Half Wild (15 page)

The Hunter’s squatted down and is on the phone and then shooting back at Nesbitt and I’m almost on her. But she’s made the call now. I’m running fast toward her. She turns and shoots at me but misses badly. She’s spooked. Nesbitt shoots at her but the Hunter is off, running down the slope toward Pilot’s house. She’s fast but I think I can reach her before she gets there. I’m lurching down the slope but the slope is helping the Hunter too and she reaches the patio and she’s shooting everything. Everything. It’s like some Hollywood movie gone mad.

I reach her but she’s pulling at the vines and falling backward toward me to the ground. Backward, black shiny hair in a ponytail moving toward me, her hand still gripping the vines, though I know from her body that she’s already dead.

She lands on the ground. Her face is blank. There’s a bullet hole, small, deep and perfectly round, in her forehead.

And Gabriel is kneeling there, his gun pointing at me. His arm straight. His face blank too.

“It’s me,” I shout, holding out my arms just in case.

Nesbitt skids to a halt beside me, saying, “And me.” Then he says, “Shit!”

Pilot is lying on the floor, slumped sideways. The little girl is kneeling beside her, holding her hand. There are two red stains on Pilot’s body, one on her shoulder and one on her stomach.

Gabriel leans over Pilot, feeling for a pulse. “She’s still alive.”

I tell him, “There were four Hunters watching the house. They’ve phoned in, contacted base or whatever they do. We have to go.”

“There might be more at the car. They may have got Van.”

Nesbitt says, “I’ll check. If I’m not back with the car in two minutes you’ll know there’s trouble.” And he’s gone.

Gabriel crouches down to the level of the girl and speaks to her slowly and quietly in French. She doesn’t say anything and is still holding Pilot’s hand. Gabriel asks her something. She nods. He takes Pilot’s hand from her and she runs inside the house.

I go to the side of the house and climb onto a low wall from where I can see down the road, and I hear the engine before I see our 4x4 reversing at high speed toward us. Van and Nesbitt are inside.

I go back to Gabriel. “Nesbitt’s here.” There’s a screech of car tires at the other side of the house to confirm it.

Gabriel picks up Pilot and she screams.

Gabriel says, “I told the girl to get whatever she needs. We’re going in one minute.”

And he carries Pilot round the side of the house.

Ten seconds later the girl appears, wearing clumpy boots and carrying a small, pale pink rucksack that looks like it’s going to burst open. I go to her and grab her hand. But she snatches it away and runs round the corner of the house to the car.

We’re in the 4x4, hurtling along a track, probably away fast enough but no one dares say it yet. The way Nesbitt has been driving we’re more likely to be killed in a car crash than by Hunters’ bullets.

Gabriel and I are sitting in the back of the car. Pilot is laid out across us, her bare feet on my lap. Surprisingly they smell of peppermint. But the main smell in the car is fear. The air is heavy with it. We’ve been driving for three hours and hardly spoken: every minute further away feels like we really have escaped. I can see the side of Van’s face and her jaw is more relaxed now but even she was scared. Van has given Pilot a potion to take the pain away and thankfully she’s been asleep since she took it. Up to then her screams were getting to me, getting to us all, I think.

I turn to Gabriel. He’s holding a cloth over Pilot’s stomach. The cloth is all blood now. Pilot looks like she won’t survive another minute but she looked like that half an hour ago. Two Hunter bullets are still in her. Van took one look at the wounds and said she couldn’t remove the bullet in Pilot’s stomach and, the way she said it, I knew that was it. There was nothing we could do. It would just be a matter of time before Pilot would die.

The girl is kneeling in the footwell by Gabriel’s legs, smoothing back Pilot’s hair and whispering to her.

Gabriel asks me, “You OK?”

I don’t know. I say yes and turn away to stare out the window.

“Well, I’m not,” Nesbitt says. “I’m desperate for a piss.”

The car comes to a sliding stop. We’re in low hills, farmland. Who knows where. Nesbitt switches the engine off and gets out. The rest of us sit in silence, letting the dust settle.

Nesbitt stands by the car and pees. “Boy, do I need this.”

Van asks Gabriel, “How’s Pilot’s pulse?”

“Faint. Slow.”

“She has strong healing powers but the poison from the bullets will eventually overpower everything.”

Nesbitt leans back into the car and says, “So, Gabby? Did Pilot tell you anything before she got shot? You were talking long enough.”

“Yes, but I learned little. At first she said that she didn’t know where Mercury’s home was but I was sure she did. I flattered her as much as I could, telling her that she was unique in knowing Mercury so well, but of course I imagined few people had ever actually been invited to her house. Still she wouldn’t say anything. I said it was strange that, above everyone, Mercury trusted Rose, a White Witch by birth, as the one person to be granted access to her home. That did it. Pilot couldn’t resist saying that she’d been invited too and had gone to Mercury’s home several times. It was she who ‘introduced’ Rose to Mercury years ago. She took Rose there herself.

“But she said that she was honor-bound as a true Black Witch and friend of Mercury to reveal nothing about it. Mercury wanted her home to be secret.”

Van says, “So are you telling us that she didn’t reveal where it is?”

“That’s pretty much it.”

“All that for nothing!” Nesbitt kicks the side of the car.

Gabriel goes on. “I said that perhaps Mercury had abandoned her home now, with the Hunters close on her tail. That perhaps they’d found its location. Pilot laughed at that and said it would never be found. She said that she was planning on taking the girl there as a replacement for Rose.” Gabriel glances down at the girl sitting by his feet.

Van says, “I don’t suppose she would have told the girl where Mercury lives?”

“Pilot insisted that only she knew and that she would never tell anyone. She also said that she was safe in that village. That there had been no Hunters anywhere near it. I think they must have arrived around the same time as us. Which makes me think that either Isch told the Hunters where we were going or they followed us from Barcelona.”

“They didn’t follow us or I’d be dead too,” Van says. “They would have seen the 4x4. And Isch would not have told them voluntarily or quickly. Perhaps one of her girls?” She looks at Nesbitt. He nods.

“So Isch is dead or captured by Hunters. If captured she’ll tell them about your meeting with Celia and that I was there,” I say.

“I think that’s a fair assumption.”

Nesbitt curses and walks round the car and kicks it again.

The girl shifts now and Gabriel says something to her in French. She answers in French.

“Pers?” Van smiles at the little girl. “Her name is Pers?”

“Yes,” Gabriel replies.

There’s more talk. Van joins in, speaking French too, and then, to top it off, Nesbitt reappears at the driver’s door and joins in.

The girl speaks again and looks at me and I’d like to say something to her but even in English I can’t think of the right words, about Pilot and how I’m sorry and I don’t know what will happen to her now and life’s pretty shit all round but maybe Van will look after you although really she’s not a great surrogate mother and Nesbitt would make an interesting father figure but anyway it’s better than being a slave to Mercury.

And then I see her eyes aren’t looking for anything from me. And she starts shouting. I don’t know French but I’m guessing she’s cursing. Her face is close to mine and I’m shrinking right back against the car door and she spits in my face. Gabriel has his arms round her, holding her away from me, saying things in her ear, but I don’t think it’s helping much as she kicks me and Gabriel has to wrap one of his legs over hers to keep her still. I open the door and fall out. I get up, wiping the spit off my face, looking at the tangled coil of arms and legs and hair.

“What was that about?”

“She don’t like mongs much to start with but she seems to blame you for the Hunter attack.”

Van has got out of the jeep and walked round to join us. She takes out a cigarette and Nesbitt lights it. Then Van holds the case out toward Gabriel. Pers shouts something and kicks again, and I realize Van was offering the cigarette to her. Van turns to Nesbitt, saying, “Highly spirited.” And she drags on the cigarette, swallowing the smoke. She says to Gabriel, “Find out what you can about her.”

Gabriel talks to Pers and she speaks to him in a more polite voice. Van listens and translates for me. “Her parents are dead, her father years ago, her mother recently, by Hunters; she escaped. Isch took her in and told her she’d grow up to be a great witch. Pilot was going to take her to Mercury. She’s ten, so she says.”

Van comments, “I’m not sure Mercury would have been that impressed: she’s a nasty little thing. But she might prove useful. If Mercury is looking for an apprentice Pers might be our way in.”

“We have to find Mercury first.”

“Yes, that is becoming a tiresome problem.” Van draws heavily on her cigarette again. “Gabriel, you have asked Pers if she knows where Mercury’s home is, haven’t you?”

“Yes. She says she doesn’t know. I believe her.”

Van drops the cigarette to the ground and looks at it. “Yes, I do too. Which means the only way to find out is to get Pilot to tell us.”

“A potion?” I ask.

“Yes, but it’s not that simple. A truth potion would be best but they take time to make and need to be adapted to the person, and they work so much better if the person is weak-willed and healthy. Here we have a skinny, dying patient with a strong will. Much trickier.”

“So?”

“The other option is a potion to access her memory of the place, go where she went, see what she saw.”

“A vision of it?”

“Yes. I can make a potion with something from Pilot and something that belonged to Mercury.” She looks not very hopefully at Gabriel. “I don’t suppose you have anything?”

“I have a hairpin, which I got off Rose. Mercury made them and gave them to her.”

Gabriel shows it to Van, who shakes her head. “It’s magical. If I use that it will interfere with the potion’s magic.”

“There’s no other option. We have to try the truth potion,” I say.

“There isn’t enough time,” Van insists. “She’ll sleep for a couple of hours with the drug I’ve given her. I’ll talk to her when she wakes. Maybe her situation will help change her mind. But for now we’re all tired. We’ll rest until then.”

“We staying here?” Nesbitt says, looking around at the vast nothingness.

“Yes,” Van replies. “This will be Pilot’s final resting place.”

It’s getting dark and I wander off into a field and lie on the bare earth and close my eyes. My brain is mush.

I think of Annalise as I fall asleep. I’m walking with her by a river, through a meadow, blue sky overhead. We lie on the ground together and the birds call to each other. The breeze ruffles my shirt, the sun warm on my face. I roll onto my side. Annalise is looking up at the sky; her skin is glowing, flushed with the sun, and she’s talking, moving her lips, but I’m not paying attention, I’m just thinking how I like looking at her. I blow in her ear, expecting her to smile, but she doesn’t; she keeps on talking. So I lean over her and kiss her but she doesn’t kiss me back and so I move to be over her, to look into her eyes. Her eyes are the same blue as ever but they’re not focused on me: they’re focused on nothing and the silver glints are still. Frozen. And I seem to fly up and be unable to touch her. She’s lying on the ground, her lips moving, but she’s not talking at all; she’s gasping for air, taking her last breaths. I fly further from her and see she’s on the ground by the cottage and Mercury is standing over her and the gale is holding me back and I’m shouting at Mercury. And I wake and sit up.

Gabriel is with me. “What happened? You were shouting.”

“I’m OK. I’m OK. I have something of Mercury’s.”

* * *

Van is grinning. “It’s perfect.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.” She’s holding the piece of paper that Mercury gave me. The piece of paper she drew a map on so I could find the house that Clay was using as a base.

The folded piece of paper has been in my pocket for months: flattened, soaked and worn, so that it’s rounded at the edges and there’s a hole in the middle. But it is from Mercury—it used to belong to her. Even better, it has Mercury’s handwriting on it, which is still visible, and, most importantly according to Van, Mercury gave it to me—it’s not a thing stolen but a gift.

It’s the perfect item for the potion.

“Of course this means that you must receive the vision from Pilot.”

“OK.”

“That means you make the potion and you drink the potion. The potion is like a river cutting through the land of the mind, carrying memories from Pilot to you.”

“OK,” I say, a little more cautiously now.

“You must make the cut that it flows down and be what it flows into.”

“I cut her?”

“We need her blood for the potion. Lots. You must bleed her to death.”

“What?”

“She’s dying anyway, Nathan.”

* * *

I used to think that I would never kill anyone. I remember, as a kid, hearing stories about Hunters killing Black Witches and stories about my father killing Hunters, and I thought I’d never do that. But so far, at the grand old age of seventeen, I’ve killed five people. And now I’m going to have to kill another. But Pilot isn’t trying to kill me. She’s dying anyway but I’ll be the one who kills her. Another death on my hands.

And I’m shocked at how little I think about those people I’ve killed. I thought murderers would be haunted by memories of their victims but I hardly give them a thought. I want to think of them now, sort of as a mark of respect, and possibly to convince myself that I’m not totally lacking in feeling. There was the first, the Hunter in Geneva whose neck I broke. I do remember her well. Then the Hunter in the forest, the fast one, the one I killed when I was an animal. Then there’s Kieran, who I don’t want to give any respect to. And then came the two in Spain. The first one was in the dry valley. I stabbed her in the neck. The second one was under an olive tree. The ground was strewn with olives. I remember them well: green olives, fat, ripe, some split open, staining the ground. I can’t remember the Hunter very well. I remember the ground beneath her better than her.

I’ve killed five people.

Soon to be six.

If I can go through with it.

* * *

Pilot is lying on the ground. Her head is on a pillow made of a rug from the car. Pers is sitting beside her, holding her hand. Van has spent the last hour surrounded by vials and jars from her carpetbag. She’s been mixing and grinding ingredients, preparing them for me, and now she says she’s ready. She speaks to Pilot. Gabriel says, “She’s telling her we don’t have to do this. All Pilot has to do is tell us the location. She’s saying she can help with the pain.”

“And what’s Pilot saying?” But I think I can guess.

“Basically, no.”

Van then speaks to Pers, I guess telling her what’s going to happen. I expect Pers to spit at Van, to fight and complain, but she just holds Pilot’s hand and whispers to her.

Van says to me, “Pers is a sharp little vixen. Don’t be fooled by her cute exterior, Nathan.”

Pers doesn’t strike me as cute in any way. I know she already hates me, and I know that she’ll hate me more for doing this to Pilot. There’s always room for more hate.

Van has told me what to do. I must cut down Pilot’s arm vertically, into the vein. Pilot must see and know what I’m doing. I must collect her blood and add it to the potion that Van has made up using the map. I must take as much blood as I can. Pilot will die. Pilot has to die. It’s best if I drink the potion as she dies.

Van says, “Pilot has many memories in her head; she must really understand what you need to know and how badly you need it. When you cut her think about Mercury, think about Pilot’s blood, and think about taking Pilot’s memories of Mercury’s home.”

Pilot is wearing a dress with wide sleeves and Gabriel has pulled one up to reveal the pale skin on the inside of her long, thin arm. The blue vein seems to lie boldly but deeply within it.

I have the knife in my hand, put the point to Pilot’s skin, and then take it away. I’m not ready. I’ve got to get my head together. Got to think the correct thoughts.

“It’s the only way to find Mercury, Nathan,” says Van. “The only way to help Annalise. But you must be sure. The potion won’t work if you’re not sure. Remember, Pilot will be gone anyway in a few hours. There is nothing we can do to save her; she’s dying.”

Gabriel says, “But you are going to kill her. You are taking the last few hours she has from her. You have to be sure.”

Van looks at him. “Gabriel, what would you do if Nathan was held by Mercury? If you had to cut Pilot to find him and try to rescue him?”

Gabriel doesn’t reply. He stares at Van and then turns away.

She says, quietly and slowly, “I think you’d skin her alive.”

He turns back to look at me and I see the gold glints tumble slowly in his eyes as he says, “Ten times over.”

“But you don’t think I should do this. Why? Because I don’t care enough about Annalise?”

He shakes his head. “I know you do, Nathan. You don’t need to prove it.”

“I’m not proving anything. I’m trying to find a way to help Annalise.”

“And this is the only way,” says Van.

I think of Mercury and finding her home and push the knife’s point into Pilot’s arm and draw the blade down. Pilot doesn’t flinch but she grunts and says something, a curse, I think, and, even though I told myself not to look at her face, I do. Her eyes are black; as black as mine. She says some more things, more curses. I can smell her breath, which is rancid. It’s good that I can concentrate on Pilot’s face. I know I have to believe in what I’m doing. Pilot stops cursing and her eyelids flutter but don’t close. She stares at me until the end and then beyond, but the flashes of gray in her eyes, which were weak even before I cut, finally disappear, and her blood flows more slowly and then stops.

“Quick,” orders Van. “Before she dies.”

I add some of the blood to the stone bowl that Van passes me: the pulp of the map and Van’s other ingredients lie in the bottom. “Add more,” Van says. “Stir it in.”

I think there’ll be Hunter poison in it too but Van has said that I can counter that. She says I can counter everything.

“Find Mercury, Nathan. Find Mercury and save Annalise. Remember, that is what you have to do.”

I put the bowl to my lips and sip the potion. It tastes of stone, strangely dry, almost peppery, and gives a hot feeling inside my throat and stomach.

“Think of Mercury,” Van reminds me. And I swallow all the potion while remembering Mercury standing over Annalise. When I’ve finished I drop the bowl.

Pers is looking at me, her eyes black and full of hate, and suddenly I’m furious with her for judging me for what I am and what I have to do. I have to get away before I hit her so I stand up but my legs collapse and I’m surprised to find that Nesbitt catches me and lowers me to the ground.

My body’s weak but my mind’s on fire. I want to find Pilot’s memories but I don’t know where to search for them.

I close my eyes.

I see Pers. She’s kneeling above me. I’m lying on the patio in Spain. I’ve just been shot. Then Pers is gone and I’m walking through a grove of olive trees and stopping to pick up something: a stone, a sharp stone. Then I’m on a beach and picking up a pebble and the sun is hot on my face. Then I’m by a river and I’m placing the stones in a small dam. Damming it up.

This is Pilot’s way of resisting me accessing her memories. Van had told me Pilot might do this, fill her mind with false thoughts, not memories at all. I concentrate on Mercury, her hair, her gray dress, the cold chill she could summon in a second. I see her. And then I’m standing by a large blue lake. It’s cold and the pale blue mackerel sky is reflected on the water. I pick up a stone, the biggest I can find. I’m going to carry it to the end of the lake to dam up the river. As I walk along, carrying the stone, I glance up and see that in the lake is an island and it’s the strangest of things. A white island. And I realize that it’s not an island at all but an iceberg floating in the lake. I’m still carrying the heavy rock along the shore but I want to look at the iceberg, to feel the cold and the breeze, to think of Mercury and her chill breath. But I keep looking down, looking at the stones at my feet and walking to the river, then dropping the rock in the water, damming it up.

* * *

The vision is near Mercury’s home. Van is sure of that. But it’s not much help. I’ve gone over it many times now but I’m not finding anything new. All I get are the same things over and over. Me in Pilot’s head, lifting rocks and putting them in a dam.

I ask for advice and Van says, “She’s dead. And they aren’t real memories. Find the real ones.”

“Thanks. Very helpful,” I reply.

And I try again and come up with the same stuff.

* * *

It’s late, dark. I’m pacing around outside, in the garden. We’ve moved on from where Pilot died, where I killed her. We’ve got another car and another house to stay in. I think we’re in France but I’m not sure. The others are inside. Nesbitt at least provides a good meal for us all but he’s complaining about how long it’s taking to locate Mercury. He’s nervous about information Isch will have disclosed to the Hunters if she’s been caught. Celia is in danger, may be revealed as a spy, but Van says that there’s nothing that can be done except trust that Celia can look after herself.

We’ve been here a full day now. Waiting for me to find where we should go next. The back door opens and Gabriel comes out.

“Tired?” he asks.

“Tired—yes. Angry—yes. Pissed off—ninety-nine percent of the time. Fun to be around—never.”

Gabriel smiles. “Who wants fun when you can have interesting?”

We sit down on some blankets under one of the trees. We slept here last night. “Any brilliant ideas?” I ask.

“On how to find the memories?”

“Yes.”

“Keep going over them. Find the way through.”

I rest my head back against the tree and say, “It’s so boring. The same thing over and over.”

“Boring but necessary.” He looks at me. “If you want to find Annalise do it again.”

I look at him. I realize he’s right. He’d do it all a thousand times for me.

* * *

I go over each memory: the olive grove, the beach, and the lake. But I think the lake is the real memory. That’s what appeared when I began thinking of Mercury. I go back to that and I see it again. The lake, the sky reflected in it, and I feel a cold breeze which seems real—that’s a feeling I’ve not had in the other memories. I concentrate on the breeze. I shiver and look to my right. I’m in Pilot’s head. I’ve heard something. There’s a hill, tree-covered and brown. There are pockets of snow. There’s a road by the lake and I walk along it. In the lake is the iceberg, its reflection mirrored perfectly in the water. I turn back to the hill and see Mercury beckoning me and I walk toward her, to her home.