Icefall (22 page)

‘I do,' said Seth. ‘Shit.'

I don't know why I had such a doomy feeling. ‘Sure? It's not very good…'

‘It's good enough. They're both Sithe. He's one of Kilrevin's lieutenants from way back. And there's—
damn,
there's Cuthag. They must have latched onto the poor old Rooneys ages ago. Got pally with them, won their trust and—' He made a guttural sound and drew his finger across his throat.

A feather of unease fluttered in my gut. ‘I don't like how planned that sounds. I thought they were afterthoughts. I thought Hannah had it right, that they killed them to get at her.'

‘Doesn't look that way. Why would they be so interested in the Rooneys?' He shrugged, exasperated. ‘C'mon, we'll give it another fifteen minutes.'

‘No more,' I warned. ‘Or I'll be so hungry I'll be eating
you
.'

‘Any time.' He threw me a wicked wink before flopping back onto the sofa.

Bored, I got back to the photos. At least in the Antigua folder there was something of interest. Here they were on a beach again, and here in an open-sided restaurant. That couple was still around. The Rooneys had spent a lot of time with them. Hannah always said Sheena was gregarious.

A thought brushed my brain, and vanished. I frowned. No getting it back. It would come to me later.

Seth tossed aside a photo and rummaged for another. Frowning, he picked strands of cobweb off his fingers and shook the yellowing picture, then picked at its edges. Two stuck together, obviously.

‘Don't go tearing them,' I said.

‘Like Aileen would notice.' But he eased them apart quite carefully.

‘Finn,' he said.

‘Huh?'

He didn't answer. Glad of another distraction, I stood up again, then leaned on the end of the sofa to look over his shoulder. His head was right there, so I kissed the top of it. ‘Mm? Want to get a late lunch?'

‘Finn,' he said again.

I was alert now. I squinted at the stiff photograph in his fingers, which shook a little.

He'd torn it a little bit, just a tiny spot where the surface had come off, but the rest of it was clear and unfaded. Maybe it had helped that it was stuck to the back of the other one for years.

‘It's dated. Edinburgh 1876. This is her, the woman I couldn't find at Register House. Catherine Andrews.'

He lifted the photo so I could see it better. Thomas stood a little behind his wife, hand proprietorial on her shoulder, pride blazing out of his handsome face. He looked strong, intelligent, slightly startled, and irredeemably in love. There was something far more self-contained about Catherine, more secretive, but no wonder Thomas looked proud. She was beautiful, exceptionally so. Her glossy hair was coiled in an elaborate bun; her tilted face held a look of sweet mischief and solemn promise. Her eyes were large and luminous, demanding the camera's full attention so that the rest of the picture seemed almost out of focus; but that was an illusion. It was only that the eyes were so bright. They were lovely, and seductive, and oddly empty.

I stared at the smiling bride and her besotted husband. Couldn't take my eyes off them. But Seth stroked the pad of his thumb across the lovely monochrome face, gently at first, then again and again, harder, as if he could obliterate it.

‘What now?' I licked my dry lips.

‘Oh, Finn, I dunno,' he said miserably. ‘Let's go home.'

 

Hannah

I tried not to run, like Sionnach said. The Caledonian wasn't far from the beach and the leisure centre, but it was on the town side of the bypass. It wouldn't take us more than ten minutes to get there, if I didn't run under a lorry.

What was this, her first time? No, she owed him money. Second or third, then? What were the signs?

Trouble was, I didn't know. Drugs had never done anything for me, so I'd never bothered to find out.

‘Don't kill him,' I said suddenly, grabbing Sionnach's arm.

Sionnach smiled sideways. He'd already unfastened his jacket.

‘I'll scare him,' he said.

‘Only scare.'

‘Promise.'

Despite myself, I slowed as we approached the old ruin. I didn't know why the hotel was still standing. There was wire fencing round it, plastered with
Keep Out
and
No Entry
and
Danger
signs
.
And a board, chipped at the edges, that read
Acquired for Development by AFS Properties.
It must be at the bottom of AFS's priority list.

The wire fencing was so saggy and ripped as to be pointless, and Sionnach, familiar with the place already, stepped through a gap into a tarmac car park, cracked and pitted with weeds. The Caledonian itself was a doleful rickle of concrete, crawling with vines, every window broken. Prowling shadows froze to stare: scrawny cats, half of them bulging with kittens.

There was a faint stink of urine that became overpowering the closer we got to the deserted building. The entrance doors were long gone, ripped from their hinges, so we walked straight into reception, where the floor tiles were crazily tilted. A fire had been built in the middle, still smelling of smoke and charred plywood that might have been the remains of the doors. Beer bottles and cigarette ends and scrunched-up fag packets were piled in the ashes, and shattered glass lay everywhere.

Sionnach gave a shrug, as if to say
We should have known.

So we should. Why else would she come here? Guilt stole over me again, for not looking after Lauren better, for not giving enough of a damn. She didn't need space, I thought suddenly. She needed us. And she didn't get us. So she took this place instead, and her new pal H. I shuddered.

The place seemed very quiet. Sionnach drew his blade, stepped across a gap in the floor, and pushed at a swing door.

Must have been a conference room at some point; it was that kind of size. One forlorn metal chair was propped against a wall that was scrawled with obscene drawings in marker pen. Incredibly, a couple of broken frames still hung on one long wall, the glass gone, the prints washed out and corrugated by damp. They were common pictures you saw in just about every pub and hotel on the coast, as well as the foyer of our school: the mercat cross of the town; the ruins of a mediaeval cathedral; a Highland cow standing picturesquely in front of a loch. Wires straggled where appliances had been yanked from the walls and ceiling, and greasy water dripped steadily through the roof into a yawning hole in the floor.

Chilled, I approached it. Sionnach stayed very still, his blade held ready at his side.

I halted on the edge of the hole, then stepped instinctively back from it. Tiles and concrete had been wrenched up, leaving support beams exposed: rotten and broken, some of them charred by fire-raisers. The smell was even worse here. I could see a faint dark gleam, deep in the hole, and when the light moved I realised the hole was flooded. That was the source of the smell: a dank stagnant pool in the guts of the building.

No wonder AFS Properties couldn't bring themselves to get started. I rubbed my arms and stepped further back, not liking that pool.

‘Sionnach?'

No answer.

‘Sionnach?'

I turned, reluctantly because I hated that hole in the floor, hated to turn my back on it.

‘All right, Hannah.'

He spoke calmly, despite the two men with the naked swords. I hadn't heard their steps and I didn't recognise either of them, though I was plenty familiar with the glint in their eyes. I took one step forward.

‘Stay back,' said Sionnach. ‘Go if you can.'

A quick look to left and right confirmed what I suspected: I couldn't go. The only way out of this room was past the guys with the swords—or perhaps through the hole in the floor, and frankly I'd rather take my chances with the Chuckle Brothers.

‘Then stay,' said Sionnach, a smile in his voice. ‘I'll be a minute.'

They went for him. So fast I hardly saw them move, but he was no slouch himself. He'd half-turned in a wicked little feint—I'd watched him practise it—and ducked and sprung back before the first of them could double back for him.

It was the only way he could have done it and he did it beautifully. He should have had the blond one's head off, but the man jerked aside at the last instant and Sionnach's blade went only halfway through. Reflexively I shut my eyes as blood arced in a great spray and the man stumbled forward, juddering, twitching, flailing, but not in any danger of getting up again. His kicking legs jerked him to a halt by the pool, head hanging into the hole, blood spilling over the edge. The drip of it echoed in the new silence.

Down to one opponent, Sionnach eyed him, breathing hard, and before I could catch my breath they were at one another again. This one was shorter, and bearded: he was good, but strong rather than fast. Sionnach somersaulted low to avoid a slash, rolled easily to his feet and lashed his blade across the man's hamstrings. Beardie howled, fell forward then stumbled back, and Sionnach drove his blade between his ribs.

I didn't have time for revulsion, or nausea, or relief, or anything else. Sionnach raised his blade yet again, manic fear and aggression in his eyes, and my own blood ran like iced water. For seconds that seemed like minutes, we couldn't move or make a sound.

I made my throat work.

‘You,' I said.

*   *   *

I was too shocked even to be very afraid. At that moment I was. The fear came later. Just a little later.

I'd never forget that face. It wasn't forgettable, even though the left eye was missing, the lids stitched roughly shut. His left hand was hideously scarred too: lumpy and ridged and misshapen, the forefinger missing from the second knuckle. It looked like it had been savaged by a wolf. Still fit for purpose, though, because it was tight round the throat of Lauren, while his good hand pressed a sword lightly against her throat.

What a delicate touch he had. The blade creased her skin but didn't break it. She looked stunned by terror.

The Wolf of Kilrevin gave a world-weary sigh. ‘Do I have to do everything myself?'

As he rolled his eye, it was caught by the damp print of the cathedral ruins. He shook his mutilated head in admiration. ‘That was a job well done, that was. How that Bishop squealed.'

‘You're alive,' I croaked.

‘Of course I am. Alive, and not very happy with your uncle.' He examined the wrecked hand round Lauren's throat. ‘You think I'm going to die of falling down a hill? I've been keeping my head down since MacRothe's healer fused its bloody bones, but you can't blame me.' He grinned. ‘And after that I was in Kazakhstan. Bit of a busman's holiday. What a place. Even more fun than Chile in seventy-four.'

‘Hannah.' Lauren gave a barely audible squeak. Impatiently the Wolf shook her.

‘Speak up, speak up,' he told her.

‘Hannah. I'm sorry.'

I swallowed. My throat hurt. ‘You didn't send my mother that text?'

‘I did.' She nodded her head, with difficulty. I could hear her breathing catch and rasp. ‘They told me to. But they've got your mum's phone.' She dragged in another breath. ‘More convincing. Than sending it straight to you.'

I was so numb I could barely feel my fingers any more. ‘Why? What did they tell you?'

‘I met a woman. Friend of your mum's.' Tears spilled from her eyes, though it might have just been pain and breathlessness. ‘She talked a lot. Said you were lying. Said Sionnach and Seth killed my family.'

Sionnach wasn't speaking or moving, but as if he'd elbowed me in the ribs I remembered suddenly what Finn used to say.
She can make anyone believe anything.

‘Was she pretty?' I said bleakly. ‘Redhead?'

‘Miss Snow,' rasped Lauren. ‘I don't know. She wore this turban. It was a redhead killed my—'

‘That's quite enough,' said the Wolf, and tightened his grip. Lauren's voice dried, and her tears dribbled onto the broken tiles. ‘There now,' he went on, ‘if that's all cleared up, perhaps we can get on with business?' He smiled at me. ‘Could you move? I want you breathing.'

‘Yeah, Hannah,' said Sionnach. ‘Stay clear.'

‘Sionnach!'

‘All right, Hannah. S'okay.' He didn't look at me; all his attention was fixed on the Wolf, even when someone walked in through the broken door from reception.

‘You're late,' said the Wolf irritably. ‘Hold this.' He shoved Lauren hard.

She tripped and stumbled but she didn't have time to fall. The newcomer caught her, seized her by the hair and hauled her against him. Goggles. He gave me a cool smile.

The Wolf examined his sword blade, tilting it to catch the light. ‘I'm not sure I can bring myself to do this. It's a
twin,
for gods' sake. Killing his sister was like shooting a myxied rabbit.'

Sionnach growled.

Sighing, the Wolf stepped forward, and Sionnach flew for him.

I knew Sionnach was fast. I knew he was good. He could give Seth a run for his money, in the big empty basement at home where they kept their skills honed. I used to sit at the side, out of the way, and hoot and cheer, never sure who I was egging on because I never was sure who would win, who I wanted to win.

Here, now, I was silent. I wanted to howl for Sionnach, and I was afraid to. He was tired, and he'd fought two already, and he'd used up much of his speed. He barely held off each hacking stroke, and I was terrified of distracting him fatally. I could only breathe in and out, when I remembered to, and beg Sionnach's gods to give him a break, an advantage of sorts, a lucky strike, a bit of
mercy.

Two more Sithe fighters waited at the edge of the conference room, but no-one tried to hold me: there was nothing I could do. The blades glittered, snapping and flashing in the dreary light, but the Wolf was easy and slick and fast where Sionnach was only furious and desperate. He backed away in one of the few lulls, panting for breath, eyeing his cool opponent.