The House (30 page)

“Can you block
it out?” Eddie asked. He had his hand on my shoulder but he pulled
me into a tight hug when I shook my head. It was what I wanted,
what I needed, but it still sent more tears down my cheeks. I
wasn’t even brushing them away anymore. I just let them fall down
from my jaw and onto Eddie. He didn’t seem to notice.

I felt another
set of arms around me. Hercules lifted me up off the floor and
started to walk away down the hall. I vaguely felt the change in
motion as he started up the stairs but my mind was slipping further
and further away. It felt like every time I got a handle on this
new power it intensified exponentially just to spite me. Now it
felt worse than ever. I had a vague thought that it wasn’t right,
that it wasn’t supposed to happen this way, then there wasn’t
enough me left in my head to think clearly.

I felt the
softness of my bed under me as Hercules put me down. I don’t know
how I knew who had picked me up, maybe because it was always
Hercules to come to my rescue lately. I felt him move away and held
fast onto his arms. Pulling him back, making him hold me. It didn’t
offer any relief; it simply felt like without someone to hold me I
would fall to pieces where I lay. Or float away. Maybe I would like
to float away.

Real voices
started up as Eddie came into the room. I could tell the
difference; I could focus on the real world with a great effort.
The tone of the voices was different to the ones inside my head,
the great clamour falling away slightly if I had something solid to
hold onto.

“What’s wrong
with her? Sounds like she’s gone crazy,” Eddie said.

“She’s not
crazy. Her power has gotten stronger and she’s still getting the
hang of it. You’ll be alright, Trix ... you’ll learn how to handle
this new power just as easily as you always have.” Hercules sounded
kind and soft, or maybe the bed felt soft. It was difficult to
distinguish between the sound of his voice and the feel of the
bed.

“She’s
dangerous like this. Did you see what happened before? She could do
that to all of us – we’d be sitting ducks!” Eddie’s voice was
heated, anger threading its way through, but underneath it was
fear. Fear that he would be the next person to disappear into the
night and never return. “There must be someone who knows how to
deal with her...someone you can call.”

I don’t
remember hearing any more, although there must have been more. I
had a vague sense then of talking but it was all mixed up in the
feel of the bed and the warmth of Hercules next to me. His hand
stroking my hair over and over again. Right then I couldn’t think
of anything better. Falling asleep while someone held me, comforted
me.

I didn’t
manage it though. I could still catch pieces of conversation around
me. Someone was arguing, though I couldn’t tell what it was about.
There was something about ‘being quiet’, someone shushing the
others. It sounded like others, more voices than just two, each
more indistinct than the last. All of them mixing with the voices
in my head.

My head felt
heavy, too full. I could think...if only just. My sense of reality
was wavering, although I realised that the voices were also
reality. They were real thoughts of the people around me. Again I
thought that if I could just control it, work through it, make
sense of it, I would be able to find Marie, Stripes, Shayanna and
all the others we had somehow misplaced. That’s how it seemed to
me, that we had misplaced them. That we would find them in some
unlikely place and realise we’d been really silly not to think of
it first.

It was a
pretty thought.

I woke up in a
sweat. My head was pounding with voices and Hercules still had his
arms wrapped around me. Also wrapped around me was my winter duvet
and soft blanket. The heating must have been on full as well.

Hercules was
sleeping; his body laid down the length of mine outside the covers.
Whether to be gentlemanly or so that he didn’t cook I don’t know.
Likely so he didn’t roast alive like I was starting to, I think.
He’d never been one for modesty.

It took me a
while to orientate myself. Everything seemed to take twice or three
times as long as it should have. Like I had to think through a
thick wall. I managed to pick my head up a few centimetres from the
bed but Hercules was all wound up in my hair, holding me hostage. I
managed to groan. I was fairly sure I hadn’t meant to make a sound
but I couldn’t be sure.

Hercules
looked up, saw my hair underneath him and moved quickly out of the
way. I had just started to remove myself from my many-layered
prison when my eyes caught upon something else. Someone else.
Hercules had left my bed to stand by the door apologetically. At
least, it had better be apologetically I thought as I glared at
him.

There, sitting
in my bedroom chair, where my mound of half-clean clothes usually
sat, was my grandfather. I think I groaned again but it might have
been one or several of the voices. It was harder to separate myself
from the voices, to keep myself intact. My control slipped for a
moment when I fully registered that my grandfather was there, in my
room, in my chair. Looking for all the world like he owned the
place.

“Are you
feeling better?” he asked. There was almost no inflection to his
voice, like he was afraid that to show any emotion might anger
me.

“No,” I
replied. You are always supposed to say ‘yes’, that you are feeling
better. That somehow the presence of the person asking has helped
you. The sight of my grandfather then did little but arouse old
nightmares for which I had no wish and no use. “Why are you
here?”

“Your friends
called me. They were worried. Apparently you had a little accident
the other day.” He said it just like that – a little accident – as
if I had tripped and grazed my knee. It was the same wording he’d
used when I’d managed to accidentally wipe a prisoner’s mind. The
memory made me shiver.

“They did, did
they?” My eyebrows felt like they were about to disappear into my
hairline. “Well, I guess you came running then. Your precious
little granddaughter in trouble. Or rather, I suppose, your
precious granddaughter causing trouble.”

“I was
worried. I don’t like this situation and I don’t like to see you
hurt. No matter what you might think,” he said. His voice was
perfectly level without a touch of inflection. I shivered again.
There was something inherently wrong with a voice without any
emotion at all. It reminded me far too much of some of the crazier
prisoners at the Covenant. I would refuse to go anywhere near
anyone who sounded like that at one time. Their memories and
emotions were generally so alien as to be abhorrent to me.

“Whatever,” I
said, turning over in my bed to face away from him. Childish, but
if he was going to treat me like a child I felt perfectly good
acting like one. For all my thoughts of bravery and not making
things worse, my grandfather had always been able to reduce me to
this. The helpless child. “You never cared about my wellbeing
before. You’ve heard that my powers have gone crazy and you’ve come
to investigate.”

“Your powers
are worrying, yes, but the fact that you seem to be coping so badly
is my main concern.”

“Coping badly.
I know...lets fill your head with people shouting random thoughts
and see how well you cope shall we?” I turned back around to face
him. I had to sit up, to get some kind of formality between us.
Life was easier that way.

“You have
become a telepath. Do you have any idea what that means?” he asked
me. Finally, his voice started to sound like he had some emotion.
It was a stretch but I thought I sensed some anger in there. Of
course, my grandfather used his anger well; he’d certainly
accumulated enough of it to have some to spare.

“What it
means? What it means is that I can hear every damn thought that
goes though someone’s mind and it is going to drive me insane!” My
voice rose gradually as I spoke from a whisper to a shout, and I
rose with it until I stood over my grandfather looking down at
him.

I sat back
down again, ashamed. No matter what he did I still respected my
grandfather; it was still ingrained in me to defer to him, to be
courteous. I was acting like a teenager again, rebelling against
him and shouting at him. It never made a dent before and I didn’t
expect it to now. I actually realised that if I wanted him to treat
me like an adult I had to act like one. The impetus had to come
from me; he certainly wouldn’t start the ball rolling.

“What it means
is that the High Council wants you at the Covenant. What it means
is that the Great witches want to evaluate you.” There was a touch
of sadness in his voice then.

“The High
Council doesn’t get involved in these things; they don’t get
involved in anything since Britain closed its borders. How can they
even know? And the only reason anyone is ever summoned to the
Covenant is to keep them there. I will not be a prisoner,
grandfather. I will not bow to them. I am a shifter, not a witch.”
I was controlled, but fear thrilled through me. Now on top of
everything else some ancient witches wanted to get me out of the
way.

Somehow they
had found out about me and someone had decided I wasn’t fit to live
my life anymore. I suppressed another shiver at the thought of what
they would do to me.

“There hasn’t
been a true telepath in four hundred years. They want to meet you.
They can’t come here. They want to talk,” my grandfather pleaded. I
don’t know if he was pleading for me to believe him or so that he
would believe his own words.

“And if I
remember my history lessons they locked him away before walling off
the door, but then decided he wasn’t dying quickly enough and
torched an entire wing of the Covenant he was in. Somewhere in
France, I think.”

“He had gone
mad, they all saw it. They couldn’t do anything; he bewitched his
guard to let him out, he made people forget they had seen him.” He
was talking desperately now, fever in his eyes.

“Marie,
Shayana and Stripes have been kidnapped. I will not wait in a cell
for some witch who’s too old to tie their own shoe laces to decide
I’m safe. Because, you know what grandfather? They never will and
you know it. That’s why you’re here, because you think I’m
dangerous.

How powerful was the last telepath in France, eh? He could
influence one person, see into their mind. I can see into
everyone’s
mind. The
whole damn world by the feel of it.
I
wouldn’t think I was safe to be
around if that was all the information I had.” I sat with my head
in my hands.

“Why couldn’t
this have happened before Marie went missing?” I thought to myself.
But then I suppose it had, my powers had been growing for years.
Maybe they were just storing up inside of me. It was impossible;
powers do not grow stronger and they do not change. Yet there I was
– an insanely strong telepath who used to be a weak empath.

“You need help
to control your power. Something has happened; you’ve never lost
control before. You knocked yourself and two of your friends
unconscious accidentally, Beatrice. What will happen if you don’t
get help?” I just looked at him, tears gracing the corners of my
eyes.

“I’ll go
mad...but then I will anyway, grandfather. That’s why they’ll kill
me as soon as they set eyes on me. All telepaths go mad, I know
that. Remember, we get taught these things; all strong telepaths
throughout history have gone mad eventually so they were taken out.
Then they started to take out all telepaths just to be sure. I also
remember the testing they did, do you? The tests when I was too
young to know better, just to make sure? They would have killed me
then, grandfather, and you would have let them.” I let the
accusation hang in the air. I didn’t know where it had come from;
all I knew was that I was going crazy at exactly the time I was
needed.

I couldn’t
afford to fall apart.

I couldn’t
afford to take time off to train.

“I can’t
leave, grandfather – my family is here. I won’t go to the Covenant
and I certainly won’t go all the way to the High Council. The only
one left in Britain is in Scotland!”

“I thought you
might say as much.” He was back to being businesslike. “I don’t
want you to die, Beatrice. If I have to defy the High Council to
keep you then I will, but you need to learn control. Without it
you’ll end up hurting yourself. This may not be the best time but
you’re not going to be any help to your friends curled up in a ball
in bed unable to do anything. Jalas is here, he will stay when I
leave. I haven’t told anyone he is here. I did not tell anyone
about your power. I have to go. There are some even worse whispers
around than missing shifters.” And he just walked out the door. I
sat stunned for a moment before I noticed that Jalas had taken his
place in the room.

“No,” I
growled. I felt my throat slip. “You can not be here.”

“And yet, here
I am,” he said, a smirk sliding across his face. I hated him, hated
him then with the fury only a former love can. He was my
grandfather’s right hand. He was the dungeon torturer and every
moment with him reminded me of the terrible things I had seen and
done there.

“Go away. I
don’t want you. How could you even help me? You are not a
telepath,” I said through gritted teeth, having managed to shift my
throat back to normal.

“I helped to
train you before. And besides, there are no telepaths. Don’t you
think that’s kind of the point?” He was looking at me expectantly.
Somehow he always managed to know me that little bit too well. It
seemed that he could read every movement, every nuance.

“Fine. But you
realise that you’ll have to let me read your mind?” I goaded him.
When all else fails, try threats – it didn’t work.