Relics--The Folded Land

by Tim Lebbon

  The sky blazed blue. No clouds, no rain, no hint of thunder and lightning.

  That’s what I saw, he thought. That’s what I felt. He tried to move, struggled, but his muscles did not obey his commands. His heart felt hot and molten in his chest. His whole world was a paused breath.

  And when he tried to breathe, nothing happened.

  He gasped and tried to shout his daughter’s name. Darkness closed in. His heart, heavy and hot, became a blazing rock. Sparks of agony passed through his body, from the tips of his limbs into his core, as if the lightning was still there hammering at him, punching in again and again until its malevolent work was done. A millionth of a second, the doctor had said, and the father understood now that he was trapped in that moment, his last moment.

  He understood also that this was no accident or coincidence.

  He struggled and fought, as he had every day since his wife had been taken from them. He fought for his daughter. Sometimes, though, the will to fight is not enough.

  Senses fading, death stalked in and pulled him down to its eternal bosom. With only his hearing left, he expected at any moment to hear the calming whisper of his dear departed wife.

  He heard nothing, and then there was nothing.

  No more moments at all.

  4

  Angela Gough knew that the best way to reveal herself was to acknowledge that she was hiding.

  The man looking at her in the coffee shop was probably just some guy, bored or distracted, catching her eye and gazing for just a little too long. She had that effect on people sometimes. Perhaps it was to do with all the things she had done, and all the things she had seen, reflected somehow in her eyes.

  She looked back down at the phone in her hand. For the thousandth time in three months she switched it to selfie mode and gazed at her image, wondering what people saw. It surprised her every time. Her dark, shoulder-length hair was now dyed silver and trimmed shorter. Her blue eyes were darkened with tinted contact lenses. The heavy framed glasses she wore contained plain glass. Everything about her appearance had changed.

  A lot about her had changed.

  If he recognized her, it was because he already knew who she was, and had followed her here.

  She tapped the phone back into photo mode, snuggled down in the seat, leaned across to pick up her coffee. Then she settled again with the phone angled toward him. With another tap she zoomed in.

  Coffee Man was no longer looking at her. In fact, he was pointedly not looking at her, holding his mug up with both hands and glancing everywhere around the bustling café, apart from in her direction. He wore a Bluetooth earplug and a small microphone clipped to the inside of his polo shirt collar. That meant nothing. Plenty of people spent their lives permanently connected.

  “Paranoid,” she whispered. She talked to herself a lot now. Sometimes it held the demons at bay. Other times it was an attempt to make herself feel less lonely, although it usually succeeded in doing the opposite. “Just some guy.”

  She took a picture anyway.

  The café was a small independent place she’d only been to once before. She’d stopped in Albany for a while on her way through to somewhere else, anywhere else. She never made a habit of becoming a regular. She tried not to develop any habits at all, but she’d liked this place when she’d visited a couple of days ago, enjoyed its busy atmosphere and the sense of calm welcome extended by the staff and customers.

  Almost without thinking she flicked through to her photograph album, and there was a picture of Vince. She knew it was foolish, keeping this snapshot on her phone, but it was the one she’d been unable to delete. He was sitting in their small back garden in London, beer bottle in one hand, the other held up to shield the sun from his eyes, and he was grinning the smile she loved. From the first time she’d seen the photo, she’d known that he was shielding the sun so that he could see her more clearly. He’d told her so. She had been lucky to take the shot at just the right moment, before he realized what she was doing. It was an honest reflection of their love.

  Someone laughed. Music blared. The hubbub of voices merged into a single mass, and she wasn’t able to make out anything that was being said. It was a nicely appointed café, walls lined with posters about regional Albany events and artwork from local artists. The counter was heavy with homemade cakes and pastries, and she could tell that many of the clientele were regulars. The way the barista smiled at them was different from the smile he’d offered Angela when she’d arrived, still open and friendly, but also businesslike.

  Angela was getting very good at telling stories from expressions.

  Like the guy not looking, displaying his interest in her like a brand.

  Finishing her coffee, she glanced around the rest of the room as she tilted the cup back against her lips. If he was a cop, he’d have at least one other companion, with probably more waiting outside. No one was going to risk arresting a mass murderer on their own.

  She couldn’t see anyone obvious, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

  The bathrooms were at the rear of the café, and although there also was a private staff doorway, there was no telling if that led toward a back entrance. Even if it did, there was no way to guarantee it would be open. It wasn’t worth taking the chance. Angela did her best to live life without risks. She’d have to leave via the front door, and prepare to engineer a distraction if the guy stood to follow her out.

  For weeks, Angela had expected to be caught. After the horrors in London—the revelation of Vince’s secret life, her involvement with Fat Frederick Meloy, the murders, and Kin and humans meeting in a bloody, terrible clash— she and Vince had fled to the USA on separate flights. She was met at the airport by police. Vince got through.

  She’d believed that was it for her, and from that moment on she’d stuck to their story, and maintained that Vince was dead.

  Then he and the Kin had rescued her from the police precinct, and the world of the Kin had opened up for her. Turned out those fantastical creatures existed not only in London, as she’d grown to believe.

  The Kin were everywhere.

  Coffee Man, sitting in the café and watching her by not watching, was not Kin. There was no wonder in his eyes. No fear.

  She stood, picked up her backpack, pocketed her phone, and made her way toward the front door. The barista caught her eye and nodded, and she smiled back. In the wide mirror behind the counter she saw the man muttering something as he stood.

  That was it, then. He was here for her, and he was talking to a partner she had yet to see.

  Angela’s heart sped up but her senses remained sharp. She had been mentally preparing for an occasion such as this, and knew that it would come at some point. Her drifting might have been aimless, but her existence was not. She lived life with a keen focus. She wished it didn’t have to be so, but she had to believe that danger stalked her every minute of the day.

  As she pushed the glass door open, her attention was ahead of her. She knew the threat behind was a good fifteen seconds away, having to negotiate his way around tables, chairs, and other customers. By the time he reached the door she needed to be gone. To do that, she had to know where his partner was.

  The sidewalk outside was home to half a dozen tables, all of them occupied by couples or groups eating and drinking. She scanned them and saw no one who appeared to be on their own. No one who was looking at her, or at the doorway behind her. That was no comfort. She was in flight mode now, and she’d been here before, ready and willing to run at a moment’s notice. She had been forced to run twice since being sprung from police custody by Vince and the Kin. The first time had been just a few hours later, when she and Vince had escaped pursuit thanks to the intervention of a small, skinny man who’d punctured a police car’s tires.

  The second time she had been on her own. She’d run so quickly, escaped so efficiently through the streets of Boston’s docklands, that she’d never even been certain she was being followed.

&nbs
p; Turning left now, she headed along the sidewalk. After counting to five, she spun on her heel and strode back past the tables.

  Coffee Man was standing just outside the café, the door swinging shut behind him, still muttering into his hands-free. As she fixed him with her gaze and marched toward him, his eyes went wide with surprise.

  He froze to the spot.

  She had maybe two seconds.

  “You touch me again and I’ll call the cops, you fucking prick!” She pointed at him from just a few feet away, then turned and rushed along the sidewalk, not quite running. From behind she heard the scrape of several chairs on concrete, a table knocked, cups rolling and spilling.

  “Hey, pal, where d’you think you’re going?”

  Angela chanced a quick glance back. A woman and two men stood in front of her pursuer, blocking his route along the sidewalk. One of the men looked her way, concerned. She nodded her thanks and gave him a grateful wave. She tried to look afraid. It wasn’t hard.

  If he was a cop he’d be after her within a few seconds. If he wasn’t, it might take him a little longer to forge a path through the people. She hated playing the victim, but that precious head start might make all the difference.

  Angela glanced around as she went, frowning, wondering where the hell his partner was. She also wondered whether she might truly be paranoid, and if the poor guy had just been someone taking a mid-morning coffee, catching her eye, maybe looking away in embarrassment at being caught.

  As she turned a corner, however, and prepared to start running, the truth hit home. Not only was the man coming for her, but his partner was here as well.

  And they were going to kill her.

  “Claudette,” Angela muttered, and a flush of memories assaulted her.

  Claudette and Harry, Mary Rock’s goons, haranguing her in the coffee shop in London and demanding to know where Vince had gone, because he’d killed her brother and she wanted revenge. Claudette ushering her into the car outside her maisonette, while Angela was certain that Vince was dead on the road behind her.

  It hadn’t been him, but Claudette hadn’t cared. She wasn’t the sort of woman to care, but she was the sort to inflict pain. Later, at Mary Rock’s house, she’d stabbed Fat Frederick Meloy in the chest and fled into the night, never to be seen again.

  If only.

  If Angela went that way, Claudette would have her. She had no choice. Turning, she ran back the way she’d come, then cut across the T-junction away from Coffee Man, and Claudette. There was no time to slow down or even look both ways. She dodged around two cars idling at the junction, and sprinted out into the road as brakes squealed and horns blared. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a white van careening toward her.

  She jigged right and jumped, sliding across the bonnet of a car a split second before the van smashed into the fender behind her. Glass smashed. The car rocked beneath her, bucking her off onto the road. She sprawled, leapt to her feet, continued running. The driver called out, angry and surprised. Claudette and Coffee Man would be saving their breath.

  Reaching the opposite sidewalk and aiming for the wide-open park gates, she risked a quick glance back. Coffee Man had already crossed the street by the café and was sprinting along the sidewalk toward her. People stepped out of his way. She didn’t blame them—he looked determined, strong, and dangerous. Claudette was there now, wending her way between vehicles stalled across the road following the collision. Her face was almost expressionless. Angela knew the brutality the small, slight woman possessed.

  She had maybe a ten-second head start, and she’d use it well. Angela kept fit, running most days, and when she was on the move from place to place she often did much of the journey on foot. She was on the run in the truest sense of the term, and she knew the value of speed and endurance. The drivers involved in the fender bender would already be calling the police. Only as a very last resort could she put herself back in their hands.

  The wide path into the park curved left and right. She went left, darting past a group of mothers with strollers and toddlers playing on the grass. She scanned the lawn ahead of her, searching for somewhere to hide, desperate for a way out. It was wide open here, an area of gently rolling landscape, paths, benches, and a small lake to her right, while on her left a bank of hedges curved around, marking the park’s boundary. She could follow the hedge and hope there was another gate further on. Or she could cut straight across and skirt around the lake.

  She chose the latter, and felt eyes on her as she ran. If she’d been moving slower she might have passed as a particularly energetic jogger, although her loose trousers, tee shirt, and backpack weren’t the traditional runner’s garb. But she didn’t slow down, concentrating on form and pace, scanning the ground ahead of her for trip hazards, wondering what would happen if she fell. Would she break her ankle? Would they kill her out there in the open? Would Claudette torture her first, trying to get Vince’s location?

  The idea winged by that maybe she should be looking for a cop. Certainly she’d end up being questioned again, for the gruesome deaths back in London. Deported, probably. Interrogated by Detective Inspector Volk, who was surely still searching for her, especially after her inexplicable escape from the holding cell. She’d spend life in prison, because she couldn’t give up the Kin. Even if she tried, the stories she had to tell were preposterous. Insane.

  Maybe they’d lock her up in an institution instead. Maybe Vince and the Kin would rescue her from there, as well.

  She loped across a wide pathway, just dodging around a startled cyclist, and glanced back as she started down the gentle slope toward the lake. Coffee Man was falling back a little, but of Claudette there was no sign. Angela frowned, scanned left and right, yet the woman was nowhere to be seen.

  “What the fuck?” she muttered.

  The lake was just ahead of her now, and at last she could see where perhaps she might be able to escape. This side of the lake was open to lawns, with a couple of low wooden docks for the mooring of rowboats, and an artificial beach where kids played in the sand. The other side was heavy with undergrowth, and she could tell from the lay of the land that the park perimeter was just beyond. Even if there was no gateway over there, she could climb over the wall or fence. She’d done it before. Then, every second’s lead she had on her pursuers gave her a better chance of getting lost in the streets.

  If luck was with her, she’d jump from the wall and hail a cab.

  She cut left, dashing past a couple of lovers lying in the sun. That sparked a pang of jealousy. The last time she’d seen Vince had been more than four weeks ago. He’d been distracted, they hadn’t had much time, and they’d parted with an air of loss she was convinced she felt much more than him. Back in London she’d probed into his hidden world and become ensnared, like it or not. She’d been both enraptured and horrified by the creatures revealed in the darkness of the world—Lilou the nymph, who Vince perhaps loved; Mallian the fallen angel, brutal and elemental; Ballus the mad satyr.

  There were others, too. Wonderful, beautiful, terrifying, unbelievable. All the while, her love for Vince had been her driving force, and the one thing still tying her to the world she knew and could understand. It had become her foundation, to prevent her from drifting away from reality and becoming lost, afloat in the new, wider reality. It still shocked her to think about it.

  She wasn’t sure whether Vince was still tethered to her world. He was the same in many ways, but in some more important ways, she feared he was gone.

  The woman raised her head when she heard Angela’s rhythmic footfalls. She smiled. Angela looked away and concentrated on maintaining her speed, alert for threats, and more concerned as each moment passed that she’d lost sight of Claudette.

  She reached the path that skirted the lake and started a clockwise circuit.

  Something to her left caught her attention. A fluttering in the bushes that lined the park’s perimeter, and a sound like birds cackling. When she looked directly toward t
he disturbance she saw nothing.

  Passing a group of older teens playing frisbee, she considered stopping and confronting Coffee Man again. The youths might come to her aid, and for a while she’d be safe. Until the police arrived. But he was with Claudette, and she wore violence like a second skin. Now that Angela was running, there was no saying what she and Coffee Man would do to catch her. Or who they might hurt.

  She sprinted past the teenagers and headed around the lake. There were a few people walking the path, and a couple of kids on tricycles, but the far side was quieter, with little other than a spread of grass and then the heavily planted park perimeter.

  Angela aimed for that, and soon felt a tree’s shadows cutting her off from the blazing sunlight. Sweating, panting, she ducked beneath the overhanging branches and risked a halt to look back.

  Coffee Man was rushing around the lake toward her. Their pursuit had turned a few heads, and several of the college kids were standing with hands on their hips, frisbee now forgotten. His pace had slackened and he was visibly weakening. Good. She could outrun him, at least, and then—

  “Bitch.”

  Angela spun around. Claudette stalked toward her from deeper in the shadows, sweat glinting on her brow, gun in hand. It was aimed at Angela’s stomach. From fifteen feet away, she would hardly miss.

  Angela opened her mouth, but there was nothing to say that might persuade Claudette to let her go.

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Liar. Where’s Vince?” Angela shrugged.

  “If you don’t know, then you’re useless to me, so I’ll just kill you.”

  Angela didn’t react. Her senses were heightened, everything sharp, crystal clear, slow.

  “How did you find me?”

  “You think you’re that good at hiding?” Claudette stepped closer. There was a silencer on her gun. Angela had only ever seen them in the movies. From behind, she heard Coffee Man’s heavy approaching footsteps.