Ropes followed – long, thin, red cords, each going through a piton head to join the hairs. Getting out of the way, unable to disguise her unease, Amanda stood outside the room as Zoe took her time arranging the ends, gathering them together in her hands. She started to mutter words over them and, even from out in the hall, Amanda could sense the magical build-up.
Mallory had finally stopped talking, which wasn’t the relief Amanda had expected, as the man started to strip. The vest fell to the floor first, then the boots, then the jeans.
He joined in the chant, his words slipping over and under Zoe’s, modulating his tone. For a moment, they were working in a strange harmony – a moment spoiled by the fact that he kept stepping closer and closer to her until the tips of his toes were nudging the sides of her boots.
Zoe paid him no mind, concentrating on her work. She stepped away, backing out of the room, carefully, step by step, holding the ropes before her.
Three quick words and synchronised cantrips between them and the free ends of the ropes all snapped to the centre of the room, attached themselves to Mallory’s limbs. They whipped him up into the air.
The ropes and pitons creaked for a moment as Zoe stepped further back, hands out like she expected the whole thing to collapse.
‘You good?’ she asked him when the ropes held.
‘Course I am.’
‘Good.’ She walked forward and grabbed his nose hard, making the man call out in pain. ‘Stop standing so fucking close. This is hard enough without feeling your nasty little dick pressed against my leg.’
‘Ugh. It was a joke! Only a joke. Fucking hell.’
She let go. ‘We’re headed down the corridor. Shout if you need anything.’
‘Wait!’ For a second, Mallory actually sounded panicked. ‘My blood. Come on, I need it to get this done. Come on.’
‘Yeah, don’t think I will.’ She shot Amanda a wink.
‘You fucking bitch! I’ll fucking kill you, you fucking—’
‘All right, calm down. I can have a joke too, can’t I? Fucking hell.’ She pulled the bag off her shoulder and drew a small capped vial from a side pocket.
The image of it made Amanda’s face feel cold and she turned away, trying to block out the sound of the wide, wet breath of a man with his mouth held open.
‘Ready? You sure? Ready.’
‘Just fucking…’ The man’s words cut off, his breath becoming thick gulps, gasps for air. ‘Yes, yes, yes.’
Mallory was a blood addict. There had been too much else going on for Amanda to have spotted the signs earlier, but it all made sense. Blood gave Abras a boost of magic when they needed it, but it was hugely addictive and burned someone out if they didn’t get a steady supply, specially prepared. That must have been how Harry and Fitzackley were keeping a man like Mallory under control.
The sound of the man’s gasps made her feel ill, long tendons of memory reaching back to her childhood. Her head filled with images of bleeding into bowls to feed her father’s addiction. Not so much a single memory as a slew of them, a whole twisted, knotted braid of her life that spread its threads through so many parts of her, the world and how she interacted with it.
Now she was a twist of the scared little girl she’d been and the woman angry at that scared little girl all at once. Nauseous, angry, gritting her teeth, she wasn’t sure if she was shaking from nerves or fury or disgust. It was taking all of her energy not to make a noise.
The sound eventually died, the screw cap going back on as Mallory gave a sigh that was part relief and part elation.
‘That’s it,’ said Zoe.
‘You might need to prepare more,’ said Mallory. ‘This is a big job. Get some more ready for me, would you?’
‘You’ve had plenty. If you can’t do it on that, then you’re not going to do it at all. Now come on, let’s get started.’ Zoe turned, spotting Amanda’s expression for the first time. ‘You OK?’
‘Fine. What happens now?’
‘Now the magic happens. Between the hair and the room, he should be able to divine where she is.’
‘Why didn’t we start with this? Instead of spending our day—’
‘Because it’s not exact and if Karina knows her shit, she’ll feel this coming and start running. We just have to hope that we catch her scent. I’m going back to the kitchen to grab something to eat. Stay here and keep an eye on him, I won’t be long. Give us a shout if something goes wrong?’
‘How will I tell?’ Amanda asked as the woman started down the corridor.
‘You’ll know.’
The ropes creaked, held taut by the man’s stringy body in the centre, Mallory suspended in a spiderweb of blood-red strands.
Sighing, he began to mutter.
The smell of magic grew stronger, making Amanda’s nose prickle. The scars on her arms and legs began to itch.
A breeze stirred from nowhere, delivering a salt kiss. For a moment, the concrete beneath Amanda felt like soil running through her toes. The sound of waves crashed around the walls once, trailing silence after it. Mallory’s muttering was a constant monotone beneath it all, weaving his incantations.
Forest sounds turned to the groan of machinery turned to the rasp of someone snoring. There was the muffled murmur of a conversation in another room, the chink of cutlery. For a half-moment, there was the quiet whicker of horses. Amanda briefly tasted earth, salt, then, strangely, tomato. The net he was casting was bringing back strange moments of synaesthesia.
There was the feel of sand and stones under her feet, the cold of kitchen tiles against her palms. She could hear what she thought might be a photocopier. Fresh manure and the foetid smell of some wild animal’s nest. There was the sensation of a pen scratching on paper. Stone scraped on stone, but there was something different to the noise. Amanda blinked; the sound had come from inside the room.
Looking around, she saw the rock in the corner that Zoe had pointed to and dismissed earlier. She stared hard, watching it carefully. She didn’t have to wait long. It shivered, sliding an inch towards her, towards Mallory.
Mallory’s eyes were closed, his expression one of stern concentration, his eyelids shifting as his gaze moved across the island.
Making sure he wasn’t watching, she picked up the stone.
She caught another flash of sensation; an image appeared in her head, the ocean lapping at a shingle beach, the ring of the curse storm flashing its lightning in the distance. At the same time, she felt a tug in her chest, almost two tugs, the weaker pulling her towards Mallory, the stronger up and out onto the surface.
She knew what this was – a lodestone. She’d seen them in the films and on TV shows. They were rare, could only be made by a pair of expert magic users who cared for one another: lovers or family. Holding it created a strange one-way connection, an emotional, almost physical connection with one of its creators.
This was it, this was what she was looking for. Follow the tug she felt when she squeezed it and it would lead her straight to Karina without the woman even knowing it.
But why did Karina have this? She couldn’t have smuggled it in, it would have been found long ago. Had she made it with someone here on the island? No, whoever had owned this had been the one who had helped her escape. They must have dropped it in the altercation with Mallory, unable to retrieve it when Karina’s escape had been discovered.
Amanda thought of the guards who might have searched the room, touching the stone with gloved hands and throwing it aside, if they’d touched it at all, dismissing it as Zoe had done, as a keepsake.
Mallory’s breath caught in his throat. He made a choking sound. He jerked once, twice, now fighting against his restraints, but they wouldn’t let go.
It took a moment of staring at the man in horror before Amanda began to see the steam rising from his body.
‘You all right?’ she heard herself asking. Glancing down the corridor, she wondered if she should call Zoe.
The ropes strained in all directi
ons as the man pulled, his muscles standing out like skinny knots in his arms as he struggled to curl himself into a ball. She could hear him fighting to scream, a fight that he began to win, the sound eking its way through his squeezed throat, finding purchase until he was roaring.
‘Zoe!’ Amanda called, but the effort was needless, Zoe was already bounding up the corridor towards them.
‘What’s going on?’
‘I don’t know. He just started…’
‘Shit.’ Zoe pushed past her. ‘Get Harry.’
‘What’s happening?’
‘That bitch is good. I think she’s fighting back. Go, get someone.’ Zoe put her hands to Mallory’s head and started to utter her incantations.
This was it, Amanda realised. This was her chance.
The man was definitely steaming, wisps of it curling around his body, like it was seeping from the seams of his muscles and out from between his ribs. He was held in a rictus, his teeth clenched, unable to do more than grunt.
Backing away, she ran down the corridor, headed for the crew’s apartments and the private exit.
She heard Zoe shouting her name, doubled her pace.
Mallory cried out in pain and Amanda smiled.
Let the fucker hurt.
The men were nowhere to be seen as she passed their bedrooms, through the kitchen and up the stairs. The door to their exit wasn’t even locked.
The fresh air was the sweetest thing she’d ever tasted.
She let the stone pull at her hand, leading her back around the prison, in the direction of the dock. Her nerves still rang with the strange sense memory of Mallory’s synaesthetic effluvia.
The tall plate fence loomed to her left, blotting out the stars. To the right, she could make out the not-so-distant lights of the small village that formed the guards’ quarters. She was walking across a field, feeling horribly exposed, the moonlight above a weak glow through the clouds, sketching the way ahead and the steam on her breath.
The lightning and thunder were muted in the distance, the charged feel of a late-summer storm. The strobe from the cursed clouds did little to illuminate her path.
She wouldn’t see a guard until she was on top of them in the dark and she trusted that the same would apply for them if they came looking for her.
There was going to be some backlash to this, going off and doing the job herself, but she would deal with that later.
The tug of the stone was leading her through the houses. There was no choice but to go around, the pier a distant light to her left.
She could see her destination already, a dark clot of trees past the neck of what they generously called the ‘North Island’. She recognised it from the map in Fitzackley’s office. It was little more than a growth on the side of the main island, a fraction of the size of the larger piece. If the island’s shape resembled anything, it was an acorn and this small island, long and narrow, was its stalk.
It was the exact opposite direction Drummond had mentioned the dogs’ finding a scent, the opposite side to where they’d concentrated their search. Amanda was impressed all over again. This woman was running rings around her pursuers and they didn’t even know it. Too bad she wouldn’t find out how she’d done it.
At the neck, she could see the ocean in both directions, cross from beach to beach in less than a minute. As the land widened out again, it grew a thinner covering of trees, which Amanda joined.
She checked the knife in her pocket, tried to get her breathing under control, tried to shake the nerves.
This was for Michaela, she told herself. And she repeated it over and over and over again to drown out all the other thoughts that fought for supremacy in her head.
She could see the beach up ahead. The cloud cover had begun to break, the sand pale under the stars, the high moon reflecting off the waves.
There she was. A woman stood on a small spit of sand, the most northerly point of the island, staring out to sea. She was dressed in her prison coat, trousers and boots, all of which had seen better days. Her long black hair was kept under control in a braid.
The storm boiled far off the coast, thunder and lightning fighting to escape the clouds, like an animal behind bars.
Scowling with the effort of staying quiet, Amanda pulled out the knife. She held it close to her leg, not wanting a glint from the blade to give her away.
Waves crashed, masking the crunch of her boots in the sand.
She was only feet away when the woman turned. Her fist was clenched around the sister stone, held protectively to her chest.
Karina looked both more and less than the woman Amanda had seen on the television, shorter perhaps. Her skin was sallow and drawn; it looked as though she hadn’t slept in days. The relief on her face was desperate and quickly soured as she realised that the person coming out to meet her was not her friend. Her gaze slipped downwards as Amanda shifted her grip on the blade. Lightning flashed off the metal.
All of a sudden, Amanda was unable to think of what came next. She’d never killed like this before. What should she do? Grab her and bring the knife up into her belly? Try for the throat? Or the chest?
She just wished the woman would stop looking at her.
Karina had frozen, nowhere to run, her expression twisting and twitching as fear overwhelmed her. Tears glittered in her eyes.
Caleb would already be finished. Amanda had done worse. She had killed people before. Bad people. Karina was bad. She wouldn’t be here if she weren’t. Whatever the police had found in her home from that raid, it had to have been bad. Her daughter’s life depended on Amanda doing this. She would bear the weight, bear the guilt to keep her little girl safe.
‘Get away from her, you bitch!’ The voice came out from among the trees, piercing the sound of the water, the thud of blood in Amanda’s ears.
Amanda turned and where a moment ago there had been nobody, there was the shape of a woman. Face cloaked in shadow, Amanda could only see that the newcomer wasn’t a prisoner. None of her clothes were prison-issue – the jeans, the top, the coat.
The woman stepped forward, her expression a rabid snarl, a look of pure fury.
It was only as Amanda met the girl’s eyes that she recognised her.
‘Steph?’
And the girl unleashed, throwing out her hands. Amanda didn’t even feel the blow; the girl, Karina, the trees, the beach all retreating at speed as she flew out and out and out.
There was the briefest sensation of hitting the ocean, the water swallowing her whole and then…
Nothing.
Chapter Twelve
Michaela stumbled out of Pearce’s house like she was drunk. Reeling from how thoroughly the man had pulled the rug out from underneath both her and her mother, she quickly lost herself in the maze of streets.
He was using each of them to control the other. They were both so far apart, how were they meant to fight it?
Lights were off in every home, even the noise of the traffic here seemed fainter. She’d never felt so alone.
She’d worked so hard to be independent, to meet life on her terms. Leaving her mother, using what money she’d had tucked away, she’d got her own place and used every scrap of knowledge to figure out a living for herself. But that independence, that enforced solitude, it hadn’t made her stronger, only more vulnerable to sharks like Pearce. And now the only person in the world she could turn to was the one being used against her.
How could she have been so stupid?
Wandering the streets, crying and shivering, she began to piece herself back together. Unable to face going home, a place he had already violated, she finally settled in an all-night café in Soho.
The place was almost empty, lights low, the single member of staff deep into a book. Two women were sat near the back, sharing a short tube of emo. Contentment, if Michaela was any judge, the way they smiled and sat back in their chairs, stroking the rims of their coffee cups.
Picking a corner, she watched the video over and over
again, unable to believe that it was her mother doing magic, shouting those words. But there was no mistaking her.
Moving on, she devoured every article she could find about the prison and quickly became frustrated at the lack of concrete facts.
Why would Pearce want her mother sent to that awful place? It didn’t make any sense. Was it a revenge thing? Mum had never mentioned a Pearce, but then that wasn’t his real name.
All this work and stress and it had told her nothing.
A quick search for him on the internet revealed the house wasn’t even his. It was still for sale. Whatever he’d been using it for, she was sure it would be empty by the time she returned, leaving no trace that he had even been there.
What was he up to?
There was no way for her to find out. Whatever she tried, he was already a step ahead of her. There was nothing she could do. She’d been out-thought, outmanoeuvred, beaten before she’d even known there was a fight.
There was only one way out.
‘You’re calling me now? Thought you said—’
‘I need you to meet me. Now.’
* * *
Jared was late. She’d had time to go back to Pearce’s rented office to pick something up and was still waiting in the cold. But her heart leapt at the sight of him.
‘Hey,’ the boy grinned on seeing her and came in for a hug.
She stopped him with a hand to the chest, then whipped her head away when he tried to kiss her on the cheek. ‘You’re late and this isn’t like that, this is serious.’
‘But it doesn’t have to be.’
Jesus Christ. ‘I need you to listen. Come on, I don’t want anyone overhearing.’
‘Who’s going to be listening?’
‘I don’t know. Come on.’
Leading him down the street, she hoped she wasn’t making some huge mistake. Jared was better than most of these drug boys: he could keep his mind on business more than half of the time. His life was a constant string of business deals and ideas, one eye fixed permanently on the horizon, looking for the paths that would get him ahead. It was the other eye she had to watch.
Strange Ways Page 17