Acolyte (31 page)

Jonah glared at Kendrick, furious that he'd try to make the link between Tess and Silva. ‘Tess is ill,' said Jonah. ‘Either it's the medication killing her, or the separation from whatever she's host to, but it comes down to the same thing. You said it yourself. There may not be a choice.'

‘Even if there
was
a choice,' said Kendrick, looking almost bitter, ‘you'd rather she faced something that could destroy her, on the slim chance that it'd help us. You'd risk her sanity on a whim. Tell me you wouldn't.
Tell me.
'

No matter how much he wanted to deny it, Jonah said nothing. He looked away from Kendrick.

And saw her there. At the door, watching.

‘Tess …' he called, but she was already gone.

The atmosphere in the house the next morning was sombre and uneasy. Fresh from a full night of medicinally aided sleep, Never had emerged from his room to find himself in the midst of a cold silence, which became even chillier when Jonah explained what had happened the night before.

The physical chill of the house was more pronounced, too, as the overnight temperature outside had plummeted. Once he'd eaten breakfast, Never excused himself. ‘I'm going down to the basement,' he said. ‘I'll see if there's something I can do about the boiler. Maybe I can improve the heating before we all die of pneumonia.'

Jonah gave him a sceptical look. ‘You're not just going to hit it, are you?'

‘Not
just
,' said Never.

Kendrick muttered inaudibly and went upstairs to his room, taking his laptop with him. Jonah watched the man leave, knowing exactly what he was doing: getting an update on Lucas Silva. His mind had been going over it endlessly in the early hours, and he'd slept very little – wondering exactly what Kendrick's team was doing to him.

Tess sat with coffee and toast, looking even more pale and dark-eyed. She'd hardly moved since Jonah had come downstairs, and had avoided making eye contact with him.

‘Maybe Never's right,' he said, trying to break the silence. ‘This cold can't be good for any of us.'

She looked at him, hurt and wary. ‘Maybe,' she said. ‘Although I doubt it's me he's doing it for. I don't think Never likes me very much.'

‘He's a little overprotective,' said Jonah. He smiled, hoping for one in return. It took a few moments, but he got it, albeit tentative.

‘Because every time I show up, it's bad news?' said Tess. ‘I'm sorry, Jonah. If I hurt you. Coming to see you after so many years, then leaving the way I did. I'd hoped it would be a kind of closure.'

‘It was,' he said. ‘You didn't mean for things to turn out the way they did. You hadn't even wanted me to be involved in Unity.' He took a breath. This was old news; they were talking around the real issue, avoiding it. But it had to be faced: ‘I'm the one who's sorry, Tess,' he said. ‘About last night. You were the first friend I had at Baseline. I was a frightened fourteen-year-old, and you made it OK. You'll always be important to me. I'm ashamed at how I behaved last night. This isn't your fault, and—'

‘Don't be so sure,' she said. ‘I was the first to achieve Unity. I was the best placed to see the dangers that were coming. If I'd been able to integrate, embrace the Elder I was host to, if I'd
understood
… maybe everything could have been avoided.'

‘There were eleven others who went through the same process after you, and before Michael Andreas. None of them managed it either.'

‘I know,' she said. ‘But the others are dead. I'm the last. My failure to bond with the Elder within me is
my
failure, Jonah.' She paused. ‘They came through like waking dreams, at first – these memories that weren't my own. Vistas of such beauty, skies with impossible colours. Cities that were inconceivably vast and complex. But most of it seemed like visual noise, things I couldn't hope to understand. We all thought understanding would come eventually – that we would take shelter, and have time to learn how to see the truth in these visions, and help each other. Then I found
out the real truth. That by taking the Elders into ourselves, we'd made them abandon their posts, and the evil they'd vowed to guard was free. I could feel the Elder within me flinch, then hide from it. Its fear was what made the visions turn to nightmares. Absolute terror. Absolute despair. I couldn't cope with it. Whatever I learned seemed to be so pitiful in comparison.'

‘But you knew some things,' said Jonah.

‘I did. I knew about the sunlight, and Larry put these in place to ease my mind, with a generator in the basement.' She gestured to the lights high on the ceiling. ‘Buying time, Larry said, but I think he was humouring me.'

‘He trusts your judgement,' said Jonah.

‘My judgement?' she said, shaking her head. ‘It was my judgement that got me into this. I believed in what Michael was doing.'

‘Michael Andreas was a good man, Tess. And strong. I can't imagine what it would have taken to suppress the creature possessing him, long enough to try to destroy it.'

‘Yes,' said Tess, sadly. ‘He's still inside. You realize that, don't you? The darkness that took him, it consumes souls, corrupts them until they're just another part of it, but Michael is still alive. He must see everything it does, powerless to stop it.' She smiled, tears in her eyes, her gaze drifting off. ‘People used to read more into our relationship than was there, but it was a simple love. I would have done anything for him. If I could do one last thing, it would be to bring him peace.' She looked at Jonah. ‘I have to face it, sooner or later. I have to do whatever I can to grant him that.'

‘Maybe when you're better, Tess,' he said. ‘When you've got your strength back. But we have options now. We have to see where they lead.' The image came to him of Lucas Silva's terrified face, and the faces of his wife and child. He could see Tess's troubled expression, and suspected she was thinking the same thing.

We have options now.

But at what cost?

*

By the time darkness fell that evening, Never's quest to improve the heating had paid off, Kendrick having given him five minutes of closely supervised time online to hunt down advice on the model of boiler. ‘I did also hit some things,' admitted Never, but nobody was complaining. While the house was far from cosy, the chilly bite had gone from the air.

Kendrick remained surly and untalkative all day, and although the others avoided mentioning Silva and the ongoing interrogation, Jonah presumed it was foremost on their minds. He wondered how Never was dealing with it, as the one to have suffered the most. Here they were, complicit in the torture of another man, telling themselves that he was the enemy, knowing that doing anything to stop it would put their own lives at risk and undermine their chances at defeating Andreas.

The unconscionable took so little effort to justify, Jonah thought.

As darkness fell, Kendrick was with them in the kitchen making himself some coffee when his phone rang. He put the phone to his ear. ‘Yes?' he said, sounding hopeful. Then his expression changed, and with it the mood in the room: he looked anxious. ‘Power's out? How long?'

Kendrick sat quickly and put the phone on speaker, placing it in front of him.

‘Two minutes,' said the voice on the other end of the line. It sounded like the bearded man Kendrick had spoken to the night before. ‘Ako went to the basement to see what the problem is. Nash is here with me.'

‘Have you had any problems with the power before?' asked Kendrick.

‘None,' said the man. ‘That's why I called you. It doesn't feel right.'

‘Get Nash to take a look out an upstairs window,' said Kendrick. ‘Check how widespread the power outage is.'

They heard muffled speaking, then a shout. ‘She says the streetlights are on.'

Kendrick thought: four long seconds. He came to a decision. ‘You need to get out of there,' said Kendrick, tense. ‘Now.'

‘Yes, sir,' said the man. ‘Ako!' he shouted. ‘We're leaving.'

Another voice, a woman: ‘Something's outside.'

There was a loud thump. ‘Front door! Front door!' came a shout, followed by another thump and the sound of splintering wood.

Kendrick closed his eyes as the gunfire started, rapid bursts interspersed with barked commands, shouts. Then a man screaming, desperate and terrified. The screaming went on and on, not stopping, sounding more and more strangled, then
wet.

Kendrick ended the call. He sat, intense and silent, worrying his thumbnail as he thought hard.

‘Do your friends know our location?' asked Tess urgently. Kendrick didn't reply. ‘
Larry!'

‘Andreas's people will be able to get nothing from them,' he said. ‘They can reel off a thousand decoy addresses, useless to Andreas.'

Jonah found it horribly unnerving to see just how shaken Kendrick was. Something else was unnerving him, too. ‘But how could they have been tracked down?' he said.

‘The shadows must be able to find each other after all,' said Kendrick. ‘We'd considered that unlikely, but this isn't something we could risk trying again.' He looked at Jonah. ‘Happy now?'

Jonah glared at him. ‘You think I'm glad your people are hurt, or dead? Fuck you.'

Long seconds went by before Never broke the impasse. ‘This isn't going to help us,' he said. He looked at Kendrick. ‘How many people do you have loyal to you? If Andreas does get his machine built, can they destroy it?'

Kendrick shook his head. ‘If we use up every advantage we have to destroy the machine, I suspect they'd be able to rebuild it
quickly.' Jonah could hear the frustration growing in Kendrick's voice.

‘Attack Andreas directly, then,' said Never. ‘There has to be a way for—'

‘Stop!'
shouted Kendrick. ‘Stop it. I need to think. Yammering in my fucking ear doesn't help. I just need to think.' He went upstairs again, a cloud of agitation around him.

‘He'll come up with something,' said Tess, looking exhausted. ‘He always has backup plans up his sleeve.'

‘Given that his last plan involved kidnap and torture,' said Never, ‘I'm not sure I want to know.'

Tess ignored the comment and stood.

‘Are you going to talk to him?' said Jonah.

She shook her head. There was something about her that worried him, something
resigned.
‘No,' she said. ‘I think I'll try and get some sleep.'

‘Is she OK?' said Never once she'd gone. ‘She really doesn't look well.'

‘She's not,' said Jonah. ‘Maybe sleep is what she needs most.'

*

As the night wore on, he tried not to think about any of it. Their future, whether he liked it or not, was in Kendrick's hands, and there was nothing Jonah could do to contribute. While Never flicked between channels on the TV, Jonah attempted to read, struggling through sentence by sentence, not really connecting with the words. He gave up, and instead turned his eye to the television and the bland distractions Never had found.

As midnight approached, he was slipping in and out of a welcome doze when a sound wrenched him into sudden awareness.

Tess was screaming.

Jonah ran upstairs with Never on his heels. As he reached Tess's bedroom door Kendrick was just going inside.

Her screams had been heartrending, with the same visceral punch of those wet-sounding cries they'd heard over the phone earlier. Panic, desperation and terror. The screams broke down into gasping sobs. Jonah entered the room and saw Tess clutching Kendrick so tightly her knuckles were white.

‘It's OK,' Kendrick was saying. ‘You're safe.'

She looked up, trembling. ‘It was so frightened,' she said. ‘So alone. And then –' She closed her eyes, shaking. When finally she opened them again, she looked at Kendrick, terrified.
‘It talked to me
,
'
she said.

*

She paused for a moment, composing herself, then stood and walked across the room, picking up a bottle of pills from a table. She shook out two capsules and swallowed them dry. ‘I didn't take my medication,' she said. ‘I had to try. We had so little time, I
had
to. Then, as I dreamed, it came to me. The Elder was frightened, and it was angry. It showed me terrible things …' She paused, staring ahead of herself. She looked at Kendrick, drained. ‘Terrible things. It was punishing me for abandoning it, I think, but it was so scared. It thought it was being watched, and …' She tailed off, closing her eyes, visibly trembling.

Kendrick looked at Jonah, accusation on his face. ‘Was this you? Did you tell her to do this?'

Jonah shook his head, raising his voice. ‘Don't you
dare
try and duck out of this, Kendrick. You were the one who brought up the idea, the one who kept planting the seed.'

They were face to face, now, both voices growing louder as they bickered back and forth.

From behind them, Tess spoke in an exhausted voice. ‘The rise,' she started, but she was ignored by them both.

‘Hey,' said Never, ‘can you two shut it? Tess is—'

They ignored him, too, until he stood between them and yelled:
‘For fuck's sake, shut up!'
He turned and gestured to Tess; Jonah and Kendrick, shamefaced, looked at her.

‘The rise,' she said. ‘That's when it's vulnerable, the only time it will be. The shadows are part of the whole, but so is what's inside Andreas. Just a
part.
The connection it has with the bulk of its power has to be severed. Destroy the body of the vessel when it attempts its rise, and the connection could be closed forever.'

‘The body of the vessel …' said Kendrick. ‘You mean Andreas?'