Why?
Fox had assumed Kaidan was simply getting his kicks in the Big City, sating his psychopathic hunger for killing in a target-rich environment. But something Sorcha had mentioned in the forest and something Fox had seen earlier tonight told him that the killings might have been more an act of rebellion. The more he thought about them, the more hey he believed them to be. If he could understand the motivation behind the crimes, he could understand Kaidan. And if he could understand Kaidan he could influence him. As he struggled to stay awake, his mind wandered back to the crime scenes in Portland. His last conscious image before sleep claimed him was of a severed head in a bloodstained wardrobe. But it wasn’t the head or the blood that occupied his thoughts; it was the photograph of Sorcha stapled to the corpse’s forehead and the cryptic message written over her face in colored letters:
SERVE THE DEMON
SAVE THE ANGEL
Chapter 54
Some hours earlier. Portland
As she did most evening, after returning home from the university, Samantha Quail brewed herself a pot of her late husband’s favorite tea: Twining’s Assam. She had only recently stopped automatically putting out a second cup for him. Even as she glanced in the fridge and considered supper, she realized she was still thinking about what Howard and Nathan might like, rather than what appealed to her. Whatever she told Nathan, she still missed Howard more than she cared to admit, particularly in the evenings when the big house seemed so quiet and empty. She missed Nathan, too, although he had only been away for a couple of days.
The sound of the bell made her close the fridge and hurry to the door. She hoped it might be Nathan, returning from seeking Sorcha in the wilderness, but it wasn’t. “Hello, Samantha. Can we talk?” She had known Detective Jordache for years, ever since the fateful day he had led her nephew out of the garage in which her sister, brother-in-law and niece had been brutally murdered. This evening he looked uncomfortable, almost as uncomfortable as the night Sorcha had stayed with her and Jordache’s men had failed to stop the killer getting into her house. As well as a notebook, she noticed he was carrying her paper on archaeosonics under one arm.
“Come in.” She went to the kitchen, finished pouring her tea, then made Jordache a black espresso the way she knew he liked it.
“It’s about Nathan.” He took the coffee and thanked her. “You know the three homicides he was helping us with?”
She nodded. “He said you might pop around to ask a few questions once you’d had a chance to think things through. He also said you didn’t believe his theory about the killer and Sorcha.”
Jordache sat beside her at the kitchen table, placed the documents in front of him and took another sip of coffee. “What Nathan said was pretty hard to believe.” A shrug. “But we’ve just lost our prime suspect: a head case who tried to take credit for the homicides until we discovered he was with his sister in Seattle on the night of the first killing. So we’re back to square one.” He paused. “And…”
“And what?”
Jordache picked up the notebook. “Nathan made detailed notes in here about what Sorcha told him she ‘sensed’ at the three crime scenes: both the prior murders and the recent ones. The prior ones can be explained because most of the details were in old police records.”
She laughed drily. “Come on, Karl. How could Sorcha have known what was in police records? She has no memory of her life before a couple of weeks ago and afterwards she was stuck in Tranquil Waters.”
Jordache grimaced and raised a hand. “I know. I know. The point is: they happened years ago and records exist so it would be possible for her to learn the details. But the new killings are much harder to explain away. Sorcha told Nathan stuff — like how one of the victims was stabbed — which she couldn’t have known.”
“So how do you explain it, Karl?”
“I can’t.” He tapped Samantha’s paper. “Is this how you explain it? With ghosts?”
“They’re not ghosts. They’re recordings, burned into the fabric of a building. Archaeosonics is unproven but the evidence is growing.” She summarized the key points of her thesis just as she had for Sorcha when they had first met. “Crucially, Sorcha’s unique synaesthesia enables her to play back these imprinted dying moments.”
He frowned. “Her death-echo synaesthesia?”
“That’s what Nathan calls it because she appears to experience a building’s archaeosonics through the prism of her five senses — creating a sixth. Did Nathan tell you about the envelope experiment he conducted at Tranquil Waters?”
“No,” said Jordache. “I’m afraid I wasn’t at my most receptive or open-minded when we last spoke.” She told Jordache about the experiment and her subsequent discussion with Fox and Sorcha. “So you believe her gift is possible?” he asked.
She nodded. “Quantum physics says it’s not only possible but probable. Especially as nothing else explains her visions or sensory hallucinations.”
“Could anyone else possess this death-echo synaesthesia?”
“I don’t see why Sorcha should be unique. As you know, Nathan was convinced the killer had the same synaesthesia and was a member of her father’s cult. That’s why he went off to warn her.”
“I thought he was just hung up on Delaney’s cult because of what happened to his folks. He shouldn’t have gone by himself. I told him not to go.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You gave him no choice.”
“When do you expect him back?”
“He said I should call you if he hadn’t returned by the end of the week. Tell you to go get him.” She felt a cold shiver. “Karl, you think Nathan’s in real danger?”
“Possibly. I don’t know,” Jordache said, a little too quickly. “I need to know more about Regan Delaney’s cult. Did Nathan tell you anything about it?”
“Only a little. If you want more, you should go see his brother, Connor Delaney, in Sacramento.” She got up anxiously. “Nathan left me his number.” As she pressed it into his hand she locked eyes with Jordache. “He’s your friend, Karl. If he is in danger, then bring him back safely to me. Like you did once before.”
Chapter 55
Sorcha slept in deathly oblivion until her nightmares returned. She woke before dawn, in a cold sweat. The sedative had made her mouth feel dry and her temples ache but the confusion in her head troubled her more. In her dreams she had again been running from a demonic pursuer through a deserted hotel of empty rooms, occupied only by the ghosts of the dead. It was obvious now that the hotel of the dead was the tower and her demonic pursuer was Kaidan. She was running from him because of something specific that had happened.
But what?
Had he attacked her? Was he jealous of her because she had usurped his place in their father’s Great Work? If so, why did her father need her now? Kaidan had obviously borne the burden of their father’s expectations for most of his life so what had happened to make her more important? Had the Great Work changed? Had something happened between Kaidan and Delaney? Or had something changed with her?
Rubbing her eyes with frustration, she sensed she held the answers to all these questions within her, if only she could remember them. She was aware of her lost memories hovering on the cusp of her consciousness, tantalizingly fragmented and unfocused, and realized she was running out of time. Soon it would be dawn, and then Esbat, with all it threatened, would be upon her.
Part Four
Beyond Indigo
Chapter 56
The pain in Nathan Fox’s bound wrist woke him, accompanied by the throb in his skull, and the ache in his back and gut from where Kaidan had hit him with the rifle. The pain at least welcomed him back to his body and told him that the numbing paralysis from the ketamine had passed. He rolled over in the dark to get more comfortable on the polished amethyst floor. Relaxing his hand, he tried to loosen the garrote-like grip of the silk noose around his wrist but the more he picked at it the tighter it became.
Unsure if it was night o
r day, he noticed a pinprick of light coming through the top of the conical ceiling and realized the chamber wasn’t as dark as before. He rose to his knees and looked across at the concave table. Its white surface was alive, illuminated with moving images projected from a lens at the top of the tower’s conical roof. It appeared to be just after dawn but as the lens rotated there was enough daylight for it to project a clear and detailed panorama of the surrounding settlement into the camera obscura.
As he watched the Indigo Family emerge from their cabins and go about their business he saw many head for the Great Hall, no doubt to complete the preparations for Esbat. A rush of anxiety made him stand and stretch his muscles. The sudden movement triggered the lamps. The light was low but after his night of darkness Fox welcomed it like the sun.
On the amethyst plinth, next to the black ledger, Fox noticed the leather-bound family Bible Regan had stolen from Connor. Flicking through its ancient yellowed pages he was surprised to see how many had been defaced with red ink. Words and chapters had been ringed and underlined, like a student’s notes in a thumbed school text. In Ecclesiastes 12:6 the words before the silver cord is broken had been underline three times. And every mention of the Grigori or the Nephilim in the books of Genesis and Numbers had been ringed in red.
At the front of the Bible was a thick concertina of pages which, when unfolded, revealed a lovingly illustrated family tree scribed with beautiful calligraphy. The tree went back centuries, to when the Delaneys first appeared in Ireland. Two things stood out. The first was that all the men’s names were written in bold capitals, the women in regular lower case. The second was that most of the names had an asterisk by them, which, according to a legend at the top of the first page, meant they possessed the mothú. Seeing how many people had inherited the family trait and how far back it went helped Fox understand how important this had once been to the Delaneys. Some of the lines in the tree were drawn ambiguously, indicating that on more than one occasion close family members had married each other to keep the mothú alive. He unfolded more pages until he found Regan Delaney’s name.
He heard a door opening and footsteps on the stairs. His heart jumped. They were coming for him. Kaidan appeared through the opening in the center of the lotus symbol and stepped into the room. Two men in indigo tunics were with him. When Kaidan saw the Bible he strode over and took it from Fox. “I was just looking at your family history and couldn’t help noticing how patriarchal it is,” Fox said.
“This is none of your business,” Kaidan growled, replacing the Bible on the plinth.
“The women appear to be there only to make up the numbers,” Fox said, “which is strange, given the importance your father and his ancestors placed on the mothú. Did you know that synaesthesia tends to be passed down through the female line?”
Kaidan ignored him, pulled a large knife from a sheath on his belt and cut the silk tie on Fox’s wrist, releasing him from the plinth. He then looped another silk tie around both hands and tightened it. Close up, beneath the smell of soap and shampoo, Fox smelled a subtle malodor. Though Kaidan had just showered he still carried the smell of death about him. Medical examiners, who dealt with death daily, had told Fox they sometimes had to shower two or three times to purge the smell from their skin but Fox surmised that Kaidan probably had a mild form of trimethylaminuria, a rare metabolic disorder that most commonly caused sufferers to excrete the smell of fish or, in some cases, decay.
“I understand why your father valued you more than your half-sister, Kaidan, because you were the first-born male and she was just a worthless girl. But I don’t understand what happened to make her so important now. What did you do wrong? What changed your father’s mind about her?”
Kaidan turned to the men. “Take him,” he barked.
The men pulled him up by the silk tie around his wrists and dragged him to the stairs. Kaidan led the way. “Where are you taking me?” Fox said.
“To the preparation suite,” said Kaidan. “So you can ready yourself for tonight.” Something flickered in his cold eyes. “You should feel honored. The Seer’s chosen you to be one of the two Pathfinders selected every Esbat.”
“What about Sorcha?”
“She’ll be joining you.”
“And you? Do you still have a role in the Seer’s Magnum Opus?”
A half-smile curled his lips but he didn’t reach his eyes. “Oh yes. I still have a role.” The men dragged Fox down the stairs, out of the tower and across the still-quiet settlement to a cabin beyond the Great Hall. The preparation suite consisted of a small room with a prayer mat on the floor, a bathroom and an adjoining larger room with a couch, table and chairs. The table was generously laden with food and drink. Two sticks of incense burned by the window, which was covered with a wrought-iron grille. Kaidan pulled out his knife again and cut Fox’s silk hand ties. “Use the bathroom, make yourself comfortable. The others are fasting until the feast tonight but you won’t be eating then so take whatever you like now.”
“Why won’t I be eating tonight?”
“Pathfinders don’t take part in the feast.”
Fox rubbed his wrists. “Is this my last supper?”
Kaidan ignored the question. “All Pathfinders are brought here, isolated from the others, provided with peace and quiet and all physical comforts. Consider it an opportunity to prepare and purify yourself for Esbat.” Kaidan told the two Watchers to stand guard outside. As soon as they had closed and locked the door Kaidan raised the knife and held the blade close to Fox’s face. For the first time his eyes betrayed the white heat of his anger. “Don’t you dare disrespect me in front of the Watchers,” he seethed. “Sorcha has not become more important than me. We’re both equally important.”
Fox couldn’t help wondering if the blade inches from his right eye was the same one that had severed the man’s head in Portland but he kept his voice calm, adopting the same tone he used with all his patients — and murder suspects. He had to engage him if he wanted to probe the killings in Portland. “I understand,” he said. “It must be very difficult.”
Kaidan pushed the knife closer. “How can you possibly understand? I did everything the Seer asked of me. I’ve only ever failed him once — and tonight I’ll put that right.”
“I understand you’re devoted to your whole life to your father’s goal, done terrible things in his name, made unimaginable sacrifices and surrendered all your own hopes and dreams to his. So it must be devastating to have him now throw all that dedication and loyalty back in your face just when the project is reaching its climax. Turning to your sister for help when she doesn’t even want any part of the Great Work.”
Kaidan blinked, taken aback by Fox’s assessment. “He still needs me to play my part.”
“I’m sure he does. But why do you obey him?”
“He’s the Seer,” Kaidan said.
“Sorcha told me your aura’s as pure as his, if not purer. Surely your power’s equal to his? You’re obviously angry with him. Why do you take it?”
Kaidan looked up at him as if he was speaking a foreign language. “He’s my father. He’s the Seer,” he said again. “Everyone obeys him.”
“That’s not true,” Fox said softly. “You disobeyed him when you killed those three men in Portland. Why? At first I thought it might be just for the sadistic thrill but it was more than that, wasn’t it?”
Kaidan narrowed his eyes. “They were nothing to me.”
“Then why make the killings so elaborate? Why target rapists and murderers and then kill them the same way they killed their victims? And why did you staple a picture of Sorcha to their faces and leave a cryptic message? What does ‘Serve the demon, save the angel’ mean, Kaidan? Were you talking about the demon in you or is the demon someone else…?”
Kaidan stepped back, still brandishing the knife. The confused look on his face told Fox that the young man was so conflicted he probably didn’t know himself why he had done what he had done — not consciously, anyway.
“What’s going to happen to Sorcha, Kaidan? Are we both to be killed and added to your father’s collection?”
Kaidan smiled coldly. “You still don’t get it, do you? To my father, killing the children of men is no different to slaughtering cattle but Sorcha’s not a daughter of man. She’s his daughter. She’s special.” He walked to the door. “She’s been touched with the divine.” As he spoke of his sister, Kaidan’s harsh tone softened and Fox detected wistfulness, even affection in his voice. He recalled Kaidan’s evident shame when Sorcha had accused Delaney of killing her mother. In his experience true psychopaths were incapable of shame. Then he remembered the Mayan sacrificial stone in his uncle Howard’s study. When Kaidan had touched it he would have experienced the intense death echoes of countless sacrificial victims, women whose hearts had been pulled out of their chests still beating. Perhaps it wasn’t simply the shock of the unexpected that had made Kaidan knock it to the floor. Perhaps the imprints in the stone had repelled and horrified him, as they would to any sane human being. If so, then there might still be the dying embers of a conscience within him.
“When you say you’ve only failed the Seer once, did your failure involve Sorcha? Was it something you didn’t — or couldn’t — do?”
Kaidan sheathed the knife and turned to leave. “Stop trying to get inside my head. What happened in Portland is unimportant. It’s in the past. Only the future matters, and Sorcha and I are both the future. She and I are the only violets my father produced and without more violets there’ll be no Great Work.” He stood by the door and looked Fox in the eye. “You’re a shrink so you think you understand the human mind. But to understand my father you’ve got to look beyond the petty concerns of the children of men and strive to know the mind of God.” Kaidan knocked on the door and waited for the Watchers to unlock it. “You can’t begin to imagine what he’s planned for Sorcha,” he said as the door opened. He paused before closing the door behind him. “And me.”
Colour of Death, The Page 28
