Blood Entwines (20 page)

Kara closed the front door behind her, shutting out the chill of the night air. Jack was watching her from his new position, crumpled on the floor at the bottom of the stairs next to a dusty coat rack.

A flush of pink raced up her cheeks as she wondered how much of her conversation he had overheard.

She tried to hide the irritation in her voice as she helped him up. ‘What happened to you?'

‘Couch.' He slurred his words, limping forward, his body swaying. Kara jammed her shoulder under his armpit, taking some of his weight.

‘Let me help you before you keel over.' He mumbled something, but she couldn't make out what he was saying. She dragged him towards the couch, toppling him into it. She was hot in her jacket and scarf.

Kara straightened up, looking around her. She shrugged out of her jacket, unwrapping the scarf as she took in her surroundings. She could just make out the battered couch that dominated the centre of the room. Against one wall a ceiling-high bookcase was stuffed with dusty books. On the opposite wall there was a large marble fireplace, with an empty grate. Kara dropped her scarf over a nearby armchair.

It was getting dark. There was a corner light. She fumbled with the switch. A soft glow filled the dim room, accentuating the subtle beauty, and Kara realised what good taste its owners must have had and how sad it was to see it in such a sorry state.

She glanced down at Jack. His eyes were closed. Kara wasn't sure if he was asleep, if she should leave him or try to revive him. She took a step forward and placed her hand gently on his forehead. He was burning up.

His hand shot up and grasped her by the wrist, pulling her down towards him, his eyes searching, disorientated.

‘Ouch, Jack, you're hurting me. Let go.' She yanked her hand free, rubbing at the place where his fingers had bitten into her skin.

She glared at him, concern for his wellbeing completely deserting her. ‘You're a real piece of work, you know that? Here I am trying to help you and you're mauling me . . .' She kicked the corner of the couch to make sure he was listening. ‘I should have left you in the alleyway.' She stood over him, glaring down, waiting for a response. He looked at her, glassy-eyed, panting for breath.

‘He shouldn't have been there.'

‘What are you talking about?' She instantly forgot her irritation.

He closed his eyes.

‘I needed to be alone. I was about to change. I didn't think anyone would be there. He thought I was going to jump.'

Kara was paying attention now to what he was saying. The word ‘jump' always caught her attention.

His head drooped to one side, like he was in the midst of a deep sleep. His lips were slack, parted, a glob of spit leaking from the corner of his mouth.

‘Jack?' She shook him roughly.

He mumbled something, forcing Kara to move closer.

‘. . . tried to talk me away from the edge, but I could feel the change coming. I could feel my blood turning and I couldn't make him go away.' He raised his hands in front of his face, swatting at invisible images.

He paused, opening his bloodshot eyes.

Kara took a step back.

‘Irritating. Wouldn't listen. Like you.'

Kara felt the muscles in her stomach tighten.

‘Tell me,' she whispered.

‘That day. The roof.' His eyes dulled, the pupils turning milky. His face, his skin, had a greenish pallor.

Kara sunk to her knees in front of him; she gripped the corner of the seat, every muscle straining forward.

‘Who was on the roof?'

‘Me.' He hacked a lung-wrenching cough. ‘Your father. The faceless man.'

She rocked back on her heels. He had said the words and she had heard them, but she couldn't process them. Was Jack saying her father was a monster? Her father had been alone on the roof before he jumped. They said in the investigation afterwards that the street-surveillance tapes had shown him go into the building alone and nobody else had come out. She didn't understand.

‘I wanted people to be safe. Away. I had to get away. The roof. Quiet. No one there.' Jack's words dragged Kara out of her contemplative state; she must concentrate on what he was telling her.

He coughed again, the noise raking through his chest. She visualised the young man on the roof, perched on the edge, legs dangling, her father seeing him, going up the stairs, trying to talk some sense into him.

‘What happened?' She needed to know the truth.

‘I tried to control it. So weak. Couldn't. He's coming now. Get away.'

The insistence in his voice startled her. He half rose from the couch and pushed meekly against her.

‘You tried to control who?' Kara took hold of his shoulders and shook him ferociously, his body jerking backwards and forwards with each movement.

‘The faceless man. A monster. He forced me to drink his blood. I should never have . . .'

Kara didn't care. ‘But my dad, on the roof?' She didn't want to know about anything else.

On replay in her head was that fateful day, over and over again, her father going to work that morning, stealing a piece of toast from her plate as he rushed out of the door, her laugh floating after him.

She needed to know the truth.

‘What happened? Please, Jack. Please. You have to tell me.'

‘Tried to talk. Stay away. I told him. I tried to warn. Wouldn't listen . . .' Jack gurgled, the words getting stuck in his mouth. His eyes rolled back in his head, exposing the whites, with lines of red streaking through them.

With one supreme effort, he shouted at her: ‘He's coming. Get away!'

He struck at her, aimlessly flinging his arms. He screamed. His back arched off the couch as if an invisible rope was pulling at his centre, craning him up.

Kara scrambled back out of his reach. A heavy iron poker lay abandoned on the hearth. She wanted to take it up, to bash him across the head.

‘What did you do to my father?' She came back to him, digging her fingernails into the flesh of his upper arm. Her hand was hot, soaking up the heat of his skin. Her own blood pulsed in her body, concentrated at the contact point between her and Jack.

He whispered her name, crooning it. ‘Kara, Kara. I'm sorry.' He was crying silent tears. ‘I pushed him.'

He hissed, his limbs tightening in wakeful rigor mortis.

‘He will rip you in two.' Jack roared the words at her. She could feel spittle hit her face, the damp droplets on her skin. She wanted to run, could feel the well of panic begin to overflow, his panic and hers intermingling.

Another fierce howl of pain ripped through him and Kara stared, unable to look away. Jack squirmed on the couch, scratching at his skin, tearing his own flesh for release from the pain. Kara scurried on her haunches across the room till her back hit against the solid brick wall.

She pushed with all her might, but couldn't get any further from him. Jack's back was arched off the couch, his nails dug into the soft cushions, his feet thrashing. What should she do? Kara panted short breaths. She couldn't move, her muscles refusing to function, her mind slowly blanking out everything, all that pain.

It could have been a moment or an hour, the only sound in the room a quiet whimpering. The whimpering was coming from Kara.

Jack had pushed her father. The truth at last. She had said it all along. Her father would never, never have done that to her. And she was right. But why did it not feel any better? Why, if possible, was the pain worse? She needed to kill him, to kill Jack. Maybe then she would feel an ease of the pain.

He lay slack on the couch, his head lolling against the tattered cushions, his hands, gripped in a claw-like position, feet and legs stretched at an awkward angle.

Kara wasn't sure if he was breathing. She watched his chest for a second and could see no rise and fall, nothing.

Maybe he is dead? But she would know, surely.

It was this thought that got her to her feet. She swayed unsteadily, the room moved around her and she gripped the mantelpiece for support. What would happen after she did it? The blood in her veins, his blood too, mingling there. She didn't care. Revenge. That was all she could think of.

She moved automatically till she was standing beside the couch. She looked down at Jack and imagined her father's last minutes alive on earth: his effort to help this kid who he thought was about to jump to his death.

She remembered the hushed words of the neighbours at his funeral, the word ‘suicide' at the graveside and the house afterwards. That word nestled in her heart. It plagued her. It mangled its way through her brain as she tried to sleep, echoing, even in her dreams.

She'd spent so long blaming herself. What if she had willingly given her father her last piece of toast that morning, without calling a rebuke after him? What if she had made more of an effort to get good grades, keep the house clean, be a better daughter?

Hours, days, weeks had gone by where she analysed and overanalysed each moment she'd spent with her dad towards the end, trying to see if she had done something wrong.

It all led to this: Jack whose blood had saved her life; Jack who had killed her father.

He's coming.
What had he meant when he'd shouted at her? The ravings of a lunatic. The ravings of a murderer.

She opened her hand and held it, palm down, a few inches over his mouth and nose. It would be so easy to press down, to cut short the air, to stop his breath. She felt the blood in her body go fiery hot, pushing and pulsing against her skin. She gasped in pain as a sharp shot of agony raced up her spine. Maybe this was it; maybe Jack was dead and her time was up too.

She doubled over and knelt on the side of the couch, gasping tiny breaths in and out, in an out. Then it stopped. Nothing, no feeling, no connection.

Had he died? Was that what had just happened? She straightened up with considerable effort and leaned over to listen to his chest.

She didn't see his eyes opening.

Kara didn't notice that they weren't Jack's eyes looking at her. They burned black and vicious, drinking in the sight of her and all her human frailty.

He had done a good job this time, this puppet of his. Something young and pretty. Surely she would scream for him. He liked it when they screamed
.

Jack grabbed her wrist, pulling her forward, upending her so her torso was swallowed up by the couch, her arms pulled back.

She tried to struggle, but couldn't find her footing in the softness of the cushions, material plugged up her mouth and nose, making it difficult to breathe. Jack was wrenching her arms backwards, straining the muscles to tearing point.

She rolled her weight to one side freeing up her leg and, like a horse, she kicked back. Her foot connected with Jack's abdomen and she heard a grunt. The reward for her effort was a lessening of pressure on her arms. Scrambling, she pushed herself up from the couch, spitting hair from her mouth. She stumbled into the centre of the room. Jack was kneeling on one knee, his arm clutched to his stomach.

She backed away, every nerve in her body telling her she should run, telling her she was in danger. The only way out of the room was through the door. To get to the door she would have to be fast. Prone as Jack was at the moment, she did not underestimate his strength or speed.

She took one step towards the door.

‘I wouldn't do that if I were you.' The voice was not Jack's yet it came from his body. He lifted his head to look at her. She froze. Slowly Jack stood up and turned to face her completely.

Kara swallowed a scream.

His eyes were pure black, deader than anything she had ever seen. He looked at her with hungry longing. The facial features were angular, sharp, as if something with corners had been pushed into Jack's body. The skin on his face, taut over these new angles, looked painful.

‘I like what he has brought me – this boy might be worth keeping after all.'

He stretched out a hand, claw-like, in Kara's direction and flexed his fingers, beckoning her towards him. She felt the ebb of her blood and the urge to step forward, but the voice in her head screamed with certainty.
Do not go near him. He will rip you to pieces
.

She would fight if she had to; she would not let him take her.

He sniffed the air around her.

‘You are pretty. How fortunate that I chose this boy tonight.' His voice oozed with menace. Kara thought she was going to vomit. She swallowed and tried to buy herself some time.

‘What have you done with Jack?'

He laughed a dry laugh. It rasped from him like plumes of smoke.

‘What, this useless thing?'

He indicated his own body.

‘He does my will, as is fitting; I use him when I wish. It was Steve the accountant for a while, but I tired of that body.'

She gaped at him. ‘But how . . . ?'

He grinned at her and leaned his head to one side, appraising her again with his dead eyes.

‘It intrigues you?'

She nodded. Keep him talking.

‘You are not afraid?' He seemed somewhat put out by her reaction.

‘No,' she said, trying to sound as unaffected as possible, hoping he couldn't hear her thumping heart. He leaned against the chair arm and studied his nails, picking flecks of dirt from them.

‘I'm going to kill you, you know.' He didn't even glance up at her.

‘I know,' she said.

He looked up, disappointment creasing his angular features. ‘Hmm, that's a pity. I was hoping to have some fun with you, but, nonetheless, I will kill you anyway.'

Kara shrugged her shoulders. ‘Whatever. But you haven't answered my question.'

‘Yes,' he admitted, smiling with distaste. ‘That is true. This . . .' He stood up and twirled round once, the smoothness and speed of his movement impressive. ‘I take what I want. I leave few alive. Those I do receive a gift from me.'