Solace & Grief (3 page)

No. More. Walls
.

With a scream that sounded half lightning, half birdsong, Leonie drove the hammerhead straight through the masonry, disappearing from view in a torrent of dust and sunlight. Solace smiled. Her vision spun away. The last thing she saw was Leonie standing, haloed like a saint.

It was too late for night, too early for dawn, when Solace left the group house. Dressed in a faded pair of grey-black jeans, old Blundstone work-boots, a khaki top and a corduroy jacket, she made her bed, ran her fingers over her collection of ageing paperbacks, smiled at the room and closed the door, slipping out down the hallway and into the kitchen. She took a packet of dried apricots from the cupboard, a plastic bottle of cold water from the fridge and an icy pole from the freezer: it was an odd assortment of goodies, but there was nothing else she could lay hands on that wouldn't make her sick outright. Besides, she only had two hands.

The kitchen door should have been locked. Instead, it opened smoothly at Solace's touch.

At the side gate, she paused to unwrap the icy pole, dropping the paper neatly into the bin. She stuffed the apricots in her jacket pocket, grasped the lid of the bottle between two fingers and took her first bite of breakfast, grinning at the taste of frozen lemonade. There were worse ways, Solace reflected, to start an adventure.

And then she left.

S
olace had never walked so far in her life. From her starting point, she'd already crossed several suburbs, making sure to keep well away from the main roads as she zigzagged towards the Sydney CBD. Something told her Mrs Plumber and Miss Daisy wouldn't come looking for her – or that if they did, they wouldn't search long – but in this, at least, she was willing to trust to caution. Once the sun had risen, this tactic paid off in a far more practical sense: the side streets were shaded by venerable trees, protecting Solace from too much sun exposure. Her icy pole long gone, she started on the apricots, munching one every half-kilometre or so and taking occasional swigs of water. Oddly, she wasn't concerned by her total lack of money. Sooner or later, yes, she'd have to find food and shelter but, in Solace's mind, this fact didn't quite connect with a notion of payment. The newfound part of her, what she was coming to think of as the Vampire Cynic, noted this discrepancy with interest, but even then, she still couldn't bring herself to worry.

She wondered idly how the others were coping with her absence. Her dreams last night had been strange, what little of them she remembered – something about Annamaria in trouble, Luci made of marbles and Leonie locked up, she thought, but that was hardly helpful.
At least,
Solace mused,
if they
are
distressed, there's cake
. The thought made her laugh. Given her delicate stomach, Solace couldn't actually eat cake, but it was nonetheless a birthday staple. For Luci's sake, she hoped it was chocolate, and concluded it probably was. Mrs Plumber and Miss Daisy knew for whom they were
really
shopping, after all.

She felt a slight pang for her house-mothers. They'd done their best, and if – as the Vampire Cynic strongly suspected – some sort of
force
had ultimately been responsible for keeping her in the group home, then Sarah and Daisy had been bound by it, too. Politely, the word
magic
kept knocking at the door of her vocabulary, but Solace stubbornly refused it entry. Magic, she reasoned, was not an explanation: it was what happened when you snapped your fingers and a rabbit appeared. Magic was, by popular definition, outside the laws of nature; and if Solace really
was
a vampire, the laws of nature would accommodate.

‘There must be others like me,’ she said aloud. ‘Or if I'm a freak, there must be a reason for it.’ She chewed her lip, not liking the second notion nearly so much as the first. A tremor of loneliness shook her. To combat it, Solace ate the last of her apricots, scrunching up the plastic wrapping and dropping it in a nearby wheelie bin. Squinting, she glanced skywards, trying to gauge the time. She'd never owned a watch, but guessed by how sore her legs were and the sun's general position that it was sometime around noon, and therefore a very good time to stop. Looking around, she spied a patch of public-looking greenery and made for it, picking herself a spot to lie down beneath a smooth, lean grey gum.

Running her hand across the trunk, she was made aware of her own exhaustion. There wasn't much water left, but she drank it anyway, slumping down with a sigh of relief. From where she was sitting, the sun was visible only as the branches of surrounding trees moved, lancing through the foliage like winks of light off a faceted crystal, dappling the ground beyond without impinging on her chosen shade. She smiled, trying to remember the last time she'd simply sat outdoors on her own, let alone at midday. The park was completely deserted – unusual, she supposed, but hardly a source of complaint. She closed her eyes.

‘I really shouldn't have come.’

With a startled yelp, Solace jerked awake and tried, somewhat unsuccessfully, to shuffle backwards and stand up all in the one motion, cracking her skull on the tree in the process. Swearing, she cast around for a culprit, but whoever had spoken, assuming she hadn't simply dreamed it, was nowhere to be seen. Puzzled and a little scared, she peered around behind the tree, in case whoever-it-was had a sense of humour.

Nothing.

‘Right,’ she gulped. ‘Okay. I'm hearing things. I've just been out in the sun too long.
Way
too long,’ she added, in a mutinous undertone. Staring around for a final time, she resettled herself, and after some wary lash-fluttering, let her lids fall shut.

‘Don't panic. More importantly, don't open your eyes.’

Solace felt her heart speed up. Someone was hunkered down quite close to her, she could hear it in the crunching twigs and hissing grass. Judging by the voice, her uninvited guest was definitely male. Still – and this was important – she felt no dread at his presence. She took a deep breath. The scent of mint and lemongrass pervaded, underwritten by crisp vanilla. Hardly a menacing perfume. Twisting her head, she listened to his calm breath, felt the stillness of his posture, sensed the steady echo of his heart.
This man,
concluded the Vampire Cynic,
is not the man from the alley. A stranger, yes, and strange, but not a threat
.

The nape of her neck began to tingle.

‘Why are you here?’ she asked. The man laughed, his voice mahogany-rich, and now she'd overcome her initial shock, pleasant.

‘To help.’

‘Acts of random altruism?’ Solace asked, sarcastically. ‘Or do you mean me in particular?’

‘The latter. There's a place you need to find.’

‘Why?’

‘Because.’

She felt a tickle of motion cross her face, and concluded that the man had waved his hand.

‘You must. Or rather, you
will
. Sooner or later. It's where everything starts. Once you cross the threshold, everything changes. The world is changed. Sooner or later. But sooner is better.’

‘Why can't I look at you?’

He chuckled. ‘Like I said, little nomad. I shouldn't be here. Eventually, we'll meet. But you won't remember this. Specifically, you won't remember
me
.’

‘What?’ Angrily, Solace shook her head. ‘If I won't remember, then what's the point?’

‘This is.’

Softly, she felt something brush her forehead. She gasped. A vein of ice shot through her temples, spreading through her flesh. The force of it made her spasm, back arching like an epileptic. Knowledge fizzed through her: urgent, potent, a warning, a path. She opened her eyes, chest heaving. Her vision swam. She forced herself to sit up straight, clutching her head, staring around for – what? It was like she'd been dreaming. Her fingers twitched. There'd been something, someone she had to remember, and then it was gone. The memory popped like a soap bubble.

Solace Morgan shook her head, yawned and glanced at the sky. She'd slept for maybe an hour. In summer, one o'clock was worse for her than midday, but this was late autumn. A cool breeze blew by, making music with a park's worth of fallen leaves, a crackling susurrus.

‘Better keep going.’

Standing, she stretched her back and shoulders, finding satisfaction in how strong they felt. At this rate, she'd reach the CBD by early evening.

Somewhere in the final few kilometres, a storm blew up. At first, it was little more than an intensification of the breeze, swirling leaves, plastic bags and aluminium debris down gutters and footpaths with childish enthusiasm. Then came the rumble of distant thunder, sonorous as cracking stone. The wind began whipping harder, and a few lonely drops came pelting down at an angle, dashing themselves on the tarmac in dramatic Rorschach blots. Then the heavens opened. Solace was drenched within minutes, but persevered, propelled forwards by some nameless directive. If asked, she couldn't have said why she didn't just wait it out, or why, once she reached the CBD, she took
this
particular turning,
that
little side street. As lightning jagged overhead, she found herself laughing, revelling in the wonderful, stupid freedom that was getting caught in the rain, running down unfamiliar paths that narrowed and narrowed until she was gloriously, purposefully lost.

In a slender, nameless lane, her madness finally gave out. Tucking clumps of rain-scraggled hair behind her ears, she sized up the right-hand wall, found a doorway midway down its length and tucked herself – gratefully, tiredly – out of the storm. Surprisingly, she wasn't even cold, although her jacket had started to cling and chafe uncomfortably. Cramped by the space, she started to peel it off. Wet jeans were even worse, she decided, but unlike the jacket, they weren't exactly optional.

As the rain drummed down with renewed vigour, Solace turned her head and paused, noticing a strange, repetitive noise. Peering out from her alcove, she saw lights at the lane's far end: two of them, in fact, set high on her wall and tilted down to illuminate – what? She could just make out the glint of a metal banister, and realised that it must lead down to a basement club. With that, the noise became obvious: it was music, bass line thuds strained through tarmac, brick and concrete.

Self-consciously, she looked at her clothes. Even without the jacket, she was drenched, if no longer technically sopping. Her hair was a tangle of rats’ tails. The chances of any self-respecting bouncer letting her in on sight were slim to none, especially as, if there were any kind of cover charge, she wouldn't be able to pay it. Still, the club was close, and the rain was going nowhere. She wanted to dry off, sit comfortably, maybe even talk to someone, none of which was going to happen in a doorway. She did as best she could with her hair, combing it with her fingers. Her shirt, at least, was starting to cling less, heated by the warmth of her body, but the jacket remained a lump of wet cloth. Regretfully, Solace decided she'd be better off without it, at least for the time being.

That still left the problem of how to get in. She had no money, and while she was convinced of her own physical strength, she was hardly going to tackle the bouncer. Which left persuasion. Slyly, the Vampire Cynic brought up the question of thrall, or rather, what Solace had come to think of as thrall. It was the one ability she'd never definitively proven: control, compulsion, making someone do what she wanted for no better reason than that she wanted it done. Now
there
was power. In another life, it might even have been tempting. But Solace had learned the hard way what it was like in other people's heads, the kind of secrets that Luci, Leonie and Annamaria carried. Most of what she'd learned, she'd never meant to ask. Such a gift demanded responsibility.
But still,
she thought,
I've never actually done it on
purpose.
Who knows what I might learn? And maybe,
a smaller voice added,
maybe you never did anything in the first place. They could've just been honest, all those times. You need to know
.

‘Yes. I do.’

Standing, she stuck a hand out, testing the rain. It fell more lightly now, though still not done. It was good enough. With a final glance at her discarded jacket, Solace stepped out into the alley, hugging the right-hand wall for what little shelter it offered.

Heart beating fast, she surveyed the club entrance. Partially hidden down a flight of stairs and shielded by an awning, a massive man whose stance screamed ‘security’ guarded a solid basement door. As she watched, it half-opened to reveal a pair of girls, struggling with the weight of the door and perhaps unsteady for other reasons, too. When the bouncer lent a hand, they giggled, high heels clattering on the metal stairs. At street level, one even turned and blew him a kiss, blushing before she linked arms with her friend, who made a teasing noise. Heads together, they lurched off into the evening, laughing loudly at such drunken boldness. The simple human silliness of it made Solace smile.

She approached the bouncer.