The Colour of Death (45 page)

“Then start again, Sorcha.  Let me help you.”

She turned to him.  “You sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.  We’re in this together now.  Come back to Portland.  Forget the past, focus on the present and let the future take care of itself.”

She smiled and closed the locket.  “Thank you.”

As they walked outside, Fox saw the police carrying Maria to one of the helicopters.  She lay on a stretcher holding her wrapped-up newborn.  Sorcha stared at her then marched over.

“What are you doing?” Fox asked Sorcha.

“I want to check the baby.”

“Why?”  Fox had initially assumed Sorcha had blacked out because of the intense and bloody nature of her father’s death but now he realized she had encountered worse death echoes.  Something else had tipped her over the edge.  “What’s wrong with the baby?”

“Nothing.  I just want to check its color.”

“I thought all newborns were indigo.”

“They are.  Unless…”

Fox remembered what Delaney had said.  ‘Unless they’re beyond indigo like you and Kaidan?”

She glanced at him.  “And my father.”  Before Maria could protest, Sorcha pulled back the wrap, exposing the baby.

An involuntary shiver ran down Fox’s spine.  “What color is it?”

“It means nothing,” said Sorcha, studying the baby.  “I realize that now.”

“What color is it?”

“Violet.  The baby’s violet.”

As a rational man Fox knew the baby’s rare aura was an irrelevant coincidence.  It was only a question of time before Delaney sired another violet and there was no way the Seer’s spirit had transferred to the infant staring back at him.  As he looked at the baby’s blue eyes, however, and noticed how violet they looked in the fading moonlight, he thought of all the strange experiences he had encountered in the tower and for a moment, just a moment, he wondered.

Chapter 70

Five days later

The movements of the chestnut mare beneath Sorcha felt both natural and familiar as she cantered across the emerald grass.  They say you never forget how to ride a bicycle.  The same evidently applied to horses.  She gave a small tug on the reins and the horse turned obediently in the paddock and headed toward the large clapboard house etched white against the flawless blue sky.  Closing her eyes she breathed in the smell of horse, leather and cut grass.  It felt a million miles away from her father’s cult.  If there was a heaven, it might be like this.

“You want to go back to the house?” said the young girl on the pony beside her.

Sorcha turned to her cousin and smiled.  “Race you, Angela.”

The girl squealed with delight, kicked her heels and sped off across the paddock, bouncing in her saddle.  Sorcha followed.  As they neared the house Sorcha could see Nathan and Samantha talking with her uncle Connor on the veranda.  It felt good to know she had other family — good family.  When her uncle had showed her around the house she had entered the room in which his father — her grandfather — had died and she had sensed the man’s love for Connor as well as his pain.  Connor couldn’t have been more welcoming to her, insisting she regard his stud farm as her home.

Sorcha’s father had hoarded a considerable fortune and once the legalities were finalized she stood to inherit a significant sum.  She intended to return part of it to Connor to reinvest in the stud.  She regretted not being able to return the family Bible her father had stolen from him.  It had disappeared amid the chaos of the collapsing cult, as panicked members of the Indigo Family had scattered.  Zara had also disappeared, slipping away from the police and vanishing into the wilderness.  Sorcha suspected that Delaney’s Wife had taken the Bible and would never be found.  Zara and other members of the cult had lived so long off the grid that there was no official record of their existence.

Sorcha, however, was about to enter the grid for the first time.

Samantha waved from the house and she waved back.  Sorcha had been staying with Fox’s aunt since returning to Portland and was glad Samantha had agreed to come with them when Fox arranged today’s visit to Sacramento.  Because Samantha and his uncle had saved Fox when he had lost his family, Fox seemed to think her uncle would save her — even though she wasn’t a childlike Fox had been and no longer needed saving.  Evidently worried about her, Fox had been careful — almost too careful — to give Sorcha enough space to decide what she wanted to do next.

Fox didn’t seem to appreciate that she was doing fine because of what he had already done for her and taught her.  In the same way he had helped her disengage from her death echoes, she had learned to disengage from her painful past.  Someone once claimed that ‘we are our memories’ but Fox had taught her this wasn’t true.  Memories may inform who we are but they don’t define us.  Our choices do that.  If Kaidan, who had done unspeakable things, could break out of the prison of his past — however briefly and belatedly — then anyone could.  Her past, like a foreign country she had once visited and didn’t much like, no longer concerned her.  Her focus now was on the present and the future.

Another squeal of delight told her that Angela had beaten her back to the house.  The excited girl waved at her, jumped off her pony and ran toward the house to tell her father.  As Sorcha dismounted and handed the reins to the waiting groom, Fox came down from the veranda.  He held a sheaf of papers in his hand.  ‘You ride a lot better than I do,” he said.

“That’s not difficult.”

He laughed.  “You enjoyed it?”

“Loved it.”  She pointed to the papers.  “Is that it?”

“Your uncle’s signed all the identification forms.  You just need to sign the passport application and then soon, for the first time in your life, you’ll exist officially.”

She took the papers from him and was surprised how reassuring she found it to see her name written on the official document.  Then she realized it would literally confirm who she was.  “Can I sign it now?”

He passed her a pen.  “It might be more comfortable inside.”

“I want to sign it now.”  She leaned against a fence post.  “What’s my signature?”

“Whatever you decide.”

As she signed the form she realized it was the first time she could remember writing her name:  Sorcha Delaney.  “Not only does my name taste good when I hear it, I like the colors of the letters when I write it.”

“Good.”  Fox showed her four passport-size photographs she had sat for yesterday.  “We only need two for the application.  What do you want to do with the other two?”

She took one, folded it to fit and then opened her locket.  She began removing the faded picture of her past self.  Then she stopped, replaced it and put the passport photograph over it.  She studied her new self for a moment, then closed the locket.

Fox stepped back toward the main house.  “What do you think of your uncle’s place?  You like it here?”

“Very much.”  She looked at him.  “But you must understand something, Nathan.  I like Connor and his family and they have a lovely home.  And I love the fact that I have family who are so normal but — and it’s a big but — I don’t belong here.  I know you’re worried about me, Nathan, but you don’t need to be.  Not anymore.  I don’t know what my future holds, only that I want it to involve two things.  The first is the
mothú
.  My death-echo synaesthesia has become such a key part of me that I want to turn it from a curse into a gift.  Instead of being scared of it, I wasn’t to harness it’s power and do something useful with it.”

“And what’s the second?”

She sighed.  God, for a perceptive man he could be incredibly dense.  She walked toward him.  “
You
, Nathan.”  She moved closer, until they were a foot apart.  She half expected him to back away but he didn’t and she felt bolder.  “Don’t you see, Nathan?  You’ve saved me.”  She moved closer.  “When I was lost you found me.  When I was broken you made me whole again.  When I was in danger you came for me.”  She moved still closer, until they were touching, his taut body against hers.  She looked up and tried to read his blue eyes.  “Now it’s my turn.”

For a long moment he didn’t react and she realized he was trembling, afraid he was marshaling his defenses, deciding how best to reject her without hurting her feelings.  Then, as he smiled and leaned his head toward hers, she heard Connor call them in for drinks.  “It’s your turn to do what?” Fox teased, lips inches from hers.

At that moment Angela rushed out of the house, grabbed them both by the arms and began dragging them inside.  Sorcha smiled at Fox and took his hand.  “Save you, Nathan.  It’s my turn to save you.”

Epilogue

The yellow bulldozers and wreckers waiting to begin their work gleam like oversized children’s toys in the early light.  As a thin blush of pink warms the dawn horizon and the rising sun reveals a cloudless blue sky, it looks as good a day as any to start one’s life anew.  Fox feels nervous but resolved as he parks by the large sign: 
Condemned Buildings.  Do Not Enter
.

“You ready?” Sorcha says.

“As I’ll ever be.”  He opens the car door and gets out.

A man in a construction helmet approaches.  “You Dr. Fox?”

“Yes.”

“OK, you’ve got one hour before we start bulldozing.  Like it says in the paperwork, you’re doing this at your own risk but don’t worry, the building’s safe until we send in the ’dozers.  We’re going in at eight sharp.  So be off site by then.  OK?”

“OK.”

The man hands each of them a helmet.  “See you in an hour.”

As they pass the first of the disconnected gas pump Fox casts his mind back twenty years, to the day his life changed forever.  When they get to the kiosk door he braces himself.  Then, just as Fox did with Sorcha on the day they met, she takes his hand.  “Come.  I’ll be right beside you.”

Fox winces as he opens the door, waiting for the sound of the bell he heard all those years ago, but there is nothing, only the squeak of tired hinges as he steps inside.  The place has been stripped for demolition and is unrecognizable from that in his memory.  It could be anywhere.  Suddenly he feels foolish because there is nothing in here to be frightened of.  Trying to orient himself, he walks over to where the comic book stand had been.  He looks over at where the cash register clerk was shot, and remembers the blood dripping like red treacle off the cartons.  Sorcha is already touching the wall, face intense with concentration.  Slowly she walks over to the wall against which his family was shot.  And he was spared.

Suddenly, the anxiety kicks in.  What will she discover?  “Can you sense anything?”  She nods but says nothing.  For a long while he watches her walk along the wall, shaking her head.  He can see her blinking back tears.

“What’s wrong?” he says, suddenly wishing he hadn’t agreed to do this.

“Nothing,” she says.  “It’s OK.”

“Tell me what you see.  Tell me what you feel.”

“It’s in fragments, but when I put them together, it’s pretty clear what happened.”  Sorcha takes his hand and leads him along the wall:  “After the clerk, the first to be shot was your mother.  You saw the bullet hit her and your mirror-touch synaesthesia made you feel the impact and her pain.  The shock made you black out.  But only momentarily.  You regained consciousness in time to see your father shot next — feeling his pain as acutely as if it were your own.  The hooded killer laughed as you blacked out again, calling you a ‘goddamned jack-in-the-box’.

“The next time you came to, you tried to throw yourself in front of your sister.  But the killer pushed you away and shot her.  Again you watched.  It’s like you thought sharing their pain might somehow lessen it.  When you blacked out again the killer stood over you and waited for you to come to.  Then, as soon as you opened your eyes, he pulled the trigger again.  But nothing happened.  The gun jammed.

“Ignoring him, you clambered over to check on your mother.  You were trying to stem the blood flowing from her wound when the killer put the gun inches from your head and pulled the trigger four more times.  Each time the pistol jammed.  The last words the killer said to you were:  “I don’t know whether you’re a pig like the others or an immortal like us.  But whatever you are, boy, you’re lucky.”  Those were the last words each of your family heard before they died.  “You mother’s last words to you were:  “My lucky boy, I love you.”  After she died you tried to help your father and then, finally, your sister but you couldn’t save them.

“The point is, Nathan, I can sense from their death echoes that knowing you survived helped ease their passing.  I can feel their love much more strongly than I feel their suffering or pain.  You shouldn’t feel guilty for surviving.  You should feel glad.”  Again she blinks back tears.  “You were lucky but you were brave, too.  You were only ten but you shared each one of their deaths and tried to save them.  No one could have done any more than that.  No wonder your memory blanked it out.”

Suddenly, she embraces Fox and holds him close.  At first he tries to push her away but as the guilt slips from him like loosened chains he feels the tears come in rolling waves.  For the first time since they died he surrenders all control, collapses in Sorcha’s arms and cries — really cries.  Great sobs rack his frame as if purging his body of the years of pent-up sadness.

Finally, the tears stop and he feels a great weight lift from him.  He stands and thanks Sorcha, then takes her hand and walks outside.  After returning the helmets they stand by the car and watch the bulldozers move in and level the garage.  He feels nothing as the building collapses into rubble.  Only a sense that a part of his past, which had been mislaid, has been put back where it belongs.

At that moment a police car drives into the lot and parks beside them.  Karl Jordache gets out and hurries over.  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“What’s wrong, Karl?” says Fox.

“We’ve got a homicide in the Pearl that’s not adding up.  I could really do with some help.”