Relics--The Folded Land

by Tim Lebbon

  Am I a superhero now? she’d asked, and she wished she could fly. Pass through walls. Make herself invisible.

  “I will fly,” she murmured. “I’ll run so fast that I’ll become invisible. Run, pretend to hide, run again, get away from them, lose them.”

  The bus changed gears and she fell against the wall. It was slowing. She opened the door a crack and peered out, and she could see roadside buildings flitting by, and then a wide-open space with cars and trucks parked in ordered ranks. A roadside rest area, with diner, gas station, a row of small local shops. And a bus stop.

  She waited until the bus was drifting to a halt before leaving the toilet and lying low on the back seat. Crouched down, she waited. If Old Itch came to check on her she was ready to start shouting, but the memory of that confrontation in the coffee shop was fresh, how he’d whispered into Beard’s ear or… or bitten him. With those long teeth the likes of which she had never seen before.

  The bus stopped, hydraulic brakes hissed and clicked. Sammi leaned on the handle and the emergency window cracked open. She held her breath, waiting for an alarm. There was none.

  Without looking back Sammi jumped down to the pavement. Directly behind the bus was an open area scattered with benches, and beyond that a row of small shops, most of them closed and dark. She ran for them. No shouts rose from behind, no calls for her to stop. A few people threw her strange looks, but she smiled at them and that seemed to calm their nerves. One of them even smiled in return.

  When she reached a little ice cream parlor she paused to glance back. There was no sign of Old Itch, Jeff, or the woman with him. His guard. Just like Old Itch was her guard.

  He’s a vampire, isn’t he? she thought with new clarity. I’ve got to face that. A dead one, itching forever at the wound that killed him.

  For some reason, that fact didn’t surprise or scare her as much as it should.

  Sammi coughed a loud, barking laugh and darted for the space between two shops. She wouldn’t stop. She’d disappear, pretend to hide, run again, jig left and right, lose herself to lose her pursuers. As long as they hadn’t noticed her absence, and were still on the bus when it started again, she’d have a good chance to get away.

  She leapt over a pile of refuse bags, turned a corner, startled a couple of young women smoking cigarettes outside a restaurant kitchen’s open door. Muttering an apology she ran on, emerging into a small staff parking area. She dashed across a wide concrete parking lot that ended with a small road leading off between houses, shadowy and unlit, then risked another look back.

  There were no signs of pursuit. Past the block of buildings she saw the freeway, and seeing the bus edge itself back onto the road, she felt both a rush of excitement and a terrible, hollowing loss.

  I’m alone now. She went to speak, to call her mother’s name, when the shadows beside a nearby house began to stir. A shape emerged and came at her, faster than should have been possible, utterly silent. It flowed like the night, and Sammi took a few faltering steps back, heels connecting with the curb and sending her sprawling. She didn’t hit the ground.

  Hands clasped her shoulder and right arm, and the coolness bit in as it had before. The wrongness. Hands didn’t feel like that, and she knew why. People like Old Itch didn’t exist, because he wasn’t a person. He was a ghost. Knowing that should have given her power over him, but she was still terrified.

  “Let me go!” she shouted, and Old Itch pulled her upright. He didn’t look angry, but afraid. She wondered what he had to lose, but didn’t care. He was misleading her, and taking her somewhere false, somewhere to do with him, not her and her dead mother.

  “Don’t shout,” he said. “Don’t be afraid, come with me because your mother—”

  “She’s dead!” Sammi shouted, and she lashed out with her right fist. It connected with his chest but she felt little pressure. He shifted back a step or two and she surged forward, punching again, connecting again. Her mother had always been against violence, but her father had taught her how to fight if she really had to. “A kick to the balls and a fist to the face,” he’d said, and she tried that now, kicking between Old Itch’s legs, punching him in the mouth.

  It was like kicking and punching water. He shifted around her blows, flickering in and out of shadow and then manifesting again slightly to her left or right.

  “Please come with me,” he said, and the plea surprised her. His eyes were dead and flat, and filled with lies.

  Sammi reached for his chest and punched him in the wound he always scratched. He gasped and fell back, and his shadow smeared like a smudged ink sketch.

  “Leave me alone!” she shouted again. Lights came on in a couple of houses. A door opened. Sammi stood over Old Itch where he lay on the sidewalk and glared down at him.

  “Please,” he said. “She’ll never forgive me. She’ll never let me rest.”

  “Who?” Sammi snapped. “Who is this all for?”

  “You’ll get to know her,” he said. “In the Fold, you’ll have forever to know her.”

  A brief flicker of doubt and sympathy lit inside her, but then Sammi shook her head.

  “You took me away from my father,” she said. “Days ago, I don’t know how many. I’ve been confused, you’ve confused me. But I know you now, Old Itch. I know what you are and what you were. You don’t scare me anymore.”

  “Your father’s dead,” he growled, voice filled with bile and hate, and she had never heard him sounding so alive.

  A chill ran down her spine.

  “Hey, miss, are you okay?” a man asked. He was approaching slowly along the sidewalk.

  “I’m just leaving,” she said.

  “Maybe you should—” the man began.

  “Don’t go,” Old Itch said, but Sammi knew that he wasn’t strong, only persuasive. A ghost could have no hold over her.

  “Mom?” she said as she ran into the night. There was no reply. “Mom?” Silence. Sammi sobbed once. Her mother was dead. Whoever had been speaking to her since the lightning strike, it hadn’t been her mother.

  She had to get home.

  17

  Gregor knew he was close.

  His backpack sat on the passenger seat beside him. He could not remember a time when it had been more than six feet from him. He felt more whole than he ever had before. His corners were established, the edges of his life were solid and defined. Just a few more missing pieces, and he would be complete.

  Those pieces were close by, and he had to be careful. He had to ensure that everything went well. He welcomed his instincts and senses, but he had to trust in the science of things, though that science was strange.

  Pulling off the freeway he parked by the side of a quiet road, climbing out and leaving the car’s passenger door open to keep the dome light lit. The road headed through a forest, and trees on either side whispered at his intrusion, the gentle breeze chilling him after he left the warmth of the car. He stood and urinated, looking up at the sky where a few stars peered through wispy clouds. The sunset had been amazing, and driving into the foothills he had sensed the wide expanse of wilderness awaiting him. Of course, this was where it would end. It would be in the wild, the silence, the places where few people ventured.

  He zipped up and took the small bowl from the car, placing it on the graveled roadside. Filling it with water from a plastic bottle, he delved into the side pocket of his backpack and brought out the feather once more. Careful as ever he uncovered it, lifted it with an unconscious reverence, and placed it on the water’s surface.

  As it began to spin, there was the mutter of another car’s engine. The vehicle’s lights came into view and caught his car, casting it in shadow and splashing through the windows.

  Gregor remained crouched down. Some people might stop to offer help if they thought he had broken down, but most would pass by a mysterious parked car in the woods, especially at night. He wasn’t afraid. Fear played little part in his life, and he was confident of his abilities to protect himsel
f.

  The vehicle slowed. He raised himself a little, looking through his car windows at the approaching lights. They stopped, remained on, and he heard the unmistakable squawk of a radio.

  Cops. Gregor grunted in frustration.

  A door opened. Boots crunched on gravel.

  He turned back to the angel feather, now so still in the water that it might have been frozen there. It pointed further along the road and up into the hills, and he felt some small satisfaction in knowing that he was heading in the right direction. As he reached for the feather, eager to hide it from view, the voice came from much closer than he’d expected.

  “Please stand and step into view, sir.”

  Gregor paused.

  “Please, sir!” The cop was serious. Gregor knew that tone.

  “I just need to—”

  “You need to stand and do as I say.”

  “Problem, Chris?” The second voice came from the parked cruiser.

  “No problem.” Chris punctuated his statement with the unmistakable cocking of his piece.

  Gregor stood and leaned against the car, still looking away from the cops. The bowl and feather remained by his feet, and he wondered how he might explain them. He wondered how he might explain a backpack filled with strange items, including body parts. The possibility of being arrested had always troubled him, but he never believed it would be like this, a chance meeting in the dark.

  “I’m feeling a bit sick, that’s all, officer.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, sir. Please keep your hands in view and turn around, nice and slow.”

  “Car’s a rental,” the other cop said from their vehicle.

  “Okay, Cam. Gentleman’s just feeling sick. Been drinking, sir?”

  “I don’t drink.” Gregor did as he was told, turning to face the cops, hands held up at chest level. The first cop, Chris, stood by the car’s trunk. He was short but athletic, and he seemed very comfortable pointing his gun at a man who was doing nothing wrong. “Do you really need to aim that at me?”

  Chris did not reply. He looked Gregor up and down, then took two steps to his right and looked at the ground behind him. He saw the bowl, but in the poor light he probably couldn’t make it out.

  “What’s that?”

  “A drink. Water.”

  “You drinking like a dog?”

  “I’m not doing anything wrong.” Gregor tried to inject confusion and fear into his voice, but inside he was assessing, and trying to work out how the situation had gone so wrong.

  “Cam?” Chris asked.

  “Hang on.”

  Gregor frowned. The cops were acting strangely. Chris took one more step to the side and Gregor tried to see past the cruiser’s glaring headlamps to Cam. He was still inside the vehicle, and impossible to make out.

  “I have my license,” Gregor said. “Just let me—”

  “Hands where I can see them,” Chris said. He was very much in control.

  The trees whispered as if in cahoots with the two officers, muttering their suspicions of what Gregor was doing, perhaps sharing the knowledge they had of him. Places like this had seen him before, hunting, stalking, killing. He had taken a leshy in South America, and perhaps that tree spirit’s death was known throughout every forest.

  “That’s him,” Cam said, and everything shifted. This was more than a random stop, and Gregor was in far deeper trouble than he’d suspected.

  Chris tensed, his whole attitude hardening.

  “Hands on the car roof, lean forward, legs back and apart.” Behind him another door opened and his partner joined him, a taller, bulkier shadow also holding a gun.

  “Who do you think I am?” Gregor asked. “My name’s Philip, I’m a football coach at my son’s school, I’m heading out to join my family camping, I had to stay behind for a while because I had some work to finish up, I don’t know why you’re treating me like a criminal, I feel sick and I was having a drink and…”

  All the while he was doing what Chris asked, but slowly, very slowly, turning and placing his right hand on the car roof, and as he turned he plucked the blade from its sheath on his left hip and held it curved against his forearm.

  “Just do as you’re told, dickhead,” Cam said.

  Head down, Gregor placed both forearms flat on the car roof, careful not to knock the blade against the metal. He felt it against his skin, cool and keen. It was almost a part of him, and as Chris approached and tapped his left foot to spread his legs some more, Gregor took a deep, slow breath and let the knife do its work.

  He swept the blade down and back, pivoting on his right foot and turning left, feeling the blade enter flesh. It was a familiar sensation, as was the gasp of warm breath against his neck as the cop gasped his shock and surprise.

  “Chris!” Cam shouted.

  Gregor knew he had no more than a couple of seconds to act. Blade wedged into Chris’s side, he tugged on the handle to swing himself behind the cop, wrapping his other arm around the man’s chest and holding him upright. Though still conscious, Chris just grunted in pain, and offered no resistance.

  The other cop was ten feet away.

  “Put the knife down!” Cam shouted.

  Gregor started pushing Chris forward. He was strong, the cop was small, and even though he’d been stabbed, Chris’s automatic response was to walk, not slump down. The blade in his side prevented him from doing anything else.

  Eight feet away.

  “Stop, let him go, get down on the ground!” Cam shouted, but there was no way he would shoot. Even if he thought of himself as a crack shot, he wouldn’t risk blowing off his own partner’s head.

  Four feet.

  Chris still grasped his gun and he brought up his right hand, waving the weapon uselessly.

  Gregor paused, tugged the blade from the man’s side and shoved him forward into his partner, following his falling body and dropping behind it, lashing out with the blade, feeling and hearing the satisfying slick of razor-sharp metal through flesh.

  Cam tried to cry out, but all he could utter was a wet gurgle as his neck opened and his life leaked out. He dropped to his knees beside Chris. Gregor shoved at the cops and rolled aside, coming up into a crouch. He was ready with the blade in case one of them lifted their gun his way. But Cam was too busy dying, and Chris squirmed into a fetal position, hugging the agony in his stomach.

  Gregor’s heartbeat had barely increased. He breathed deep and slow, alert for any unexpected changes in the situation, but he was confident that he was fully in control. As Cam bled out, he plucked up Chris’s dropped gun and heaved it behind him into the trees. He’d never liked guns. The blade was his way.

  When he knelt beside the bodies, Chris started begging, but Gregor paid no heed. One hard thrust of the knife into his right ear, a twist, and the man was gone. He wiped the blade on the cop’s uniform, then hurried to the cruiser. Climbing in, he sat in the passenger seat and looked at the small computer terminal mounted on the dashboard.

  There was a photograph of him on the screen. It came as a shock and he frowned, trying to make out where and when it had been taken. The white walls, paint flaking. The bland furniture. A hospital—and then he remembered visiting Marianne Francis. He had left her alive because he hadn’t wanted anyone on his trail for her murder. She must have snapped a photo on her phone when he wasn’t looking, and now this half-blurred image was available to every cop in the state, perhaps the country, as they searched for the serial killer of those lightning strike survivors.

  So much for showing her mercy.

  Angry in spite of himself, he switched off the headlights and slammed the cruiser doors. A couple of minutes to drag the bodies into the ditch beside the road was all he could spare. The feather still pointed, true and sharp, and his time was ticking down. He was close to success, and the end of this part of his life.

  What came next would depend upon what he found at the end of his journey.

  18

  Vince knew that Lilou made
every man feel special, but with him he believed it was true. He had saved her life, after all. Down in subterranean London he’d fought and killed Mary Rock’s two goons to stop them from killing her, never intending to end that day a murderer, but never once looking back and regretting his actions.

  He had been injured in the process, badly, so Lilou had helped him, hidden him away and introduced him to the world of the Kin. He’d already known about their dead, and had spent years collecting ancient relics from their time on Earth. Lilou had revealed to him that they were still alive.

  And how alive. He had fallen in love with her, not knowing then quite what sort of creature she was. Even when he’d come to know more, it hadn’t lessened his passion, but it had confused the guilt he felt. He had tried to rationalize it, and over time it had become something that he could deal with, even explain away if the need arose. Because his love for Angela was a solid thing, with foundations and history, a tactile fact. She was a huge part of his life, and he could trace his love for her from the moment they had met.

  His love for Lilou was supernatural.

  “What is it between you and Ahara?” Vince asked.

  Lilou didn’t seem to hear.

  “Lilou?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Really.” He felt anger rising, and didn’t like her taking him for a fool. Her sigh meant that she knew she could not.

  “It’s not Ahara,” she said. She brought her legs up and hugged them to her. They were in a large motel room, supposedly resting for a couple of hours. Angela and Meloy were out buying food. Ahara had vanished as soon as they drove into the parking lot. Meloy had offered to go with Angela, and when Vince objected, she said it was okay, that she wanted to catch up with the gangster.

  Vince had felt a surprising pang of jealousy. It was ridiculous, especially compared to the tension between him and Lilou, though that was a tension that went only one way. It was in her nature to have men love her, and he often wondered what she made of relationships.