Dead of Light (31 page)

Those inside that could still move, legend said, had dragged themselves one by one from the twisted wreck of their car, staggered or crawled to the railing, hauled themselves over and plummeted down to the tidal suck of the river.

And Uncle James had all this time been sitting quietly in his car, twenty metres further down the bridge and watching it all happen, making it all happen, legend said, without so much as turning his head to look. He did it with mirrors.

o0o

That was the legend of James' talent, and I'd always thought it stretched, as legends are. But now I felt it, now I learned the truth and something more also, something of the life of the untalented in this town. How it feels to be cattle on a Macallan ranch. There had always been Hazel giving me hints, giving me clues and little nudges; but this was different, this was emphatic, a lesson writ in flame inside my body, burned deep into the bone.

Uncle James' will closed over me like intentional water, surrounding and engulfing and then forcing in through inadequate barriers of skin. It gripped me as a hand grips a glove, from the inside out. Nothing was mine except my thoughts, and briefly I wasn't certain even of those.

I guess I must have looked strange, but only slightly. A little stiff, a little jerky in movement, nothing more than that. The light was bad, stark black and white and mostly black; and no one was close enough to see my eyes, beyond maybe a panic flash as they rolled in my skull. Even those were outwith my own control, but Uncle James wasn't bothering to take charge there. Not for lack of ability, I reckoned, only lack of interest. Right then I profoundly believed every rumour I'd ever heard about his preponderance of talent — and Christ, Allan was supposed to be
better
than this?

My aimless eyes jerked and slithered: faces and walls, the pavement, the car, spinning at bad angles like a hectic movie montage. I was caged, I was floating. I could touch nothing, couldn't get a grip; nor would the world grip me.

A skilled puppeteer, my uncle walked me to the car, opened the door for me himself and folded me in. Only a few seconds it took, before he stepped back and released me; but already I was frantic, I was desperate, I was soul cruelly exiled from body and I thought not very much more of it would madden me forever.

When he left me, when the cloak of his desire slipped from my shoulders, I felt utterly disorientated inside my own skin. Sweating and soul-sick, I lifted shaking hands towards my eyes only to see myself to do that, to know that I had control again of hands and eyes both; and then I toppled more than leant sideways, a sour urgency rising in my throat and only one clear thought in my head,
don't spew in Uncle James' limo, don't do anything ever again to upset Uncle James...

I got my head out of the open door of the car just in time; a thin vomit burned my mouth and spattered on the pavement. The acrid stink of it in my nose was like smelling-salts, almost, it sharpened my reeling mind and gave me focus. My eyes watered and my nose was running, there was foul dribble on my chin; I reached up instinctively with the back of my hand but someone intercepted, gripping my wrist to still it. Thin fingers, female fingers: I could see legs also, carefully straddling the pool of my vomit. Looking up, thinking
Carol
, I found Laura instead.

Her face said she was shocked and frightened and curious, all three; scientist and medic as she was, the greatest of those would be curiosity, I thought. But not yet, because she was friend also. Even from her side of the great divide, what lay between us was strong enough to overcome the rest. For a while, for a little while...

“There's a box of Kleenex on the back,” she said, nothing more than that; but then she put one hand on my shoulder for balance, stretched past me into the car and came up with treasure, a fat handful of tissues.

And shook her head when I reached to take them, and quickly and efficiently did the work herself instead, mopping my sweat-slick brow and my eyes and my mouth against my mumbled protests. What was left of the wad after she pressed into my hand, and said, “Here. I'm not blowing your nose for you. But what happened, Ben?” The curiosity was rising like oil through water, pushing to the surface regardless. “You look dreadful; and the way you just caved in like that, it's not like you, stubborn as shit you are...”

Either Jamie hadn't told her about his father's talent or she just hadn't made the connection, seeing it at work for the first time. But I only shook my head, seeing no reason to help Jamie out here, wondering what else he hadn't told her.

Behind her, Uncle James said, “Get into the car, please. We don't have time to waste.”

Laura bit her lip, glanced at me briefly and read my surrender in my face. She climbed in over my legs and sat down beside me, squeezing my knee as she settled; after a second the door opened on the other side and Carol got in. She seemed confused, unhappy with the arrangements; but this was no time to start swapping around.

Jamie sat in the front, although he could have joined us three without squeezing, the car was wide enough. It felt like a class division, real Macallans only in the first rank of seats. He did his best to bridge that, sitting awkwardly sideways and peering Chad-like at us over the headrest, even reaching between the seats to fumble for Laura's hand before she shook her head at him,
don't be ridiculous
; those were gestures, though, gestures at best. This was Uncle James' car, Uncle James' world we were sat in, and that meant them and us with barriers between too wide to breach. Even Jamie couldn't punch those walls down; and he knew it, and he wasn't really trying.

His father was still out in the street, talking to Lamartine. I could see them through the windscreen, and also the harsh-lit white shape in the road that was Steve cloaked with Gino's tablecloth. Dark patches were spreading already through the linen, doing more than stain.

A few abrupt words, a jab of his hand towards that tablecloth, and Uncle James came back to the car. Got in, sat down, twisted like a mirror-image of his son to see back for reversing, and Laura said, “Could we have this window open, please? Ben's side?”

He just stared at her.

I heard Jamie suck a warning breath and I guess both of us were sending her telepathic messages,
be careful, for God's sake, you don't know what he's like when he gets mad
; but, “Ben needs air,” she said calmly, seeming totally unfazed. Only her fingers on my leg said that was a lie, twitching nervously at the wrinkles in my jeans.

“Don't want him throwing up again,” Jamie murmured. Uncle James' finger stabbed on a button, the window wound itself quietly down beside me, and pity me because I caught the look that Laura gave my cousin then, her own sweet sending.

I love you
, that look was saying; and I turned my head away into the flow of dark air, dark thoughts as the car shot backwards up the alley, crunching broken glass with no respect for its tyres.

o0o

Uncle James drove us quickly out of town, and none of us spoke again before he'd pulled up with a scatter of gravel in front of his big house. I'd kept my face in the wind all the way, slowly recovering my body, testing my possession of it: clenching fists and toes, flexing muscles, reclaiming what should never have been lost. I wanted yet another bath, deeper and hotter; I wanted to wash the taint of my uncle from my flesh inside and out, but I wasn't Laura, and I knew I wouldn't dare to ask.

Probably I wasn't the only one glad of the breeze in the back there. It couldn't have been easy for either Laura or Carol to be cooped up in a car, even a car so large, with three Macallans setting their nerves to shiver. Too much else on their minds, I thought, for either my cousin or my uncle to have noticed the change in me, but I had to be adding to the girls' inevitable discomfort. Guilt again: for the first time I was irredeemably part of the problem, and no solution in sight.

As soon as the car was still I had the door open and was out of there, stamping and stretching, still feeling weak and uncertain. Carol was no slower, on the other side. One glimpse of her across the limo's roof and my own face twisted in sympathy with hers; she looked close to chundering in her turn, and I hated myself and all my blood. And hated my uncle for dragging her along, and myself again and more for having been the catalyst that drew her into this.

“Just breathe deep,” I told her quietly. “It passes.”

She nodded,
thanks
or maybe
thanks, but I worked that out for myself already
, and then she doubled over, propping her arms against bent knees for balance. I was around the back of the limo without pause for thought, but when I got there she lifted her head to greet me with a half-hearted grin.

“Thought you were going to throw up,” I muttered, oddly embarrassed.

“Not me. I never throw up. Felt dizzy standing, that's all. But what is it, damn it? What does that? It's fun, sort of, with one of you. With you,” making me look around quickly, see if anyone was listening; but Laura was only just getting out on the other side with Jamie helping, and Uncle James was already halfway to the door, expecting us to follow. There were lights burning all through the house; no sleep for anyone tonight. “But Laura says it's always like this when there's a bunch of you together. You make us poor mortals feel awful...”

“We're mortal,” I said, and winced to hear myself say it, so soon after Steve had proved it. From the expression on her face, she didn't need reminding either. “Uncle Allan says it's psychic resonance, we've each got our own and they sort of clash when we're together. Like music, yeah? A lot of instruments, all tuned differently. Sets up bad harmonics. If it's any comfort, we're not exactly immune. It can get difficult, if there's too many of us.”

“There are loads too many of you,” she said flatly. “And no, that's no comfort at all.”

But she straightened slowly, and slipped her arm through mine; and we went into the house tracking my cousin and my love, and Laura was leaning on Jamie as much as Carol leant on me.

o0o

No sign of Uncle James in the hall, but the door to the big room was standing open, and there was the murmur of voices inside. Long displaced here, in what had once been my second home, I was glad to be going in behind Jamie; he even held Laura up briefly at the door, looking back to be sure of me, so that we could all make our entrance together.

Uncle James was standing down at the end, by the big fireplace, striking a pose as ever. Uncle Allan was there too, quietly in an armchair picking at his fingernails, striking no poses at all. And my father was there, giving me a nod of greeting and a frown for the company I kept; there were others there, just about all the senior men of the family; and surprisingly Father Hamish was there also, and I couldn't work that out at all. This was family business, surely. I couldn't see the need for a priest.

Uncle James beckoned us impatiently forward, and we stood in a little group in the centre of that watchful circle, holding close together, feeling like witnesses at a star chamber.

“Very well, then,” Uncle James said, talking directly to Jamie. “Tell us everything: everything you saw, everything you heard. If he leaves anything out,” scanning the rest of us with a single flick of his eyes, “you tell us.”

“Everything you thought,” Uncle Allan put in mildly from his chair. “That, too. Impressions. Even if they don't seem relevant.”

o0o

Jamie did his best, I guess we all did, though it didn't seem to satisfy.

It was a hard audience we had to play to, and they made no concessions. Even Allan was rough with his questioning, trying to squeeze out of us more than we'd consciously absorbed. And they wanted to know precisely how Steve had died, exactly what we'd seen and what he'd done, what had been done to him; and though Jamie and I could start it off, at the last that came down to Carol because of course we hadn't been there, we'd been away chasing a man with more than his fair share of talent.

Spotting him, chasing him, and in Jamie's case at least blasting away at him — and then that moment, that instant of decision when he could have played splatterpunk with the man's body and had chosen not to.

They were good, our interrogators. I don't think either one of us had intended to tell them that, but they learned it anyway. Which made it my turn to rescue Jamie suddenly from his father's cold and malignant anger, as Jamie had rescued Laura in the car; so I said, “Come on, it's no use shouting at him. He made his choice, and it's over now, we can't go back and do it different. But I'll tell you what's interesting.”

“What, then? Apart from my son being afraid of his responsibilities?”

Jamie shifted at my side; Laura grabbed his wrist, I talked loud and urgent over the top of his hissing protest.

“What's really interesting is that the other guy didn't do anything either. It should've been a classic shoot-out, only neither one of them fired...”

“Too far away,” Uncle James said dismissively.

“We don't know that, and we certainly can't assume it. We don't know how he does it, what he does; but it wasn't too far for Jamie, and whatever else, this guy's strong. He's got a lot of talent. We can't afford to make assumptions, and I think that one's wrong anyway.”

“What, then?” Uncle Allan butted in, and at least he sounded interested in my opinion. “You've obviously got a theory, Ben. What is it?”

“Light,” I said. “I think he lost his light. Otherwise he would have splattered Jamie, and me too; Christ, why not? That's obviously his goal in life, to kill Macallans. Only he'd just been playing slam-dunk with a stone basketball, and the dust of that was all around him, we could see it like a cloud; and I think it worked like a cloud, like ten-tenths cover. I think he didn't zap us because he couldn't, he was cut off from the source.”