The Colour of Death (22 page)

Delaney’s eyes narrowed.  “What?  The tower?”

“Yes.  And the eye.”  She could hear her voice trembling but wasn’t sure if it was excitement or fear.

“I told you you'd remember things,” he soothed, taking her hand.  “I’ll explain everything later.  Now, come with me.”  Trestle tables, laden with drink and food, had been arrayed in rows outside one of the great barns, and a whole pig was roasting on a spit over an open fire.  Her father led her to the main table where three women in indigo robes greeted them.  One was heavily pregnant and another carried a newborn baby.  All were smiling at her but she also detected scrutiny in their eyes.  The youngest, the blonde, dipped a finger in a pot of dye and pressed it to her father’s forehead.  The mark it left was a different color from any of the other dots.  Then, using the same dye, she pressed her finger to Sorcha’s forehead.  As everyone sat at the tables her father smiled at her.  “It must seem a bit overwhelming but everyone wants to celebrate your homecoming.”  Then he stood, raised his hands and projected his voice over the crowd.  “On this beautiful evening, days from Esbat, we welcome back our precious daughter, Sorcha.  Her ordeal among the sub-indigos has stolen her memory, but we must give thanks that she has returned safely to us from the children of men.  Soon we fast for Esbat but tonight we celebrate…”

Delaney spoke as if life outside the settlement was a perilous place for the Indigo Family.  Watching their rapt, smiling faces, it was obvious they worshipped him.  Their unquestioning devotion made Sorcha feel uncomfortable, especially when they glanced at her with the same hungry expectancy.  As he looked around she noticed an attractive older woman with an indigo dot on her forehead, long plaited graying hair, hoop earrings and large glasses, sitting on one of the outlying tables.  Unlike the others, she didn’t appear transfixed by her father.  Instead she smiled warmly at Sorcha and, when she caught her eye, gave a little wave.  Sorcha didn’t recognize her but the woman’s natural gesture and smile made her feel like she knew her.  Then Delaney stopped speaking, the food was served and Sorcha was enveloped in a flurry of activity.

As Sorcha thought of the woman and wondered who she was, she didn’t notice another pair of eyes staring at her.  The large man stood alone, concealed behind the slaughterhouse on the edge of the settlement.  Behind him was an anonymous white four-wheel drive.  Unlike the others, his face expressed no joy or excitement at Sorcha’s return.  His unblinking eyes were as cold as those of a predator watching its prey.

Chapter 33

Connor Delaney’s call so alarmed Nathan Fox that he cancelled his afternoon appointments and caught the first plane to Sacramento in northern California.  After the hour-and-a-half flight he arrived at the Delaney Stud Farm at 2:40 p.m.  Located only twenty minutes from the airport, the manicured lush grasslands, white paddock fences and clapboard stable blocks seemed a million miles away from the bustle and noise of the Californian capital.  Gleaming chestnut horses cantering in front of the main house completed the idyllic scene.

Despite the obvious beauty of his property, Connor Delaney’s worried eyes expressed no pleasure when he surveyed it.  He seemed to see only the peeling paint and other signs of neglect that years of financial woe had forced upon him.  After a brisk greeting, the horse breeder led Fox to the veranda of the big house and pointed to the neighboring golf and country club.  “That’s new.  All that land once belonged to the family until Regan took out his inheritance and almost bankrupted me,” he said bitterly.  “I had to sell off primed land just to survive.”

Like a smudged version of his attractive, charismatic younger brother, Connor Delaney was shorter and heavier, with thinning hair.  He was more serious and anxious, too.  As a psychiatrist, Fox had come across his type often:  the dull but dutiful older son who obeyed the rules and put in the hard work, only to see a charming but feckless younger sibling flout every rule and steal all the prizes.  Connor pointed to the paddock.  “You ride, Dr. Fox?”

“I learned as a child.”

“I’ve got two horses saddled up.  We could talk and ride.”

Fox laughed.  “As long as they’re good-natured.  I haven’t ridden in a while.”

Connor smiled and something about the way his mouth moved reminded Fox of Sorcha.  “Don’t worry, old Stan’s not got an ornery bone in his body.  We’ll just walk them, stretch their legs.”  Connor led him to the stables and within minutes Fox was riding a bay gelding out into the paddock.  He had only ever been a competent rider but it felt surprisingly good to be on horseback again, especially in this setting.  Connor rode beside him.  “So tell me.  What’s your patient got to do with Regan?”

Fox hesitated, not wanting to say too much.  “We were treating her for amnesia.  Your brother recognized her and came to take her home.”

“Back to his cult?”

“Yes.”

Connor frowned.  “The only reason Regan came for her was because he needed her for his Great Work.”

“Great Work?”

“It’s what he calls his insane, all-consuming project.  The Great Work was a term used in European medieval alchemy to refer to as the successful transmutation of base metal into gold.  It also had a spiritual meaning:  converting base humans into something more divine, free from the constraints of the material world and closer to gods.  I don’t know the details of Regan’s Great Work but I know it involves the
mothú
.”  Connor leaned back in his saddle, warming to his theme.  “To understand my brother and his cult you’ve first got to understand out family history and his obsession with the Delaney
mothú
.”

“There’s a long history of synaesthesia in your family?”

His host smiled.  “Synaesthesia?  I forgot that’s what you shrinks call it.  Yeah, we’ve got history, centuries of it.  We come from an old line of Irish Travelers, or Pavees, as we prefer to call ourselves.  The Delaneys are one of the oldest families on the road.  We traveled the length and breadth of Ireland before crossing to England and eventually America.  Unlike the thieves and con artists that give Pavees a bad name, we’ve always taken pride in earning an honest wage through our skill with horses, for which Buffers — non-Travelers — pay handsomely.

“Initially we trained, treated and bred horses for the gentry but soon we became breeders in our own right, focusing on thoroughbreds.  We know all about bloodlines and selective breeding because for centuries we’ve practiced it on our own family.  My ancestors believed superstitiously that the Delaneys’ identity and success lay in the
mothú
, the sense — what you call synaesthesia.  It’s been in the family for generations and not just by accident.  We actively sought out partners who had synaesthesia, marrying cousins and sometimes even closer family members in order to keep the
mothú
within the bloodline.  The superstition was so strong it didn’t matter which kind of synaesthesia we had and it didn’t really matter if it helped with horses or business.  The
mothú
was seen as a special badge of birth that gave us status within the family.

“Almost a hundred years ago my grandfather, Seamus broke away from the British and Irish Delaneys and came to America with a string of thoroughbred stallions and brood mares.  He moved here to California and set up business.  His family — he had three daughters and one son, my father — still kept itself to itself and observed the traditions but over time things changed.  As the family became more successful they became more embedded in Buffer society.  First they traveled, taking their horses and expertise wherever the work was, then they rented a spread and people began to come to them, and finally they bought this land and settled down.  My grandfather and then my father realized that to build on their success they had to network, become more mainstream and fit in.  We were all sent to the best Buffer schools and almost overnight the
mothú
, the backbone of our family tradition, went from being seen as a prized gift and badge of honor to an embarrassment, a superstitious quirk we were all happy to dispense with.  All except for Regan, of course.  He wasn’t happy at all.”

“Why not?”

“Like most Delaneys, I inherited a basic form of synaesthesia:  grapheme-color.  I see letters and numbers as colors.  It doesn’t really affect my life and I don’t regard it as particularly significant.  Regan was very different, though.  He claimed to have every form of synaesthesia you can think of — and some you can’t.”

“Can you give me examples?”

“Sure.  I don’t know the scientific names for them all but he claimed to see letters as colors, feel what others were feeling, see auras…”  Connor proceeded to list all the forms Sorcha had exhibited in Fox’s first session.  “Like I said,  He claimed to have every sort you can imagine.”

“You sound like you didn’t believe him?”

“You could never be sure what to believe with Regan.  The family were kind of embarrassed because if he did have a freak form of the
mothú
it would almost certainly be a genetic mutation due to the generations of inbreeding.  Unsurprisingly, he supported the traditional family view that the
mothú
marked him as special, which of course meant he was really special, unique.

“His conviction was reinforced by the fact that everything came easy to him:  he was beautiful, bright, charming and doted on — however he behaved.  When he was younger he used to bring rocks and bricks and chunks of rubble home and make them into weird sculptures and mosaics.  Never explained why.  When he got older he had his pick of women and screwed around like it was going out of fashion.  I can’t recall one woman who refused him.  Part of his bizarre courting ritual was to make extreme claims about his
mothú
.”

“Such as?”

Connor frowned and shook his head.  “You really want to know all this stuff?”

“Please.”

“When he reached puberty he claimed that every time he had an orgasm he had an out-of-body experience.  He believed his soul literally left his body.  Said he could sense things beyond the physical world, beyond the veil dividing life and death.”

Fox had read that synaesthetes made up a high proportion of those claiming to have out-of-body experiences.  “Were any of his claims ever tested?”

Connor Delaney grimaced.  “No.  The guy’s an egotistical liar with no conscience.  He’d say no and do anything to promote himself and get what he wants.  He only got his veterinary qualifications, which were important to the family business, to please Dad.”

“What did your father think of him?”

“He thought the sun shone out of his ass,” Connor spat.  “In Dad’s eyes, Regan could do no wrong.  Then one day a horse Regan was treating kicked him in the head.  He recovered but complained of splitting headaches and became increasingly obsessed with sex and death and, of course, his goddamn
mothú
.  He began reading books on the occult and world religions, searching for anything that reinforced his convictions.  He spent hours poring over the Old Testament.  Ever heard of the Nephilim?”

“No.”

“The Nephilim appear in the Old Testament, in both Genesis and Numbers.  According to the Bible, angels known as the Grigori were sent down to earth to watch men.  In time these ‘sons of gods’ saw how beautiful the ‘daughters of men’ were and mated with them, injecting their divine blood into the human gene pool.  The progeny of these couplings were the Nephilim, hybrid beings with superhuman senses and powers, and Regan became convinced that the
mothú
in all its forms was some kind of angelic trait, a throwback to these angel-human crossbreeds and a vestige of divine power.  Basically, anyone with the
mothú
was a descendant of the Nephilim and had divine blood in their veins.  Everyone else was just a base human.  Of course, Regan, with his extreme synaesthesia, saw himself as purer than most — a throwback to the original fallen Grigori rather than the half-breed Nephilim.  He wanted the family to reinstate the importance of the
mothú
but none of us took him seriously.  Then he met Aurora, who had just returned from India, her head filled with New Age nonsense.  Aurora claimed to be a healer and she took Regan very seriously.  She reinforced and validated every fantasy he had about himself.

“How?”

“Aurora was part of a New Age commune that called itself the Indigo Family.  Many of them had followed the hippy trail to India and been influenced by Eastern mystics and gurus.  Aurora introduced Regan to chakras, the third eye and all these other New Age concepts.  He claimed she cured his headaches using crystals.  Aurora was an emotion-color synaesthete who saw auras and she believed Regan’s aura was unique.  When she took him to meet the rest of the Indigo Family, most of whom were fellow synaesthetes, they embraced him too.  Apparently synaesthetes have an aura which ranges from turquoise through blue to purple-indigo, hence the cult’s name, whereas non-synaesthetes, or sub-synaesthetes as Regan liked to call them, have auras at the ‘lower’ end of the color spectrum:  from red, through orange and yellow, to green.  To show their particular aura many cult members painted a colored spot here like the Hindu do.”  Connor pressed a finger to the middle of his forehead, leaving a white mark.  “Something to do with the sixth chakra or the third eye, which they believe helps them see into the spiritual realm.  Like I said, most in the cult had blue or indigo auras but Aurora said that Regan’s was even purer, higher up the spiritual spectrum, beyond indigo.  Whatever the hell that means.”

Fox nodded.  “I guess she confirmed your brother’s belief that his synaesthesia was a kind of superpower.”

“Totally.  The cult’s and his belief systems aligned perfectly.”  Connor laughed humorlessly.  “This was where the madness really got serious.  The Indigo Family reinforced all his prejudices and self-delusions, removing any vestigial constraints.  Within months, although he still spent time on the family business, he was the cult’s leader in all but name.  Then the suicides happened.”