by Megan Tayte
There was a note of suggestion in his tone and Jude pounced on it immediately. ‘You’d better not be suggesting someone from Cerulea did this! That’s impossible. Everything we do is about respecting life, preserving it. Not ending it. And besides, none of us know Elizabeth either!’
‘Not quite true,’ Gabe pointed out. ‘You do. And so does Evangeline. And –’
‘And you do.’
‘I did once. But my point is not that you, Jude, or me, or Scarlett, or Sienna, or Evangeline or any other Cerulean or Vindico did this. My point is that none of us did it. This darkness – we don’t have it in us. We’re people of honour.’
‘Honour!’ Jude scoffed. ‘You?!’
‘Yes,’ said Gabe firmly, ‘honour. As will be clear to you today as you learn how we work here.’
Jude snorted, folded his arms and looked away.
‘So it’s a dead end,’ I said bleakly. ‘The police can’t find a shred of evidence, and we have nothing to go on. Unless Mum wakes up and tells us what happened, he’ll get away with it. He’ll get away with it!’
‘You know,’ said Luke, ‘Holmesian deduction –’
‘Sorry?’ Gabe cut in.
Luke coloured a little. ‘Sherlock Holmes. Famous for his logical approach to detecting.’
‘Ah. I see. Go on.’
‘Well, if you look at it logically, as Holmes would, the question of who did it breaks down into several other questions that are, individually, perhaps easier to answer.’
‘Like?’ said Jude.
‘Like was the attack random or planned? Was it meant to hurt or to kill? Was the attacker a stranger or someone known to her? Was the attacker, as you say, a he – or in fact a she? But most importantly, what was the motive? Why exactly did someone hurt Elizabeth?’
My eyes had filled up during the course of his speech. ‘I don’t know!’ I burst out. ‘I can’t think of anyone who’d want to hurt Mum! She was – she is – she’s…’
Luke squeezed my hand. ‘She’s a lovely lady,’ he finished for me. ‘Who didn’t deserve to get hurt.’
I scrubbed an errant tear with a napkin. ‘There must be something we can do.’
‘We’re trying, Scarlett,’ Gabe said. ‘Sienna’s searching the lodge again today. And the manor house.’
Oh. So that was the ‘job’ for the day. Much less murderous than I’d envisioned.
‘She’s searching it again?’ Jude said.
‘Yes, again. Sienna’s spent a lot of time there this past week, searching. She’s sure the answer lies on that estate.’
‘And what has she found so far?’ I asked.
Gabe said nothing; he just shook his head.
‘Great.’ I sat back in my chair. ‘Like I said, dead end.’
I didn’t repeat my depressing conviction that Mum’s attacker was going to get away with it. But I thought it, and Luke must have seen the agony in my eyes.
‘When it comes to the truth,’ he said firmly, ‘there is no dead end. We will get there.’
I knew he was talking about more than Mum now – he was talking about shining a light on all the shadows.
I looked at Gabe. He was watching us closely.
‘You’re right,’ I said to Luke, though I kept my eyes on our host. ‘Truth will out.’
Gabe met my challenge unflinchingly. If anything he looked… moved?
‘Scarlett,’ he said, ‘you’re more my daughter than you can possibly imagine.’
‘Because you’re all about truth?’
My father smiled. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact. And by the end of this day, I’ll have proved that to you.’
Show, don’t tell: the golden rule of writing, of toddlers exhibiting undecipherable paintings and, apparently, of the Fallen when it came to inducting an outsider into their way of life. I had expected our ‘induction’ to involve Jude, Luke and me sitting safely in the penthouse apartment, navigating a lengthy lecture delivered by the all-powerful Gabe. Not so. My father had another plan. We were to spend time with those who lived and breathed the Fallen ethos. Alone, apparently.
‘You’re not coming? You’re just throwing us to the wolves?’ I protested hotly as Gabe accompanied us down in the lift to the fifteenth floor where, he’d just explained, we’d be parting company.
My father’s lips quirked. ‘That’s one way to see it.’
‘But these people are…’ Jude spluttered. ‘I mean, is this safe?’
‘You’ll be safer here than anywhere in the country. Possibly the world.’
I caught Luke’s eye. He cleared his throat and tried the polite approach. ‘This is your place, your setup, Gabe,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you best showing us around?’
‘Don’t you want the truth?’ Gabe asked seriously. When we all nodded, he said: ‘But one man’s truth is only one version of the truth. You need more than that – others’ truths, given freely. Then you can make up your own minds.’
I saw the wisdom. I recognised the faith he had in his world that meant he’d let us poke and probe. I appreciated his openness: such a stark contrast to his rivals on Cerulea. But there was no denying that I felt very shaky about going it alone. Gabe was not a man I’d like to run into down some gloomy back alley at night, but at least with him at our side, I felt somewhat protected in this dark and dangerous world.
‘Don’t worry,’ added Gabe cheerfully. ‘I’m not leaving you entirely alone.’
‘Oh?’ I said hopefully.
‘I’ve got just the guy to act as tour guide for you.’
‘Oh,’ I said far less hopefully as the doors slid open to reveal said tour guide.
He was waiting for us, leaning against the wall opposite the lift and examining a gruesome-looking gash on his forearm. Like Gabe, he wasn’t a guy I’d like to run into down some gloomy back alley at night. I knew this for a fact, because I’d met him already in such circumstances. Twice. And both times he’d been quite calmly doing extensive physical damage to a frightened and cornered human.
‘Morning all,’ said Daniel easily.
‘Morning,’ said Gabe. He nodded at the younger man’s arm. ‘Rough job?’
Daniel shrugged. ‘Nothing I couldn’t handle.’
Beside me, Luke had taken a sharp breath and gripped my hand – he knew the name Daniel; he knew this was my sister’s accomplice in the murder I’d witnessed.
‘On you go,’ said Gabe brightly, apparently oblivious to any tension around him. He gave Jude a little push in the small of his back – little but strong enough to eject him from the lift.
Jude turned to glare daggers at him, and Luke’s grip on my hand crossed from uncomfortable to bone crunching. Clearly, we were heading for an altercation.
I stepped out of the lift, pulling Luke with me. I figured one of us had to look up for the challenge, even if that one was, I suspected, the most trembly-kneed of us all. I mean, Daniel was a giant – taller even than Luke – with wolf-like amber eyes and a physique that spelled danger. (Literally. It was tattooed onto his forearm in capital letters just above the gory wound.) But even while my instincts screamed Killer! Run!, logic dictated that Daniel was no threat to us.
I heard the doors start to close behind me, and Gabe’s last words – ‘Keep an open mind’ – and then I heard nothing but four people breathing, one calmly, three somewhat heavily.
‘So,’ said Daniel, politely ignoring the fact that Luke, Jude and I were huddled a good distance from him and hadn’t managed to utter a single word yet. ‘I’m Daniel. Joined the Vindicos when I was thirteen, and lived here ever since. Started out healing, and worked my way up to Enforcer.’
‘Enforcer?’ said Luke.
‘Someone who does the enforcing.’
‘You mean you rough people up and kill them – that’s your job?’
‘Pretty much. Plus investigating. Rooting out the lowlifes and pervs and seriously disturbed. You know.’
‘We don’t, actually,’ said Jude.
‘Lucky you,’ Dan
iel replied easily. ‘They’re no picnic, these freaks.’
‘You call them freaks,’ Jude muttered.
I dug an elbow into his ribs; subtext: Cool it!
But like Gabe, Daniel didn’t seem remotely offended by any label put on him.
‘Yeah, I felt the same back when Gabe first found me. Kind of freaky to make a living doling out corporal punishment.’
‘Murder. You murder people.’
‘If that’s how you want to term it then yes, occasionally.’
Clear amber eyes were locked on grey stormy ones.
‘So,’ I said, stepping between Jude and Daniel, ‘shall we…’
‘Yeah,’ said Daniel, ‘let’s go meet some more murderers.’
Without waiting for a response, he turned and flung open the wooden door behind him and strode into the room beyond.
‘This is the hub, as we call it. For meetings. Socialising. Chilling. Eating together – all that,’ he shouted over his shoulder. He had to shout. The room was alive with noise.
Curiosity won out over trepidation, and I followed him, leaving Jude and Luke, at either side of me, no choice but to match my stride.
We weren’t moving for long, though. At the threshold, we juddered to a halt.
The space beyond was vast – every internal wall had been removed so that the single room spanned the entire floor of the apartment block. Furniture groupings marked out different sections: a kitchen and dining area; various seating arrangements, from the quiet to the corporate-looking; a cluster of sofas and armchairs angled towards a colossal wall-mounted TV screen; a roped-off area by a mirrored wall that looked like a cross between a boxing ring and a yoga studio; and a kids’ zone, with funky rugs and squishy beanbags and a wide range of colourful toys for all ages.
But it wasn’t the room itself that had our feet rooted to the floor. It was the people. Male, female. Old, young. White, black. Trendy, geeky. Mainstream, alternative. It was a lively, noisy melting pot; a strange new world that was strange for the simple fact that it wasn’t, actually, strange at all.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Jude. ‘You mix with humans here?’
‘Nope,’ said Daniel, who’d resumed his leaning-against-the-wall stance.
‘They’re all Fallen?’
‘We call ourselves Vindicos, but yeah…’
Jude and I stared about in silent shock. Luke looked on politely – given that he’d never been to Cerulea, I guessed the contrast wasn’t clear to him.
I remembered my first glimpse of the Ceruleans on the island. Then, I’d been similarly frozen on a threshold of a room. But that one had contained only men of a certain age and a mere handful of women – all of them homogenous.
A loud, musical voice caught my attention. I looked to the source: a tall, black woman standing a few feet away and talking animatedly to a wily-looking teenage lad. I made out the words mauvais and souffrir and guérir. She was French?
Contrast. That was too benign a word. Compared to Cerulea, this was revolutionary.
‘It’s so… normal!’ I said. ‘Like any London scene.’
‘’Course,’ said Daniel. ‘How else would you want to live?’
Jude was gripping the doorframe as if his knees wouldn’t hold him. ‘But what do you… why is there… how…?’
‘So many questions,’ Luke said.
Daniel grinned. ‘Then let’s get you the answers. We’ll start with Mabel. She’s a riot.’
As he led us into the room, to a woman sitting in an armchair and knitting a scarf fit for a goliath, I couldn’t help reflecting that this first ‘wolf’ looked a lot like a harmless, twinkly-eyed, rosy-cheeked old lady. But then, I thought, once upon a time hadn’t Red Riding Hood made the same foolish assumption?
*
We spent the next several hours immersed in Gabriel’s world.
An old lady called Mabel explained the meaning of the Vindicos’ name: from the Latin verb vindico, meaning to avenge, to punish, to liberate and to protect. It was not Gabe’s invention, she explained, but a much older term that had been in use for thousands of years.
A man in biker leathers told us how the Vindicos saw the scope of their power: essentially, as limitless. After several instances of overruling the instinct to hold back, the instinct was lost. The scars remained, but they wore them as badges of honour.
An eager guy wearing a Star Wars t-shirt shared how he’d met Gabe in ‘the olden days’, when Gabe was just a lone, idealistic Vindico, and how he’d been so inspired by his example that he’d joined him. ‘The man is a visionary,’ he said. ‘So full of ideas – and courage.’
A woman in a sari with a toddler balanced on each hip explained that the bulk of the Vindicos’ work was, like the Ceruleans, directed at healing. Resurrection was exceptionally rare – usually entirely impossible. But not unheard of. Just recently two children had been brought back in Great Ormond Street Hospital, their cancer miraculously gone.
A guy with angel wings tattooed on his neck told us that Gabe’s Enforcers numbered only ten, and that threats were usually enough. Violence – especially to the level of taking a life – was rare, but accepted as a necessary evil.
A dreadlocked Welshman gave a recent head count for Vindico adults in the London base as a hundred, but explained that the number was often in flux. Geographical limitations were laughable. Vindicos came and went from other cities, other countries, where they had different names, sometimes different approaches, but all shared the same power.
A suit-clad woman with blinging Union Jack cufflinks told us that she was a representative on the recently formed Vindico Council, based in New York. For the past century Vindicos had been grouping together, just like Gabe’s London organisation, and calls had come for a body that would unite Vindicos worldwide. There was some debate as to whether the Council would be empowered to decide on, and enforce, universal laws.
A weathered elder with snow-white hair explained that the Vindicos were not aligned to any one religion – all interpretations of the power and its providence were welcomed and, indeed, widely discussed. Any Vindico was free to follow his or her religious faith, whatever that may be.
A groomed bloke wearing guyliner gave his view on the darker side of the Vindicos’ work. When it came to evil, he said, who was a Vindico to stand by and do nothing while a human explored the depths of depravity? Did a serial rapist, abductor and torturer of women deserve to live? Was the world a sorrier place for the loss of a rabid paedophile with a sideline in bestiality? Who would mourn the passing of a woman who’d beaten and burned and starved her son systematically for so long that beneath his worn and ill-fitting clothes he was nothing but bones and scars?
A French lady named Isobel gave her take on the Cerulean way: ‘You’re ’earts are in ze right place, but you are cut off on your little island from ze big, wide world. Lonely. Ze sacrifices you make – Gabriel ’as told us. Zey are noble, but not necessary. It is a shame your leader limits you so.’
A wiry man in surgical scrubs explained how it was that Vindicos were such a varied group: their means of creation was far wider than that of the Ceruleans. Some were direct descendants of Vindicos, like the little girls and boys running about the room. The odd few were Ceruleans turned Vindicos. But many, many hadn’t been born to be a Vindico, but called to it: they’d died and awoken Vindicos, like the First World War soldiers George and Arthur and William and Henry from the Cerulean origins story. The white-haired man, who’d been a priest in what he termed his ‘past life’, was one such Vindico.
A curvaceous teenage girl performing ballet stretches explained how the members of the community worked as collectors of sorts. In the course of their healing work, they naturally stumbled across lone Vindicos using their powers. They also sought out newbies, largely through analysing news items. Some of the new Vindicos they found chose to remain alone, but most were eager to join others and have a sense of belonging.
Finally, an earnest five-year-old called Ma
rcus told us ‘The Big Rule What We All ’Ave to Follow’: be true. ‘Gabeeall has a fing ’bout that,’ he explained. ‘Once I telled my mummy that I didn’t make the dog in the park all better, only I did make the dog in the park all better, and she knew that I did make the dog in the park all better and that I didn’t be true, and she said I couldn’t watch my TV show I like for A WEEK. And she took me to see Gabeeall and he talked all about be true and then you can never go wrong. So the next time I made an animal all better I telled the troof, and I got to watch SpongeBob SquarePants, which is the best TV show ever. You see?’
And we did see – that, and so much more. So much, in fact, that once Luke and Jude and I had said our best polite goodbyes and thank you’s to everyone (Daniel included) and retreated to the lift, we all reached out to hit the button marked Ground floor: exit at the same time.
The aptly named Waterside was right on the River Thames at Imperial Wharf, just a couple of minutes’ walk from Gabe’s apartment block. It called itself a bar and kitchen, and clearly little expense had been spared in the funky decor designed to appeal to the young professionals who spilled through the door. But it was fundamentally nothing more than a pub, as familiar and comfortable a setting as any British public house on a Saturday afternoon. Just the place to reset with a dose of normality.
We sat at a table with high-backed sofa-style seats that gave the feeling of a booth. Near the bar and out in the open, it wasn’t a private spot. That was fine. We were done with seclusion.
Jude and Luke decided a stiff drink was in order, and got beers in tall, slim glasses that looked like vases. I opted for a ‘Chocolate Cake’ mocktail, figuring Cara would approve. I had no idea what the ingredients were, but it certainly went down easily.
The debrief was inevitable. Jude was white-faced and silent. I’d said little more than ‘Mind melt, total mind melt’ since leaving the fifteenth floor. Luke, altogether less shocked, kicked us off.
