Without thinking or planning anything more, she turned to face the Strix and lunged at her. The Strix was much stronger than her, but with the added strength of Rose filling her, Becky clamped her hands around the throat of the creature who had stolen her child. The baby let out an outraged shriek as he was caught between their bodies.
Becky gripped hard, digging her fingers into flesh. She was gratified to hear a guttural noise escape the Strix’s lips, but she showed no signs of weakening.
Mam, Dad, help me! I can’t do it on my own!
She felt hands cover hers. The skin was calloused and rough from years of work at sea. Strong hands and fingers. Thick wrists. Becky knew that even with their help she couldn’t kill the beast, but it didn’t matter. They were together, for one brief final moment. She pulled her hands out from under her dad’s and heard the creature gasp as his stronger hands closed on her slender neck. The Strix’s hands flew up to grapple with his and she dropped the baby. Becky’s arms were waiting to catch him. Instantly she turned to descend the stairs then glanced back and, with the last of her mother’s sight, saw a hazy image of her dad struggling with the monster, holding her down, his face contorted with effort.
Becky rushed down the stairs. Francis was bawling now and it thrilled her to hear it. It was real and alive, as he was. She skidded across the tiles, seen now in shades of grey, and ran from the house. Matt, soaked to the skin and pacing furiously, grabbed her. They hugged the baby between them and kissed, both of them wet with rain and tears.
But they weren’t safe. The shade of her dad wouldn’t be able to hold the creature for long. Matt tucked the baby inside his coat and they ran for their lives.
Reaching the beach, Lia stood under a rocky outcrop and looked out over the water, shivering, shielding her eyes from wind gusts full of needle-sharp grains.
There was a ship out there, being cast up and thrust down into the turbulent sea. She couldn’t see, but she heard it grinding against rocks and smashing against the cliff. The thin screams of the passengers and crew reached her over the howl of wind and water.
Lights came and men came. The lanterns were seldom still and showed her glimpses of the broken ship, dead bodies, men on a ledge above the sea pulling things from corpses, bending over dying people. They finally finished and started back up the rocks, following a path she recognised as the path she had followed with Brendan. Then she heard the Strix scream and shortly after that, the remaining lanterns lit up the flashing image of huge white wings. Lia fled back up the path towards the house. This was the past she was seeing. The men of the island had stolen the lives and valuables of everyone on the ship, but had brought ashore a creature from another place, one that should never have been here.
When she got to the driveway, she saw the Strix, talons outstretched, crash through the long dining-room window.
Lia ran into the hall and heard the screams. The dining room was once again old and damp and there was nothing to see. Still, she could hear awful screams and moans. Finally, there was a heavy silence.
Then a hard clicking sound. Taloned feet walking towards her.
Someone grabbed her from behind, lifting her by the waist and swinging her out of the dining-room door. Whoever it was pulled her back against the wall. She didn’t scream. The person was warm and alive. The sound of the talons faded and Lia turned around.
‘Harry,’ she whispered. ‘Thank God. What the hell is going on?’
‘I don’t know. Everything is all mixed up,’ he said.
He sounded strange. Less in control than usual.
‘You’re the first one I’ve seen since we came in,’ she said. ‘I was alone. Have you seen the others?’
He shook his head, but he was looking over her head. She got a creepy feeling and moved to stand with her back to the wall beside him. He fumbled for her hand and his fingers were icy cold.
‘What is it?’ she whispered.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Outside.’
Lia wished she could shut her eyes and not look, but she couldn’t help it. The darkness outside the open front door was moving. She squinted her eyes and suddenly everything came into focus and she saw clearly what Harry could see.
Hordes of the dead, all waiting. Most of them were just bones, but some still had fleshy parts. As if seeing them had raised a barrier, they began to shove their way in the door. Bones rattled across the tiles and, in the shove, several fell and smashed into individual parts. Fibias, tibias and a dice-like scatter of finger-and-toe bones.
Lia moved closer to Harry and was glad that he was holding her hand.
‘The sea sent them back,’ Harry said.
‘What?’ she whispered.
‘They’re the drowned, the murdered.’
‘So many?’ she said.
He didn’t take his eyes off them.
They were a terrible sight, but strangely Lia wasn’t afraid of them. They were helpless, lost. The sea had returned them but they weren’t an army. She felt a deep sorrow for them. Some still had long hair attached to their skulls. One small one, plainly a child, had the shredded remains of a blue ribbon in her hair. Others wore necklaces, whose pendants rattled inside their hollow chests. They were restless and unburied.
And suddenly among them, she saw faces she knew. These were also numbered among the dead, but their demise had not been at the hands of wreckers, luring their ships to the treacherous shore, to the Devil’s Teeth. She saw Rose, lips moving as though she were silently praying. Brendan came into view, and Lia thought he smiled at her before his eyes focused on something she couldn’t see. It was a haphazard parade of the island’s dead. Evan, Jim, Frank. Andrew. Harry’s hand tightened on hers when he saw them. He was hurting her, but his hand went loose before she could say anything.
Lia looked again and felt all the strength run out of her legs. Her face felt cold and stiff. Her dad was with the dead but, unlike them, he was standing still, and staring at her. He started towards her and Harry, and the others let him through.
Lia, my darling girl. I’ve missed you.
Tears filled Lia’s eyes and the image of her father blurred.
Hello, brother.
Hello, Will.
The night was clear and calm, with a doldrums feel. It was an ordinary night, not quite summer, not quite fall. Lia was no longer in the Hall. She was standing at the end the foot-worn path from the Robin’s Rest to the edge of the cliff, the dry ground spongy under her feet. A half-moon lent its light and the sky was orange on the horizon.
Two figures were walking along the path in single file. Their voices carried on the still air. Harry and her father. They passed without seeing her and sat at the cliff edge, dangling their legs over.
‘Been coming out here a while without you now, Will,’ Harry said. ‘It’s good to have you back.’
‘I told you, it’s only for a little while, Harry. I’m going back to New York, to my family.’
‘Your family is here. Always has been, always will be.’
‘You’re my family, but the others are not. Why don’t you come with me? Sell the Robin and come to New York with me. Get to know Jasmine and Lia.’
Harry shook his head. ‘You must be mad. You know what happens if we break the bond. You’re already looking older than me.’
‘What good is it to you, Harry? You’ve had hundreds of years. All of us have, but has any one of us ever been happy? Andrew and a couple of the others have been through wives and families, but the children always leave and the wives always die. Look down there.’ He pointed to the Devil’s Teeth below. ‘The bones of the wives are down there with the bones of those you all shipwrecked.’
‘There couldn’t be a record of successive wives – you know that. As for the shipwrecks, what we did you knew about.’
‘Yes, and tried to stop you,’ Will said.
There was silence for a while before Harry spoke again.
‘You’re going back to Jasmine after she’s been unfaithful to you?’
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‘I drove her to it, because I couldn’t settle. I was torn between here and there. Between my brother and my wife. She loves me still. It can be fixed.’
‘We have been brothers a long time,’ Harry said. ‘If you go, you will die.’
‘Yes,’ Will said. ‘But not for a few years. I’ll have my time with Jasmine and Lia.’
‘They’re worth that to you?’ Harry said.
‘They’re worth more than I could ever tell them.’
Harry sighed and stood up. He held his hand out and Will stood and took it.
‘Your family here loves you too. I love you.’
Will shook his head. ‘No, brother. It’s been too long. You crave more life than any man has a right to and all you love is her.’ He gestured with his free hand towards the Hall, invisible in the dark, but felt in the bones. ‘She took death from us but her gift bore a terrible price. You choose to stay and exist, and I choose to leave, to live and die a mortal man.’
Lia had loved and trusted Harry almost from the moment she had arrived on the island. She had known him for a mere fraction of his long existence compared to his brother, her father. Yet in that moment she knew not to trust him and she screamed to her father to watch out, but he couldn’t hear her. She tried to run to him but she couldn’t move. This was a window to the past and no more.
Harry let go of his brother’s hand and opened his arms. The two men hugged.
‘Goodbye, brother,’ Harry said.
He broke the hug, put his hands on his Will’s chest and shoved.
Lia screamed again. Will, the more slender of the brothers, flew backwards, his arms pinwheeling. He thrust out a hand for help but there was no hand to meet his. He fell out of sight over the cliff and Harry stood still, his head down. Then he turned and went back along the path to the Robin’s Rest.
With his departure, Lia was able to move. She threw herself down on her belly as she had done once before and looked down. It was too dark to see much, but there was enough of a moon to show a man caught on the Devil’s Teeth, with gentle waves washing around him.
She cried, the pain like a physical lump in her chest, trying to stop her breath. The truth overwhelmed her. Then a glimmer of comfort dawned – her father had not jumped to his death after all – the ‘witnesses’ had lied. With this thought, she felt the window to the past close.
When she opened her eyes, she was back in the Hall again. There was no one there with her except Harry. He was standing with his back to her, his broad shoulders low, his head bowed. She tried to move quietly along the wall, but he turned. His eyes were red-rimmed as though he had been crying. But they were full of knowledge. His features seemed more pointed, more cruel. His generous mouth had tightened into a thin line.
She broke into a run, trying to dodge past him. He grabbed her arm and spun her off her feet. When he let her go, she fell and slid along the tiles. Before she could get up, he was on her, holding her down with his body, pinning her wrists to the floor.
‘You’re not going anywhere. You are one of us, or you will be soon. Ed is already one of us. You can be with him forever. He’s a full-blood islander and you’re half. You’ll make children that will stay.’ He cocked his head to one side, bird-like. ‘She’s coming.’
His weight was suddenly knocked away. Lia scrambled to her feet.
It was Ed. He and Harry were rolling together on the ground. Ed was strong, but Harry was so much stronger. Lia looked around but there was nothing she could use as a weapon. Harry now had Ed pinned to the ground. Lia flung herself onto his back and went for his eyes with her nails. He roared and bucked but she clung on. He was forced to let Ed go but, instead of standing up, he rolled away and crushed her beneath him, knocking the air out of her lungs. Ed struggled up and pulled Harry off her, but Harry rolled again and pinned Ed down.
Lia, looking up and trying to breathe, saw her before the men did.
She didn’t look much like Ed, but she had the same intense expression that he wore when he was concentrating. She was less solid, less there than Will had been, but she had enough strength to pull Harry away from her son.
‘Mam!’ Ed called but she was gone.
Harry fell backwards but sprang quickly to his feet.
Lia tried to grab Ed’s hand but he pulled it away. He was different. Some part of him had wanted to protect her from Harry, but whatever the Strix had done to him had changed him. His eyes had a sheen of gold about them now. Ed was gone. Harry had killed her father. She should have wanted to run and get away from all of the horror, but the little girl who wanted to run away was no longer inside her. What she felt instead was rage.
Twenty-Seven
Later on he will understand how some men so loved her,
that they did dare much for her sake.
Bram Stoker, Dracula, 1897
Harry checked himself. He had no quarrel with Ed or Lia. The future depended on them and he must make them his allies.
Will had been wrong to leave. He hadn’t really been one of them, but the Strix had bestowed the same gift on him as she had on them all. Their reward for setting her free from her confinement on the ship. Will had always pulled against them. Going away and only visiting infrequently made the bond weaker. Going away forever and throwing the gift back in her face was just wrong.
Still, the memory of his hands on Will’s chest and the sensation of pushing his brother away from him, out over the cliff edge and down to the Devil’s Teeth, would never leave him. Sometimes, he sat and looked at his hands, wishing to erase the sensation of the push. He dreamed of hugging Will, and in the dreams they said goodbye and Will went back to America. These dreams were worse than nightmares. After a nightmare, he woke to discover that the monsters weren’t real. After the dream of his brother, Harry always awoke to discover that the horror was real, the monsters were real, and he was one of them.
Those moments were few. Most of the time, he could feel the Strix moving inside him, sliding along the corridors of veins and arteries in his blood, and could feel himself moving inside her. Nothing else mattered. Just taking care of her, keeping things square on the island, and living on and on.
Harry had grown to despise those of the old families who thought they loved mortal women. It led them to choose women from the mainland. The blood was being diluted. Harry could feel that they were gone. All of them. Andrew, Brendan, Jim and Evan. Will. He was the only one left, but Ed was a full-blood islander and Lia was half blood. They would make a strong line, more deeply connected than any had been for a long time. Harry would make sure that they stayed. Ed had already been visited by the Strix. Harry could feel the link between them growing. He might take Jasmine for himself. The Hall had let her in but never the likes of Matt. Mothers and babies shared blood. Lia must have passed a little of the old family blood to Jasmine. She was a beautiful woman and would be a good partner for a few years until she joined the others in the sea below.
Ah, he could feel the Strix approach. He turned away from Ed and Lia and stood at the bottom of the stairs, the place where they had thrown so many half dead people for her meal. She appeared at the top and slowly descended. When she reached the bottom she leaned in to him for a kiss. It was a kiss that went on for a long time. He basked in her touch and her attention. It was only towards the end of the kiss that he began to feel that something was wrong. He often felt weak when he was with her, depending on whether he was feeding her or she was feeding him but this was different.
He found it harder to keep his arms around her slender body. It became such an effort to hold them up that he stopped trying and stood there while she kissed him. He was dizzy and cold and for a moment he tried to struggle but his limbs wouldn’t obey him. If she had let him go, he would have fallen.
He opened his eyes and saw that she was watching him, her golden eyes intent.
He knew then that she was saying goodbye in the only way she knew how. Death was the only thing that could part them and she had decided to br
ing Death to him. She had chosen someone new. Rage and jealousy made him able to struggle a little but her strength was much greater than his. The bond between them hadn’t yet broken and, as she continued to kiss his life away, he knew that she had chosen Ed as her new companion. Would he have the same gift of long life, or would he change and become like her? Sharp, beautiful, fierce. Was it Lia who would have to stay and feed them?
He was struck by the image of Lia, forever sixteen, finding her own way to bring prey in return for life. Now that his connection with the Strix was coming to an end, his love for her was no longer his driving force. Pain and sorrow filled him and tears rolled down his cheeks.
There was so much to regret. He and his friends had wrecked ships and stolen gold and jewels and lives before the Strix came. Will had been the good one. He didn’t deserve everything that happened to him. Together, they had watched their parents grow old and die. They had themselves married, only to watch wives and children live and die, like the mayfly, a whole life in the blink of an eye. Now that the centuries were coming to an end, he couldn’t quite remember why he had killed his brother. Disloyalty to the Strix and to his old companions didn’t seem a good enough reason. The connection to the Strix and the others upon whom she had bestowed her gift was suddenly tenuous.
There were so many dead. So many strangers, so many loved ones. He knew he had not been a good man but he no longer understood how to pray, or to ask for forgiveness. It was too late anyway. There was no more time left.
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