Hidden Among Us (13 page)

“What is that?” Joe kept saying, over and over again, repeating himself like a scratched DVD. “What is that thing, what is it?”

Not human,
a voice screamed inside my head.
Run!

He hadn’t changed at all in fourteen years. I hadn’t forgotten, not even in all that time. He looked the same. Ageless. A deep, unrelenting fury welled up inside me and burst. I struggled up, staggering towards him, speared with pain every time my bad foot touched the ground.

“Give her back!” I hardly recognized my own voice: a ragged, bloody roar. I hated Lissy for telling Mum about Elena, getting Dad kicked out, but she was still my sister.

“Where’s my sister?”

The Hidden creature just raised one hand, gave us both a slight, mocking smile as if he couldn’t decide which was more amusing: my rage or Joe’s shocked confusion. Then he just turned and walked off to the lake, black cloak flowing behind like a crow dragging its wing. He stepped straight in without looking back at us, and first of all his cloak seemed to float on the surface, then he was gone, head and shoulders disappearing beneath the flat glassy water.

A freezing cold chill slid right down my neck as I stood on the lawn, wet grass soaking my bloodied jeans, gasping for breath, fighting the urge to sink to my knees, anything to ease the hideous pain in my ankle. They were back. The Hidden. For years they’d lived only in my worst dreams. Not any more. Now they were here in the real world, and they’d taken Lissy.

Joe stood beside me, staring fixedly at an ever-expanding circle of ripples left on the water. “What?” He sounded breathless, like he’d just sprinted a hundred metres, but it was just the shock. Understandable. “How did that happen?” He turned to me. “What was that – thing? It looked like a person but—”

My hands were shaking wildly, and I was starting to feel sick, unable to cope with the pain or the pressure. I had to get a grip. I looked straight at him. “They’re not people. Laugh if you want but let’s just say that now. I don’t know what they are but they’re not people.”

Joe sat down on the grass, staring at the lake. I couldn’t blame him. There are creatures here on earth who look human, pass for human, but are not human. I’d grown up with this possibility, now I knew it was true. To Joe, it was extraordinary. Devastating.

We didn’t have time for it.

“Look,” I said, trying not to let my impatience show. “We’ve got to get away from the Reach. Those people with the grey Alfa. They could come back.” I glanced at the lake. “For Christ’s sake, Joe,
he
could come back, and you definitely don’t want to mess with them.”

Joe got up, slowly, watching me all the time. He obviously thought I was a complete nutter, to be treated with extreme caution. Quite justified, really. “OK,” he said. “OK. I saw it. Him. That thing— But if they’re
here
, more of the same, wouldn’t someone else have seen them too? Isn’t there some kind of record? Like an investigation? I mean, this is mad. It’s a world-changing thing, it’s crazy – a different
species
, you only have to look at them—”

“Why,” I said quietly, “do you think we’ve just spent the last half hour hiding on the roof like a pair of idiots? Those guys with the flashy grey car. They
are
the investigation.” With supreme effort, I clambered to my feet, doing my best to ignore the intense pain in my leg. It was so bad I now felt like throwing up.

Not only did I have a gang of crazed house-breakers on my trail, one sister in hospital and another who could best be described as missing, I now had a cocky teenage northerner to look after, ripe for collateral damage.

Great. Just great.

23

I walked in darkness, earth and dry roots beneath my bare feet, mouth dry, fear fluttering in my belly. At last the dark lifted; another bowl of fire lit my way, lying on the bare soil. Again there was hardly any smoke, just bluish flames glowing like burning brandy on a Christmas pudding. A few metres on, more fire in a stone cup lit up a sheet of silvery-gold metal flattened against the wall. It was carved with birds and clambering roses, each petal perfect: so real. The birds looked as if they might fly away: bright-eyed, feathered wings full of life. But then the sheet of silver just curled away from the earthen wall, an abandoned project. Further on, a white stool lay discarded, one broken leg. It looked like marble. One leg had been just snapped in half.

Who were these people?

I thought of Tippy’s dirty clothes and tangled hair. Living underground, all this grime and darkness and beauty jumbled up together. And then I heard music I recognized. Folky, wild: drums, a harp, and I was back in those dark woods, dancing with him. With the boy. I’d known all along, really and truly, that
he
was here somewhere. Cold fingers. Eyes that shone like dark wet steel.

What do you want?
Sudden fury overtook me. Connie was desperately sick, blood-poisoned. She might be dead by now and I wouldn’t even know. Mum could have arrived back from the hospital with the worst news possible and found me gone because of his stupid games. Prancing about in the woods, mysteriously appearing in my bedroom like some kind of murderous creep. And now this.

I ran down the tunnel, following the music.

You’ll just have to take me home
.

The light grew brighter and brighter; soon there were bowls of fire every few paces, the music growing louder with every step. I passed a heap of sparkling fabric just left on the soil. It was draped with drifts of cobweb that made my toes curl – I didn’t even want to think about how big the spiders were, and—

Someone was watching.

I turned to face a girl even more monstrously tall than me. Bright white hair hung wild and uncombed around her shoulders, all the way down to her waist, as if she were some old lady. But her eyes didn’t look old, just all glittery and shadowy silver like the boy’s. Neither did her face; she couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen. Her skin was pale and creamy smooth. She smiled, fast, like she was making a sudden tactical move, and I saw bright sharp teeth.

The words rose up from the back of my mind.
Not human. She’s not human. Something else
.

“So, little sky-in-her-eyes. You came back.”

Came back?

She leaned closer; I breathed in the throat-raking scent of stale woodsmoke, unwashed clothes and a wood full of bluebells on a hot day. “I’ve been called Rose.”

She offered the information as if a name could easily flow into something else and change, like water into ice or steam.

“Where am I?” My voice sounded more trembling and tearful than I’d meant.

Rose shrugged: an odd fluid movement, as if the joints in her shoulders moved in a different way to mine. “Only where you have always been. What else is there but the world?”

“Listen.” I tried to sound firm and confident, like I really didn’t have time for this. Which I didn’t. “I must go home. Please can you help me? I don’t know how to get out of this place.”

I was starting to panic, feeling in every bone and muscle the weight of all that earth above me and on all sides,
buried
underground with this Rose-thing. Not-human. I pushed the thought from my mind, telling myself,
Not possible, not really. She’s just—

“Oh,” said Rose. “You want to
leave
?” She spoke as if I’d expressed the need to fly. And laughed. “Well, now you’re here, that might be a little difficult.”

My entire body froze with fear.

“I don’t even know why I’m here. Look, my—” Instinct warned me against telling Rose about Connie. As if even from here in this horrible underground lair she might be able to harm her. “Listen, I need to get home. I don’t belong here, OK?”

“Oh?” Rose sighed at my confusion. “Well, I’d better take you to find him.”

And she just started walking off, muddy silk skirts swishing like wind through the trees, hair hanging in a great tangle all down her back way past her waist, dirty and freakishly white for someone who looked so young. It shone like polished silver.

The music got louder. I felt the drum beating through me, pulsing in my blood and bones, making me want to dance again, even though every nerve in my body sang with terror. Now everywhere I looked there were gold symbols hammered into the earthen walls; they reminded me of the Egyptian hieroglyphs I’d seen in books. An enormous horn about six feet long hung from glittering chains. What huge animal had
that
been taken from? An elephant?

“They’re all dead now,” Rose said, not turning to look at me. “The Horned Ones. In case you were wondering and most of you do. It’s been such a long time since any of you
saw
one.”

I didn’t like the way she’d guessed what I’d been thinking. Or what she’d said.
Just keep your mind on the music
. I could hear someone singing now: holding a high clear note, bright and distant as a star. Rose picked up her pace and was now walking so fast I ran to keep up, nearly tripping on a carved wooden chest left open, spewing more bright silky stuff and a tangle of ribbons out onto the dirt floor.

Then, with no warning, Rose grabbed my arm and drew me off into a side passage so thick with cobwebs it was like walking through clinging mist. Her fingers were freezing; a deep chill spread up my arm, and just out of sight jerky long-legged shapes scuttled away. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out – just a dry little gasp. Cobwebs brushed my face, caught in my hair, unseen things crunched beneath my bare feet; I was dizzy now, head spinning with fright, burning nausea surging up my throat.

In the deep gloom I could just make out a sheer rock face ahead of us; Rose had led me to a dead-end tunnel, deep underground.

What was she going to do to me here?

I was so horrified my head swirled with dizziness; any second now I would faint, but just at the last second before I did Rose stopped and said
Open
. I had a sense that the ground beneath my feet was not to be trusted, of everything shifting, and before I had time to scream the darkness lifted. I was blinking in the brightness of it all, coughing as smoke raked the back of my throat.

The spidery tunnel had opened out into a cavern so high and wide I couldn’t see where it began or ended, just earthen walls reaching up higher, higher, and finally lost in a swirling clot of green-tinged smoke.

The music stopped.

Fires burnt nearly everywhere I looked, flames in black charred bowls hanging from above or shoved up against walls, one enormous pool of greenish fire burning in the middle of the cavern. Tippy was sitting beside it like a pet cat, putting a little wooden doll to bed in a pile of rags. She stared at me, unblinking, still that terrible longing in her eyes as if I were someone – or something – that she recognized.

They were
all
looking at me, and all the time I was thinking,
How did she do that? A wall of solid rock, and now this—

“Welcome,” Rose whispered in my ear, mocking, “to the secret halls of the Hidden, where men could never find us.” She smiled. Her breath smelled like crushed herbs on a hot day, spicy and weirdly enticing. “Until my dear beloved opened the Gateway.”

Hadn’t Virgie Creed mentioned Uncle Miles opening some kind of portal at the Reach? What had he
done
?

I stared around me, breathless with horror, with sheer disbelief.
This shouldn’t be happening
, I kept telling myself.
It can’t be real
. But it was. I could see perhaps fifty of the Hidden lounging in the shadows, stretched out in the fires’ warmth like strange and beautiful cats. Were there
more
? They were too tall, their limbs too long. So cold and pale with long shining hair hanging in tangled plaits and coils around their shoulders, men and women alike. Male and female. It was clear straight away they were totally different from Tippy. Not only was Tippy the only child, but she glowed with heat, her cheeks flushed pink from the fire. Each and every one of the Hidden was whiter than the belly of a fish, weirdly gorgeous with dark eyes that glittered in the firelight as they watched, some holding flat drums, one sat by a harp. Watching me in silence. Just like in the woods, a half forgotten instinct shrieked at me that if they chose, I would be prey. Hunted. Down here, with nowhere to run.

“Child of my brother,” Rose said, voice as sweet as honey, eyes harder than solid shining steel, “O child of my brother, claim your prey. Brought to ground at last.”

Prey
. I turned, about to run anywhere, even back into those webs and that awful darkness, but she grabbed me tight around one wrist. Cold shot up my arm and I knew there was no pulling away. Rose was straw-thin and delicate but stronger than a granite cliff. Her body obeyed different laws to my own.

Rose is not a person. She’s something else. Hidden. They’re all something else
—

And I’m prey
.

My head spun; everything was black. I dropped to my knees and heard Rose laughing, high and wild like a little girl Connie’s age. She let go of my arm and I fell forwards, breathing in cold damp earth. I couldn’t get away. I couldn’t get out. How could I escape, when Rose could make a wall of rock just melt away into nothing?

“Leave her alone.” I knew that voice.

I opened my eyes and looked up. There he was. The boy. Crouching right in front of me, like we were playing a game – smiling but sad and haunted at the same time.

“Hello, Lissy.”

I said what I’d been longing to since I first saw him. “What are you?”

Elf? Fairy? Alien? Not human, though. Definitely not. His answer was completely way off what I expected.

“Did no one ever say?” The boy shrugged his shoulders with that same odd fluidity as Rose. “I’m your brother.”

“No.” The word came out, hard and choking like dry leaves.

Rafe’s my brother. Not this
creature.

I could feel them all watching me but none of them moved, not even Tippy, who was the only child in sight. A human child, down here among these
things—