by S E Holmes
“It’s good to see you, Judge Smith.”
“Please, call me Nash. I get the urge to strike my gavel every time you call me Judge.”
“Um, okay … Nash. How was Bermuda?” I took a leaf out of Andie’s book and waved my hands about as I spoke. The judge regarded me as though I was high, which wasn’t too removed from the truth.
“I returned far less burdened. Thank you for asking, Winnie. And the Whitsundays?”
Two could play the vague game. “The week was packed, very busy. I got sunburned and we had to stay indoors for a while.”
He eyed my combat attire, both of us worthy of politics. My hair was braided through a cap and Smithy wore similar clothes with thick-soled Army lace-ups. Ours weren’t exactly the right outfits for ordinary pursuits.
“It’s a shame you had to cut your holiday short.”
“Yes, we barely had time to unpack.” I arranged my arms in my lap. Maybe I’d been flailing about too much. “We didn’t have to come home, but I didn’t want Bea to go alone.” Perhaps if I asked him to smell my perfume?
“That’s kind of you, Winnie. Are you and Vegas indulging in boot camp prior to the wake?”
I laughed half-heartedly. How would I explain Daniel and his Matrix combo? The voice in my head screeched, ‘Forget how we’re dressed and look at my arms, damn you!’
“Most of our clothes are in the wash.”
“Ohh.”
My answer seemed to satisfy him. I scrambled around for another topic, idle banter not my most well-practised activity. My preferred mode of communication was the ‘walk and wave’.
“Nice jet.”
“It’s Fortescue’s.”
“I had no idea that butlering was so lucrative.”
“His main profession is in ancient manuscripts. He’s an expert and travels widely. This is a business acquisition.”
“Ahh, fascinating.” He crossed his legs and surveyed me with a pensive gaze. “Another glorious Sydney day. How are you adjusting to returning to Australia, Winnie?”
He deserved an engraved plaque for persistence. If only I could adopt sullen indifference like others my age, but I was too well-raised and didn’t have the heart to be so rude. Unlike his brat of a fixedly silent son.
“I would be thrilled if I never had to go anywhere else again. The heat was a bit of a shock. I’d forgotten how beautiful this city is.”
He chuckled. “I suppose one would get sick of bouncing around the world after a while.”
Surely this torture could not go on for the endless hours trapped in this cabin? I fantasised about sticking Smithy with a cattle prod just to hear if his voice box still worked. Now was definitely not the right time to ask for the judge’s account of his dead wife.
“I really thought you of all people would never succumb to peer pressure or passing fad, Winnie.”
“Pardon?”
“You’re beautiful without embellishment.”
“Er, thank you. Embellishment?” I fished.
Smithy popped above the back of his chair to scrutinise his father from across the aisle, leaning forward as the turbines gathered speed and we readied to lift from the runway.
“Nice of you to join us, Vegas.”
“What did you mean about Bear?” The intensity of his son’s question clearly took the judge by surprise.
“Nothing offensive, I assure you.” The judge smiled at me. “It’s all class.”
“Oh, for the love of … Spit it out, Dad.”
“I see years of nagging have failed to impress upon you courtesy, Vegas. I was delighted when you lost interest. It’s fine for the youthful, but what about as age sets in? What was once Marilyn Monroe slides into Shrek.”
“Please,” Smithy begged.
The judge squinted suspiciously at his son. He reached over and gestured for my hand. “May I?” I placed mine in his and he flipped it palm up. “Tattoos. Very unusual, I’ve never seen anything quite like them. So … vivid.” He let me go. “Do the symbols represent—”
Heedless of manners or the precipitously angled floor, I vaulted up, ran to the cockpit and flung the door open. Bea broke from attending the instrument panel to look over her shoulder at me, lifting one headphone so she could hear.
“The judge can see my Deltas.”
“Another Trinity draftee. How unfortunate.” Bea sighed. “That certainly simplifies things.”
Daniel pushed the throttle lever full forward and the altimeter climbed. “Nattering can wait. Take your seat until I tell you, Winsome.”
I made a face at Daniel and mumbled, “Toss wit” loud enough for him to hear. Retreating to my seat next to a perplexed-looking judge, the plane’s nose tilted into the headwind and we left terra firma for less solid realms.
Twenty-Five
It was midmorning on Friday when we finally drove down the long, rutted dirt road to the gates of Raphaela’s Lafayette property. We were all tired and grumpy, having spent the two-hour trip from New Orleans stuck in a small sedan with squabbling Smiths. What marked the place most was utter stillness: not a chirping bird, buzzing insect or wisp of wind through the moss-draped crowns of towering bald cypress. It was as though a shroud had descended to smother the swamp and every living thing sought refuge elsewhere.
Elsewhere seemed an attractive destination at this point. I tried not to pay attention to the rising anxiety, not to think about the woman who’d made this remote place her home, not to acknowledge the bond we shared and the inevitability of our fates. I could only parcel small bits at a time or I would come undone. The judge seemed to adopt the same attitude, after I’d shown him our history and the enemy we were destined to confront.
“I should have known,” he kept repeating. “Vegas only ever addresses me as ‘Dad’ in extraordinary circumstances.” So he wasn’t quite as cool about it as the Traceurs, but at least he didn’t attempt to throw himself from the jet without a parachute.
My singlet glued my back and my joints were stiff from being wedged between the judge and Bea in the back seat. It was difficult to observe much of the lush Southern greenery, magnolia trees and charming French Creole architecture without leaning at an unpleasant angle and fostering a backache. I’d abandoned the effort after part way through the spectacular Atchafalaya Basin. The verbal jousting began the moment Judge Smith glimpsed the car Smithy had hired; none of it completely drowned out by my headphones blaring my favourite tracks by the Silversun Pickups.
“The cats will not fit in this sardine tin. We should get an Audi sports-wagon like mine. There is hardly a vehicle on the road faster, more comfortable or more endowed with safety inclusions.”
“This is an Evo X, light, quick and inconspicuous. Even in the land of muscle cars, your choice sticks out like an elephant’s gona—”
“Decorum, son,” Nash had said with a brittle tone.
“I assure you, Nash.” Bea massaged her temples. “The cats will finish the journey on foot and reach our destination prior to us.”
“What type of cats did you say they were, Bea? How could they cover two hundred and twenty kilometres at all, let alone so fast?”
The judge had declared it inhumane to keep panthers in a warehouse, in favour of releasing them into the wild. Even with Bea’s patient reassurances that these particular cats were exactly where they wanted to be, and that any wildlife within a considerable area was grateful of the fact, the judge took a while to accept it.
That hurdle negotiated, we’d barely made it from the airport when Judge Smith started about his son’s driving, the comments unremitting for the rest of the way. Admittedly, Smithy drove like a maniac. But his new Warrior senses helped, operating like radar for any obstacles to our purpose. Bea spent a great deal of the trip white-lipped and grabbing for her absent pearls. Especially when Daniel decided to drown the bickering by blasting a radio sermon on ‘letting Jesus into your heart’, to minimal success.
He looked about ready to explode by the time we pulled up. “For t
he love of all that’s silent, cease your quarrel! Everyone stay in the car. Let the cats do their job.”
The cats materialised at the base of the huge fence, one either side of the gate’s pillars. They lost substance and slithered up the side like smoky phantoms.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me they could do that?” I said.
“They are Katokotes,” Aunt Bea said. “Also known as Ne’er Tigers. These are my Familiars and straddle the spirit dimensions, attuned to wavelengths humans are unable to detect. It is rare, but any affiliated with the Order may acquire a Familiar in animal form. The animal makes the choice of master. Through them, I am able to discern anything of immediate relevance to the Trinity.”
“Cherish and Vovo are how you and Fortescue and Mrs Paget know everything?” I asked, amazed.
She gave me a terse nod.
I had a disconcerting thought. “But that means we’ve left the Trinity at home blind.”
“Enough lessons,” spat Daniel. He pointed at the mansion, perched on a barren hill in the hazy distance. “Look hard, Winsome. See with your Keeper’s senses.”
Oh, how I regretted doing as commanded, the true state of things solidifying under my focus. Smithy muttered an expletive, to which no one objected.
Raphaela’s house crawled with grey-skinned spider demons of the eyeless, twisted-limb variety, whose nose-slits wetly snuffled the air for intruders. A dense, undulating mass of chittering, drooling fiends, their internal organs pulsing beneath translucid hides, patchy and rotted, outlined the mansion. Their collective malice invaded my mind, an unbreachable wall of ill-will that made me queasy.
“We won’t be entering via the land side,” Daniel said.
“How do we get in at all?” Perhaps it was time for another hefty dose of allayver. I worried about my growing dependence.
Smithy caught my eye, concern in his tone. “You good, Bear?”
I yearned for the secure embrace of my Warrior. His comforting touch and soothing words. “Peachy.”
“Echoes, Daniel?” Bea asked.
“Echoes, I expected. Not the Sentinels, ugly little brutes. They are watching for something.”
“Us, already?”
Daniel shook his head. “I think not. The Crone is not subtle. She’d be here waiting for us. Something else has upset Anathema to be on such high alert.”
“What are we up against?”
“If anything sets foot on land scoured by the witch’s demons, the spectre of a slain soldier will rise up and repeat its final act. Not so problematic at the outer edges as they simply waited to join the front line, but as we near Raphaela’s house where Billie fought the heaviest numbers, row upon row would wake in waves, swinging axes and talons with the wrath of battle in their blood. The only countermeasure is to activate and avoid. They cannot be killed a second time, but can inflict a mortal blow to any who get in the way.”
“Outstanding,” Smithy said. “Why don’t we just skirt the perimeter of Raphaela’s land, keep away from the most intense fighting?”
“Nothing is ever that simple, Vee. If you set one off, you set them off in entirety. Alright if you’ve got the time it took for Billie to battle them. It would simply be a matter of waiting it out, but we don’t have hours.”
“That is why the cats are here. They are the only creatures capable of winning through. They clear a path of least resistance, so to speak,” Bea added. “The cats can dodge the blitz. In all my years with Cherish and Vovo, they have never had cause to be anything but pampered housecats. I pray we will not have to test their reflexes.”
“More importantly, if we were to trigger Finesse’s Echoes, she would know trespassers are present. We really do not wish to provide her with incentive to visit.”
“Water it is,” Smith said. “Let’s move away from this place, so we can spread the map out and plan.”
An hour later, we milled in the car park of a tiny marina that hired pirogues, nimble hovercraft and plain old tinnies with outboard motors, none of which in my opinion seemed sturdy enough to counter cottonmouths or copperheads or brown recluses or black widows … or alligators. Lime-tinged water lapped the short jetty, rippling in a gentle tide across an eerie lake of semi-submerged forest, buttressed trunks skirted by lily pads. The air was redolent with grassy vegetation and evaporating rainwater, and a litany of insects, trilling frogs and unidentified birds. Thankfully, we’d avoided Louisiana high-summer humidity, the lengthening shadows of afternoon bestowing a cool breeze. Smithy and his father were involved in another heated disagreement based on a suggestion Bea had put forward.
“Splitting up is a dumb idea,” Smithy argued. “You and the judge should wait here in the car. Once we’re in and out of Raphaela’s, we’ll all go and search for Maya.”
“In and out?” the judge said. “Even if that were the case, we have a clear advantage over youth and brawn.”
“What fighting advantage could we possibly offer, Nash?” Bea frowned.
“Never underestimate the persuasive cunning of age, Beatrice. It’ll save time for us to locate Maya, while you three seek the Key.”
Having grown up with a poisons expert, a sharp shooter and a swordsman, none of whom had spilled their secrets over the years, he’d nailed their shrewdness. It remained a poor justification for me losing sight of Aunt Bea. Smithy looked set to protest, Benji’s hideous plight stark in our minds.
“We’re wasting time. Nash is right,” Daniel said, ending the debate with a typical glare at each of us.
Smithy clenched his teeth. “Easy decision for you to make, Daniel. What have you got to lose?” He might never agree with a thing the judge uttered, but he didn’t want his father out of sight either.
“Everything I have ever cherished has already been taken from me,” Daniel answered coldly. “You two keep the weapons, except for our knives. Fighting our way out is not an option. There are too many of them. Stealth is our best defence now.”
His stare lingered pointedly on me, and Bea’s worried face said more than her manners permitted aloud. Smithy and his father fumbled a clinch of the barely acquainted, which enhanced the angst all around. If paternal affection was called for, things were really dire. We were heading into that wasps’ nest unarmed, and with a man driven by vengeance. My suspicions of an ulterior motive came crashing back. Was Daniel genuinely loyal to the Trinity or did we meet peril with the devil at our side?
Twenty-Six
Hud stretched out in the dark on his belly, on the topmost huge concrete pipe of many chained together in a pyramid, his elbows propping a set of binoculars. The fights were in full swing across the tarmac in a deserted industrial complex at the tip of a headland, used for holding construction material. His eyes trained on a floodlit fight-stage in the centre of a broad concrete clearing, bordered by more stacked pipes. In its midst, a couple of youths indulged in an illegal, bare-knuckle, mixed-martial-arts tournament, sweat and blood splattering any packed in front.
Someone had removed a section of the surrounding chain-link fence, and cars filled with teenagers filed through to park haphazardly in any available space. Hundreds had turned up to watch or compete, the atmosphere heavy with pot and alcohol-fuelled bravado.
DZ Deathrays blasted ‘Dollar Chills’ heavy on the bass from speakers nearby. Off to the side, a group of scantily clad girls writhed about for the gratification of a dozen boys, who likely used the pretence of ogling to evade a turn in the ring. Amongst the jiggling exhibitionists were Tiffany, Prue and Priscilla. Tiffany danced in a frenzy, swigging from a bottle of baby-pink Alizé, her blonde hair flying and breasts almost bouncing out of her spangly top. Hud knew all too well that she excised the pain of her father’s loss.
So far, the vile twins were conspicuous by their absence. Fortescue cruised the grounds in reconnaissance, Hugo monitoring from some well-concealed nook in the vicinity.
“Do you think they ever get sick of attention?” Hud asked Bickles, who balanced parallel, avidly scanning with h
is own set of binoculars.
Bickles didn’t reply. He’d been preoccupied since Andie left with Mrs Paget for the lab earlier that afternoon. They’d decided to break in at night, as it was the least staffed, just security patrolling the grounds and monitoring the equipment.
“Hey, mate. You can’t afford to let your mind wander. It’s too little to be out on its own.”
Bickles laughed weakly. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a girl robotics engineer? Let alone one as cool as Andie. If anything happens to her …” He shook his head, unable to finish the thought.
“Ty, she’ll be fine. She can talk them to death if she’s cornered.” This was the wrong thing to say.
“That’s it! I can’t take it. I’m going to find her.”
Hud rolled his eyes. “Hold your horses, cowboy.” There came a cheered roar, another fighter knocked out of competition, possibly literally. Bickles began to scrunch backwards along the pipe. “What do you think Andie’s reaction will be if you desert your post and things go wobbly?” Hud called.
Bickles stopped and his face fell. “She’d never forgive me.”
“Anyway, what are the chances that Quint dude will show up at the same time? Or at all?”
Fortescue spoke in their ear-buds. “I have him in view. He’s preparing to fight.”
“Of course he is,” Hud replied. “It could be our chance, if some thug knocks him senseless. Any sign of his mental sister?”
“Negative.”
“That makes me nervous. Or even more nervous.”
Looking ashamed, Bickles wormed his way to his post and they trained their binoculars on the clearing once more. “My fake nose itches.”
“Yeah, I’m going to grow a real goatee, the glue’s a pain. What do you reckon? It suits my hairstyle, huh?” Hud ran his hand over his newly shorn fuzz.
“There’s nothing worse than a guy who sculpts his facial hair.”
