Blue Dome (The Blue Dome Series) (11 page)

I scowled, feeling
slightly patronised.

“So what does this guy,
Demarge, want with you?” I said.

Thomas sighed wearily. “He
needs me to help him find something – a place, hidden away – that he’s been
desperate to find for years.”

“Is this place somewhere
near Wiltsdown?” I asked.

“In a way,” he said. “You
can get to it from Wiltsdown, but the place itself is in a totally different …”
Thomas struggled for the right word to explain; “…
dimension,
” he said
finally.

I frowned, trying to get
my head around what he meant. “What’s the place called?” I said.

“The ‘Slipworld’. It’s
where Min and I are from.” Thomas must have been able to tell from the look on
my face that I barely had a clue what he was talking about. “You really need to
see it to be able to understand properly,” he said. “And you will.”

“So what’s so great about
the Slipworld?” I said. “Why does Demarge want to go there so badly?”

“If Demarge could gain
access to the Slipworld and find a way to destroy it, he would become extremely
powerful.” Thomas paused and looked at me so intensely that I found myself
looking away. “Clare, he is
very
dangerous and he can
never
be
allowed to find out where we live.” He took a breath and continued more gently.
“Which brings me to you. Demarge has been looking for you for a long time.”

“He’s been
what
?”
I said slowly, as a cold shiver sliced down my back. “
Why
?”

“Because you have
something he needs,” said Thomas.

“To do with my dad?” I
said. “Like information about what he’s been up to?” It was the only thing that
made sense.

“No,” said Thomas
carefully. “This has nothing to do with your father, at least not directly. Demarge
only needed him when he enlisted the help of Morana.”

“Morana?” I’d never heard
of her before.

“You know her as Arlene,
your stepmother,” said Thomas.

I shook my head.

“I think you’ve got the
wrong person,” I said. “My stepmother is definitely called Arlene, not Morana.”

“Believe me, Clare, they
are one and the same person,” said Thomas. “We’ve been watching her for a while.
She works for Demarge, has done since the beginning.”

“The beginning?” I said dully.

Thomas nodded. “Morana is a contemporary of mine and Min’s.”

I laughed, almost
snorting with disbelief.

“Don’t tell me that she’s
supposed to be thousands of years old too?” I said. Arlene had just celebrated
her thirty-ninth birthday and was pretty touchy about her age. I cringed as I
imagined what she’d say to anyone who dared suggest she was thousands of years
old. It wouldn’t be pretty.

“Appearances can be
deceptive,” said Thomas.

I rolled my eyes
sceptically. There was no possible way Thomas could know anything about my
family. He was making up a bunch of weird allegations on the basis of absolutely
nothing.

“C’mon Thomas, I know my
own stepmother,” I said.

“Clare, is it really so
inconceivable that there might be things about her that you don’t know?” he
replied.

Technically Thomas did
have a point. I hadn’t actually known Arlene all that long. At the same time
though, I didn’t need to know where she’d gone to school to know that she
wasn’t thousands of years old, or that she worked for Demarge. Like Bede had
said, it was Dad who was tied up with importing reptiles, not Arlene.

“Of course I don’t know
everything
about her,” I said. “But I know about the stuff that actually matters.”

“Okay, so how do I know
that she met your dad at an insurance conference in
Geneva
and moved in with your family about five years ago?”

I stared at Thomas in
shock. He was right, it had been about five years ago, roughly the same time as
Dad had had a massive argument with Aunt Pixie and we’d stopped seeing her. “Who
told you?” I said.

“No one,” said Thomas. “Like
I said, we’ve been watching Morana for a while. It was Demarge who arranged for
her to seduce your father.”

“Demarge?” I said. Now I
was completely confused.

“It’s all been his design,”
said Thomas, “although it hasn’t been easy to execute. Your dad was a good
father. He took a lot of convincing that Morana would make the ideal stepmother.
It was easier with you, being younger, but your brother, he was a completely
different proposition. We watched her struggle with him for years, even on the
wedding day, when he left the reception early to steal that car with his
friends.”

“You know about that?” I said.

I remembered the night of the wedding only too well. The police had
brought Bede home in the early hours of the morning, when Dad and Arlene had
only just arrived back at the house themselves, still in their wedding clothes.
They’d grounded Bede for months afterwards. But that had been private family
business. The fact that Thomas now seemed to know about it made me feel as if
someone had rifled through my bedroom when I wasn’t looking and found the diary
I kept locked under my mattress.

“I’m just so sorry that we couldn’t stop her before she made her
move,” Thomas continued. “I really don’t know what happened – one minute Min
and I were monitoring the situation and the next…well…I’m just so sorry about
your poor father.

My blood ran cold.

“Dad?” I said. “Do you know where he is?”

“Oh Clare,” Thomas whispered. “You still don’t know, do you?”

I looked silently at my lap, paralysed with fear at the revelation
that was about to come. Part of me wanted to know the awful truth and just be
done with it, like that old saying about pulling off a sticking plaster in one
go. At the same time, a bigger part of me wanted to stay perfectly still, so I
could freeze whatever hope was still intact and keep it safe. As Thomas opened
his mouth to speak, I fought with all my strength not to scream at him to stop,
to clap my hands over my ears and block his words from burrowing in. But the
truth was inevitable. I knew that.

“She killed him Clare,” he said softly. “Morana, the Angel of Death.
She killed him and she framed your brother for it.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t believe you. You must have
made a mistake. He’s not dead. He can’t be!”

I could feel Thomas’s gaze resting on the crown of my head as my
eyes began to fill with tears. Without speaking he slowly reached out and took
my hand. It was the final straw, I couldn’t hold it in any more. Large, salty
tears began rolling down my cheeks in extravagant wet streaks before dropping off
the edge of my chin. I didn’t bother wiping them away.

“I just…I don’t get it,” I said, struggling to actually push the
words out through my sobs. “Really, Arl…I mean, Morana? Why would she do that?”

“Because it’s time,” said Thomas.

“Time?” I said, repeating the word as if it was part of a foreign
language. “For what?”

“For Demarge to set his plan in motion,” said Thomas.

“What plan?” I said, weakly.

“His plan to destroy the Slipworld.” Thomas paused. “And to persuade
you to join him.”

I felt a wave of nausea wash over me.

“But I still don’t even know what the Slipworld is,” I said. “And
why me, anyway?”

“Because of who you are,
what you possess. You may not realise yet, Clare, but you have something very
rare.”

I stared at him,
dumbfounded. “You’ve definitely got the wrong person,” I said. “I can
guarantee, the only thing that’s rare about me is my height, and I’m sure
Demarge isn’t particularly interested in that.”

Thomas shook his head, the
way people do when they think you’ve misunderstood something they’ve said. “I
don’t want to scare you anymore than I already have, but trust me when I say
that Demarge will never stop until he has you in his possession.”

I looked at Thomas in
disbelief. “You don’t want to scare me, and yet you tell me
that
?”

“I’m sorry Clare, but
there’s no way of avoiding it, and there’s no easy way to tell you the truth.”

“So how does writing ‘run’ in blood on Dad’s bedroom mirror fit with
Demarge wanting to get hold of me?” I said.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” said Thomas. “Your father wrote it,
with the last of the life he had in him. He wrote it out of the love he had for
you and your brother.”

I was crying so hard now that it was difficult to breathe and I
found myself snapping at the air, only managing to grab small snatches of
oxygen at a time. Thomas shuffled across and pulled me towards him as I wept onto
his shoulder.

“I am so sorry,” he said. “If only Min and I had reacted faster,
things might have turned out differently.”

It took me a long time to get myself together. Eventually, after it
felt as if I’d cried out every last bit of moisture from my body, I was at last
able to sit up and dry my eyes. Thomas pushed the hair back from my face.

“What about the snake-importing business that Dad was involved in? How
does that fit with all of this?” I said.

“Clare, there
was
no importing business,” said Thomas. “Your
dad was a good man, he would never have jeopardised the lives of his children by
getting mixed up in something like that.”

“But I saw that letter from the insurance company,” I said. “Bede
found it in the safe. Dad hadn’t been working for them for years.”

Thomas shook his head. “That letter wasn’t real, Clare. You need to
understand, Archons like Morana are extremely clever. She could easily have had
that letter printed and planted in the safe for you or Bede to find. It would
have been child’s play to her. Once the letter was out in the open it was just
a matter of her concocting a story to go with it.”

“Archons like Morana,” I repeated. “What do you mean?”

“An ‘Archon’ is the name given
to a special class of Demarge’s servants. Morana is an Archon. Min and I are Aeons.
We aren’t all that dissimilar; we just work for different sides.”

“Oh,” I sniffed. I was beginning to wonder how much more crazy stuff
I was going to have to try to make sense of. I took a deep breath and exhaled
slowly. It was hard to remember the last time I’d felt so exhausted. I leant
back against the huge stone slabs of the wall, strangely comforted by the
coldness that was now seeping into my body – at least
that
felt real.

“Did Morana find you
too?” I said.

“No, that was my own
doing,” said Thomas wryly. “Min and I heard that Morana had received new
instructions from Demarge and that she was on the move. I was trying to track
her down before she could do any damage but, as it turns out, I let my guard
down far too easily. That’s the thing about this world Clare, it has a habit of
blunting the senses.”

I looked at him
curiously. What did he mean, “blunting the senses”? Thomas seemed to read my
mind before I could ask him.

“There’ll be time for
explanations later. The main thing now is to make sure you survive.”

Bede decided to stick to the
back roads – fewer people meant fewer collisions, and more chance of staying inconspicuous.
It also meant there was less risk of running into Mick again. A date with Mr Meat-Fists
was the last thing he needed. He focused on the cobblestones stretching out in
front of him as his feet hammered the footpath. The buildings lining the
streets melted into blurred swatches of colour, as the memories of Arlene crept
stealthily into his mind. He started to replay the various family events that
had taken place over the previous five years. Had she really been fooling them
all that time? No, it was impossible. Not even the best actor in the world could
have kept it up for that long. It had to be yet another one of the stunts that
Arlene Drama Queen pulled when she didn’t get her own way.

Man, she really is a
piece of work. I mean, it’s one thing not to get on with your stepmother, but
that chick takes the biscuit
, thought Bede. He began
to laugh, first inside his head, then quietly out loud.

This whole thing seems
too ridiculous to be true, because it is just that, ridiculous. I mean, that
story about Dad being bitten by a snake, how gullible does she think I am? “So
Arlene wants to call herself Morana now? Who cares? It’s probably some fad in
one of those stupid magazines she’s always reading. I bet what’s really happened
is that she and Dad got mixed up in some sort of dodgy business with that fat
guy and the creepy dude in black. It all ended up going bad, she got in a strop
with Dad over it, and now she’s playing it mean by telling me some crap about him
being dead. That would be typical of her – fighting over nothing, turning septic
and it ending up okay again after all.

Then Bede remembered the
writing in blood on the mirror. It was the one piece of the jigsaw that didn’t
quite fit. He continued to wrestle with it as weaved his way through the
Old
Town
, keeping his collar turned up and his head bowed to avoid making
eye contact with anyone. He knew from experience that eye contact had a nasty
habit of making people remember you. Not ideal, especially at a time when he
knew he’d need to shift like smoke if he was to avoid the police.

It was freezing now, the
cold rising up out of the ground and through the soles of his shoes. Just the
thought of having to sleep outside for a second night made him shiver
uncontrollably. Shopkeepers were starting to bring their signs inside, the
metal frames scraping the footpaths like knives against bone. The smell of
roast dinners wafted from homes and lingered in the streets, the thick, meaty
perfumes crystallising in the cold night air. Bede’s stomach growled hungrily
as he remembered the loaf of bread he’d dropped by the roadside. He pulled his
coat tightly around his shoulders and buried his hands deep inside his pockets,
pulling out a fistful of coins. Counting them quickly, he realised he had less
than half the money he’d need to get a bed in a hostel.

“Great, just great,” he
muttered to himself.

In a corner of the
Old
Town
the loud, sonorous bongs of the
Old
Town
clock, echoed
across the rooftops like the deep-bellied voice of an old man. Bede counted the
chimes.
Six o’clock
.
The
guys will be out skateboarding now
.

It wasn’t the first time
that Bede’s thoughts had wandered to his friends. They were like a surrogate
family to him – had been ever since Arlene had moved in and home had stopped
being home. Now, standing alone, cold and virtually penniless on the street,
Bede missed them more than ever. Without thinking, his feet began to walk him
out of the
Old
Town
, towards the river. He was soon
standing on the southern embankment, looking across the oily-black tide. Somewhere,
deep in that thick, dark soup, he imagined the slick bodies of thousands of
eels churning themselves into knots. A cold chill cruised up and down his spine.
He tore his eyes away and quickly ran towards the safe, bright lights of the
bridge.

Bede had soon reached the
northern bank and began running towards the skateboard park as if on
auto-pilot. It wasn’t long before he could hear the familiar sound of juddering
wheels, racing up and down the wooden ramps. In the distance, a group of boys
were standing around with their boards, watching each other practice their ollies
and kickflips. Two or three others were tagging a wall and laughing loudly. The
chemical smell of spray paint hung in the air.

“Hey!” Bede began running
towards the group watching the jumps.

It was only then that it
struck him, he didn’t actually know what he was going to say when he got there.
Usually it was easy, he could just dump whatever was on his mind and that would
be it. But this was different. This was so much bigger than anything he’d ever had
to deal with before.

How would I even begin
telling them what’s being going on
? he thought.
Hi
guys, guess what, my Dad’s a criminal and has gone AWOL. Arlene says he’s dead
and that she’s framed me for it. Oh yeah, and some dude wrote ‘RUN’ in blood on
a bedroom mirror in my house. So what’s up with you?

Bede sighed. No matter
how much he rehearsed it in his head, there was no way he was going to be able
to explain what he’d been going through.

“Hey man, what’s up?” said
a voice behind him.

Bede turned to see Shrapnel standing near one of the ramps. He had a
skateboard propped under one arm, and was wearing a black hoodie and baggy
trousers slung low so that the tops of his underpants were showing above the
belt line.

“Hey Shrap,” said Bede, giving his friend a high-five.

Shrapnel set his skateboard down and ran his fingers through his
thick, dirty- blond hair. It was so matted it looked as if it was some sort of
animal was camping on top of his head.

“So, haven’t seen you ‘round for a bit?”

“Nah, been busy,” said Bede, evasively. “You?”

Shrapnel shrugged. “Y’know, old man’s still on at me about getting a
job and the old lady’s on at him about fixing the boiler. Same old crap really.”
He paused as if suddenly remembered something. “Hey man, did you know the cops
were around here looking for you?”

“Oh. Right,” said Bede. “You didn’t say anything, did you?”

“Nah man, no way. So what’s the deal? You been ‘busy’, nicking
another car or something?”

“Ah, not exactly.” Bede shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the
other. “It’s kind of…complicated.”

Shrapnel shrugged. “Yeah, know how it is,” he said.

No, you really don’t
, thought Bede,
nodding all the same to avoid any more awkward questions.

“Hey, if the cops come around again, you’ll say you haven’t seen me,
yeah? I don’t really need them on my tail right now.”

Shrapnel raised his eyebrows. “What kind of trouble are you in?”

“It’s not me really, it’s Dad. Can’t get into it right now, but
promise me man, if you see the cops again you won’t tell them anything.”

“Sweet, whatever,” said Shrapnel.

“The other thing is…” Bede paused awkwardly. “You don’t happen to
have any money I could borrow do you? I really hate to ask but, well, I’m kind
of…not living at home at the moment.”

“Yeah, sure, what are mates for?” Shrapnel dug around in his pockets
and pulled out a couple of notes. “Here, take this. Just pay me back when you
can.”

“Thanks, I owe you.”

“No worries. So you’re not with your olds? Where’re you staying
then?”

“Anywhere I can find really,
at least until this gets sorted.”

Shrapnel drew a breath
back through his teeth. “That’s pretty brutal.”

“Tell me about it. Even
worse, Clare’s on the streets too but I don’t know where.”

Shrapnel’s eyebrows
arched in surprise. “She’s fallen out with your parents too?”

“Yeah,” said Bede,
vaguely. He really wanted to change the subject.

Shrapnel nodded
sympathetically, as a thought suddenly occurred to him.

“Hey, do you remember my
cousin,
Troy
?”

Bede laughed. “Yeah, he
used to come skateboarding until he went and got a job and turned all, ‘I’m a
serious businessman now’.”

“That’s the one,” said
Shrapnel, grinning. “He’s not such a bad guy though – may be able to help you
out.”

“How?”

“He’s got this flat with
a bunch of guys, just a few blocks from mine. It’s not exactly, well, legit. I
mean, nothing major or anything, but they kind of just found the place, broke
in and started living there.”

“You mean squatting?”
said Bede.

“Yeah, more or less,”
said Shrapnel. “Anyway, I’ve been there and it’s huge. I don’t reckon they’d
even notice if you bunked down for a bit.”

“Really?”

Shrapnel nodded. “I could
have a word to
Troy
, I reckon
he’d be cool about it.”

“Man, that’d be amazing,”
said Bede. It was by far the best news he’d heard all day. “I’d kill just to have
a shower and a decent night’s sleep.”

“C’mon then.”

Shrapnel slapped Bede on
the back and began leading him out of the skateboard park. It was dark now and
the streetlights were pinging into life. Bede let Shrapnel do the talking, it
was easier that way. Eventually, they came to the intersection of Rice and
Menlove Streets.

“This way.” Shrapnel
nodded towards a pedestrian access, pointing out a dilapidated house with its
front door boarded up. “Home, sweet home, my friend. C’mon, they use the side
door.”

Bede followed Shrapnel
along the makeshift path that had been hacked into the undergrowth at the side
of the house. As they neared the door he could see its handle was missing, the
socket crusted over with rust. A long piece of piping was propped up against
the wall and one end of it had been roughly hammered into a sharp point.

“That’s your key to the
place,” said Shrapnel.

Bede frowned. “What do
you mean?”

Shrapnel picked up the
piping. “Here, I’ll show you.” He slid the sharp end of the metal into the
doorjamb, jimmying it open to allow a thin wedge of space through which to
squeeze into the house. He then reached outside, replaced the piping against
the wall, and slammed the door behind them.

“See?” Shrapnel grinned. “Pretty
ingenious, eh? No one would even suspect people were living here.”

Bede blinked as his eyes adjusted
to the darkness of the room. There was a long bench down one side that looked
as if it had once been part of a craftsman’s workshop. It was stacked so high
with old papers and assorted junk – machine parts, a broken bookshelf, an old
fridge – that the pile almost met the long, draping cobwebs which hung from the
ceiling like sleepy ghosts. A collection of shoes and muddy gumboots hovered at
the door, nesting among rakes, shears and a wheelbarrow with a missing handle. The
place smelt nasty, like a combination of wet dog, smelly feet and mouldy
cheese.

“So where are the people
who live here?” said Bede, wrinkling his nose.

“Dunno, should be around
somewhere,” said Shrapnel.

They stepped through the
door on the other side of the room and into a long corridor that ran down the
centre of the building. From where they were standing, Bede counted a further
four smaller corridors branching off to his right. Halfway down the left-hand side
of the main corridor, a staircase led up to the floor above, while, at the very
end, Bede could see what looked like a kitchen.

“This place is huge,” he
muttered to himself as he turned to Shrapnel. “How many floors are there?”

Shrapnel shrugged.
“Dunno, four I think.
Troy
reckons it used to be a hotel or something.”

Bede began to explore the
house, quietly wandering from one dark, doorless room to the next. Each one had
a series of mattresses lining the sides, some of which still had people
sleeping on them.

“Hey,
Troy
,” Shrapnel called in a low voice. “
Troy
, are you here?”

There was no answer. Then
someone in a sleeping bag suddenly rolled over, making Bede and Shrapnel jump.

“Sorry man, didn’t see
you there,” said Shrapnel.

“Don’t worry about it,”
the man said, yawning. “I need to be getting up anyway. Who’re you looking
for?”

“
Troy
,” said Shrapnel. “Do you know if he’s around?”

“Yeah, if you go
upstairs, first room on your right, you should be able to catch him before he
goes on nightshift.”

“Thanks,” said Shrapnel. They
left the room and walked to the staircase. The wooden stairs wore grooves from
years of use and the banister swayed under Bede’s hand.

“Hey,
Troy
, are you there?” Shrapnel called.