Death's Ink Black Shadow

by John Wiltshire

  He stretched and felt better.

  He’d just needed to eat and sleep. He was ready to tackle Nikolas now without the panic and fear that he was watching his idol topple. Idols occasionally needed propping up. Ben had been stiffening up various parts of Nikolas Mikkelsen for years.

  There was a note stuck to the TV screen, telling him that Steven had taken Radulf for a walk—up to Drover tor, which his uncle had told him about. It crossed Ben’s mind that with good eyesight he’d be able to see the ferry to France from there as it made its way out through Plymouth Sound. He didn’t like the odd coincidence, and it made him uneasy for some reason that he couldn’t fathom.

  The house was quiet once more.

  He decided to make something for dinner. His culinary skills were pretty good these days. He smiled as he rummaged in the freezer, remembering Miles with the chocolate cake. Then he recalled the little conspiratorial glance the boy had given Nikolas after the fire, as if they shared a secret that Nikolas didn’t want Ben to know.

  Ben straightened.

  Was it possible everyone else actually believed Nikolas?

  This was a startling thought Ben hadn’t considered before.

  He thought back to Em’s words. This is Nikolas.

  He swallowed. He suddenly realised that it was very possible they did. But Miles and Emilia were only children—despite how they might think themselves superior in wisdom to adults. Molly Rose, obviously, went where she was sent. Jennifer? Did she believe Nikolas? Babushka? Squeezy?

  He thought back to the moment when he’d been outside the kitchen in London, squatting in the courtyard looking in at the people inside and becoming aware that his friends had a different relationship with Nikolas when he wasn’t present. Although Squeezy called Nikolas the big wassock and Nikolas returned the favour continually addressing Squeezy as the idiot or the moron, they did seem to have an unusual connection when it came to getting things done. They were on the same wavelength.

  Was everyone attuned to Nikolas but him?

  He heard the gravel warning system once more and glanced out to see Nikolas driving up.

  He felt an annoying flutter in his belly. A little anxiety at meeting him again. He felt he’d behaved badly, somehow, in not believing Nikolas, when it was patently obvious that everyone else did.

  But it should be the other way around. Nikolas should feel bad. Nikolas should come in apologising for spreading his irrational fears like a virus and infecting all their friends who’d come to see him as infallible and accept his pronouncements and commandments as if he were God.

  It would be far better if fewer people were so in his thrall. Nikolas needed people with more common sense around him. Then Ben brought Andrea Gillian to mind. No one saw through Nikolas’s bullshit more than she did.

  Family crisis?

  He looked up as Nikolas came in and saw a similar fleeting nervousness on his face. At the same time they said, “Sorry,” and grinned, and Ben came into a hard possessive hug very willingly. They stood together in the warm sunshine in their kitchen with the good cooking smells around them, and Ben enjoyed a sense of peace once more. Step by step, he could make this right. One by one, he’d bring them back, summon them from wherever Nikolas had sent them and start healing Nikolas’s fractured psyche. He’d been doing it for many years now. He was pretty good at it. From what he knew of Nikolas, they’d all probably been sent to luxury cabins, fabulous hotels or other such places billionaires could afford to call safe houses. Perhaps he would go and join Tim and Squeezy. He could do with a few days in a luxury hotel. Limitless food. Limitless sex with Nikolas.

  Nikolas pulled away. “Why are you laughing?” He poked at the food to see what Ben was making then turned to the table. Suddenly, he said in a choked voice, “Three plates?”

  Ben nodded. “Oh, yeah. Steven’s here. I said he could—” Nikolas seized his arms so tightly that Ben reared back to break the hold. “What the—?”

  “Where is he? Ben! Where is he?”

  “Taking Radulf for a walk! Nikolas! Ow! Fucking let go!”

  Nikolas dropped Ben’s wrist, which he’d grabbed after his vice-like grip on his arms had been broken. “Where!”

  “Drover—”

  Nikolas was running before Ben finished his sentence.

  Ben tore after him. “He’s quite safe, Nik! Nikolas!”

  Nikolas got to the lawn and hesitated, his face such a mask of desperate concern and terror that Ben skidded up beside him and appealed despairingly, “He’ll be okay, Nik! He’s just taking the dog—”

  It seemed Nikolas had only stopped to decide between running to follow his son or to get a horse, for he then took off for the stables.

  Ben hesitated, thinking about using the car, but realising that there was no way he could get it out of the grounds past the old drystone wall.

  Nikolas had fetched his horse.

  He hadn’t even taken time to saddle it or put a bridle on. He was bareback, lying low, spurring the creature faster with his heels. Ben stepped onto the grass in front of him and lifted an arm.

  He thought for one moment Nikolas would ignore him, but he didn’t. He caught him expertly under the arm and swung him up.

  Ben clung on around Nikolas’s waist. He wasn’t a natural horseman like Nikolas, but he was incredibly strong and gripped just as tight to the horse’s flanks with his legs as he was holding onto Nikolas.

  They reached the wall and Nikolas jumped it. He’d never done that before. They crashed down on the other side. Ben dug his fingers into Nikolas’s belly even harder. He was pressed entirely to the bony frame, could feel every disc in Nikolas’s spine, taut as it was, flat over the horse’s neck.

  When they came to where the track veered off to the right and meandered past the bog that spread around the base of the tor, the longer but only safe route to the top of the rocks, Nikolas went left, toward the bog.

  Ben hissed and tried to speak, but it was too difficult over the speed of their gallop.

  Suddenly, Nikolas halted them and slid off. Ben half-fell with him and then cried out.

  Radulf was right in the centre of the bog, inexorably sinking. Steven, covered in mud, was standing to one side, wringing his hands, shouting at them, “I tried to reach him. I can’t reach him. He just blundered in, stupid dog! I can’t reach him.”

  Ben and Nikolas then worked in tandem as if they’d rehearsed this all their lives. Perhaps they had. Despite their recent differences, despite all the surface conflict and constant bickering, deep down, they thought as one and always had.

  Nikolas ripped off his belt as he was running to the withered tree stump that stood, like a lone sentinel, beside the soft ground.

  Ben ran to the bog, tearing his off similarly and throwing himself like a bad diver, belly flopping onto the mud. He reached Radulf and got the belt under his front legs, which were splayed uselessly on the traitorous surface, his rear end now entirely under. Ben cinched the belt tight so it wouldn’t slip over Radulf’s head and twisted his hand into it like a rodeo rider about to leave the pen. Very cautiously, feeling his body slowly being sucked down, he twisted around flat to the mud and stretched back his other hand.

  Nikolas had got his belt around the lone tree and savagely twisted it around his wrist. A firm hold, not giving.

  They focused on each other across the few feet that separated them, both ready, both steady. Ben flicked his gaze to Steven.

  Steven was staring back at him.

  It seemed to Ben as if that consideration went on for all eternity. The mad flight and panic to reach them, the rush of the horse beneath him, the pounding of Nikolas’s heart which he’d felt as he’d pressed against him. All stilled now. Nothing but the silence of the moors, the faint sound of wind through the rocks.

  And then time returned to its normal speed. Increased, as his legs were now being dragged under, Radulf beginning to lose his nerve. He pleaded to the boy, “Come on!”

  Nikolas was fixated on Ste
ven, too, but his look was as one to a dangerous wild animal he was coaxing to control.

  “Take my hand, Stefan.”

  Steven chuckled. “A little late for that, isn’t it, Dad?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Nikolas felt a weight leave him.

  They had come to it at last.

  He’d known it was going to happen sooner or later—although to give Stefan his due, he’d hidden his true nature well. His intent. But then it was in his blood—deception.

  Nikolas had known though.

  As he’d told Ben that very first night—Stefan was his son. What more evidence did he need of the poisonous legacy the boy had inherited? He was only surprised it hadn’t come to this sooner.

  But now it was here. He could lay the burden down at last and step out into the light where all was known and understood. As if he would see Stefan as an aberration and take him into his heart…Life didn’t offer respite from pain. As if he’d welcome this stranger and enfold him in his arms as his long-lost son and not then hear that tainted blood taunting him across the dark hollows of remembrance. He’d embraced Stefan to keep him close. He’d taken him in as you welcome an enemy you are studying for weaknesses. Aeroe, London, all of it. The more he’d deceived Ben, the happier Ben had seemed and the easier the lies had become. He’d been so mired in the effort that sometimes he’d felt more trapped than Ben was now. He had lived a parallel life, with Ben alongside him on a different track in the sunshine, where he belonged. He and Stefan had cavorted together in the darkness, and Ben, blinded by the light that shone upon him, had not been able to see that dance.

  He glanced over at Ben and saw such a mixture of horror, guilt, and disbelief upon his perfect features that Nikolas almost quailed, even at this late stage.

  But he rallied.

  It’s what he did.

  What he always did.

  He’d kept everyone safe as best he could, despite being fought at every turn, and now here they were. Ben would never have seen the truth of Stefan until they’d arrived at this point. Ben never saw his truth, refusing to see the monster he saw every day in the mirror. And to be fair to Ben, what proof was there except for knowing that blood, in the end, told its own story? However hard Peyton had tried, he couldn’t find proof that Kristina had been murdered. She’d had breast cancer. She had died at home after a session of chemotherapy. No proof. But Nikolas had known. Peyton, frustrated beyond belief, could not prove that Stefan had set the fire, that he had poisoned Radulf. But it never occurred to him to question that any other scenarios were possible. Peyton, unlike Ben, didn’t need proof to see life’s truths.

  And Ben was dying now, separated by four feet of mud. It seemed fitting somehow.

  Nikolas untangled his wrist and stood, ignoring his son for a moment, but very aware of Stefan’s cautious step back, his gleeful expression.

  He tested the edge of the bog, and his foot sunk down to his knee. He tumbled back onto the dry land and pulled it out. It came without his shoe.

  He knew the mud had tasted him then and shivered. He lay on his belly, stretched as far as he could risk without going under too, but he could not reach Ben. The fingers he knew better than his own were still out of his grasp. He considered the belt he’d left tied to the tree and wished, for the very first time in his life, that he resembled Peyton Garic. Then the belt would have been longer. Long enough.

  He tried to shuffle forward on his stomach just a little more, just to close that tantalizing gap, but Ben murmured, “Don’t risk it.”

  Even that much speech made him sink a little further.

  At the sound of his voice, Radulf stirred, his sightless eyes blinking. He whined and suddenly began to scrabble, seeming to realise that he had firm ground near him at last—Ben. He flailed his front legs, flopping them further into the mud, attempting to climb onto Ben. They both went under a little more.

  Nikolas rose, and looked despairingly around. If only he’d taken time to put a bridle on the horse. He considered the tree, but it was nothing more than a stump. Rocks and grass and the skulls of sheep not as wise as their comrades—bones were the only thing left behind by the ravenous appetite of this killing ground.

  He shuddered and went closer to Stefan.

  They stood regarding one another.

  Stefan said coolly, “You don’t seem surprised.”

  Nikolas shrugged. It was his day for shrugging. “You’re my son.”

  “Ah, I get to meet Aleksey Mikkelsen at last.” He mock bowed.

  Nikolas laughed. “I never actually go anywhere; I just use another name.”

  Stefan flashed him a confused look, but rallied to his game, beginning to gesture with his hands. “Four feet. Four feet. See him sink, Father! What are you going to do? Run and try to get help? Will he be gone before you get back? Forever suspended in the peat, preserved in all his perfection?” He cast a quick glance at Ben and confided seriously, “This is nothing personal against you, by the way. This is all about him. What he did to my grandfather…my mother…”

  Ben didn’t reply. Radulf’s front legs were on his shoulders, only their heads now out of the murderous suck. Stefan seemed fascinated by the dog’s efforts and commented thoughtfully, “I’m surprised it’s got the strength. I put out enough poison to kill one of those ponies over there. You’d think the stuff would do more permanent damage.”

  Nikolas brought Stefan’s gaze back to him by holding out his hand. “Please, help me…”

  Stefan smirked. “No. So, what are you going to do, Aleksey Mikkelsen? You’re a billionaire, but you don’t have four feet of rope to save him. I, for one, am delighted with the irony. Worthy of a book, no? Maybe I’ll write it. Hmm, catchy title…Let me think. ‘When the Swords Flash.’ Like it? Oh, come on! You must have read Julius Caesar! Okay, how about, ‘House Fires and How to Prevent Them.’ Or should that be thatched cottages…? No? Jesus, picky or what?”

  Nikolas kept his breathing even. “You’re making a mistake.”

  Stefan’s eyes narrowed, but he was darting his gaze around, the director of the play checking his stage and his actors: dog and boyfriend drowning; no way to reach them; undisturbed; cue grievous mourning. “I don’t think so.”

  Nikolas shrugged one last time. “I wasn’t Aleksey Mikkelsen when I squirted you out.” Before Stefan could step away, Nikolas grabbed him around the neck, forcing him into the crook of his elbow, his other hand over Stefan’s face.

  Closing his eyes, kissing into his golden hair, Nikolas twisted and whispered, “Say hello to Aleksey Primakov.”

  § § §

  Ben saw it as a hug.

  He thought Nikolas was embracing his son.

  He didn’t get what Nikolas had done until the body dropped, until Nikolas picked it up and heaved it out, using it as a rope.

  Ben was flung Nikolas’s dead son as a rope, the legs landing by his hand.

  He grabbed one ankle.

  It was still warm. He fancied he could still feel a pulse, but he was now having to tip his chin back to breathe, and Radulf was trying to climb into his hair, so he reckoned his judgement might have been off.

  Nikolas rammed his hand back into the belt around the tree, braced his feet into the grass and took Steven’s outstretched hand, almost gently at first, as if awed by this odd occurrence—father and son holding hands. But then Ben realised he was only getting a tight grip, testing the hold.

  Nikolas nodded, satisfied, and shouted, “Pull yourself out, Ben.”

  § § §

  Nikolas felt the body in his hand shift as Ben’s purchase on the ankle changed. The dog was now up on Ben, pushing him under the peat, but also allowing him to let go of the belt. Tentatively, Ben did, bringing his other hand to the ankle.

  He felt the dead flesh stretch in his hand as Ben began to pull.

  He saw Ben’s incredible arm muscles swell.

  His back strained to the weight.

  “I can’t.”

  It was nothin
g more than a whisper. Nikolas looked over despairingly then screamed, “Ben!”

  There was nothing but a death grip on the foot and the barest hint of muzzle. He couldn’t see Ben at all.

  Nikolas wrenched his hand out of the belt. For one awful moment, the bog tried to claim them all, but he flung himself around, jamming his leg into the leather, painfully twisting it to force it into the restraint. Now, with two hands, he gripped Stefan’s limp arm and pulled.

  Nikolas was exceptionally strong in his shoulders from pounding endless laps. Endless boring laps in the pool hour after hour for no other purpose than to be here at this moment and able to save Ben’s life. An inch gained. He readjusted and yanked again.

  Another inch.

  Something tore in his shoulder, but he ignored it and heaved again. “Ben!” He wanted to scream at him not to go and leave him alone. That if he went he’d follow him and make his life hell in the afterlife. He had no breath to waste though.

  He tugged again and saw a face come out of the mud. Another inch, another vast strain of his tendons. He heard a hiss from the mud as it was forced to release its captives. He hauled again. He felt something give—not in his arm this time, but Stefan’s, and a terrible dread came over him that he would tear his son in half, the pressure on the dead joints too much, and like a Christian in an arena strapped between horses, he would fly apart, condemning Ben to an agonising death.

  He heaved again and gained the shoulder, grabbing it, getting his fingers jammed into Stefan’s armpits, hugging the torso to him, and now he could see Ben quite clearly, his face completely mud-covered, eyes closed, but the grip on his lifeline sure.

  The dog was scrabbling once more, not helping, until suddenly, the frantic activity paid off and Radulf got his back legs onto Ben’s back. Then he was free, shivering along the bridge of bodies and onto dry ground.

  Ben was over a hundred pounds lighter then.

  Nikolas heard a final hiss of madness from the bog. It knew it had lost.

  He strained once more, now hugging his son around his waist, Stefan’s hair against his face, soft and so like his own that he thought it was his for a moment. He fought his way down Stefan’s body, always fighting, even in this, and then he felt a chilled hand seize onto his.