Blood & Dust (14 page)

This is the house of sorrow; a white house for white pain. A winnowy girl dresses
in white and serves tea. She is barely pubescent, her breasts budding. Her hair is worn in a bob cut
under a white cap; her long, thin legs are clad in white stockings, her slender arms covered by long
sleeves. Her face is round and radiant, her brown eyes alert with humour. She likes serving tea. It
is all she has known, serving tea and being taught to play piano and cross-stitch, to cook and to
mend and pronounce her 'ings'. She loves swimming in the creek and running in the moonlit fields
when they are bare and furrowed, waiting for replanting. She loves visiting the nearby beaches at
Hervey Bay; loves licking ice-creams on the esplanade and riding the dodgem cars and shooting pool.

Taipan hates it. He refuses to pronounce his 'ings'. He hates the starched
clothes, he hates the tea, he hates the white boys making jokes about his sister, the vile hunger in
their eyes feeding on every patch of skin she shows, the way they whisper too loud the words of hate
- boong, Abo, coon. She is his sister and he hates everything about her. Yet he loves her so
intensely it burns. His mind and heart rage. He remembers when the coppers came and herded the
children like dogs into the paddy wagon. Being slapped for speaking his tongue, learning to say the
Lord's Prayer under the nuns' hawkish gaze. Being inspected by the good Christian folk looking to
save his soul. Hitting the man who would have taken his sister and left him. Remembers sensing
something different about the woman with her hair in a bun, her tiny glasses, her elegant stature,
the billowing skirt and cameo at her neck-high collar as she picked his sister and him from the dorm
one night. Jasmine calls them Christopher and Heather but he refuses to use those names. She is
Willa, only Willa.

He finds Jasmine with his sister one night, all blood and fangs and licking
tongue and thrusting, caressing fingers. She uses his love of his sister, his now monstrous sister,
to keep him prisoner. When he is at what she calls his manly peak, Jasmine comes for him, too,
seeking to quell his rebellious nature with her own bloody power. But it works the other way, the
blood fuelling his resolve, giving him the strength to break free, plumbing depths of strength as
old as the earth itself. He manages to wound Jasmine before jumping from an upper storey window.
With a vow to free his sister, he flees into the night. An owl watches him leap the perimeter fence
and push through the green cane. He takes the bird as a good omen; his sister will be protected in
his absence.

He becomes Taipan but she remains Willa, always Willa. She is the ache that won't
dull, the emptiness that can't be filled, the shame that can't be washed clean.

It was fully dark when Kevin came to his senses. He stood and brushed at the mud
caked to him. The half moon had dropped in the sky, but it was brighter than he remembered; much,
much brighter. The stars felt close enough to touch. The softest of breezes caressed the hairs on
his arms. The scent of fresh exhaust. Voices. The Night Riders had guests. He walked back to the
shed, noting the bikes parked near the Rover.

Hippie shouted to him from where he sat puffing on a sickly sweet cigarette. The scent triggered
a memory of Derek and Hippie in the farmhouse, of that aroma draped around them like a feather boa.

'Back from walkabout, eh? Budgie and his boys arrived just a jiffy ago. G'arn inside outta the
cold.'

'You coming in?'

'Nah, I'm on guard duty, man.' He blew a cloud of smoke and chuckled. 'I'm the high in the sky.'

Kevin headed for the door. He'd never seen much in the way of drugs. Some of the lads on the
cricket team had had grass, but that was about it. He'd never got the point, never understood the
trade-off. Never wanted it bad enough to get a boot up the arse from his old man.

He paused at the door, feeling like a gatecrasher as the hubbub filled the room on the other
side.
Never had any time for drugs, and look at me now.
He pushed through the noise barrier,
stepped onto the shearing platform and damn near tripped over Penny. She was sitting with her back
to a wall and a steaming mug of soup clutched in her hands. She looked ashen.

His mother, when she'd been sick when he was young, real sick, all grey with
sunken eyes and knobbly bones and thin, tight, yellowed skin.

He stumbled, regained his balance, blinked the afterimages of the memory away, to find Reg
sitting beside Penny. She leaned on his shoulder, her eyes filled with a staring weariness.

'Hey,' he said, forcing himself to focus. He was back in the shed, but the sorrow and fear were
taking longer to drain away.

The rest of the gang were crowded around the Esky where Taipan and Acacia kneeled over a map by
the light of a hissing gas lamp. Budgie gave Kevin a nod from the midst of the gathering, their
subdued chatter making him think of a swarm of midges.

The Night Riders, caught somewhere between the thrill and guilt of survival.

Kevin felt like the kid who'd turned up to a party in fancy dress when it wasn't. Unnerving
crimson and green eyes studied him, as if the gang could see inside his head, as though they knew
Taipan had come to him in the night, had fed from Kala and then gone to Kevin and given him his
blood memories. But he couldn't see Kala - where was she? What had happened to her?

'Taipan?' Concern pushed him forward.

The biker was talking to Budgie, who bent to point something out on the map.

Closer. Louder: 'Chris?'

Taipan leapt to his feet, forged through the gangers toward him. Before Kevin knew what was
happening, Taipan's fists were bunched at his collar, pushing him hard up against a pole. It was
like being squashed against a crush by a wild bull. Taipan's eyes blazed with ice-green fury.

'You don't say that name. No-one says that name.'

'I saw; I heard-'

'You saw - you heard -
nothin'
.'

Kevin nodded, embarrassingly aware of everyone watching.

'You don't mention
him
, you don't mention
her
. Not to me. Not to anyone. You got
it?'

'Sure, sure.'

Taipan let him drop and stepped back. 'All right, you mob, listen up - party's over. We can't
afford to stay here for a day. We need to lay down some mileage, keep some daylight between us and
that VS mob. So start packin'.'

Kala appeared out of the scrum and came to Kevin where he sagged against the post. 'You okay?'

He pulled away, feeling guilty but not sure why. Taipan had fed from her and then fed him; it all
felt wrong somehow. Dirty.

'Remember what I told you back at the house,' she said. 'We keep it to ourselves.'

He nodded. A few of the gang had smirked when Taipan had torn him a new one, but most just looked
anxious. There were, he realised, a lot of guns.

Kala reached again and this time he let her touch him. She brushed at the dirt. 'I guess we all
look pretty scruffy, eh? Sleepin' rough.'

'You don't look so bad,' he said.

'You're well enough to flirt, you're well enough to help pack the gear.' Her lips lifted at the
corners in a smile that made his chest tighten. He hadn't been lying about her looking good. Had to
shut down the flash memory of feeding from her. From her and Meg; God, Meg.

'Hey,' he asked. 'What was that thing?' He jerked his head at Reg, standing, helping Penny to her
feet.

For a moment, he didn't think Kala was going to answer, but then she admitted, 'We need it. Like
a drug. But from just one. It gets too confusing, otherwise, two or more in your head at once,
pulling you in different ways.'

'So if you drank my blood, what would happen?'

'If I drank enough, absorbed enough, we'd forge a link.'

'But you're already linked to Taipan.'

'His blood is stronger, so his link would be stronger.' She bit her lip, then added, 'He's my
fix.'

'What about Nigel, then? Who was his fix? Why didn't they know he was gonna dob you all in?'

'Nigel didn't have a fix. He got fed a brew - different vampires mixing their blood. None of them
strong enough to make a link, but enough to give him all the benefits - healing, strength, sharper
senses.'

'But-'

Taipan forced his way between them. 'Does this look like a QCWA meetin' to you? You still waitin'
for ya tea and pikelets? I said get packin'. Now say goodbye to Budgie there and let's get to it.'

'Where's Budgie going?' Kevin asked, but Taipan was hauling Kala away to help Penny.

'Takin' a few of the lads inland,' the bald biker said from where he crouched nearby over his
saddlebag. 'Gonna raise some hell, run some distraction.'

'Good luck, I guess,' Kevin mumbled.

Budgie gave him a wink. 'You keep your arse out of the daylight, and we'll catch up with you at
The Farm in a coupla days.'

'The Farm?' Kevin asked, but everyone was in motion, Taipan herding them.

Before he knew it, he was scrambling into the back of the Rover with the three red-eyes. Penny
was already asleep; Kala looked exhausted, nodding off where she lay on bedrolls next to Penny.
Hippie sat at the back, rolling a smoke. Taipan took the driver's seat and dug out his tobacco
pouch. 'Hop over here,' he told Kevin. 'You're ridin' shotgun.'

Kevin scrambled into the cabin to find a submachine gun, its bare steel stock extended, on the
seat.

'You can shoot, eh,' Taipan said. 'You bein' a country
boy 'n' all.'

'Sure,' Kevin said, though the automatic was a bit more advanced than the guns he was used to.

'Just don't shoot ya dick off. Or mine.' Taipan gave him a cheeky look, as though he knew just
what temptation he'd presented Kevin with.

'Kala looked pretty wiped,' Kevin said as he made a point of keeping the barrel pointed out the
window.

'Don't mind 'bout that myxo. That girl needs her rest, that's all. Don't go botherin' her. She
might hafta drive, once the sun comes up.'

'What about the bikes?'

'Hippie and Penny can handle 'em.'

Hippie threw a victory salute of acknowledgement of his bike-riding prowess.

Taipan clashed the gears and the Rover lurched forward, the bikes swarming around it. Budgie's
group split off at the bitumen with a beeping of horns. Budgie threw a long mono of farewell.

They drove, and the night was vivid, the stars bright, the Rover a miasma of diesel and dust and
gun oil, the sound of engine and tyres subsiding into a drowsy background hum. Kevin fought to stay
awake. He didn't want to go back into that dreamscape where everything was, he presumed, real. Where
snippets of his life would rise and goad with forgotten details, where bits and pieces of Taipan's
life and Kala's, too, would bob up through the stream, throwing him off-kilter, each so very
personal, threatening to make him forget who he was. And for all that, none of them would reveal the
one truth he most wanted to know.

'What happened to my father?' Kevin asked.

'You didn't see it?' Taipan asked, tapping his forehead.

'No,' Kevin said. 'I saw your sister, and you, at a cane farm. Is that where we're going?'

'That place is gone, long time ago,' Taipan said. 'And like I told you already - you don't talk
to me 'bout Willa. You don't talk to no-one 'bout her.'

'Okay then. What about my dad?'

'I won't talk to no-one about him, either.'

The compulsion to push the man out of the Rover was so strong it made Kevin quiver. But all he
did was say, 'Fuck you. Fuck the lot of you.' He sat and watched the sign posts to familiar places
flash by in the night. It reminded him he was going farther and farther away from home. He wondered
about his mother and Meg. Did Taipan dream of them? He hoped not. Finally he succumbed to his
exhaustion, slept, and it all happened again, but this time - this time - he saw everything.

He uses the wall for support as he scrambles to his feet, his ankles still bound
by wire. The mechanic has the shotgun pointed at him. The son's blood is in his mouth; his
lifestream's pulsing through his mind.

'This first-aid gig is startin' to become a habit.'

'What's wrong?' the father asks. 'Did it work?'

'Lost too much. You don't wanna donate a pint, eh, Thomas?'

'Did it work?'

'It takes time. But yeah, it's worked, all right.' The hunger is in the kid,
wormin' through him. He can feel it in his blood.'

'This cop was healing while I watched.' Thomas nods at the Hunter on the floor
near his son.

'Scratches for the likes of him. This is heavier kadaicha. All the way to the
soul.'

'When I know my boy's alive, then I'll help you out of here.'

'Might not have that much time, fella.'

'Then you're in trouble, aren't you.'

'One of us is, that's for sure.'

'Fine, I believe you.' Thomas hands him the pliers, then puts a set of keys on
the corner of the desk and steps away. 'For the truck. In the garage.'

'Keep ya truck.' He gestures at the office door, blocked by a filin' cabinet.
'You get me outside, my gang'll take care of the rest.'

'And you'll let us all go?'

He squats, back to the wall, awkwardly cuts the wire away from his ankles. 'We
couldn't give a shit about you. Don't know about them other blokes though.'

'I'll take my chances.'

'There's more to that Hunter than meets the eye, eh.'

'I figured.'

'I don't reckon you have. They don't send just anyone to pick up my kind. Maybe
you should just use that.'

The father considers his shotgun. 'I'm not a murderer.'

'He is. So am I.'

Thomas walks to the cabinet, puts the shotgun down. 'Then let's go, before he
wonders where I've got to.'

'Actually, I was already wondering that,' the Hunter says from the doorway. Fuck.
The barrel of his pistol covers them. 'Letting him go isn't the best idea.'

'My son's dying. My wife's up at that house. We're surrounded by gunmen. You tell
me what you'd do.'