Blood Winter

by S. J. Coles

  “Are you drunk?” I kept my back to him, filled the kettle, fetched the instant coffee. “Where is she?” I glared at him. “Where is she, Alec?”

  “You should leave,” I said.

  “If I found you, they will too.”

  “And what are you going to do?” I bit out. “You can’t even look after yourself.”

  His brow clouded. “I knew you’d be this way.”

  “Get out, David,” I growled, sloshing hot water onto the coffee grounds. My heart was thumping, my skin itching. I swallowed some, burning my mouth but desperate for something to still my swirling head.

  “You’ve got no right to be judging anyone’s life choices, Alec MacCarthy.”

  “I said get out.”

  “Not without Megan.” He’d folded his arms in a gesture so similar to his sister’s that my heart ached. “And this is the last time I’m gonna ask where she is.”

  “She went out,” I muttered.

  “You let her go out?”

  “‘Let her’?” I said. “She’s not my prisoner.”

  “If they see her, smell her—”

  “Smell her?”

  He shouldered his way out of his coat. His shirt shifted, allowing a glimpse of the gun in his waistband, and I went cold. “You really don’t know anything, do you?”

  “I know you can only make things worse,” I said, eyes fixed on the shape under his shirt.

  He stepped up to me. “I’m not the one who’s put her in the path of some vengeful haemo—”

  “You think this is my fault?”

  “I know it is.”

  “She invited me to that damn club opening—”

  “And why do you think the hotshot property developer got himself in with her in the first place, huh? It couldn’t be so that he had a way in with you, Lord Aviemore, could it?” I stared at him. My stomach felt like it had filled with concrete. He smiled unpleasantly. “Yeah, now you see.”

  I strode to the window and glared into the empty distillery.

  “I just want to make sure she’s safe.” His tone wasn’t exactly conciliatory, but it held a fraction less antagonism. I didn’t answer. I watched his reflection in the glass as he scanned the room. Something in his face made my chest hurt.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” I said in a low voice.

  “You can’t blame me for everything, Alec.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “Okay, since we’re fucking skirting the subject… How was what happened between us my fault?”

  “The fact that you don’t know just proves my point.”

  “You’re the one that gave up on us.”

  “You left…without a word.”

  “Only after you said we had no future.”

  I spun to face him. My chest hurt. My head hurt. The words tumbled out of me like an avalanche. “I had to pick you up from the hospital. Again. I was…so angry.” I balled my fists. “I still am. I didn’t…” I scowled at the floor. “I couldn’t stand by and watch you kill yourself.”

  “So now you’re fucking something that doesn’t die?”

  My blood ran cold. “What?”

  His face twisted. “That’s right. Meg told me. I knew your dad had fucked you up, but Jesus Christ, Alec.”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “Clearly not, if you think they don’t die.”

  “Oh, I’ve read the Public Health articles too,” he said with a sneer. “But you forget that I’ve seen shit go down with these things.” His face clouded, his dark eyebrows drawn together. “Nasty shit. You’d be amazed what can be kept off social media when someone important enough wants it buried. You want the truth? The only way to put one down? Shoot them right here”—he pressed a finger between his eyebrows—“at close range. Get them anywhere else, even point blank, and you just make them angry. Have ever you seen a haemo angry?” Silence hung between us like wet fog. There was a nasty taste in my mouth and Brody’s screams filled my ears again. “You know what I’m talking about.” His voice was low and he was watching me closely.

  A knock on the door made us both jump. He got to it before me.

  “David.” Meg dropped her shopping bags and threw her arms around him. He held her close, talking softly in her ear. I hung back near the window, not moving even when she broke the hug to smile at me. Her face fell when she took in my expression. “I see you’ve had your reunion.”

  “Meg, I don’t—” I started.

  “I don’t want to hear it from either of you.” She turned her look on David, who raised his hands in a not-guilty gesture.

  “We should go,” he said.

  “Now?” I glared. “It’s nearly dark.”

  “You think you’re the only one who can drive like a maniac?”

  “I said,” Meg cut in, “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Meg—”

  “No.” She cut off her brother. “Alec’s right. It’s too late to try to get anywhere tonight.” David shot me a black look. Meg started unpacking the bags. “This place is as safe as we’re gonna get, for now,” she went on, laying steak on a board and starting to chop.

  “Meg, if you’ve had Blood, they can smell it for miles—”

  She stiffened, the hand gripping the knife going white at the knuckles. “Blood? You think we drank Blood?”

  David looked startled. He glanced at me then back at her. “You said—”

  “We didn’t know it was a Blood Party until it was too late.” She continued to chop, a little more forcefully. “But we didn’t drink, David. We’re not stupid.”

  David assessed me and I met his scrutiny with a level stare. Eventually his eyes slid away. “Good. That’s an advantage to us. But you still need to get away from this city.”

  “Tomorrow,” she said, heating sesame oil in a new frying pan and tossing in the steak with some green peppers and garlic. She glanced at me over her shoulder then back to her brother. “We’ll go tomorrow. I promise.”

  * * * *

  I’d never known anything more uncomfortable than that meal with David and Meg. Her stir-fry was excellent, fragrant and rich, but it sat like stone in my belly. The TV was on in the corner, tuned to some movie channel whilst they kept up a flow of stilted conversation. I couldn’t tell if the elephant in the room was David or me. I gave short, one-word answers until Meg gave up trying to include me. I tried to figure out whether they expected me to leave with them or whether I wanted to if they did.

  I tried not to look at David. I’d made myself not think about him for years. I remembered his branded sportswear, expensive shoes and overpriced, ugly watches. I remembered watching it all disappear as his drug habit worsened. Now he sat with his legs crossed on my faded second-hand couch in non-branded jeans, a plain black T-shirt, no watch, un-groomed and thin but smiling…at Meg, not at me…talking easily, calmly. There was no twitchiness from withdrawal, none of the nervous energy I remembered from when he would be coming down. He had apparently had the same job in a South London Starbucks for the last two years and was on his way to becoming store manager. I couldn’t decide if it was the truth or whether he was just saying it for Meg’s benefit…or mine.

  I desperately wanted to go to my room and shut the door on them, but I couldn’t leave. I kept watching the door, the windows. David’s gun was like a fourth person in the room. Eventually Meg patted her brother’s knee a little stiffly and rose. She gave me an apologetic glance and wished me goodnight. When we heard her door shut, David’s face changed.

  “Say whatever you want to say.”

  I chewed over several things, rejected all of them and left the room. I leaned against my bedroom door, kneading my temples. The ache didn’t leave. I got into bed, leaving the curtains open, and made sure the shotgun was in reach. I listened to David move around the sitting room, turning off the TV, rooting in the cupboard for spare blankets. I listened to everything fall silent.

  T
he only sound was the low growl of Glasgow in the distance. Physical and mental exhaustion wrestled with the caffeine and fear. I waited for the dreams.

  Terje appeared in the corner of the room. The light from the streetlight shone in his white-blond hair and glinted in the sliver of his eyes. He stood motionless, hands in the pockets of a long, black overcoat. His eyes were on me, darker than night, deeper than space. A strand of hair had become untucked from behind his ear. I wanted to reach out and brush it back. My skin and veins started to thrum whilst the chill of fear spread slowly through my insides.

  I reached out. Sometimes in the dreams, he came to me. Sometimes I had to go to him. This time nothing happened. It was only when my hand dropped and I felt the worn, old sheet under my fingers that I realized I wasn’t asleep.

  I scrabbled for the gun, heart climbing up my throat. I leveled it at him, panting, palms sweating.

  “I think we’ve been through this.” His voice wasn’t loud but it filled my head and flesh with electricity.

  “You can’t bite me if I blow your head off.” My own voice was thin.

  “Do you want to blow my head off?”

  I didn’t dare blink. My hands were shaking. Silence stretched on. His eyes were like points of starlight in a black night. I’d forgotten how completely unreal he looked. And how completely entrancing.

  “How did you get in here?” I quavered, thinking of Meg and David sleeping a few feet away.

  “Your friends are fine,” he said, as if reading my thoughts on my face. He took his hands out of his pockets. They were so long, so fine, the nails sharper than cut glass.

  “Don’t move.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “We’re to stay like this all night then?”

  “Stay back.”

  “I’m nowhere near you, Alec.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “You’re panicking.”

  “Did you kill—?”

  “Alec,” he cut me off, stepping closer. I gripped the gun tighter. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Not anymore.

  He came closer. My finger trembled on the trigger. He drifted to the bed. The barrel quivered an inch from his face, which was as cool and distant as snow on the mountaintops. Cold sweat stood out on my face and back.

  “I’ve come to help you.” His voice was like coffee laced with liquor. I wanted so badly to swallow it and feel comforted, but I didn’t dare.

  “Help me?”

  “Yes.”

  “The way you helped that politician? And Olivia Ogdell-Paige? Her husband?”

  Something shifted in the backs of his eyes. “They are not my concern.”

  I drew breath in and out through my teeth. “They’re dead, aren’t they?” He didn’t speak. “Did you kill them?”

  “Alec—”

  “They were right,” I gritted. “The Ogdells. The anti-haemos. The protest groups. You’re monsters, all of you.” In a movement too quick to see, he’d taken the gun. I scrambled out of the bed and stood against the wall. “Just leave Meg alone. Please. She didn’t do anything. She didn’t—”

  “Alec,” he said softly, propping the gun against the wall. “You need to listen.”

  “I don’t want to hear anything from you.”

  “I’ve not hurt anyone.”

  “You didn’t?” I wanted to believe, so badly, but I didn’t trust myself to spot a lie. “Where are they, then?”

  Something dark ghosted in his eyes. “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I ground out.

  He gave a small sigh. “You don’t have to, but you’d be safer if you did.”

  I clenched my fists to stop my hands shaking. “If you didn’t take them, who did?” His glance slid away. “Who, Terje?” His name felt strange in my mouth. I’d said it so many times in dreams or in the safe cage of night in my bed at Glenroe. I’d never thought I’d say it to his face again. It felt weighty, like an overladen water pail. He still didn’t speak. “You’re going to tell me what’s going on, or…”

  “Or what?”

  I held his gaze with some effort. “I don’t think you want to hurt me,” I ventured, watching him closely. “But the Blood will fight if I’m a threat, right? So tell me. Tell me what’s going on or I’ll go for the gun—”

  “That wouldn’t be wise.”

  “Tell me.”

  His eyes flickered. “It’s my Magister.”

  “Your what?”

  “The head of my commune. My…” His glance slid to the wall again. “I can’t tell you more, but you must believe me when I say that it wasn’t me that took those people.”

  My mouth was dry. “Then why are you here?”

  “I told you. To help you.”

  “Why?”

  He blinked again, slowly. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “This Magister… He wants to hurt me?”

  “She wants to hurt everyone,” he said slowly. “Everyone who was there that night.”

  “Meg and I didn’t do anything—”

  “We don’t have much time.” He stepped toward me. “I can protect you, but we must leave. Now.”

  “I can’t leave Meg.”

  “She can’t come, Alec. She won’t understand.”

  “I won’t leave her on her own whilst—”

  “She’s safe. I promise. She’s the only one who is.”

  I frowned. “Why?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Terje.”

  He huffed out a breath through his nose, the first sign of impatience I’d seen him display. “She didn’t drink?”

  “No.”

  “Then my Magister won’t find her.”

  That taste rose in the back of my throat again. I could smell burning leaves, sun-warmed heather. My heart skittered about. My fingertips pulsed. Blood rushed into my face. He was watching me realize. “I didn’t ask to drink.”

  “That won’t matter to her.”

  Anger warred with fear over an echoing pit of something deep and dark in the back of my mind. He was so close that if I reached out, I could touch him. For real this time, not a dream. I wondered if he’d want me to…if he’d let me. I wondered why that was all I could think about right now.

  He moved close. His breath brushed my jaw. I could smell his hair, clean and cool like mountain wind. “Please, Alec, let me help you.”

  I let out a shuddering breath, fighting for control over the feelings battling in my chest. I finally nodded and watched something that might have been relief warm his face.

  “Get dressed,” he ordered. “Quietly.”

  I obeyed in a daze then stuffed what little I’d brought with me into my rucksack and followed him down the darkened corridor. I stopped outside Meg’s room, but he urged me on with a firm hold on my elbow.

  He opened the door into the sitting area silently and ghosted through, making no more noise than fog. We were halfway to the front door when a lamp snapped on. David stood by the sofa, his pistol raised.

  “Don’t move,” he bit out, but whether he was talking to me or Terje I couldn’t tell. His face was a rigid mask. Sweat shone on his forehead.

  “David, put it down,” I said.

  “Step away.”

  “David—”

  “Step away, Alec.”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “If you’ve even touched Meg—”

  “She’s fine,” I said, stepping between them. David’s forehead was twisted, his jaw bulging. The gun didn’t waver. “David, she will be fine. She’s not in danger.”

  “Who’s told you that? Him?” He jerked the gun over my shoulder to where Terje stood by the door, unmoving, eyes locked unblinking on David.

  “I trust him.”

  “Christ,” David breathed, his eyes widening. “I didn’t want to believe it. But it’s true, isn’t it?”

  “What is?”

  “You’ve got Bloodlust. I saw it i
n your face. I didn’t want to believe but—don’t move.”

  Terje had put his hand on the door handle. “We must leave, Alec. Now.”

  “You have no idea what you’ve done,” David breathed, words addressed to me even though his eyes were fixed on Terje. “You’ll end up doing anything that thing asks, just for a sniff of the stuff.”

  “That’s not true—”

  “Bullshit,” he snapped. “He owns you now.”

  “No—”

  “How do you think he found you, Alec? He can smell it. They can sniff out anyone who’s drank Blood.” I stared at Terje, but he was as readable as carved marble. “You brought this down on us,” David said, looking at me for the first time, his eyes jet black with pain. “You put Meg in danger. And for what? A Blood hit? After all the self-righteous shit you spewed at me the day I left?”

  “It’s not like that,” I said, willing it to be the truth.

  “Isn’t it? Just you wait, Alec. You think me on crack was bad? You have no idea—” David jerked his head up. Meg was moving around in her room.

  A gust of cold night air made me jump. The door was open and Terje had vanished.

  “Alec!”

  David’s desperate plea was lost in the noise of me rattling down the steps. I braced myself for the sound of a shot, but it didn’t come. I skidded out onto the deserted road and stared around dumbly, jumping at the sound of an engine starting. A black Mitsubishi SUV roared up to the pavement, Terje in the driver’s seat. I hesitated then climbed in. He pressed the accelerator before I’d shut the door. I watched the dim shape of the distillery disappear in the wing mirror.

  “Phone.” He was holding out a long-fingered hand.

  “Why?”

  He wound down his window. “Give it to me.”

  “I’m not giving up my phone. What if Meg—”

  “You can’t be of any more help to her,” he cut me off. “And someone may use it to track you.”

  “I’m not giving you my phone,” I said firmly.

  He sent me a sideways glance but dropped his hand. “I won’t make you. But this will have all been for nothing if you don’t turn it off and leave it off.”

  “If this Magister can find me by smell, why would she need to trace my phone?”