Relics--The Folded Land

by Tim Lebbon

  The man peers up into the sky, and he doesn’t seem surprised that it has gone from daylight to night in the few minutes since he arrived. She can do that. Here, she can do anything.

  “The endless stars,” she says.

  The man frowns. “I… don’t recognize them. The constellations. The patterns.”

  “Didn’t I tell you? This is a whole new world.”

  “Who are you? Why have you done this? I was happy.”

  “Your name is Hengle,” she says.

  “No. No. My name is Jeff.” He appears shocked by his old, forgotten name. His reaction frustrates her, but she cannot let her impatience mar this moment. There is an eternity for things to sort themselves out, and become right again.

  “Hengle,” she says, quieter. “Four hundred years ago you lived in northern France, making a woodland your own. Two hundred years later you were living in London, married to a human wife. Since then you have denied your heritage. You’re here to embrace it once again.”

  “Where’s Mary?” he asks. “I was promised Mary. She’s been gone too long, and…” He looks past her, deeper into the Fold. “She was never here.”

  “Mary is your dead wife,” she says. “A human. I cannot raise the wraith of a human, not like Gradaal who brought you to me. And even if I could, I would not. I’m offering you eternity, Hengle. This place, my place, once it’s sealed and becomes the Fold it will be a new Time for all of us. Kin only, no humans. No one forcing us to hide. No society to which you must submit or assimilate. You don’t have to deny who you are anymore.”

  “I’m Hengle,” he whispers.

  “You are,” she says, delighted. “Here, you can allow yourself to be Hengle the werewolf once more. How long has it been?”

  Hengle smiles and cries at the same time. He reaches for his belt, zipper, buttons, and strips off the human clothing that has acted like a shield between his denier’s life and the reality of who he really is. He looks up at the strange starscape, and she makes a moon appear, large and full, a face in the sky.

  “A long time,” he says. Naked, he walks past her and steps from tarmac onto grass. He squeezes his toes. Without looking back he starts walking, then running, as a change begins.

  There’s a sound behind her, footsteps on a hard, smooth surface. She turns around. A woman is approaching, hand in hand with the wraith of an old, short goblin. Both of them have the look of someone seeking something.

  She can give them both what they want.

  20

  As they approached Danville in the early pre-dawn hours, Angela only hoped their plan would work. It had so many variables and unknowns that she felt a heavy, hot tension in her chest, with Sammi’s wellbeing at its core.

  The wisp Ahara was with them again. Angela didn’t understand why and how she came and went, but the Kin seemed to be working to her own agenda. Vince had told Angela the reason behind Lilou’s dislike of the wisp. She didn’t care. The nymph’s love life concerned her only so far as it involved Vince, and beyond that only if it affected their search for Sammi.

  The girl was her focus.

  In truth she was also Angela’s distraction, a fresh purpose which gave direction to this new life spent running and hiding.

  “Almost there,” Vince said. He was driving the Jeep, Angela next to him. In the back sat Ahara and Lilou, with Meloy between them. The wisp was still looking at the image of the skin map on Meloy’s phone screen. “You guys ready?”

  “Ready,” Meloy said. He had contributed the most to their plan, though it was shaky at best. Angela found herself trusting the gangster all over again. Fat Frederick Meloy, reputation notwithstanding, had proven to be useful in London, and she hoped that trend would continue here. His fascination with the Kin helped keep him in line.

  * * *

  Several minutes later Vince pulled up close to Danville’s small bus station and Lilou and Meloy jumped out. Lilou caught Angela’s eye and nodded. She nodded back.

  Ahara remained in the back seat. “Anything else?” Angela asked, turning to look at her.

  “We go into the hills,” Ahara said.

  “We’re finding Sammi,” Angela said. “Gregor’s looking for her, too. Find him, we find her. So can you help with that?”

  Ahara peered at the veinous map on the small phone screen. “It’s leading us into the hills,” she said again.

  “Fine,” Angela responded. She turned back around and stared through the windshield as Vince drove them slowly along the main street.

  “She’ll help when she can,” Vince said.

  “Big help so far.”

  “She got you out of jail.”

  “Yeah, but I’m still not free.”

  “We’re as free as they are.”

  Angela had never thought of it quite that way. She’d never compared herself to the Kin, not even since being on the run. There were people hunting her now, in the same way that there were always people hunting the Kin. Mary Rock in London, Gregor over here, others.

  “Let’s just look,” she said. “You take the left, I’ll take the right.”

  “Where would she be if she was here?”

  “I don’t know,” Angela said. “I hardly know her.” That stark truth only added to the guilt she felt at Sammi’s disappearance, and the desperate need to find her and protect her from the Kin-killer. Whether or not she was Kin—and Angela had tried to shove that possibility from her mind—she owed her niece a duty of care, even if she’d shown little affection over the years.

  Since losing her own life, family, and friends, she cared a lot.

  Danville’s streets were just waking up. Dawn lit the horizon, and the streetlights started to flicker off as early morning workers hit the streets. They all had somewhere to go, and several drivers overtook the Jeep as it cruised along the main drag.

  “We can’t do this for long without attracting suspicion,” she said.

  “Especially if the town’s waking to news of two dead cops,” Vince said. “The Feds will be swarming all over the place soon.”

  “Not the best spot in the world for us to be.”

  “If she’s here, we’ll find her before then.”

  “She probably won’t even recognize me,” Angela said.

  “Sure she will!” Vince said confidently, but she wasn’t convinced.

  They reached the edge of town and parked by the side of the road. Vince dashed into a Dunkin’ Donuts to grab a couple of coffees. Angela glanced into the back seat. Ahara almost wasn’t there, and the wisp might have smiled at her. Or not.

  She jumped a little when the door opened again, and Vince climbed in. Coffee in hand, they drove back along the main street, taking a left along the first of the side roads. Smart houses stood on either side. Gardens, driveways, back yards, paths heading off between buildings… they were looking for a needle in a haystack.

  Angela dialed Meloy. He answered after two rings.

  “Anything?”

  “Nothing here,” he said.

  “Right.”

  “Angela, we’ll find her,” he said. “That’s what we’re here for.”

  “Lilou’s here to find the killer.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s Lilou. I’m here for you and Vince as well. I’m loyal to my friends.”

  Angela thought again about the stories concerning Meloy, the terrible things he’d supposedly done to people, the brutal crimes he’d perpetrated. She couldn’t help but feel glad he was on their side.

  * * *

  “What’s Lilou?” the nymph demanded.

  “Angela’s worried you don’t care about her niece.”

  “We’re here, aren’t we?”

  “I see you,” a voice said. “I know you.” Lilou stepped away from Meloy and looked around. Close to Meloy’s side stood a thin, small man. She had to blink a few times to really make him out. It wasn’t that he was uncertain, like the wisp, but that he was almost not there at all.

  “Who the fuck?” Meloy jumped at the sig
ht of someone so close to him. His hands came up in a reflexive defensive gesture.

  “Who are you?” Lilou asked.

  “I see you,” the man said again. He snatched at a half-hidden wound on his chest, fingers like gossamer threads, mouth moving just out of sync with his words. Lilou knew what he was.

  “I see you also,” she said, “I’m sorry to say.”

  “Not as sorry as I am,” the man said.

  “So who is this?” Meloy asked.

  Lilou looked around to see if anyone else was watching their exchange. Early commuters awaited a bus to board, and no one seemed to be paying them much attention.

  “A wraith,” she said.

  “Like a ghost?”

  “If you like, but brought up by someone with a purpose. Wraiths haunt unwillingly.”

  “She told me she’d set me free,” the wraith said.

  “Who told you?”

  “I never knew her name. I’m not sure she could tell me. The fairy.”

  Lilou’s eyes went wide.

  “Fairy?” Meloy asked, looking equally shocked.

  “Where is she?” Lilou asked.

  “Somewhere close but… I no longer have the map,” the wraith said.

  “Did you lose the map?”

  “The girl ran away. I wasn’t as good as I should have been.”

  Meloy reached for the wraith, his hands moving close but not quite touching, as if he was afraid that he might touch nothing.

  “Take us to her,” Lilou said.

  “What? No,” Meloy said. “What about Sammi?”

  “Sammi ran,” the wraith said.

  “Where is the fairy?”

  “In the hills,” Meloy said. “That’s what your friendly wisp has been saying.”

  “In the hills,” the wraith agreed. “But if I go there now, without my charge… without Sammi…” He looked and sounded bereft, wretched.

  “Which way did she run?” Meloy asked.

  The wraith pointed.

  “How long ago?”

  “Dawn.”

  Meloy grabbed Lilou. “She’s close!”

  “Okay,” Lilou said, nodding.

  Meloy grabbed her harder. “But what the fuck is this about a fairy?”

  * * *

  As soon as the man stopped to help her, Sammi knew she was in trouble.

  “Hey, kid, need a lift?”

  “Yeah, like I’d ever get in a car with a stranger.” She was on the edge of town, tired from fleeing the bus station, hungry, thirsty, and wondering how the hell she would get back to her father. She’d gone to the police station, but when she’d arrived there things had been chaos, with people rushing back and forth, lots of cars in the parking lot, and a local radio station’s mobile studio parked up on the sidewalk across the street.

  The craziness had scared her away.

  “Those marks on your arm,” the man said. “You been struck?” He rubbed at his own arm as he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “You?”

  “Twice.”

  Her hand went to the network of marks, smoothing over them for the thousandth time, reading herself like Braille. She wished it was a language she understood.

  “Hurts, doesn’t it?” He stared at her arm and where more of the pattern was visible on her neck.

  Sammi frowned.

  No, not really, she thought, and she knew he was lying. But why would someone lie about being struck by lightning?

  “I can show you something,” the man said. “I think you’ll like it. I think it’ll like you.”

  “Get lost, creep.”

  The man held up a large feather, holding it by the shaft.

  Something about it entranced her, even though from this distance it looked normal. From a goose perhaps, or a swan. It was the purest white she’d ever seen, and it seemed to shift and twitch in his hand, even though there wasn’t any breeze. It was like a living thing, striving to free itself from his grasp.

  “You want to tickle me somewhere with that, perv?”

  “It’s not like that,” he said, and he let the feather drop outside the car window. His eyes were wide, expectant, and she noticed for the first time that they were tinted a strange shade of red. She had never seen eyes like that before. She certainly hadn’t ever met a man like this.

  The feather swooped down, drifting back and forth as it floated toward the ground. The man’s expression dropped, then the feather lifted once more and flitted toward her. He seemed happy again.

  Sammi couldn’t help herself. She took a step forward and held out her hand, anticipating the soft touch of feather against skin, reaching for it and wondering how such contact might change what had happened to her. She was lost, afraid, alone and unknown miles from her father and home, brought here by what she thought might have been the ghost of a dead vampire. It was all so strange, terrifying, yet somehow it didn’t seem surprising.

  As if she had been expecting this her whole life.

  The feather crossed half of the gap between girl and car before drifting to the ground and staying there. It twitched left and right, then became still. Something about it seemed… pitiful.

  “I don’t understand,” the man in the car said.

  Sammi took a few steps forward and plucked up the feather, holding it by the quill. There was no weight to it at all. She held it up to one eye and looked through the fronds, and was amazed to see the vibrant colors of the world concentrated through it, all the edges sharper, everything revealed in a higher definition than simple reality.

  “That’s mine,” the man said. He opened the car door and got out, approaching her with his hand held towards her.

  She saw the knife he held, blade curved back against his forearm. Viewed through the feather it seemed different from everything else, older and more decayed. It was a dull, rusty red, stained by untold deaths.

  Sammi turned to run. Something clipped her left foot out from under her and she went sprawling, still clasping the feather. She crawled forward across the gravel roadside and onto a grassy verge, kicking out behind her to try to ward him off. Getting ready to stand and run, she felt something grasp her belt and lift her clean from the ground.

  “Mine,” he said into her ear, and a big hand closed around hers. He squeezed tight, grinding her knuckles together. She let go of the feather.

  “Help!” Sammi shouted, and then she felt something cool and sharp against her throat.

  “One more time, and you’ll never scream again.”

  She squirmed and struggled, looking around frantically to see if anyone had noticed what was happening. No cars passed by. This side road leading out of town was bordered on both sides by fields of fruit trees growing on timber and wire frames and an occasional lane leading to a farmstead, the road itself edged with a dusty verge and drainage ditch on both sides. Lonely telegraph poles marched toward where the road veered to the left, a quarter of a mile further on. Much farther in the distance, hills stood shadowed against the dawn sky.

  They were alone. She should have never come this far out.

  “What do you want?” she shouted, but she feared she knew exactly what he wanted. Her mother and father had warned her about men like this. Despite that strange stuff with the feather, and all of the weirdness about lightning strikes, he was just a pervert preying on a young girl alone.

  She couldn’t afford to think about what might happen in the future. Everything was now. First chance she had, she would kick him in the balls and sprint back into town.

  “Stop struggling,” he said, pushing the knife harder against her throat. “This blade’s tasted a great deal of blood over the past few days. Most of it not human.”

  Sammi ceased her struggles. Fear bit in deep, ice around her heavy heart, a stone in her chest. The man pulled her upright and kept his arm rested on her shoulder, blade to her throat. She smelled his breath, stale and somehow meaty, like roadkill two days dead. Every part of her wanted to do the things her parents had told her to do in a si
tuation like this, and the things she’d learned in the mixed martial arts classes she attended intermittently—rake her boot down his shin, stomp on his toes, kick him in the nuts.

  She did none of those.

  “Most of it not human.”

  Whatever had happened to her since the second lightning strike, this man was part of it.

  “I want my dad.”

  “Daddy’s dead, kid.” It was the second time she’d been told that, but she wouldn’t allow herself to believe. She couldn’t. After everything that had happened to her family, her life couldn’t go that way.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” he said. “You’re not quite what I expected, but we’ll go somewhere to find out what you are. Now, into the car without making a sound.” He started to move. “Hungry? You hungry? I am. We’ll stop for food.”

  “Hey!” It was a woman’s voice, and she looked up and into the rows of fruit trees across the verge and ditch. A woman stared back at her. Behind her was a tall man, both of them readying as if to leap across the ditch. They looked like they’d been running.

  Sammi’s first thought was, She’s not human.

  * * *

  He will lead us to Grace, Lilou thought. They had to rescue Sammi but let the man escape. She had no idea how to do that.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Gregor shouted.

  “Take it easy,” Lilou said. She considered lowering her mask, because despite his affectations this man was human. But he was also a human who had known, hunted, and killed the Kin for decades, and he knew what they could do. If not immune to her charms, he might be ready.

  “Yeah, take it easy, Gregor,” Meloy said, stepping past her toward the ditch. He could be across it and onto the man in seconds. And in that time the man would slice the girl’s throat.

  Gregor’s eyes went wide and Lilou sighed. Now he knows we know him, she thought. She wasn’t sure how that might affect the situation, but it felt as if they’d given away an advantage. They weren’t just passersby who’d wandered across the scene.

  His gaze flickered back and forth between them, then settled on Lilou. He smiled.

  “I don’t need you, but I’ll be happy to gut you anyway.”