Dispossession (37 page)

Didn’t care where Luke had gone either, or what he would do
now. I just walked cautiously down the corridor and up the stairs myself, ears
straining for any scutter of hooves on tile, any sound of threat.

Nothing in the corridor above, nothing in the foyer; the
rabbit in its corner was still now, dead I hoped. I didn’t go to check.

Outside and no signs, no sounds of movement. I took a breath
and started for home, my feet wanting to run and my mind saying
no, take it steady, try at least to look innocent and
uninvolved in anything.

Started for home and got not very far at all, barely fifty
metres before I did hear something.

Not the sound of a sheep, the sound of a kitten: a faint
mewing, coming from under a bush as the best path home led me through shrubbery
towards the road. I checked, all my nerves brittle, my eyes jerking and my mind
screaming
mad cat, beware!

It wasn’t mad, only afraid, or seemed so; and not afraid of
me. It came crawling on its belly from the shadows, a black kitten too small to
be alone in the night, and what could I do? I picked it up and cradled it, felt
its mewing change to a mute purr, a slight vibration under its skin; and I
tucked it into my jacket, pulled the zip up to give it comfort, and carried it
home.

And so, when Carol came back from her parents, Shaitan was
there with me to welcome her; and he made the difference, he was a buffer to
set against our uncertainties, a small dependent life for whose sake we had to
make this work.

o0o

That was the story I gave to Suzie as we walked that day,
though I didn’t tell it all, only as much as she needed. Or as much as I could
bear, perhaps. I’d never told anyone but Carol before, and Carol couldn’t have
taken even what detail I gave Suzie. Wouldn’t have wanted it.

The grip of Suzie’s hand in mine was all for me, though,
whatever comfort she could give; and her eyes watched me sideways,
suspiciously, clocking I think that I was leaving some things out. Wanting it
all, she was, or seeming so. I guess, when you’ve seen your brother appallingly
killed, the deaths of strangers and animals are no great matter; knowing your
partner’s secrets matters more. Perhaps.

She didn’t dig, though, or not into the messy stuff I’d left
out. All she said was, “I remember this. There was lots about it on the telly,
big story for a couple of days, yes?”

“Yeah, it was. National news. Once they’d had a look at the
bodies, they decided those two guys probably hadn’t killed each other,” which
was when I started thinking again about the kids, and what a frenzy could do to
them, and what responsibility I carried by saying nothing. “The inquest brought
in a verdict of unlawful killing, but no one ever got arrested. Some of the
papers had big theories about black-magic cults, or some drug the scientists
were experimenting with, that turned cute little bunnies into killers. I know
the university’s animal-rights groups did get investigated pretty hard. I think
the only reason the kids got away with it was that they weren’t an organised
group, they didn’t belong to anything, they were just a bunch of friends who
happened to throw up this one big idea...”

And were unlucky enough to know Luke, foolish enough to
take him along.

Suzie grunted, thought about it for a minute, then, “So what
are we saying here, Luke drives people crazy as well as animals? He hasn’t
driven you crazy. Or me. Though I don’t think I like him much.”

Well, that wasn’t a surprise. Luke didn’t go out of his way
to be liked. Didn’t go out of his way for any reason. “Just depends, I
suppose,” I said, thinking on my feet, trying to find a logical explanation for
something that didn’t actually seem to operate in a logical universe. “The
wrong people in the wrong place, perhaps. I mean, you saw how Carol was, just
with having him in the house there. Animals are okay if they can run away, it’s
when they’re caged or trapped; and the same with people, I think. If they feel
caged or trapped. He’s got this aura, and I guess some people just can’t take
it at that intensity.” It hadn’t been a lot of fun for me, driving
cross-country in a car with him; and I was inured, I’d thought I was immune.

Another grunt, and she swung my arm vigorously in time with
her pacing. “Well, don’t you get into any lifts with him,” she said, doing a mind-reading
act, doing it well.

“Promise,” I said lightly, earning myself a scowl.

“I
mean
it, Jonty. He’s,
he’s not
safe
.”

No. Safe he certainly wasn’t, though I’d never seen him lift
a finger to harm a living thing.

“I’ve known him a long time, love,” I said, which was true;
and, “I can handle Luke,” which blatantly wasn’t.

She snorted disbelievingly,
you
think you’re immune?
And she had both hands tight on my arm now to say
that if I wouldn’t be careful on my own account she’d be careful for me, she’d
keep me close.

Which was fair enough, I supposed. She’d married me, after
all. And I’d married her. She was entitled.

“What happens when we get there?” she asked, after a little
while walking in silence. “I mean, he’s going to have a confrontation with
Deverill, I suppose, but what about us? Do we go in with him, or just hang
around, or what?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. I hadn’t thought it out that
far. “We’ll just see what happens, I guess. What Luke does, what he wants. We
don’t have to wait, he can find his own way back.” The same way we’d come,
inevitably; that was the only route he’d know. “Could be a wasted journey
anyway, Deverill may not be there.”

“He should’ve phoned first,” she said. I just laughed. There
wasn’t a phone in the city would work for Luke, even if he’d thought to use
one.

o0o

Talking passes the time. Time passes, and you get there in
the end. We walked, we talked; we mostly followed Luke, who spoke not a word to
us; and eventually we came to a village and found the right road out of it, so
that five minutes later we stood outside Deverill’s impressive gates,
impressively closed to us.

Suzie and I stood, at least. Luke of course had ranged
ahead, seeing nothing to say that his quarry lived here. The name was there,
carved into the stone gateposts on either side of the drive, but he wouldn’t
see that.

So I stood still and waited until he looked back from the
next corner, and then I beckoned and he came running.

“This is Arlen Bank?” he demanded.

“This is Arlen Bank,” I confirmed, looking to see if either
one of the posts held a buzzer or an intercom, any way to communicate with the
people inside.

“Good,” Luke said, and he swarmed up one of those gates in
nothing flat, a handhold and a foothold and another hand and he was standing
ten foot above us, standing on tiptoe on top of the gate and staring into the
grounds beyond.

Look out, Luke, you’ll fall
—but
that wasn’t funny, would never under any circumstances have been funny, and I’d
never under any circumstances say it. Besides, he had a perfect balance; I’d
seen him do harder, madder things than this, and never give a hint of falling.

Turned out that the intercom unit was on the pylon beside
the gates. Turned out that we didn’t need to use it. The camera atop the pylon
was whining softly, seeking us out, zooming in. I waved at it, a vague and
stupid gesture, and wondered if I needed now to buzz them anyway, and tell them
who we were. By the time I’d decided that etiquette said yes I did, it was
again too late. There was a car bumping over the grass inside the gates, a
serious-looking 4 x 4 in too much of a hurry to divert onto the tarmac’d drive.

Probably Luke had broken some kind of security beam, I
thought, by climbing onto the gate. It was just too quick otherwise, to have
spotted us here and got a vehicle this far in response.

The car stopped and Dean jumped out, looking pretty serious
himself. It’d be okay once he saw me, I thought, or at least it would be
better. I wasn’t sure how far my writ ran, either as colleague or life-savee,
but I thought I could argue us as far as an interview with Deverill.

But of course Dean wasn’t looking at me at all, he was only
looking at Luke, where he stood so high against the sky; and so far as I could
tell from the back of his head in silhouette, Luke was only looking at Dean.

And then he wasn’t only looking at all, he was jumping down,
even as Dean yelled, “What the hell do you think you’re doing up there,
shit-for-brains? Go on, get the fuck out of here...!”

But Luke got down on Dean’s side of the gates, he floated
down and landed on the balls of his feet as lightly as any lad from the Kirov
or the Royal Ballet, and even I couldn’t tell if that was just his natural
grace or something more.

He came to ground maybe five metres in front of Dean; and
five metres quickly became three and two and one, because Dean went charging
like a bull, or like a hard efficient bulldog angered by an affront to his
master, and there wasn’t time for me to shout more than his name as a warning
to him even if he would ever have paused to listen.

He charged in, thinking that this would be easy:
some kid playing games
, he was thinking, no
doubt,
some cocky nineteen-year-old fancies a
dance on the grass...

If Luke had really been nineteen, no doubt that’s what he
would have got, just a Dean’s Excuse-me and the bum’s rush after, with more
than grass-stains on his skin to show for it. But I didn’t think you could
count Luke’s true age, not in years, not in any human scale; and you certainly
couldn’t count his looks. Pretty enough to tumble, he looked, and far too
pretty to brawl.

So Dean went charging in, quite likely smiling inside,
looking forward to this; and when he came up for air he was smiling right up
front, smiling wider than ever he’d smiled before.

He was smiling because Luke had torn open both his cheeks,
and all the flesh was flapping loose and happy.

It had been so quick, I had to play it through my head
again. Child of my times, I needed the slo-mo action replay before I could
quite believe it. Dean likewise, I thought: at least he stood there staring,
doing nothing more, while his mouth gaped wider far than it was meant to and
the blood ran freely over his jaw and fell like rain on his T-shirt.

He had been charging, then, and Luke had lifted his hands,
that was all, to catch Dean’s head between them; and then suddenly Dean hadn’t
been charging any more, he’d been standing rock-still, all his strength and
momentum nothing against Luke’s solidity. Hitherto-irresistible force meets
truly immovable object, and that’s what happens, I suppose. Nice to know, after
all this time.

What happens, to be precise, is that object sticks its
thumbs into force’s mouth, one on either side, and tears the flesh like damp
cardboard until the rips reach almost from ear to ear.

o0o

Suzie gasped and ran forward—brave girl, stupid girl—while I
was still rooted with shock. She ran to one of the gates and tried to pull it
open, then tried to shake it off its hinges while it moved no more than I did,
than Dean did, than Luke.

Then Luke did move again, and so did I. I sprinted up to
where Suzie was trying to climb the gate now as Luke had, clinging to the
wrought-iron risers with both hands as she fitted her soft boots into
decorative whorls and frets. I grabbed her round the waist and pulled her down
again, held her hard against my body as she struggled, as she fought to be
free. Distantly I was aware of her sobbing foully, “Let me
go
, you fucking bastard, for Christ’s sake let me
help him if you won’t, you shitting coward,” and so on and on in a relentless
monotone while her eyes and mine were riveted to the mad circus beyond the bars
of the gate.

Luke held Dean around the neck now, with his other hand
clamped in his hair; and as we watched he pulled, he peeled Dean’s scalp away
from his skull as swift and easy as peeling a satsuma. There was a wet, choking
sound from Dean, closest he could get to a scream perhaps with his throat full
of blood. So much blood there was, it was soaking Luke’s filthy whites also;
but he wasn’t near done yet, it seemed. This wasn’t enough. His clawed hand let
go of what it held, let the mess hang from Dean’s neck, a slack wet flap of
dripping skin and hair; and then it gripped Dean’s T-shirt and yanked once,
ripped it from him like a sodden rag and tossed it aside.

The same for his jeans, the same single tug to tear riveted
denim into shapeless nothing, and then Dean was naked but for underwear and
shoes. Luke sank his nails into a blood-streaked shoulder and tore skin from
flesh and bone just as easily. Baby-pink skin, that was, freshly regrown from
the burns Dean had taken saving me; and his body might just as well have saved
itself the effort. Might as well have saved itself the effort of saving me,
come to that, wouldn’t be in this mess now if I’d burned up like Oliver...

Suzie gasped, and her breathy cursing died to a mutter, to a
moan. She stood trembling now within the circle of my arms, so that I could let
her go and climb the gate myself, knowing myself as useless as she would have
been if I’d not prevented her from trying. What could either of us do against
Luke? No argument would touch him, no pitiful muscle would hinder him for a
moment from what he chose to do.

Knowing that, I climbed anyway, watching my hands and feet
now, not watching Luke. Maybe that was why I climbed: to have something else to
look at, to focus on. But I wasn’t totally focused, because the lightest touch
on my ankle stopped me dead. I looked down and saw Suzie stretching up, to hold
me. Mostly what I saw was her eyes, huge and dark in a face turned pale and
sick, slicked with sweat. She couldn’t say
don’t
leave me
, not with her conscience and mine both screaming
go! go!
—but those desperate eyes said it for her,
and they did more than her hand did, to keep me still on that side of the
gates.