Death's Ink Black Shadow (25 page)

He tore out, running toward the conflagration, an arm over his face, terrible memories making him cry out in disbelief. Everything had begun with
fire
—Nate’s death precipitating his feelings for Nikolas…Horse Tor Manor burning down and allowing their new lives in this house…And now it was all ending.

A window blew out on the top floor. Ben screamed Babushka’s name, Emilia’s. He heard a shout back and saw them climbing out of the kitchen window, both in nightclothes, both coughing.

He sensed someone at his side. Nikolas. Nikolas began to walk toward the burning house. Ben seized his arm. “You can’t go in there!”

Nikolas snorted and shook his hand off. “I’ve been in there for months,” and followed up his cryptic comment by kicking the front door down and plunging into the fire.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

When Ben followed Nikolas into the house, he realised the fire must have started at the back or the attic, for although they were in dense, black smoke, which seared his lungs as he breathed, the hallway and stairs weren’t actually burning yet. Nikolas was mounting the stairs ahead of him, his shirt off and wrapped around his face. Ben copied him, breathing easier through the warm, familiar smell of his own top.

Nikolas had accompanied Mrs Toogood and Miles to the house, and appeared to know where they would be.

Enid Toogood would be unable to escape unaided.

She was physically unable to do so.

Nikolas shouted for Miles and Ben heard an instant yell back.

They staggered toward the sound. The bedroom was empty. Nikolas headed for the en suite and had to kick the door open. It had been blockaded on the inside with soaking wet towels at the base. Both Miles and his grandmother were sitting in the bathtub, also soaking wet, as Miles had apparently turned the shower on above them—warm water, as he was trying to tell Nikolas, so they wouldn’t get cold waiting. Hypothermia was as dangerous for burn victims as shock—didn’t he know that? The window was open wide.

All in all, they were very secure in their wet, safe pod.

Ben had the fleeting and very strange thought that if he did ever go to Mars he’d quite like Miles Toogood to accompany him.

Nikolas lifted Mrs Toogood out of the bath as if she weighed less than the wet towels around her. He carried her to the window and appeared to be considering the drop. He smiled at something, and when Ben peered out he saw that Emilia and Babushka had driven the Merc under the window.

It was an easy climb for Ben, and Nikolas handed Enid Toogood to him.

Miles was more of a struggle to get out, but he was fortunate in his rescuers. Both he and Nikolas were well able to lift and pass him between them, even though, apparently, they weren’t using the best holds as advised by Junior Firefighters.

The actual firefighters arrived too late to save the house.

They’d arrived too late once to save a much larger property that had stood in the grounds. One of the firefighters had been present at that incident and clearly remembered Nikolas. He gave him a wide berth, anyway.

Even Miles was quiet as they sat in the kitchen of the big house in the early hours of the morning. All that was now visible of the fire was a faint glow in the trees, which could have just been the sun rising in the east. It was hard to tell.

Miles was giving Nikolas little glances. To Ben it appeared as if Nikolas was well aware of this and eventually he watched a tiny, odd exchange that puzzled him greatly. Miles opened his mouth to say something; Nikolas flicked him a tiny, negative shake; Miles returned an equally small nod of acceptance, and then they both began talking about inconsequential things.

Emilia was texting her friends, regaling them, no doubt, with exaggerated accounts of the fire. Her phone, a gift from Nikolas the previous year, was the only thing to emerge from the house with the four humans, as she’d been texting in bed and had shoved it into her dressing gown pocket as she’d fled.

They all seemed in accord that it was the best way to have things. Possessions could be replaced. People could not.

Enid Toogood also seemed to have something on her mind.

They didn’t find out what it was until later that morning when Miles had been persuaded to go to bed.

She told Nikolas that Miles had nearly died that night because of her—because he wouldn’t leave her. That he’d put her in the bath and sealed the room and had sat there waiting with her, telling her how fortunate they were that he’d been studying life without air—that they could test some of his new theories.

She was a liability.

She didn’t see how she could continue to be all Miles had in the world when it didn’t seem to have occurred to him yet that she would not live to see colonies on Mars.

§ § §

By the afternoon, the remains of the house were safe enough for them all to return to. Nothing could be salvaged. Emilia immediately claimed she’d never been happy with the blood red and black she’d chosen for her bedroom. Babushka agreed, through her granddaughter’s translation, that all her old things from Russia needed burning. She much preferred new things and, besides, most of her treasured family mementoes were still in Siberia, she could always have them shipped, if she wanted them. They all ignored the contradictions in what she said, and Ben realised they were putting on a brave face—for Nikolas.

What he thought of the fire, the losses, or anything else was a complete mystery to Ben. He spoke, he walked and talked, occasionally smiled, laughed once or twice, but nothing reached his eyes. They remained completely guarded, shut off from Ben, as were his thoughts. Nikolas was standing right there next to him, even put an arm over his shoulder, but it was as if he were retreating slowly down a dark tunnel and Ben couldn’t bring him back—or catch him up.

The fire had started in the thatch. Mice had chewed through an electrical cable in the roof, so the fire investigator told them—did they not know that one in five house fires were caused by rodents and that they should have put traps out, especially in country properties like this? Miles was the only one who seemed impressed by this helpful attitude.

Nikolas spent the evening in his office. Once or twice, when Ben took him tea, which he did as a matter of course now, using it as an excuse to see what he was doing, see if he could catch him in an unguarded moment and break him out of this odd shell he’d erected around himself, he found Nikolas pouring intently over the recordings on the monitor.

Ben perched on the edge of Nikolas’s desk, watching him study the ghostly images on the black and white screen. “Can you see the fire starting?”

Nikolas grunted.

It was a change from the shrugging, if not an improvement.

“Don’t suppose you can see the mouse? At least he got toasted. Or I guess they pour out when it starts to heat up? Like rats on a sinking ship? Maybe it was a rat? Mutant? Big as a dog? Zombie rat? Nikolas! Are you listening to me?”

Nikolas grunted again. He was focused on one screen in particular and then hesitantly asked, “Can you see that?”

Ben squinted and leant further forward. “What?”

“There’s a jump? As if…”

“What?”

“No, never mind. I am probably just seeing things.”

Ben frowned. “What do you see?”

Nikolas sighed. “It’s like a stutter. Look…a hedgehog. See him here and then he is here. Too far.”

“But the monitors are time lapsed. An image every…what? Five seconds?”

Nikolas nodded. “But he could not move that fast.”

“Course they can. They’re speedy little buggers. What do you think happened? Someone fiddled with one of the cameras? They knew they were here and how to alter them? How?”

Nikolas shook himself and smiled, catching Ben around the back of the neck and planting a swift kiss on his hair. “Of course not. I’m just cross that my beautiful house has been destroyed. I will have to start planning and designing again, and you know how I hate doing that. Fortunately, I was very well insured.”

“If you—”

But Nikolas didn’t wait for Ben to finish. He’d gone, and Ben was left alone staring thoughtfully at the hedgehog as he appeared to hop across the expanse of lawn in front of what had once been Babushka’s house.

The next day it had apparently been decided that Miles and his grandmother would continue their planned trip to France—and that Babushka and Emilia would go with them.

Ben found this inexplicable for some reason. Partially because he got the distinct impression things were being decided when he wasn’t present. That decisions were being made from which he was deliberately excluded. Babushka was cut off from him by the language difficulties. Miles, he suspected, already shared some secret with Nikolas, and Ben had already worked out that the boy was entirely in Nikolas Mikkelsen’s thrall and would probably not give up his privileged information even under torture. Enid Toogood he didn’t know well enough to tackle, and she intimidated him to almost mute silence with genteel good breeding, so there was only one possible victim. He got Emilia on her own that morning by volunteering to let her drive his new car up and down the driveway—which was over a mile long from the start at their house to the gateposts on the ridge, so it was a decent distance.

She was breezily taking it up to fourth gear when he indicated for her to pull over on the side of the drive and stop.

“Tell me what’s going on, Em.”

Her brows rose a fraction and then she narrowed her eyes. “If there was anything going on, you’d know, wouldn’t you?”

He wrinkled his nose, thinking about this for a moment but had to ask for clarification.

She nodded as if this confirmed something for her, but reworded, “There can’t be anything going on, can there, or you’d know about it.”

“I don’t know; that’s why I’m asking.”

“Nothing is going on, Ben. Ask Nikolas.”

He gritted his teeth. “I have. He says nothing is going on.”

“Well, there you go!”

“Why are you going to France all of a sudden?”

“
Comprendez vous
…”

“Huh?”

“Exactly.”

“Em!”

She sighed. “Ask Nikolas.”

“I have!”

“Yes, but you don’t listen to his answers, Ben.”

Ben froze. She pouted and played with the steering wheel, sliding it idly through her hands.

“What has he told you?”

“That we’re all going to die.”

“What!”

She sniffed. “We’re leaving. He’s had new passports made for us all. Someone he’s got working for him? We’re going to France under assumed names.”

“What! What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m fourteen, Ben. You shouldn’t swear at me. It sets a bad example.”

“Shut up, Em. This is important. Are you being serious, or is this you channelling Nik’s sense of humour?”

“You think someone trying to kill us is funny?”

“No one is trying to kill anyone! This is
Nikolas
! Something is wrong with him, Em. He’s…flipped. I don’t know!”

She took her eyes off the wheel and turned to him. Her gaze was so sad that Ben’s outrage stilled on an icy shiver trickling down to the base of his spine.

“Oh, Ben. How can you be so right and so wrong at the same time? This
is
Nikolas.”

Ben told her to get out of the driver’s seat, and he drove them back to the house.

Nikolas was back in the study, on the phone.

He put it down when he saw Ben’s face.

“What the fuck? Smuggling them out of the country? What is this? Some kind of fucking spy novel? Why don’t you get Molly Rose and put her in a secret location too!”

“I already have.”

Ben’s mouth dropped open. That storybook reaction hadn’t happened often to him before, and he sat heavily on the chair, leaning forward, staring incredulously at Nikolas. He tried to speak then had to lick his lips to get words out. “Seriously, I think you’re—”

“I know you do. That doesn’t alter the truth.”

Ben rose and went to him, taking his hand. “Nik, this is really worrying me. Can we talk calmly about this?”

“Of course we can. I am exceptionally calm. What do you want to say?”

Ben blew out a little breath. “Tell me what you think is going on here. Start with that.”

“I have been telling you. I told you right from the start. You refuse to listen.”

“Okay, okay. Let’s pretend you haven’t told me anything. Tell me again now.”

“It’s coming, Ben. The end—for us. You and me. Well, you, and that will end me. It’s arrived, and it’s heading our way, and I have to stop it any way I can.”

“Okay, okay.” Ben heard his own repetition, but for the life of him, he couldn’t think of anything more rational to say. He sat down, elbows on knees, head in hands.

He could sense Nikolas watching him. “What we’ve survived so far will be as nothing to what is coming. They will take everything away from me, everyone I know—everyone I care for. Radulf was the first. He was an easy target, I suppose.”

Ben straightened. “Radulf? You think…he ate
badger bait
.”

“No, he was deliberately poisoned, but it’s irrelevant to me whether you believe me or not. He was first and then the fire, which was intended to take Em and Babushka. I am uncertain whether they knew the others were in there. Perhaps not.”

“Jesus. Jesus. Oh, Nik, you’re scaring me.”

Nikolas shrugged, which wasn’t the best thing he could have done. Ben rose again, agitated, pacing. “You think these are the same guys who killed Kate—that they’re out to destroy your life?”

He heard a faint sound and turned, but Nikolas’s face was back to its infuriating neutrality. He shrugged again.

Ben looked askance at him. “Where is Molly?”

“Somewhere safe with her grandparents.”

“Where?”

“Do you believe me?”

“No! The fuck I don’t! Where is she?”

“I’m not going to tell you. I think you know there is no way you will be able to force the knowledge from me. I didn’t want you to find out about France until they’d gone. I hope Em didn’t tell you where they are going.”

Ben swallowed. “What is this? Are you mad?”

“Not at all. I’ve always told you—I’m the sanest person I know. You are the one who is mad—deluded anyway.”