Death's Ink Black Shadow (2 page)

His
daughter.

He frowned.

That little
human being
suspiciously wearing a dress he’d also seen in the shop they’d just visited—all hand-smocked (and what the fuck did that mean?), so he’d been told, and embroidered with little roses and costing just shy of a thousand pounds—was
his
. A sliver of him jettisoned without thought but grown. A miniature, female version of him.

“You like her!”

Nikolas glanced over, his mind still clearly on the great triumph he was witnessing in the middle of the room. “Who?”

Ben motioned toward Molly Rose. He didn’t like saying her name. He felt daft. He hadn’t even told anyone outside his closest friends Tim and Squeezy that he had a daughter, and even to them he termed her the squirt. “Molly.”

Nikolas seemed puzzled. “What’s not to like?”

Ben copied the frown unconsciously. “But she’s just a…” He wrinkled his nose. “Baby.”

Their profound conversation was interrupted by Jennifer bringing in the tea, which she placed upon a table well out of the small crawler’s reach. She considered Molly Rose who was wobbling a little and then sat suddenly, bouncing slightly on the padding of her nappy.

Jennifer didn’t seem as happy with Nikolas’s horse as her granddaughter.

CHAPTER TWO

Ben went to his regimental do that night and Nikolas knew he’d crawl in incoherently drunk sometime in the early hours of the morning. He’d then vomit (hopefully not over him, but this was a distinct possibility), and then not wake until the afternoon, when he’d swear never to drink again and be very quiet and contrite and loving until he felt well enough to go for a punishingly long run to sweat out the last of the poison, at which point he’d be ravenous and extremely turned on. So, Nikolas reckoned he had about twenty-four hours of unpleasantness to endure until things got distinctly more enjoyable. Ben horny was always very agreeable indeed.

An evening without Ben was actually something to be treasured. In the past, he’d have immediately indulged in more unhealthy pursuits. Their siren whispers were still audible, but he’d ignore them for the moment. He had other things to keep his mind distracted. He turned on a classical piece—full volume—a recording of Jacqueline du Pre playing Bach at the Royal Albert Hall accompanied, amongst others, by Nina Mikkelsen on piano.

Ben, Nikolas knew, would be ranting at this, refusing to tolerate the
crap noise
. One day, Nikolas thought he might try to explain to Ben how his life had once been filled with such sounds, his mother practising up to eight hours a day, music, always music, scales and arpeggios accompanying all the great triumphs and disasters of Nikolas’s childhood. She’d been playing Stravinsky’s Sacrificial Dance from The Rite of Spring when he’d tumbled off the roof of the villa and broken his leg. He’d always hated perverse dissonance in music ever since. But then he’d lain for over an hour before his mother had come for him. Nikolas knew she’d heard him fall, and the racket he’d made subsequently, lying hurt in the courtyard, but as she’d told him later, Stravinsky negated human feeling.

He’d never tried flying again.

If he’d thought of it, he’d have pushed Nika off first to see if their homemade wings actually worked.

When the recording was to his satisfaction, he logged onto the online chess game he was playing with a surprisingly challenging opponent. Chainsaw had gone Nbd7, which was a good move, Nikolas had to concede. He countered with a better one. That done, he texted Emilia to see how she was getting on and received,
How’s Molly?
back.

How was Molly? It was a good question.

He’d managed to get Ben to visit his daughter a total of three times now. Each time he’d seen a gradual increase in Ben’s acceptance of the fact that he did have a child. Quite what Nikolas wanted Ben to do about this was something yet to be decided. He wrote,
Standing now
, with a grin, remembering her little look of rebellion.

Nikolas hoped she’d respond. Something. Anything. Chainsaw hadn’t replied yet. Perhaps he was busy colouring in coastlines. It was about all Nikolas could remember from school, aged eight—inking blue around endless coastlines of countries he would one day visit and kill people in. Not such a wasted education then.

He couldn’t sit still or stop for a moment when he was alone these days. Background silence had to be filled with sound, music, or if he was desperate, the radio, a report about the state of the world—war, immigration, missing planes, death, tragedy—anything other than his own thoughts.

If he started to think, then he’d feel again the suffocating realisation that it was all coming to an end.

He’d tried to tell Ben.

He’d tried to leave him first, but when that had failed, he’d tried to tell him, in those bad few hours when Ben had broken him open, forced him to be honest. Honesty had never done Nikolas any good in his life, and it hadn’t then. Ben didn’t get it. Something was coming. It was coming for him, or for Ben, which was pretty much the same thing these days, and then all of this would be over.

Better enjoy it while he could.

§ § §

Nikolas had just got his first cigarette of the night lit, a glass of
Russian Standard
poured, and a bottle of Romanée
Conti
lined up for later, when he heard the front door click. He didn’t have time for his usual sanitizing of the scene.

When Ben appeared in the sitting room doorway, he didn’t seem to know what to wince at first—the cigarette, the noise, or the alcohol. Nikolas made an annoyed grunt, which he hoped covered all three sins, and turned the music off.

Ben stared at him. “Seriously?”

“I thought you were at…”

“Seriously?”

Nikolas twitched his nose and stubbed out his cigarette.

Under the steely green gaze, the glass of vodka was carried to the kitchen and emptied down the sink.

When these things were done to his apparent satisfaction, Ben flung himself onto the couch and turned the TV on. He wasn’t watching it, Nikolas knew.

Nikolas sat down alongside the sulking figure and offered him a glass of wine. Ben glanced at it then took it.

Nikolas cheered up fractionally (but covertly); the night wouldn’t be wholly without pleasure. Of all his addictions, of all the things he now craved to keep the demons at bay, to prevent the inevitable end of everything arriving, Ben Rider-Mikkelsen’s body was at the top of the list. Hands down, best distraction ever.

He ruffled Ben’s hair and commented cautiously, “I thought you were gone for the night.” Ben could take it as enquiry or apology—however he wanted.

Ben flicked his gaze over from the screen. “So I see.”

“Was the reunion cancelled?”

“No.”

Nikolas studied the perfection of light through the red in his glass, debating whether to push. Ben would tell him in his own time. He always did. Ben didn’t have the capacity for…Nikolas swirled the wine a little. He’d underestimated Ben recently. It wasn’t a mistake he wanted to make again.

“It was boring.”

Nikolas raised his brows a little, regarding the frowning figure. Boring? Ben had never gone to a regimental do and called it that before. Ben never called anything that except books that didn’t rely on zombies for their interest or films that had subtitles.

Ben finally turned the TV off. “I’ve got nothing in common with any of them anymore.”

Nikolas decided silence was the best conversational companion, so he resisted the temptation to point out the obvious.

“They were all talking about jobs and girlfriends, wives, kids—shit like that.”

The desire to prompt, “And?” was overwhelming.

“And I can’t say anything, can I?” Nikolas tried not to wince as Ben downed the thousand-pound-a-bottle glass of wine in one gulp. “So I came home.”

“In defeat?”

Ben suddenly turned to him, slamming the glass down on the table. “Fucking hell. You
moron
.” He crushed himself to Nikolas, claiming him with a savage pressing of wine-brushed lips and wide-open mouth, tongue seeking entrance. Into the possessing, he murmured, “I wanted to tell them about
you
.” He began to unbutton Nikolas’s shirt. “I wanted to shout out that I was fucking a
man
. That I was fucking
you
.” He began to kiss down Nikolas’s belly. “And then I didn’t want to tell them anything. I just wanted to come home and
do
it.”

Nikolas responded to the kissing, to the sudden passion, fumbling for Ben’s zip. They undressed each other desperately and fucked upon the sofa until their bodies were languid and sated and they couldn’t have said, if asked, who was in whom, or where the last tingles of release came from.

Eventually, senses other than ones below the waist returned, and Nikolas could hear faint street noises, Radulf snoring, the occasional tick from the fridge. And this was the best of times for him now, when they were more one body than two, joined by sweat and semen, saliva shared, leisurely kissing with the soft grind of pelvic bone to bone, and nerves firing off from a residue of intense pleasure.

§ § §

Ben mouthed into Nikolas’s ear. “It’s never
defeat
when I think about the fact I have you.”

Nikolas chuckled. “What do you want, Benjamin Rider-Mikkelsen? You’re being blatantly manipulative—not that I don’t agree with just how lucky you are…”

Ben lightly punched him but then conceded, “I was wondering…Stop it!” He hated that Nikolas could read him so easily, although there had been a time only recently when Nik had not been able to read him at all. Misread all the signals, in fact. Perhaps, one day, they would talk about what had happened, but not now. Nikolas wasn’t ready.

“I was wondering whether we could ask the Armstrongs to Devon for a few days. With…the baby, I mean.”

“Molly.”

“Yes, obviously.”

“Say her name then.”

“Stop laughing! It’s not funny. I’m not being funny!”

“Yes, you are a little, Ben. She’s your
daughter
. Say her name.”

“All right! Molly then. Invite Molly to Devon. And they’d have to come as well, I guess. What do you think?”

“Ben?”

“What?”

“It’s your daughter and your house. You don’t need to ask me. It’s
your
life.”

Ben arched a little away from Nikolas so he could see his face. He shook his head. “I ask myself if you are the biggest pillock I’ve ever met and then tell myself no, how could you be? I was in the army. But then you go and say something like that and just prove yet again that you are! Jesus, Nik,
you
are my life.”

Nikolas sighed and stretched with very evident delight. “Well, in that case—”

No one ever rang the bell this late in the evening.

It wouldn’t have fazed them especially except for the nakedness, the dried cum, and the smell of sweat and sex.

But they were both ex-soldiers, both able to dress and assume the façade of nonchalant innocence very quickly when required.

Nikolas even poured himself another glass of wine. But just as he did, his hand shook, a small spasm. The wine spilt on the coffee table, a blood-red pooling. Nikolas closed his eyes for a moment, but Ben had the strangest thought that he wasn’t shutting them to the mess, but to what had caused it, to whatever,
whoever
, was at the door.

Many weeks later, Ben recalled that pooling red liquid with profound sadness. If he’d known what was waiting for them on the other side of the front door, would he have still opened it? Let it in?

No. He wouldn’t have. Ben wasn’t someone who believed in seeing life as a learning experience—that all things, good or bad, could be used for personal growth. He was mature enough and so was Nikolas. He would have saved both of them the pain that was to come.

But despite his belief in fate and omens, when Ben remembered back to that evening, he knew he’d sensed nothing ominous about the softly chiming bell when it repeated its ring.

He’d simply finished zipping his jeans, ruffled Nikolas’s hair and answered its summons.

CHAPTER THREE

Once or twice since meeting Nikolas, Ben had experienced a sensation of his heart stopping and then restarting—just a tiny break in its normal beat. He knew it wasn’t physical, more a mental reaction to Nikolas’s occasionally jarring dissonance. This time, however, opening the door, the reaction was decidedly physical, and Ben found it hard to breathe for a moment, almost staggering.

He was profoundly grateful that he continued to take air in and out and that he didn’t collapse.

Nikolas was standing on the doorstep.

Not his Nikolas, of course. His Nikolas wasn’t Nikolas though. His Nikolas was Aleksey. But this
was
Nikolas. Ben knew this, was sure of it with a certainty he’d have stuck with under torture, because this boy was a photograph made manifest. This was the boy with the seashell, the boy who had once spoken to Ben and said, as clearly as if he were a real person who could speak out loud, “The man you love is a fraud.”

Ben then realised his error.
Boy
. Whoever this was, it couldn’t be the
Nikolas
from the photograph, because that Nikolas was, would have been, almost forty-seven—and he was dead. That seemed important somehow as well.

Then he got it.

Stefan. The dead child. Who were they to make the arrogant assumption that the dead stayed dead?

Ben began to laugh, but there was very little humour in the sound.

The young man’s face creased with confusion and he glanced at a piece of paper in his hand. “Sorry, I think I might have the wrong house? My name’s Steven Sky, I’m looking for—” His eyes slipped past Ben to something, someone, behind him. Ben didn’t need to look.

There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment, and then the man who had obviously got he was at the right address, ventured, “Uncle Nikolas?”

Ben was absurdly grateful that he had not completed the young man’s earlier sentence for him. If he had, he’d have prompted, “Aleksey? You’re looking for Aleksey Mikkelsen?”

Ben couldn’t see Nikolas’s reaction to the mistaken assumption, but it was embarrassing to be doing nothing, and clearly Nikolas could hardly deny that the man had the right address—in a way. He
was
definitely a Mikkelsen—same hair, same face, same build. He was Nikolas half a lifetime ago—the half Ben had not shared. The half he
coveted
.