Dead of Light (34 page)

“Yes,” she said, and the savagery in her voice said that she too knew what a low blow that was. “I have to pick him up from his dad's, sometime this morning; but I can get a bus from your end of town. All right?”

I shrugged a reluctant acceptance, and then offered an olive branch of sorts, as I remembered that I had wheels of my own now. “I'll run you over, if you like. On the bike.”

“Okay. Great. Now. Windows? I don't know much about it, but I thought you lot only got one dip each in the basket of tricks.”

And you got fire
, the unspoken addition there. Memories of a man's face, burning; those I didn't need.

“And slow down a bit,” she added. “Please? I feel like a toddler, running to keep up with Daddy.”

I sighed and made an effort to walk more slowly, a harder effort to explain.

“Traditionally, that's right. One talent each. Except that we can, no,
they
can all make nightfire, that's like the base that everything else springs from. Sort of like athletes, they specialise in jumping or throwing or whatever, but they can all run, right? So I guess I can make, what, dayfire, I suppose you have to call it; and it seems like I can punch windows out, too.”

“How did you know?”

“Dunno. Just felt that I could, and I wanted to.”
I wanted to smash something, and Uncle James' face wouldn't have been politic.
“But don't ask how I did it, okay?”

“Why not?”

“Couldn't tell you, is why not. It's magic. Literally. You want a theory,”
you want to be like Laura
, “talk to Jacko sometime. He'll tell you all about how rhythm holds the universe together, on the molecular level; and that's what it comes down to in the end, one way or another. It has to. Our blood dances to a different drummer, is all, and his beat is the stronger. We can change the rhythm in things, and that's what makes them break apart.”

What else I had on my mind, what I didn't want to say until I'd played a little in private, was that I was a sport by definition. I was a freak, using sunlight; and if the bog-standard, the absolute rule about nightlight didn't apply to me, maybe the other rules didn't apply either. I remembered that man from last night, who could break stone balls with a glance but who could also turn blood bad in Macallan bodies. That was two tricks, it seemed to me; and if he could double his luck, then maybe I could too...

o0o

We walked on, and I walked at least some of my temper off, so that we were fairly amicable partners by the time we came back to my flat. Carol even stroked her hand up and down my arm, chuckling a little at the tingle. “You know, a girl could get used to this. It's very sexy. Other men are going to seem kind of flat, I think.”

 I didn't tell her, but a man could get used to it, too: to having that effect on women. My cousins took it for granted, by and large took their women for granted also; and Jamie had better not, had better never do that, or he'd have me to answer to. In daylight, naturally...

“Time for a coffee?” I asked, ripping more foliage off the olive-tree. “I want one anyway, I'm parched.”

“Yes, of course. You should, you didn't have any breakfast, did you?”

Didn't have anything, last night or this morning; and I was curiously glad of that, not to have taken any refreshment in my uncle's house. Call it a fine line, but in my code there's a distinction between bed and breakfast. Accepting shelter under someone's roof costs them nothing, so that beyond a measure of thanks nothing is what you owe. Taking their hospitality also, eating and drinking makes a transient into a guest irreparably, would have made one of me last night; and guests have obligations, and not breaking windows seemed pretty much the least of them.

o0o

Inside the flat, there was no sign of Jacko or Jonathan except that the place was unwontedly clean; one or other of them had had a binge. Nothing to say where they were and when — or whether — they'd be back; but I did find a couple of notes pushed through the door. One was from my tutor at college, asking why I'd missed a crucial seminar and where was an overdue essay, and hadn't I better get in touch with him pronto if I wanted to survive this term? The other was from our telephonically-unchallenged neighbour upstairs, relaying a message from the manager at Medicall, who assigned the drivers' shifts: did I realise I'd missed a shift last night without even calling in with an excuse, and was I aware that that was a capital offence, and that I should consider myself lucky simply to be sacked?

“Ouch,” said Carol, listening in to that. “What was the note?”

“Same thing, really, only from college. It's just threats; they'll let me back if I grovel.”

If
I grovelled. Things were changing so fast around me, all my realities had been snatched up like a hand of cards and shuffled and redealt: it was hard to see myself going quietly back into that loose and fragile life of mine, where the chief worry was money enough to get me through another term of books and alcohol, the two luxuries so crucial to a student.

o0o

We had a coffee, and she kept asking questions I couldn't answer; and even when she wasn't doing that I was asking questions of myself, and couldn't answer those either. It wasn't the best hour I'd spent with her, out of the last twenty-four. Not the worst either, but it was hardly likely to be that. Too much competition there, it didn't stand a chance.

Eventually she glanced at the clock, and made a rueful face. I nodded.

“Come on, then.”

“Hang on, Ben. What are you going to do? I'm not sure it's a smart idea, leaving you on your own. I can always ask Richard to keep Nicky for one more night, he wouldn't mind. It's just horse-trading, I can pay him back later...”

“No,” I said, “really. It's what I want, to be alone for a bit.”

“Mm, I figured that. But why?”

“I want to try a few things,” I said, as offhand as I could manage it. “Test myself a little, figure some stuff out. And then I'm going over to see Uncle Allan, and I'm sorry, I can't take you with me. Wouldn't if I could, I don't like you so much involved with my family, it's not safe to make them notice you; but I couldn't anyway. Allan's too private, he wouldn't talk to me if you were there.”

“Unh. Well, all right then. As long as you're not just fobbing me off?”

“Not a fob. Promise.”

She still didn't look convinced, but, “Look, do me a favour, then. Keep in touch, yeah? Phone me. A couple of times today, and tonight. Just check in, so that I know what's what.”

“You mean like heroes in the movies never do?”

“That's exactly what I mean, yes. Don't be a hero.”

“Promise,” I said lightly, said again; and probably I meant it as little as any hero ever meant a promise to a civilian non-combatant in time of war. I meant to walk on some dangerous water, with only the hope of miracles to keep me up; catching me phoning in to confess.

She accepted it, though, or seemed to; and she rode pillion behind me on the bike, wind in our hair again but no dreams now, no space for dreaming in my busy head.

She kissed me briefly when I dropped her off. Then she clipped me over the back of the head where I sat astride the bike, and said, “Wear a helmet, fool. And don't forget to phone me.”

I nodded, put the bike into gear and roared away, suddenly urgent: not stopping even to say hi to Nicky, which I would have written down as criminal any other day. There are duties owed to children, and making time to observe the civilities is definitely one of them. As is not breaking promises.

Luckily, that doesn't apply to adults. They're not burdened with a child's trust; they can make their own assessment of your reliability, and if they misjudge you, that's just tough.

Too bad, Carol. Don't wait up.

o0o

That promise might have been a lie, but not what else I'd said to her. I did want to find Uncle Allan that day, to try to learn where his mind was leading; and first, yes, I wanted to try a few things. Test myself a bit; and test also the sunlight that was beating down on my bare head now, to see just what strength it was ready to lend me, what talent I did have.

So I drove not home, and not yet to Allan's house: but down to the river and the land laid waste, where the Duke survived in the midst of nothing, standing above destruction like a lord of misrule. Like Jamie all those years ago, I wanted to pit myself against bricks and concrete; and like Jamie's first night out, I didn't intend to ask permission first.

Didn't need to down here, even if I'd been in the mood. Any damage I managed would be doing a favour to the town. This was one of several sites bought up by an incoming company that didn't understand the system. They'd taken over acres of derelict housing to redevelop, and got halfway through the demolition before they learned how much it was going to cost them to operate here. They'd pulled out then, with the taste of fear strong in their mouths and a major loss to explain to their shareholders; and the result was what I faced now.

Behind broken and graffiti-covered hoardings, there were mounds of rubble where as a child I'd known long rows of terraced houses. Not all the buildings had been flattened; some were only roofless shells still lined in places with peeling strips of wallpaper, different patterns all that remained sometimes to map the different rooms, where interior walls and floors had fallen. Joists hung at crazy angles, many charred by fires the local kids had set.

There was a long-abandoned petrol station here too, the pumps and workings salvaged but a glassless kiosk still standing under a canopy supported on concrete pillars.

I parked the bike by the pub and set off up the crumbling road. No problem of access; I walked in through a gap in the hoardings, and scrambled over heaps of broken brick till I came to where a lone wall stood proud among the wreckage. Again no glass in the neat square holes that were its windows, but that didn't matter. I knew about glass already. I was here to learn about other things.

o0o

I didn't see them, but if there were any kids on the loose down there that day — and there must surely have been some — they would certainly have seen me. And seen also what I was doing, making magic in broad daylight under a generous sun.

I learned quicker than Jamie had, or else I was more mature or simply more in need of knowing urgently what I could and couldn't achieve.

After a couple of hours' hot work, there was nothing left of that wall, nor any others in my line of sight.

At first I was crude, as Jamie had been. It was like breaking windows, just a mental punch cracking into brickwork; I swear I even flinched the first couple of times. Foolish, but my fists were bunching at my sides, and I expected to feel my knuckles splinter.

It was brick that splintered. I stood ten metres from the wall and hurled my invisible thunderbolts, and sent great blocks of it crashing to the ground. The early ones flickered with flame as they broke away and landed black and smoking, before I learned to control the dayfire.

Then I tried what I shouldn't even have been thinking of, according to family lore: I tried a different talent. I reached out for loosened bricks left awkwardly balanced at the margins of where I'd struck, and raised them delicately up. The first time or two they slipped from my imaginary fingers and fell, but I had unmistakably had a grip; a little more practice and I was juggling, I was making bricks dance in the air before I brought them down to build new and shaky walls on the rubble, like a child playing with wooden blocks.

Elated but somehow not surprised, I changed again. I lifted a solitary brick, and squeezed it. And watched it crumble to dust before my eyes and swirl to nothing in the wind, and couldn't hold in a triumphant yell. Briefly it seemed as if there was nothing I couldn't do; I felt more than powerful, I felt omnipotent. Yes, and vengeful.

Until a stray cloud drifted across the sun, and the tingle left my skin and I was abruptly weak and helpless, reminded that I had only reflected power. No sun myself, I was only a moon in daylight, dependent on another source to shine; and all the long hours of night lay too soon ahead...

When the sun came back, I walked down a little further, to that big garage. Whichever company had owned it, they'd taken their decals off, leaving the frame oddly naked; but it was still solid otherwise. The development company hadn't reached this far with its machines and manpower.

I stood under the canopy, where the sunlight just warmed the back of my neck, and I squeezed the kiosk as I had squeezed the brick. I watched its walls fold in on themselves, listened to them crack and saw them craze and collapse.

Then I turned my eyes upward, to the canopy.

It might have been twenty metres long and ten deep, standing foursquare above the pits where the pumps had stood. Not heavy, I thought, only wood and plastic with metal girders to keep its shape; but oh, it was big. Maybe too big for me, or too well-rooted, but I had to know.

Call it a push, call it a lift; doesn't matter, I guess. I reached underneath and thrust upward; and again I heard the sounds of internal breaking, and dust and filth showered down as it trembled and stayed anchored on its fat concrete pillars.

I scowled, took a breath and tried again.

Those watching kids, if there were any, would only have seen a man standing still and doing nothing. If they'd been close enough, perhaps they'd have seen me sweat, perhaps they'd have giggled when they saw the weird faces that I pulled, but they'd never have known how hard I was working there, how brutally I was straining.

The structure shook visibly, a lot more shit came cascading down; and at last, with a great tearing sound and splinters flying, the whole canopy broke free in one piece and went spinning end over end like a sheet of cardboard in the wind.

It hit the ground some fifty metres away, and fell apart. I dropped to a crouch, dizzy with success and wonder, gaping at what I'd done. Sheared metal rods stuck up from the pillars, bent into crazy shapes by the force of that breaking; sunlight washed all the concrete forecourt, where it hadn't come since the canopy was first erected.