About to leave the room, she noticed the charred remains of a letter screwed into a ball on the dressing table. She reached out to pick it up, and a sudden gust blew through the room and the door slammed shut, making her jump. The charred pieces of paper took flight like a flock of dark birds and flew around the room. Verity stood with her mouth open.
After a while, the charred remains came to roost all over the ground.
She shook her head, picked up the ball of paper, and unfolded it, the charred edges crumbling between her fingers. She could make out words, but apart from the words Trinity and Derbyshire, they weren't words she recognised. They looked foreign.
Without really thinking about it, she put the paper in her purse and hurriedly left the room. Although it used to be her home, the house now felt alien, uninviting and cold, and she didn't want to stay any longer than necessary.
She walked out of the house and then wandered around the garden to see if she could find anyone, but the place seemed deserted. She couldn't understand why the house was unlocked with no one here.
In the back garden, she stood and looked at the house, and for a moment she thought she glimpsed movement in an upstairs window, a face, peering down at her, but then she realised it was just the reflection of a crow, circling lazily in the sky.
Verity clucked her tongue, and then headed towards the station. There was nothing left for her here but memories.
CHAPTER 7
Zen trudged along the side of the road, his attempt at hitching a lift so far unsuccessful. If anything, the drivers took one look at him and went faster, probably afraid he might car-jack them if they went any slower.
To make matters worse, a cold wind gusted. He hugged himself, elbows tight to his sides as he blew into his cupped hands to get some feeling back into his fingers.
This damn odyssey seemed stupid, but he needed to get away – somewhere they couldn’t find him. He’d seen many strange things before, usually while under narcotic influence, but presently stone cold sober and drug free, things didn't get any freakier than when nightmares invaded reality.
Not for the first time, he wondered whether he was having flashbacks, narcotic epilepsy, but deep down he knew he wasn't. It was too real, the people in that hellish world too corporeal to conjure from a fervid imagination.
He spat on the ground and rolled himself a cigarette. He meant to pack in smoking, but there was no chance of that now. He needed nicotine like people needed oxygen.
He absently wondered where his parents were. The last he’d heard, they were travelling the hippy trails through India, with the intention of heading to Angkor Wat, the ruined city in the jungles of Cambodia where they believed they would find their enlightenment.
Before that, it had been the Inca town in the shadow of Machu Picchu in the mountains of Peru. And before that Stonehenge (he liked to call it Stoned-henge), and before that Jerusalem. He could never fathom their single-minded devotion in the search of Utopia.
He heard a vehicle approaching, but the bend in the road obscured his view. He stuck his thumb out without even looking up. The act now robotic, he was surprised when the vehicle, a battered lorry cab, stopped thirty feet ahead.
After being caught out before when the driver sped off laughing as he ran to get in, Zen sauntered up to the lorry feigning nonchalance. When he reached the vehicle, he noticed a sticker on the bumper: I stop for no one. The window descended and the driver, a pretty girl about Zen’s age, leaned out.
“How far you going?” she asked, pouting her lips.
“As far as I can get.”
The girl nodded, tresses of long, strawberry blonde hair falling over her face. “Get in.”
Zen grinned, clambered into the lorry and slammed the door.
The girl smiled at him and floored the accelerator, a plume of diesel smoke gushing from the tailpipe behind the cab.
Zen couldn't help noticing how attractive the girl was. Her blue eyes watched the road ahead, giving him the opportunity to study her body. She wore an almost see-through, tight white top that hugged her ample breasts, through which he could see her dark nipples, one of which appeared pierced, bringing a warm glow to his groin. Piercings also lined her ears like curtain rings. He thought he could also see the dark stamp of a tattoo over one of her breasts, and he felt he might have met a kindred spirit.
As she steered the vehicle, the muscles in her forearms flexed.
Outside the cab, the countryside whizzed past in a blur. Zen preferred it that way.
“So where you heading?” he asked, putting his hands behind his head and stretching his legs out.
“Same place as you, Zen, same place as you.”
It took him a couple of seconds to realise she knew his name, a name he hadn't told her. He turned to look at her, and she looked back at him and grinned as she floored the accelerator.
I stop for no one.
CHAPTER 8
“Stop the bloody truck,” Zen spat. His heart felt like a punch bag as he shuffled away from the woman at the wheel.
“Why, would you prefer to walk?” She looked at him and smiled seductively.
“How the hell do you know my name?” His stomach twisted in knots.
“They told me.”
“They?”
“You know, them.” She smiled, all sugar and spice and all things nice.
Zen shivered. Hellish images filled his head.
The woman leaned forward and pressed play on the CD player in the dashboard. It looked incongruous compared to the battered condition of the lorry. Seconds later the guttural, dark and angry music of Slipknot reverberated around the cab.
“How did you find me?”
“I was told where to look.”
How did they know? How did they fucking know? “So what did they send you for?”
“To make sure you don’t stray from the path.”
Zen took a deep breath to try to calm his nerves. It didn’t work. “So what’s your name?” An indefinable aura emanated from her; made her seem both beautiful and yet deadly, like a thunderhead.
The girl crunched down through the lorry's gears as they approached a bend in the road. “You can call me Jade.” After navigating the bend, she went back up through the gears. The lorry's engine roared like a monster.
He’d accepted a bet whose odds now seemed impossible: Murder. He would go down for life if he killed someone. Talk about a no win situation. Sure, he would be rich, but it would be no help behind bars. Secretly, he still held onto the hope that he’d imagined it all, but now that hope faded, crushed beneath the rumbling wheels of a truck hastening him to his fate.
“I can't kill anyone. I'm not a bloody killer.”
Jade shrugged. “Then you'd better be a fast runner.”
Zen puffed his cheeks out.
You lose ... you die.
Passing through the town of Ashbourne, Zen felt apprehensive. With each mile they travelled, the closer they got. And the closer they got, the more mysterious everything seemed. Thoughts ran through his head, pieces of a jigsaw that wouldn't fit together.
The sun hovered on the horizon by the time they reached the town of Matlock Bath. Limestone crags rose almost vertically from the edge of a river that ran parallel to the road. The main street resembled a promenade, lined with shops, amusement arcades and visitor attractions, with signs advertising show caverns and a theme park. The area seemed to be popular with motorcyclists who parked along the road and strolled through the town dressed in their leathers. Up ahead, a cable car passed over the road, taking passengers to the top of the wooded slopes. Whitewashed houses dotted the hillside.
“I think we'll rest here for the night,” Jade said after passing though the town. She pulled into a lay-by and parked the lorry up.
Zen felt glad they’d stopped. Still needed to think of a way to wheedle himself out of the bet. In the distance, he could see the limestone crag, dark and forbidding as the sun went down.
Jade pulled the curtai
ns over the cab windows, and then climbed into a sleeping section behind the seats. Zen settled himself down in the front, his arms folded over his chest and his head leaning against the cold window. His head swam with questions and he didn't think he’d be able to sleep.
“Well, are you joining me or not?”
Zen turned to face Jade and his jaw dropped open when he saw she’d removed her white top. A black, tribal dragon tattoo inscribed her left breast, and as he’d suspected, a piercing speared one of her large nipples.
Zen licked his lips and followed the magnetic attraction of his penis as he clambered over the seat. There was no preamble as their lips met and he fumbled to undo her jeans. He yanked them off and then fondled her breasts, his fingers teasing the steel stud in her nipple.
Jade groaned and pulled Zen's top off before removing his trousers and underwear. Then her mouth devoured his penis, and shivers of pleasure ran through him as her tongue flicked over his genital piercing. He reciprocated, pleased to find a piercing through her vulva. He was in heaven, and although there wasn't much room to manoeuvre, she mounted him, her hands pressed against the ceiling of the cab as she rose up and down.
Zen clenched his buttocks and thrust into her, his eyes watching the rise and fall of her breasts. A fine sheen of sweat coated her body and she threw her head back, a cascade of hair falling down her back.
God, it felt good.
When they finished, Jade lay at his side. He could hear her breathing. He ran a hand through her hair, heard her sigh and mumble something in her sleep and he smiled.
Outside, the wind sniffed around the lorry like a pack of wolves.
Eventually he fell asleep, but a dream disturbed his slumber.
In the dream, he saw his mother and father walking towards him through a dark forest. They looked older than the last time he’d seen them, his mother's hair streaked with grey and his father's braided ponytail more like a snake than hair.
Both were dressed in bellbottom jeans decorated with flowers, and his father sported a thick afghan coat while his mother wore a thin, cotton shirt.
“Hey, son,” his father said. “Long time no see.”
Zen mumbled a curt reply in his sleep.
“You know we love you, son,” his mother said.
“Remember that,” his father said. The braided snake stirred, flicking out a forked tongue.
Somewhere overhead, an owl hooted. Zen didn't know if it was in the dream, or in the real world.
“Zen,” his mother said. “There's a storm in a teacup, the tea leaves show dark portents.”
Zen's father nodded and his coat rippled, as though something moved underneath.
The leaves on the trees rustled and whispered in nature's secret language. Overhead, a shooting star streaked across the sky, leaving a rainbow of colours in its wake.
The trees changed and Zen found himself standing in a mangrove swamp. His parents hovered over the surface, while he sank up to his knees. Something agitated the surface to his left and a chimerical bird took flight from the branches of a bizarre, twisted tree, the roots of which looked like distended fingers.
The leaves of the tree burst into flames; then they flew away like moths that flew too close, their wings beating frantically in an attempt to put out the fire.
His father opened his coat. “Beware the wolf in sheep's clothing.”
Zen tried to back away, but his legs wouldn't move. He was sinking too fast. A creature was merged with his father's naked body. Canine teeth gnashed at the air, its feral eyes glowing like amber. Its paws protruded from his father's chest and thighs and its head broke through his ribs, the bones of which fused around its face like a macabre skeletal cage.
Zen screamed. He didn't know whether the sound also vented in the corporeal world or not, but it seemed loud enough to conquer realms.
His father dropped to the ground, and the animal legs propelled the creature towards Zen. The wolf face snarled and his father smiled, seemingly unaffected by the mud into which Zen sank.
A pressure constricted his chest as he sank and he raised his head, hoping to stop himself from going under; and then the world went black.
Zen woke gasping for air. A debilitating weight pressed against his waist and he looked up. For a moment, he thought he must still be dreaming, caught in an infinite nightmare loop.
Jade crouched over him, knife in hand. Zen shuddered, and a sick feeling hunkered in his stomach.
Next second, Jade stabbed the blade towards Zen’s face.
CHAPTER 9
Zen brought his hands up and grabbed Jade's wrists. She gnashed and struggled like a rabid dog as he fought to restrain her, the blade of the knife inches from his eye.
Jade grunted, using all her strength to drive the blade home. With only the whites of her eyes visible, she appeared haunting and unnatural and Zen wished he were still dreaming.
“Die, you son-of-a-bitch,” she squealed, spit flying from her lips.
Fear stabbed Zen with as much pain as the knife would if it found its target. It took all his strength to wrestle her. The tip of the blade inched closer to his eye. “What do you think you're doing?” he snarled. He twisted aside and relaxed his hold, allowing the blade of the knife to spear the bed where his head had been.
“Bastard,” Jade snarled, pulling the knife back out.
With her centre of gravity altered, Zen seized the moment and rolled her off. She crashed into the back of the cab and he quickly jumped out of bed and onto the front seat. Behind him, Jade swore and he turned to see her looming towards him, still intent on stabbing him with the knife.
Zen grabbed the handle and flung the door open, shivering as the cold wind embraced him. But he moved too slowly. Pain flared across his back like a white-hot star exploding as she sliced his skin and he sucked air through his teeth, back arched in agony.
“You're crazy,” he shouted, jumping out of the lorry.
“And you're dead,” Jade screamed, following him out.
The moon glowed behind ominous clouds and Zen looked around for a means of escape. He briefly realised that both of them were still naked and his manhood shrivelled, partly due to the cold, and partly due to fear.
The cold seemed to infiltrate his body more where the metal piercings entered his flesh, using them as conductors to chill him to the bone.
Although it was dark, he spotted Jade's teeth glowing as she peeled her lips back, incisors like daggers. At any other time her naked body would have excited him, but now it looked obscene, her muscles bunched and taut as she advanced, grinning.
Zen turned and fled. Sharp thorns on the road stabbed his feet, but he ignored the pain. He would rather suffer a little prick, than a big one from the knife.
He could see a rock face in the distance, rising like a fortress wall. Trees to his left rustled in the wind and he ran towards them, ignoring the masochistic lash of the branches in the hope he could hide within their shadows. His hair snagged, strands pulled painfully from his scalp and for a moment, he thought Jade had grabbed him and his heart missed a beat but she remained a few feet behind. He heard her slashing the branches, hacking like a maniac at everything in her path.
Overhead, an owl hooted, the forlorn sound carried on the wind like a dark omen.
In the background, a dog barked. It sounded like a wolf and he remembered his father's warning in the dream.
Beware the wolf in sheep's clothing.
A vehicle rumbled along a road in the distance, the headlights chasing the dark. Zen headed towards it, his feet bleeding. He stepped on a sharp branch and winced, bit his lip, his face prickling, but he pressed on. Fear quelled the pain.
“You can't get away,” Jade shouted.
He risked a quick glance back, but couldn't see her. At least when he knew where she was, he knew what to run from, and in which direction to head. Now, she could be anywhere. The wind whistled a sinister tune in his ears. His arms pumped like pistons, but his legs pumped faster, propelling h
im through the trees.
Ahead, the trees seemed different. Darker. More sinister.
Light flashed through the branches, and Zen headed towards the source. He could hear a low rumbling engine, and he emerged onto a road as a lorry trundled past. Its headlights momentarily bathed him in a strange orange glare, turning him into a sundial with a revolving shadow that stretched before him like a dark road in the gloom of the night.
Then the lorry disappeared, and he found himself on the edge of a forest entwined by black roses in a macabre marriage, thorny and barbed rings of wedded bliss.
An intermittent, cancerous orange light pulsed in the distance, and Zen froze in his tracks and stared at the lighthouse; he immediately recognised it as the one from the city. But what was it doing here, in the middle of nowhere, shining like a beacon for lost souls?
He heard someone crashing through the trees, but he didn't dare look back, too afraid of what he might see. Up ahead, the lighthouse loomed, impossibly high. So high that it made him dizzy to look up. Surely he would have seen such a monumental building before, on the way through the town.
Confused, scared and cold, he headed towards the monolithic structure, each step excruciatingly painful, as though he ran on broken glass; his lungs were on fire.
Although the tower appeared to be miles away, it only took seconds to reach it. Zen frowned and looked back, but could see only inky black trees.
At the foot of the tower, a door opened and the albino man appeared.
He smiled without warmth.
Was there no escape from the madness?
A scream emanated from the trees. Startled, Zen looked back to see Jade crash though the foliage, lips peeled back and the knife poised above her head. Blood trickled from cuts on her legs and from a gash on her forehead.
“You'd better come in,” the albino man said, stepping aside.
Zen grimaced. “Why bother? You may as well kill me here.”
The albino man frowned. “Why would I want to kill you? You haven’t lost the bet … yet.”
Dark Seduction Page 4
