Blood (19 page)

He wasn't sure why, whether it was because Asmund had been cursed just as much as he had, or perhaps he was saddened by the loss. For whatever his faults, Asmund had been the first of his own kind that he'd ever met, and together they might have had much to discuss. And Asmund had made him what he was, whether he liked it or not, so in some strange way, perhaps it was the sadness of a boy who has lost his father.

An hour later, they were sitting around the heavy wooden table in Chris and Rachel's rustic kitchen. The room was lit by candles because they had returned to find the city was still blacked out from the earlier storm. There was only one candle on the table itself and Rachel had placed it as far away from Will as possible.

Chris had just opened a bottle of red wine and poured out three glasses, saying, “I'm not sure we should be encouraging you to drink, Eloise, but under the circumstances …”

“That's very sweet of you, Chris, but I've been drinking wine with dinner since I was about five.”

He handed her the glass and said, “Will, I feel awful not being able to offer you anything.”

Will shook his head, dismissing the thought, but then Rachel added, “And it's dreadful that you didn't really find what you were looking for.”

“But we did find some answers,” said Eloise. “At least we know for sure now that Lorcan Labraid is the Suspended King, and that he's one of the four.”

Chris shook his head and said, “But each answer just leads to more questions. Who are the four, and how is Labraid a Suspended King, and most of all,
what
were you meant to find out there tonight?”

Will didn't respond and after a second, Rachel said, “You don't look very disappointed, Will.”

“I found the man who did this to me. If I never learn anything else about myself, I'll be satisfied that I found Asmund and saw him destroyed.”

Eloise sipped at her wine and said, “The way he just vaporized like that—I know he wasn't a nice person or anything, but I felt sorry for him when that happened.”

“So did I,” said Will, but then remembered the pendant. He took it out of his pocket and looked at it, saying, “This fell from his neck and landed on my chest. It was the only bit of him that didn't disappear.”

Rachel took it from him and said, “Looks like bronze. Hey, maybe it was meant to survive. Maybe it was even meant to land on your chest.”

Chris thought about it and looked enthusiastic as an idea overtook him. “That's it! How do we know Asmund even deviated from the plan? I mean, maybe he thought he was defying his master's orders, but maybe that was all part of it.” He held his hands up as if trying to grasp the conclusion he was after. “The church will speak, that was what it said, and in a way it did, but maybe the only thing that was meant to come out of it was you getting your hands on that pendant.”

Will wasn't convinced, and would have been happier with a simple explanation from his maker, but as Asmund himself had pointed out, there were many tests on the road to a great man's destiny.

Rachel held the pendant up to the candlelight and said, “Nice theory, but I can't see this speaking much— it's broken for one thing.”

The pendant looked like half a disc, jagged down one side where it had broken, but as Eloise looked at it, her eyes opened wide and she said, “Maybe it isn't broken.” She got up from the table and took one of the candles into the sitting room.

“Where are you going?”

“Getting something from my bag,” she called out.

When she came back in she sat down and held out her hand to take the pendant, then held up the object in her other hand.

“The pendant Jex gave me.”

It looked almost the same, but when Eloise placed them together, the jagged edges corresponded perfectly—they had once been two halves of a whole disc.

“Incredible,” said Will.

Eloise laid the two pieces together on the table. The relief upon it, which had been hard to decipher from either half, was immediately obvious now.

“It's a boar's head,” said Will. “It was our family crest.”

“So this must have belonged to someone in your family,” said Chris.

“Not necessarily—it was a common emblem.” Yet Will refused to believe that anything could be entirely coincidental now. “Is there anything on the back?”

Eloise turned it over, pushing the two pieces back together. It was engraved with three lines, crisscrossing in the middle where a small triangle was formed between them. There were two letters, too, one on each half.

Rachel spotted the possible connection first and said, “
W
and
E
—Eloise, which half did Jex give you?”

“The
E
—that's why he gave it to me. Actually, no, he said it should always have been mine, but when I refused, he insisted and said it already had my initial on it.”

“Will and Eloise,” said Rachel.

Chris was staring hard at the back of the pendant, as if he could see something there that no one else had seen. He looked puzzled, but finally it came to him and he said, “It doesn't stand for Will and Ella, it stands for West and East. This is a map.” He looked at Rachel and coaxed her, saying, “Come on, Rachel, look at the lines! Don't they look at all familiar?” Without waiting for an answer, he asked Will, “Do you think this is old? I mean, if Asmund had it …”

“I don't think he'd left Puckhurst for centuries, and I can't imagine it was delivered to him in that time.”

Rachel saw what Chris had been hinting at now and said, “Ley lines! But if this is old, that means Watkins was right.” She turned to Will and said, “In the 1920s, an amateur archaeologist called Alfred Watkins came up with the theory of ley lines, the idea that ancient sites were all constructed along certain alignments, connected to the energy in the earth.”

The theory sounded vaguely familiar, and Will wondered if he remembered it from that time.

Chris smiled and said, “But, more importantly, I recognize this—that small triangle in the middle is the giveaway. These particular lines are very close to here. They cross in such a way that a small triangle of land exists between them, and on that land is Marland Abbey.”

“Oh. My. God.” They looked at Eloise who explained herself by saying, “This is just too freaky.”

Will agreed. “It's certainly a coming together.”

“How so? I mean, I know it became the family seat for the Earls of Mercia, but surely that was hundreds of years after your time?”

“But my father … I think he had some special connection to that place, something he also instilled in me—I went there many times as a child.”

“And I go to school there.”

Rachel looked surprised and said, “You go to Marland Abbey? So how come …?”

She was about to ask how Eloise had ended up living on the streets, but Eloise said, “Don't ask, it's all incredibly stupid and embarrassing. But it looks like I ought to go back now, if they'll take me.”

“Yes,” said Will. “I admit to being curious anyway, for many reasons, but this pendant suggests that Marland is the place I need to go next, though preparing the way won't be easy.”

“Maybe not. But we can help, and Eloise will be in the school—hopefully—so that should allow some freedom of movement.”

“If they don't have me in solitary confinement,” joked Eloise.

Rachel added to Chris's comments, saying, “And Will, if there's nowhere suitable for you there, we can take you out there at night and bring you back, as often as you want—it's not a long drive from the city.”

“Thank you. Of course, I'm hoping that won't be necessary. You've done enough already.” And in truth, he felt a little guilty accepting their help because he'd suspected them so strongly, led astray by the discomfort in his arm.

Rachel said, “Will, partly thanks to you, the paranormal has been the great passion of our life. We could never do enough if it meant finding out more about all of this. We'd do anything.”

He believed her of course, just as he should have listened to Eloise from the start, because they'd already risked their lives for him and here they were expressing a willingness to do whatever it took. Perhaps they were just wealthy people in need of excitement, but whatever they were, he now doubted they'd ever had a suspicious motive in their lives.

And as if to prove his natural enthusiasm, Chris said, “There's just one thing I don't understand. Well, as a matter of fact, I don't understand anything, but there's one thing particularly puzzling me.”

“Go on,” said Will.

“Asmund bit you. His master, for whom we don't have a name, bit him. And his master's master is Lorcan Labraid.”

“Who's the evil of the world,” added Eloise helpfully.

“But you see, that means we've accounted for everyone in a direct line from you to this ultimately evil creature, Lorcan Labraid. So if we've accounted for everyone, who on earth is Wyndham?”

“I wish I knew,” said Will. “Someone powerful enough to raise the dead, a sorcerer, but not apparently connected to Asmund or Lorcan Labraid. Nor is there any reference to him in Jex's notebook. The only thing we know for certain about him is that he's dangerous.”

Eloise nodded in agreement, but then studied her watch by the candlelight and said, “Will, I think we'll have to go soon.”

He glanced up at the clock and said, “Of course.”

But Rachel got up first and said, “Wait there a minute.”

She went through to the other room and came back a moment later with a thin leather strap. She threaded it through the half of the pendant that had been Asmund's and handed it to Will.

“With all this danger around, I think both of you should wear these. They might bring you luck.”

“Maybe you're right,” said Eloise, and put hers on. Will followed suit, though he was reminded in the process of what had happened to the pendant's previous owner— it had certainly afforded him no protection.

They said their good-byes and Will and Eloise set out into the darkened streets, lit with only the faintest blue tinge from the moon, which was already low in the sky.

They hadn't walked far when Eloise said, “When I thanked you in the church, you asked me what for. So I'm thanking you again.” He looked at her questioningly. “When the time came, you chose my life over your destiny—that can't have been an easy thing to do.”

“You know, the odd thing is, I hardly even thought about it. I should have done, but I just knew it was the right thing to do. Perhaps Chris was right—perhaps the prophecy referred to what actually happened up there and not what we'd expected.”

Eloise laughed. “Well, let's hope some of the other prophecies are a little more straightforward.”

They walked in silence for a while. Will thought about the pendant, about the way those two halves had fused perfectly together, and that in turn made him think of the last few days, which had been the most extraordinary in even his eventful life.

“Why are you smiling?”

He glanced at her and said, “Because I'm happy.”

“I gathered, though I can't think why, given tonight's mixed results.” Another couple of paces were covered in silence. “Would you like to share the secret of this happiness?”

He touched the pendant with his hand and said, “This has made me understand something. I've been wondering on and off over these last few days, why now, why Jex's notebook, why the emergence of all these strange forces, my brother, the witches, Asmund? Is it because of the new millennium or because of some alignment in the heavens? Why have I waited seven hundred and fifty years and now, all at once, my destiny is being set out before me like a test?”

“And?”

Will stopped walking and she stopped, too, and looked back at him.

“What the witches said. It's because of you, Eloise. The pendant confirmed what I already sensed in every fiber of my being—I've waited seven hundred and fifty years for you to be born. We were meant to find each other because in some way or other—and I don't know what that is— you are part of my future.”

She stared at him in disbelief, then let out a single laugh, then another. She looked infectiously happy.

“If I didn't taste like dinner, I'd kiss you right now.”

“If you didn't taste like dinner, I'd kiss you back.”

“Really?”

“Of course. I'm amazed you even need to ask.”

He reached out and brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers and she said, “You could hold my hand, unless it hurts for you to do that …”

He shook his head and took her hand in his, and as if a memory of his former life had found its way back, this time the warmth of her skin was as restorative as that summer day he dreamt of.

He smiled and they walked on like that, and suddenly the lights burst back into life all around them as the power surged back through the city. They burned so brightly that Will immediately thought to reach for his sunglasses, but he left them in his pocket.

He knew he wasn't the only one who'd waited seven hundred and fifty years for her, but the floodlit cathedral soared reassuringly into the dark sky ahead of them, and on this night, walking with Eloise, it was hard to believe there could be any evil in the world, or that anything could harm either of them.

I was different from birth. In my coloring, I took after neither parent, for both were fair. Indeed, I was once told that despite my mother's unquestionable honor, had it not been for the obvious facial resemblance to my father he might well have considered himself cuckolded.

My stepmother told me that my dark hair and green eyes were the memories of ancient lines emerging again. That good woman understood well the complex strands that combine to make us what we are, as can be seen in the Earldom itself.

My father was no relation to the Anglo-Saxon Earls of Mercia. He was of Norman descent and inheritor of a title that had been recreated only in 1175 by the grace of Henry II.

Yet my mother was a direct descendant of Edwin, the last Anglo-Saxon Earl. And my stepmother told me of a further link, of the way in which one of Edwin's ancestors had married into the line of the ancient British kings who had ruled here previously—it was from that stock that she claimed I must have derived my dark locks.

I have existed long enough to know something of genetics, to understand complexities that even she might not have grasped. But I have also existed long enough to understand that I possessed something that had belonged to neither my father nor the mother I never knew.

Just as the ley lines converge on the broken pendant, so the noble lines of all the peoples to rule in these islands converged on me. All those ancient rulers, lost beyond the edges of history, have their life force carried like a torch in my person.

And if those noble lines converged once, they must also have threaded through the centuries, crossing and separating, crossing and separating, touching countless others, perhaps even you who read this. For that is something else I have only come to truly understand in the most recent past.

As strange as I might seem, and whatever fate awaits me, we are all born of the same stuff. I am part you, and you are part me. We are blood, you and I. We are blood.