by N. J. Mercer
Rachel reached the heavy iron gate in the boundary wall of the house. She had intended to try and climb over the metal barrier, and when it opened a little as soon as she put her foot on it, she was pleasantly surprised. Maybe fate was favouring her after all she thought, unaware that it was the gate Martin and Peter Pike had melted open with acid the previous night. She heard a faint scraping sound in the distance, it was unmistakable; back in the house, someone had opened the window to her room. Seconds later, she heard voices and dared to glance over her shoulder to look back at the old building for the first time since making her escape. She saw Elizabeth leaning out of her window, squinting into the dark night; more worryingly, there were three men in black gowns running out of the front door. One of them she recognised as an odd man who visited her foster father from time to time; the other two were a mystery. All three raced into the night, undoubtedly after her. With no time to waste, she slipped out of the grounds, into the woodland around the house. As she ran, she wished she had taken a moment to close the metal gate again behind her. The three pursuing Disciples had separated and were heading towards different gates in the perimeter wall; one of them inevitably made his way towards Rachel’s exit point.
She ran panting through the woodland, pleased with herself for having had the presence of mind to put on her trainers before she escaped, the ground here was rough and uneven with dead leaf litter and protruding gnarly roots everywhere. There was shouting in the distance, she could not make out the words; it was closer than she would have liked and it prompted her to run faster. She gasped for more cold air to feed her oxygen-starved blood. One of her pursuers discovered the open gate and was calling to his companions to follow him through it. Rachel pressed on. Soon she would be at the road, and she knew that beyond it there lay a larger, denser body of woodland, one which would provide a better opportunity for concealment. Martin had told her to always keep the amulet nearby; he had insisted and she did not know why. It was a simple instruction, and whatever the reasons behind it were, there was something reassuring about holding on to the strange item.
Chapter 29
Damn, this is narrow! thought Boyd as he rode. Even the widest roads had sections that were only a little broader than a car. Later tonight, when they brought the motorhome along, it was vital that there be an absence of oncoming traffic. Or the final confrontation with the forces of evil would be lost because our camper van couldn’t get its fat arse past the traffic. He chuckled to himself at this. It also occurred to him that the isolation of these routes could work against him and his friends, say, for example, if they required medical attention, or the police, or even just a lift. He dismissed these concerns promptly with an “Aaagh, what the hell!”
Earlier, Boyd had contacted the Order to inform his superiors of the showdown tonight, and he had also put in a request for more manpower. The Aged Masters had sent their response; they had wished him well and told him they would be waiting earnestly for his next report. They had been happy to send the people he needed – unfortunately, there would not be any help arriving in time for tonight. To Boyd, already aware of the scale of Disciple activity, this had been a blow, but one from which he had already recovered.
Boyd’s eyes flicked from the road to the digital clock on his motorbike; midnight was approaching. The boys had not called him, he suspected the mobile phone signal in these parts was pretty poor, no matter; he would soon be turning back. He hoped Johnny would have returned by the time he got to the motorhome.
There was one last thing he wanted to do before retracing his steps and that was to see the house itself; get a first-hand view of the target. Now that, thought Boyd, would be truly valuable. He calculated that he could look at the building and still return by around Johnny’s midnight deadline. The maps in his memory told him there would be a left turn coming up; half a mile along it would be a narrow lane which took him past the front of Edward Devilliers’ house. He dabbed the throttle and the bike lurched forward. Boyd leaned into the curves of the road with perfect control; he was a skilful rider with years of experience and was almost touching the tarmac with his knee through the bends. Progress was good.
Suddenly, he was confronted by the unexpected. Out of the bushes ahead of him, right along the bike’s trajectory, there emerged a ghost in a white gown. His mind processed the information in a split second; he was about to collide with a small, frail-looking girl. She would not stand a chance of surviving the impending collision, especially out here, miles from any hospital. Instinct took over; he squeezed both his brakes and leaned sharply to the right, overbalancing the bike and making it hit the deck. His motorcycle plunged into a fast slide on its side. He followed a foot behind, his leather trousers and jacket skimming the surface of the road, protecting him across the abrasive tarmac. He hoped the desperate manoeuvre had altered the machine’s direction enough to avoid the girl who stood frozen before him, her eyes wide with fear.
Boyd stuck out his arm to grip the road with a gauntleted hand, trying his best to alter the course of his own slide away from the bike; he preferred ending up in a bush to an impact with almost two hundred and fifty kilograms of metal and toughened plastic. The bike caught in a roadside ditch, it flipped up and bounced off a hedge to end up lying back on the road. Much to Boyd’s relief, it had missed the girl entirely. He was soon worrying about himself again as he slid into the same ditch and made heavy contact with the soil embankment on its opposite side; his head absorbed much of the impact – and everything went black.
**
Rachel whimpered when she saw the bike heading towards her. It was travelling too fast to avoid, and her body had reflexively frozen in the middle of the road. She held her arms aloft to brace for impact in a futile, instinctive response that would have been no defence against the speeding mass; if the rider had not acted so quickly, she would not be alive. From her point of view, it was a miracle that the bike had toppled and slid away. She saw the rider land in a ditch; he looked hurt and was not moving. She thought he could be dead and wondered what to do.
Rachel was only metres away from the thick woodland across the road, all she had to do was run into it and hide; she had enough of a head start on her pursuers to do this – what about the man in the ditch? Could she just leave him there? The distant sound of snapping branches made up her mind. Leaving the rider, she ran into the trees to look for a place where she could conceal herself and catch her breath. She spotted a crop of wild, mature shrubs and decided they would provide suitable cover. She forced her way into their very centre, sustaining scratches all the way up her arms and legs and another one on the cheek. She crouched in a relatively comfortable spot amongst the lattice of branches; not only was she well hidden, she also had a view of the road where the motorbike and its fallen rider lay.
As Rachel hid, three men in loose gowns burst through the bushes on the opposite side; so afraid was she of making a sound and being seen that she almost stopped breathing. She watched the men look up and down the road as they emerged, and she saw the startled expression on their faces when they noticed the motorbike and the man in leather. They muttered amongst themselves, discussing what to do about the mysterious rider she guessed. Two of the men walked over to the downed rider, the third robed man ran across the road and into the woodland where she now hid, continuing the pursuit. Just as she had hoped, he went looking for her deep in the woods when, in fact, she lay in hiding at their very edge; convinced that he would not be able to find her, she switched her attention back to his two accomplices.
Rachel carefully watched the robed men examine the rider, and when they were sure that he was unconscious they lifted his motorbike; not to stand it up at the side of the road as one would have expected, instead, they pushed and pulled it through the bushes until it was concealed. They returned to the rider, leant over him and examined his face through the open visor; they then lifted him from the ditch and searched his clothing, retrieving a couple of items from his jacket which they closely s
crutinised. Rachel strained to see what they had; it looked like a book and, to her surprise, a gun. He had a gun, for heaven’s sake! Her heart leapt – could it be Martin? One of the men placed these items in his robe, and they started dragging the biker towards the house with his boot heels scraping along the ground behind them. Just before they were completely out of sight, they called for their companion who emerged from the trees not far from Rachel. He followed them back with a last look over his shoulder; Rachel could have sworn he made eye contact with her, but he walked on. Had they given up on the pursuit? She wasn’t surprised, the woodland where she hid was vast; however, she suspected they would soon return with help.
The night was quiet again. Rachel felt terrible; she had already abandoned her foster sisters, and now, because of her, this man who might be Martin was also being dragged off to whatever terrible events were about to take place in the house. Rachel knew she could not leave another person to the mercy of her foster father and decided to help the stranger who had crashed. She slipped out of her hiding place to follow the three men and their captive … even though it meant returning to where she had just escaped from. She did not do this only for the sake of an unconscious motorcyclist, there was also self-preservation in her actions. She realised that the woods would soon be searched thoroughly, probably focusing on the area where the motorbike had crashed – where she had been hiding. It would not be safe outdoors; her foster father had no shortage of people at his disposal. Heading back to the house, paradoxically, could be the safest thing to do.
She crept along, clutching Martin’s amulet tightly all the way. She passed the motorbike and felt the warmth radiating from its engine. Who could its rider have been? Was it Martin? A passer-by, maybe? If only they had removed his helmet instead of lifting the visor, then she could have seen his face. She followed them back to the house, always silent, always keeping a safe distance. Her dress was a grubby grey colour now – far more effective as camouflage; she was no longer a stark ghostly figure in the moonlight.
She watched as they dragged the man through the gate in the perimeter wall. She waited, and then, after plucking up all the courage she could muster, she entered the grounds of the fearful house, full of apprehension. She shifted stealthily from tree to tree. On familiar territory again, her confidence increased. She crouched behind a small, ornamental garden wall and observed. The unconscious man was being taken to the great front door of the house, it was open, and waiting inside was her foster mother.
**
Elizabeth Devilliers paced nervously in the entrance hall of her house; she bit one of her carefully manicured nails. Where are they? All they had to do was catch one teenage girl; surely it couldn’t be that difficult for three grown men. Edward had already started the ceremony, and she shuddered at the thought of disturbing him. It had taken generations of waiting for this night to arrive. He would not be happy; his rage would be monumental. Where are those three idiots?
As a precaution, she had already given Meredith and Lisa their lemonade; unlike Rachel, the virgin who had vanished into the night, they would not be going anywhere.
She felt a faint vibration in the floor beneath her and, for the first time, the distant sound of chanting was audible from where she stood, above ground. They must be coming up to full flow, she thought. Elizabeth knew that if anybody could find Rachel it would be Edward, who had command over all manner of alien beings; that, however, was not the point. At this stage of the ceremony, he was not to be distracted.
There was a commotion in the garden, Elizabeth walked over to the front door. Her heart raced as she saw the three she had sent out earlier dragging somebody back to the house. Bloody hell, I hope they haven’t hurt her, she thought. As they got closer, her mood turned sour again because she could see that it was not the girl whom they had; they were returning with a leather-clad man. She waited until they were close enough before letting them know exactly how she felt.
“Who, or what, the fuck is that?” she demanded furiously. “And where is the girl!?”
The three men shifted uneasily and glanced sideways at each other, waiting for the one who would have the courage to tell her they had lost Rachel.
“Well, what’s going on? Marshall … you tell me,” she said, pointing to the thin man with brown hair Rachel had recognised earlier.
Marshall cleared his throat. “We’re going to need help. The girl dived into those woods across the road. We need more men – and dogs – we’d better do this quickly before she gets away for good.”
“You fuckwits! So you let her get away then! The whole point of sending you three was to not disturb my husband! When the time comes, you go and tell him what happened,” Elizabeth raged. There was more uneasy shifting from the men.
“Do I have to ask you everything?” continued Elizabeth, shaking her head in disbelief. “You haven’t told me who this is yet.”
Marshall spoke up again. “We found him lying by the road; he’s got something to do with what’s going on.”
“What are you talking about? He just looks like some idiot who crashed to me … this had better be good!”
In response, Marshall handed Boyd’s holy book and small automatic pistol to Elizabeth. She handled the items curiously and scrutinised the strange runes embossed on the leather cover, so similar to the script used in some of Edward’s books.
“You may save your skins yet,” she said, handing the items back. “Take these to Edward and explain what happened. Bind him upstairs first! No doubt, my husband will want to ‘mind probe’ and I have a feeling he will make it a particularly painful one. Inform the Pharmacist!”
The Disciples dragged Boyd’s limp body into the house. Elizabeth stood alone in the front doorway beneath the portico and stared out into the night. “Where are you, Rachel?” she muttered under her breath.
Chapter 30
Hidden in the sprawling garden, Rachel watched the three men take Boyd inside. Elizabeth Devilliers remained in the doorway of her old house, staring out across the lawn – Rachel knew she must have been thinking about her, her wayward foster daughter. After what seemed like an age, Elizabeth turned around, and she also walked back into the house. Not knowing what to do next, Rachel decided to remain where she was, crouching and watching. She felt cold and adjusted her jacket. A part of her wanted to run back into the night, and she questioned how long she would last out there, alone. So instead, Rachel opted to slowly move through the garden, edging ever closer to the house, back to her sisters and the biker. She was about thirty metres from the building when a group of men in black combat fatigues burst out from one of the distant outhouses with dogs that were yelping and straining against their leads. Rachel had to dive behind an old shed to avoid their attention; she was convinced the game was up. How could she possibly hide from these animals? She counted four handlers with a dog each. The men were forcibly dragging their beasts towards the broken gate, fighting and cursing them all the way. Rachel suspected the dogs had picked up her scent within the garden itself while the handlers, who must have been told she had left the grounds, kept coaxing the animals back on to her old trail that exited the premises. The dogs eventually got the message, and the hunting party quickly left the garden; Rachel counted herself very lucky not to have been caught.
When the sound of the yelping dogs faded into the distance, Rachel noticed a light that had not been there before illuminating one of the windows high up in the roof. It was from the big old attic, a large space at the very top of the house, hardly used by anybody except her foster father. It must be where they have taken the rider, she thought to herself, and she knew a way up there.
**
He lay on his back, disorientated. He tried to open his eyes; his lids felt heavy and they wouldn’t go all the way. He could just about make out the poorly lit room with sloping ceilings he was in; more importantly, he could see the vague outline of two figures nearby. In the background was the sound of water running through pipes and steadily d
ripping into a tank. Nice and easy now. Just let yourself recover a bit before trying anything stupid. Boyd’s mind flashed back for a second. Who was that girl I nearly collided with, and what was she doing out there? he speculated briefly before his thoughts returned to his current situation.
Slowly, subtly, so as not to draw the attention of the two men, he tried to move. An old fear of his was that one day he would come off his bike and end up paralysed; dying was fine, paralysis, he couldn’t bear the thought of. As he lay there, he was convinced that this fear had become reality. It took a little longer before he realised that he had no spinal injury and the reason he could not move was because he was bound. He wondered whether his back was hurting from the accident or from being trussed up on the uncomfortable mattress-less metal bed frame. Probably both, he concluded. The backache was part of a bigger picture of pain. His whole body felt sore, every rib hurt and one thigh throbbed; all of this was eclipsed by the terrible burning he felt from the ropes around his hands and ankles.
Slowly, his eyes started to focus again, and he could see the two figures wearing long black gowns far more clearly. They faced away from him and were locked in deep conversation, one which he could not hear the words of.
His limbs felt stiff and were starting to cramp. He tried stretching ever so slightly to encourage the circulation; the bed frame creaked and a head turned around.
“Oh, look, someone’s waking up!”
Another head turned, both figures walked to either side of him. The two men were in their late thirties or early forties. The one to his left was tall and well-built with tight curly brown hair; the other, to his right, had a cruel, pointed face with thinning brown hair and a terrible complexion, a face peppered with acne and scars.
Now that they were closer, Boyd could see the long black gown each of them wore was made of soft leather and had an attached hood that hung limply over the back. He caught a glimpse of a suit beneath each of these garments. It concerned Boyd that they were not going to any great lengths to conceal their identity from him; it was a bad sign, they obviously did not reckon he would be sticking around long enough to get them into any trouble. Oh well, time to say hello, he thought.
