Second Night (26 page)

Caz smiled. ‘And Jem wouldn't stop howling and we were just going to call the cops when she got back.'

‘And then she told us about the job interview. Do you remember how excited she was when she showed us the pictures of the boss's old fortress? And a week later we were getting our gear together and going half way across the country before we'd even had time to think about it.'

‘The lodge seemed so big when we moved in and the manor house was something else,' agreed Caz.

‘And you thought the boss was an alien, he was just so unreal,' laughed Jasper.

‘I thought Daisy was a witch until she got out the biscuits.'

‘And then you found out she was only a kitchen witch, and pretty good at that.'

‘The best.'

‘Al was the bonus though.'

‘Totally. Now it seems completely normal and all this,' Caz waved his hand, ‘is just a bad dream.'

‘How did five of us ever fit into this place?' marvelled Jasper.

‘We were smaller then.'

‘Our ideas were smaller, you mean.'

‘It's amazing how fast you can adapt to the idea of always having a decent amount of cash on hand without having to think about it,' observed Caz.

‘It's more than an idea,' said Jasper. ‘I'm going for nothing less than megabucks.'

‘What, with the band?'

‘It would be good but it's too risky in the long term. I tell you, bro, a decent degree plus a few handy connections that the boss must still have tucked away in that antique address book of his, and I'll be made. Nothing's going to make me settle for a life like this again.'

An image of Jasper and Charles Fordham-Marshall, sat side by side in a bank vault counting bags of cash, made Caz smile.
But that's Guardian stuff,
he thought.
I can't see Jas taking that oath either, not at any price.

Sir Jonas summoned the Guardians to the study immediately after lunch. ‘Has there been more news from Plymouth?' he asked anxiously.

‘Not since young Jemima phoned a couple of hours ago,' answered Daisy. ‘The old man was still living then, as far as she knew.'

‘Is he quite unconscious?'

‘I believe so.'

‘And they are continually at his bedside?'

‘From what she said, the boys are doing the bulk of it, Jasper in the day and young Caz is there all night.'

‘I see.' Sir Jonas adjusted the eyepatch and tapped his stick distractedly on the floor.

‘I'm worried about how he's managing for food,' said Daisy. ‘The evenings draw in so quickly now. I'm afraid he's going to get caught out and then what's he going to do?'

‘He'll be all right,' said John. ‘He's got plenty of money with him and there're restaurants and cafes that do deliveries nowadays. He can get stuff sent in wherever he is, especially in a big city.'

‘But what if he's in that hospital and starts falling about with those stomach pains of his. They'll have him on the operating table and start opening him up, and then what's to be done?'

‘Don't worry, Dais, it won't happen,' said Alan. ‘He had a good scare the other night. He won't be trying anything fancy, particularly so far from home. He'll slip off somewhere and eat before he goes anywhere near the hospital, if I know anything about him at all.'

‘Have you had any opportunity to talk to him since Council, Mister Alan?' asked Sir Jonas.

‘No, not yet, Master. I'm waiting for him to come to me about it.'

‘Do you have any idea why he became so ill?'

‘I can only guess that he was trying something different with a casting. It was full moon and he'd been up at Thunderslea for most of the day, which is unusual for him, considering he casts mostly at night.'

‘Do you think he experienced some form of visitation?'

‘I couldn't say for sure.'

‘Was there evidence of anything untoward at the site? Any damage of any kind?'

Alan shook his head. ‘Nothing. I was up there myself later that same night, after we had got him settled upstairs. I checked the whole place over again in daylight. There was not a mark to be seen, just a few scufflings around the leaves under the tree and a fox could have done that, or a badger.'

‘But you did note a repetition of similar phenomena following the apparent wounding that Madame Marguerite and Mister John reported upon his arrival here that same evening?'

‘Yes.'

Daisy was still shaking at the thought of it. ‘We all did,' she said, shuddering. ‘I've never seen anything like it in all my life. He looked like he'd been beaten up and half strangled. I thought he'd be laid up for weeks and then there he was with not a mark on him in the morning, and seeming not to remember too much about it either when he eventually came to.'

‘It can only have been the result of visitation!' exclaimed Sir Jonas excitedly. ‘Nothing else could have produced such a reaction. This must augur well for the next vigil!'

‘Or ill,' muttered Daisy, clenching her teeth to stop them chattering.

When Alan closed the armoury for the night, he buckled his sword around his waist and went to the security room. He scanned the screens quickly. The spear was missing from its case in the exhibition room. He shut down the surveillance system at Thunderslea, reflected for a moment and pressed a second key. The screen monitoring the stable yard blacked out.

He went outside to check the horses. Nanna was eating her hay. The colt was fast asleep on the straw in his loose box. Freyja and Rúna were standing by their doors, watching the stars. Kyri had disappeared.

CHAPTER 44

The sickly sweet stench of death filled every corner of the room, and a sense of menace that had not been there the night before. Jasper had been reluctant to leave.

‘We should do this together, bro,' he said. ‘It doesn't look like he's going to last much longer.'

Caz shook his head. ‘It doesn't matter to me when he dies. If he does it on my watch, so be it. I'll be okay.'

‘But you will get them to call me, won't you?'

‘I will.'

As soon as he was gone Caz closed the curtains, pushed the chair up close beside the bed and sat down.

‘I'm here again, Dad,' he said, in his father's voice. ‘There's no one around. No one can hear us. I want to know about the curse. You've been wanting to tell me all these years and now I'm listening. Why are we cursed?' He gripped the cold hand curled on the white coverlet, squeezing the bony fingers one by one to force a response. ‘Come on, Dad, tell me! Who cursed us? Tell me! You've got to tell me!'

The near lifeless husk remained inert. The rhythm of the shallow breathing continued unchanged, the wavering heartbeat uninterrupted in its peaceful winding down towards a gentle ending, in stark contrast with the raging that had been the sum of its thwarted life. Caz dropped the hand in disgust.

‘How dare you die well!' he muttered savagely.

The nurses came to check their patient. The younger one instinctively drew her cardigan around her shoulders, her eyes darting nervously from the figure on the bed to the silent attendant. She sensed the fury barely concealed behind the impassive face.

‘Would you like me to call your brother?' she asked.

‘No. We're used to people dying in our family.'

The curt reply did not satisfy the senior nurse but she was reluctant to challenge it.

‘I want you to ring the bell immediately there is any change in his condition,' she said briskly.

‘I will.'

‘Is there anything you want?'

‘No.'

The sense of menace grew with every hour. Reaching into his backpack for his Guardians' knife, Caz slipped the sheath onto his belt under his jacket.
There was nothing like this when Dad died,
he thought.
That was just sad, but this feels bad
.

He got up and paced the floor, alert for any indication that the straw man might return to consciousness. A few minutes after two o'clock the heartbeat changed, racing madly. The eyes opened and Caz saw his chance. He grabbed the flailing hands. The nails were blue.

‘Tell me about the curse!' he demanded.

The straw man's mouth opened and shut several times, gasping in the net of death. Caz leaned over him, closing his eyes against the stench of the fetid breath. The eyes rolled back in the corded head. What was left of the voice slipped, gasping, past the strangled vocal cords. ‘The sea.'

Caz took both of his grandfather's arms and shook him.

‘What about the sea?' he cried. ‘Who cursed us? You've got to tell me! Who cursed us?'

Something sharp and heavy knocked at the window… tap, tap, tap.

Caz leapt to his feet. Laughing with relief, he ran to the window and threw back the curtains, expecting to see the raven – but a shorter, stocky bird with distinctly crossed eyes was perched on the ledge.

Mesmerised, Caz pressed his face to the glass while the crow's thick, powerful beak rapped again – tap, tap, tap – drilling through his forehead. Numb with shock and naked without the wisdom of the raven guiding the weight of the spear in his hand, his mouth worked, dust dry. He shook from head to foot, a cold sweat running down his back and soaking his clothes.

The straw man groaned. Iron hands dragged Caz stumbling back to the bedside to witness the final obscene act of his grandfather's life, forcing his face down to within inches of the eyes opened wide and staring at some unseen horror. The fragile heart raced madly within the rapidly contracting rib cage. The face changed colour, livid red and white. The marks of an invisible chain seared around the scraggy neck and there was a stench of burning flesh. The lips curled back and turned blue.

In the last agonising moment before the heartbeat stopped, the mouth dropped open, gushing stinking bloodied phlegm as Franklin Wylde's final breath escaped, sighing, from his fractured lungs. In his frozen eyes, the pupils expanded on the black terror impressed into their fathomless depths.

The pressure clamped around Caz's head and neck abruptly released and he fell back into the chair, retching and gasping for breath. When he staggered to the adjoining bathroom, the face in the mirror looking back at him was deathly white and heavily shadowed under deeply sunken eyes. The stubble was thick and dark on his gaunt cheeks.

Burning resentment boiled over into rage. He drank copious cupfuls of bitter tasting water and strode back into the silent room. There was no sign of the crow at the window and the urgent presence of power was gone. The life force was draining rapidly out of the body on the bed. The distended veins on the head and hands were shrinking. The chain marks were already nothing more than a faint red stain across the throat.

‘You deserve whatever has taken your sorry soul, old straw man,' Caz snarled. ‘Your curse is dead with you.'

He shut the lids on the dead eyes and closed the jaw on the old man's final, silent scream. Gripping his knife hilt, he turned on the last of the unseen host he sensed lingering in the stifling room.

‘You've made your point, but the curse is finished. It ends right here with the old man, do you hear me? My family is free and I'll find my own reckoning. The curse is dead!'

Footsteps came running down the corridor as soon as he pressed the bell button. The young nurse came in and went to the bed. ‘He's gone then.'

Caz nodded. ‘Yes.'

She wiped the dead man's chin and straightened the coverlet.

‘It was for the best. Would you like me to call your family?' she asked kindly. ‘Do they want to view the body?'

‘No, take him away. We weren't close. We'll sort it out in the morning.'

‘Can I do anything for you? Would you like something to drink?'

‘No, I'm going. You could call me a taxi. That would be good.'

‘Where shall I say for?'

‘Torpoint ferry.'

CHAPTER 45

The river crossing marked the county line from Devonshire into Cornwall. The ramp lifted up and locked into place as soon as the deckhands closed the barriers behind the last car. The engines laboured, straining between the forces of tide and wind to take up the slack on the huge chains and pull the ferry across the water.

The deckhands exchanged looks as they stepped over the feet of the cloaked and hooded figure sprawled on one of the seats in the passenger area –
another nutter come out of the woodwork for the night. Don't we see them all?

Caz sat up, staring miserably at the view of the city lights, shattered into myriad pixel images by the bitterly cold, sleety rain slanting across the windows in front of him. The spooks had caught him out again and this time there was no doubting that they meant business. Battle was joined. The two remaining Runes of the Deathless were the prize and it would be a fight all the way to the bitter end to win them.

But there was still a glimmer of hope. Someone had warned him.
‘You are pursued.'

Who told me that?
He tried to fit a voice to the words – a rasping voice, from beyond the threshold of the Shadowed World.
Was it Haldor Vidarsson, Bryn's murderer? But he was going to kill me as well. Why would he want to help me now?

One of the deckhands shouted to his mate. ‘Bloody hell! Did you see that bird?'

‘What bird?'

‘A bloody great big, black bird just flew across the bow! Didn't you see it?'

‘Can't see nothing on a filthy night like this.'

Caz leapt up and ran out on to the open deck, into the streaming, howling wind. The stark white lights along the railings played havoc with his night vision. He leaned out over the rail, all his senses straining.
Is it the crow or the raven?

In one direction, white waves pounded the ships moored in the receding dockyards. In the other, a distant wedge of light resolved into spotlights. The second ferry was fast approaching from the opposite bank. He heard the rumble of the engines and the brakes grinding in a badly parked car on the advancing deck.