Down and down she ran, hurtling down the stairs as fast as her bulk allowed. There was no dark now. The fire was orange and red and seemed to have only one thought in mind. It wanted her. It wanted Roxy.
‘A bad master.’ No servant at all.
It would not be controlled or told what to do. It had come alive, turned into something terrifying.
Yet still not as terrifying as the Dyces.
Where were they now?
She was on the first floor, and already the fire was beginning to rage above her. Surely, the panic would have started. The Dyces would be running, hopefully too busy to even think about her.
Look for her.
Or were they caught in the flames on the floors above?
Roxy was breathless, exhausted, but she had to keep going. No time to stop, already smoke was following her, drifting relentlessly after her. She heard a scream, then another, screeching into the summer night. One of the girls, alerted, was now warning the others. Good. She wanted none of them hurt in this.
Part of her wanted to run out of the house then, forget lighting the last fire on the servants’ staircase. She didn’t need it. The fire was eating the house, growing stronger, chasing her, blazing with anger now.
Yet she still couldn’t take the chance. This had to be the biggest blaze ever. One that could be seen for miles. Roxy gathered sticks and broken bits of furniture, pulled curtains from walls and pictures with their wooden frames, piled them high on the stairs, on the floor, leading down to the bottom corridor. She would break the window on that corridor and get out that way. Not through the door behind the table. It was too risky going that way. The Dyces might just be there, waiting for her. They would show her no mercy. No, she would make her escape through the window, and then it would be a mad race to the shelter of the long grass. She took a deep breath and prayed, and then she dropped the last of the matches, striking not just one, but two, three in her excitement.
She longed to get into the open air, fill her lungs and run as far from this house as she could. She would wait in the grass for the fire brigade to come, as surely they must. The police would be with them. Oh, how she longed for that moment. Ready for questions to be asked, and answered.
The last fire leapt into life and Roxy stumbled back from it, her heart racing, her stomach heavy. ‘Soon we’ll rest, baby.’ She said it softly. ‘Soon.’
The house was ablaze. No stopping it now. Roxy stood for a moment, fascinated, feeling the heat envelop her, the smoke reaching out for her.
She could hardly breathe. Her eyes were smarting so badly she could hardly see. She had to get out of here. Now. A sudden leap of flame made her jump, brought her out of her stupor. She moved, looking around and wishing she had broken that window before she dropped the matches. Yet, how could she? The smashing of glass might have alerted the Dyces before she had the chance to run to any kind of safety. This had been the only way.
She ran to the window. It looked out on to the back of the house and out and on to the fields. She could make them out through the cracks in the shutter. She glanced back, expecting to see the fire rushing at her, searching her out with its tongues of flame, its licking fingers. Sending out smoke to weaken her first. She grabbed at the shutters, and pulled.
Nothing happened.
No. This couldn’t be. The shutters stayed closed. In every other floor they practically fell off in her hands, dry splintered wood, weak with age. Yet here, when she needed them to break open most, they were jammed tight. Could she make it to the next window? No. The fire would reach there first, and anyway, would the shutters there give any easier? She was growing frantic, grabbing, pulling at them, ignoring splinters and blood, pulling with a strength she didn’t know she had. She was desperate to survive, desperate to save her baby. Now she had another enemy. One of her own making. The fire. It didn’t care who its victim was. But it must have a sacrifice.
Suddenly, she roared, ‘It’s not going to be us!’ She yelled it through the flames and the smoke. She screamed it like a demon, and in that second the shutters broke open. She fell back, scrabbled to her feet, gripped the window sill to pull herself up and over. She punched at the glass with both hands. ‘We’re getting out!’ she told her baby. ‘We’re getting out of here.’
The glass smashed, and though her hands were bleeding, she didn’t feel any pain. She climbed on to the sill. The sky was burnt orange, it was like the brightest golden sunset. The air hung with the acrid smell of smoke.
‘Please, let all of the girls be safe,’ she prayed. Then she jumped on to the grass. Her dress caught on a nail, but she yanked it free and she ran towards the long grass. She could hear screams coming from the front of the house, in the distance, but they came from the open air. The girls were outside, had to be. She didn’t stop running or look back until she was hidden from view, throwing herself on to the ground. She was exhausted. She turned on her back and watched Dragon House burn. There would be nothing left of it. Already its blazing windows were like gaping red eyes. The roof timbers were alive with fire and the sky was aflame.
Nothing would be left of it. Good.
And in the distance … could she hear the sound of a siren wailing closer?
Surely she could. That couldn’t be her hopeful imagination.
Roxy tried to sit up. Now she felt the pain, in her bleeding hands, on her raw face, in her aching back. She gasped as a spasm gripped her and held her in a vice for a moment before letting her go.
But she knew it would be back.
She knew then she had something more than the fire to worry about.
She was in labour.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
No! She couldn’t be in labour – not now, not yet. She wasn’t safe yet. Here, she was alone – and she was afraid. She tried to stand up when another spasm of pain tightened its grip on her. What was she going to do now? This wasn’t fair. If only the fire brigade were here now, instead of somewhere in the distance, wailing closer. Please, hurry. She fell on her knees as if in prayer, saw figures running frantically round the house, silhouetted against the fire. She needed help, but not from them. She would be back in the Dragons’ lair if she stepped out of the long grass and signalled for help. They’d take her baby, kill her baby, kill her.
No, she had to stay here. The fire brigade were on their way, she held on to that. More than one would come to a fire like this with its tentacles shooting out, reaching for anything that would burn. Already the grass was on fire and the trees nearest the house were ablaze. She could feel the intense heat even here. Her doing, this fire destroying Dragon House.
Destroy it, then! she screamed silently. I want it destroyed.
She gasped as she saw Dragon Woman appear, trying to herd the girls together, trying to keep them from panicking. She couldn’t do it and Roxy was glad. The girls couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell them. The only thing they did understand was fire. The same in any language. They pulled away from her screaming. Then Roxy bent double as another pain racked its way through her. Coming so often? What did that mean? That her baby would soon be born? Not now, it was too soon. She still had a month to go. And not here, not while Dragon Woman could still grasp her baby from her.
She watched Dragon Woman look all around her. Was she looking for Dragon Man, her husband, or was it Roxy she still searched for?
As the siren wailed closer Roxy could see, even from the distance, the panic on Dragon Woman’s face. No mistaking now. Soon, soon help would come. Help she could trust. In her sudden panic, Dragon Woman began pushing, herding the girls into the jeep. Roxy knew what she was going to do. She was going to get away before the firemen came. She was going to take as many of the girls as she could, protect their investment, even now. Take some of the girls for their vile evil purposes, take them somewhere else, to some other Dragon House and it would all start again.
Roxy had to stop that. But how? She was growing weaker with every contraction. She let out a low moan as yet
another gripped her. Her baby, eager to get out. He would be here soon. But she couldn’t let them get away to trick another Anne Marie, to take another Aidan. She wouldn’t let them get away.
Dragon Woman was piling, pushing girls into the jeep, and the girls were fighting for a place, thinking it was safety they were going to. If she didn’t think of something soon they would get away.
Roxy staggered to her feet. There was only one way to stop her. She began heading for Dragon Woman. The fire engines were close, so close they had to be here on time. But if Dragon Woman saw her, it would hold her up just long enough for them to arrive.
One of the girls saw Roxy first. She started screaming and gesturing wildly, pulling at Dragon Woman, pointing to Roxy as she staggered closer. Dragon Woman looked up and her eyes flashed with hate and anger.
‘You little …’ Dragon Woman screamed at her, jumped from the jeep. She was coming at her, anger roaring from her like the fire. Roxy turned then and she began to run. She ran towards the fire engines wailing closer, but she knew Dragon Woman was faster than she was. Dragon Woman was after her now.
Then Roxy saw them. She could have screamed with happiness. Three fire engines, their headlights beaming at her, advancing like great red monsters come to fight the Dragons. She began shouting, screaming, waving her arms about madly. Still she could hear mad Dragon Woman closing in on her. Ignoring everything in her thirst for revenge on Roxy. She would kill her even then, somehow Roxy knew that. But Roxy was going to make it. Her baby was going to make it.
She ran into the path of the first fire engine. It had to screech to a halt as she stood in front of it.
A fireman jumped to the ground and ran to her, caught her just as she crumpled to the ground. He looked from Roxy to the woman running behind her.
‘Evil,’ Roxy murmured. ‘She’s evil. They’re all evil.’
Dragon Woman threw herself on the ground beside her. ‘Where’s Alfred!’ she screamed at Roxy, trying to pull her from the fireman’s arms. ‘What have you done with Alfred?’
She would have shaken the life from her if the fireman hadn’t pulled her hands away.
‘What’s going on here?’ he yelled.
‘Where is he?’ Dragon Woman screamed again.
Roxy turned her eyes to the blaze, raging through the house. Sparks and flames rose to the midnight sky. Not a room, not a corner would escape that inferno. Dragon Woman followed her gaze and let out a roar like a wild animal. Roxy knew then that he had been in there searching for her. Was he still there now? Trapped in the fire. Trapped with the body of Stevens? Roxy had a picture of Dragon Man running, trying to find a way out, enveloped in fire.
‘Alfred!’ Dragon Woman screamed, pushing Roxy from her and running towards the house. One of the fireman was after her, holding her back, though she struggled wildly screaming her husband’s name over and over.
Roxy watched her unemotionally. Well, she thought, at least there was something she loved.
‘How are you doing?’ the fireman asked her.
She clutched at his arm. Was there ever a face so kindly? Here at last, a smile she could trust.
‘Help me,’ she said. ‘I think I’m going to have my baby.’
Chapter Thirty
Even as Roxy lay there in the fireman’s arms, Dragon Woman was trying to concoct some crazy story to explain a houseful of pregnant, foreign young girls. Trying to convince them that her husband had perished in a fire losing his own life to save Roxy, not kill her. A story to make the firemen and then the police (when they arrived) believe that the Dyces were caring, philanthropic people. Philanthropic. Roxy was sure that was the word she had used.
No one believed her. It was too late for the Dyces. There were no real explanations for the girls who clambered out of the jeep, frightened, bewildered, unable to speak any English.
‘Evil,’ was the only word Roxy had the strength to say, and then she couldn’t say any more. Her baby was coming. And all she wanted was her own mother, there with her, to comfort her, to hold her hand.
Roxy’s baby was born in an ambulance. Roxy was hardly aware of who was there or what was happening. She wasn’t even aware any more of the pain. She was too overcome with a blessed feeling of relief. She was safe. She had saved her baby.
She had to wait two more days to see her mother. Two more days too in which she learned just how evil the Dyces really were.
Roxy knew then she’d been wrong again, as she had been wrong so often before.
The Dyces weren’t witches.
There are worse things than witches.
Witches are a storybook fantasy. What the Dyces had been doing was real-life horror, worse than anything Roxy could ever have imagined. Whose evil mind had come up with the trade they were involved in?
When Roxy had been told what she had saved herself from, and not just her own baby, but all those other girls’ babies too, she had hugged her son – this tiny thing who relied on her totally – close against her, as if even now the Dyces might reach out and snatch him from her.
The Dyces had been selling the babies, but not for adoption. They had been selling them for their organs. ‘Harvesting their organs’, was the way the police had explained it to her during one of the many interviews she had with them. Harvesting, such a beautiful word, debased, abused by the nightmare use the Dyces had made of it. The Dyces were killing their babies for their organs. They had been involved in a black-market trade for babies’ organs, sold by unscrupulous people for profit. Used for transplants, operations and research. And then they were sending the girls back on the streets to get pregnant again, so the whole nightmarish process could begin once more.
Roxy had put her hands over her ears to blot out the words, couldn’t bear to hear any more. She couldn’t take in the magnitude of what they had done, to Babs’s baby, and Agnes’s. What they had done to Sula’s. They’d never had any intention of sending her home. She was an investment they could make money from again. The police assumed that when Sula had realised this, she had fought for all she was worth, and that had sealed her fate.
‘And Aneeka?’ Roxy had asked.
‘We’ve found Aneeka,’ they told her. It seemed that Aneeka had been at Dragon House before, had been told then that her first baby had died. Back on the streets, pregnant again, she realised too late what the Dyces had really done, and planned to do again.
They had taken all the babies and killed them.
‘How does anybody kill a baby?’ she had asked the policewoman who had told her the whole horrifying story.
‘There are evil people in the world, Roxy. And this was a worldwide organisation. With your help we’ve tracked it to Italy, stopped it. These people were on the lookout for vulnerable young girls, usually illegal immigrants, migrant workers – the kind who have no one to turn to, no rights under the law – and then they made them believe they were actually helping them.’ The policewoman had paused then, taken a deep breath, as if even recounting it made her feel faint, too disgusted to carry on. ‘All they wanted was for the girls to grow strong healthy babies inside them, and when they were born they were taken away from them. It was a sick, evil industry, but you can pride yourself on the fact that you helped stop it, Roxy. Mrs Dyce and the rest of them will go to prison for a long, long time.’
Not long enough, Roxy thought bitterly. Too late for Anne Marie, and for little Aidan as well. That was all she could think about. How could Anne Marie bear this news when she heard it? And she would hear of it. It was in all the papers. And where was Anne Marie now?
‘Did Mrs Dyce do all this because she’d had a baby adopted?’ Roxy had asked, remembering the story Mrs Dyce had told her.
That was when she had found out the real truth about the Dyces.
‘Oh, there was a baby, Roxy,’ the policewoman explained, ‘but it wasn’t adopted. It died. According to Mrs Dyce, because there was no transplant available. It made her very bitter.’
Roxy leapt to her feet at that.
‘That’s not an excuse!’ she shouted. ‘They won’t let her use that as an excuse, will they?’ For Roxy had a vision of some clever lawyer getting Mrs Dyce off, and that old witch’s smug smile as she left the court room, a free woman.
The policewoman assured her. ‘No, Roxy. No chance of that. Nothing could justify such evil. The Dyces had been arranging illegal adoptions for a long time before they became involved in this. As far as we understand, Dragon House, as you call it, was chosen especially because of its isolation. Set up especially for its evil purpose.
And now it was destroyed, Roxy thought. And she was glad.
The policewoman went on. ‘No, the Dyces were mainly motivated by money, lots of it. That, and a hatred for the girls they were dealing with. “Lowlifes”, she called them, who were bringing more lowlifes into the world.’
Roxy had been sick then. Couldn’t stop herself. Sick that anyone could look at her baby, her beautiful baby, any beautiful baby, and think of it as a lowlife.
Roxy cried when her mother arrived with Jennifer. She had so much to explain, so much to apologise for.
But as soon as her mother stepped into the hospital room she ran to Roxy and hugged her. No explanations were necessary. No apologies. And suddenly, Roxy understood that too. She was a mother herself now, and knew she would always understand and forgive her own child. Jennifer forgave Roxy too, immediately. The baby saw to that. She rushed to his crib.
‘Can I hold him? He is gorgeous. Look at his beautiful eyes.’
They wouldn’t listen to her mumbled words of apology. All they wanted was Roxy and her baby.
Roxy named him Andrew, after her father. How proud he would have been of his little grandson, and Roxy swore she would set about making them both proud of her too.
Yet, if everyone loved Andrew, Andrew adored Paul. Clutching his finger with a tiny fist, gurgling happily whenever Paul would lift him. And Paul adored him too, and Roxy tried to accept that and enjoy it for her mum’s sake.
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