Leah ran towards it. She stripped off her cardigan, used it to smother the flames, burned her hands and burned them again, but somehow managed to put out the fire.
She did not know who the figure was, but she knew it was damaged too badly to live. Its fingers twitched. Curled.
Gabriel slammed on the Audi’s brakes and the vehicle slithered to a halt behind Sebastien’s abandoned 4x4. Both of the Jeep’s doors were open. No one sat inside. To the right of the vehicle, a second Audi was on fire.
Barefoot, feet still throbbing from his injuries, he threw open his driver’s door. Limping to the burning Audi, he peered inside, steeling himself for what he might find. But the cabin was empty. It looked like someone had bled away their life on the driver’s seat, but they weren’t there now.
‘Look!’
Sebastien climbed out of the passenger seat. The old man’s face was pinched with horror, his finger raised and pointing towards a pillar of smoke and flame rolling out of a stone structure on the bank of the river. Tiny black shapes flickered out of a top floor window and spiralled round the column of smoke.
In front of the building, Leah knelt over a blackened lump.
At the end, she had discovered she didn’t want to die in darkness, in the stink of a burning building, with only Jakab – and whatever animal rotted in the corner – for company.
Even though the fire had taken her eyes and she would never again see the sun, even though her nerves had been seared away and she would never feel its warmth, it had seemed important to be outside.
She lay on her side, feeling her muscles spasming, feeling her heart beginning to labour, feeling the breath that rasped in and out of her ruined lungs beginning to slow.
‘Mummy, please don’t leave me here alone.’
If Hannah could have wept for those words, she would have done. So cruel for life to end this way. She knew she had made the right choice. Knew she had set Leah free. Knew she had finally rid her of the curse that stalked them.
Sebastien would look after the girl. And if not him, Gabriel. Or perhaps Éva. She had not known any of them long. But she trusted them.
‘I love you,’ whispered her daughter. ‘I don’t want you to go too.’
Hannah opened her mouth to speak, but her voice was gone. So dreadful for Leah to see her like this. If only she could say goodbye. If only she could offer some comfort.
She wondered if Nate would be pleased with her. Wondered what he might say. Wondered if even now he watched her as she lay here, watched his wife and his daughter together under an autumn sun.
And now her pain was ebbing. And light was again starting to flare behind her eyes. This time it was not a burning light, not a scorching light, but a cathartic warmth, a glow, a peace, and Hannah felt herself sigh, felt herself let go of all the pain and the fear and the loss, and felt herself step into that peace and open her arms to it.
Leah slumped over into a heap as she watched her mother pass away. She knew it was her mother now, recognised her from the smouldering boots she wore – the only things left that identified her.
She had said everything would be all right. But it wasn’t all right. Wasn’t all right at all. She shouldn’t have to see her parents die like this. Not both of them.
Hearing a shout from the woods, Leah looked up to see figures running towards her. Through her tears, she didn’t know them. And then she did.
Gabriel reached her first. He stared down at the blackened husk on the grass. When he raised his beautiful cobalt eyes to her, she noticed that they were wet with tears. ‘Is it Hannah? Is it your mother?’
She nodded.
‘Oh, Leah. Oh, darling, I’m so sorry.’ His face crumpled, and when she saw that she tried to rise. He closed the distance between them and swept her up into his arms, and she nestled her face into his shoulder and breathed his scent and pretended that everything was all right. Even though it would never be.
‘Jakab.’ Gabriel nodded towards the mill, at the dark flames boiling out of the building’s windows. At the black smoke curling across the water. ‘Is he in there?’
Leah nodded.
‘She was the bravest woman I ever met, your mother. She kept her promise.’
‘She promised everything would be all right.’
‘And it will. It may take you a while, but you’ll see.’
Now she heard a new sound, a dreadful wrenching cry, a mix of anger and disbelief and pain. When she opened her eyes she saw Sebastien stagger up to Hannah’s body. He fell to his knees.
The old man reached out and seemed about to touch her roasted flesh. Instead he laced his fingers above his head and turned to Gabriel. ‘Do something!’
The Irishman slumped. ‘What can I do? What can any of us do? Open your eyes, man. She’s gone.’
‘There’s life in her.’
‘No. And even if there was . . . Look at her, Seb; just look.’
Sebastien’s eyes were wild. ‘Haven’t you paid any attention? Don’t you see? When are you going to figure this out for yourself? She’s one of you, Gabriel, one of your own. Hannah’s hosszú élet. I’m sure of it. She’s one of you and she can heal.’
Leah felt Gabriel stiffen. Suddenly she was slipping from his embrace, sliding down his frame.
‘She can’t be,’ he said. ‘That’s impossible.’
Sebastien lurched to his feet. He paced, turned, raked fingers through his hair. ‘Stupid, stupid. It was the one thing Charles and I fought over. I knew his intentions were noble, but I never agreed it was the right thing to do.’
Now Gabriel was the one shouting, his face flushed. ‘You’re not making any sense!’
‘It was Charles’s theory, not mine,’ the old man said, the words tumbling out of him. ‘He’d done his research, interrogated the dates, realised there was a good chance. He had his suspicions about her mother, Nicole, even more so with Hannah as he watched her grow. But do you want me to tell you the story now while she dies at your feet? Or do you want to save her life and let me finish it later?’
Gabriel fell to his knees. ‘If what you say is true . . .’
‘Goddamn it, Gabe!’
Gabriel bent over Hannah and placed his ear against her cracked lips. He turned his head and looked into her ruined face. Then he raised his eyes to Sebastien. ‘You’re absolutely sure?’
Sebastien clenched his fists and rolled his eyes heavenward.
Placing one hand on Hannah’s chest above her heart, Gabriel touched her temple with the other. He closed his eyes and exhaled.
Leah watched, her own breath shallow in her throat. She went to Sebastien, fitted her hand into his. ‘What’s he doing?’ she whispered, afraid that she had confused what she had heard, afraid that the tiny ember of hope that glowed inside her would wink out.
Sebastien enfolded her fingers into his leathery palm. ‘There’s a chance. Just a chance, mind you. Hosszú életek can heal one another. It’s risky and it’s painful and it doesn’t always work. Your mother is partly hosszú élet, I’m sure of it. But I can’t say how potent that part of her is.’ Sebastien turned to her. ‘Do you believe in miracles?’
How in the world did she answer that?
On the grass, Gabriel hissed and his hands twitched. Leah watched as, minutely, his fingers appeared to sink into her mother’s flesh. As they did he tilted back his head and moaned in pain.
The body beneath his hands trembled, bucked. And then it stilled. Gabriel sucked in a breath. He gritted his teeth. His face drained of colour so completely that he looked to Leah like a wraith. Again he opened his mouth to cry out, but this time no sound emerged. Finally, he tore his hands free. Leah saw that his fingers were raw with blood, and that he was sobbing. ‘It’s no good. She’s too badly hurt.’
He bellowed with frustration, panted for bre
ath. ‘I can put all of myself into her. And I would. But I don’t have enough to bring her back. It’d kill me and she’d still be dead.’
Leah let go of Sebastien’s hand. ‘Then you have to try harder!’ she screamed. ‘She didn’t give up! She never gave up!’
Gabriel’s eyes had lost their cobalt hue, had faded to a sickly grey. ‘Leah, I’m sorry—’
‘No. No! Don’t say that. Don’t say you’re sorry.’
She felt a hand on her shoulder, and when she turned to shrug it free she saw that it was a woman’s, slender and smooth.
Éva stood behind her, and her eyes ached with compassion. ‘He’s right, Leah. She’s too badly burned.’ The Örökös Főnök raised her eyes to Gabriel. ‘You can’t do it alone. But you might with my help.’
His eyes flared as he saw his mother’s expression. Some private understanding seemed to pass between them. Éva, tall and strong and beautiful, sank to her knees in the grass beside her son. She reached out her hands and settled them on to Hannah’s blackened body. Then she turned to Gabriel and the smile she gave him pricked tears from his eyes. ‘Let me do this for you.’
Gabriel took a shuddering breath. He stared at his mother for what seemed like an age. And then he placed his hands over hers.
Silent, the two hosszú életek closed their eyes.
Smoke and ash billowed up from the watermill into the autumn sky. Flames boiled inside the building. Forced from their daytime home, bats circled the smoke, swooping and diving and cavorting.
Leah looked away from them, to the river, to the foaming water that poured out of the mill race and crashed on to the debris of the shattered wheel below. She looked at the far bank, at the trees that lined it, at the sunlight that dappled through the leaves and spun cobwebs of silver on the water.
In the long grass, Éva slumped against her son, but she did not remove her hands from Hannah’s body, and Gabriel did not move to catch her, even though he grimaced and set his jaw. As Leah watched, a lick of wind lifted a crisp flake of her mother’s skin and bore it away.
Underneath was a small patch of pink.
Healthy skin. Hairless, but unblemished.
Leah stared at it. She heard Sebastien cry out behind her. At first she thought he wept for her mother, for the miracle of what had just happened, and then she realised that his tears were for Éva.
The elegant hosszú élet Főnök was growing old. Her skin crinkled, the flesh beneath it withered. In a matter of minutes Éva aged thirty years, and she continued to change. Her cheeks sank. Her eyes clouded. Their colour leached away.
More flakes of blackened skin drifted up into the sky.
Éva sighed through shrunken lips. And finally, as the quickening flesh beneath her fingers twitched, as Hannah’s lungs filled with air, the old woman collapsed into the grass, her eyes closed and her breath wheezing out of her, and Sebastien fell to his knees and whispered her name.
Epilogue
Gabriel sat beside her on the bench as the autumn sun sank below the horizon. She couldn’t watch the sunset, couldn’t see the golden light as it spread out across the sky, but she could feel the warmth of its rays on her face, and it felt good.
He wouldn’t let her go outside during the day, fearful that the midday sun might damage her new skin. He wouldn’t let her spend much time alone, either. She didn’t mind that. In fact, she was grateful for it. The memories of what had happened were still too immense to face alone. Her body might have healed, but her mind hadn’t. Not yet.
‘You’re quiet,’ she said.
‘I was just thinking,’ he replied. ‘About her. About them.’
‘How is she?’
‘She’s dying. But she’s happy.’
‘Is she in pain?’
‘A little – just the usual pains of old age. But you know what? She’s not going to die today. Nor next week, most likely.’
‘She sacrificed so much.’ Hannah fought to steady her emotions. As much as anything, the salt of her tears would sting.
‘She’s happy, Hannah. That’s the funny thing. My mother and Sebastien. It’s incredible. She may have a week, maybe a year. How old is he? Eighty? He has no time either. Yet it’s as if they’re twenty-somethings again.’
The wind blew, and it brought the scent of autumn fruit. Hannah knew that he watched her. Self-consciously she raised a hand to her face, to the bandages over her eyes. ‘Don’t.’
‘What?’
‘Look at me.’
‘You’re going to be all right, you know.’
She took a breath. ‘I miss him so badly, Gabe. Every hour. Every second. Nate’s dead. I know that. I know I’ll never see him again. Not in this life, at least. But I’m still in love with him.’ She heard her voice crack. ‘I’ll always be in love with him.’
‘And that’s just as it should be.’
She reached out to him and found his arm, his hand. ‘You’ve been so good to us. So patient.’
‘I’ve got plenty of time on my hands.’
She could hear the grin on his lips and suddenly she found herself laughing. ‘If everything I’ve heard is true, we’ve both got plenty of that.’
‘Do you remember the night, in the kitchen, when I showed you the lélekfeltárás?’
‘What about it?’
‘I saw something in your eyes. Or thought I did. Just a flicker. For the briefest moment. And then it was gone.’
‘Well, you won’t be seeing it again.’
While they had been able to restore her life, she would not regain her sight.
‘There are other things I can teach you. Things I can teach Leah. When you’re both ready.’
‘I’m not sure, Gabriel. I’m not sure I want that.’
‘You might. In time.’
And he was right. She might. ‘What I don’t understand,’ Hannah said. ‘When I talked to your mother, she said it was impossible. Someone like me, I mean. Said that no one could be conceived that way.’
‘It’s what we thought. No, it’s what we knew. A hundred times over. I can’t explain it; I can’t explain you. None of us can. You shouldn’t exist, Hannah, and yet you do.’ He laughed sheepishly. ‘We’re calling you a miracle.’
‘I’m no miracle,’ she said. ‘But it’s given you hope, hasn’t it? It’s given you all a shred of hope. For a future, I mean.’
Gabriel was silent for a while. Quietly, he said, ‘That depends on you.’
She didn’t know what to say to that. So she squeezed his hand instead.
‘You haven’t told me what you learned from Seb,’ he said.
Hannah shrugged. ‘He says my father worked it out. From the diaries. Don’t ask me how. Do you remember I told you about Albert and Anna? My great-grandfather and great-grandmother? They lived in Sopron, fled to Germany when Jakab tracked them down. For a time, while he was preparing to kill Albert, Jakab supplanted him. Just like he supplanted my father. And when Anna fell pregnant, it was Jakab’s baby growing in her belly.’
‘Which means Jakab was your ancestor. Your great-grandfather, in fact. Do you think he knew?’
‘No. And I don’t think it would have made much difference if he had. He was too corrupted by that point. Too insane.’ She shuddered. ‘Come on. I don’t want to hear his name any more. He’s dead. Gone. Out of our lives forever. Where’s Leah? Have you seen her?’
From the trees, Hannah heard a rustle of movement.
‘I’m here.’
‘Have you been sitting there all along?’
‘Mostly.’
‘Come over here, scamp.’
The aroma of toffee and chocolate. Of salty skin.
‘What have you been doing?’
‘Starting a diary,’ the girl replied. ‘One of my own.’
&nbs
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The String Diaries Page 40