“Could you…?” Father tried to point at the spanner, but his hand jerked wildly out of his control.
“Of course,” said Adam, flicking a switch on the device. The prongs detached themselves from Father’s chest, and the wires retracted. Adam replaced it in his pocket.
“Impressive,” said Father. Adam smiled, thinly.
“The prodigal returns,” said Adam.
Adam opened his eyes. It was dawn.
Adam spent nearly a week in the cottage. Longer than he had planned, but he knew preparation was more important than haste. He shot rabbits and cooked them over a spit the first couple of extra nights, then hunted and killed a wild boar, using no weapon other than a knife. His physical condition was still excellent, and as the blood of the conquered animal seeped into the loamy earth, Adam felt a savage joy. He was gloriously alive and so close to the end of his quest.
He had digested all the information in the two reports and burned them both. He had spent hours communing with the darkness, allowing it to fill him, no longer able to sense where he stopped and the darkness began. He was Chosen, and he felt unstoppable.
Before leaving, he finally collected what he had come for. Rolled in a dirty piece of cloth in the top drawer of Father’s desk, exactly where it had been the night Father first showed him. A curved dagger at least eighteen hundred years old. Lethally sharp. Adam wondered how many lives had been taken by the dagger, how much blood spilled over the centuries. Father had certainly sacrificed dozens to Satan, unaware of his true Master. Adam handled the knife reverentially before rewrapping it in the cloth and stowing it in his backpack. He had researched its true provenance and was confident he would be the one to bring about the purpose for which it had always been destined. It was time to reward those who saw the world as it was, not as they had been taught it was. The worshipers of Ialdabaoth, the Demiurge.
21
Northumbria, Northeast England
Adam bought a boat a hundred miles from Innisfarne and made his way up the coastline over the course of two days.
He needed accurate, up-to-date information about Joni Varden’s movements. The information in the Broker’s report had been obtained by operatives infiltrating the island. The authors had spent a week there and confirmed the earlier report’s assertion that Sebastian Varden had gone. After an absence of over sixteen years, the presumption was that he was dead. Adam didn’t like presumptions. It hadn’t done anything for his father, who had faced Sonia Svetlana presuming his devotion to the Satanic cause would make him victorious. Or Svetlana herself, who had presumed her dominant abilities combined with the help of a hand-picked team of powerful Acolytes would be enough to defeat Varden. The safest course to follow was to presume nothing about a situation until you had all the information. Varden had been gone for seventeen years now. That was enough information to be reasonably confident about discounting him. It didn’t mean he was definitely dead, it just meant it was safe to proceed as if he was.
When he reached the small island, Adam kept his distance, passing it from every conceivable angle before looking for a suitable spot to moor up on the mainland. The best mooring was taken by Penelope, an old fishing vessel, which acted as a ferry to and from Innisfarne. He passed it some thirty yards out. A white-haired man emerged from the boat’s small cabin and watched him. Adam waved, a pair of binoculars and a long-lensed camera hanging round his neck. He had elected for a pasty pale complexion set off by curly ginger hair for this trip. He also sported round, gold-rimmed spectacles. The white-haired man watched impassively for a few seconds, then raised an arm and gave a short wave back. He watched until Adam was out of sight.
That night, Adam moored in a secluded cove about five miles further south. When night fell, he made his way overland back to Penelope and looked for a suitable spot to set up camp. He found it in a small copse halfway up a neighboring hill. It gave him a good view of the boat and enough cover to render him virtually invisible, especially in the camouflage he now wore.
According to the Broker’s reports, Penelope made the crossing every morning at 5:30am. Adam arrived on Sunday night. Sure enough, the boat didn’t move until Monday at 5:15am, when an old Landrover pulled up alongside it. The old, white-haired man got out and started the boat’s engine, warming her up. No one else got on, and at 5:30am it departed. Two hours later it was back. The crossing took about twenty-three minutes, but the old man obviously hung around for his breakfast. There were four passengers on the return trip.
Tuesday saw three new arrivals. The reports had suggested the vast majority of visitors were muesli-eating, sandal-wearing tree-huggers who spent their time on Innisfarne meditating, doing menial work or walking around the island. It was just over six miles from north to south, so that wouldn’t account for much of their time.
Adam had tried meditating on a few occasions. Mostly during the time Father thought he could develop some Manna ability. He was supposed to watch his thoughts without engaging with them, that much he remembered. But what he saw in his head didn’t resemble what the meditation teachers spoke about. He was aware of darkness, fear, pain and horror. It had terrified him at the time, before he had begun to recognize that the darkness was there to teach him. If he embraced it.
Adam watched the new guests board the boat. One was male, old, feeble. The other two were more interesting. Both women, one of them tall, confident - she looked every inch a Manna user. The other subdued-looking. Beaten. The reports had mentioned that Innisfarne had become a refuge for women who had suffered violent domestic abuse. Many of them had been physically and psychologically traumatized. The island had quietly earned somewhat of a reputation among professionals in the field for undoing damage that no other treatment had been able to touch. Adam focused the binoculars on the shorter woman. Her head was bowed, she shuffled rather than walked, and when the older man asked her a question, she turned away quickly. Interesting.
Adam had considered going to Innisfarne himself, but the risk was too great. He knew the island was Manna-free, and—even if a Sensitive with active reserves was there—the darkness within him would enable him to move among them without arousing suspicion, but…But. Joni Varden was too much of an unknown. Her father had possessed power beyond the comprehension of the Broker’s team of informants. She might have inherited no power at all. Or she could be her father’s equal. No one knew. It was pointless to risk getting to her only to find she knew exactly who Adam was immediately and could stop his heart by simply clicking her fingers.
He hadn’t got this close only to mess up now. Once again, his disciplined, almost serene patience came into play.
He went back to his boat and started surveilling the island from a distance of about a mile, using image stabilized binoculars to counter the movement of the vessel. He covered the island coastline systematically, the engine always running so he could move along if anyone took an interest in him.
On the eighth day, he saw her. She emerged from the tree line at the northern tip of Innisfarne and walked along the shingled beach. She looked lost in her own thoughts. No photograph had been available, but she matched the physical description. Adam had to admit she was striking. She had her mother’s unruly black hair, combined with unusually light gray eyes. She walked around the headland, then headed back toward the group of buildings just south of the center of the island.
She kept up the same routine the next day. On the third day, Adam laid the AWSM sniper rifle on the floor of the boat and sharpened and oiled the knife. He then stripped naked, removing the ginger wig and makeup.
With thirty minutes to go before she normally appeared, Adam reached within himself to contact the darkness, letting it fill him with its cold, dread purpose.
With five minutes to go, he lifted the binoculars to his eyes and waited.
22
Innisfarne
Present Day
The bald man knelt beside her and looked into her eyes. Joni looked back and saw nothing in his expression. J
ust blankness. If the eyes truly were the windows to the soul, this guy was either missing a soul, or he really needed to clean his windows.
Joni was suddenly aware of just how quiet everything was. She could hear the waves on the rocks, but no seabirds were shrieking. Close to, it seemed the bald man was able to breathe soundlessly. And Mum and Uncle John weren’t breathing at all anymore.
He looked away then and raised the knife. It was curved and had some kind of intricate design carved into the handle. The sunlight caught the blade and dazzled her for a second.
He paused and whispered a word reverentially. Almost like a lover.
“Ialdabaoth.”
Oh. Yeah. I remember.
As the knife came down toward her chest in a blur of speed, Joni reset.
Joni looked at Uncle John. He was smiling at her as if waiting for her to say something. On other occasions, when she had reset, she had been prepared, calm, ready to pick up from wherever she had left off. This time, she burst into tears, grabbed Mee and hugged her, then did the same to John, her body wracked with sobs.
She pulled them both back further into the trees and away from the beach, where she could see the boat bobbing in the water, the figure in it watching the shore. She shuddered.
“What is it, Jones, what’s the matter?” Mee and John both looked completely confused by Joni’s sudden outburst, but before she could start to explain, Mee looked at her shrewdly.
“Was that a reset?”
Joni nodded, still sobbing occasionally, holding her mother’s hands tightly like a toddler who had just been lost and was scared of it happening again. She had a sudden thought and shot a look back at the boat, just visible through the trees. It hadn’t moved. She created another reset point.
She told them. She didn’t hold back any details. They all sat down. No one interrupted. When she had finished speaking, Mee looked at her for a long moment.
“Good job you got your heart broken this summer and not next, then.”
Joni realized she must still be in shock. It took a while to process the logic - that without the writing course, without Odd and Mell, she might not yet have learned to use her ability to reset the multiverse. And they’d all be dead now. She was still thinking about it when Mee and John stood up. She realized she had missed much of what they had said. But one word had sunk in.
“Police?” she said. “No. We can’t. What are you going to say? There’s a bald guy on a boat who looks funny? Can you please search his boat, because we think he’s got a gun and a really ornate knife on board. He’s probably trying to kill us. Yeah, they’ll totally arrest him. Or you, maybe.”
Mee started to object, but she could see the logic. She turned to John.
“What the hell shall we do?” she said. John shook his head numbly, thinking.
Joni surprised herself by finding that, despite the lingering horror of the last hour, she was able to think logically. She wondered if that was a quality of her ability. She remembered what had just happened as clearly as any other memory. More clearly, since it was so horrific. And yet it hadn’t, actually, happened at all. They hadn’t walked onto the beach. Yet.
“I have an idea,” she said.
She knew she couldn’t explain what she really wanted to do. There was no way Mum or Uncle John would let her do it. But the bald man had been there to sacrifice her. It was Joni he wanted. If she was going to protect Mum and John, she was going to have to do this alone.
Mee was looking at her closely. And she was thinking. Joni could see her begin to work out what Joni was thinking of doing.
“No, Jones. Don’t. We can work this out together. You’re safer here, with us. We can protect you.”
But Mum hadn’t seen the emptiness in the bald man’s eyes. She hadn’t felt the certainty. The commitment. He had come for Joni, nobody else. No one would be able to protect her. And there was no need for them to get hurt trying.
She made her decision.
“Joni!” said Mee. “No!”
She reset.
She was back. Standing again, not sitting. They were still in amongst the trees, the sea just in sight. Mum and John knew nothing about what had happened on the beach. They were waiting for her to explain why she was suddenly so upset.
She lied to them. It wasn’t easy, but she turned her thoughts away from the awful pictures still fresh in her brain - John spinning as the bullet caught him, Mum’s head caving in. She desperately wanted to be comforted, but she knew it wouldn’t be possible if she wanted to protect them. So she lied. Told them she was crying because it had only just hit her how much she wanted to know her father, how much she had missed out on because he wasn’t there. There was enough truth in what she was saying to make her tears convincing.
Mee wrapped her arms around her daughter.
“You still want a walk? Or shall we just go home?”
Joni nodded dumbly and let herself be led away, back toward the Keep, her head on her mother’s shoulder.
Before dawn the next day, Joni was up, packing. She threw everything she thought she might need into a backpack.
She wrote a note for Mum, leaving it on her pillow. She couldn’t allow herself to think too hard about how Mee would react. She’d already lost Dad. Joni’s note reassured her that she would be back, that only she could take care of this problem and she was sorry she wasn’t able to share it.
She made it to the small quay before Penelope arrived and hid the backpack in a clump of long grass around the base of a tree.
She went to breakfast as usual. Her quietness and tension would, she hoped, be put down to the emotional day she’d had, finding out about her father. No one seemed suspicious, even though she felt like she had a neon sign above her head, flashing, WARNING. ABOUT TO RUN AWAY.
She kissed both Uncle John and Mum before excusing herself. She didn’t cry. She even managed to agree to meet Mum later to talk about a distance-learning writing course.
Stuart, Penelope’s owner, was a man of regular habits, and Joni had already spotted him going to the bathroom. She figured she had about a ten-minute start over him.
At the quay, she reset before retrieving her backpack, then got onto the boat, squeezing under a pile of tarp in one corner. There was still a faint smell of fish although Penelope hadn’t been used as a fishing boat for many years.
The ten-minute wait seemed more like thirty, but finally Stuart’s heavy boots could be heard and, a few seconds later, he was onboard, the boat tipping and rocking. She heard him whistling to himself as he started the engine and cast off, then the engine noise increased as they headed out to sea.
When they reached the mainland, she kept perfectly still while the process was reversed. After she heard Stuart’s Landrover roar away, she waited fifteen minutes before moving. Then she crawled out from under the tarp, pulling her backpack after her. She took out an envelope addressed to Stuart and left it tucked under the steering wheel, in a clear plastic bag in case of rain. It was August, but this was northeast Britain.
She pulled the backpack onto her shoulders and set off, heading inland.
Joni had stolen twenty £500 cash disqs from the Keep. Although she hadn’t really had a choice, she couldn’t stop herself feeling guilty, all the same. Most were in the backpack, but, as she walked, she took one out of her pocket to look at it. She needed to be able to handle it as if it was something she’d done all her life, otherwise, she’d draw attention to herself.
The disq was black, shiny, about the same size as a £5 coin. Disqs had replaced cash almost completely during Joni’s lifetime, although, living somewhere where no one paid for anything, it wasn’t as if she had noticed the difference. All she really knew was that the disq would gradually change color as she used it, first the tip, then the rest, red replacing black. When it was a solid red, it needed topping up. This was done online or at ATMs. Since Innisfarne was— quite possibly—the only place in the country with no internet and only one ancient computer, Kate replenishe
d the store during her infrequent trips to the mainland.
Joni replaced the disq in her pocket and walked on. The main road was about three miles. She knew there was a bus stop there. She couldn’t help but feel a little thrill of excitement as she walked. She was on the mainland. She could walk for hundreds of miles with the sea at her back before finding it again. And then it would be the Atlantic Ocean, not the North Sea. Not that she intended going West. She was going to London. That much she knew. After that, her plans got a little hazy.
Then she remembered the bald man’s eyes and shivered. If Stuart played his part, she had a forty-eight-hour head start. She just hoped it would be enough.
23
London
Joni disembarked at Victoria coach station and immediately wished she hadn’t. The coach station was vast, and it was teeming with people. She stood with her back against the bus for a couple of minutes, trying to gather her thoughts. In an attempt to distract her mind from the enormity of the situation, she counted the number of buses she could see. There were twenty-four of them in sight, and she could hear the electric engines whirring their warnings as more approached, parking in numbered bays.
She had finally succumbed to exhaustion and slept the last hour of the journey. She had missed the sight of London taking shape around her in the early evening, the sinking sun reflecting from glass skyscrapers that rubbed shoulder with medieval churches.
Joni had been last off the bus, grabbing her bag after the driver gently touched her shoulder to wake her. It was her second bus ride ever. Her first had been earlier that day - the short hop from the main road nearest Innisfarne south to Moilburgh. The second bus was bigger, the seats wider and there was so much more to see through the tinted windows. So many cars! And houses, and shops, and people, and animals: cows in the field chewing grass and looking bored, a pair of horses galloping around a field. Sheep moving in one amorphous mass as a dog herded them. Pigs, memorably, lying in a brown field; fat, pink and muddy, basking in the sun.
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 79
