Icefall (10 page)

‘So are you,' Seth grunted. ‘I mean, bookkeeping?'

‘Okay, so that was a disaster,' she admitted. ‘I was only trying to be respectable.'

‘I've never seen such elaborate paper aeroplanes,' said Seth. ‘And so many of them.'

‘Oh, and we all thought your job was a great idea, didn't we? Driving ruddy great lorries up and down the M6. Your blood pressure was in orbit. As for your arteries…'

‘My arteries,' said Seth primly, ‘are fine.' His look darkened. ‘It wasn't the work, it was the view. That bloody road.'

Rory flopped down, sprawling half on top of his father. ‘Sulaire's not happy either,' he told them. ‘Did you hear? He kind of forgot himself and took it out on a deer carcass. Nobody at the hotel will come near him now. They think he's channelling Hannibal Lecter.'

‘Oh, not him too,' said Finn. ‘Some guy at Orach's office tried to stick his hand up her skirt. They had to rush him to A&E with a crushed testicle.'

Seth stuck his face back in the cushions to muffle his snigger, but Finn slapped his back anyway.

‘Well, at least Grian's speaking to me again,' he said. ‘Back on the rigs for me, I reckon.'

‘Over my dead body,' said Finn. ‘And Grian's. And then yours, probably. Rory, do
not
turn on that TV.'

‘I'm going to watch a movie with Hannah.' He ran a finger along the DVD rack.

‘You've got exams this year,' mumbled Seth, ‘and you're never off that bloody Xbox. Haven't you got homework?'

‘Nope.'

Finn gave Rory a dark look, but a smooth facility for lying to his father, and his father's equally smooth new facility for accepting it, was Rory's only compensation for the loss of their mind link. She sighed and gave in. ‘Fine. But I'm not staying. You and Hannah don't know where the volume control is.'

‘Look who's talking,' muttered Rory.

‘Why, you little—'

Seth hauled himself off the sofa, grabbed his jacket, and took Finn's hand. ‘Come on, then, lover. I'll buy you dinner. Well. I will if you give me a sub. Be good,' he told Rory airily.

‘You too,' Rory sang as he selected a film. As the front door clunked shut, he added, ‘As if.'

~
I heard that, young man.

~
Well, pass it along to my dad.
He grinned. ~
Have fun, lovebirds.

~
Don't you have too much, young man, just because we're …

‘Have they gone out?' Hannah's voice drowned out the rest of Finn's warning. She shut the door, flopped her arms lazily across the back of the sofa and watched Rory load the DVD. ‘Does that mean we can have a horror movie?'

‘It means we don't have to watch
It's A Wonderful Life
or anything by Richard Curtis.' Rory rolled his eyes. ‘Bloody stepmothers. It didn't tell me this bit in the fairy tales.'

‘Don't start it yet.' Hannah came round to the front of the sofa and flung herself down on the cushions. ‘I want to talk to you.'

‘Not you as well.' Rory rubbed his face.

‘Hey, don't be like that. It's not like I'm going to nag you about your homework.' She grinned, then grew serious. ‘Look, I'm sick of waiting for you to tell me. What happened that day? Y'know, back in October. With the Veil?'

Rory turned back to the screen, prodding the remote. ‘Nothing.'

‘Seriously, pause that. How come you had so much trouble opening it? And why was it—'

‘I said, it was
nothing,
' he snapped, more curtly than he meant to. ‘I found a tough bit for once. That's all.'

‘That was so not all.' Hannah scowled. ‘Why won't you tell me?'

‘Because there's nothing to tell.'

‘Why are you being like this?' She raised her voice over the thumping drumbeat on the main menu. ‘Turn that thing down!'

‘You sound like Finn.' He could hear the savage note in his own voice, but he didn't care to repress it.

‘Maybe Finn has a point sometimes. What did you find in the Veil?'

‘Leave it.' He gave her a venomous look over his shoulder. ‘Leave me alone, for fecksake
.
'

‘Fine.' Hannah stood up. ‘I will, then.'

It took him till she was outside in the hall to realise she wasn't bluffing. Pausing the movie, he scrambled to his feet and followed her. ‘No. Where are you going?'

‘Out.' She shot him a glare.

‘You can't.' He was alarmed now. ‘You heard what Sionnach said. I'm not to let you go out alone.'

Hannah sighed, softening. ‘Oh, for crying out loud. I'm only going round to Lauren's.'

‘Not without Sionnach.' Alarmed, Rory grabbed the front door and tried to shut it. ‘You know what he said. You can't go without—'

~
She doesn't have to
. Behind them, Sionnach was already pulling on his leather jacket. ~
Do you, Currac
?

Hannah gave Rory a smirk of victory. Partly, no doubt, because she'd finally persuaded Sionnach to shorten her name from Currac-sagairt. She could talk him into anything. She was the only person Rory knew who could talk Sionnach into anything he didn't want to do; and it worked the other way round, too.

Rory looked from one to the other, vaguely resentful of their tight relationship and not a little anxious. Even he found Sionnach unnerving these days, and sometimes Rory thought uneasily of his mad, dead twin, Eili. He didn't think there was madness in Sionnach, though: only a huge silence where there had once been the other half of him, and a grief that despite its dark immensity couldn't begin to fill the gap. The man's voice, never overused, had almost fallen out of use altogether.

Rory still loved him all the same. And Hannah, who had once loathed Sionnach on sight, now treated him with a fierce protectiveness that seemed to amuse him. In turn she had become his replacement reason for living.

~
Come on then, Currac,
Sionnach told her now for Rory to hear. ~
It's not as if Rory has anything he wants to talk to us about. Do you, Laochan?

Rory grunted. ‘No,' he said. ‘Because there's nothing to explain.'

With a slight smile, Sionnach spread his hands. ~
That's that then.

When the door closed behind them, Rory stared at it for an age.

There's nothing to talk about. Nothing.

It was an accident.

I didn't mean it anyway and it won't happen again.
Rory gritted his teeth in irritation as an involuntary shudder went through him.

He flopped onto the sofa and crossed his arms over his eyes, his interest in the movie dead. He wished he hadn't been so bad-tempered, and he wished he hadn't driven Hannah away, and he wished, for a pointless moment, that they could go away somewhere and be alone together for a day. Not that that was an option. And after what happened last time—the whole being-on-the-run thing, and the deaths of everyone who tried to help him, and the should-have-been-mortal wounding of Finn, and the loss of his father's dun, and the exile of their whole clann—well, he wasn't even going to ask permission.

Besides, he knew fine he'd fallen out with Hannah deliberately. She was bound to be curious about what had happened last October, when she was attacked by Darach, and he was attacked by whatever lay sleeping in the Veil.

But just because Hannah wanted to know, didn't mean he had to tell her.
Nothing to tell.
And why suffer a bloody interrogation when he didn't know the answer?

Lolling an arm to the side, he let his fingers twitch for the Veil. It caught willingly in his fingers, rippled against his skin.

~
What did you do to me? Why did you do it?

Awkward questions, indeed. And as well as he knew and loved the Veil, it wasn't as if it was ever going to answer.

 

Lauren

Shania and Darryl were home for a visit
.
If she'd known that, she needn't have stayed out so late. Lauren swore under her breath at the extra car in the driveway. If her sister would keep her up to date with her plans, she could plot and ration her escapes a little better.

Maybe I should just go and live with Shania
. Yeah, her sister would love that.

Lauren turned the key very quietly, laying her hand flat against the lock plate in a futile effort to muffle any click. An ersatz iron lantern burned in the porch, a large moth rattling wearily inside the glass. To Lauren the racket seemed unreasonably loud, but she couldn't reach high enough to kill the thing. She shut her eyes tight and pushed open the inner door of the house.

No sound. The hall and the stairway were in darkness, but when she reached the top of the stairs she saw a thin strip of soft light beneath the door to her parents' bedroom. At least one of them was awake, then. She swallowed, treading softly down the beige carpet of the passageway. If she went straight to her own room, her father would have an excuse to come there and ask her where she'd been all night. Better to go in to their room voluntarily, let her mother know she was in the house, than to have Marty hunt her down alone.

Her hand trembled as she placed it against the door. It barely creaked as she pushed, and it swung wide even as she hoped irrationally that it wouldn't. For an instant the warm yellow glow of the bedside lamp seemed to pulse brighter, then the light settled. The tangle of bodies on the bed stirred, and one of them rose up on a slender arm, sweeping aside a tumble of red-gold hair to peer at her.

Lauren couldn't move, couldn't even close her gaping mouth. The woman who was not her mother smiled affectionately, unconcerned. Beneath her, Marty grunted and struggled up to lean back on his elbows. He stared at Lauren, seeming for a moment not to recognise her. His eyes held a dull glow; oddly blank, thought Lauren irrelevantly, for a father in a passionate illicit clinch.

‘What?' Marty mumbled, blinking.

The woman kissed a finger and laid it against his lips, then turned back, cocking her head to watch Lauren.

‘We didn't expect company,' she told her with a smile.

‘Yeah,' was all Lauren could say, and even that came out on a husky stutter.

Marty kicked away the remaining sheets and leaned forward, swinging his feet to the floor. He blinked faster, shaking his head, as Lauren tried to back off. ‘Listen, love, don't you breathe a word to your mother—'

The red-haired woman rested her hand on his flexing bicep. ‘Sh,' she said softly, ‘the girl won't tell a soul.' And then, gently, ‘Go ahead, now. Kill.'

Lauren's blood flow plummeted into her feet and her limbs turned rubbery. She couldn't even summon the strength to run as the bright light of fury finally sparked Marty's eyes into life. Lunging up from the bed, he sprang for her. In sheer shock, she turned then to run, but too late. From behind, hands seized her throat and crushed it with fingers like cold iron.

The soft yellow glow dulled to red. Dying didn't even hurt, not at her throat, though Lauren was aware of a distant agony in her lungs. She didn't think those hands could tighten any more, but they did, and when Marty let her go, she knew her neck must have snapped.

She fell forward, cracking her forehead on the edge of the door, and her vision went black. There were guttering pinpricks of light in the darkness, and even as she wondered how she'd managed to feel that pain in her head, the tiny flashing stars coalesced into a yellow glow. It was way too bright.
Tunnel of light
, she thought.
Nice.

Not fair that it still hurts
.
Not fair.

Lauren sucked in a sudden breath and her eyes jolted wide. Her heart was pumping again, overtime, like a huge piston. Her head was twisted to the side but she could hardly see for her own tangled hair, and there was something in her eyes anyway. And there was a stone weight across her legs, and she couldn't move them, and she was soaking.

I'm paralysed, oh God, he's paralysed me, and I've gone and wet myself.

No. No. She could feel them, she could feel her legs, but there was a weight on them, and she couldn't move even if she dared to try. All she could do was blink, and that was when she realised that Marty was sprawled across her, and the surge of revulsion made her want to draw a breath to scream, except that she couldn't, he was crushing her lungs, and what she'd wet herself with was
eight pints of blood oh my God oh my God and don't move don't move don't move.

‘He'd better be alive, Cuthag,' said the woman.

‘Sorry. Didn't mean to be quite that efficient.'

That was a man's voice.
Oh God oh God there are more of them.

‘You're so clumsy sometimes.' Another woman was speaking; a different one.
Oh God how many?
‘Kate, I think the full-mortal's still breathing.'

Through a film of blood and tears and the web of her hair, Lauren made out a figure, walking close, dusting her hands together before dropping to her knees beside them.

The redheaded woman gripped Marty's floppy head in both hands. Lauren felt the weight of it tugged off her but she wouldn't move, wouldn't breathe, wouldn't stir, wouldn't
die
.

A faint gurgle came from Marty's bloody mouth as the redhead pulled back on his skull; then she was arching in ecstasy, her eyes blazing with joy and life. Marty's face went from grey to blue-white, the veins nearly breaching his skin. He made a high-pitched sound like nothing Lauren had ever heard, or ever wanted to hear again. It rose in pitch till Lauren thought with gratitude that it had stopped; but then she heard the dog in the neighbours' garden begin to yap and howl and bark in demented terror.

‘Just in time,' said the redhead happily. ‘
Now
he's dead.'