Chosen
(the first part of the Chosen Few trilogy)
by
David Leadbeater
Copyright © 2011 by David Leadbeater
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher/author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
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Other books by David Leadbeater
The Bones of Odin
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DEDICATION
For Erica, my amazing wife, and Keira and Megan, my beautiful daughters.
1
NEW YORK CITY - U.S.A.
The lights went out.
Johnny Trevochet’s breath froze in his throat
A hush fell over Madison Square Garden; a hush laced with so much tension and suppressed excitement he had never experienced the like of it before. The rock group Supernatural were about to kick off a kick-ass concert, and the anticipation was palpable.
Amidst the whispers, the whistles, and the rising wave of noise he turned to smile at his wife, Natalie. This simple act was harder than he could ever have imagined before the accident that took away the use of his legs and destroyed his acting career. The wheelchair didn’t give like normal seating. He had to turn his entire body like a damn robot.
“Hey, Johnny,” she winked and leaned forward to whisper in his ear. “Remember Harvard?”
His discomfort slipped away as a rare smile came to his lips and he remembered a day more than ten years ago. A day when smiles came naturally, before Fate took its greedy bite out of him. It had been one of those unforgettable Boston, Massachusetts, mid-Autumn days: a bracing wind, a crisp golden light that splintered through the trees, and the promise of winter snapping at the air.
“Remember what?” he teased her and delighted in the way she threw back her head to laugh. It was his greatest pleasure, watching his wife laugh. It was the reason he hadn’t taken the easy way out after a drunken attorney put an end to his acting career one snowbound New York night.
Natalie leaned in closer, her words falling like drops of honey. When her lips brushed against his ear, tingles spread from his brain to his toes, never mind the goddamned paralysis. Then, Supernatural made a high-level appearance, and the rest of her sentence was lost in uproar.
Powerful chords of rock music drowned out everything except the spectacle of light and dancing that erupted before them. People rushed to the front of the stage. Due to his recent disability and his luminary reputation, Johnny had been able to secure front row ‘disabled-area’ tickets to the gig, the hottest of the year. He had heard that Supernatural were the new wave; an all-girl rock group who knew how to play, how to write, and sure as hell knew how to dress.
He stared for a moment, then blinked, swallowed, and pretended he hadn’t been staring. “Good. . .erm. . .start,” he shouted.
Natalie raised her eyebrows, still laughing, and again he was catapulted back to Boston. One evening, in the gardens of one of the quieter halls, they had enjoyed a picnic of cheese and wine whilst hiding themselves away among the shedding trees. They had taken blankets too, and had spent the night there, keeping the cold at bay with each other’s bodies, toasting Chardonnay to the frosted stars, and making the conversation of two people who knew they were destined to be with each other beyond youth and into old age. It had been the best night of both their lives.
Johnny was dragged back to the present as the first song came to a rowdy end and the lead singer of Supernatural, Emily Crowe- a dynamic girl with raven-coloured locks, shouted: “CAN YOU HEAR ME?” in a booming voice that belied her size.
The crowd responded immediately, Johnny and Natalie included, roaring their approval. Without delay, Supernatural launched into their second song, electric guitars screamed, and the drummer went into a frenzy. Johnny let the atmosphere take him. After all, he thought, if you couldn’t forget your worries at a rock concert, along with twenty thousand like-minded people, you might as well be dead. You might as well have breathed your last on that snow-ridden street.
The crescendo of noise swelled around him. People were dancing in the aisles. He turned to Natalie.
“I wish. . .I just wish. . .” he shouted, and then a crushing sadness fell over him, causing a break in his voice.
“I wish I could take you to Central Park after this,” he said. “I wish I could take you ice skating.”
He saw his own hurt reflected in Natalie’s eyes. And then the sudden strength. And the belief. “One day,” she said, then added “Spanky.”
And just like that she made him smile. ‘Spanky’ was her pet name for him. A few years ago, the producers of his soap-opera had green-lighted a humorous spanking scene with his pretty female co-star. He had come home sheepish; terrified his wife would be angry at him for agreeing to do it. Instead she had fallen about laughing and had never let him forget it.
Now, he leaned forward, trying to ignore the wheelchair’s restrictions. “If I said you could go anywhere this summer, see anything in any part of the world, where would you choose?”
They were silent for a moment, as the music rolled and swelled around them. Supernatural’s lead singer strutted back and forth not ten feet away, slightly elevated on stage, chomping so hard at her microphone Johnny wondered if it was made of cookie dough.
“You’d think I might say Boston,” Natalie said at last when the music stilled. “But I’m thinking something different. England, I think. And not London. There are supposed to be castle walls in York you can follow right around the city.”
At that moment, Johnny experienced a peculiar sensation. He had the nauseating sense everything around him suddenly receded and then returned instantly, like some special-effects trick. Time seemed to shift, as if one moment hadn’t quite melded with the next. His head started spinning. It happened so fast he couldn’t be sure anything had happened at first, but then the sick expression on Natalie’s face and the confused commotion all around him confirmed it.
What the-?
The music faded. A guitar barked discordantly. On stage, Emily Crowe and her leather-clad lead guitarist stared at each other and then into the crowd.
“Johnny. . .” Natalie sounded puzzled.
“Shhh. . .” Johnny held up a hand as a new sound arose. A terrible knowledge hit him. He struggled to turn around in his chair.
“Oh my God!”
Behind them, twenty thousand people had begun to stampede.
***
This can’t be happening. My God, not now.
Johnny Trevochet turned back to his wife.
Natalie sat frozen, her face white with fear.
A terrible undulating wave of noise swept through the Garden. Johnny knew that sound. It was the primordial sound of terror. The sound of a speeding car breaking your legs.
He snapped his head to the left when the swell of people smashed some unfortunates against the stage. Screaming and the sound of crushing bodies rent the air. Up on stage, the members of Supernatural watched in horror. Johnny saw their bodyguards rush on and begin to drag them away. The lead guitarist ran back to her micr
ophone, shouting something that was lost in the mad cacophony of human terror that rose like a killer wave.
“The stage!” he screamed at Natalie. She didn’t respond, so he got right up in her face. “The stage! Get us up on the fucking stage!”
Natalie snapped out of it and began to drag him forward. Around them other people were clambering and struggling in the same direction. The stage was eerily deserted now, lit by a single spotlight and strewn with wires and instruments. Johnny shook his head in disgust. If the members of Supernatural or their bodyguards had elected to hang around they might have saved dozens of lives.
Something dark was rising, he could sense it. It filled his lungs like a malignant cancer. It filled the Garden up to its rafters with malice, curdling the very air they breathed. A high-pitched wail sliced through everything. Not human, Johnny thought before his wheelchair toppled over and he landed face first on the sticky floor, amidst a plastic carnage of broken chairs, paper cups and bottles.
It was a desperate moment. He thought: this is it; this is where I get trampled to death, then Natalie was down beside him.
“Come on, Johnny,” she breathed. She hauled him up.
He blinked in disbelief at the chaos that was the Garden. To his right, uniformed guards tried to stem the stampede. Johnny saw one of them swept away in a panicked rush of bodies; he saw another elbowed in the face and trampled underfoot. He saw blood spraying from the crowd in errant patterns as if a coked-up painter had decided to decorate the Garden in crimson.
This couldn’t be happening. Denial still dulled Johnny’s wits even as a man fell snarling at his feet. Johnny reached for him, but the man kicked out, at the seats, at anything that might lever him back to his feet. Johnny stared, unable to help the man even if he’d wanted to, sitting with his back against the stage and facing the surging tide of humanity gone insane.
It was Natalie and him against them all. Natalie crouched beside him, looked him dead in the eyes. The look said it all.
“Be safe.”
She moved back, then ran and jumped, and caught the edge of the stage. In a few seconds she had hauled herself up, then rolled on to her front, wriggled to the edge of the stage and reached back down.
“Come on, Johnny!”
She caught his hands and heaved, struggling with his dead weight. Shame and humiliation rushed through him as he tried to shuffle the top part of his body over the edge of the stage. His dead legs dangled uselessly, giving him no leverage. Other people were clambering up now, some reaching back to help loved ones, some reaching back to help just anyone. Others stumbled straight for the stage exit without even a backwards glance.
Natalie hooked her hands under his arms, positioned herself so they were face to face, then heaved. Johnny could feel the strength dwindling out of her. He sensed more than felt his heavy bulk slide up onto the stage. Natalie collapsed and Johnny shuffled his head back around towards the Garden.
“Holy shit!” he muttered, biting his lip in fear, in shock, in confusion.
He stared out over the battling sea of humanity in sheer horror. The panicked screams of thousands smashed and reverberated off the walls, swelling towards the ceiling where they were swallowed by the eager darkness.
“What the hell is causing this?” he said aloud, to no one in particular.
***
The man called Loki stared out the window of his hotel room on West 34th Street, the hard approximation of a smile curling his lips as he watched the panic take hold fifteen floors below. He laughed as pathetic streams of the damned tripped and fell from the blood-soaked exits of Madison Square Garden. Their screams were muted by the triple-glazing. Shame, he thought. He itched to be among them, to feel their distress, their suffering. He laughed again, a sound lacking any trace of humour. He shook his head as the cops arrived- the so-called forces of good- red lights flashing, as if that was going to help. They had no idea what was happening. They were no match for what was coming.
“Hey, George,” a feminine voice floated from the room behind him. “Would’ya look at this,” he heard the sound of the TV as she turned the volume up. “Something’s happened at the Garden. They say it’s the worst thing since 9/11.”
Pathetic moron, he thought. Typical home-grown American bitch. The vice he never should have allowed himself, but one he indulged to help make the waiting that much sweeter. He felt nothing but contempt for her. There he watched real life and death unfold, whilst in this room she lay sprawled on the four-poster bed, clad in lace, sipping wine and watching television. It was the same the world over, he knew. Untold human hordes sat around their squawking boxes, insulated from reality, happy in their sublime ignorance, ingesting the fast food that was literally killing them. But then, why did they need real life experience when they had Hollywood blockbusters, Sony Playstations and the World Wide Web?
He padded back to her, a force of nature, his every movement seemingly effortless. He sneered at the half empty bottle of California red before turning cold, violent eyes on the girl.
He revelled in her expression of fear. His nostrils flared. This was it. This prime piece of American sweetmeat had a body like a Victoria’s Secret catwalk model: tanned skin, a flawless face, eyes that drew you in like warm, liquid gold; narrow hips, and an ass so soft and smooth it was like resting your balls on a Versace cushion.
“George,” she swallowed nervously and waved towards the TV. “Have you seen this? I really need to go,” her eyes were wide. “My brother was at this concert. He’s in there.”
“You have been fully compensated for the whole night,” he told her, lips stretched with cold mirth. He spread his hands. “After all, what do you Americans say? A deal’s a deal?”
“But…my brother-”
“Take off your robe,” he told her. “And put your head against the window. That way you needn’t miss a thing.”
He laughed as she complied. He could tell she was already exhausted from the evening’s previous efforts. He didn’t care. She meant nothing to him. She was soft candy, bought and paid for. A sack of sugar with no name. He would use her tonight, then throw her away as he continued to prepare for the coming battles that would bring Hell itself to this aimless world.
“For Gorgoroth!” he whispered into her ear as she watched distressing scenes below. She would bear witness to that what those on the ground could not- the twisting malevolent vapours that teased and trickled their way up through the Garden’s roof, drifting higher and higher into the ever-darkening New York night.
2
YORK, ENGLAND
My mobile vibrated. I fished it out of my pocket and checked the screen.
Number unlisted.
A bloom of fear spread through me. For the last twenty-three months I had sprinted for the ringing phone or the chiming doorbell, always hoping it would be Raychel getting back in touch.
I was still waiting.
“Hello?”
“Is that Mr. Dean Logan?”
The voice held that formal quality that could freeze the breath in your throat.
“Yes, it is.”
“I’m ringing about your daughter, Mr. Logan. I’m ringing about Lucy.”
Lucy?
“There has been an incident, sir.” The voice was steel, intended for the delivery of bad news. “Lucy is okay, but she cut herself tonight. I can’t go into details over the phone but could you come to York District Hospital? You may want to pick up some of her things from home first.”
I closed my eyes tight. Oh, Lucy. You’re all I have left. What have you done now?
***
As I wrenched open the door to my house, I saw my shattered face reflected in the broken mirror that dominated the hallway. Blood smeared the glass.
My daughter’s blood.
Oh, God. First I’d failed my wife, now I’d failed my daughter. I wanted to scream, to put my fist through the door. Instead I glanced at my best friend, Holly.
“Wait here.”
The
TV was blaring away to itself. I heard something about a disaster at Madison Square Garden. A high-class hooker thrown out of a twenty-storey hotel room opposite.
Holly reached out to wipe away the tears that ran down my cheeks. I blinked, unaware I‘d been crying.
“Not a chance, Dean. I’m coming with you.”
I headed straight for the stairs, then stopped and just stared. “I…I don’t know what to do.”
Lucy. My daughter had faced up to her mother’s mystifying disappearance the way a coward takes on a prize-fighter- by hitting the canvas and covering her eyes. I wished she would share. I would gladly take the pain. I blamed myself when she had cut herself the first time. But now? Had I neglected my own daughter yet again?
Would they take her away from me?
“Dean,” Holly had been around me long enough to gauge where my thoughts were heading. “Just go upstairs and pack her an overnighter. Now.”
I started up, feeling numb. I entered Lucy’s bedroom. A typical teenager’s domain, complete with the mess of books, magazines, school clothes, sports equipment, hair scrunchies, conditioner, pre-conditioner, body lotion, anti-dryness lotion, and CDs filed everywhere except in the CD rack- a room packed with my daughter’s fast-moving life, but not with her.
Holly stood before me, deliberately filling my vision. “Listen to me, Dean. This is not your fault. It’s not Lucy’s fault. It’s hers.”
Holly pointed towards one of only two framed pictures of Raychel that still remained in the house.
“Raychel left you,” Holly said. “She didn’t care about her husband or her daughter, or how her leaving would affect you both.”
I was still struggling to cope with Raychel's disappearance, and Lucy was living life with a slab of guilt fixed around her shoulders. Guilt that was unfounded, yet undiminished with the passage of time.
Chosen (The Chosen Few Trilogy #1) Page 1
