mutual identification through voluntary stimulation of the iris.
2. The most intimate act of hosszú életek lovers, performed by far more intense and prolonged stimulation.
Written in the Blood Page 44