Goddess (17 page)

He looked more relaxed than I’d seen for a while. I realised I’d missed his mocking smile. Although it made my stomach flutter, I tried to keep my tone light-hearted too. ‘Rick has got his gods confused. Artemis isn’t exactly famous for her partying. It’s Dionysus who was the crazy hedonist.’

‘Maybe you should consider a change of cult. Why are you hiding anyway? This is all in your honour.’

I went to join him at the doorway of the greenhouse and surveyed the scene. It was a long way from the drinks receptions at the High Priestess’s residence. Everyone looked as if they were on some kind of high, many were in various states of undress and the music was loud enough to make your ears bleed. ‘They’re Rick Moodie’s groupies, not mine.’

‘Only some of them. Most of the people here watched your TV interview and then came to find you. Word’s got out – there are more arriving all the time.’

‘Great. I bet the Civil Guard won’t be far behind.’

‘So maybe it’s time to stop hiding. This could be your chance. Yes, some people are here just to have a good time. But others want inspiration. Leadership. They want to believe in you.’

I swallowed hard. ‘Do you believe in me?’

‘In every way.’ Aiden’s smile wasn’t mocking any more. ‘Even if you weren’t the oracle, I’d want you to be a part of this. I’d still want you with me. Do you understand?’

I didn’t know how to answer. Maybe I didn’t need to. I just looked back at him, shivers running up and down my spine.

‘You’re a girl worth believing in, Aura. You’re worth fighting for.’

We had been talking loudly, to hear ourselves over the music. Abruptly, it cut out. With a clash of cymbals, and a raucous shout, Rick called the revellers to follow him. There was a white-painted gazebo on top of a small hill in the centre of the garden. He sprang up the steps and under the arches, banging the cymbals and skipped about as his guests milled below. Crystal and Seraphina, both very unsteady on their feet, waved flaming torches to either side. They looked like a couple of cut-price priestesses in flowing white dresses, flowers stuck in their hair. Scarlet watched, arms folded and expression inscrutable, from the side.

‘Welcome, my friends,’ Rick bellowed, raising his hands to the heavens. ‘Welcome to the Holy Feast of the Goddess of the Moon!’

He plunged into slurred ramblings about his muse, the moon and why the goddess had marked us all for greatness. His audience shuffled restlessly.

I still felt light-headed, but it was more than the disorientating effects of the oracle. I’d left the tangle of fears about death and madness behind, and was buzzing with different emotions. Emotions that I found it hard to separate from the champagne and the lights swinging in the trees . . . And Aiden, smiling and sardonic at my side. Aiden, who believed in me. Who didn’t just think I was a Cause or a Project or whatever else Scarlet had said.

He was right: these people were here for me and Artemis, not some has-been rock star. It was time for me to take charge. It was time for me to prove that, yes, I
was
someone worth fighting for.

I ran up the slope and grabbed the microphone off Rick. He did a bleary double take. ‘Honoured Worshipfulness!’

I wore the wolf-mask on my head, like a crown. My silk dress swished around my ankles, the body shimmer sparkled on my face and throat and arms. A lot of the guests were preoccupied with their drinks and each other. But the ones gathering at the front were gazing up at me with a hopeful, hungry sort of look. They were quiet and ready to listen. Many were holding up camera phones.

My voice rang out, loud and confident.

‘I am Aura. I am the Oracle of Artemis. I am
your
oracle – the one the cult and the Emergency Committee want to hide from you. Don’t listen to their lies. Don’t believe their promises. Artemis sees them for what they are: tyrants and traitors.’

It was hard to speak over the whoops and cheers. But my voice rose above it all. This time, it wasn’t the goddess speaking. This was me.

‘If you want to protect the true oracle, if you care about the freedom of our country, don’t let them get away with this. Strike, protest, disrupt. Malcolm Greeve is going to the temple for a private oracle this week – let’s show him what we think of him, and his friends’ fake prophecies. It’s time to reclaim our temple, and our streets.’

I had everyone’s attention now. Their roars of support were deafening.

‘The world is watching, and so is the goddess. I’ll be with you. Artemis will be with you. Together –’

There was another clash of the cymbals. Rick had pushed in front of me, grinning manically. ‘
Viva la revolución!
’

‘Revolution! Revolution!’ the crowd bellowed back.

‘All hail the Queen of Beasts!’ he cried. ‘Let us revel in her darkness! Let us dance in her light!’ He flung back his head and began to howl. ‘Let the wild hunt begin!’ The music was back with a thrash of metal and drums.

People began to leap and run around the garden, barking like dogs and pretending to blow horns. Aiden was at my side, but I hardly heard what he said. I backed into the gazebo, suddenly frightened by the horde of people crowding the hill.

Many still wore masks; those with bare faces had a frenzied gleam in their eyes. I glimpsed Lindy Ryan, her dress half pulled off her shoulders, hair wild, stumbling about and laughing hysterically. I felt a tremble of hysteria too.

‘Come on,’ said Aiden in my ear. ‘Let’s get away from all this.’

He ushered me away from the crowd and towards the gate in the wrought-iron fence that separated the garden from the wood. I hung back, but not for long. This time the darkness of the wood was inviting, the air cool and full of whisperings.

The lights from the house glowed behind a web of leaves. The trees were black, the sky bronze. The party’s thumping music and muffled shrieks seemed to belong to another world. My head was spinning and my skin prickled; I didn’t know if it was excitement or dread. Somehow it seemed that this was where I’d been meant to be from the start of everything. That this place, this person, this moment had always been waiting for me.

Aiden and I stood facing each other. We hadn’t hurried, yet both of us were out of breath.

‘Everyone’s gone mad,’ I said. ‘Maybe the spirit of Dionysus is here after all.’

‘It’s just us. Only us.’

He meant that the craziness of the party was all too human. But I wanted him to mean something else. That the two of us were alone together and no one was watching, not even a god.

I took a step closer. So did he. His face was shadow-dappled, his eyes greener than the leaves.

I would allow myself to touch him. Just the once. I reached up and traced the strong arch of his brows, the curve of his cheek, the hollows of his neck. His skin was warm bronze. I let my hand fall, and stepped back. Never again.

‘Aura . . .’

‘I can’t,’ I whispered. ‘I mustn’t. The goddess –’

‘I understand, but you have to listen.’ Aiden moved closer, his voice urgent yet coaxing. ‘I know you have a gift – call it second sight or an extra-developed sixth sense. Hell, maybe it’s even down to a rip in the space–time continuum. But the only reason you see Artemis in your visions is because that’s what you expect to see. Your whole life’s been built around her mythology, and so that’s what your brain uses to make sense of the experience. The goddess can’t actually hurt you. She can’t hurt anyone. Otherwise, why are Opis and Lionel still strutting around the temple?’

‘Artemis doesn’t care about them. She chose
me
. I’m bound to her now, forever.’ I took a deep, shaking breath. ‘Do you know what happened to the first Aura, the one I’m named after? She was a handmaiden who claimed to be even more pure than Artemis. As revenge, Artemis caused her to be raped by the god Dionysus. It sent her mad. She gave birth to twin sons, and ate one of them. She –’

‘Horror stories and old wives’ tales. Forget them.’

I was in his arms. He felt strong. He felt safe. I clutched at him with cold fingers.

‘You should be frightened too. Look at Orion. The goddess loved him, but when he seduced one of her nymphs she killed him. Don’t you see? The British made Orion into Herne, but the story’s the same.’ I was babbling. I knew I didn’t make sense any more but my fear was gushing out with the words, unstoppable. ‘You’re my Lord Herne. You’ve been Chosen too. Like Orion. The hunter turned into prey. Like Actaeon –’

‘Listen to me.’ Aiden gripped me by the shoulders. ‘I don’t care. Even if Artemis is real, even if she’s picked me,
I
don’t choose
her
. If those old tales are true, then she doesn’t deserve to be worshipped.’

He tried to smile at me, but the smile was crooked. His lips would taste of blasphemy, dark and intoxicating. I could taste it in my mouth too. The taste of freedom, the taste of all forbidden things.

I leaned in and I kissed him, right on his forbidden mouth. It was as warm and hungry as mine. We fell to the ground, entangled, pulling at each other’s clothes, grasping at each other’s hair. Earth and leaves rolled damply against my skin.

He kept saying my name. ‘Aura. Oh, Aura.’

Then I heard it again.
Aura.

And with it, I felt a cold breath on my skin, a sick heat in my blood. A chiming in my head and all through my bones.

I flung Aiden off me with a shout: of anger or terror, I didn’t know.

We stared at each other, motionless. Only a short distance away, voices from the party were raised in yelps and howls. There was a moment of perfect, scorching clarity.

And then night poured into me, black and infinite, and the moon blazed in my skull.

I was breaking into pieces, fragments of light and leaves. I would break Aiden into pieces too. I would hear him howl. I would flay his flesh. I would pluck out his eyes, I would tear at the pulp of his heart and brain –

Please. No. Have mercy.

I lurched upwards and away.

Forgive me. Forgive him. I beg –

I had some confused idea of drawing the goddess away from Aiden, into the trees. For how could they hurt me, I thought dazedly, when they were only painted leaves? Then the painted web turned into a real one, the branches whipping my face, briars tearing my clothes. I sobbed and gasped as horror snapped at my heels.

I seemed to run for hours, days, pursued by the goddess’s fury. Once, I saw the dead animals of Artemisia House had escaped their glass cases and come to life in the undergrowth. I smelled their decayed breath and dusty pelts, heard them snarl as they bared their yellowed fangs. Another time, I tripped over a bramble that became a thin black serpent, coiled round my leg. It bit my leg so the blood ran, and I realised the whole forest floor was squirming with snakes. Yet I stumbled on.

When I came to my senses, the wood had thinned, and I was standing beside a tarmacked road. Above me, the moon was full; bright and hard as ice.

Those whom the gods love die young
.

Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first send mad
.

The goddess loves me . . . and so she sends me mad.

The goddess hates me . . . and so she sends me mad.

She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me, she –

Silence. Black and silver trees, black road, silver girl. The moon, the moon.

I turned and saw Aiden in the shadows of the wood.

‘It was the goddess,’ I said, quite calmly. ‘She was going to kill you.
I
was going to kill you.’

He made a slow, uncertain step towards me. At once I shouted out with a violence that cracked my voice: ‘Stay back!
Back –
’

I fled down the road, into the night.

Chapter 17

Police sources have confirmed that the prime minister, Nicholas Riley, was found hanging from a lamp post in Trafalgar Square at five o’clock this morning.

The prime minister was being transferred between prisons when a group of masked gunmen attacked the van in which he and his guards were travelling. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the atrocity.

BBC News

‘Whatever happened to you?’

It was Scarlet, leaning out of her sports car in the light of a thin yellow dawn. I’d been wandering the road for hours, barely noticing the surrounding blur of fields and pylons, sheep and trees.

She was looking at me curiously. I remembered that my hands and face were flecked with blood, that my dress was torn, my hair wild.

‘It was the goddess,’ I said at last. ‘She came to me again, in a vision. And then I, er, decided to go for a walk. To clear my head.’

‘Well, I’ve been looking for you.’

‘Did . . . did Aiden ask you to?’

‘I haven’t seen him since the party.’ Scarlet drummed her fingers distractedly on the wheel. ‘Look, don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but I think that maybe you coming to stay with us was a mistake after all. Dad totally lost it last night. And, well, now that so many people know you’re here it won’t be safe. For any of us.’