Blue Dome (The Blue Dome Series) (20 page)

“So have all the Shards
found their way into the Slipworld in the same way as me?” I asked.

“More or less,” said
Thomas. “They’ve been in trouble and an Aeon has found them and shown them the
entrance. Although it is possible for a Shard to slip through the seam without
an Aeon, it is impossible to actually find the entrance itself without our
help. We have to be extremely careful, as Demarge is desperate to find his way
in.”

“Why?” I said. “What does
he want with the Slipworld?”

“He’s wanted to destroy
it ever since was created,” since Min. “It’s not just about eradicating the
interference of Aeons, it’s a statement of defiance.”

“Has he ever been in the
Slipworld?” I asked.

“No, although he’s come
extremely close,” said Min shuddering at the memory. “The problem with Demarge –
and, for that matter, the Archons who work for him – is that they are also made
of light. It would easy for them to pass into the Slipworld if they could find
the entrance. If that were to happen it would be catastrophic for both Aeons
and humans alike. Demarge would be able to bring with him an army of heavy
creatures that could clog the Slipworld so that it could no longer function. Given
how close Ecoli got to us in the Cathedral, there’s a good chance that Demarge
is already close to working out where the entrance is. As soon as you are
settled here, we will need to go back and get Bede so that the entrance to the
Slipworld can be shifted again.”

“Is Demarge really that
powerful?” I asked. “I mean, he may be God in our world, but surely not here?”

Min sighed and shook her
head resignedly.

“Yes Clare, I’m afraid
Demarge really is that powerful, regardless of whether or not he’s in your
world or ours.”

The trees were now
starting to thin a little and I could see we were coming into a small glade. In
the middle of the short-cropped grass was a large farmhouse, made of softly
glowing red bricks that looked as if they’d had several hours to warm in the
sun. The house had a thatched roof with a perfectly even fringe that hung over
the eaves, reminding me of the type of haircut that a medieval monk might have
worn.

“Here we are,” said
Thomas, leading us around the back of the house to a pair of large wooden
doors. “The home of the Shards – including you – while in the Slipworld.”

I cast Thomas a curious
look. While the farmhouse was big, it certainly wasn’t massive.

“How do so many people
live here?” I asked.

Thomas laughed. “Believe
me, it’s much larger inside than it looks from the outside.”

As he pushed down on the
large, iron door handle, the hinges creaked and the door slowly fell open. I
followed him and Min hesitantly inside, into what appeared to be a large kitchen.
Stretching down the middle of the room was a long, wooden table, on top of
which a round of cheese was gently sweating under a fine muslin cloth. Pots of
rosemary, basil and mint lined the windowsill, their perfume mixing with the
lavender that crowded the vases on the benches. Hanging from hooks along the
walls, fibrous white ropes of garlic kept company with bunches of wild flowers
that had been left upside-down to dry.

“Is that cheese made of
light as well?” I asked, nodding at the faintly yellow disc on the table. I
hadn’t even considered what people would
eat
when they came to the
Slipworld.

“Yes, the cheese is made
of light too,” said Min. “But of course, the food in the Slipworld needs to be
solid enough to be useful to humans. That’s why the food here looks and tastes
just as it does in the world of matter. It’s just that you need to eat much
more of it to feel full.”

I smiled to myself as I
thought of Bede – he’d love it here, any excuse to eat like a pig and my
brother was there.

“Come, why don’t we introduce
you to some of the others,” said Thomas, leading me gently towards the corridor
and away from the kitchen.

It was then that I
suddenly heard a familiar footfall, although I couldn’t remember from where. A
shock of recognition, followed swiftly by the words,
no it can’t possibly be
,
flashed across my mind, just as Min began to address the stranger.

“Hello Mary, how are
you?”

I stared at the woman, literally
gaping. It was the same Mary who lived on the streets of Wiltsdown and who everyone
thought was crazy. The last time I’d seen her was when she’d stopped me on the
street the day that Bede and I had gone on the run.

Min smiled, looking at
me, then Mary, then back to me again, as if introducing us with her eyes.

“I think you two have met
before, haven’t you?” she said.

I nodded mutely, before
suddenly remembering my manners.

“Umm, yeah, hi,” I said.

Mary fixed me with her
clear violet-blue eyes. “I knew I’d see you in here, sooner or later,” she
said, smiling with the same knowing confidence as when she’d stopped me on the
street. I was still trying to recover from the surprise as I watched her disappear
down the corridor again.

“So Mary is a Shard too?”
I said.

“Yes, one of our regulars
in fact,” said Thomas. “Unfortunately it’s not uncommon for Shards to be
branded as crazy or mentally ill in your world, and for others to see them that
way. It means that people like Mary never get listened to, which is extremely
convenient for Demarge.”

I continued to think
about what Thomas had said as I followed him and Min down the hall and into a
large library. The room was lined with bookshelves that stretched from the floor
to the ceiling. Some of them were so high that small ladders had been built
into the shelves, enabling the top-most volumes to be reached. Along one side
of the library, a set of glass doors opened onto an internal courtyard where a
tall man with a small watering can was tending to a herb garden. I could tell
immediately that he was an Aeon, rather than a Shard, by the way he moved – as smoothly
and gracefully as liquid. He had high cheekbones and large dark eyes that were
set wide apart in his symmetrical face and his red caftan glowed warmly against
his dark skin. He was concentrating so hard on what he was doing that for a
couple of minutes he didn’t realise we were even there. Then, all of a sudden,
he looked at us with a strange mix of relief and fear, instantly dropping the
watering can and running towards us.

“Thomas, Min, you’re back,”
he said. “We’ve just had word that Demarge has captured two Shards. One of them
is wanted by the police for murder. There’s a very good chance that Demarge
will hand him over.”

I felt the breath catch
the back of my throat.

“That’s Bede, I’m sure of
it,” I whispered, the words stumbling over my teeth. “I knew I should have
stayed back and looked for him.” I turned to the others. “We’ve got to find him,
we’ve got to go back!”

“She’s right, a rescue
party will need to be convened immediately,” said the man in red. “Demarge is
on the brink of finding the entrance to the Slipworld, but we can’t move the
portal until all the Shards are safe. If we don’t hurry now it will be too late.”

Beneath his blind-fold, Bede
could feel someone loosening the thick knots that bound his hands. The memory
of Calix scuttling frantically across the floor was still fresh in his mind.
Why
couldn’t I have fought harder?
he thought to himself. It was the same
question that had plagued him ever since he’d been dumped in the cold holding
cell, several hours earlier. But no matter how many times he replayed the scene
in his mind, he knew there was nothing else he could have done. Demarge had
been too strong.

Bede finally felt the
ropes fall away from his wrists. As he pushed up his blind-fold he could hear a
door creak open in front of him. A rough pair of hands pushed him inside a
small room.

“Oy, go easy!” said Bede.

The door closed with a
heavy thud, deadening his voice, as the smoky scent of burning wood found its
way to his nose. A cold wind was blowing through the small, square window on the
opposite side of the cell. Bede shivered, pulling his coat closely around him. He
began instinctively making his way to the hearth, where a collection of flames
was licking at the wrought-iron grate as if it was the lid of a yogurt pot. Suddenly,
something brought him to an abrupt halt. Lying on the floor immediately in
front of the hearth was a large, dark shape. He studied it for a couple of
seconds, watching its surface rise and fall. It was definitely alive. Bede
froze. Surely he wasn’t about to be dinner for some half-starved animal?

Bede could now hear his
own breathing, rising up out of his chest in quick, nervous gasps, as he watched
the light rebounding off the sharp angles of the creature’s body. The more he
looked at it, the more he realised that something wasn’t quite right. Not only
did the animal have just one elbow, but it was also lying at a very strange
angle. There was also a large strange lump at the end of the animal that was nearest
the fire. It looked far too big to be a dog’s head, even if the dog was
massive. He leaned in to get a better look, realising with shock that the shape
wasn’t an animal at all, but a person lying on its side, their head and arms
curled into their chest. Bede cleared his throat, pausing for a response. The
person shifted position slightly, then lay still again.

“Umm, hello?” said Bede. Again,
there was no response.

He took a couple of steps
forward and crouched, nearly knocking over a bucket of water that was tucked into
the corner of the hearth. The person’s sleeping face was familiar – Bede was
sure he’d seen the kid around Wiltsdown before. What on earth was he doing in
here? He stood and padded softly around the boy.

“What the hell...?”

Bede stopped dead when he
saw the boy’s back. His shirt and jumper hung in ribbons where three long,
diagonal gouges scoured the flesh from shoulder to hip. What was left of the
boy’s skin was crusted in blood and the stones beneath him were stained scarlet.

“What happened to you?”
said Bede under his breath. He knelt down beside the boy and nudged him gently.
“Can you hear me?”

The boy groaned and
whispered something indecipherable.

“What?” said Bede.

The boy mumbled again and
this time Bede caught the word “freezing”. He looked down and saw that the boy
was shivering, his skin covered in goose bumps.

“Hang on,” said Bede. He
peeled off his coat and was about to place it over the boy’s shoulders when he
stopped. There was a serious amount of the boy’s clothing wedged into the cuts
on his back, held fast by blood and pus.

There’s no way that’s
going to heal
, he thought to himself.

Bede lay his coat on the
floor and, grimacing with disgust, began to prise the edges of the fabric out
of the wounds with his fingernails. It wasn’t long before his fingers were
caked in dried blood and he was starting to feel sick. The boy flinched and a
small whimper leaked from his mouth.

“Sorry mate, but it’s
better for you in the long run,” said Bede, trying to convince himself as much
as the boy.

Finally, after about an
hour of painstaking work, the skin, and what was left of the shirt, were once
again completely separate. Bede crawled over to the bucket of water and sluiced
some liquid into his hands, wringing the blood from them before drying his
palms on his jeans. He then carried the bucket back to the boy and set it down
beside him. The remains of the boy’s shirt and jumper were lying in strips on
the floor. Bede grabbed a handful, tipped some water over them and gently
dabbed the wounds clean. He then set about tearing the remainder of the jumper
into strips and knotting the ends into bandages.

“This might hurt but I’ll
try to be quick.”

Bede rolled the boy
slightly and slipped the bandages underneath, wrapping the fabric around him as
tightly as possible. The boy groaned, but was far too weak to resist. Bede tied
the ends into knots, making the boy look like a makeshift mummy. He then
replaced the boy’s jumper with his own and wrapped his coat tightly around him.
Bede moved the boy closer to the fire, squeezing in next to him to warm his
hands and face in the glow.

The boy was quiet now. Bede
listened to the sound of crackling wood, his thoughts drifting to the events of
the past few days. Everything he knew had changed, irrevocably, forever. It
felt as if someone had scooped out his insides and hidden them somewhere,
leaving his shell to wander aimlessly around, searching for something that he
would never be able to find again. He remembered how he had felt this way when
his mother had died. In the silence, he felt the tears start to creep out of
his eyes and roll down his cheeks. He didn’t bother wiping them away.

By the time the boy woke
up, Bede had pretty much forgotten there was anyone else in the room, and jumped
when he suddenly heard a small, croaky voice.

“Where am I?”

Bede shrugged. “Beats me.
Looks like we’re Demarge’s prisoners though.”

The boy groaned, and tried
to sit up. He got halfway before realising it was too painful, and propped himself
up on his elbows instead. The boy gazed at Bede with exhausted, half-lidded
eyes.

“I can’t remember what
happened…how I even got here,” he said.

“You got cut up pretty
bad,” said Bede.

The boy nodded slowly. “That
bit’s starting to come back to me. Kind of glad I can’t see it.”

“What’s your name?” asked
Bede.

“Justin,” the boy
replied.

“Are you from around here?”

“You mean Wiltsdown? Not
really. I just go to school here.”

“Which one?” said Bede.

“Wiltsdown High. Do you
know it?”

Bede nodded. “Yeah, went
there myself. My sister still does.”

“Who’s your sister? I
might know her,” said Justin.

“Clare de Milo?”

Justin’s eyes flashed
with recognition. He quickly looked away.

“Yeah, I know her. She’s
in my class. Tall, brainy, red hair?”

Bede laughed. “Sounds
like her.”

“I don’t know her that
well though,” said Justin quickly. “I only just started at Wiltsdown High this
year.”

“What, you got expelled
from somewhere else?” Bede joked.

“Something like that,”
said Justin.

“Oh,” said Bede abruptly.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s fine,” said Justin,
shrugging it off.

Bede decided to change
the subject. “So what’s the story with those cuts?”

“It’s kind of a long
story.”

Bede shrugged. “Doesn’t
look like this hotel’s too hot on room service, you’ve probably got time to
spill.”

Justin gave a bitter
laugh, wincing as he felt his back spasm.

“Don’t know where to
start really,” he said. “I guess I’ve had a bunch of stuff going on at home for
the last couple of years. My mum’s been pretty sick and it’s just me and her.
No one outside the family really gets it. Anyway, I’ve ended up doing some
things that haven’t been so great.”

“Like what?” asked Bede.

“Nothing too heavy,
mainly just breaking into rich people’s houses and stealing stuff. I never did
anything violent, I’m not into that kind of thing. It’s more that I was in
places I shouldn’t have been.”

Justin paused, trying to
gauge Bede’s reaction.

“I’ve kind of been there
myself,” said Bede, smiling sheepishly. Justin visibly relaxed.

“So anyway, I got caught
and sent to a place for young offenders for a bit. Then my old school didn’t
want me back, so I had to go to Wiltsdown High. It was fine, you know, made
some friends, the usual thing. Started hanging out with this guy called Vince,
who was in the same class as me and Clare. Vince told me about this guy who he
was working for after school. Part-time job kind of thing. This guy paid a lot
of money. I mean,
a lot
of money.”

“Demarge?” said Bede.

“Yeah,” said Justin. “Anyway,
the work wasn’t exactly legit – you know, breaking and entering, running dodgy
errands in rough parts of town. You got even more money if you roughed people
up, but like I say, I don’t do that stuff. Could do burglaries though, no
problem. So Vince introduced me to this guy and before I knew it we were both working
for him. It was good at first. I was doing all the same old stuff as before,
but this time the jobs were hand-picked, the risks were lower and the pay back
was guaranteed.”

 “So what happened?”

Justin shrugged. “I dunno,
things just started to change.” He paused. “Or maybe it was me who started to
change, who knows? I started to get this feeling that things weren’t exactly
right
about Demarge. I mean, I started off thinking he was some sort of B-grade
gangster. But then he started to scare me. Like,
really
scare me. He’s
got a ruthless streak and...” his voice trailed off.

“And what?” said Bede.

“Nah, it’s too crazy,”
said Justin.

“Try me,” said Bede.

“He can do stuff that
other people just can’t. Stuff that’s, well, not humanly possible
.
”

“Like throw lightning
across a floor at someone?” said Bede.

Justin stared at him. “So
you’ve seen it too?” he said quietly.

“I don’t know what I’ve
seen, but I’m beginning to believe anything,” said Bede wearily. “So why didn’t
you just walk away and forget about it?”

“I couldn’t,” said
Justin. “By then it wasn’t about the money any more. I was really scared. I
knew too much about Demarge and how he worked for him to just let me walk
away.”

“So what happened next?”
said Bede.

“Vince started to get
really hungry for the money. There were jobs he’d take on that were way too
heavy for me. I warned him about it. ‘Vince’, I'd say, ‘don’t get in over your
head man, you’re just a kid.’ He’d get pretty mad at me and say that I didn’t
know what I was talking about and that I thought I was some big shot, just
because I’d been expelled from my last school. Seriously, he didn’t know the
half about my life, but there you go.”

Justin stared
distractedly into the fire for a couple of seconds, while Bede waited for him
to find his train of thought again.

“Anyway, Vince came up to
me at school one day and said, ‘Hey, Demarge needs another kid to do a job, and
I’m going to get that Thomas in on it. Demarge is going to pay me big money,
man.’ I told Vince not to do it, to just leave Thomas alone. It was one thing
for me and Vince to get mixed up in all that stuff, but Thomas, he’s a nice
kid, he doesn’t need the grief. So I told Vince I wasn’t up for it and he went
nuts. I didn’t want to fall out with him so I said, ‘okay, if you’re going to
do this then I’ll wait for you afterwards.’ Vince said he wasn’t a wuss and didn’t
need me there, but I still had a real bad feeling about it. So I waited for
Vince to meet Thomas at the school gates and followed them to an old warehouse.
Demarge has them all over the place. I waited at the door for a long time and
eventually Vince came out, smiling the biggest smile I’ve ever seen. He’d
completely forgotten he’d told me not to wait. In fact, it was like he was
happy I was there so he could show off. I remember him saying ‘just look at
this’ and pulling out a huge wad of money. It was more than Demarge had ever
paid us in one go before. I asked him where Thomas was and he just shrugged and
said he didn’t know – upstairs with Demarge probably. The whole thing seemed
kind of weird to me. I mean, Demarge only normally paid that kind of money for
seriously big jobs and I couldn’t understand why he would have shelled out so
much just to get Thomas on the payroll. I’m pretty sure Thomas knew jack about
burglary and, to be honest, I couldn’t see him really wanting to find out more.
So I said that to Vince and he got really angry again. So angry that we ended
up getting into a fight.”

“So how did it end?”
asked Bede.

“Vince ran off and I
started chasing him. I was just coming around the corner of the park and had
almost caught up with him when I saw a gang hanging about near the entrance. There
were about eight of them, all at least Vince’s size, some even bigger. Vince
had been running too fast to stop but I still time to hide before they saw me. The
gang looked like trouble, big time. I heard one of them call out to him,
something like, “What you looking at?” and Vince calling back some sort of
fighting talk. Man, he just didn’t know when to shut up sometimes. I kept
watching from behind the wall and before I knew it, the gang and circled him. They
were giving him some real grief…”