Dead of Light (40 page)

Carol had made coffee, and dug half a bottle of cheap brandy out of a cupboard to fortify it; and then we'd had to talk, or I had. Jamie had demanded that. It was the girls, he'd said, who sensed something wrong with my big farewell scene that I'd thought I was handling so cleverly; they insisted on quietly following us out, me and Allan. Carol's idea apparently to go for the vehicles, to flood the churchyard with light when Allan sent the other witnesses inside. And then the weathercock came down, he'd said, and the girls at least were certain. Carol certain enough that I needed saving, not to think of her own safety as she came roaring in on her charger; and Laura certain enough of Allan's villainy that she gave no heed to consequences, she only used what she had against him, the strength of metal and speed and a blinding, disabling light.

But Jamie had been all the opposites of certain, he'd been all confusion and doubt; and he'd made me tell them everything I knew, all the hints and clues that built together into a case against Allan and then what Allan himself had said, his irresistible confession.

What I still hadn't been able to tell them was why, because Allan had drawn back from telling me, content to let me die not knowing.

o0o

Needing to know, I came to the long single-storey stretch where french windows looked out on what was almost a private garden for the private patients. Some of the windows stood open, and long lacy white curtains billowed gently in the breeze.

I walked slowly along the line of windows, looking in. There were nurses busy in some rooms, visitors in others; those I barely glanced into. Sleeping patients I gave more attention to, stopping sometimes to look closely, to be certain before moving on.

I found Uncle Allan finally where I should have known to find him, in the last and largest, the best room on the ward, right at the end where he could have windows in two walls and all the privacy he wanted.

He was alone, as I'd hoped to find him, though I was sure there would be guards in the corridor beyond the closed door, police and family both. Peering through the half-drawn curtains I could see that his eyes were shut, but he was lying propped up on pillows: only dozing, then, most likely.

The french windows were locked, and there was no handle on the outside, but that was not a problem. I laid the flat of my hand against a single small pane beside the lock, and sunlight fell on my fingers' tips; and oh, it was easy now, I felt so strong. The glass warmed and folded beneath my touch, turned so plastic I could squeeze it in my fist and tug it out. Then I reached in through the vacant space, turned the key and pushed the window open.

There'd been no sound except the single metallic scrape of the lock unlatching. Perhaps it was that which roused him, or else the change in air as I brought the breeze in with me; but my uncle opened his eyes, looked directly at me — and smiled.

Said, “Hullo, Benedict. I thought perhaps you'd come.”

o0o

After I'd told them everything I could, Jamie had hovered, had paced the small space of Carol's living-room, had finally asked to use the phone.

Had dialled a number and waited while we all pretended not to listen, while we listened hard; had finally said, “Dad, it's Jamie.”

A pause, then: “No, sorry, I won't tell you that. What about you, where are you? ... Oh. The hospital, right,” passing the information on to us without letting his father know there was anyone else tuned in. “How is he, then? ... Uh-huh. Yeah... No, look, he's your brother, but he's my uncle, right? That's just as ... Well, I'll tell you why. If you'll stop shouting, I'll tell you...”

And he'd done that, neatly and accurately, his mind still sharp though his face was still pale and there was still a tremble in his fingers; he'd told his father everything I'd said and everything we'd done except the last thing, where we'd come for shelter.

No way to tell, he'd said to us afterwards, how Uncle James had taken the news, or what he'd do about it. But Jamie had dropped onto the floor in a collapse so sudden it was almost frightening; he'd slumped back against Laura's legs where she was sitting on the sofa, he'd tilted his head against her knee and closed his eyes while her fingers played soothingly in his hair, and he'd looked five years younger all in a moment. Infinitely relieved, I guess, with the burden of responsibility rolled off his shoulders and onto his father's. Nothing more for me to do, his body had been saying, I've put it out of my hands now.

The relief for me had come a few minutes later, when Carol had told Laura to take him up to bed.

“You two can have my room,” she'd said. “I'll sleep in with Nicky, he's got a spare bunk in there for when one of his little friends stays over. It's embarrassing, but I fit it.”

“What about Ben?” Laura had asked.

“Sleeping-bag in here. Lots of cushions, he'll be fine.”

After the other two had gone up, while Carol was bustling around in mother-mode to organise my bedding, I'd suggested diffidently, “You don't have to squash in with Nicky, you know. You could stay down here with me. It's a warm night, we could unzip the sleeping-bag and just nest together...”

But she'd shaken her head, firm and decisive. “Not tonight, Ben. Laura needs company, you could see, that's why I've given them the double bed; but I need to be alone. And with my son, I need that too. To remember what's important. All right?”

“Sure,” I'd said. “Fine,” I'd said. “Good night, then,” I'd said.

“You wouldn't have liked it anyway,” she'd told me, ruffling my hair, still playing mother. “Tonight, maybe, but not tomorrow. Nicky gets up early, and he's
horrible
if he finds men in my bed. He's going to be bad enough with strangers in the house, me camped out with you down here would be unthinkably awful. Sleep well; and if you can't, I've left the brandy out in the kitchen, okay?”

And she'd kissed me on the forehead and left me, and I had neither slept nor drunk myself to sleep, but only stared at the little patch of sky I could see through the window from where I lay while it changed from black to white, though all my thoughts were grey.

o0o

Only a thin smile my uncle gave me, in a face turned unexpectedly thin and grey; and his voice was thin also, weak in a man who had never seemed weak. He looked dreadfully ill. I didn't need the drip into his arm or the electrodes taped to his chest or the bedclothes raised on frames to keep their weight off his legs to tell me that he'd been more than hurt last night. Damaged beyond repair, was how he looked.

But then I'd seen the damage done, and the only surprise was that he'd survived it at all. A tough breed, we Macallans: hard on others and hard in ourselves.

“Hullo, uncle.” I walked over to sit on a chair beside the bed, and it was no surprise at all that he wasn't yelling, he wasn't calling his undoubted guards in to repel boarders. I'd never expected him to. A logical man, my uncle, logical above all; and a man of words and arguments, he'd want to talk.

Besides, he knew what I was capable of, and he knew what likely mood I'd be in when I came, if I came. I could toast his guards if I chose to, if they made trouble for me.

“Well, Ben. This isn't good, you know,” and he didn't only mean his state of health, though his faint gesture took in all the machinery he was attached to, signifiers of all that damage.

“No,” I said.
It's fucking awful
was what I wanted to say, what I hoped he'd hear from me regardless; but Aunt Jess had trained me not to swear in front of senior family, and it's hard to break the habits of a lifetime.

For a minute neither of us said anything more, we only looked at each other; then, “Worst thing about hospital visits,” he said, “those long silences where you can't think of anything to talk about. What shall we talk about, Ben?”

“Let's pick up where we left off last night,” I said, grabbing with relief at the same light, easy, superficial tone, as if it really didn't matter a damn. “You were going to tell me why.”

“Was I?” He sounded momentarily doubtful, just a teasing little reminder that actually he'd chosen not to do that, to kill me in my ignorance; but, “All right, then. It's a cull, I suppose is the best way to say it. A necessary weeding out.”

“They were family...” I said, the reality breaking through for a moment.
They were my twin, my cousins — your niece, your nephew, your blood also, every one of them your blood...

“Exactly.”

Walls of containment weren't doing their job any more. I stared at him, and even to my own ears sounded like a child in despair, hurt beyond bearing, as I said, “I thought you loved us...?”

“Ben, Ben.” He shook his head a little, smiled a little, just exactly like an adult with his taller perspective on a child's griefs. “It's the body that matters, not the cells. Not the individuals. Yes, I have loved you — but that doesn't matter either. You can't preserve a weakened or corrupted bloodline, simply for sentiment. The family deserves better of us.”

Fuck the family
, I wanted to say. Would have done, perhaps, only that I'd said it so often before and with so much less cause, it was devalued past recovery.

Besides, Allan wasn't giving me the time to interrupt.

“The family
expects
better,” he said. “There's historical precedent for it. If you look back at the records, all our history is a tale of feuds and schisms, one branch warring with another — and the weaker always lost. By definition. It's survival of the fittest, you see? The family corpus doing its own pruning, thinning out the inferior stock.

“And we need it again now, we need it so badly. Our ancestors were so much the better men. We've grown stunted, Ben, we're losing our magnificence; and losing it so fast, on a historical scale, it's frightening.

“I'd hoped that marrying out would bring some mongrel virility to the line, but that was an experiment that largely failed. Except with you, of course. You're aberrant, obviously, but it's a fascinating aberration. And potentially fruitful. I'd love to know if you're just a sport, or if your talent will breed true.

“For that reason, I didn't mean to harm you. Not until you got too close to me. I was sure of Jamie — even if he'd recognised me, I could have squared him with what I was doing — but you're too volatile, and you've lived outside the family ethos for too long. You're also very powerful, I think, and we can never have a trial of strength. Except at twilight, perhaps, or dawn: but even then one would be waxing and the other waning, it wouldn't be a true test.”

I was barely listening to him then, rather thinking about Jamie, and whether Uncle Allan could really have talked him around. Maybe he could have, even despite Marty, though I hated myself for conceding the possibility.

But, “So you killed Hazel because she was a half-breed freak,” I said. “Is that right?”

“More or less. She couldn't be allowed to breed, Ben. The bloodline is fragile at the moment; it needs purifying, not further dilution.”

“Uh-huh.” Wasn't going to think about that right now.
Wasn't
going to think about it. “What about the others, then: Marty and Tommy, and Steve? How did you
pick
them, for God's sake?”

He sighed at my vehemence. “Tommy again had too much outside blood in him,”
ah, those giveaway blue eyes, shoulda worn contact lenses, Tom,
“but there's more than one corruption in the line. They were all of them weak, to start with; rough, certainly, but their talents were very crude. I didn't hold out much hope for their children, or their children's children.

“But more than that, they were too much your Uncle James' men. Seeing talent only as a means to an end, a way to grab more for themselves; and that's what will destroy this family, as much as an encroaching dissipation. Marty and Hazel already had their own private little business running, milking extra on their own account, did you know? And doing it badly, greedily, as you'd expect from those two. Misuse and miscegenation, those are the forces at work against us now. Either one of them could prove fatal, and working together they're deadly. And of course they work from the inside, by definition; so no hope of attracting allies, I had to work alone.”

And then he sighed again, and his face twitched with pain as he settled against his pillows. “I've done a little,” he said, “but only a little, and there's such a job needs doing. I've barely scratched the surface. But I don't suppose I'll be allowed to go much further, will I?”

“No,” I said, “I don't suppose you will.”

“James came to see me earlier. Stood at the foot of the bed, scowled at me, went away again. You must have told him, did you? He can't have worked it out for himself, he hasn't got the agility.”

“Jamie told him.” I only said that in my cousin's defence, hoping to make Allan think he couldn't have recruited Jamie after all; because if Allan was thinking so, I might manage it myself.

But Allan only smiled, and said, “Ah. Yes. After the fact, of course he would.”

Oh, he was a manipulative bastard, was Allan. Even then he knew exactly what he was doing to me. It wasn't cruelty, nothing malignant; he was still trying to remake me a little, to have me see the world a little closer to the way he saw it, even if all he could influence now was my perspective on a cousin I loved.

We were both silent again, for a little; then Allan said, “There'll be a doctor coming soon. They check on me every hour or so.”

“Yeah. Right. Thanks.”

I stood up, and walked back into the path of sunlight where it was falling through the open window. It was the dazzle of that which had me rubbing at my eyes, nothing more.

“Goodbye, Ben,” my uncle said softly, at my back.