Stalking Tender Prey

by Constantine, Storm

  In the bedroom, she dressed quickly, pulling on black trousers, black shirt, a leather jacket, biker boots. She wound up her hair and as she left the flat, picked up a pair of shades from on top of the microwave in the kitchen.

  It was getting near rush hour and already traffic filled the streets of the city. Aninka sat fuming in a tail-back. She lit a cigarette and turned on the radio, pushing buttons until she found the local station. Inane music filled the car. Aninka looked at her watch. How long till a news report? The traffic began to move. Aninka edged towards the other side of the city.

  Out on the dual carriageway, she put her foot down, flying up the outside lane. Her hands were wet upon the steering wheel. She pulled onto Victoria Heights and parked her car by a row of shops. Here, she went into the newsagents and bought a paper and some cigarettes. Catching a glimpse of her reflection in the shop window, she realised she was too conspicuous in her terrorist’s garb. She took off the shades and the leather jacket. Only her height betrayed her now, she thought.

  It took her five minutes to walk up the hill to the turning which led to Bronte Close. There was a phone box at the end of the road. Obeying her instincts, the wordless shout of alarm in her guts, Aninka went into the phone box and picked up the phone. She could see all the way down Bronte Close, and as she feared, it was packed with police vehicles. Red and white tape fluttered in the breeze, marking an exclusion zone. Ambulances were there, TV crews. Neighbours were crowding against the tape, ghoulishly craning forwards. Aninka’s spine crawled. She feared recognition, pursuit.

  As she walked briskly back to her car, she expected a police vehicle to draw up alongside her at any moment. ‘Would you mind answering a few questions?’ Her heart was hammering in her chest by the time she nervelessly operated the central locking of her car and swung into the driver’s seat. Without pausing, she set off smoothly, trying to appear calm. She was a woman who’d stopped to buy cigarettes and a paper, make a phone call. That was all. Not suspicious at all. Had any of Wendy’s neighbours noticed her on the occasions she’d called at Bronte Close? What about friends, relatives, who weren’t connected with the magical group? Had any members spoken of knowing Aninka to anyone?

  She drove round to Noah’s house. His car was parked out front. Weak with relief, Aninka ran up the steps and rang the doorbell. There was no immediate response. She rang again, a long, impatient pressure on the button. Eventually, the intercom sputtered and Noah said, ‘Yeah?’

  ‘It’s me,’ Aninka answered. ‘Let me in now, you bastard!’

  She heard the locking mechanism churn and opened the door. The long, Victorian hallway was almost in darkness. ‘Noah?’ she called.

  He came down the wide stairway, belting a bathrobe. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Were you asleep?’ Aninka gabbled. ‘I’ve been calling you all day! You might have answered the phone.’

  ‘I’ve been in bed,’ Noah answered. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen the news?’

  She followed him into the kitchen. He looked sleepy, sensual, dragged from a bed of lust, no doubt. ‘No.’ He took a carton of fresh orange juice from the fridge, swigged from it. ‘Should I have?’

  ‘I’m in trouble, Noah. That guy I met, Peverel Othman. He’s Anakim. People are dead, hurt. Something terrible’s happened...’ She felt tears come, despised herself for it. ‘Give me a drink, will you.’

  Noah said nothing, but got her a glass of wine. ‘Have you called home?’

  ‘No! Noah, what am I going to do? I’m implicated. I was with him. Bloody hell!’ She blinked back tears, wiping her face, drinking wine, scrabbling in her bag for a cigarette.

  ‘You’d better tell me about it.’ It was typical of Noah to be like this, deadpan, unconcerned. It was one of the things she liked most about him. He never got hysterical, or over-reacted. She followed him into his living room, one of his living rooms.

  There, he dragged the story out of her with cold, probing questions. When she’d finished, he put a full bottle of wine down on the coffee table in front of her, and went to the phone.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Aninka asked, refilling her glass. She felt better now, drained. She’d passed the story on. It didn’t feel like hers any more.

  ‘What do you think?’

  She stood up. ‘You can’t! Please don’t.’

  ‘Ninka, we have to. Fuck Othman, we need to get you out of this mess.’ He pushed his hair back behind his free ear, changed his stance. Someone had answered. ‘Hi, it’s Noah. Can I speak to Enniel?’

  Aninka made a sound and sat down again. She didn’t want to hear this conversation, but couldn’t force herself to leave the room. Noah spoke quietly, relating the bare facts in a flat tone. ‘Uh huh, I’ll tell her. Right. Bye.’ He put down the phone.

  ‘Well?’ Aninka asked.

  He shrugged. ‘They’ll see to it. Don’t worry. You have to go home, talk to Enniel.’

  Aninka groaned. ‘Oh great!’

  ‘What did you expect?’ Noah strolled over to her, sat down in a chair opposite, laced his hands loosely between his knees.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Aninka said. ‘Stop staring at me like that. Don’t judge me, OK?’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ Noah answered. ‘I was just thinking this was all I needed. I was having such a good time.’

  ‘Sorry to interrupt.’

  ‘Couldn’t be helped. I don’t mind, really. Do you want to stay here for a couple of days?’

  ‘I’d like to. When have I got to see Enniel?’

  ‘When you’re ready. There’s no rush.’

  Aninka sighed miserably. ‘I can’t believe this is happening!’

  Noah stood up, reached out to stroke her hair. ‘Never mind. Perhaps you’d better keep the TV on, see what’s happened. Do you mind if I go back upstairs?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I’ll be fine.’

  Left alone, she sat staring at the TV for a while before she dared turn it on. Halfway through the second Australian soap opera, Noah came back downstairs. He was dressed, his hair wet. He helped himself to one of Aninka’s two remaining cigarettes from the packet she’d left on the coffee table. Shyly, two young Goth types followed him into the room, one male, one female. He told them to go to the kitchen and they slunk out.

  Noah sat and held Aninka’s hand as they watched the local news report. At one point, Aninka said, ‘Turn it off,’ but Noah wouldn’t. Everyone was dead. Everyone. The house on Bronte Close would go down in history as a place of carnage. The connection had already been made with Serafina. Some piece of evidence must have been with her body when she’d been found earlier that day. Thankfully, the method of killing wasn’t revealed. They were just bodies. Bodies removed from a house. Aninka turned away from the footage of covered stretchers being carried into the ambulances. It was impossible to believe that Wendy, Enid and the others were extinguished from life. She found herself wondering what their faces had looked like when they’d been found. It was terrible.

  ‘You need more than wine,’ Noah said, and offered her pills. Taking these, she slept on the sofa, waking up in the middle of the night, to find Noah and his friends watching a video, a pirate copy of a recently released block-buster. Her mouth felt sour, her head thick. Noah told the girl to make Aninka a sandwich, and the boy went with her to the kitchen. ‘This is my cousin,’ Noah told them, as if it mattered. Hadn’t they wondered who this strange female was as she’d slept?

  ‘He’s got to be stopped,’ Aninka said. ‘I want to stop him.’

  Noah raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that your responsibility? You’ve reported in. What else can you do?’

  Aninka paused, wondering whether she should tell the truth. ‘Noah, he touched me, he invaded every pore of me. He used me. He killed my friends. What other reasons do I need?’

  ‘There is only one reason,’ Noah answered. ‘Our own security. And there are people who will see to that. The rest...’ He waved a hand at her dismissively.
‘Unimportant. Brief lives snuffed out. On the scale of time, they missed only a second. It’s irrelevant. You’ve attached too much emotional dross to it.’

  ‘I can’t look at people in that way,’ Aninka replied. ‘I can’t be so heartless.’

  ‘Save your heart for your own,’ Noah said, patting her knee. ‘Anyway, I expect your friend, Peverel Othman, will be long gone by now. He’s old, Ninka. He knows the score. He knows our people will come looking for him. They’ll never find him. He’s probably done this kind of thing a thousand times before. All we can do is cover up the mess, deal with people, quieten things down. You know this. It’s our legacy.’

  Aninka was shivering. She could tell Enniel more about what Noah had said to her during the few days she’d spent in his house, but could see little point. No doubt Noah had already related all this to her guardian anyway. Once she lapsed into silence, Enniel waited a few moments for her to continue and then turned off the tape recorder. He drew in a long breath, tapping his lips with arched fingertips. Aninka couldn’t break the silence. She felt sick, disorientated. In her guts was a terrible longing, a crippling sense of grief.

  ‘Do you know the significance of the gate Othman spoke of?’ Enniel said.

  Aninka jumped at the sound of his voice. It was over now. She’d done her part, and had no desire to speak of it further. She shook her head. ‘Should I?’

  Enniel screwed up his face. ‘Well... I’m only guessing of course, but over the centuries many Grigori — Anakim — have tried to reopen the stargate, our access to the Source, that which was lost to us a long time ago.’

  Aninka frowned and shrugged. ‘I don’t pay much attention to legends.’

  Enniel laughed dryly. ‘You have made that clear to me. Still, just because something has become distant in time, you shouldn’t dismiss it entirely.

  ‘So what is the stargate? Where is it?’

  Enniel stood up and walked slowly across the room to stand staring up at a tapestry next to the window. ‘It’s not a physical gate, my dear, but symbolically it is seen as the constellation of Orion. It is a psychic portal to which our ancestors had access. In trance, they concentrated their attention upon Orion and were able to pass through it to a place beyond space and time, the source of the universe, a void that exists forever in no-time, before the creation of the multiverse, all the different universes that comprise our multi-reality.’

  Aninka shook her head. ‘You’re losing me, Enniel. Do I have to hear this? What has this to do with Othman?’

  Enniel ignored her interruption. ‘Beyond the stargate, the Anannage could commune with the very fabric of creation, what is known to the less articulate as God. It is where we acquired our knowledge, the knowledge that set us apart from the other races of the Earth, made us what we are, or were.’ He turned away from the tapestry. ‘But the gate has been closed to us for millennia, since the Fall. Did Othman ever say anything else to you about a gate? Anything, no matter how brief or apparently trivial?’

  Aninka frowned. ‘I can’t remember. I don’t think so.’ She opened her mouth, then shut it quickly.

  ‘Yes?’ Enniel enquired lightly.

  ‘It’s, well, not much, but Pev sometimes talked in his sleep. Usually, it was gibberish, or it didn’t even wake me up, but once he sounded really upset, so I tried to wake him. He cried out and almost flew at me. Then he said, “They have closed the gate for eternity. I am within it.” It was a bit weird, but he calmed down very quickly, then told me he’d had a nightmare about being bound up, or something.’

  Enniel nodded. ‘Ah... You did not mention this in your narrative.’

  Aninka felt a surge of anger. She experienced a need to move and went to help herself to more brandy. ‘There is a lot of stuff I haven’t told you, because I can’t remember it all at once. Do you want to know about him going with me to supermarkets or taking my clothes to the cleaners? How do I know what is important and what isn’t? I’ve revealed to you some of the most intimate details of my life, and now you’re complaining because I haven’t told you enough!’ She drank half a glass of brandy in one swallow. It burned the back of her throat, but she refused to cough, blinking back the tears which followed, because she didn’t want Enniel to think she was crying.

  Enniel came to her side, put a hand upon her shoulder. ‘Ninka,’ he said softly. There was concern in his voice and sympathy.

  Aninka was prey to his compassion. When he gently pulled her against him, she could only cling to him and weep. ‘I love him,’ she said. ‘I still do. Even after all that. What’s wrong with me?’

  Enniel stroked her back. ‘Ssh. It’s all right. You can’t help loving him.’

  Aninka raised her head. ‘But he’s evil. I hate myself for what I feel! Why can’t I stop? It’s so pointless and self-destructive! What has he done to me?’

  Enniel led her back to the sofa and sat down beside her, cradling her against him. ‘He is a very special man, Ninka. People can’t help but love him. That is part of his power that cannot be taken away or limited.’

  ‘You know him, don’t you?’ Aninka said. It gave her comfort to think that.

  ‘No,’ Enniel replied. ‘I don’t. But I know of him. I have not been given sanction to disclose any further information to you, Ninka. I’m sorry about that. Stay here a while longer, and the situation may change.’

  Aninka uttered a watery laugh. ‘I want to hide for ever. I want to be a child again.’ She drew away from Enniel. ‘Thanks. I’d like to stay a while.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Wednesday 21st October: Little Moor

  Verity found, much to her own annoyance, that she was looking forward to the dinner party. Tuesday, she had given Mrs Roan a list of provisions to buy, and together they had discussed the menu over tea. After breakfast on Wednesday, Verity herself had driven with Mrs Roan over to the supermarket outside Patterham, where they had spent a very pleasant hour choosing the right ingredients for the meal. Verity bought bunches of flowers from the garage attached to the supermarket, and it was in a spirit of excitement that the two women drove back to Little Moor.

  Raven was waiting just inside the door as they entered the house. Verity stooped to stroke his broad head. He did not particularly like being picked up, she’d found, but enjoyed a decorous caress, as long as she did not touch his body. Huge pluming tail held aloft, Raven preceded the women into the kitchen, where the initial preparations were begun.

  Louis had shrewdly allowed Verity to organise everything herself, but was secretly pleased she seemed to be enjoying it. He ventured into the kitchen area at lunchtime, and seeing his daughter’s obvious excitement decided he’d suggested this meal not one moment too soon. Clearly, this was what Verity needed. He hoped her mood carried over into the evening, so that no-one would think he lived with a miserable, frigid spinster. How wonderful it would be if she befriended the Winter girl, for example. Louis’ imagination roamed. He thought of seeing the two young women going off on shopping expeditions, their heads bent over some mutual creative project, dressing up and filling the house with the air of perfume before they drove off together to some party or an assignation with boys in a pub. Louis sighed. If only that could happen.

  Verity caught him day-dreaming. ‘Stop moping around, Dad, and get out of the way. On second thoughts, peel these mushrooms.’

  Smiling, Louis was happy to comply.

  Lily appraised herself in the cheval glass in her bedroom. It was six o’clock and she’d not long got back home after her visit to Patterham with Barbara. They’d stopped for coffee in a wonderful dim-lit bar, and had ended up chatting for longer than they’d intended, Lily’s magical bags of purchases beneath the table. Barbara had taken her to several dress shops, where Lily had tried on a number of outfits. Barbara had hummed and ahed, while Lily twirled in front of her. ‘Well?’

  ‘Mmm. No.’

  To Lily all the floating fabrics were beautiful, and she’d have been happy to buy nearly every garment she’
d tried on. Barbara, however, was looking for something special. Eventually, they found it. A floorlength dress of translucent voile, tight to the bust, then flowing out in a mass of soft swathes. The colours were oceanic, dark greens, muted aquamarines. It was also very expensive, but as it went so well with Lily’s red hair, and accentuated her slim figure so attractively, it had to be the one. Then leggings and a long-sleeved top had to be acquired to be worn beneath the dress, which would otherwise be rather too ‘saucy’, as Barbara put it. Lily would have liked to go for bright orange, but Barbara politely suggested black.

  Now, Lily examined herself in the mirror, intoxicated by her own reflection. She’d washed her hair, pinned some of it up, while the rest fell over her shoulders. She felt like a mermaid, or a transformed mermaid, something that belonged in the ocean, but had come to dry land to cause mischief, to break hearts. She dismissed the thought of Peverel Othman from her mind, and sat down to apply her make-up.

  In his bedroom, Owen Winter made his own preparation, no less carefully. He wore the leather trousers he kept for the weekend excursions to night-clubs with his friends. He wore a loose white shirt. He felt strangely clean and scoured. There was no cheval glass in Owen’s room, but a fading, image warping mirror above the dust-coated dressing table. Here Owen regarded himself. He thought he looked like a ghost, but the image was pleasing.

  At seven-thirty, Barbara and Barney met Peverel Othman in the hall of The White House. They were walking up to Low Mede rather than travelling in the Land Rover, so that Barbara could drink, even though the air was rather chill, and there was a scent of rain in it. Othman’s hair hung loose around his shoulders. Barbara thought he looked like a rock star. She wanted to touch him, and knew that she could: reach out with the fingertips and touch. It was more delicious not to do it. Barney looked at Othman askance, probably, Barbara thought, wondering what he was doing socialising with a person of Othman’s type. If Audrey had brought one home as a boyfriend, Barney would have gagged.