Waking the Dead (13 page)
“He might not believe us, but he might watch them if we said something had happened.” Caitrin bit her lip, thinking. “What if we said they’d taken drugs? By mistake, like. We could say Josh brought them with him from
“You haven’t flown internationally, have you,” Nick said wryly. “I don’t think he’d have gotten through the airport with them, let alone onto a plane.”
“We deal with this ourselves,” John said, his tone making it plain that it wasn’t up for debate. “And by ‘we’ I mean Nick with me helping him.” He looked down at Caitrin, his expression as stern as Nick had ever seen it; John was usually indulgence itself with his niece. “You’re going to argue with me, and we don’t have time, so I’ll give you something to do. We’ll all get in the car and go to this lady’s --”
“Please. Call me Bonnie,” she said. “I feel as if we’re past the point of being formal, don’t you?”
“We go to wherever Bonnie’s staying,” John continued.
“The Fraser Arms Hotel,” she said. “We all are.”
“Fine. We go there, and you and Caitrin find this book and get a list of possible targets. You can call us when you have it.”
“And what will you be doing?” Caitrin asked suspiciously. “Because I want to help Josh, Uncle John, and I’ll not be put somewhere safe like a baby!”
“We’ll look for the car; the island’s not that big, after all, and we know they won’t be trying to leave it. We’ll start in town, maybe go out to where the
“Or the graveyard,” Nick put in. “They could be drawn there.”
John nodded. “Aye, they might. We’ll see them as we drive by if they are.” He looked at Nick, his eyes warm with concern. “Are you up for this? You’re awful pale, love.”
“I’m okay,” Nick said. He had to be -- there wasn’t anyone else who could do what he could, and for all he knew, the longer that ghost was in possession of Josh’s body, the harder it would be to get him out. He hated to think what Josh might be going through right now.
“Let’s go.”
It took them another ten minutes to get organized, what with three of them needing dry shoes. “We can’t chance stopping at my house,” Caitrin said. “My mam’s shopping on
John drove them all down to the hotel, where Bonnie and Caitrin were dropped off, and left strict instructions that they were to call if they found anything or if they saw Josh or Fred. Then he and Nick drove slowly through town, keeping an eagle eye out for Fred’s car and finally spotting it parked not too far from the pub.
And, if Nick wasn’t mistaken, there were Fred and Josh -- Blayne and Toran now -- disappearing into said pub. “There,” he said. “God, I hope all they want is a drink.”
“It’s been a long time since their last one, right enough,” John said. Off Nick’s look, he added, “Blayne and Toran, I mean.”
“True.”
“But I’m thinking they’re hunting,” John said, his fingers drumming against the steering wheel. “And not for a pint of ale.” He pulled up beside Fred’s car. “We should maybe do something so that they can’t drive away.”
“Like what? Shoot out the tires?” Nick got out of the car, fighting dizziness. He leaned against the car until John came around and slipped a hand under his arm and together they walked over to the pub. “Like you said; where are they going to go? And to be honest, I’d sooner they did drive away from the town; there’s a limit to what we can do in public.”
“Good point.”
Inside, the pub was its usual busy self, with the TV set above the bar showing a soccer match and the click of cue against ball coming from the pool table. Blayne and Toran were at the bar, already sipping at pints of lager, studying the room with a predatory, focused stare. Nick noticed that no one stood close to them; even Todd, the younger barman who pulled pints on Geordie’s nights off, had retreated to the far end of the bar, his face troubled as he slowly polished a glass with a towel.
Slowly, Nick and John walked toward them. When they were about six feet away, Nick stopped, gesturing at John not to get any nearer. “Josh.”
Toran shook his head; his eyes were so dark that even without everything else, Nick would have known something was wrong. “Not anymore.” He looked at Blayne. “I’d have thought he’d get the hint that he was better off well away from us.”
“Aye, Toran.” Blayne took another sip from his pint glass and shook his head sadly. “I remember a time when a man had the sense to avoid trouble.”
“Ah, but that was also a time when men knew better than to bed other men,” Toran said. “Back in our day, they would have been run off the island, not let to live amongst decent folk.”
Hearing those words come from Josh’s mouth, even though the voice didn’t sound much like his, was harder than Nick would have anticipated. It took everything he had not to let the hurt show on his face. “Things change,” he said.
Blayne smirked over the rim of his glass. “Aye, we know. And a good deal more is about to.”
“Oh, aye?” John settled himself into what Nick privately thought of as his fighting stance, even though it had been a long time now since John had gotten into an argument that turned physical. His hands were curled slightly, almost making fists, his weight was balanced evenly, and there was a spark of anger in his eyes. “For you two, maybe. Murdering bastards, the pair of you. You deserved all you got and it was a cleaner death than I’d have given you.”
Toran moved so quickly that Nick didn’t even have time to blink -- he grabbed onto John, turned him around, and shoved him up against the bar, snarling in his face. “We didn’t murder anyone,” he hissed. “We were
innocent
. They were the murderers, the ones that tied us up in that cave and left us to drown.”
Around them, conversations died, silence spreading outward as heads turned to watch. Todd tensed behind the bar and then began to move toward them, but caught Nick’s eye and subsided.
John, who didn’t get intimidated easily, met Toran’s aggression with a contemptuous snort. “Is that so? Not a version of the story I’ve ever heard.” Like Toran, he kept his voice down, but they were still getting too much attention. He shrugged free, and Toran let him, his breath coming in short gasps.
Nick turned to Blayne. “If that’s so --” John snorted again, but Nick continued. “Then we can talk about it, but not here. Let’s go someplace else, okay?”
Blayne tilted his head, his gaze sliding past Nick to a group of men in the corner who had gone back to their card game when John and Josh hadn’t begun to fight. “I like it here. I see an old friend.”
Nick gave the men a cursory glance. He knew them by sight, but they were twenty years older and he wasn’t sure what their names were or which of them Blayne meant. “No, you don’t know them,” he said. “You don’t know anyone alive today. You’re out of your time, and you don’t belong here.”
“He’s right,” John said. “And if you’ll let him, he can help to send you to where you do belong.” He added, “Heaven or hell, and I’m still thinking it’s going to be the last one.”
A pause, and then Fred -- Blayne, Nick reminded himself -- nodded. “Fine.”
Nick wasn’t sure why they’d agreed; maybe it was just because they had the sense to realize that starting a brawl in a pub full of people, none of whom knew them, wasn’t likely to end well. He was just glad they were willing to step outside, away from the crowd that had no idea what was going on. Hopefully, they’d be able to get this taken care of before that changed.
“So what is it you think you can do for us?” Josh asked, once they’d stepped outside and away from the pub’s entrance. “Because somehow I’m doubting we have the same goals in mind.”
“Well, you can’t stay like this.” Nick tried to sound relaxed and reasonable about it when he was feeling anything but. “You must be using up an awful lot of energy, being in these bodies the way you are. I don’t think the original owners are just sitting there quietly, letting you do whatever you want.”
Blayne nodded. “Aye, well. This one’s none too happy about it, and that’s the truth. Doesn’t mean I’m going to just turn control back over to him, though, no matter how much he might want it. We were cheated, Toran and I -- it wasn’t right.”
“I can see how you’d feel that way,” Nick said diplomatically. Across the road from the pub, a low wall ran along a steep, rocky slope leading down to the water, with a bench in front of it. “Why don’t we go over there and you can tell me what happened?”
Toran rolled his eyes but after a quick glance at Blayne, he walked to the bench and sat down on it, his legs sprawled wide, his face impassive. Blayne sat beside him, and Nick and John sat facing them on the wall, the sea at their backs.
“So,” John said. “Innocent, you say?”
“We watched her die,” Toran said, “but the only part we had in that was walking through the door when she thought us many miles away. It was getting dark and she was always nervous, ready to jump and scream at a mouse skittering over the floor. She must have heard us coming because she peered out through the window. We saw her and waved and thought she knew it was us. We were singing -- a little drunk, happy to be home, our pockets well-lined.”
“We’d a gift for her,” Blayne added, his face locked in sad lines now. “A wee hand mirror. She’d had one when we were bairns and dropped it and cried for hours over it.”
Despite himself, Nick felt sympathy rise, picturing the scene.
“We hammered on the door, roaring out for her to open it and let us in, not knowing why she hadn’t come running to meet us…” Toran shook his head. “She lay behind the door, so close that when I pushed it open, it struck her head, but she was already dead, I swear, her eyes staring up at me, wide and empty. God, will you ever forget her eyes?” he asked his brother. “I see them now, I do --”
There were tears in Blayne’s eyes. “I know. We stood there for so long, barely saying a word to each other. Shock, I think. It had been years since we’d been home, and we were so looking forward to surprising her…”
“We were still standing there, with the front door open and her body on the floor, not yet cold, when someone must have happened by.” Toran wrapped his arms around himself. “Not twenty minutes later, a group came up the path with torches and weapons. We tried to run off, but they caught us near the shore. They knocked us about and tied our hands behind our backs, and put us in that cave. They wouldn’t listen to a word we said, wouldn’t even
hear
us…”
Nick had no idea what to say to that. He could imagine all too vividly what it would have been like, the water getting higher and higher until there was no air left to breathe.
“They were the murderers,” Blayne said fiercely. “And after we died, we went after them. It was only fair -- we wanted revenge for what they’d done.”
“I can understand that in a way,” John said. “And I can understand why they stopped you, too.”
Toran made an odd choking sound, half groan. “That spell… Trapped in that cave… It was like they wouldn’t stop tormenting us. We were held there like flies in honey, struggling endlessly.”
“And then we freed you,” Nick said. “And now you have a choice --”
“No,” John interrupted, his elbow nudging into Nick’s ribs, a warning, Nick supposed. “You have a path to follow. An interrupted journey to finish.”
“Go toward the light?” Nick muttered under his breath. “Somehow I don’t think it’s going to be that easy.”
“Maybe not,” John said. “You weren’t angels, were you? Or was the part of the legend that had your pockets full of stolen gold a lie, too?”
“We had money, aye,” Blayne said. “Wouldn’t you have, if you were coming home to see your mother for the first time in years? But it wasn’t stolen; we’d earned it, every guinea.”
Nick shook his head, because they were getting so far off-track it wasn’t even funny. “Look, you’re going to have to go, whether you want to or not. You’re not powerful enough to stay here indefinitely.” He hoped.
“It doesn’t need to be indefinitely,” Blayne said with a smirk. “Just long enough to --” He broke off as Toran suddenly groaned and clutched at his head, bending low at the waist, face hidden.
Nick was up off the wall in a shot, silently praying that Toran was somehow dissipating, or at least losing the ability to keep control of Josh the way he had been. He knelt on the ground in front of the man, and when Toran lifted Josh’s face again, it was Josh’s green eyes that looked back at him, anguished.
“Nick,” he gasped, grabbing at Nick’s hands and holding on tightly. “They want -- they want to kill people, all the ones that are related to -- God, don’t let them. Please.”
“I know,” Nick said. He could feel John standing just behind him; Blayne had jumped to his feet and backed away a few steps. “It’s okay. We won’t. Just hang on.”
“They’re crazy.” Josh pressed the heel of one hand to his temple. He was shaking. “Insane. They weren’t, before, but I think all those years in that cave…”
“Toran!” Blayne’s voice cracked. “Where are you, brother?”
Good question. Nick guessed Toran was still inside Josh -- no, he knew that, because he could sense him -- but Toran was quiescent now, a stronger will holding his at bay. Possession was nine-tenths of the law, and Josh was firmly entrenched after eighteen years of ownership; Toran was clinging by his fingertips.
Blayne threw his head back, his eyes lit with a roiling dark energy, his face contorted with grief and loss. “Toran!” he screamed up at the sky. “To me, brother! To me!”
“What the hell?” John asked. “Nick!”
But there was nothing he could do. As they watched -- and Nick wondered if John and Josh could even see it -- Toran’s spirit escaped the prison of flesh and bone that Josh’s body had become and flowed into Fred’s body, joining his brother.