“Yeah, thanks Mrs W,” Aiden said, pulling the balaclava over his head. “Just call me Batman.”
With a groan at his sad attempt at humour, Mum exhorted us again to be careful and they drove away, leaving the three of us alone in the carpark. At our car, Aiden dumped his coat on the back seat, suggesting that Severn do the same.
“We can’t fly in them and we can’t drop them in the gutter or we’ll never see them again.”
“What about your t-shirts. Will you need me to hold those if you fly?” I asked.
“Nah, I’ll tuck mine in my belt. That way, I can pull it on quickly if I have to land and blend in.”
“That makes sense.”
We drove down Riccarton Avenue, swung into Montreal Street and deposited Aiden on the corner of Oxford Terrace, then continued down Hereford Street to find a park closer to the Square. Severn and I approached the Square through a small alley which took us by the back of the cathedral, and made our way around the edge until we could see the Square’s central courtyard and the huge crowd gathered there, praying and chanting.
“Let’s add a prayer,” Severn said. “Let’s pray Aiden finds the girls and keeps them well away from here tonight.”
“Amen to that,” I agreed. “And let’s pray that the winged angels from the mountain get here speedily in their heavenly chariot, or whatever you call your ‘other’ jet.” I stressed ‘other’ to get in a dig as I still found it hard to comprehend anyone who had not one but several planes at their disposal.
Severn looked at his watch. “I called Finn about eleven o’clock last night. Assuming it took them a couple of hours to get packed, get to the airport and get flight clearance, and allowing for a couple of refuelling stops on the way, it’s about a twenty-one hour flight, so I reckon they will be here by one or two in the morning. Or before, depending on how direct a route Martin choses to take.”
“Only two hours to get from the monastery to Paris? I thought you were way down in the south somewhere.”
“We are. We fly out of Toulouse-Blagnac airport. There is more than one international airport in France, you know.”
“Oops. I’m hopeless at geography.”
Severn put his arm around me and pulled me close. “At least you can navigate us around the Square. We really need to get over to the other side without getting into the middle of the mob or stopped by the police.”
“Follow me.”
We skirted around the perimeter of the Square, hugging the walls of the shops that framed it, trying to stay in the darkest patches. We got to the Worcester Boulevard intersection before Severn spotted the group of cast members, including the Rev watching from a safe distance behind them. Severn said something I didn’t pick up but I saw the Rev look our way and raise his hand in recognition. We didn’t attempt to join him, but took up a position where we could follow any part of the group that split off in our direction.
“Can you see the cricketer guy?” Severn asked.
“I wouldn’t know a cricketer from a hole in the ground,” I said. “We would need Grant for that. But my guess would be the tall, skinny guy carrying the large sports bag that’s probably full of dangerously soggy tennis balls.”
The police must have thought the same thing. Or they knew what he looked like.
The rally had been going for at least an hour before we got there and was starting to lose its momentum. The preachers taking centre stage on their temporary raised dais on the cathedral steps were tag-teaming each other, rotating their turn as whoever was yelling started to lose their voice, but their message was all the same. Lots of biblical out-of-context quotes, dire warnings about satanic minions, and prayers that were answered by the crowd in a torrent of halleluiahs. After the first five minutes I was bored, which is why I noticed the police closing in. We weren’t the only ones sneaking into the event incognito. I gave Severn a nudge.
“That guy moving in, the one just in front of the two cops in uniform, he’s the cop who interviewed me for hours about Tasha.”
We shrank back into the protective shadow of the building and watched the police contingent approach the group containing the cast members. Behind them, I saw the Rev walk away. He had heard my comment and taken evasive action. The uniformed police halted and the plain-clothes detective stepped forwards to tap the tall skinny guy on the shoulder. The cricketer turned around with a welcoming smile for whoever had approached him. The smile sank to a quizzical frown as the detective said words I couldn’t hear and held out his warrant card, then the cricketer’s expression changed a third time, the frown twisting to fury. The detective indicated the sports bag and the cricketer bolted.
Clutching the bag to his chest, he spun on his heel and attempted to break through the crowd of supporters behind him. The uniformed police sprang after him but the crowd was on his side, blocking and hampering the police pursuit. Our corner of the rally soon became a riot, the police shoving people aside as they rushed to overwhelm the fleeing cricketer while the members of our cast and their friends fought back. With angry shouts, they snatched at the police, pulling at their vests and trying to surround them or trip them up. In the middle of the melee I spotted Mic Ten clinging to the back of a policewoman, pulling at her hair and screaming. I pointed her out to Severn who gave a derisive snort.
“Pity she doesn’t project her voice that well on stage. She wouldn’t need a microphone,” he said. “And it looks like she won’t need one tomorrow. She’s just been arrested.”
Behind the policewoman handcuffing Mic Ten, the cricketer was still on the move, dodging backwards and forwards, sidestepping the police and taking advantage of the gaps in the crowd created by his supporters. But as he ran further towards the centre of the rally, he outran his friends and found himself trapped in the dense, swaying mass of people in prayer. A woman rocking a pram forced the cricketer to change direction, and he ran straight into the arms of another police officer coming in on a flanking manoeuvre. Some of the rally stopped praying to applaud as the policeman dragged him away.
Duly handcuffed, the cricketer was marched back to the detective who reached out to accept the bag that the cricketer had determinedly held onto. As the detective reached forwards to open the bag to display the weapons inside, the rally broke into to a rousing chorus of perfectly-timed halleluiahs. I never thought I would credit that annoying detective with good work but that was well executed. Pity Mum wasn’t there to see it.
Chapter 23
More police, including several with dogs straining on their leashes and barking at the now terrified crowd, spread out through the Square. As they made their presence obvious, the rally fell apart. None of the well-meaning, scared folk who had genuinely feared the arrival of the demons wanted to be arrested for praying, so they dispersed faster than crew when the stage manager called for a volunteer. One minute we were standing at the back of the rally, well out of the road, and the next we were engulfed in a tsunami of people, running, crying, still praying. A thousand or more people all swarmed at once into the narrow opening of Worcester Boulevard, where we were standing.
We pressed ourselves back against the wall of the shop behind us but there was nowhere to go. The crowd was relentless, surging into the street opening, and spreading out towards us as they ran out of space. Someone was pushed against me and I lost contact with Severn. The tide of humanity surged again and I was swept into it, away from him. I heard him call my name but I couldn’t fight against the determined flow. A woman shoved me hard against the building as she forced her way past me. I stumbled, clutching at her to regain my balance but, instead of helping me, she swung her fist. My head rocked backwards into the building’s window frame, my vision blurred and I sank to the ground.
Nothing made sense. Lights seemed to flash all around me, my head was exploding with pain and when I raised my hand to feel my head, my hand came away wet which I couldn’t understand. My head was spinning and I wasn’t sure where I was or why I was so cold. I tried to stand up but a s
trong hand on my shoulder held me down.
“Don’t try to move, love,” a gentle voice said. “You’ve had a nasty bash on your head and you’re bleeding. Just take it easy.”
I sat back against the cold stone of the building and let my brain re-engage. Gradually the flashing lights behind my eyes faded and I could see that the liquid on my hands was, as the voice had said, my own blood. I looked up. The crowd had moved on but crouched beside me were two men. Severn knelt to my left, his arm around my shoulder, and to my right the owner of the gentle voice, a police officer looking anything but gentle in a protective riot vest.
“You got punched in the face and then hit your head on the stonework,” Severn explained. “You’ve got a cut on your head and you’re going to have a black eye by tomorrow. How do you feel?”
“Do you need me to call an ambulance?” the policeman asked.
“I’ll be fine,” I assured him. “It hurts but it’s not worth an ambulance.”
“It’s still a head injury. You need to be checked out,” the policeman insisted. “I don’t want you walking away then collapsing later.”
“I could take her to the hospital,” Severn said. “Our car is just over in Hereford Street. If you could sit with her, I could run and get it.”
“All right,” the policeman agreed. “As long as you make sure you go to the hospital, or at least to the after hours surgery.”
“I will. Riley, I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”
“Riley, is it?” the policeman asked as Severn jogged away. “Is that young lad your boyfriend?”
“Yes,” I said with pride.
“And what were you two doing down here tonight? Were you part of the rally?”
“No, we were just passing through the Square. I guess we were being a bit nosy so we stopped to watch for a while.”
“So you weren’t with any of the groups there tonight?”
“No.”
“Your boyfriend? He wasn’t here to meet the National Front?”
“What? The National Front. Aren’t they the white power lot? Why would you think we were meeting them?”
“Your black clothes, his haircut. Looks pretty National Front to me.”
“No, no no. We’re theatre crew. We’re with the Robin Hood show that’s running in Mona Vale at the moment. We had a performance tonight and we came here after the show finished. We wear black so the audience don’t notice us and we haven’t had time to get changed yet. We do the sound, the microphones and all that. I can get our stage manager to vouch for us, if we need it.”
“Theatre crew, eh? So if I came to the show tomorrow, just to check, where would I find you two?”
“On the shorter of the two scaffolding towers, behind the sound desks. Or running around the dressing rooms attaching radio microphones to actors. You can always check with Grant Watson who plays the Sherriff – he’s my stepfather.”
“Okay, I believe you. Now, where’s your boyfriend with that car?”
We sat in silence for a few more minutes before Severn pulled up, then the policeman helped me to my feet and into the passenger seat. I thanked him for looking after me and we drove off.
“He thought we were National Front members because of our blacks and your ultra-short haircut,” I said.
“You should have said no, all vampires look like this. Now, how do we get to the hospital?”
“Do we have to?”
“Yes we do. He’s right. You had two blows to your head. I’m not going to be the one who has to explain to your mother if you’ve got a concussion and I don’t get you checked out.”
At the hospital the Accident and Emergency Department was full of rally-goers with a range of injuries from sprains and cuts to broken bones and one serious knife wound. He and the group with him were definitely National Front as their jacket patches proclaimed so we weren’t surprised when our black clothes got us dirty looks as we entered. We could have done without being shadowed by a massive security guard who watched us with suspicion as we waited to be seen.
At Severn’s suggestion, I rang Mum while Sev sent texts to Aiden and the Rev. Mum wanted to rush straight into the hospital but I managed to convince her that I wasn’t too badly hurt. I blamed Severn and the policeman for being over-cautious and I downplayed the truth – that my head ached and my eye had swollen up. We were still waiting to see a doctor when the Rev and Aiden arrived, their black clothes getting them the evil eye from the security guard.
“Where are the girls?” Severn demanded as they slumped into seats beside us.
“Safe from that angry lot tonight,” Aiden replied. “They’re still in the club. Olivia was all for flying over the rally and dropping buckets of glitter over them but, for once in her life, Meredith got sensible. Apparently, and I am only quoting her and have no idea what she means, they have bigger fish to fry and need to save their energy. When I left them a few minutes ago they were eyeing up some poor sucker to be their dinner so we can safely assume they won’t be leaving the club for another hour or so.”
“Good,” I said. “I hope they don’t. I could be stuck here for another hour or so too. My head hurts so you guys can do the thinking for a change. Aiden, you must have some idea what those girls are up to. You’re Meredith’s twin. She must have said something that would give us a hint. Think, man.”
“Let’s backtrack,” Severn suggested. “Last we knew, the girls were in the monastery and didn’t seem to have any great desire to come back here. What changed that?”
“We came,” Aiden said. “Riley sent us some emails and we decided to fly out and help.”
“And we discussed it. We talked about it in front of the girls when you were packing your suitcase,” the Rev added. “Remember Aiden? The girls were there too.”
“Yeah, they were. What did they ask us again?”
After a pause the Rev answered. “Meredith asked if it was Riley’s company – well, actually she called Riley Severn’s bitch but we won’t go there. I said yes because I hadn’t clicked that it was a different company with Riley’s lot helping out. I wasn’t really listening to them, because they talk rubbish all the time and my mind was working on another level, trying to work out the logistics of our journey, and I walked away. They were still speaking but I wasn’t listening, sorry.”
“Hang on, I’m trying to remember,” Aiden said. “Give me a minute.” He steepled his fingers and bounced them off each other for what seemed like forever before he spoke again. “Olivia asked if they could come too. I said no. Meredith asked why not and whined a bit, trying to use the little girly begging voice that worked on Finn when she was a kid. I told her no again and she called me something rude. I zipped up my bag and pushed them out of my room and they went the other way to me but I heard Olivia whisper about going anyway. She said something else, what was it?” He paused to think, dragging the memory from the back of his brain. “You need to find her. She still owes you. That’s what she said.”
“Who’s the she?” the Rev asked. “Riley?”
“I don’t think so. She doesn’t like Riley, mainly because Riley’s with Severn and she doesn’t like Severn winning anything, but she doesn’t hate her. She’s sort of ambivalently negative.”
“Much the same as I feel about her,” I said.
“So who is she after?” the Rev repeated.
“Julia,” I said. “It had to be Julia. It all fits. Julia is dumped on the beach with nothing to show how she got there, which suggests to me that she was flown there. At her funeral we found out that during our last show, the first time you guys were here, she was one of Seth’s hook-ups and was pretty cut up when he left without saying goodbye.”
“Which was our fault,” Severn said. “I wish we’d known. I would have faked a letter from him.”
“Anyway,” I continued. “We might not have known but I reckon Meredith and Olivia did. Those two were Seth’s acolytes. He didn’t go anywhere without them. I think they were jealous of Julia.”
“But Seth flirted with everybody. Why would Julia make them more jealous than any other one of the hundreds of women he’s flirted with?”
“Because he wanted to turn her,” Aiden said. “He wanted to add her to his collection. Neither of them would have wanted that.”
“What makes you think that?” the Rev asked.
“Because Seth mentioned it. We were out hunting. Severn, you and the girls had gone into a club to pick up a punter and you, Rev, had got distracted by something, can’t remember what, so there was just Seth and me standing in some alleyway. He asked me what I would think of turning another girl. I knew Riley was always chatting with you two, so I thought he was talking about her. He said no, he meant a girl on his side of the stage. That had to be Julia.”
“She was certainly in love with him,” I said. “She was deeply depressed when he didn’t say goodbye. See, it all fits together. The girls are still holding a grudge against Julia for stealing their man and came back for revenge. I still don’t get the Brighton beach fetish though.”
“None of us understand that,” Aiden said. “None of us has ever understood that.”
“If that’s true, they’ve achieved their mission, so why are they still here causing all this trouble? Why haven’t they just gone back to France?” the Rev asked.
“Because they’re bored silly in France,” Aiden said. “It’s a monastery, for heaven’s sake. It might be perfect for the old monks and not too bad for a computer geek like Severn, but those two are party animals. They’re not going to go back there voluntarily. They didn’t go there voluntarily to start with. You’ll need chains and shackles to get them back there again.”
The Rev fiddled with his ponytail while he considered his options.
“Well, they can’t stay here. They’ve caused too much trouble for that. I wonder if we can cut a deal with them. I’m sure we can fund them to move somewhere else, like Paris, or New York.”
“That could work. They might go for that, let’s try it. We got through the whole anti-demon rally without them flying in just to stir things up, so maybe I can reason with them. If that’s a serious offer, Rev, let me take it to them.”
Out for Blood Page 12
