by Rae Else
Even as her mind whirled with these thoughts, she couldn’t help coming back to Anna and Alex lying to her. Luke said that being seen by the Triad meant being fast tracked to competing in the elemental matches. Hadn’t her mother said that she wanted to keep her from being drawn into this world? Perhaps, Anna had lied about the Order and the Triad because she wanted to keep her from this. Perhaps she was getting help from the rebels – Dan, Adam and Tia – but ordinarily had nothing to do with it. El tried to explain it away that easily, but it didn’t add up. A chill ran down her spine as she thought more on what Luke had said. If the Order was the law, did that make Anna, her grandma and her criminals?
Luke’s face clouded over as his eyes skimmed the doorway. El imagined turning to see a group of people in dark, flowing robes marching towards her. Her hands began to sweat as she turned to see Dan striding towards them. He looked hawk-like, his eyes pinned on her. She noticed that he was as tall as Luke. He was wearing a grey T-shirt today and blue jeans with trainers. The lighter clothes flattered his dark skin and features.
Dan looked like he meant to wrench her up as he neared. Luke jumped to his feet and was in front of her in seconds. She clambered to her feet too. Dan’s quick eyes assessed Luke and a look of satisfaction flitted across his face.
El sensed that they would welcome the fight and spoke up. ‘It’s fine. I need to go and sort this out.’
Luke allowed her past, his eyes fixed on Dan with the same suspicion he’d eyed her with earlier.
‘Thanks for the chat, she said.’ She smiled as she thought she’d been more captive audience than willing participant in their discussion. He seemed to be thinking along the same lines as a look of confusion flitted across his features, before matching her smile.
‘You sure you’re okay?’ Luke asked, his eyes skimming Dan.
Luke’s words had raised goosebumps on her arms and she wondered if his distrustful gaze was right to brand Dan a criminal. Even so, she had to find out the truth from Anna. She was her mother after all. Surely she needed to give her the benefit of the doubt. Her heart raced as she considered: who could she trust?
But she nodded and walked on, hoping that Dan would follow and that Luke wouldn’t start a fight, or call the Order. She chanced a look back and felt the brush of his gaze on her cheek once more. Then she walked back into the city as though stepping out from a dream.
- Chapter Eight -
Rebels and Runaways
By the time they got back to Endon’s basement car park, the silence was entrenched. El had tried a couple of times to draw Dan into talking, but he was set on ignoring her. On reaching the van, she was disappointed that Adam wasn’t there, knowing she’d have a better chance of wheedling something out of him.
‘Where’s Adam?’ she asked.
‘Where I should be.’
It was clear that Dan was going to rebuff any attempt at conversation. An oppressive silence settled again. El decided to look on the bright side; Dan was in such a foul mood that he seemed to have forgotten the blindfold. Or perhaps he was afraid to ask her to wear it. She almost wished that he would, wanting to have a reason to shout at him. If she provoked him enough, he might let some truths slip.
For the first time, the streets of the city were drenched in sunlight and stretched out visibly before her. El surreptitiously drew out one of the books Alex had given her. She peeked at Dan to check he hadn’t noticed that she was reading. His focus was on the road, his jaw set in grim resolve. El suspected it was her rather than the road that he was mad at. He seemed as set on keeping her in the dark as Anna was. She hunched more to try to shield the thick volume.
She’d deliberately pulled out the one about serpents. Perhaps there’d be something in here that could shed some light on the Order and the rebels. At this point, she wouldn’t mind whether she found something to either confirm or contradict what Luke had said. She just wanted answers. Skimming the introduction, she came to the first chapter entitled, The Function of the Serpent. A lot of the author’s words seemed infused with severity and to reaffirm what Luke had said. She read:
The serpent power is central to keeping the arete world veiled. This has meant that serpents are bound by duty, honour and tradition to create and protect the kerykeion.
The book told of times throughout history when this duty had been neglected and arete power had drawn the suspicion of the human populace. The author pointed out that during witch trials in the Medieval inquisitions, such as Torsaker, North Berwick and Salem, a high proportion of arete had lived in these areas. Failure to create and maintain the kerykeion effectively had been a contributing factor in starting the witch hunts.
The academic material made for dry reading. After scanning a few more pages, El closed the book, distracted by the angry blare of car horns sounding in their wake. Dan was jumping lanes wherever he could – driving like a maniac. They were hurtling along a road flanking the river Thames. She kept expecting to see flashing, blue lights behind them. Open-topped, red tour buses teemed along the roads, while on the river ferries cruised with equally full decks.
The van pulled away from the river and the queue of traffic became thicker. The top of Nelson’s column appeared up ahead. Dan pulled into a narrow side street. She doubted they were making a stop for a bit of sightseeing.
‘Stay here,’ he said.
El glared after him as he threw the door shut and ran across the road into a building on the corner opposite. It was four-storeys high, its entrance colonnaded and a decorative clock sat halfway up. For a couple of minutes, she watched the entrance. The fact that she was being kept out of the loop again weighed heavily on her.
Luke’s words kept circling around her head. Why was he the only one who had confided anything to her? It was Anna and Dan who were skulking around like criminals. What was she doing just sitting here, waiting? She could just leave now. Walking through London by herself scared her though. What if she lost control of her power? And what would happen when the concealment ran out? Foreboding filled her at the thought of the Triad seeing her and the Order finding her. But what if Luke was right? Mistrust of Anna and Dan took hold and made her restless. She couldn’t just sit here doing nothing.
She slipped the flowery kimono off, shrugged on her bag and opted to leave the books in the van. She felt less conspicuous in the black vest top as she jogged over to the building. Through the door was a large, yellow lobby with sumptuous, period sofas and a reception desk. There was no one present.
She tuned into sounds in the area and caught the resonant tone that she recognised as Dan’s, further back in the building.
‘You’ve done it. Let’s go.’
Another male voice, higher pitched answered, ‘No, Jim’s had all the fun.’
A mixture of laughter, awash with a scream, sent a chill down El’s spine. She walked through a pair of double doors, still listening as she moved slowly along the corridor.
‘That’s nothing,’ another voice said.
In the corridor gilt mirrors were interspersed with oil paintings of rural landscapes; the yellow and orange fields were reflected in the glass so that their bright patchwork wound along both sides of the corridor. The golden pastures were steeped in both the sunshine in the scenes and the rays that pierced the windows set high up in the wall. As El crept down the passage amidst the ripening corn, it was as though the quiet, rustic scenes were trying to mask what was occurring in the room beyond.
She reached the end of the hall and peered through the crack in the door: an office – wide, spacious, grandly decorated. With her heightened senses, she already had a good idea of the occupants in the room, having felt the heat emanating from their bodies.
Dan stood nearest the door, two other men stood in the centre of the room, and another behind a large, heavy desk. The wiry man in the centre laughed as he rammed a pair of thick-rimmed glasses back onto the face of the man next to him, who had tears in his eyes and was noticeably old
er – a human.
The thicker-set man at the desk now caught the gaze of the human. ‘He’s just an andreko.’
El felt a prickle of fear at his derisive tone. What were they doing to this human? A flurry of anger swept through her as she noticed the man at the desk, smile. Confusion flitted across the human’s face before his hand slapped his own cheek. He did it again and again, whilst the man at the desk laughed at his handiwork.
El swallowed the lump that had risen in her throat.
‘That’s enough,’ Dan said, but the wiry man had already flicked his eyes to the human. The man stopped hitting himself and lurched across to the side of the room, reaching for something.
El realised too late he wasn’t reaching for something, but into something. His scream rent the air as a spray of blood was churned up from the shredder, into which he’d fed his own hand. El felt the bite of each metal tooth as the machine ground into his skin, the blades cutting a lattice. She lurched back and bolted down the hall. A rush of panic shot through her. She had to get away. She pushed her legs to go faster and raced out the front door. She squealed as she ran into someone. She looked up into emerald eyes. Luke.
‘I followed, I heard–’ he said.
El looked back over her shoulder and saw Dan hurrying into the lobby. The bright colour of the reception was obscured by the flurry of black suits as the other men issued into the reception too, towards them.
‘Go,’ El cried.
Another wave of fear flashed through her. She was on the wrong side. Luke was right. He yanked her arm – and this time she followed him without question – crossing the street, sprinting to a silver car. He lost no time and slid across the bonnet to the driver’s side. El yanked open the other door and jumped in.
‘Go, go,’ she shouted, slamming the door and pushing the lock down.
Luke started the engine, and with a quick manoeuvre, accelerated down the road towards Nelson’s Column. El watched the tall, dark man over her shoulder recede, but before they’d reached the end of the road, she saw the van skidding out onto the street.
Trafalgar Square passed in a blur as El searched behind, scanning the road and the roundabout, dreading the moment when the van would reappear. They turned down another street and there was still no sign of the vehicle. The traffic lights were in their favour too and, jumping lanes, Luke wove through the traffic, taking a series of side streets until they were firing past the Thames. When they took a bridge across the bustling waterways El’s fright finally began to ebb.
* * *
After a short while, Luke parked up on the pavement near a church. He listened grimly to her account of what had happened and in turn explained how he’d followed her, worried that she didn’t fully appreciate what sort of people she was dealing with. El still didn’t feel that she understood. Those rebels had injured that human just for fun. They had spoken about him contemptuously, calling him an andreko as though he was no more than an animal.
Luke explained that there were some arete who believed that they were a higher race than humans and that the word andreko literally translated as “that which is below”. The memory of the human’s hand being torn and ground made El’s teeth itch. It all blurred in her frenzied mind and seemed to mingle with the thud of the guest’s body at Cobbold House.
They were receiving quite a few looks from curious passers-by – where they were parked definitely wasn’t legal. It wasn’t until a traffic warden approached that Luke jumped out of the car. He grabbed a sheet of paper and hipflask from the dashboard. El watched him upturning the container and, with his finger, draw a vertical line on the paper. He added a snaking line, finishing with a horizontal slash, before tucking the paper under one of the windscreen wipers. It didn’t matter that the mark was faint and that the liquid added extra lines as it dripped; immediately the warden and the bystanders withdrew.
Nearby, people were issuing down the steps and coming up from the embankment. A few days ago, she wouldn’t have believed that she could feel such reassurance amidst a multitude of humans, but now there was safety in numbers; safety in being one of the many.
Was the river a sufficient barrier between her and the rebels though? Soon El’s wariness crept back. It wasn’t fear of the graeae tracking her that consumed her now, but of the rebels. She wondered how Dan had found her earlier in the meadow.
‘El…’ Luke said. His gaze was a tingle across her cheek. ‘I’d like you to come with me tonight to an Order meeting.’
El frowned. The terrible warning that Anna had given her still echoed through her head: if the Order had found your grandma, she’d be dead.
‘I don’t trust the rebels,’ she said, ‘but that doesn’t mean I want to go to some Order try-out either.’
‘It’s not a try-out. I mean, you can try out if you want but you don’t have to. I know plenty of arete who just go there to hang out. My brother Josh is an arachnid and can’t compete because he doesn’t have an elemental power – he still goes.’
When El looked unconvinced, he grew solemn. There was an urgency to his bright eyes, which contrasted with their cooling quality.
‘Please, El. I want you to come and see the other side. I don’t want these people to hurt someone else I care about.’
Warmth spread through her. He cared about her. His open, earnest look was soothing and her skin tingled as he gazed at her. Although it possessed a coolness, it wasn’t cold. It was like a spring morning, when the air is at its freshest and seems to kiss your cheek. In the evening light, his eyes were still bright, but softer. She felt safe with him. She believed him or wanted to. Doubt crept through her again. She’d learned that even those closest to her seemed not to deserve her trust. Plus, she’d only just met Luke. Why was he so determined to help her?
‘Look, it’s not that I’m not grateful for all your help, but I just don’t know at the moment what’s real–’
‘What’s real is the danger you’re in because of what’s in your blood. That serum is part of a rebel weapon, used to hide them from the authorities and break the kerykeion.’
El paled. He knew. How long had he known that her blood contained the concealment?
His voice was softer when he spoke, ‘Six years ago, the first attacks on the kerykeion started. There were a series of targeted assaults all over London and in other major cities. Before that day, they had never been able to be undone, only added to. But in hundreds of public places, the kerykeion were dissolved.
‘My family lived in New York at the time. The rebels were disrupting the power of the kerykeion in order to draw Order members out. When they came to remark them, the rebels attacked. Hundreds of arete and humans got caught in the crossfire. My mother died.’
El’s blood ran cold. She remembered the way he’d talked so passionately in the meadow about the Order upholding justice, about keeping the arete and human world joined and stable. She realised that he had a very real reason to hate the rebels. He’d said he didn’t want someone else he cared about to be hurt by them because he’d suffered personally, at their hands.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said quietly.
He didn’t look up and El knew his brow was furrowed to keep a handle on his pain. She thought of her granddad and how lost she’d been when he passed away. His death had been of natural causes. She couldn’t imagine how Luke must have felt, a boy dealing with the murder of his mother. She thought too of how passionately Luke had spoken of helping humans in the future with his abilities and understood his drive to do so even more now. His mother, an arachnid, would have had no elemental power or manipulation over humans. Apart from the athletic abilities Luke had inherited from her, she would have been defenceless in any fighting that had occurred. Human almost.
She wanted to soothe him, to say that she’d do whatever he thought best, but she needed to think logically.
Her voice was tentative, ‘Luke, I understand that you’d like me to go to the Order meeting and see the
other side, but with this … thing … in my blood, I’d be classed as a rebel. I shouldn’t go anywhere near them until it wears off.’
He fixed his eyes determinedly on her. ‘Don’t you see? You’ve been seen by the Triad already. What do you think will happen when your power comes back into their field of vision? They’ll find you. And how do you think it’ll look if they find this weapon that can dissolve kerykeion in your blood. Even if you remain hidden until it’s out of your system, you will still need to explain how you concealed yourself.’
She looked away. Anna and Alex had said her power would gradually become less visible if she didn’t use it, and if she kept taking the serum. Is that what she should do – go back? She pictured strolling into Alex’s lab or tracking down Anna’s office within Endon and conceding to remain hidden. She couldn’t go back. She couldn’t remain ignorant. She had to find out the truth about the Order and the rebels.
‘But … if I come forward to the Order, they’re going to ask questions. And even if the rebels are what you say they are – don’t ask me why, Luke – but I can’t give information about them.’
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘But can’t you see that it’s better that you come forward yourself? The Triad have foreseen your power and will fast track you to the Olympia once you’re ready to compete. If you present yourself, they’re going to have nothing to reproach you with. If you wait and they find you later, you look … guilty.’
El twisted her plait. Was this the right move? She just didn’t know.
‘Besides,’ Luke said. ‘My dad will be there. Will you let me talk to him about this? He’ll know what to do.’
