Bound (3 page)

Alex slipped out of his seatbelt and dropped into the footwell, curling up out of sight. ‘Keep driving,’ he hissed.

Welby said nothing. He reached back and pulled a jacket off the back seat and dropped it over Alex. From under its edge Alex watched his face, impassive as he drove by. At the end he turned and the car began travelling up, spiralling back towards street level. ‘We’re clear,’ the old man said.

Alex sat up into his seat. ‘My car! What the hell is wrong with these people?’

‘You must be costing this Scarlet a lot of money. He’s taking things very seriously.’

‘Maybe you setting his man on fire hasn’t helped!’

Welby looked contrite. ‘I’m sorry. I was trying to save you.’

Alex sighed. ‘I know, I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.’

‘You want to go to my flat while you decide what to do?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Alex’s fury boiled deep in his gut. ‘Thanks,’ he said through gritted teeth.

The flat was stylish. ‘Can’t be cheap to keep a place in Double Bay,’ Alex said.

Welby closed the door, dropped his keys into a bowl on a mahogany bookshelf. ‘I’m very fortunate when it comes to money. Old family fortunes and all that.’

‘How long have you lived here?’

‘Oh, I don’t live here. I have a few places around the world. I tend to travel a lot. People pay good money to lease places like this for a few days or a week at a time and it gives me somewhere readily available when I need it. They pretty much pay for themselves.’

Alex made a noise of derision. ‘If you have the money to get them in the first place.’

‘Well, yes. But let’s not talk about money. It’s an ugly subject.’

‘Fair enough.’

Welby seemed uncomfortable. Alex let him wallow in it. Given how strange this evening had been already and how freaked out he was by it, he certainly wasn’t about to make things easy for this weirdo. He realised on some level he wasn’t being fair to Welby, but nothing seemed very fair right now.

Welby cleared his throat nervously. ‘Listen, Alex, I am sorry. I’m aware this whole turn of events must be incredibly unsettling.’

‘You could say that.’

‘What do you plan to do?’

‘It’s late and I’m tired. If you don’t mind me crashing here, I’ll make some calls in the morning. I’ve had enough for now.’

‘Not a problem. And please, consider my offer to come to London. I mean it when I say you have much to gain from this. Knowledge is the most valuable thing in the world and I can give you a lot of it.’

Alex made a wry expression. ‘Knowledge can be a dangerous thing.’

‘Of course. I’m going to go to bed now, leave you to think and have some space. That door leads to the guest bedroom. Make yourself at home.’

‘All right then.’

Welby pointed to the pocket of Alex’s olive-green combat surplus jacket. ‘Have a look at that grimoire before you go to sleep. Read about the elements.’

‘Maybe I will.’

‘Good. Night then.’

Welby turned and strode across the room, disappearing behind a dark oak door. Alex slumped down on the soft leather sofa. A remote sat on the coffee table and he reached for it, flicked on the oversize television. A few channel skips found a mindless late night American chat show. He watched vacuous Hollywood celebrities trying to convince an equally vacuous audience they really did have causes they believed in. Empty programming that gave him something to stare at while his mind ticked over.

This situation had become serious, but there was nothing to be done right now. Some calls would hopefully start to put things right. Perhaps he would have to avoid Sydney for a while. There were plenty of other venues. It pissed him off that Scarlet was making his life difficult.

His thoughts drifted back to Welby’s water trick in the car, the uncanny, beautiful moving sculpture the old man had conjured. It was mind-blowing. Something seemingly simple that obviously wasn’t stage trickery.

A new part of him had woken up. His ability seemed so much more than he had ever imagined. And the fact he knew, absolutely, positively knew, that he had felt people practising magic before, weighed heavily on his mind. He hadn’t recognised it for what it was. What else did the world have to offer? What else had been concealed under this patina of normality? He remembered his father, sitting with him in a sunny garden. It had been mid-summer, hot and bright. He had been barely in school.
This world is an amazing place, son, full of fascinating things. Take a moment once in a while to look around and take it all in.
His father spoke a deeper truth than either of them could have realised at the time. The familiar old rock in his gut grew heavy, as it always did when he thought about his parents. It brought with it the usual melancholy and cold rage.

He pulled his leatherbound book from the pocket of his jacket. Welby was certainly trying to buy his favour. For a long time he held it, watched the drift of magesign around it, gently swirling and twisting, mesmerising. He realised there had been times in the past when he’d seen magesign, only he’d had no idea what it was. And not knowing meant he hadn’t really seen it properly, hadn’t focused on it. The thought made him uncomfortable, made him feel like a fool. Perhaps the world was peppered with people laughing at folks like him,
Look at the blind idiots, stumbling through life.
But he wasn’t blind any more. A veil had lifted. Now he planned to spend every minute with his eyes wide open.

He turned to the first page and began to read. It took a moment for the words to become clear, like adjusting a pair of binoculars until the image sharpened, but once through it stayed. He read it as easily as a newspaper. It described the nature of the elemental forces in the world, the physical and magical properties of water, air, fire and earth. It talked of their personalities and how they could be manipulated, conjured, controlled with the fifth element of will. Magic.

He read for a long time until his eyelids grew heavy and he began to blink long and slow. He was keen to read on, but his tiredness outgunned his resolve. The knowledge seemed to settle deep in his brain, more than words, mere information. He realised the book contained more than the script on the pages. It imparted magic directly to the reader. ‘Fuck me,’ he breathed.

A sharp, insistent rapping. For a moment he stared at the fancy glass light fitting above and wondered where the hell he was. ‘Alex? Are you awake?’

Welby’s accent brought everything back into focus. ‘C’m’ in,’ he managed through dry lips.

The door cracked open and Patrick Welby’s face slipped into the gap, his expression almost comical in its concern. ‘Ah, you’re … er …’

Alex rubbed his eyes. ‘I’m still here. I must have slept like a log.’ He sat up, stretching muscles that hadn’t moved since he lay down hours before.

Welby came into the room. ‘I was mildly concerned that you’d slipped away in the night. I can see you’re still tired.’

‘Really?’

‘Magesign. Remember I told you how the magus has to learn to mask himself? It doesn’t do to wander around like a beacon.’

‘Right.’

‘Hungry?’

Alex raised an eyebrow. ‘Bloody starving.’

‘Come on, I have eggs boiled and bread in the toaster.’

Alex sat sipping gratefully at a large espresso, his stomach full of eggs, toast and sweet, fresh tomatoes. ‘You’re looking after me well,’ he said over the rim of his mug.

‘I’m still hoping you’ll help.’

‘How old are you?’

Welby looked up from his plate, toast halfway to his lips. He stared deep into Alex’s eyes. Alex maintained his gaze, looked carefully at the play of shades around the Englishman. Something told him Welby was older than he seemed. A lot older. He thought about how much more he might be able to see if he put his mind to it. Welby’s lips curled in a smile. ‘Trying out some new tricks?’ he asked, and pulled his shades in dramatically, like an old-school thespian whipping a voluminous cloak around himself.

Alex willed his sight to pry under that thick cloak of shades, to see past them all. To his surprise the shades burst open again, laying bare all the colours Welby had to show. Welby’s eyes widened in shock and Alex realised he could see not only past the shades Welby had pulled about himself, but past shades even the poor man could not have known about or controlled. He felt as though he had mentally stripped Welby naked and flayed him as he sat before his breadcrumbs and eggshells. He saw Welby for the age he truly was, saw everything about the Englishman laid bare, wide open, raw. He could see the fibres of the man’s being and he knew everything there was to know. He pulled away his vision, mentally and physically, turning his head. ‘Fucking hell, I’m sorry!’

Welby’s hands flopped to the table, his shoulders slumping. ‘Good gods.’

Alex couldn’t bring himself to look at the old man, turned in his seat to further avert his gaze. ‘Really, Patrick, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know I could …’

‘It’s all right.’ Welby’s voice was weak. ‘By all the gods, you have some power.’

Silence, heavy and uncomfortable, for several moments. Eventually Welby said, ‘So you see me a little more clearly now?’ There was humour, sarcasm in his tone.

Alex kept his back turned. ‘You’re, what, a hundred and fifty years old?’

‘Almost. One hundred and thirty-eight. I was born at the height of Victoria’s reign, a truly marvellous time of innovation and expansion. For those of us who could afford it, of course. I began studying the arcane arts as a young man. When we develop our skill we also develop an unusual longevity. The magic tends to preserve us.’

Alex sat stunned, still reeling from what he had been able to do to Welby as well as the revelations that kept coming. He knew now what he hadn’t been able to see before. Welby’s everyday shades were a construction, a mask of normality placed over the real colours the man bore, concealing all the truths about him. Alex had torn everything away and seen deep inside.

‘It really is all right,’ Welby said. ‘You’ll have to face me again eventually. I’ve never been laid quite so naked before in my life, but at least you know beyond a doubt now that my intentions are as I stated them.’

Alex swallowed hard. ‘Your intentions are also a bit crude.’

‘Well, forgive an old man his desires. But I would never have let on about those feelings, much less acted on them. More’s the pity.’

Alex could hear a measure of mirth in Welby’s voice and couldn’t help smiling himself. Some of the tension, the shock, lifted from the room. ‘I guess I should be careful what I search for.’

‘Just be careful how hard you look. You said yourself not long ago that it was easier not to learn too much about people.’

‘I had no idea how much I could know.’

‘Now you do.’

Alex was unable still to turn around. He knew Welby’s mind, his intentions, desires, fears and elations, almost as well as he knew his own. He had looked into the very soul of the man and absorbed nearly one hundred and forty years of life experience and emotion in an instant. He felt as though he had run full speed into a solid wall, his mind and body battered by the experience. But more than that, he bore an incredible sense of guilt, of sorrow. He had committed an unforgivable invasion of privacy. He didn’t know what to say.

Welby moved around the table to stand in front of him, forcing him to look. ‘Let it go, Alex. It’s all right, really. This will be harder for you to reconcile than for me to forgive.’

He looked into Welby’s eyes and knew him in minute detail. He refused to focus on the shades, but he could see peripherally that Welby meant it when he said it was all right. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, quietly.

‘I probably shouldn’t have been quite so theatrical. I rather tempted you to pull against me. Of course, I had no idea how easily and deeply you would be able to go.’

Alex realised he had learned something else. ‘I know how to do that now, how to mask.’ He willed his own shades, his presence, his personality, to draw within the confines of his skin and wrapped it down with the intention that no one would be able to see his true aura. He created a sheen of normality — a shield — so that no one would know he was anything but a normal man.

Welby looked him up and down, eyebrows rising as he did so. ‘Very good. I honestly can’t see a thing.’ He felt Welby’s mind probe over him, like the stroke of a ghostly hand. The old man barked a short laugh. ‘Not a thing. Good lords, boy, your talents are manifold! You appear as mundane as a post box.’

‘I can stay like this too. It doesn’t feel like it would take any effort to remain like this as a … well, as a sort of default position.’

Welby nodded. ‘And so you should. You’ll attract much less attention that way. So what now?’

Alex pulled his phone from his pocket. ‘I need to make a call.’

‘I’ll give you some privacy.’

Welby left the kitchen and Alex dialled a number. After a few rings a voice said, ‘Alex, you dog! Long time, my brother.’

Alex felt immediately reassured at the sound of something normal, familiar. ‘Hey, Amir. How’s things?’

‘Oh, you know, fucken.’

As if Amir would ever tell him what was really going on. ‘I need some help,’ he said.

‘Anything, brother.’

‘You know this King Scarlet dickhead?’

Amir made a noise of disgust down the line. ‘He’s a pain in my arse. Starting to get heavy all over town.’

‘He’s insisting that I fight for him. Really insisting.’

‘We fight for no one but ourselves, brother. Since Sifu died anyway.’

‘I know. But he’s starting to get upset. Last night I had a gun pointed in my face and he trashed my fucking car, man.’

Amir cursed violently in Lebanese. ‘There’s a bit of a war going on, my friend. I’ve heard rumours of the moves he’s making and your name has come up a few times.’

‘You didn’t think to warn me?’

‘Ha! You can look after yourself, fucken! But you shouldn’t even be here this week.’

‘Gary called me to step in for an injured fighter. Now I’m thinking that guy was Scarlet’s plant, supposed to take a fall.’

‘I can see things have escalated,’ Amir said, his voice resigned. ‘I hoped he would leave you be, but you’re too good, my brother.’

‘Can you help me out?’

‘Sure. But not quickly. There’s a lot of balls in the air here. I can put you in my stable, but Scarlet won’t take that lying down.’

Alex pursed his lips. ‘No offence, but I don’t want to work for anyone, even you.’

‘Of course, of course, but Scarlet doesn’t need to know that. I tell him you’re mine and it’s just one more thing we’re fighting about.’

‘I’d really appreciate it.’

‘But he won’t be happy. He’ll come for you. I can try to sort this out, but maybe you should take a holiday for a little while. These guys are getting serious.’

Alex stared at the tabletop, seeing his control spinning away again. He hated relying on anyone for anything. Right now it seemed he had little choice. ‘There is something I could do for a week or two, overseas.’

‘Anywhere is good to be safe. I’ll keep you up to speed.’

Alex sat back, morning light through the window bathing his face. ‘Take this fucker out, Amir. And get me his car.’

‘For certain, fucken! I’d like nothing more. Leave this with me.’

‘Thanks, brother.’ Alex hung up and wandered into the lounge.

Welby sat reading a newspaper. ‘Any luck?’ he asked.

‘Sort of. For us both really.’

‘Is that so?’

‘I have friends who can hopefully sort this out, but I’ve been advised to leave town for a while.’

Welby folded the newspaper onto his lap. ‘So maybe a trip to London is just the ticket?’

Alex shook his head, frustrated these decisions didn’t seem to be his own. ‘Just the ticket,’ he said. ‘Sure.’

‘We can go right away. All expenses paid, of course,’ Welby added.

‘I need to pack some stuff, Patrick. And get my passport.’

Welby stood, dropped the newspaper onto the coffee table. ‘Money is no object. I can buy you anything you would have packed and fly you first class.’

Alex paused, taken aback. ‘My passport is at home,’ he said eventually.

‘I can teach you how you don’t need one. I can show you how you really don’t need any of the things most people consider essential, even compulsory.’

Alex let out an exasperated breath. ‘Fair enough then, Patrick Welby. Show me.’

‘Excellent! I’ll get us on a flight this afternoon.’

‘Really?’

‘Certainly. We can buy a bag and some clothes and things for you at the airport shops after we check in.’

Alex sighed.
What the hell is happening to my life?

At Sydney airport’s international terminal Alex stood nervously in line. He had listened to everything Welby had explained, marvelled at the mind tricks he pulled on their taxi driver, making the poor man take wrong turns and do weird things with the radio and indicators. All with nothing but insubstantial will. He had listened, seen and understood, but remained anxious. He wasn’t sure how Welby would use those trickster skills to get them through airport security.

The airport employee smiled. ‘Tickets and passports please,’ she said with practised jollity. Welby handed her two tickets and Alex focused in on his magesign, watched the shades as Welby’s mind worked. He saw and felt the ’sign swell, ebb and flow. ‘Any luggage to check in?’ she asked with another broad smile.

‘No, thank you. Just carry-on.’

‘Thank you, sir. Departing at gate 36. Have a nice day.’ She handed over two boarding passes, waved them through. The old man glanced back and winked before walking away. Dumbfounded, Alex followed, the only thought in his mind being,
These aren’t the droids you’re looking for
.

He followed Welby through to the departures area, dropping his phone and wallet into a plastic tray as he went through a metal detector. On the other side numerous shops enticed with bright neon and shiny displays, coaxing weary travellers to empty their wallets while they killed interminable hours before take-off. Shopkeepers smiled and opened their palms, offering succour from the boredom of international travel. Inside an hour Welby had bought Alex a stylish leather travel bag and stocked it with new jeans, a few T-shirts, a collared shirt, a warm jumper and underwear. He bought a washbag and filled it with toothbrush, toothpaste, shaver and more. Alex pulled his phone from a jacket pocket. ‘I’ll need a charger for this,’ he said. Within minutes he had one.

It was something of a revelation that if one had the money, nothing else seemed necessary. Welby’s wealth had taken care of everything. Combined with his magical skill in negotiating the red tape of modern living, there seemed very little that couldn’t be accomplished.
Magic and money. All you need.

‘Something amusing?’ Welby asked.

‘Just trying to get my head around the last few hours. It was only last night that I was doing what I do best. I fought, I won, I collected my pay and I planned to go home. Since then the world has flipped on its axis.’

Welby gestured to a seat at the departure gate. ‘And I must say you’re taking it all extremely well. It’s not often, even in my long life, that I’ve opened up this world to people. On the few occasions I have it’s been difficult and slow. Not with you. You soak it up like a dry sponge drinks water.’

Alex sat, rested his new bag between his feet. ‘I hope my mind can continue to keep a grip on it all. Why do you need money when you can mind-fuck people into believing they’ve seen our passports?’

‘Good question. When someone expects to see a passport it’s quite easy to convince them they have. They hold on to nothing but the knowledge. When they’re expecting to take money and keep it, well that’s very hard when they clearly have no bills to put in the till.’

That made a kind of sense. ‘So much to take in.’

‘We have twenty-four hours on a plane,’ Welby said. ‘First class really does pamper a person. You can actually lie down. Let’s call this next twenty-four hours a new experience-free zone. Give you time to catch up a bit, eh?’

The thought appealed. ‘Sounds good. Though I want to read more of that element book.’

‘Grimoire.’

Alex smiled. ‘Right. Grimoire. It’s amazing, not like learning. The words seem to become a part of my mind.’

‘That’s right. Reading eldritch texts is itself a kind of magic, if you can decipher them. Therein lies their power.’