He pulls his phone out of his pocket and stands. ‘How do you even know this?’ He puts the phone to his ear.
Isabel becomes aware that Luisa is staring down at her. When she looks up, Luisa is trembling, eyelashes wet and her skin sickly pale. She looks ill.
‘Because he’s in my head,’ Luisa says, ‘isn’t he?’
Isabel can’t bring herself to answer. She doesn’t have to.
That they don’t crash is a miracle. They speed all the way there, the siren lighting the dark streets around them in flashes of red and blue.
The others are on their way, with Carla electing to stay behind just in case, just in case they’re wrong.
Isabel stares unseeing out the car window, the surroundings blurring, because she can’t fathom what she’s just done. What she’s just seen.
She feels sick to her stomach.
That kind of power—
What someone could do with that kind of power. What Gabriel had done with it.
And now Isabel has done it too. Bile climbs up her throat, but she forces it down, clears her throat and forces herself to focus, to drag herself from staring sightlessly out of the window.
‘Are you okay?’ Voronov asks. He doesn’t take his eyes off the road; his hands are steady on the wheel. At the speed they’re going and with the narrowness of the road in front of him, even with the sirens he’d be an idiot if he did.
‘No,’ she says. ‘But we don’t have time for that right now.’
‘Okay.’
Chapter 66
It takes them another fifteen minutes to reach Sesimbra. Isabel can already see Jacinta’s car parked there. Voronov pulls in behind it and gets out, calling to them to find out where they are.
‘They’re at the end of the beach, starting from the first hotel,’ he says.
Isabel nods. ‘All right, you take the trail. I’ll go with you and go down to the rocks.’
Voronov gives her a sharp look.
‘Now is not the time to give me bullshit about it being dangerous. Let’s go. You can do it later. Let’s just find them.’
His face is grim but he doesn’t argue with her. They start up the dirt trail; it goes past the marina and heads up towards the houses. It occurs to Isabel that the dos Santos household is only a half-hour walk away from them. She wonders if there’s meaning in that.
Isabel shakes that thought away and then pushes on ahead. She does exactly what she did outside of Luisa’s house and lets her wards sink away, ignores the tiredness in her bones and gives herself over to her Gift.
‘Go,’ she says to Voronov. She can feel his worry and anger so acutely and sees all the colours that go with it. But if he’s next to her, it might keep her from finding Célia’s signature. Isabel isn’t used to working at this capacity. She can’t afford any distractions. ‘I’ll catch up to you. Check in in fifteen minutes.’
It takes him longer than it should, but he finally nods and sets off without her.
Isabel makes her way to the rocks.
Chapter 67
Isabel feels like she’s built of static energy. The buzzing under her skin is driving her wild.
The flashlight lights up the dirt trail winding itself away from the beach. It leads up and up towards the housing developments that were meant to provide the buyers with beautiful views of Sesimbra.
Isabel is on high alert, her senses cast out like a web to pick up anything, anything she possibly can. It’s been a while since her Gift has been working at such high frequency and the only reason she is still coherent is because it’s two-something a.m. on a weeknight and the beach is empty.
Her feet scrape over the path, the crunch of dirt and stone loud in the night. The waves crash against the side of the cliff and she can taste the sea salt in the air. There’s no railing at the side of the road, just overgrown grass that has dried and died in the winter.
Isabel’s flashlight sweeps its wide spot of light over and over as she carries on up.
Carla and Voronov are searching lower down, Carla by car and Voronov on foot. Isabel feels for the phone in her pocket and prays that it has enough battery.
Isabel almost misses it.
It’s a mantra, barely legible, like a whisper. Like someone who is battling unconsciousness.
I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry.
Isabel stops. The back of her neck is damp, as is the skin at her temples. She’s lost track of how long she’s been on this uphill climb.
‘Where are you coming from?’ she murmurs.
Because that voice isn’t someone speaking out loud. That’s someone speaking in their own mind.
Isabel takes a few breaths to settle herself and closes her eyes. Tries to see it.
She gasps. She hadn’t really expected to see anything, but there it is, in vibrant green that is fading with the words, the colour an echo in the dark.
From her left.
It’s coming from her left.
She finds herself staring down at the slope leading down to the rocks. The sound of the waves crashing into them becomes abruptly menacing.
Locking her jaw, Isabel steps up to the edge and swings her flashlight over the side.
The rocks gleam wet and black.
‘Célia,’ Isabel calls out, ‘can you hear me?’
Quiet. And then—
A cry, weak and buried under the sound of the sea.
‘Merda. Merda, merda, merda.’ How is she supposed to get down the—
Isabel sucks in a sharp breath as her light catches on an arm curled around a rock. And it’s not holding on, it’s caught in between rocks while the person trapped, floats up with the viciousness of the waves and—
Her stomach turns as the body slams against the rock with the rise of the next wave.
Fumbling in her pocket, Isabel takes out her phone.
‘Isa—’
‘Aleks, I’ve found her. Head towards the fort, go past it and up the dirt trail. She’s trapped in the rocks. Still alive. I don’t know where Gabriel is. Get here. And call an ambulance.’
‘Wait for me. Don’t go down there, Isabel.’
‘I have to, she won’t make it otherwise. Just hurry.’
‘Isabel—’
Isabel hangs up and shoves the phone back into her pocket. She shoves the flashlight in her mouth and, looking around her, shrugs out of her jacket. She tries to find Gabriel in the shadows but she sees nothing. He could kill her too. He could send her flying off the cliff edge and break her on those rocks. Fear pumps through her veins and she forces herself to remain steady.
As her jacket drops to the ground, Isabel realises she won’t be able to use the flashlight either. She lets rip another string of swearwords as she heads back down the road to where land gives way to rock. She’s going to have to pick her way through the rocks and hope that the lighthouse far away will provide enough of something for her not to slip and drown.
It’s funny that something that she used to do as a child with her dad could terrify her now.
You can do this, Isabel, you can do this.
She hears the echoes of Célia’s thoughts again, wondering if she’s alone again, if whoever had called to her had left.
‘Célia,’ Isabel calls out, hands gripping the rocks tightly, ‘hold on, I’m coming to you. Voronov is bringing help.’ She makes her way cautiously, knowing that if she rushes and slips up it’s not going to be pretty. She stays crouched low and close to the cliff side.
The expanse of rocks starts to narrow down, getting closer and closer to the wall of the cliff side as she approaches the spot where she’d seen Célia barely clinging on.
She doesn’t know how long it takes her to get there. It feels like hours before she is finally pressed flat against the cliff side, staring at the damaged arm still trapped in the rocks.
How the hell is she going to get Célia up?
Gritting her teeth, Isabel moves over the last few rocks separating them.
A large wave
hits. Her instinct to jerk back is what does it. Her foot sinks in between two rocks and she falls back. She feels the crack of the rock against the back of her head and cries out as pain splinters through her. She’s winded, air driven out of her from the fall and the pain, but she rights herself, breathes through it as she steadies and presses a hand to the place where she was hit.
She stays lower this time and manages to reach Célia even as another wave slaps up against her and leaves her soaked to the bone.
Bracing herself and trying to stay out of the path of the waves, Isabel peers over the peak of the rock and sees her. Célia’s eyes are barely open and she’s bobbing with the sea. Her face looks drained of life. The angle of her trapped arm has bile rushing up Isabel’s throat.
‘Célia, look at me,’ Isabel says, voice urgent, ‘look at me.’
She gets a moan. Célia moves her head, pressing the side of her face against the rock.
‘Célia, can you move your other arm? Can you reach for me?’ Isabel grits her teeth, reaches down and grips Célia’s chin, tipping her face up. Célia’s skin is like ice. It feels like she’s not even touching something human.
Célia doesn’t respond, her head just lolls back and she moans.
Isabel tries it another way.
It’s hard. Isabel’s head hurts but she goes back into her own mind space and follows the track of those echoes back to their source until she’s in the middle of a green so vivid, it feels like she’s actually seeing it.
Célia. Can you hear me?
It hurts . . .
Isabel closes her eyes briefly in relief.
You need to open your eyes and look at me. Do it now.
Célia’s eyes open.
‘Now give me your arm. Give me your arm!’ Isabel says it both aloud and in Célia’s head, needing to reach her in any way she can.
Nothing happens.
Isabel’s about to yell at her when there’s a twitch of movement. A shaking, weak hand emerges from the water, and Isabel doesn’t wait. She reaches down further, grabs Célia’s hand and pulls, grunting at the effort. She hooks her feet into the divots of the rocks to brace herself and drags Célia up.
A weak scream splits the night. Célia’s bad arm comes loose as she’s pulled forward. She shudders, eyes rolling back into her head.
The wave comes up with a roar. Salt water fills Isabel’s mouth and she chokes as it goes up her nose and leaves her lips stinging, but using the momentum she yanks at Célia’s arm.
She cushions Célia’s fall, does her best to take the brunt of it. Rocks jab into Isabel’s back, making her sob out a cry of pain. Célia is a limp weight, lying far too still against her. The only sign that she’s even alive is the short bursts of air puffing out against the wet skin of Isabel’s neck.
Shock.
‘Okay, okay,’ Isabel whispers. She wraps herself around the other woman and closes her eyes and breathes. ‘Stay with me. Stay with me.’
‘Why would you do this?’
The new voice behind her makes her freeze.
He’s here.
Chapter 68
‘Why did you come, Isabel? It would’ve been fine after this.’
Isabel twists around to find him standing by the wall of the cliff. He looks . . . he looks betrayed.
Isabel doesn’t say anything, remains nestled in the rocks, heart pounding in her throat. She doesn’t let go of Célia.
‘You understand me,’ he’s saying, ‘so why are you doing this? You’re like me.’ He sounds hoarse, it’s hard to hear him over the waves. ‘Do you know what people like them can do to people like us? What they were planning on doing to me?’
And Isabel has never felt so helpless in her life. ‘What were they planning on doing to you?’
‘Gil was going to come clean. After all these years. He was going to go to the Registry and Monitoring. Tell them everything.’ He smiles but his eyes are flat. ‘You know what happens to Gifted people like you and me don’t you? If you’re a seven then maybe, maybe they’ll let you live your life, slap a Monitor on you. But if you go above that . . . what do you think happens to the nines and the tens? What do you think happened to that girl in Colombo?’
Isabel keeps her hold on Célia, can taste the sea on her lips, drying them out, and licks them compulsively, her own body starting to shiver from the wet and the cold.
‘It’s why you took suppressors, wasn’t it? That fear.’
Fuck. She glances down at Célia and prays that she’s too out of it to hear what he’s saying. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You’re lying,’ he says, calm, ‘you don’t have to lie to me. I’ve been on your side from the start, you know that. If they get their hands on us, we’ll disappear, just like the girl from Colombo. We’ll disappear and we won’t come back. You’ve heard the stories, don’t pretend you haven’t. The government and the people like to turn a blind eye to all the cases. Have you looked? For yourself? Have you ever thought to look at the number of missing cases for Gifted people? Have you ever checked to see what their levels are? Because I have.’ His jaw firms and he straightens up. ‘And that’s not going to happen to me. No one’s putting me in a cage.’
And how is it that she’s staring at a killer, at someone capable of taking away someone’s consent, taking away their ability to live, their very life – and how can she feel her chest ache from the things he’s saying?
He’s voicing everything that weighed on her every time she popped a pill, every time her mum looked at her, every time a retesting came around and she worried that this would be the time they would realise what she hid.
But not this way. Deus, none of this was the way to do it. ‘Gabriel—’
He lifts a hand towards her and she feels it.
It’s terrifying.
Something unseen tugs at Célia, trying to rip her out of Isabel’s arms. Isabel tightens her grip and makes herself as much of a dead weight as she can, trying to keep Célia down with her. The power is violent.
‘Stop,’ she grits out. ‘Don’t do this.’
It pulls again. Isabel’s grip weakens and Célia nearly slips through.
‘Gabriel!’ she snaps out.
This time when he pulls, Isabel rolls with it, taking Célia with her. They both hit the rock opposite. Isabel tastes blood in her mouth and the right side of her face is agony.
She defends herself.
Gabriel’s thoughts are made up of yellow. A poisonous yellow that’s green around the edges. Isabel dives right for them.
His surprise is such a puff of innocence in the face of the dark oily malice oozing from his core. Isabel grits her teeth and follows her instinct and goes right for it.
It’s an out-of-body experience.
It reminds her of seeing someone else’s memories, that feeling of dislocation.
This time, when she opens her eyes, she’s staring at two women wedged between the rocks at the edge of the water. One of them familiar, Célia, unconscious. Probably dead now. And the other . . .
She’s staring at her own face.
I knew it, the thought echoes in her own head, so close, so touched with wonder. You’re just like me. Your Gift is so amazing.
‘You should’ve listened to me, Gabriel,’ she says softly, and it’s disconcerting, so disconcerting to hear her own words coming out in Gabriel’s voice, spoken with a cadence that she has never heard in his voice. Isabel steps forward.
Fear spikes. It’s not her own.
Isabel keeps moving, moving the foreign weight of Gabriel’s body around her, one step at a time over the uneven surface of the rocks.
Don’t!
But Isabel does exactly what he did. She moves him, bit by bit, her control tenuous over the body she’s wearing. And as she gets closer to the water, she feels his body begin to shake, her control over him not absolute. But it’s strong enough.
Isabel’s at the edge, Gabriel’s protests screaming loud in her mind as she sto
ps right there.
To her left, Isabel’s own body is still, staring vacantly ahead, Célia collapsed on top of her.
Just one more step and he’ll hit the water.
Cold metal touches the back of her head.
‘Isabel.’ Voronov. ‘I need you to come out of there. I’ve got this.’
‘He’s not safe,’ she says, and pauses, still thrown when her words emerge in Gabriel’s voice. She forces herself to continue. ‘He could rip that gun out of your hand in a second.’
‘Hold on to him long enough for me to get the cuffs on him. The blindfold should help. He can’t touch what he can’t see. Not even with his powers.’
‘We don’t know that.’
‘Trust me. There’ll be no going back if you make him step off that edge. Don’t put me in that position. Leave him while we still have time.’ He lowers his voice. ‘People can’t even suspect that you’ve been able to do this.’
She feels Voronov’s fingers closing around her wrist – Gabriel’s wrist – and she lets him.
‘I’m going to reach for the other one. Hold him for a bit longer for me but then leave when I tell you to. Isabel?’
She breathes through it, flexes the fingers of Gabriel’s hand. Voronov’s hand is warm.
‘Isabel?’
Inside, Gabriel is battering against her hold, throwing his entire power into it. But that’s the small difference between them. His Gift is so great and vast; she doesn’t stand a chance against his telekinesis. But her telepathy is even stronger than his.
He can’t win this one.
‘Okay.’
Only then does Voronov reach for the other hand. The cuffs pinch the skin and she winces.
When the cloth wraps around her eyes, Isabel lets herself sink out of the mist of yellow with a sigh.
She blinks. She’s cold. She hurts.
Isabel looks to the side in time to watch as violent rasping breaths lift Gabriel’s threat. He’s sucking in air like he hasn’t breathed in years as he’s pulled back by Voronov, who forces him to sit back against a rock.
The Colours of Death Page 34