The Secret Gift

by Ian Somers

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘Do you want some porridge or not?’

  ‘No. I don’t feel good this morning. The air’s getting chilly.’

  ‘It’s almost October, Hunter. Winter is on its way.’

  ‘Cold makes my body stiff,’ he said. ‘Can’t get the blood circulating, you know. Can’t move around anymore,’ he raised his voice. ‘Stuck in this blasted chair!’

  ‘Calm down.’

  ‘I can’t calm down. It’s all right for you to say calm down. You can go for a walk, or a jog, make yourself a meal, visit the town. I’m stuck here all day and night! And that cat of yours! Oh, that cat is determined to make my life even more miserable.’

  Such temper tantrums were common for Hunter. Especially in the mornings. He tended to calm down gradually as the day wore on. He was particularly grouchy, and upset, that day so I took his tea to the sink and emptied it. I made him a coffee to take his mind off his troubles, and told him to take it to the other room. I followed him down the hallway and to the sitting room where he relit his cigar and sipped his coffee as he stared out the window.

  Being disabled wasn’t easy for him. It wouldn’t be easy for anyone to lose their mobility. But Hunter had lived life as a warrior. He’d been constantly in and out of fights, and travelled the world hunting for dangerous villains. Being confined to the chair, and to the cottage, was incredibly frustrating for a man like him. When I first moved back to the cottage with him I actually cried a few times when he wasn’t looking. That’s how upset I was to see him so down and so weak.

  It had gotten easier over time to be around him, not just through familiarity, but because I knew he was gradually improving. When I returned from Thailand I went to Canavan’s house to see how he was doing. At first he refused to talk to me, or even to make eye contact with me. Canavan told me that he had been crestfallen that I had gone away to travel the world while he was lying in a bed, paralysed from the neck down. He was right to be angry. Only when I returned did I see how selfish I had been.

  I was determined to wait around until Hunter spoke to me, and was left waiting for five weeks. Hunter’s stubbornness had not been dented by the ordeal he had gone through. During my stay in Hornsea I was reunited with Jim Sterling. He paid regular visits to Hunter and used his sixteenth gift to try to repair the damage that had been done by Boxer. There was no immediate improvement, but over the five weeks I noticed that he regained the use of three fingers on his right hand. And Sterling was confident that Hunter would recovery fully someday.

  As soon as Hunter could lift his right arm he was insisting that he be allowed to return to his home in the Scottish wilderness. Canavan refused. That was when Hunter started to talk to me again, and soon he had convinced me to live with him in his cottage. I only agreed because I owed him in a big way, and was able to convince Canavan and Sterling that he would be safe with me. In the six months that followed, Hunter regained the use of both arms and a slight movement in his toes. It was enough to allow him to move about in a wheelchair. There were also subtle hints of his gifts returning. He had no psychokinetic ability since the accident, but his electro-psyching was slowly returning. He was on the slow and painful road to recovery, and would likely be back on his feet within a year. After that, he’d soon be champing at the bit to revive his career as an agent.

  I left him to his cigar and went to my room to listen to some music – an old passion of mine that I’d rediscovered since I’d left the Guild. It was nice to enjoy the simple things in life again. Most days I would spend a couple of hours listening to my favourite tunes, relaxing, thinking of nothing more important than what to make for dinner. On that day even the dry serenade of Nick Drake could not calm my soul. There was a busy night ahead for me, and my mind was growing busy. By midday I’d left my bed to light a fire in the sitting room and sat in the armchair watching it in silence.

  ‘Any word from the Guild?’ Hunter asked without drawing his gaze from the window.

  ‘None,’ I answered. ‘They know better than to contact me.’

  ‘The least they could do is keep me up to date with what’s going on in the world. It’s like they’ve forgotten all about me.’

  ‘I’m sure you’d know about it if there was anything important going on.’

  ‘Anything could be happening out there,’ he said. ‘And I wouldn’t know about it.’

  ‘Why would they tell you anyway? You’re of no use to them anymore, Hunter.’

  ‘I can still do my bit.’

  ‘Really?’ I chuckled. ‘I can just see you now, rolling into action.’

  ‘You’ve a terrible sense of humour, Bentley.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s something I developed over the years. I wonder where I would learn such a thing …?’

  ‘I must have done something awful in a previous life to have ended up like this.’

  ‘In a previous life?’ I laughed. ‘You’ve done enough awful things in this life to deserve a lot worse that you’re suffering now.’

  ‘It’s hell.’

  ‘Oh, stop. You know full well that you’ll be up walking around again in time.’

  ‘It can’t come soon enough. I hate being trapped here, depending on you, and putting up with that evil cat of yours.’

  ‘Oh, be quiet, would you? Keep this up and I’ll have to send you to bed for your afternoon nap.’

  He turned to me and raised his middle finger.

  ‘Mature,’ I said, rolling my eyes. ‘That’s very mature of you.’

  A line of electricity pulsed around his raised finger and he gave a defiant grin.

  ‘Any more of your jokes, Bentley, and you’ll be the one who’ll be taking a nap.’

  That’s how we spent most of that day, bickering and poking fun at one another. To some it would seem like a hellish existence. To us it was normal. It’s the way we’d always been. It was the way we liked it.

  Most days were the same in the cottage. The nights were unpredictable, though. Sometimes Hunter would be exhausted by 8pm and would sleep soundly until morning. Other nights he suffered with pains and could not sleep. On those nights I’d sit by the fire with him, sharing a few measures of whiskey and talking over the old times. The problem with that was that our old times were in fact dark times that weren’t always nice to recount. There was often mention of our friends who had died in battle. Of the love I had for Cathy. Of the love that Hunter had once shared with Linda Farrier. Of the lunatics we had fought. These were not easy conversations to have.

  Some nights the discussion would turn to the future. What might happen to the Guild and the gifted people around the world. We even discussed the demons that Sterling had accidentally made of his murdered friends. We discussed the four Orangmati that remained at large. Where they could be. What they were doing. I claimed that they were terrified of Sterling and would never again reveal themselves. Hunter, being an argumentative soul, would always counter this claim by reminding me of Ian Garrot’s search for Sarah Fisher years before – back when we were trying to save her from the clutches of Edward Zalech. ‘They are not as dormant as we would like to believe,’ Hunter would say. And he was probably right.

  Any talk of the Orangmati, or of Jim Sterling, would force me to ponder my own destiny. I had developed many of the true gifts, and the coming of the sixteenth gift seemed inevitable. Sterling was getting old and might not be strong enough to face his old foes if they returned. I could not escape the fact that I would have to be the one to confront them if that time ever came.

  ‘Are you off out on one of your mysterious excursions tonight?’ Hunter asked.

  ‘Nothing mysterious about it.’

  ‘It’s a mystery to me. The last Saturday of each month you leave here for God knows where on that bike of yours, and don’t return for nearly two days.’

  ‘I told you before, Hunter. I’m seeing a girl who lives in Aberdeen. She works most weekends, and the last weekend of each month she has free. Nothing wrong or mysterious about
it.’

  ‘You’re a terrible liar, Bentley. I know you’re up to something.’

  ‘I’m not lying to you.’

  ‘Yes, you are.’

  ‘Why do you think I’m lying?’

  ‘Because you look worried each time before you leave. A young man going to see his girlfriend wouldn’t look like you do now.’

  ‘I’m nervous around girls.’

  ‘Ah, keep your secrets!’ he spat. ‘I don’t care what you’re doing.’

  ‘Don’t ask if you don’t care,’ I said. ‘But will you be all right on your own for the night?’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like I’m an …’ He was about to say ‘invalid’, but stopped himself short.

  ‘Will you be okay until I return, Hunter?’

  ‘I will.’

  Hunter fell asleep in his chair early that evening and I used my psychokinetic power to levitate him into the air and through the hallway to his bed. I then brought the wheelchair to his room and left it within reach. I felt a little guilty about leaving him alone so I gathered three cigars – one more than he was allowed in one day – and placed them on his bedside locker. I then made sure everything in the kitchen was within reach for him the next morning before I prepared to leave. I never thought I’d actually grow so attached to him. It actually made me laugh when I thought back to when we’d first met and how much we hated each other. I was glad we’d sorted out our differences. I was glad I’d come back. I was glad he was my best friend.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  All the Time in the World

  As soon as I had gotten everything ready for Hunter, I went straight to my bedroom and pulled up one of the floorboards under my bed. In the dark space beneath the floor was a small wooden jewellery box that I lifted onto the bed. I gazed at the contents for a long while before taking them out. I slipped one into my jacket and placed the rest back into the box. As soon as I’d put the floorboard back in place I made my way to the back of the cottage and climbed onto my kinetibike.

  I drove slowly away from the cottage until I found a long, narrow road that cut through the wild grasslands. The road was perfectly straight for over a mile and was a good place to launch the bike into flight mode.

  I stalled the bike on the roadside so that I could prepare myself for the flight. It took a lot of concentration and a lot of energy to fly the GKS20, especially a long flight to continental Europe. I sucked in deep breaths and reached into my jacket pocket to gaze upon what I’d taken from the jewellery box.

  The Guild death cards that Sterling had asked me to take from the Palatium two and a half years earlier had been with me throughout my long journey and my stay in Scotland. Thirty-two of them had been put back inside the box. I’d taken only one with me that night and was staring at it as I prepared to take flight No.27.

  I turned the card around and gazed on Malcolm Wilson’s mugshot. His treachery had led to many deaths that I wanted desperately to avenge – none more so than Detective Clarke. Wilson had been walking free for far too long. I’d been searching for him one weekend of every month since I’d been living with Hunter. Each time I got a little further along the trail. A little closer to catching him. I was patient in my hunt for this elusive murderer. I was patient because time was on my side for a change. I started the engine of the GSK20 and looked out over the highlands to see the sun slipping beneath the horizon.

  Night was fast approaching and I had all the time in the world.

  About the Author

  Ian Somers lives in Dublin and works as a graphic designer. His first two books about Ross Bentley, Million Dollar Gift and The Hidden Gift, are also published by The O’Brien Press.

  Copyright

  This eBook edition first published 2014 by

  The O’Brien Press Ltd,

  12 Terenure Road East, Rathgar,

  Dublin 6, Ireland. Tel: +353 1 4923333; Fax: +353 1 4922777

  E-mail: books@obrien.ie.

  Website: www.obrien.ie

  First published 2014.

  eBook ISBN: 978–1–84717–710–0

  Text © copyright Ian Somers 2014

  Copyright for typesetting, layout, editing, design

  © The O’Brien Press Ltd

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or in any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Cover & internal images (skull, sparks & background) © copyright Shutterstock.com.

  The O’Brien Press receives financial assistance from

  Read more of

  Ross Bentley’s

  adventures …

  The first Ross Bentley book

  Million Dollar Gift

  by Ian Somers

  Ross Bentley has a gift – he can move things with his mind.

  Ross has always known he was different, but he’s kept his talent secret, even from those closest to him. Everything changes when he hears about a contest called The Million Dollar Gift – a wealthy businessman has pledged a million dollars to anyone who can prove they have superhuman powers. It’s too good a chance to miss …

  But Ross finds himself drawn ever deeper into a world of corruption and peril. His gift puts him in danger from powerful foes, but also introduces him to people and talents he can hardly believe exist …

  A fast-paced ride into a hidden world of extraordinary gifts and deadly enemies.

  The second Ross Bentley book

  The Hidden Gift

  by Ian Somers

  Ross Bentley has supernatural gifts, but they don’t stop him feeling alone and miserable when he’s cut off from family and friends in a remote farmhouse with Hunter, the taciturn but powerful Guild-member tasked with protecting and training him. But suddenly Hunter is summoned by the Guild. A gifted child has been kidnapped. Hunter needs to track her down, and he has no choice but to take Ross with him. The search for the missing child, and the dangers it uncovers, take Ross to the darkest place he’s ever been. He must face danger and great grief and learn to harness his powers to face down his greatest nemesis yet …