Power Games

by Victoria Fox

  The heat, the blaze, the fear, the single shining quest for survival sharpened every desire to a spearhead. They wanted to live, and there was no better way of expressing it than the pleasure they had brought to each other. Celeste had given to him without limits. She craved it again.

  Yet she knew in her heart that she could never venture out on that raft, whether Jacob went or not. Fear, then, was stronger than love. Was she in love?

  She had thought herself in love with Carl, but in a way she witnessed rather than felt. Memories of her relationship became a moving disc at the end of a telescope, a long dark tunnel between her and it. Was that why she didn’t want Jacob to complete the raft? Maybe it wasn’t the water; it was the idea of return.

  ‘We’ll be together,’ said Jacob. But it wasn’t that easy. Carl would find her. Out here, he couldn’t find her. He would never find her.

  She picked up a shell, glistening pink, its frilled opening polished and iridescent. If Kevin’s attack had been allowed to continue, how would it have ended? Would Jacob still be here? She couldn’t consider it.

  Kevin frightened her. Gone were his narrow bones and slim build. Now he was unbreakable, a before and after shot where several years should have elapsed, not several weeks. He’s a kid, let him be, Jacob had counselled before the assault. But that was precisely it—was he a kid? Celeste wasn’t sure. He had the brains of a kid and the body of a weight-lifter. It made for a dense, brick-built dunce; a physical titan with neither sense nor reason. Now, naked and volatile, he was a loose cannon at large in the forest.

  She stood, dusting off the backs of her legs.

  There it was again. That feeling. Someone was looking.

  As Celeste made her way to the cliffs, she recalled a museum she had visited with her parents. Her mother had told her she was about to see the greatest works in the world, and what a lucky girl she was, but when they got there all Celeste felt was hounded. The portraits eyed her beadily. Their gaze travelled with her across the room. The subjects seemed animate, scrutinising her every move. Minutes into the expedition she had pleaded to leave. The museum had not welcomed her.

  It had been the same at that castle in Hungary—perhaps that was why she had taken so strongly against that billionaire’s portrait. It had seemed to say: Get out. We don’t want you here. Leave now.

  If only they could.

  There was a tremor in the undergrowth.

  Celeste hung back. A pig was snuffling in the leaves, its dark tail switching flies. With a grunt it looked up, sensing its witness, and its ear, covered in coarse, dank fur that Kevin had removed from one a week before, with no more enquiry than if he had been peeling back the plastic film on a packet of ham, twitched at the sound.

  She stilled in the trees, until at last it moved on.

  87

  Day 55

  At dusk Angela harpooned a fish and they grilled it over the fire, a third for Eve and the rest split equally. Mitch had fashioned a method for drinking from the coconuts, a split in the hide into which he fed a hollowed-out stalk, acting as a straw. It was an odd taste, creamy and metallic, but was a change from the boiled and cooled stream.

  Afterwards, gathered at the fire, Mitch said: ‘I haven’t been truthful with you.’

  Angela’s face flickered in the glow. ‘About what?’

  ‘You asked for evidence that we weren’t alone. I have it.’ Angela stayed perfectly still. Mitch’s voice was eerie.

  ‘There is someone else.’ He threw a glance to Eve. ‘I thought what I thought at first, but now we know for sure that we were set up … Well, I’ve changed my mind. This is a person—a real, flesh and blood person.’

  ‘Kevin,’ Angela intervened quickly. ‘On the south side.’

  ‘No. At the cave, on the day we arrived.’

  Angela remembered his question. Did anyone take a walk on the beach yesterday? Round by the bluff, towards the caves? The slash of fear widened.

  ‘The prints were there. I know what I saw.’

  ‘They were yours,’ said Eve.

  ‘How can they have been, on the first day?’

  ‘Someone went exploring.’

  ‘That soon? We three were the only ones on the mountain. There’s no way any of the rest of you could have beaten us to it.’

  ‘Then who?’

  The question strummed in the heat, taut and appalling.

  Jacob took Celeste’s hand. ‘It’s no one. Mitch imagined it.’

  The senator delivered a dry laugh. ‘Mitch imagines everything, right?’

  ‘The flight attendant,’ said Angela. ‘Maybe I was wrong.’

  ‘We should go back,’ said Eve. ‘We should find out.’

  The crash of the waves carried with it a ghostly, female sigh. Angela shivered. She felt truly, horribly afraid.

  ‘Tomorrow, we go,’ she said. ‘As soon as it’s light.’

  ‘We don’t know it’s her,’ said Mitch. ‘What if it’s someone else?’

  ‘Who?’ Angela didn’t like the way she sounded: shrill, and hunted. ‘There’s nobody else on this island. It’s just us. We saw the pilots’ bodies. We dealt with them. It’s just us. OK?’

  The silence glowed with dread possibility, a looming question mark.

  What if you’re wrong?

  ‘It’s her,’ said Angela. ‘And I’ll prove it.’

  But she did not know any more. Purgatory had become permanence—and now the threat was close, it was real and different and horrifying. Beyond the palms, into the jungle, shapes and shadows dripped and crept, startled and sinister.

  88

  Moonshine seeped in, soaking his surroundings in milky light.

  In flashes Noah made out a porthole window, through which the horizon lifted and sank. It smelled rotten, like passages in a dank cellar.

  He slept in protracted, intoxicating bursts. Each time he woke the dark had changed, hours passing, days passing; he had no concept of time. Food was brought and he devoured it like an animal, crusts and leftovers but it didn’t matter what it was, only that it gave him strength. He drank water, dirty and tasting of iron, what felt like gallons of it, every drop sucked into him for fear that any second he would find himself back on the fishing boat, rotting in the scorching sun.

  He could hear voices, the same voices that had picked him up.

  Visions came and went: dark-skinned and evil-eyed, with sweat-drenched headbands and lean, muscular torsos, their chests and arms crawling with ink. Knives and guns slung in their belts. Their teeth, rotten and black. Pirates.

  He kept hearing one word, repeated over and over:

  Koloku.

  Noah’s hands were tied behind his back. His ankles were bound. He knew he was going to be killed. Why, then, had they saved him? Why did they want to make him better?

  For another purpose: Koloku.

  Was it a place? A person? What did it want?

  Noah dragged his strength from within. All he knew was that he had to escape before they reached it—because whatever Koloku was, it spelled danger.

  89

  Day 56

  The cave was cold. It leaked and stank. Through its narrow opening the cavern lost light quickly, a few slick rocks petering out into total dark.

  Mitch shuddered at the memory of being here. He had blanked those days out, unable to re-live them. Even now it was like stepping into a dream. The roof and walls were slippery, twisted stalactites dripping from above, mottled and alien.

  He had been so sure … and yet they had not come. He had waited, and waited, but they had not come.

  He had been so convinced, believing beyond any doubt, and now he knew of Tawny’s sabotage it cast fresh, uncertain light on all that had passed before.

  They hadn’t brought him here. Someone else had.

  ‘This is where you saw the prints?’ Angela knelt.

  Mitch nodded. The snake of sand was unmarked, as he had known it would be. A scorpion darted between rocks, vanishing into the grain.

&n
bsp; It was clear what Angela was thinking. If Mitch were anyone else he might have thought it too: the heat, the sun, the circumstances, a recipe for hallucination.

  The sand was curiously, unnaturally, smooth.

  ‘You were here a long time,’ she said. Mitch could make out the shard of light in her irises but nothing more. ‘And you saw nothing?’

  ‘Just the prints—on the first day, and then …’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Some mornings, when I woke.’

  ‘The same trail?’

  ‘Like someone came in the night.’

  Angela’s silhouette was becoming clearer to him now, peeling away from the pitch, as delicate as a fingernail.

  ‘OK,’ she said, ‘here’s the deal. I can’t hold things together with this hanging over us—not if it can’t be proved.’

  ‘We should go further in.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So we can be sure.’

  ‘No. I’m not chasing ghosts. I’m not looking for trouble. Fear is a disease. It infects. I’m not letting that happen to us. There’s nothing here. No prints. It’s over.’

  Angela stepped out onto the beach. Beyond, in the distance, a trail of fire smoke could be seen coming from the south, a thin, creeping grey. Kevin.

  Days ago she would have gone to confront him; now she just walked away.

  Mitch stared back into the inky void of the cave.

  A gust of cool seeped from the darkness.

  90

  Los Angeles

  The limousine pulled up at the foot of the red carpet. Cameras snapped and paparazzi heaved. A driver came round to open the passenger door and a pair of sparkling Louboutins struck the tarmac: a glimpse of slender ankles, shapely calves, and the hem of a designer dress. Joan Chase faced her admirers with a winning smile.

  Emerging from the vehicle, she waved to the fans. As the closest thing the Little Chasers had to Kevin, his mother was now revered. She was also an impossibly glamorous upgrade on the fatso she had once been. Grief agreed with her. Now a size 8, she had lost ten years. Make-up reinstated cheekbones and a fuller top lip. Her stylist nipped and tucked with the most svelte combinations.

  Joan clutched Trey the dachshund, her scarlet-painted talons buried in his coarse fur. Trey wore a tux and sneakers: what Kevin would have worn.

  ‘Joan! Over here! This way, Joan! Another smile, Joan!’

  Graciously, she obliged. Tonight was the premiere of Chasing Glory, a short docu-movie of her son’s life. Microphones craned for a comment.

  ‘It’s my duty to carry on for Kevin,’ she told Entertainment Now! ‘Don’t get me wrong; it’s been a nightmare. But Kevin and I spent years securing his place and it would be remiss of me to let that go. We’re keeping the door ajar. I believe Kevin will come home, and when he does I want all this to be ready for him. As his mother, it’s my calling and my responsibility.’

  A blonde Rottweiler from Buzz Weekly snarled an enquiry: ‘What do you say to critics who deem this film to be in bad taste? Isn’t it too soon to cash in?’

  Trey growled and yapped.

  ‘We’re not cashing in. All proceeds are poured back into the search.’

  ‘But all this glamour and PR, is it appropriate?’

  ‘No less than your questioning, sweetheart.’ Joan cracked a smile. ‘I’m a mother in mourning and I’m doing all I can to support my son’s memory.’

  ‘What about your record deal with Cut N Dry?’

  ‘These are songs Kevin never got the chance to release. He would have wanted the fans to hear them.’

  ‘Move on, please.’ PR steered her through. Everywhere she turned, people were hysterical for her attention. Was this what it had been like for Kevin? In the later years, he had hated it. Joan couldn’t ever imagine hating it.

  Now was her time to shine, and she intended to make the most of it. Obviously, she would never have chosen this outcome. But since it was here …

  ‘Joan—’

  Sketch was in the foyer. He seized her arm.

  ‘Please, let me talk to you,’ he begged. ‘Please, just two minutes of your time.’

  She stopped to appraise him. Wow, he looked bad. While Joan had shed the years, Sketch had accumulated them. He looked sixty. The hair at his temples, once on the attractive cusp of grey, was a dingy, unwashed slate. His eyes bugged, rimmed with lack of sleep and carrying two saggy bags. He was twitchy and fretful.

  A gang of Cut N Dry execs stood at his back. Oh, how afraid she used to be of them! And now they were the ones cowering: major players, powerful titans of the music industry, reduced in her presence to a bunch of pant-wetting schoolboys.

  Joan knew what they were thinking: Please don’t tell on us!

  The men eyed her warily, like a creature about to strike. Indeed she could, at any moment and without warning. She knew their secret, and it was wicked.

  How could Cut N Dry have refused her contract? And, once this album was done, how could they fail to sign for another three, four, five?

  ‘What do you want to say?’ she asked Sketch coldly.

  ‘Only that,’ he gulped, ‘well, you look very nice.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And,’ Sketch withered under her arched brow, ‘we were thinking, well, you see the thing is, maybe it’s not such a great idea getting Turquoise da Luca to voice on the new track; she’s busy right now, her people said they couldn’t—’

  Joan cut in. ‘But you’ll make it happen, right?’

  Sketch’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. ‘Er, Joanie …’

  ‘Because it is a good idea, because I said so.’

  Sketch bowed his head. ‘Right, yes, of course. Of course we will, Joanie.’

  Joan smiled, satisfied. They could refuse her nothing.

  Before she was escorted into the theatre, Joan pressed her body against Sketch’s. Her pink lips came close. She grabbed him by the balls.

  ‘I’ve got your nut-sac on a chopping block,’ she purred. ‘Remember that.’

  And she vanished in the sparkle of studio lights.

  91

  Day 60

  Clothes marked his last lifeline to civilisation. After years being trussed up in suits and bling, moulded and styled for shoots and junkets, Kevin’s body yearned to break out. He went naked, and gloried in the spectacular.

  Squatting in the sand gutting fish, he muttered the lyrics to his songs. His fingers were stained with blood and the tips smelled briny and rich.

  Late afternoon, he slid into the forest. The canopy was high and humid. All around him shadows were lengthening. Kevin went deep. His dick was hard, as it always was, an iron shaft leading the way. Obediently, he followed, led by the potent desire that had lain still for so long, a constant, uncontrollable ache.

  Nature worshipped him. Scampers in the undergrowth retreated to let him pass, and the inquisitive eye of a monkey on a branch told him he was feared.

  The animals could smell it. The birds could sense it.

  Kevin Chase was king of the jungle.

  He wished he had another name. That one no longer belonged to him. His previous life faded a little more each day. By now it was a smudged image, hazy and bleached. He thought of no one from the old world. It was how he imagined reincarnation, to be born again, and in glimpses he might catch frayed snippets of the past—performing on stage, running an interview, filming a video, those lyrics that played on a loop in his mind—but as soon as they arrived they were gone. They held no significance for him any more.

  He came to a circular glade, into which a shaft of golden sunlight poured like wine from a jug. At its centre, he knelt, dragging his hands through a pit of soft mud and smearing it richly over his body. He took his time, the charge through his groin sizzling by the second but he enjoyed the anticipation; he knew the release would be all the more satisfying. In long, smooth strokes, he caked his erection.

  Spreading his knees wide, he thrust his hips forward. He wanted to fuck. Right no
w he would fuck anything. The mud melted, a kaleidoscope of bucking browns and greens, and frantically he searched for a hole to put it into, anything, and located a pit of sticky, fuzzy moss clinging to the side of a tree trunk. Flinging his arms around the column of bark, Kevin pounded his erection inside, breaking through the tangle of leaves and twigs until it met with something soft and springy.

  He threw his head back, picturing the tree as a woman’s body: the Little Chaser who had seduced him after The Craig Winston Show, Tawny, Celeste, Angela, anyone who would let him, and held on tight and rocked against it, fucking the life out of nature because nothing else was enough. His thighs pummelled the tree and he lifted his ass from the ground, clamping his legs around it, working like a piston, hanging helpless with his hands and feet bound.

  He could feel the tide rising. The girl beneath him would be on all fours, screaming her orgasm, and he would make her come and then—

  With a howl, Kevin ejaculated into the tree. The climax was so extreme that the sky shivered and shook in his glassy, lust-drugged perception. He fell against it as one lover to another, his cheek crumpled against the bark.

  Slowly he withdrew, careful not to snag himself on the rough exterior.

  Only then did he realise he was stuck.

  Not his dick, thank fuck, but his arms and legs. The bark, whose stickiness had seemed to him so erotic mere moments before, was smothered in tacky, gluey gum.

  The sap had him stuck fast.

  He tried to tug loose. It pulled like the time he was a kid and had soldered his fingers together with superglue, and Joan had to douse them in vinegary nail varnish to set them free. Agony. He tugged, and tugged again.

  ‘Shit!’

  His cock, now limp, dangled forlornly between his legs. He looked like a giant peanut, sludged with mud, a pair of panicked eyes glittering from a dirt-caked face.

  With horror Kevin realised that his dick was prickling with needles of fire. Daring to look down, he saw the skin there was covered in a rash of tiny red pimples.