Fade to Black (39 page)

He inclined his head. “Very perceptive of you.”

She turned away from Whitcombe, not wanting to tell him Jacinta was alive—that was something he seemed not to know. It was a win. “So, here we are…” She said to the creature.

The tall, black figure bowed, “I’m sorry… please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of...”

“Wealth and taste,” she finished the line from the Rolling Stones song for him.

“So young, yet you know the line! Really, Allison, may I call you Allison by the way? You really are impressive.”

“And you’re freaky and just a little too hairy to be honest. Were you not given a choice about that?”

“Hey, no need to descend to personal vitriol! Where I come from, I’m considered quite a catch.
The
catch, let’s be honest.”

“People are hunting for you?”

His laughter reverberated through the labyrinth. “Please, are you playing here all week? Brad, what do you think? She could join us could she not? Hmmm...?”

“She could not.”

“Darn,” he said, snapping his fingers. “There goes that idea.”

Allie sneaked a look at Robert who had not made a sound. A wet stain against his white trousers told her all she needed to know.

“And that,” the creature said, pointing at the stain, “is precisely why he wasn’t
the one
, Allison.” He leaned in closer to her, sniffing loudly, his breath abominable. “Hmmm… no little stains on your panties now are there?”

“What have you eaten?” she asked, recoiling. “A rat’s nest?”

“Yes.”

She studied him. There was something almost familiar about him, not from her dream, but in some other way.

“Something wrong, Ms. St. Clair?”

She opened her mouth to answer, but felt a prickling in the back of her brain. A voice, faint, but definitely there, was trying to reach her. She looked around the cavern, then back at the creature.

“So where is our principal murderer, Arthur?” she asked. “Didn’t have him for supper, did you?”

“No, no, he’s here. He’s joining us for breakfast; it is edging towards morning, you know.” The voice in her head grew louder. Her heart thumped so hard she looked at the creature in case he heard it.
Michael.
He was here.

“Of course he’s here, Allison,” said the creature, reading her thoughts. “Why else do you think I’m here? Or you, for that matter?”

She feigned a confused look. “A séance?”

This time he didn’t laugh. “You know, you’re not far off the mark there. Well done.” He was more English than she was. But it was an act; she supposed he could be Armenian if he chose.

“Dutch is toughest,” he said. “All that guttural stuff, sounds like you’re coughing up fur balls.”

“So where is he?” she asked, returning to the core subject.

“Arthur or the Lord Protector of Heaven and Earth and all Points in Between?”

“Either. Let’s start with Michael, then.”

“Oooh,
Michael
is it?” He affected a strange pose that didn’t quite work, but she got the idea.

“Yes, Michael, or are you bluffing on that one too?”

He spun and ushered her to the back of the cavern. She didn’t move. “C’mon, Roly won’t eat you!” he said with a chuckle.

“Roly?” A slimy suspicion tugged at her as they walked toward the narrow, fast running river that had carved its path through the granite of the cave.

“Ah yes,” he said, “we never forget our old friends. He’s been waiting for you.
Just you
, I might add, all these years. It’s really a hell of a compliment.”

She was led beside the river toward the back of the cavern, the creature leading the way, Whitcombe following her, pushing Robert along. The river bent left, revealing a new arm of the cavern. The hollow under the ancient Tor was much, much larger than she had imagined. They skirted a huge boulder, which left little room between it and the river. She put her hand on it to steady herself and knew immediately she had repeated her mistake from twenty years ago. Roly’s bloated body twitched in response. A ripple ran through his sticky skin and on to the seared nerve endings of her fingers.

“Ugh!” It was an involuntary response. She jumped back.

“Say good morning to Roly, please, Allison,” the man-creature said, not breaking stride. She looked past him to an illuminated area that stood higher than the rest of the cavern. It was a crude altar. Something lay on it. She was distracted by a movement to her right, in the cleft of rocks. A man sitting disconsolately on a ledge looked up and sprang to his feet. “Thank God!”

“Arthur,” the creature said, “may I introduce Allison St. Clair?”

“Detective Chief Inspector, actually,” she said.

Arthur stood wringing his hands. “I am so sorry. I never wanted to hurt them, I swear to you.”

Allie waved a dismissive hand. “But you did and you’ll be taken into custody. You had a choice Mr. Wendell; you know you did.”

The creature turned, an amused expression on his pinched face.

“You’ll ‘take him into custody,’ will you? You are an optimist St. Clair, but then, so many of you St. Clairs have been. God, I remember old Peter, now he was a cracker, never gave up until his heart did. It was on a stake over there by the throne by that time, but nevertheless, he had persistence. You have to admire that.”

Peter—she’d seen mention of him in the Maewyn Succat book. So he had been the other human visitor from long ago. He lived in the eighth century, if she remembered correctly.

“Close,” the creature said. “Ninth century, 816 to be exact. He was a nice man, by all accounts.”

She stepped closer to the altar. Her breath caught. Michael lay on his back, on a thick oaken board, his body spanning the entire length of the plinth. Long wooden stakes protruded from each shoulder. He was pinned left and right. She looked at his feet. Each was staked the same way. She could not see any blood. She studied his chest for signs of movement. There were none, but she knew he was not dead. Her head swam; she felt faint.

The creature, oblivious to her condition, addressed her. “We picked him up, that is, Arthur and Bradley here, picked him up from behind the stage area after the fireworks. What a show! The smell of it is still in my nose and let’s face it, I have quite a nose!” He looked closely at Allie and winked. “And you know what they say about people with big noses...”

“You’re not a person.”

He winked. “Bits of me are near enough, Allison.”

Touch me.
The voice was clear in her head.

The creature seemed not to have tuned in to the communication. He continued his rant, waving a hand toward Michael.

“Yes, he was lying crumpled and broken near a coffee stand, wasn’t he, Arthur?"

Wendell nodded. He was crumpled and broken himself.

“You were there,” Arthur said in a sulky tone.

“Well, yes, I was still riding with you at that time, but you’ve been so quiet since we parted company, so to speak, that I thought you might like to add something.”

Wendell stared blankly at the rising river. The creature ignored him and continued boasting about his prize catch.

“A gazillion volts will do that to you, no matter who or what you are. Fabulous stuff, electricity; some other places could do with it.”

She pointed at Michael. “What are your plans… Mr. Black?”

“Mr. Black,” he said. “So you
have
heard of me.” He said it again as if trying it on for size. And he rolled it around again for good measure, like a Shakespearean actor running through his tongue exercises. “Mr. Black. Miiissteeerr Bbbblack! You know, I still think it sounds nicer when
you
say it,” he said, eyeing Allie like a prime rib. “I told Arthur my preferred stage name, but he rarely used it. Yes, Mr. Black it is. Oops, sorry—what are my plans for Mr. White over there, you were asking?”

Allie sighed theatrically. “Yes, that was the question.”

Mr. Black put a hand to his ear. “Can you hear that?”

She listened, at first hearing nothing. Then slowly, a sound seeped in, a giggling sound. Dread engulfed her. “Oh no!” she moaned despite her resolve to stay calm. “Not those lemur things!”

“Oh yes. They have to eat you know, just like any other household pet. But they have a particular fondness for meat. They look like tree dwellers, don’t they? But in a funny quirk of nature, they’re not. They tunnel and live underground all their lives, hence those freaky, black eyes. Farmers around here often find a strange soil subsidence on their properties. They’re actually tunnels and they’re big enough for a decent-sized cow or a person to be dragged down. Amazing really, when you think about it. I don’t usually have to feed them at all when I visit, except on very special occasions. And there’s Roly to think about too, don’t forget; he travelled through the tunnels all the way from Peru twenty years ago and you disappointed him greatly then.”

She spun around to check where the loathsome snake-thing was. He was nowhere in sight. Robert started whimpering. She could not resist running to him any longer.

She cradled his head in her hands. “I’m so sorry, Robert. All this is my fault.”

He shook his head and spoke, the oxygen deprivation from his near drowning all those years ago slowing and slurring his speech, but his mind was sharp.

“Not… your… fault. Mine. I shouldn’t have assumed I was
the one
.” He swallowed hard and with a huge effort, spoke again, very quietly. “Save him. You must save
him
.” Allie nodded, her tears now a river. “Stop crying!
Save him!
” The harshness of his words stunned her. Robert glared at her. She got the message. She put her hand in his, something she had not done for too long. She squeezed it and stood, brushing away her tears. Time was up.
Vinculum infinitas
and all that.

“God, how do you understand him? Or do you pretend just to make him feel better?” Mr. Black goaded.

“I pretend. Ok, let’s have your lemur things out here. What do you call them?”

“Lemur things,” he answered. “You’re keen to get the final show on the road, are you? Good girl! I’ll say this for the St. Clairs… No I won’t, I changed my mind. Bradley, open the gate over there in the corner, would you? Good man.”

“Oh my God!” Allie gasped theatrically. She pointed to the tall wooden chair behind the altar. “Is that the throne of Gwynn ap Nudd, the mythical Faerie King?”

Mr. Black turned towards it. “Yes. Well, I, of course, am Gwynn ap Nudd, among other things, but you guessed that I’m sure. Nothing mythical about me, though!”

“Can I see it?” She stepped forward, out of Whitcombe’s reach and lurched towards the altar as if to sit in the prehistoric chair.

“It’s incredible!” she shrieked. Mr. Black looked again at it. She grabbed Michael’s hand just for an instant as she stumbled past.

“Sit in it if you want,” Mr. Black said, motioning towards it. But she could hardly move, her life force instantly depleted, her battery drained. She staggered to the chair and flopped in it. Mr. Black cocked his head at an angle. He walked in a low crouch to her, peering into her eyes. “What have you done?”

A high-pitched screech filled the cavern. The stripey lemurs bounded into the cave and then did what Allie had hoped—they wheeled around and fell upon Bradley Whitcombe first. He screamed and tried to bat them away, but there were too many. Their giggling and chattering intermingled with the sound of cracking bones and spurting liquid. Taking advantage of Mr. Black’s fascination with Whitcombe’s struggle, she stole a look at Michael. His chest rose and fell almost imperceptibly, but she saw it. The stripey lemurs were already losing interest in Whitcombe. The entrée had been served and enjoyed. She looked again at Michael; she needed him to get moving now! The lemurs moved as one towards them; slashes of red coated some of them from paws to tail, while others carried pieces of flesh in tiny, razor teeth.

“Cute, aren’t they?” Mr. Black said, dragging his eyes from the macabre spectacle. “The piranhas of the underworld, are they not?”

“Whatever you say,” she said, knowing what she had to do next and hating herself for it. It was all about buying time. She caught Arthur Wendell’s eye. She nodded in the direction of the advancing animals.

“It’s the least you can do, Arthur,” she gave him a sad smile. “Salvation is hard won.”

He stared at the creatures, then back at Allie. He smiled and mouthed the words, “Thank you.” He understood she had given him a shot at eternal redemption. No guarantees—just a shot. He stood and walked calmly towards the salivating pack.

“Extraordinary!” Mr. Black exclaimed, looking at Allie. “You really should be one of us. It’s not too late you know…”

Arthur Wendell went down without a fight. It was his penance for succumbing to Mr. Black. He looked at Allie St. Clair as the first of the creatures reached him. It tore the flesh from his cheek and raked a claw down his neck. He did not flinch. The pack descended and Allie saw her brother staring in horror as Arthur Wendell’s clothes were ripped to pieces, his body stripped of skin and connective tissue, his hair torn out by the roots. Still Wendell looked pleading at Allie. He sank slowly to the floor his gaze never wavering. Allie felt rage at his inhuman attacks on Georgie and Paula and yet now he stoically bore the brunt of this nightmarish attack. Somewhere deep within her she wished she had the power to forgive him; it was clearly what he sought. She turned away.

Robert yelled, a moaning, drone of a noise. He flapped his arms and rocked his chair from side to side. Mr. Black was captivated, but Allie knew what Robert was doing. He was distracting Mr. Black. She quickly glanced at Michael. His left arm was raised, his hand on the wooden stake in his shoulder. He pulled it out, his face contorted in agony.

She ran to Robert, prolonging the show. “Robert! What’s wrong?” she yelled.

“I’d say that, despite his mental deficiency, he’s worked out that he’s next, my dear. Doesn’t take a genius, does it? I mean,” he said, turning to the altar, “there’s only your brother, you, me and…”

Michael was gone. “Oh, you clever little bitch,” Mr. Black said, his yellow eyes burning into her, his chest and shoulders growing. He clapped his hands. “Roly!” he called in a thunderous voice. “Now!” He smiled at Allie. “It’s been fun. No really, it has, but I gotta go.” He hissed and spun around, his huge head swiveling in search of Michael.