The Secret Gift

by Ian Somers

  ‘And what happens when the couple of hours are up?’

  ‘Then I use my gifts to operate on myself.’

  ‘You cannot be serious!’

  ‘I am serious,’ he hissed at me. ‘I’ve done this type of thing a thousand times before. Let’s get going.’

  Hunter waved his arms in the air and weaved a cloak for us both by using his light-tuning gift. As soon as we were invisible, we went in search of a way to escape both the flames and the emergency workers were who spilling into opposite ends of the hallway.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Safe Ground

  During my year away from the Guild I became averse to taking risks. I’d grown ponderous, almost timid, in the absence of the danger I had endured in my previous stint in the Guild. I guess living a normal life means that you have the luxury to avoid life or death decisions, and that can make a person docile. I didn’t think I’d ever take another risk for the rest of my life. That changed as soon as Hunter showed up at the cottage and presented me with a task that would interrupt the slow, wearying days in the wilderness. I took a big risk that day by going to the hospital with him. I’d taken another big risk when I followed him to Dublin. And in the hours that followed the attack on the hotel, I took two more risks – ones that could have gotten me, and others, killed.

  Thanks to Hunter’s light-tuning gift, we had managed to slip past the emergency workers and the police that filed up the staircase to the fourth floor. We found our way to a fire exit on the second floor and within moments we’d made it to the shelter of an underground car park nearby.

  Hunter had been proud and stubborn about his injury back at the hotel. His strength had crumbled by the time we reached the kinetibike, which was parked in the darkest corner of the car park. Sweat was streaming down his face, he was shaking, blood was steadily seeping from the wound and had dyed one leg of his trousers dark red. His stubbornness had not diminished; he still refused to go anywhere near a hospital and insisted that he could patch himself up once we got to safe ground.

  What was safe ground, though? We were two agents who were being hunted by a gang of ruthless assassins. And we’d just partaken in a battle that had practically destroyed a city centre hotel and claimed a number of lives. Surely the hotel staff would have described us both to the police. Those descriptions had probably already been passed to every officer in the city. We were wanted men and there was nowhere and no one in Dublin that was friendly.

  I helped Hunter onto the back of the bike then drove up the exit ramp and out into the cool night air. The police were everywhere. One end of the street was blocked by two squad cars and there were uniformed officers searching the opposite end on foot. I made sure Hunter had us cloaked before I slowly steered the bike around the parked squad cars and took to a road that led away from the heart of the city. We had escaped, but where were we going?

  Hunter soon fell silent and I didn’t know what to do. For a while I contemplated driving across country to my cottage by the west coast. Hunter was getting worse by the minute, though, and I probably wouldn’t make it that far. There was only one realistic destination. I had accepted that by the time we reached the outskirts of the city. We were headed for Maybrook.

  Hunter was out cold by the time I turned off the motorway onto the road that led to the sleepy suburb. We were now uncloaked, he was slumped over my back, spilling blood on the road, and I was driving at over 200kmph. The only bit of luck we had that night was that we weren’t spotted by the local police.

  The hour was late when I parked the bike in the lane at the back of Maybrook Avenue. The streets were empty, the houses were dark and silent, and sunrise was not yet near. I waited a short while and listened out for sirens that never came. When I was sure we had not been followed I killed the engine, flicked out the kickstand and climbed off the bike. I now had an opportunity to take a closer look at Hunter. I didn’t like what I saw. He was still unconscious; he was bleeding very heavily and was as white as a sheet.

  The high-speed journey certainly hadn’t done him any good. Being slumped over the tank of a kinetibike in freezing temperatures was only making matters worse. I couldn’t waste any more time. I had to get him indoors.

  I carefully lifted him onto my shoulder and used my gift to wrench open the doorway to the back garden of my family home. It didn’t take long to bypass the patio doors and to get Hunter upstairs to the master bedroom. I then went back outside and wheeled the bike into the back garden before making my way inside once more. All the furniture and framed pictures and knick-knacks were untouched. The house looked exactly as it had the night I left for London – apart from a little dust and a stale odour in the air.

  I turned on the bedroom lights to see Hunter sprawled across the bed clutching his stomach and moaning. This was going to be a very difficult night. I almost puked when I got a closer look at his injury. Blood was spewing out around the sides of the piece of wood that was stuck in his stomach. It got worse every time he moved. His clothes were completely soaked through from perspiration, his face was bone white and every couple of minutes he went into a bout of intense shivering. He’d be dead within an hour or two and I had no idea how to save him. I couldn’t even look at the wound without vomiting, never mind carrying out some rudimentary operation on him. I sat at the end of the bed, with my face in my hands, as my only friend slowly died right next to me. Why did everyone close to me have to die? Was I cursed? Was this all my fault?

  ‘Bentley …’ Hunter said weakly. ‘Bentley, are you there?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m here.’ I rounded the bed and sat next to him. I leaned forward to look in his eyes and patted him on the shoulder. ‘How are you feeling, pal?’

  ‘Get your hands off me,’ he grumbled. ‘You need to listen, right? I want you to leave me here. I’m not going to last much longer. My insides are all cut up and I don’t have the strength to operate on myself.’

  ‘I can try, Hunter. I can try to use my gift to fix this.’

  ‘No. You’d only mess it up, then blame yourself for killing me in some incredibly painful way. You just leave me here, lad. My race is run, and so will yours, if you stay with me. You need to get out of here and go somewhere off the beaten track. And you need to stay there until all this has blown over.’

  ‘I don’t want to do that, Hunter. I can’t leave you here to die on your own.’

  ‘Do as I say,’ he said, wincing. He started shivering again, worse than before, and clutched at the piece of wood stuck in his gut. ‘I’m going to pass out now. You get on that stupid bike of yours and clear off. And don’t go searching for Cathy. You’re too important to lose …’

  He was out cold again as soon as he finished barking his last order at me. Romand, Dad, Peterson, and now Hunter. It seemed every mentor I would ever have was to meet this grim fate. And as usual, I could do nothing to prevent it.

  Or could I …? There was one chance for Hunter. I had taken my first big risk of the night by going to Maybrook. Now I was contemplating the second big risk of the night.

  Gemma Wright’s house was only a few hundred yards away. Although she couldn’t save Hunter, her dad was a medic in the army when he was a young man, and she had told me that he’d had to operate on injured soldiers a few times while serving in the Middle East. Surely he’d be able to help. To go there was reckless in the extreme. There were some very nasty people searching for me. I’d be endangering Gemma and her father by going anywhere near them.

  No agent of the Guild would have even considered going to the Wrights’ house if they were in my shoes. It was far too perilous. A sensible agent would have remained hidden that night, allowed Hunter to succumb to his injury, then moved on at first light. It was the sensible thing to do.

  I wasn’t a very sensible person, though, and within moments I was skulking along the avenue in the direction of the Maybrook Road. Hunter and I had shared too much, and faced too many dangers together, to let him slowly die from an injury I had inadvertently inflict
ed. I had to at least try to save him.

  I paused at the end of the garden and saw one light on in the Wrights’ house – Gemma’s bedroom window. I was in luck. I picked up a pebble from the driveway and used my psychokinesis to make it float upward towards the window. When I was sure no one on the street was watching at me, I used my gift to tap the pebble against the window over and over until Gemma’s face appeared between the curtains. Thankfully she was wearing her glasses and recognised me straight away.

  ‘Ross Bentley, you are the strangest person I have ever known,’ she hissed at me as soon as she’d gotten the window open. ‘What on earth are you doing throwing pebbles at my window at this hour?’

  ‘I need your help,’ I said, keeping my voice as low as possible. ‘I really need your help, Gemma.’

  ‘Is that blood on your clothes?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s the reason I need your help.’

  ‘You need my father’s help.’

  ‘I’ll go if it’s too much to ask …’

  ‘Stay there,’ she insisted. ‘I’ll come down.’

  Gemma pulled me into the hallway as soon as she had the door open. She thought I was hurt and that the blood that I was covered in was my own. I didn’t correct her because this minor misconception made her dash upstairs and wake her father without hesitation. If I’d told her the truth she might have reacted very differently. Her father was a pleasant enough man, despite being rudely awoken in the middle of the night, and came plodding down the staircase wearing striped pyjamas and a pair of furry slippers.

  ‘My God!’ he gasped as he entered the hallway. ‘Ross Bentley, what on earth have you done to yourself? Look at you, you’re covered in blood!’ Then he straightened up and a calmness came over him as he looked me up and down. ‘Where is the injured person?’

  ‘Ross is the one who’s injured,’ Gemma raised her voice. ‘Can’t you see he’s badly hurt?’

  ‘If Ross had lost that much blood,’ he said to Gemma, ‘he wouldn’t be able to stand.’

  ‘My friend is badly hurt,’ I confessed. ‘He’s at my house. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to bring him.’

  ‘Most people would take an injured friend to a hospital,’ Mr Wright said to me. ‘You must be on the run if you brought him to an empty house.’

  ‘He’s going to die. And you need to believe me, he will be murdered if I bring him to a hospital. I wouldn’t have come here if I wasn’t desperate. It’ll be my fault if he dies. I don’t want that to happen. I can’t let it happen.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Mr Wright said after a moment’s thought. ‘What sort of injury are we talking about here?’

  ‘Er …’ I didn’t want to tell him the exact injury, just in case he got spooked. I really didn’t want to alarm him but still needed to portray a sense of urgency. ‘You could say he’s been stabbed.’

  ‘And he’s lost a lot of blood already,’ he said, looking at my bloodstained clothes. ‘This type of injury requires proper medical attention, Ross. I am advising you to bring your friend to a hospital immediately. I may not be able to patch him up.’

  ‘He won’t survive the journey to a hospital, Mr Wright. You have to help me save him. It’s my fault that he got injured.’

  ‘Right,’ he said after a moment’s thought. ‘Give me a minute to gather some things.’

  The short walk from the Wrights’ house to mine seemed to take an eternity. All I could think of was that we’d get to the bedroom to find Hunter dead and as cold as the air of that winter night. The three of us entered the house as quietly as we could and found Hunter exactly how I’d left him; lying on his side and leaking blood all over the bed. Thankfully he was still breathing.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ Mr Wright said as he looked at the piece of wood sticking out of Hunter’s stomach. ‘How on earth did that get in there?’

  ‘It’s a really long story,’ I replied. ‘And I don’t think we have time for long stories right now.’

  ‘I think you’re right. This man is very close to death.’ He leaned over and took a closer look at Hunter’s injury while mumbling to himself and nodding. ‘Ross, put your hand over his mouth for a moment, would you.’

  ‘Won’t he suffocate?’

  ‘He can breathe through his nose, don’t worry.’

  ‘All right.’ I pressed the palm of my hand over Hunter’s lips and looked quizzically at Mr Wright. ‘Why do I need to cover his mouth?’

  ‘You’ll see in a moment.’

  Mr Wright pulled on a pair of latex gloves, climbed onto the bed, straddled Hunter – which looked very bizarre – then pressed hard on his abdomen with one hand, and without warning, grabbed the shard with his other hand and tore it from his stomach with one pull. Hunter’s screams would have woken half the street if they hadn’t been muffled by my hands.

  ‘Are you lucid?’ Mr Wright asked Hunter. ‘You there, can you hear my voice?’

  ‘Who the bloody hell are you?’ Hunter hissed. ‘I’m in flaming agony here!’

  ‘That’s a good sign,’ Mr Wright said quite calmly as he climbed off the bed. ‘I’d have been worried if you couldn’t feel anything.’ He started pulling instruments from his medical bag and laying them on the bed. Then he took a bottle of whiskey and unscrewed it. He took a long swig from the bottle and then passed it to Hunter. ‘What I’m about to do to you will be extremely painful and I have no anaesthetic – except for this.’

  ‘Give it here.’ Hunter was never one to pass on a shot of whiskey and raised the bottle to his face with trembling hands. He started drinking as Mr Wright began to remove his blood-soaked clothes.

  ‘Gemma,’ Mr Wright said, turning to his daughter. ‘I’d rather you didn’t have to look at a naked man drinking whiskey. I’ll call you in if you’re needed. Ross, you can remain here – I’ll need an assistant. Press your hands on the wound. Keep pressure on it.’

  Gemma’s father waited for her to leave before removing the rest of Hunter’s clothes, then used bed sheets to clear most of the blood from Hunter’s body. The retired doctor gave me a sobering look when he’d cleared away the majority of the blood. Hunter was head to toe in old scars. God only knows what Mr Wright was thinking at that moment. To his credit, he didn’t make a single comment, and got to work on his patient without delay. I’d seen my fair share of combat and had suffered quite a few bad cuts in my time, but this was a bridge too far for me. I’d never seen so much blood in all my life. Then I remembered how much Romand had bled before he died. The memory of him lying lifeless on Peterson’s lawn awakened a deep fear in me and I stood there shaking as Hunter drifted into drunken unconsciousness. He was a right old grump, was Hunter, but I didn’t want him to die. He was one of the few friends I had left in the world.

  It was bright outside by the time the last stitch was sewn. The people of Maybrook were awake and going about their normal morning routine, oblivious to what had transpired in the house that night. I parted the curtains and looked along the avenue for any sign of unwelcome visitors. Nothing was out of place. The only ones who passed along the road were sleepy suburbanites venturing into another nine to five adventure.

  ‘I’ve done all I can,’ Mr Wright said as he draped a clean sheet over Hunter. ‘He should live … I think.’

  ‘I can’t thank you enough, Mr Wright.’

  ‘I know you can’t,’ he replied sharply.

  ‘What happened, Ross?’ Gemma asked. I hadn’t even noticed her entering the room and had no idea how long she’d been standing there. ‘How did this happen?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know where to begin, Gemma.’

  ‘Try!’ she demanded. ‘We got you out of a right jam. I think you owe us an explanation.’

  ‘Do you both remember those crazy videos of me moving things around at the big contest in London?’

  ‘The videos from The Million Dollar Gift?’ she asked. ‘The fake videos?’

  ‘Yeah …’ I replied awkwardly. ‘The fake videos …’

  �
��They weren’t fake, were they?’ her father said. ‘That’s why you’re on the run.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We don’t want to hear any more,’ he said. ‘I think what you have to say may be dangerous for us to know.’

  ‘It is, Mr Wright,’ I said. ‘Thanks for understanding. Thanks for everything that you’ve done.’

  ‘Stop thanking me,’ he barked. ‘You shouldn’t stay here alone if there are evil people looking for you, Ross. This house would be a obvious place to look.’

  ‘That’s why I think the two of you should leave. I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to you. I shouldn’t have even involved you in the first place. I was just so desperate last night.’

  ‘You are still desperate if there are people searching for you and your injured friend – it will be quite some time before he is mobile again.’

  ‘I have nowhere else to take him.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t spent half the night saving this man’s life only for him to be gunned down in his sleep,’ Mr Wright said. ‘No, that won’t do at all. You and your friend should hide at our house.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Fever

  At first I refused Mr Wright’s offer. He and Gemma wouldn’t take no for an answer, though, and after a while I realised that they were right; staying in the house alone with Hunter was stupid and pointless. The assassins would eventually go to my family home in search of us, and I mightn’t have been able to fend them off without Hunter’s help. I wasn’t even sure what I would be facing considering the advanced weaponry that Vanev, and the assassin at the hospital, had used. My gifts could even be rendered ineffective by such technology. It would have been foolish to remain.

  After he’d gathered his instruments, Mr Wright walked back to his home then returned in his station wagon a few minutes later and parked in the lane at the back of the house. Gemma and I carried Hunter through the house and garden, then bundled him into the backseat. I watched them drive away then went back inside to clean up. I gathered everything that had so much as a speck of blood on it. Bloody tissues, bed clothes, towels and clothes all went into bin liners that I hid in the attic. I didn’t want to leave any evidence of our brief but traumatic stay at the house. I then went to my old room to see if there was anything I could take with me that might come in handy. I found little of use. This was the room of a stranger, a youngster with too much time on his hands. A laptop, a games console, DVDs, earphones, an MP3 player. Most of it already outdated. Most of it was crap. Just worthless junk that serves only to distract people from living their lives. The boy who had left this house for a contest in London was a shallow stranger to me now. I had become someone different and more meaningful than who I once was. It made me feel like the early years of my life had been wasted. Leaving the suburban prison had unlocked the real me. For the first time in many, many months I didn’t regret entering The Million Dollar Gift. If I had stayed here I would have amounted to nothing. I’d probably still be working at the same supermarket, and being bullied by my old boss.