by Alex Archer
“I’m not even going to ask how you can find out those details from a license plate. I just don’t want to know.” Not for the first time she was glad he was on their side.
“Speak soon.” He hung up, leaving her holding the phone to her ear.
“Well, goodbye to you, too,” she said, even though he was long gone.
Chapter 20
He drove away from the house, watching it recede in the rearview mirror.
This wasn’t the homecoming he’d hoped for, but how often in this life do you get what you want? It’s not all sunshine and roses. It wasn’t even open arms most of the time, not for the prodigal father returning at last.
But he had expected better than this.
Maybe it was optimistic to think the boy would be happy he was still alive—still, so much anger? Such hostility? He’d not expected that. Why couldn’t the boy just be happy for once? Why couldn’t he look at the miracle the sword really was and understand it, see his own heritage in the blue flame that had licked along the blade as he’d held it, and know that it was all true? Everything his old man had ever dared hope, dream. Every story he’d ever told him about his inheritance as the last true son of Wales was true.
And he’d turned the sword on him....
Owen Llewellyn felt sick to the core. He had proved them wrong; he had proved them all wrong, and they claimed he’d wasted his life. How could that be when he’d succeeded? He’d found what he’d been looking for, the first of the treasures; now he would find them all, one by one, and offer them to his children, a gift beyond price.
He’d seen the manner in which the sword responded to Geraint’s touch. It called to him. He knew it did. And the other treasures would, too. They’d recognize him. Owen would have to go back and collect it, and the boy, but not now, not yet. He’d have to wait until he’d calmed down. Geraint’s Celtic blood was thick and full of fire, but it was full of forgiveness, too, that was what made the Celts such great friends and deadly foes.
For now he would just find somewhere to hole up on his own while his children had the chance to talk to each other. Awena would win the boy over. He knew she would. She always did. He could rely on her.
He turned on the radio as he drove, tuning into Radio Wales expecting to hear reports of the murder in St. Davids.
The curate should have left him alone.
He had done everything he could to stay hidden, looking for the sword at the most ungodly of hours to minimize risk of discovery...the man had brought it on himself. He’d tried to keep him out of it...he’d tried to drive him away, even when he’d saved Owen from himself, but all that had done was hasten a good man’s death.
He felt a wave of remorse wash over him as the consequences of his actions started to sink in.
He had killed an innocent man.
Not only that, he’d tried to hide the body so that he wouldn’t be caught.
He had been scared stupid when the woman had looked at him, but—paranoia aside—that was all she had done; she’d just looked at him. Meanwhile he could have killed himself trying to get away from her. He couldn’t carry on like this. He wasn’t thinking straight. He needed to sleep. He needed to clear his head. He needed to weigh the consequences of his actions, and look ahead and not screw up, so close to the end.
He needed to own his actions.
Otherwise, he didn’t deserve to possess the sword, no matter how long he had been looking for it. He had almost defied the legend...he’d seen the flames lick along the blade, but when it came right down to it, he wasn’t worthy of it. He’d dropped the weapon and the fire had burned out. He wasn’t righteous. Not in his own mind.
It had been a while since he had last driven along this particular road, and calling it a road was being generous in the extreme, but he knew every bend, every kink and curve that lay along its path. Some of the cracks had been repaired recently, showing darker black patches where asphalt had been laid, but new cracks and hollows were already beginning to form. It was almost as though the road were a living thing, constantly changing and always needing attention.
The handful of buildings along the roadside were the same as they’d always been, reassuringly so. Though the trees had grown a little larger in the main, a few of them had been cut down. They probably dated back to the time of Giraldus Cambrensis himself. It was Owen Llewellyn who had changed. He did not like what he had become.
It would have been better if he had left the sword in the grave, then at least the curate would still be alive. It would have been better still if Owen had never heard of the treasures, then perhaps he wouldn’t have spent so much of his life searching for them and his children would still love him. They had deserved a better father, but he’d never been able to be a better man than he was.
He brushed them away with the back of his hand. He wasn’t a sentimental man. That wasn’t how his own father had raised him. But he’d sworn all his life he wouldn’t be his father, only to go and be exactly that—cold, distant, obsessed with the legends of his people and his own supposed inheritance as the rightful heir of the last true prince of Wales. He breathed in deeply, his vision blurred for a moment as he tried to stem the tears.
He would be a better man.
He would be a better father.
He would make it up to them somehow.
He took the bend without hugging the verge as tightly as he might have done but for the tears and, in turn, took the corner too quickly, narrowly missing a car coming the other way.
Their wing mirrors grazed each other, the sound amplified inside the car as his sprung in toward the car’s body, then out again after the obstruction passed.
He glanced in his mirror and saw the brake lights of the other car glowing, then it continued. A close call for both of them, but the other driver had been the one closest to slipping over the edge of the hillside. They’d been lucky. Before he saw the car disappear around the bend, though, another car emerged, following in his wake. This one came on a little more carefully, the driver obviously unfamiliar with the roads. He hadn’t seen it there before, but then he hadn’t been looking for it, either.
He could not get a clear view of the driver, but didn’t need to. He was sure it was the same make and model as the woman had been driving earlier.
But how could it possibly be her?
How could she have found him on a road like this?
What was she even doing out at this time of night? He’d lost track of time but it had to be gone midnight.
Looking for him?
Waiting for him?
If that was the case, surely that meant she knew where he lived.
So, was she with the police? That would explain how she’d tracked him down from the rest stop, using his license plate to follow a trail of bread crumbs back to the house. It didn’t really matter—she’d found him twice, but he had no intention of letting her catch him, even if he had to keep running.
He didn’t want to hear the anger in Geraint’s voice again.
He didn’t want to hear how he’d ruined their lives.
He couldn’t bear it.
Owen Llewellyn blinked again and saw the dead priest, his robes burned black and the flesh beneath still smoldering, standing in the middle of the road. He wasn’t there. He couldn’t be. He drove straight through the middle of his guilt-formed hallucination. It didn’t fade. Neither did the car in the rearview.
He floored the accelerator, even though he knew the road was dangerous; he had the advantage over her. He knew where the bends were. He knew just how sheer the cliffs were and how tight the road hugged them. He knew how high they were climbing and he knew what lay around each blind corner. She didn’t.
The conditions were treacherous.
The blacktop slick.
It was a lethal combination.
A thought began to emerge from the darkness, something from deep down that went against every emotion he had been experiencing. He was better than this woman, whoever she was. He was Owen Llewellyn, son of Wales. He didn’t have to answer to her. His fear evaporated.
There was no room for remorse. He had killed a man. It had been necessary. He could kill again.
He didn’t have the sword with him, but it had awoken something that had been lying dormant and unbidden inside him.
That was enough.
The blood of warriors flowed in his veins.
There was a farm track just around the next bend. He stamped down on the brakes as he reached the narrow turning, pulling off the road just enough to leave her with no choice but to drive past him before coming to a halt a few yards ahead. Metal barriers lined the side of the road. They were the only indication of the sheer drop down to the valley floor below.
Owen Llewellyn kept the car in gear, kept his left foot holding down the clutch and revved the engine, ready for when she got out of her car and tried to talk him into coming in peacefully.
Chapter 21
Annja could see the driver, but there was no sign of him getting out of his car. She didn’t like that he’d engineered the situation, forcing her to drive around him to pull in. It put her on the defensive. She waited for a moment, listening to the rise and fall of his engine and realizing almost too late what Owen Llewellyn was about to do.
She shifted the hire car into first gear, wishing she’d insisted on an automatic, and pushed hard on the gas just as the car behind her started to move.
A split second slower and she would have felt the full force of the car ramming into the trunk and shunting her forward. But since she was already in motion, the laws of physics presided and the impact was reduced to little more than a jolt that nudged the hire car forward.
A jarring pain shot through her arms and into her shoulders, but then the car was moving away.
She took the middle of the road, avoiding being pushed toward the grass verges as she accelerated. She took the hire car from zero to sixty in less time than it took to say, “Watch out!” and even as she hammered into a bend too fast to possibly steer through it, the back end of the car slewed out behind her and dragged across the muddy verge.
Llewellyn closed the gap in seconds, his vehicle so much more powerful than hers. She looked back at him—manic stare, wild visage—in the rearview mirror. Ahead of her a tractor cut straight across her path, lumbering onto the road from the field as it headed toward one of the farm entrances.
She hadn’t seen it coming.
Instinctively she moved to hit the brake, but managed to stop herself, knowing it would bring Llewellyn’s car right up behind her. Instead, she wrenched down hard on the wheel and accelerated into a swerve that carried her around the tractor. She caught a glimpse of the true nature of the drop, which wasn’t a few yards down a steep embankment, but a sheer plummet of a few hundred feet. She couldn’t believe how close the farmland ran to the drop-off.
Breathing hard, Annja yanked again on the wheel, sending a spray of dirt over the side as she brought the hire car back onto the asphalt.
She didn’t want to think about how far there was to fall.
She hit the horn, hoping the noise would do something, break the moment somehow; it had already gotten entirely out of hand. He shunted her again. The road ahead widened, not much, but enough to give her a few feet either side, and straightened out as the climb became more gradual. Annja turned on her headlights, slamming the gas pedal flat to the floor, and saw the gap widen. She’d bought several precious seconds with the trick; Llewellyn mistaking her rear lights for brake lights and reacting as though she’d been slowing down, not accelerating. It was the kind of trick that would only work once. She needed to make the most of it, control the situation. She had to be the one who decided what the next move was going to be.
In the distance she saw another main road, this one cresting the hilltop. There was a steady flow of traffic. The two roads were going to meet somewhere.
She only hoped Llewellyn wouldn’t do something stupid before then. However, considering what had happened on the highway already, she revised her wish: she hoped she’d reach it before he did something stupid.
A quick glance behind in the rearview showed him gaining on her again.
He just wouldn’t go away.
Llewellyn bashed into her hard, throwing her forward against the seat belt.
He dropped off behind her again.
His face filled the rearview mirror.
The engine roared and on he came again, slamming into the back of her.
Annja felt the hire car get away from her, fighting with the wheel to keep it on the road. She couldn’t think with him ramming her every few seconds.
The phone vibrated in her pocket. She ignored it. She needed to think. Up ahead a tree had fallen during the storm, split by lightning. It had fallen across the metal crash barrier.
Llewellyn tailgated her, shoving Annja toward the fallen tree and the buckled segment of the barrier. She wrestled with the wheel, trying to skirt the debris and not look over the edge at the same time. She tried to adjust her grip, mind racing. She needed to do something. Llewellyn came again, much faster this time. It was like looking at her own death in the mirror. She couldn’t reach into the otherwhere for the sword to get her out of this. She wasn’t any more blessed or special than any other crash victim, and if Llewellyn’s car slammed into hers again she was going over the cliff and there’d be nothing she could do about it. Her heightened reflexes wouldn’t save her from the fall. Once she went over that edge she was dead.
At the last moment, with Owen Llewellyn’s mad face filling her rearview mirror, Annja turned the wheel hard, throwing the hand brake so the turn became a spin—one-eighty, three-sixty and around again. The landscape spun by in a dizzy spiral, and then came the crunching impact that deployed her air bag, powder burning up her wrists as she clung on to the wheel. The momentum threatened to take the hire car up onto two wheels, but it stayed on the road.
The shriek of tires and squeal of metal didn’t stop when she stopped spinning.
Metal ground on metal, the two cars locked together like two beasts fighting for supremacy. Annja saw the expression of horror on Owen Llewellyn’s face as he fought to maintain control of his car, but he was fighting a losing battle. Even as it tore free of hers, his car slid across the wet grass, unable to get any sort of traction in the thick mud it was churning up. And then there was nothing to grip as, almost in slow motion, the car slipped over the edge and was gone, leaving Annja alone on the road, shaking and scared.
The air bag pinned her in her seat. She reached for the handle and cranked the door open, falling out. She stood, but walked unsteadily toward the barrier and looked down.
She couldn’t see the wreck at first, because she wasn’t looking far enough down the hillside. The car had gone end over end like a tumbling die. Each impact crumpled the cabin smaller; it was a mess. She couldn’t save him—and knew, roles reversed, he wouldn’t have given a second thought to saving her. The drop was too sheer for her to get down to him without ropes, the damage to the car too much for him to walk away from, surely.
But she couldn’t just drive away even if he had been doing her best to kill her.
She fished her phone out of her pocket and made the call.
By the time she got back into her car, the air bag looked like a sad balloon at the end of an even sadder party.
The ignition didn’t bite at first when she turned the key, nor the second or third attempt, then finally the engine sparked to life and she sped away before the emergency services arrived at the scene. She didn’t want to answer any of their questions yet.
Chapter 22
Annja was a good liar
.
But even the best liar would have had trouble explaining away the damage to her vehicle. She could have told them she just happened to be on the same road, that she tried to help him, but they’d have to be idiots to buy that. She wasn’t looking forward to explaining it to the hire company, either, but at least they wouldn’t try and lock her up.
She drove without looking back.
She’d ask Garin for help with the damage. He was always going on about how he had “people.” Hopefully one of them was a panel beater.
She merged with the flow of traffic on the main road up ahead, hoping that any road leading south would take her back to the highway, or rather, the motorway eventually. She couldn’t get used to the quaint way the Brits called it a motorway, not a highway or a freeway. It was indicative of a bygone age when motors were so much rarer and most people traveled on foot or horse and cart. But then, they called rest stops “service stations,” and grilled cheese “cheese-on-toast.” They were weird like that, the Brits.
The first sign she hit promised Caerleon and Caerphilly were dead ahead.
It was getting late and she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. She wanted to take a walk around the outside of the castle. Hopefully there’d be some sort of takeaway in the vicinity where she could grab a bite to eat and kill two birds with one ravenous stone.
There were plenty of places to park. There was also a sandwich shop in a row of buildings opposite the castle, not that it was open.
Once she’d finally parked, she gave in to the shock. Shaking she reached for the phone. She had to talk to Garin, but she couldn’t punch in his number. Twice she triggered the wrong app before getting the dial tone.
“I think he’s dead,” she said.
“Slow down,” Garin told her. “What are you talking about? Who’s dead?”
