A Rip in the Veil (17 page)

“Take your hands off my son!” John was halfway across the room.

“Now, now,” Hector said, producing a knife. “Let’s all calm down. And if we’re to be quite correct, this little bastard isn’t yours, is he?”

John snarled, baring his teeth in a primitive gesture of defiance. Hector laughed, and swung the boy up into his arms. The child yelped, a high-pitched sound that irritated Hector’s auditory nerves.

“What are you going to do? Burn them?” Hector said, holding the squirming boy under his arm.

“Yes,” Magnus said, “all of them. You know, like you made sure Benito and Dolores did.”

Now how on earth did Magnus Lind know that? Hector frowned at him.

“Benito Gutierrez was a false convert, crying out to his father’s God at the stake. It was just that they died, he and his daughter, and how unfortunate both daughters didn’t burn. I was only doing my civic duty, protecting my faith.”

“Of course,” Diane said, “how silly of us not to understand. Raping young women is always an indication of high religious values.”

Hector glared at her. The only person who knew about that was Mercedes. Had she left them some sort of message?

“Dolores was a little whore,” he said viciously. “For almost three years she met me in secret, received trinkets and flowers, shared my wine cup, my bed. And then…” He just shook his head. He had no reason to retell that long gone afternoon when Dolores had realised he had no intention of wedding her, or the subsequent fight. He fingered his upper lip, recalling just how close her eyes had been when she sliced the paring knife across his mouth.

“Let my grandson go,” Magnus said, advancing over the floor. “Set him down and leave before I rip your heart out.” Once again the blade shone in the lamplight, freezing Magnus to a standstill.

“You want the child, I want a painting. I’m sure we can reach an amicable agreement.” Hector turned the boy the right way up and studied him briefly. “He looks just like his grandmother.”

“Yes, and we can imagine just how much that thrills you,” Diane muttered.

“I can’t say it does.” Hector glanced at Diane, at the two men, and retreated a pace or two, making for the paintings. He moved quickly, the screaming child dangling under his arm. “I don’t even know if I have grandchildren.”

“Hopefully not,” Magnus said.

Hector gave him a cold look, changed his grip and the boy spluttered, legs kicking.

“Fragile, isn’t he?”

“Stop! Please stop!” Diane begged.

Hector released his hold and used his knife to beckon John forward.

“You,” he said, “I need you to flip through all those paintings.” He pointed at the stacks of postcard size paintings, hundreds and hundreds of them.

“Me?” John croaked, eyes hanging off his crying son.

“You.” Hector watched him stumble towards the small canvases, noted his reaction to each and every one. The young man looked about to faint, all of him trembling as he handled those squares of beckoning blues and greens. Interesting; like a human antenna, his whole body twitching in the proximity of so much magic. Hector took his time choosing, but finally he selected three and had John place them right side up on the huge table.

“I would suggest you back away, unless you want to be dragged along as well.”

“Isaac,” John said, “my son…”

Hector looked down, surprised at seeing the boy who still dangled from his arm.

“Go and stand by the door.” Once they’d complied he released the child, a small shape that flew towards the safety of his father’s arms.

*

Magnus was already moving to grab Hector, but Diane latched on to his arm.

“No, don’t get too close!”

The air around Hector shimmered, strands of colour dancing round him. Hector seemed to be praying, leaning towards the painting. A bright, white light poured out of the picture, and before their shocked eyes he sort of dove into the little square of twisting greens and blues and faded away, piece by piece. His head, his shoulders, one arm, the other…and all the time they heard him shriek, a disembodied sound that echoed through the room. With a rush of air he was gone, and on the table the bright turmoil of oils lay beckoning, whispering that they should come and look, look and drown in that white, elusive centre.

“He’s gone.” John gulped air, kissed Isaac’s head. Magnus nodded and approached the table, step by careful step. He swept together the paintings by touch alone, keeping his face averted.

“They burn,” he said “and no more looking at them, okay?”

John backed away, still clutching Isaac. “I can’t, I’m sorry, but I can’t bear to be close to them.”

Diane patted him on his arm. “Just sit there.”

John leaned back against the wall. What on earth had he witnessed? Impossible, he tried, entirely impossible. Diane filled her arms with small, brightly coloured canvases, and John could swear he could hear them whispering, begging him to come closer and look. He closed his eyes, and all along his arms and back sweat ran in small rivulets, ice-cold trickles against his overheated skin.

“Do you think he made it?” Diane dumped her pile out of the window.

“Made it?” Magnus asked, breaking a canvas over his knee.

“Well, yes; back to his time.”

Magnus gave her long look. “Frankly Diane, I don’t give a damn. I hope he rots in limbo forever.”

* * *

Hector landed with a painful thud, had to lie still for some moments while he forced air back into his lungs. All of him seemed whole, but he knew from past experience that he would be covered with bruises, the odd burn. Not that he cared, because at present his major concern wasn’t his health, it was where he was.

All around was silence, an unthreatening lack of sounds that indicated he was miles from any human habitation. Still he sniffed, hoping to be assailed by the scents of trapped summer heat, the stench of the Guadalquivir mudflats. Nothing. He was surrounded by grass and shrubs, a landscape devoid of anything that resembled his city.

With a groan he rolled over to hide his face in his arms. This wasn’t Spain, nor was this his time. This was where Diego was, it had been Diego’s face he’d seen just as the funnel closed over his head, and now he was as elegantly trapped here as a fly in a spider web.

“Please God,” Hector said out loud, “please just let me die.”

Chapter 13

It was dusk when they found somewhere to settle for the night. Matthew had been walking in silence for the last few hours, hurrying her along dwindling paths and through thickets where gnats swarmed like blankets round their heads. She followed him like a sleepwalker, so immersed in the guilt of having killed two men that she didn’t register how he faltered, even stumbled.

“Here?” she said when he stopped. A miniscule stream, and only a stand of twisted junipers as protection against the rising wind.

He sat down with a grunt. “I have to rest, this’ll do.” He closed his eyes. His nose was a swollen mess, encrusted runnels of blood running down into his beard and down one side of his mouth.

“Are you okay?” She put a hand on his forehead. He was clammy to the touch, and she sat back on her haunches. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s just a scratch,” he said, moving his shoulder. His shirt must have been stuck to his skin, because there was a tearing sound and a hurried intake of breath from Matthew. She stood up, gnawing her lip.

“First things first, fire and water.” She wrapped him in their combined blankets and left him sitting, telling him in no uncertain terms that she’d flay him if he as much as wiggled a toe.

“You’ve done this a lot?” he asked a bit later. A small fire was burning at his feet, the dented kettle set to boil with the aid of some largish stones.

“It happens,” she said, concentrating on washing his nose. For an instant her palm rested against his cheek, and he leaned into it, closing his eyes with a soft exhalation.

“Right,” she said once she was done with his face. “Let me see.”

“Nay, it’s no matter.”

“In which case it doesn’t matter if I see it, does it?”

He undid his plaid and she put a hand on the dark stain that covered the right hand side of his back.

“Jesus! You’ve been bleeding like a pig.”

Matthew twisted, trying to see.

“Sit still.” A strong grip on his shirt, and she ripped it clean off him. It made him yelp, and the shivering increased when the cool evening wind swept down his bared back.

“
Djävla skit
,” Alex said, “
Helvetes djävlar
.”

“I know you’re swearing, even if it isn’t in English.”

“I’m only doing that to spare your sensitive male ears.” She’d never seen a knife wound before. Well of course she hadn’t; she lived in a world where people got shot rather than stabbed – no major improvement really. “When did he do this?” Her hands traced other scars, faint welts up and down his back.

Matthew raised his good shoulder. “I don’t rightly know, mayhap when he was on top and I was struggling to get back on my feet.”

She washed him and sat back to think. The wound was still seeping, and now that it was superficially clean she saw that it was deep, having sunk into the uppermost part of the back, just below the shoulder joint. She tore off a huge piece of lining from her jacket and drenched it in scalding water, almost dropping the burning cloth.

If it hurt when she washed the open wound with the dripping cloth he didn’t say, but his shoulders dropped when she decided she was done, pressing a piece of dry, soft cloth against the red skin. She found his spare shirt for him in his bundle, tore strips out of the discarded one to tie her primitive bandage into place, and sat back to survey her work.

“Does it hurt?”

He shook his head. She helped him pull the shirt over his head and motioned for him to sit closer to the fire. He closed his hands around the wooden cup of hot water and drank in gulps. He looked much better now that his face was washed, but it worried her that he shivered so.

“Talk to me,” he said through chattering teeth. She nodded and helped him lie down with his head on her lap, heaping as much plaid and blanket as she could over him.

“I never finished telling you about John, did I?”

“Nay, you didn’t, but you don’t have to.”

“You told me.” She ran her hands over his head, down his back, lost in thought. “We were one of those off and on couples, you know, for some months we’d go out, and then we’d break up, and I’d be really mad at him, so I’d go out with someone else, and so would he, then one day he’d call and we’d get back together again.” She decided not to go into too much detail regarding these reconciliations – after all, it was none of his business. Plus he was kind of oversensitive when it came to the sex thing.

“When he asked me to marry him, it wasn’t a surprise for anyone. We’d been living together for two years and it sort of seemed the natural progression of things, you know?” Alex smiled, caressing the ring on her third finger. “And then he went and ruined it.” And if they hadn’t fought so bitterly, if she hadn’t flung his ring in his face and stalked off, she’d never have met Ángel and…

“What did he do?”

“He screwed my best friend.” Stupid John, stupid her, and stupid, stupid Diane.

“Screwed?”

“Fucked.”

“Oh, aye,”

“Okay, so it wasn’t entirely his fault, we’d had one of our regular fights, this time it was him being mad at me for spending so much time at work, and I tried to explain to him that what with the Millennium looming, I stood to make the killing of my lifetime.”

Matthew twisted his head to look at her and she realised she’d totally lost him.

“You work?”

“Of course; all modern women work.”

“And the bairns? The home?”

Alex shrugged offhandedly. “Day care for the kids, and most men help out at home nowadays. Well, in the future.

“I stormed off back to Magnus and Mercedes, telling John he could stuff it, I wasn’t about to let his insecurities hamper my career, and for a whole week he didn’t call or drop by. So come Saturday, I decided to go for a night out with Diane, and I ended up in a bar down in Leith.” She smiled at his raised brows. “Somewhat gentrified in my day, not the dump it probably is now. Anyway, John was there as well, and he was still angry and hurt, so he said something about not knowing if he wanted to marry a power woman in a power suit, and that pissed me off so I threw my drink at him and left.”

“Power woman,” Matthew murmured, and she could feel him laughing. “He didn’t like that, did he?”

“No, I flung it in his face.”

She’d stood outside the bar waiting for Diane, but the twofaced bitch hadn’t shown up, so she’d made her way home. Once there, she was so inflamed with anger at John she decided to have it out with him that same night, so she’d rushed over to their apartment, thrown open the door, and stood stunned at the sight of John and Diane tangled together on the sofa.

“He just stared, you know? And I wanted to cry, but instead I turned and ran, and the next morning I took a plane to Stockholm, not wanting to risk running into him.”

He had come after, trying to explain, but it had all gone very wrong and she’d yanked off his ring and thrown it on the table in front of him and then she’d walked out, vowing to never, ever talk to him again – or Diane.

“My life unravelled a bit,” she said, grimacing at the understatement. “And one day I found myself back home with an unwanted child in my belly.” By the time she’d made it home, it had been too late for an abortion, and she’d felt so trapped, hating the invasive growth inside of her. Matthew raised his hand to where hers lay on his shoulder and squeezed it.

“John was very stubborn. He rang, he dropped by, he insisted on coming with me for all my appointments. And when Isaac was born, I think he loved him from the first moment he held him. I didn’t.” She hunched with shame, recalling waves of resentment washing over her as she stood staring down at her new-born baby.

Matthew was silent for a while. “He loves you a lot,” he finally said in a rather grudging tone.

“Yes, and I love him.”

“What happened to you?” he said later. They were pressed close to each other, she holding him tight to her chest in an attempt to stop his shivering. She didn’t reply, and he thrust his backside against her.