Nephilim

by Barrowman, John; Barrowman, Carole;

  HERE LIES A’ THAT’S MORTAL OF THE HIGHLAND FOX

  MASON RENARD CALDER, DUKE OF ALBION

  1580–1639

  24.

  GIVE THEM A WHURL

  The call of the pipes was undeniable.

  Rémy had never played an instrument like this, but the desire he felt in his bones was all-consuming. The bag was made of hide that he needed to fill with air, but it was stinking and rotten, the skin pocked with holes and an abandoned rodent’s nest complete with a bloated carcass inside. He lifted down the wooden pipe, the chanter, instead. It was made of black wood and looked like a recorder but older, much older, with its finger holes rubbed down, smooth to the touch, and an etched silver ring like a collar on the lower neck of the pipe. Without a conscious thought, he put the chanter to his lips and began to play. He began with a long mournful wail, surprised that he’d drawn any sound from the ancient instrument at all. Shutting out his surroundings, he let the music calm his restlessness. He started with Onward Christian Soldiers, a favourite of his Tía Rosa’s, then Amazing Grace, because what else do you play on a chanter?

  A gust of air brushed the top of his head, the scent of oranges lingering in its wake. The mark on his neck felt alive under his skin. He played on, faster and louder. He couldn’t stop even if he wanted to. The music was wrapping him in a welcoming warmth he hadn’t felt in months.

  25.

  MUST BE A RULE

  Em let her nightgown slip off her shoulders. Zach’s fingers danced across her freckled skin, sketching an imaginary line down her back. She shivered, a soft moan escaping her lips. The canvas she’d just hung on the wall in front of her was pulsing with light, its beat matching her quickening heart. Her heart broke every time she thought of Zach sending her present back. He didn’t want it. He didn’t want her.

  Her animated-Zach’s hair was longer and lighter than before, his hands ink-stained and more calloused. He set them on her hips and smiled down at her before easing her body against his. Their lips brushed, sparks of blue and grey shooting from their touch. Zach narrowed his eyes, crinkling his nose in a way that made her toes tingle.

  She led him to her bed where they stretched out, facing each other. She pressed her forehead on to his muscular chest. Oh, how she missed his presence in her life. How the hell had she ended up in this shoebox bedroom in a church tower, like the Lady of Shalott watching the world she’d known drift past?

  Zach tilted her chin and kissed her again with an intensity of emotion that brought tears to Em’s eyes. It was a kiss that carried the trust of their childhood, the promises of their youth, and the betrayals of their young adulthood. How could the passion still reach her so intensely?

  Em knew that what she was doing was seriously frowned upon, but she had missed Zach so much. Besides, she was in the privacy of her own room. Was she shocking the church ghosts? She doubted it. Centuries of feelings had seeped into the cracked stone of the church to such an extent that in the still of the moonlit Highland nights when she was least in control, when her sensitive Guardian nature was at its most vulnerable, she felt all of those passions wash over her.

  Zach silently swept Em’s short dark hair from her face, twirling strands of her pink streak around his long pale fingers. She sighed and let his touch comfort her, then rolled on to her back and guided his kisses from her lips to her neck. As his tongue touched the soft skin beneath her collarbone, a bolt of desire coursed through every part of her body.

  Why had she thrown all this away?

  The door to her cell flew open.

  ‘Didn’t you hear me?’ Matt demanded. ‘I’ve been…’ He stopped, wrinkled his nose. ‘Oh, for God’s sake Em, get a room.’

  ‘I am in a room,’ Em protested. ‘Mine!’

  She scrambled to her sketchpad and tore up the copy of the portrait hanging back on her wall. In a shower of blues and greys, Zach ruptured into a million pieces, splattering Matt and Em with thick drops of acrylic paint.

  ‘Jeezus,’ Matt said, grabbing a towel from the sink next to Em’s bed.

  ‘What do you want?’ said Em, lacing up her boots.

  ‘Rémy’s gone,’ said Matt.

  Em slumped back on to the single bed and rubbed her eyes. With telepathic abilities since birth, she and Matt were way past embarrassing each other with their imaginations. But she was suddenly exhausted at the realization of how much she missed Zach – his wit, his love, and, yes, his body. Much more than she’d been willing to admit.

  ‘What do you mean “gone”?’

  Matt spread his hands. ‘His bed’s empty and I can hear music from the cemetery. Which can’t be good.’

  Em let her brother pull her up off the bed. She felt his concern ripple through her.

  ‘You’ll both be OK,’ Matt said gently. ‘According to Mum, Zach’s loving his internship at MOMA in New York. He’s becoming quite the Yankee.’

  ‘That does not make me feel better,’ said Em, pulling on her cardigan before trying to slap Matt’s head.

  He read her intention and ducked. ‘I’m pretty sure there’s a rule against what you were doing,’ he commented, smiling as they jogged down the narrow spiral steps of the church tower.

  ‘I’m pretty sure I don’t care.’

  26.

  THE MARTYRS’ MONUMENT

  The bagpipe music hit Matt and Em in a visible gust of cold air. It smelled of oranges.

  ‘He’s near the Martyrs’ Monument,’ said Em at once. ‘I can feel his longing.’

  She took a notebook from her sweater pocket and dashed into the woods.

  In seconds Matt was ahead of her, pulling back branches, making their way easier. At the top of the hill in front of the cemetery, he slowed, holding his hand in the air.

  ‘What is it?’ Em gasped, resting her hands on her knees.

  On the crumbling wall near the churchyard gate, an English soldier in a bloodied redcoat and a tattered powdered wig sat up on his haunches. Strips of pink flesh hung from his forehead like a cap and his eye sockets crawled with maggots. The right side of his face was resting in his shoulder, hanging from his head by ribbons of ropey black tendons. Black gunpowder burns tattooed his neck and chest. His lower jaw clicked rhythmically against his gold epaulettes but nothing, not a growl, was emanating from him.

  The only sound was the rush of the wind in the trees and the quickening tune from the bagpipes. A swirling blue haze carpeted the cemetery, rising and falling in peaks and valleys alongside the music. Behind the soldier, a woman dressed in a ball gown pirouetted in front of a grave. It was like the last dance at a zombie ceilidh.

  ‘By all that’s holy,’ breathed Matt. ‘The bawheid’s conjured up the dead.’

  Em made to run into the churchyard, but Matt held her back. ‘Wait,’ he said.

  ‘What’s your plan?’ Em demanded.

  ‘You distract the zombies and I’ll stop Rémy.’

  ‘That’s not—’

  But Matt was already running to the monument, where the music was louder, the wind warmer and the scent of oranges off the charts. Em followed. Her and zombies: not happening. Perhaps if they stopped Rémy’s playing, the dead would vanish by themselves.

  But Rémy was not so easy to find. The demented redcoat turned from the gate, spotted the two teenagers, rose and charged. He caught Matt first and took him down, jaws snapping together, biting his cheek. Frantically Matt scrambled on the ground for a tree branch or at least a stick. Finding a big rock instead, he smacked it on the soldier’s head. The soldier’s grip loosened long enough for Matt to roll free.

  Em was sketching furiously. ‘Use this!’ she yelled.

  Matt caught the tranquillizer gun as it unfurled in a ribbon of yellow in the space in front of him. He fired, hitting the soldier in what remained of his chest. The redcoat dropped to his tattered knees, tried to rise again, and then flopped flat on the ground, soaking away into the soil like a scarlet ink blot.

  ‘The music’s stopped,’ said Em suddenly
.

  The twirling girl in the ball gown vanished as a tall figure crawled from the centre of the Martyrs’ Monument and dusted down his T-shirt.

  Matt lunged, knocking Rémy back against two gravestones that toppled under their weight. ‘You could have killed us!’ he roared. ‘You and your walking dead…’

  ‘You and your superior artsy shit…’ Rémy yelled back.

  ‘Stop it,’ yelled Em. ‘Both of you!’

  Matt rolled away from Rémy, but Rémy wasn’t letting him off so easily. He grabbed a branch and swung it at Matt’s stomach. As Matt cut to the left, the branch tore at his jacket. Glancing at the rip across his pocket, he gasped and leaped at Rémy in fury, sending him crashing against the side of the monument and winding him.

  Rémy was twisting handfuls of Matt’s hair and Matt was punching at the flesh under Rémy’s chin when Em shot both of them with darts from the tranquillizer gun.

  27.

  THE GREAT WHITE DUKE

  ‘I can’t believe you shot us. My leg’s still numb.’

  Em banged the freezer shut. She tossed a packet of frozen peas to Matt, who set it against his cheek where Rémy had landed a punch, and another bag of frozen carrots to Rémy, who draped them on his shoulder where Matt had kicked him. Rémy growled. Matt snarled. The cracked Formica table felt like an unstable barrier between them.

  ‘You boys will play nice or else,’ Em scowled, sending a frisson of electricity across their scalps.

  ‘He started it,’ they both said, pointing to each other almost in unison.

  ‘What are you? Ten?’ Em demanded. ‘We’re trying to stop an apocalypse coming, and you two are trying out for WWE.’

  Matt started to speak. Em silenced him with a glare. ‘We’re all on edge and out of our league, but we have powers,’ she said. ‘And those powers come with responsibility. We use them with purpose.’

  ‘But—’ Rémy tried to jump in. Em leaned across the table and squeezed the carrots against his shoulder till he squirmed.

  ‘You’re lucky that we’re the only ones here tonight,’ she hissed at her brother. ‘We’re supposed to be hiding out, lying low, being invisible to the world until the mess we left in Spain gets sorted. And you’ – she pointed directly to Rémy – ‘I get that you’ve been thrown into this world without preamble or preparation, but we need you to pull it together or we’ll never stop the Camarilla and their Second Coming.’

  ‘Kingdom,’ mumbled Rémy.

  ‘Kingdom, Coming, whatever. This ends now.’

  Matt and Rémy’s rage rumbled in the air behind Em as she switched the kettle on. In her mind, she pressed their anger against the floor, bursting it like a balloon.

  Rémy slouched in his chair and sighed.

  Matt combed his fingers through his hair and pulled out a twig. He looked at it, and burst out laughing. He fired the stick at Rémy, who used it to fish his tea bag from his cup.

  ‘Sorry,’ Rémy said, smiling a little. ‘I had no idea I could do that, raise the dead I mean.’

  Em grinned to herself and poured water into her cup.

  ‘Since we’re all wide awake,’ said Matt, ‘we might as well get back to work.’

  With Matt in the lead, they headed along the passageway into the church.

  Rémy reached out and put his hand on Matt’s shoulder. ‘I’ve never lost control like that before.’

  Matt put his hand on top of Rémy’s. ‘It happens.’

  ‘What exactly were you doing up in the cemetery in the middle of the night anyway?’ Em asked.

  ‘I was revved up from the Piper. I thought I’d try to figure out more from my mom’s diary,’ Rémy began. ‘That’s when I heard them. The bagpipes.’

  He retrieved his mother’s journal from under the grate while Matt draped himself across an old armchair and wrapped himself in a tartan blanket. Em and Matt listened in silence as Rémy described how the music had lured him to the monument and pulled him down the narrow steps to the underground burial chamber of the Duke of Albion.

  ‘He died in the sixteen hundreds.’ Rémy looked at the others. ‘Do you know who he was?’

  ‘The Duke of Albion in the tomb was one of the founding members of Orion and one of our ancestors. But his family goes back to ancient times when his namesake was one of the first Animare, way back in the mists of forever,’ said Em. ‘You’ve heard of Oliver Cromwell, right?’

  ‘Vaguely,’ said Rémy.

  ‘What?’ scoffed Matt. ‘No history in American schools?’

  ‘You heard of Booker T. Washington?’

  Em ignored them both. ‘Cromwell was a dictator in the 1640s who chopped off the king’s head and imposed his puritanical world-view on the country. The arts suffered, and Animare were caught up in the relentless round-ups by self-righteous Puritans and accused of sorcery or witchcraft. The Duke of Albion insisted the European Council of Guardians should get actively involved in the politics of the realm. He published a pamphlet known as the Albion Doctrine, and the European Council actually put him on trial for it.’

  ‘Em,’ said Matt, dropping his shades over his eyes as moonlight poured over him through the skylights. ‘Ageing rapidly over here.’

  ‘Anyway, the duke escaped Cromwell and the Council’s clutches, and he and his followers formed Orion.’ Em dragged a chair next to Rémy at the table. ‘They operated in secret, kind of like the Underground Railroad did with slaves in America, only they were helping Animare to escape to safety. The Albion Doctrine has lots of haters to this day, and the Councils have never officially embraced it.’

  Matt added, ‘Although Orion, as a covert organization, has always embraced it.’

  Rémy rubbed his hands together for warmth. ‘And you didn’t know this great white duke was buried up there?’

  ‘Not sure I ever wondered or cared,’ said Matt. ‘But it makes sense.’

  ‘Why seal him inside the monument?’ asked Rémy. ‘Why not give him his props in the official crypt beneath the church?’

  ‘How do you know he was sealed inside?’ asked Em.

  ‘There was charcoal all over the door, and I think the crypt was sealed with some kind of … of spell.’

  ‘This isn’t Hogwarts,’ observed Matt.

  ‘That’s not what I meant and you know it,’ said Rémy.

  ‘Chill, both of you,’ Em warned.

  ‘I meant,’ said Rémy, ‘that someone may have bricked up that crypt, but it was an Animare that sealed it. I found charcoal all over the surface.’

  ‘I need to see this crypt,’ said Matt, standing up.

  ‘Not happening,’ said Em firmly. ‘In the morning, maybe. But enough ghostbusting for tonight.’

  28.

  SOUND AND VISION

  Matt picked up the old wooden chanter, examining the etchings on its silver collar. A circle of tiny thistles, like a crown of laurels, ran round the collar.

  ‘Any idea why you in particular were drawn to that underground chamber?’ he asked Rémy. ‘Orion’s been working from this church for centuries. Pretty sure no one’s been called down there before now.’

  ‘Pretty sure you’ve not had many Conjurors here either,’ said Rémy.

  ‘And pretty sure,’ added Em, ‘that the duke enchanted this pipe before he was sealed inside and somehow it reacted to Rémy’s presence.’

  ‘To what end?’ asked Rémy.

  ‘Maybe hoping some day someone like you would hear its call?’

  ‘If that’s the case,’ said Rémy, ‘then this etching must mean something specific to a Conjuror. And so Matt’s right. We do need to go back inside the monument.’

  Matt carefully passed the instrument to Rémy, who ran his fingers over the glyphs. The chords cried in his head again, but this time a fleeting image, cherished and familiar, accompanied the sound.

  ‘What?’ said Em, alert to Rémy’s expression.

  ‘I saw something,’ said Rémy.

  Lifting his guitar case from a corner of the room, h
e dug around under his guitar until he found a photograph, which he pulled out and set on the table.

  ‘I was eight or nine in this picture,’ Rémy told the twins. ‘We’d just moved to that apartment in Chicago. It was taken during one of my mom’s good spells.’

  ‘Your mum was beautiful,’ said Em.

  In the photograph, Rémy was presenting a birthday cake to a smiling Annie Dupree Rush. She was sitting at an old-fashioned roll-top desk covered in sheet music and her over-stuffed leather diary, the one now in Rémy’s hand, was in her lap. She was smiling directly at the camera, a wide, open smile that made her eyes dance. Her hair was wrapped in a bright yellow scarf and the hoops in her ears made her look Bohemian and audacious at the same time. Every porthole in the desk was bulging with scraps of paper covered in scribbled notes. Multi-coloured Post-its were stuck all over the desk’s surface.

  ‘You have her eyes,’ said Matt, who noticed everyone’s eyes since the damage done to his own.

  ‘Everyone says that,’ said Rémy, his words catching in his throat. ‘Look at the painting above the desk.’

  Matt and Em peered at a painting of a teenage angel with velvety black wings playing the violin for Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus.

  ‘I never paid much attention to it,’ Rémy said. ‘But I remember Mom would never let anyone touch it. I just caught a glimpse of it when I touched that etching.’

  ‘Let me see what I can find out about it,’ said Em, opening Orion’s database on a nearby computer. She tapped on a keypad next to the computer and a screen came down from the ceiling of the alcove. Then she tapped the computer and pulled up an image on the screen.

  ‘That’s the picture,’ said Rémy, staring at the image of Mary holding Jesus while Joseph held the sheet music for the angel as if he was seeing it for the first time.

  ‘It’s called Rest on the Flight into Egypt,’ said Em. ‘According to Orion’s description, it depicts the Holy Family beneath a copse of fruit trees after their escape from Herod.’