by Ian Somers
‘Never mind how I’m feeling. Where are we?’
‘This house belongs to a friend of mine.’
‘What are you talking about? You don’t have any friends!’
‘A friend from my former life.’
‘Don’t tell me you brought me to the place you grew up.’ He slowly climbed from the bed with a groan then returned his focus to me. ‘That was a stupid thing to do.’
‘It was either that or let you die.’
‘Die? I could have fixed the wound myself.’
‘You don’t remember telling me to escape and leave you to die?’
‘I would never have said that. Your imagination is running wild again.’
‘Yeah, I must have dreamed the whole thing up.’
‘Well, don’t beat yourself up about it.’ He parted his pyjama top and examined the rough scar on his stomach. ‘That’s not a bad job. Who did it?’
‘The man who owns this house. He is the man who saved your life and risked his neck to protect us both. Don’t you forget to thank him.’
‘Oh, enough of all this,’ he moaned. He staggered to the window, parted the curtains and squinted at the sky. ‘It’s late in the day…’
‘Almost 3pm,’ I told him.
‘3pm? Christ! That means I’ve been out for over twelve hours. We’ve wasted far too much time. We have to get going.’
‘Hunter, you’ve been unconscious for over four days.’
‘Four days?’ he asked incredulously. ‘Four days! Half the bloody Guild might have been wiped out by now. I can’t believe you left me unconscious for that long. We have to get moving immediately.’
‘Hunter, you’ll need another couple of days before you can travel. You nearly died more than once since the fight at the hotel.’
‘I’ll live,’ he grumbled. ‘Now fetch me my clothes! I refuse to leave the house in silk pyjamas that are two sizes too small for me!’
‘And where are we supposed to be going? Are you intending to catch a flight to London to see your friends in the Palatium?’
‘No …’ A veil of doubt fell over his face and he eased himself back on to the bed and sat in silence for a long while. ‘No … we can’t go there … It’s all coming back to me now.’ His brow hung low over his eyes and his hands became fists. ‘We were betrayed. Someone sold us out to Vanev and Brofeldt.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I made a call to Ballentine. Don’t you remember? I told him exactly where we were staying. Then within the hour those goons were trying to kill us. We were betrayed, Bentley.’
‘You think Ballentine told them we were at the hotel?’
‘Someone did.’
‘I don’t believe that. One of the spies must have seen us or something. Maybe they caught a glimpse of one of us standing by the window. Maybe they saw me when I left the chipper with the food.’
‘No, Bentley. They didn’t see us. They were told where we were.’
‘Maybe they had Ballentine’s phone tapped or something. Remember Brofeldt said they had people everywhere – in government agencies.’
‘All Guild phones are encrypted. They can’t be tapped. And yes, she did say they had people everywhere. She also admitted to us that they had people in the Guild.’
‘She was full of crap. She was just trying to scare us.’
‘A dying woman doesn’t tell lies,’ he assured me. ‘They have people planted in the Guild. One of those people sold us out.’
‘And if what you say is true, who betrayed us? Surely Ballentine would never work for a group like this.’
‘Ballentine’s an arsehole.’
‘That doesn’t automatically make him a traitor.’
‘I know. He might have passed the order to someone else … Maybe it was the agents based in Belfast that he called. It’s impossible to know right now.’
‘If we don’t know who the traitor is, then we can’t seek help from the Guild. We don’t really know who we’re asking for help.’
‘Exactly,’ he nodded. ‘We are on our own for now.’
‘There’s nothing we can do if we’re on our own.’
‘I’m not going to sit here hiding while the Guild is destroyed. Too many people have sacrificed themselves for the Guild for it to end up like this. There are too many good people still within the group to abandon it now. We have to try to stop this master that Brofeldt talked about.’
‘Do you have any idea who he is?’
‘None.’
‘Are you sure? Hunter, you were running a fever last night and you kept going on and on about demons who are allied to the Kematian.’
‘I never said that!’ he almost shouted. A look of shock took over his face as he turned to me. ‘I would never say something so idiotic.’
‘You did say it.’ I stepped closer to him and lowered my voice. ‘Listen, I know you’re not supposed to be telling me about the Kematian, but if he is out there and you think he’s responsible for all this, you have to tell me. I must know what I’m facing before I risk my life again.’
‘You are not facing the Kematian,’ he replied. ‘That man is dead to the world.’
‘Then who the hell is this master?’
‘I told you I don’t know,’ he said angrily. ‘We need to contact people who know more about this before we make our next move.’
‘What about the Council? Sterling? He can’t be a spy working against the Guild, he’s running the show! How can we contact him?’
‘We can’t. I told you the entire Council goes into hiding when war is brewing. No one outside the Council knows where they go …’
‘That’s bloody great!’ I moaned. ‘So we can’t contact anyone. We don’t even know who is genuine and who is a traitor.’
‘There are two people in the Guild who simply cannot be spies.’
‘Who?’
‘Marie Canavan and Elizabeth Armitage. Other than Sterling, those are the only two people who I would entrust my life to.’
‘I hope you memorised their phone numbers because your mobile phone was in the hotel room – the hotel room that was turned into a furnace.’
‘I remember their numbers. I won’t make any calls from a civilian’s house, though. I have to get moving, Bentley.’
‘We have to be careful before we leave. There’s been a car full of very suspicious looking dudes doing laps of this housing estate.’
‘Now?’
‘Last night. There’s been no sign of them today.’
‘We will have to be extra cautious.’
‘We’ll need more than caution. We’ll need a fair amount of luck to survive this time.’
‘Yes, this is indeed a wicked time. The next few days will be the most perilous we’ve ever faced.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Wrong Luggage
I had no idea what we were going to face when we entered the fray once more. I was understandably apprehensive about leaving the safety of the Wrights’ house after the vision I’d had of Hunter being killed. If that vision was accurate I would lose my best friend and would have to countenance a very lonely future. I could feel my anxiety levels rising by the minute and I doubted I had the stomach for the fight. There was no backing out, though. I was going to be a part of this gifted war whether I liked it or not. I had been targeted by the enemy, even though I had been inactive for more than a year. They would come for me one way or another, and I thought it best that I at least do my bit for the Guild rather than try to hide.
After my conversation with Hunter I went to tell Gemma and her father that the time had come for us to leave. Mr Wright fetched some of his old clothes for Hunter to wear, then insisted that we stay for dinner before we hit the road again. To my surprise Hunter accepted the offer; he told me it could be a long time before we got a square meal again, and from experience I knew this was a definite possibility.
To my surprise, Mr Wright was quite the cook. We even had starters before the main course – which wa
s quite delicious as well as filling. Then he laid out some homemade rhubarb pie and custard for dessert. It was quite the meal. I doubted I’d see the like of it again for a long time to come.
The conversation had been friendly through the evening. Then as Mr Wright poured coffees for us all the chatter died down. Most of the talking was done by Gemma’s dad; he was advising Hunter on how to treat his injury if it became infected again. He also advised him not to be doing anything strenuous. Hunter assured him he would take it easy. I sat there listening to my colleague and was fascinated by how comfortable he was with lying and how convincing it sounded. I didn’t blame him for lying. It was part of his survival technique in a way. All gifted people grow accustomed to hiding the truth from others.
Gemma barely said a single word and merely picked at her dinner. She didn’t look at me once for the entire time we were seated. Occasionally her gaze rose from her plate and focused on Hunter. She stared at him like he was a monster from a fairy tale. In truth, he was far worse than any ghoul that a writer could dream up to scare impressionable minds. Hunter had killed, or murdered, depending on your point of view, countless people throughout his life. I knew some of those people didn’t exactly deserve the punishment he delivered. I tried to convince myself that the world needed people like him – those who could set aside feelings and conscience to protect society. His view of the world and the threats that often face it was a narrow one: Stamp out the threat before it becomes too great. If that meant killing someone, then so be it. I too had taken human life, but my perspective on the world and the people and villains who filled it was polarised with Hunter’s; I could never neglect conscience, even if killing was for the greater good. There was always a price to pay for taking a human life. For me the effects of killing were hardly ever immediate; it would be weeks after the event that the guilt and revulsion would set in and linger. But for all of Hunter’s flaws, he’d probably fight to death to protect Gemma and her father if our enemies tried to harm them. It was this that made him rather odd and endearing: he could take human life at times like it meant nothing to him, then on other occasions he would risk his neck to save people he didn’t even know.
Gemma would have been terrified of both Hunter and me if she knew even a fraction of our true nature. I think her father had a better grasp on what we were. I hadn’t told him of the Guild or that we were agents who tracked down criminals, but I did get a feeling that he knew we were killers as soon as he’d laid eyes on Hunter’s scarred body. That look he gave me before he started the operation spoke volumes.
Hunter excused himself as soon as we were finished eating and went to the back garden for a cigar as the sun set over Maybrook. Gemma went to her room without so much as a word. I didn’t want to leave without talking to her one last time, and so after I helped her father clear the table, I went upstairs and rapped my knuckles on her bedroom door.
‘Go away, Ross,’ she answered from within. ‘I don’t feel like talking right now.’
‘Yes, you do. You just don’t want to say what’s on your mind.’
‘Stop twisting my words.’
‘Open the door, Gemma. I’d rather we had this chat face to face.’
‘We’re not having a chat.’
‘We are actually.’
The door swung inward and she stood facing me with sadness clouding her eyes. She reluctantly stepped to one side and ushered me inside with a tired sweep of her arm.
‘Why don’t you want to talk to me all of a sudden?’ I asked as she shut the door behind me. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I don’t like that you’re leaving.’
‘I have to leave, Gemma. I can’t stay here.’
She nodded pensively as she took a seat on the end of her bed. She took an old teddy bear from a shelf next to her and massaged its tattered ears and stared at the floor. ‘Never mind me. I’m just being silly.’
‘What’s really on your mind, Gemma?’
‘I’m wondering what the hell is out there, Ross? Where are you going? Why are you running?’
‘It’s nothing too serious, believe me. I have to hide this power of psychokinesis that I have. There are people who will do anything to have control over me because of the things I can do. That’s why I move around from place to place. I refuse to allow this gift to be used for evil.’
‘You’re not as good at lying as your Scottish friend.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Of course it’s serious, Ross. I’m not stupid.’
‘I know you’re not.’
‘Then stop treating me like I am. You disappeared into thin air, no one hears from you for two long years and then you show up at my door, your friend almost dead with a piece of wood stuck in his gut. Do you think I don’t know how it got there?’
‘How could you know?’
‘I know because I watch the news, Ross. You came to Maybrook looking like you’d been in a war only hours after a terrorist attack on a hotel in Dublin. The police have been looking for two men who are supposed to be responsible. One is Irish and in his early twenties, the other is in his mid-forties with an accent that is either Scottish or northern English.’ She rose from the bed and wrapped her hand around mine and forced a smile. ‘I know you’re not a bad person, Ross. You can’t be. But I know you’re involved in something really dangerous.’
‘I guess there’s no fooling you,’ I said, giving her hands a squeeze. ‘I won’t tell you what’s going on in my life, though. You can’t know. You don’t want to know. I would prefer if these last few days became an oddity in your life that soon becomes nothing more than a curious memory. I don’t want my presence here to alter your future.’
‘It’s too late for that,’ she said quietly. She turned away from me and sat on her bed again, running her hands through her long chestnut hair, as she often did when she was agitated.
‘How has it altered your life?’
‘Never mind.’
‘Tell me, Gemma. I want to understand.’
‘We were always good friends, Ross,’ she said, almost embarrassed. ‘Good friends … but maybe there could be a little something more than just friends …’
‘What?’ I almost laughed. ‘You think there is more to us than simply friendship?’
‘You used to have a crush on me …’
‘Yeah, I did. And I let that go when I found out that you didn’t feel the same.’
‘Things can change.’
‘Have your feelings changed?’
‘I always liked you, Ross. You were a good friend and fun to be around. I didn’t feel attracted to you, but we’re older now and you’re very different. You’re not the silly fool who just made me laugh anymore. You’re quite mysterious and you’ve got these amazing abilities.’
‘I can’t have this conversation, Gemma.’
‘I told you I didn’t want to talk. You’re the one who insisted on knowing my mind.’
‘I’m seeing someone.’
‘So am I.’
‘Well then,’ I said, suddenly grinning like a tool, ‘that settles that. This conversation is out of bounds. There’s no reason to discuss our feelings.’
‘You being here the last few days has given me these feelings.’
I had dreamed of this for countless nights when I lived in Maybrook. Gemma was the hottest girl I had ever set eyes on. A glance, a smile or simply a kind word from her was enough to brighten the darkest day. My infatuation with her was mostly frustrating because I was under the impression that the attraction wasn’t mutual. But now she had the same feelings? It had been a long time since I thought of anyone other than Cathy in a romantic way. Now there was a sliver of the old attraction to Gemma showing through. My heart was beating just a little faster than usual as I sat next to her on the bed. The faint aroma of her perfume being sucked into me with every breath was like a magnet drawing me to her. It was like magic. The same magic that had abandoned Cathy and me months earlier.
‘Try to stay a
live,’ she whispered to me. ‘I would like to think that you’re alive and that someday you might show that ugly face of yours here again.’
‘I intend to stay alive,’ I replied. ‘It might be nice to come back here again and look at your ugly face one more time.’
‘That would be very nice …’
We leaned into each other and our lips met. I couldn’t describe what we did as kissing because there was no movement on our lips. It was more like we breathed each other in for a few seconds before we drew back and took one last look into one another’s eyes.
I fought back the rising desire and hid my eyes from hers by wrapping my arms around her shoulders and giving her a hug. This confusion of the heart was not the luggage I wanted on the journey that was ahead of me. For the first time in my life I was glad to hear Hunter shouting my name from the hallway below. It allowed me to avoid dealing with feelings that had no place in my life at that time.
There was no long goodbye. Within moments I had pushed the kinetibike along the laneway at the side of the house and mounted it by the gates. Hunter stood next to me and zipped up his new coat before he climbed on the back.
‘Right, Casanova,’ he said, smirking. ‘Let’s get moving.’
‘She’s just a friend.’
‘She’s too good-looking to be a friend.’
‘We just talked.’
‘Frankly, I don’t care about your love life, Bentley. I’d like to get moving before those suspicious dudes of yours show up again.’
‘Where to?’
‘The nearest port.’
As always, Hunter’s plan seemed a simple one. We were to go to Dublin port and he would cloak us as we sneaked onto the first liner that was headed to Britain. From there we were to search out either Canavan or Armitage – these were the only two people that Hunter could be sure about. Everyone else in the Guild was to be treated as an enemy.
In truth, Hunter’s plans were never straightforward and this one was no different. No plan is simple when everyone is your enemy. We were wanted by the police after the battle at the Windmill Hotel, and because it was thought to be terrorism, every police force in the western world was on the lookout for us. The Guild was not safe for us anymore; there were people in the organisation who were traitors and had already tried to have us murdered. Then there was the shadowy group that Malcolm Wilson was a part of. They appeared to have moles planted everywhere and there was the unseen threat of the assassin that Brofeldt had warned us about. There was so much danger surrounding us that I felt claustrophobic even in the open air.
