There were lights moving north and south, there was traffic aplenty on the bypass. My own was always the road less travelled, and tonight the citizenry was well advised to stay withindoors; but even with that as a given, there should surely have been a few trucks coming and going, what trade my family sanctioned. In fact there was none. Mine was the only light moving, as far as my eyes could see.
That was strange, disconcerting, but not for long. The rate I was going, nothing could last long. The nervous tension in my body, that already had my fingers trembling right through to the bone where they were clenched around the handgrips, resolved itself into panic as soon as my squinting eyes could distinguish light from light on the road ahead.
There were the orange sodium lights that drew the line of the road on into the night; but just this side of the bridge, delineating the town’s border, there was a line of ice-blue light that flickered coldly. That was nightfire, that explained incontrovertibly why the road was deserted but for me; and I did think I’d been outguessed, I thought my enemy waited for me at the roadside, confident enough to show me that he was there.
I braked with a scream that I hoped was only tyres on tarmac, though it resonated within the confines of the helmet so that I thought some part of it at least had come from my own throat. The bike skidded, and more than anything I wanted to turn that skid into a spin, to let momentum carry me over onto the other carriageway facing the other way. If he was here, he couldn’t be elsewhere; the bridges would be clear, the Great South Road would be safe, I could find another way out of town and be free and gone before he caught up with me...
I didn’t do that, though. I controlled the skid without thinking, brought the bike to a halt and only sat there, one foot on the road and the beam of my headlight spearing down toward the roadblock, announcing me to any watching eyes.
Nothing moved. I tilted the visor back to see better, and saw how the tarmac itself was burning in a neat, tight line, straight across the road from one kerb to the other. Whoever had laid that fire was feeding it richly; nightfire was a thin light normally, reflecting its source, but this was throwing flares three or four metres high, a fierce warning and an absolute prohibition.
Shielding my eyes against the dazzle of it, I could make out the high boxy shadow of an off-road vehicle, some Japanese Land Rover-substitute, pulled appropriately off the road. Figures also, standing on either kerb: two on one side, at least one on the other. I couldn’t see their faces, but their number was enough. If I was sure of anything, I was sure I had only one man to face.
I rolled the bike slowly forward — and had to stop to spit suddenly, as sour saliva flooded my mouth. Sure I might be, but I’d been wrong before, about things I was certain of. And Christ, I was scared now; I could hear the beat of my blood in my ears, and not only my mouth was flooding. My mind spilled over with memories of the dead, and how their blood had turned bad in their bodies. Blisters or boiling sludge, crystal or acid, it all came down to blood; and any moment now, my own traitor thoughts were whispering, any moment, just keep getting closer, make them a gift of your own blood to play with. Why not? It’ll show the family, at least, show the world that you belong...
I spat again, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, tipped the visor down and went on forward.
o0o
A little nearer, and if I couldn’t see faces I could at least see that they had faces, those shadows on the borders of the road. White their faces were, and turned to me: squinting into my light as I into theirs. Powerful headlamps, Beamers have. One stepped further back onto the grass verge, trying to avoid the cone of my fierce light; the nightfire flickered and paled, seemed to die a little before it fed again.
Nearer still, and I was better off than they. They’d not be seeing anything but dark — dark helmet, visor down; dark jacket and dark jeans — and that only if they could see anything of me at all behind the light. Me, I saw them and I knew them, and my terror slowly ebbed.
Cousins, of course. Minor cousins, these, and three of them together because only that way could they hope to meet or match a major talent: a Jamie, say, if Jamie were provoked. Or a Benedict, my unabashed ego put in, breaking through in a rush as though I had nothing more to be frightened of all night, if the sun were shining on him...
Reminding myself that even minor cousins could tear me apart in darkness if they had a mind to do it — or if they were spooked enough not to look closely, not to see that I was family: and maybe the helmet wasn’t such a smart idea after all — I brought the bike to a halt still some little distance off. Killed the engine, but left the lights alive. Couldn’t hold all three of them in the beam at once, but two I had, and those I was holding on to.
I dismounted, looking at the tension in the two that I could see and feeling my shoulder blades itch with knowledge of the one that I couldn’t; and decided reluctantly that discretion at this point was far the better part of image-building.
So I lifted the helmet off, ran a hand through my hair and walked deliberately into the light, calling ahead as I went.
“Hullo, is that Conor?”
A moment’s more silence, and then an explosive breath, and, “Jesus fucking Christ, it’s only bloody Benedict!”
Mutters of relief and resentment, and I didn’t need to hear the words, I knew the sentiments too well already. Only Benedict, untrustworthy but harmless. Just a sport, a freak of nature, had no talent so he ran away and the family was well rid of him, no use for hangers-on...
“What the hell are you doing here, Benedict?”
“Came to see. What’s going on?”
He ignored that, squinting past me. “Is that your bike?”
“Yes,” I said flatly.
“Only I thought, just for a moment there, I thought...”
You thought I was my sister, right? Till you remembered that she was dead. And then you didn’t know what to think, was this a ghost come to visit or an enemy or what? Couldn’t be cattle, no cattle would be so foolish as to stray so close...
“Well, it’s me,” I said, momentarily generous, hauling him out of a hole. “So what’s with the roadblock?”
“Big stuff going down,” he said, vague and full of import; though in fact all he was telling me was I don’t know, I just follow orders, me. “Cousin James asked us himself. Seal off the town, he said, don’t let anyone in or out. That includes you,” he added, frowning. “Must do. You shouldn’t be out anyway, it’s not safe for you...” Go home and hide with the cattle, he was saying now; and no, he really didn’t know a thing, did he? Just a good soldier, doing what he was told. If I’d been Jamie, or Lamartine, or any cousin but me, he’d have let me through; me being me, no chance. The family name was a passport, sure, but not by itself enough. Talent was the key, and this door wasn’t going to open without it; and obviously there’d been no leaks dripped down to Cousin Conor, Uncle James hadn’t let slip a word about his windows. No surprise there. He’d probably told his glazier it was a sonic boom.
He might be a pompous bastard, but James was nothing else if not efficient. If he’d closed this road, he’d have closed them all; God knew there were cousins enough, through all the cadet branches of the family. If I went down to the river and drove along the footpath, there’d be someone even there to stop me, I’d lay money on it.
There must still be ways to escape; even Uncle James couldn’t isolate a town this large in a single night. I could climb fences, scramble through hedges, surf the trains if they were running. If not I could steal a boat or play chicken with the bypass traffic. I could certainly get out, if I tried hard enough.
If nobody caught me trying.
But I’d be lucky, more than lucky if I found a way to take the bike with me; and I didn’t want to leave it. Apart from the convenience and the simple speed, the sweet get-me-out-of-here! spirit of the thing, it was turning into a talisman for me. Riding it, I was Hazel’s representative on earth and the instrument of her revenge; I carried her letters-of-marque, I wa
s privileged and potent. I didn’t want to lose that, even temporarily. Knowing what I had to do, not knowing if I could ever bring myself to do it, I needed all the help I could get, and help from my hard sister was more valuable than most.
“Go on,” Conor said, roughly authoritative. “Get yourself home, and leave family business to those of us with the strength to handle it.”
Oh, that was cocky, from him; but I let it pass. Not much else I could do, in all honesty. I even managed a humiliating nod of submission as I turned and went back to the bike. Uncle James’ punctured dignity might yet work to my advantage; it’s always useful to be underestimated.
o0o
No speed in me now. I didn’t know what to do; driving laps of the town would simply be asking for trouble. I thought again about seeking shelter with friends, and again I rejected it. I just couldn’t tell how much talent there was ranged against me; for all I knew my enemy could have a witch-finder’s nose, sensitive enough to sniff me out wherever I holed up. Fe fi fo fum, I smell the blood of a Macallan man. Poor poetry, but a poorer prognosis for me if it were possible and true.
I drove slowly, indecisively back to the brow of the hill, and pulled up in the middle of the empty road. All the town lay spread out below me, shimmering with light and all of it useless to me — or so I assumed, thinking regretfully that it was too bad there was no way to store sunlight and carry it around in my pockets like ammunition for a later date in the dark.
But then again I saw nightfire where I wasn’t expecting it; and this no roadblock, no. This was a beacon and a rallying-cry, blazing bright against the pollution of a whole city’s neon and sodium glare. Not one man’s work, surely. Even the strongest of my family couldn’t light up the town alone.
What it was, was the tip of the spire on St Dominic’s, Father Hamish’s own church. There was an ancient iron weathercock up there, the gift of an eighteenth-century relative of mine, who held the whole parish in his gift; it was shaped like a phoenix, and that bird was in the fire right enough tonight, though I didn’t think it was going to rise in the morning.
It burned incandescent, like a brand in the night, like a summoning; and I couldn’t see for the fierce shine of it, but the metal that made it must be writhing and collapsing in the chill of the fire, undoing itself as it burned.
I’d have been worried for the spire, for the church itself, except that nothing that acted to Hamish’s loss was going to worry me. And besides, if the clan were gathering, they’d see the building safe. Enough to make such a nightfire, there must be enough also to control it.
And that many of my blood, all in the one place — there’d be enough there to see me safe also. Protection in numbers; it was isolation that was dangerous. Each of my cousins who’d been attacked, had been attacked alone.
So down the hill I went, and for the first time in years I went to church.
o0o
Cars again, once more so many cars, crowded onto the hardstanding in front of the church and lining the street beyond the fence, both sides: their numbers alone spoke of crisis, and never mind the sheen on their blank windows as the glass reflected the nightfire glare from the steeple above.
Being on a bike was good, even a big bike. I could wind my way between the skew-parked cars, bump sacriligeously over the turf that sheltered so many ex-Macallans and other citizens of this town that there wasn’t room for more, hadn’t even been room for Marty or for Hazel, and finally hoick it onto its stand close to Jamie’s jeep likewise heretically parked on bone-containing grass. Nearby a small side door stood open in the high wall of the church, letting a cool creamy light and the hiss of muted voices slither out.
One of the cars I’d wangled the Beamer past had been a big Volvo. Couldn’t truthfully tell the colour in the weird light back there, but there wasn’t really any question in my mind. Where were you when I wanted you? I growled silently, casting a last look back at its smug solidity before I walked unhesitatingly in through the old iron-studded door, down a short corridor and so into the church proper, where I was swamped once more with memory.
o0o
Too many Sundays, all the bloody Sundays of my childhood I’d been brought to this dim temple to sit through Mass. Right at the front they set us kids, with our parents in the pew behind to clip our ears if we fidgeted or whispered. Which of course we did, religiously. Sharp pains and boredom were my abiding recollections, coupled with the height and chill and sheer weight of stone arching above me.
Wouldn’t be bored tonight, though pain was not at all impossible and perhaps very high on the agenda.
It was still heavy and cold in there, despite so many people. Vaulting ambition had raised this church too high, spread it too wide. It was cathedral sized, and all my family couldn’t have come close to filling it, even if half the tough young cousins weren’t out manning Uncle James’ roadblocks.
It still smelled of smoking candles and incense and dusty velvet, of polish and flowers and overbearingly of stone; and it still swallowed the sharpness of sound, muffled voices to a whisper and wove them together into a background hiss of interference, nothing more.
o0o
I walked in, and that familiar hiss faded slowly. One by one they saw me, and stopped talking; and that was the helmet and leathers once more, some of them surely were taking me for Hazel come again to prove true all their hopes of resurrection. More would simply be startled by a dark unknown, disturbed by anonymity in this place where every face was known.
I enjoyed that moment, lingered a little in the cool pleasure of it before I lifted the helmet off and let them see me.
A collective sigh, and the many whispers started up again: only Benedict, for God’s sake, and what’s he doing here walking in on us like that, what does he think he’s playing at?
Wasn’t often I’d had all my family talking about me at once. I could almost have enjoyed that also, except for the occasion and the cold feeling in my bones that was actually nothing at all to do with the ambient temperature at church.
I held the helmet under my arm, and looked around. Saw that most, maybe all of the men had brought their womenfolk along; there was enough simple space here that even so many clashing auras wouldn’t sicken the stomach of anyone accustomed to being with Macallans.
Some of the faces in the nearer pews nodded to me when I glanced their way; one or two even managed a smile. Others just looked disgruntled, or looked away.
Hamish was standing by the altar in full vestments, talking to Uncle James. He’d turned his broad back to me, all the acknowledgement I was going to get from him.
But I wasn’t here for Uncle James, nor for my mother, whom I spotted now over by one of the fat stone pillars that supported the wagon-vaulted roof. She waved nervously; I lifted a hand in response, but that was auto-pilot. My eyes and my mind had moved on already.
Moved on, and found the man I was watching for coming towards me up the nearest aisle.
“Benedict. I’m surprised to see you here...”
“Hullo, Uncle Allan,” I said. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
“Well,” he said quietly, calmly, “wouldn’t you have done the same, in the circumstances? Or no, obviously you wouldn’t, because here you are,” touching my arm to be certain of it, assuring himself that I was no fetch in this place of mystery. “But perhaps you should have done, mm?”
“Perhaps I should,” I agreed, just as quietly. “Might have been more sensible. But then I never did have much sense, when it came to my favourite uncle. I never could stay away from you.”
“Ah, Ben. I got your message,” so he must have been home, though probably not until sunset or later, my cautious uncle. Must have gone home, talked to Jess, walked or trotted or maybe even run upstairs to find what I’d left for him; and I wondered whether it had hurt him as much as it had hurt me, the splintered, mangled wreck that I’d made of that sleek and shining beauty, his old and precious microscope. “What are we going to do with you, eh?”
&nb
sp; “Something pretty disgusting, I imagine.”
He laughed shortly, and his hand closed more firmly on my arm, no casual touch this time. “Let’s go outside, shall we? Where we can talk without being interrupted?”
“No,” I said, “let’s not.” It was dark out there, dark and clear, all the rainclouds of the afternoon perversely blown away again. I’d sooner stay in here where no starlight could penetrate, where even the moon was only ever the dimmest of globes distorted by old stained glass and no use to anyone.
“Ben, lad,” and he maybe said something more then, he most likely did; but I wasn’t listening any more. Even at the cost of my life, I was suddenly and appallingly distracted.
Because my father came in, my own Christless father came to church tugging Carol by the wrist, and she was sweating and fearful at his side when she should have been a mile away from here and safely under a duvet behind locked doors; and there was a swallowed cry from a pew at the back and suddenly footsteps rushing forward, and that was Laura, for God’s sake, and what the fuck was going on?
Twenty: Blinded by the Light
I wasn’t the only one distracted. Uncle Allan also was watching the girls, his attention crucially wrenched away from me; which gave me the chance to wrench my arm from his grasp and run.
Not far, only over to the doorway, where my father stood smugly posing with his captive and sneering at Laura as if she were nothing more, just a couple of heifers herded in for butchery or sacrifice or God alone knew what. But again I wasn’t the only one, and I didn’t get there first though I was closer.
Jamie must have been sitting with Laura way up at the back, or else standing with her round behind a pillar somewhere nice and private. Now he came hurtling down faster than either reason or respect would suggest to a nicely-brought-up ex-altar boy in his parish church and surrounded by his family.
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