Heart of Danger (9 page)

T
he hill was steep and overgrown with vines and prickly bushes that made the going treacherous. The gorse was the worst and it was everywhere. My clothes gave me some protection, but the thorns still jabbed my skin. There wasn’t time to be careful.

The road improved once the ground flattened out, but that was because it was well used. I stopped still, staying hidden by the gorse to check out the land. Flat paddocks lay to my left between the road and the sea. Some of them grew crops while others had cows and sheep in them. I knew enough about such things to see that a good number of people would be needed to keep a farm of that size running.

Panic swamped me. These people looked to be highly organised, used to working together as a group and obeying orders. They couldn’t keep such a place going otherwise. And there must be a lot of them. The words of the old woman from Jasper’s tribe came back to me.
If you go up there, lassie, then you’ll not come back
. I recalled her promise to remember me in their prayers. I didn’t understand prayers, but if prayers could help me then I hoped those people were praying now.

I had to go on, but my feet wouldn’t take me even one step out into the open. Panic and a terrible fear for my sister roiled around in my body.
Don’t think, just walk. Stay in this moment. All you have to do right now is walk to Hera
. Where had that come from? No time to think of that. Stay in this moment. In this moment I was in no danger.

For precious seconds I didn’t try to move my feet. What I did was clear my mind of the panic until all that remained was the determination to save Hera. They would not sacrifice her.

I was ready. I stepped out onto the open road, my shoulders tense as I waited for a shout, a command to stop or to leave. But the place seemed deserted. A tractor sat at the side of one of the crop paddocks. The ground looked freshly dug. I glanced at the sky – around
mid-afternoon
, I guessed. Too late for workers to still be at a midday meal. The sacrifice – were they all busy preparing the ceremony for the next day?

Lurking panic hacked at my defences and I closed my eyes for a moment, hoping for a sense of whether I needed to go back or to wait where I was for the police to come.

Go now
.

My eyes shot open and I broke into a run. Such urgency, such awareness of danger in that command. Was it already too late? I ran faster, not caring about the racket from the slap of my feet or the heaving of my breath. I slowed down. Useless to run myself to a standstill and then have to rest. Better to keep going at a pace I could sustain.

I could see a bridge ahead. I ran across it – no holes in this one, although there were patches where it had been mended. The road wound uphill from the end of it. I kept jogging, pulled forward by a desperate urgency.

People appeared at the top of the road. A group of them, men and women clad in heavy work clothes. They had started down towards me before they noticed me. When they did, they halted as if their legs had been switched off. Somebody shouted a command. A woman broke from the group to run back the way they’d come.

I kept on up the hill, falling to a walk as the slope steepened. I scanned their faces. Callie was at the back of the group.

They fanned out across the width of the road, their message clear – they would make sure I didn’t break through them. They waited and watched. It was going to be up to me to reach them.

Help me, Grif
.

I walked on, making the pace of my steps steady as if I had nothing to fear, nothing to lose. I pushed out the fear: if I gave into it now, then I was dead and so was Hera. I wrapped the love of my grandmother around me. I called on Fisa, my genetic mother, to come to my aid. I drew into my heart and mind the strength of those who had passed. I asked them for courage. I asked them to guide my words and my actions.

Nobody spoke as I came up to them.

‘Let me pass,’ I said, and my feet carried me on. They would have to grab me or allow me through. I caught Callie’s eye – she looked as if she wanted to cry.

Two of the men took hold of me, one on either side, gripping my arms tight. Still no one spoke, but all of them turned to accompany me and my captors back up the hill. I didn’t waste words pleading with them.

There had been a town here once, but all that was left were the outlines of the streets. There would be no help in this place. The men took me into the only building. It was huge, stretching long and low across a headland. Somebody held a door open and the men hustled me through.

We were in a long corridor. I counted the doors we passed. Ten. A lot of rooms to search if Hera was hidden somewhere. The corridor ended at a closed pair of double doors. Two women stepped out from behind me and swung them open.

I had a sense of space, of light, of a room busy with people.

Hera was there. A woman sat at a table along the side of the room, holding her on her knee. ‘Juno!’ she shouted. She wriggled free of the woman just as I wrenched myself away from the men. People converged on us, hands out like claws to snatch us.

‘Leave them.’ I didn’t know who barked the order, didn’t look to see. All my focus was on Hera stumbling towards me, her face a mess of tears and dirt.

I fell on my knees, grabbing her and hugging her tight. ‘Shhh, darling. It’s all right. Hush now. Can you be quiet?’

She held me in a stranglehold, but I felt the nod of her head as she clamped down on the sobs. ‘Good girl. Good girl.’ I would kill them for doing this to her.

I struggled to my feet, hitching her up and holding her close. We were in the centre of a room lined with dining tables along three sides. Women had stopped in the act of clearing away cups and saucers – they stood with them in their hands, and just stared at the two of us, horror on their faces.

I heard the doors behind us open. Men filed in and took their places in front of the tables beside those who had brought me here.

The atmosphere was eerie. Fear was there, throbbing through the room. But also something else, and for a moment I couldn’t work out what it was that swirled around us. When I did, I felt ill. It was bloodlust. I shoved it out of my mind. The one thing I knew was that fear wouldn’t save us – though I had no inkling of what would.

The people’s eyes flicked from the two of us to a man sitting in what looked like a throne set on a raised platform built behind the table at the top of the room. He stared at Hera and me for so long I had time to see that he wasn’t a labourer. He was dressed in city clothes, with city hair and shoes. He looked young enough to work, and fit enough, but his hands were smooth and clean.

The waiting time gave me the chance to think, to work out what to do. Running would be useless, there were too many of them. The only thing I had was my mind. I would use it, use the powers I’d always shied away from, that I’d been terrified of. I reached up, beyond my understanding, seeking to tap into strength and wisdom that would save us both.

Finally, the man said, ‘You are the sister. We were told of your coming.’

I stayed silent, concentrating on shutting us off from him, focusing on letting the help from unseen sources come to me. I knew that if I talked, if I said even a single word, that he would take it and use it against me. It would give him power over me and he would cripple my strength. I kept my silence and held my sister tight.

‘Two for the price of one,’ he said, and he stretched his mouth in a smile. ‘How … economical.’

I built a shield around us, calling for help from my dead, from Grif, from Fisa and ancestors whose names I didn’t know. I called on the love of my family, of my genetic father and of Hera’s genetic parents. I built a wall of love around us to protect us in this place of horror. Hera sighed, and some of the tension left her.

But this man was a leader and he too had powers. I sensed his determination to break through the barrier I’d built. He said, ‘You are the girl who brought destruction down on the head of our esteemed colleague Brighton Hainsworth.’ He was watching me closely, so would have seen my shock. I felt his triumph. He thought he’d broken me.

And indeed I was shocked. But I was not broken. Brighton Hainsworth had deliberately infected people with the pandemic virus. He had accused me in court of evil deeds, and he had brought about his own destruction.

The man smiled – he had the cruelest smile. ‘I see that name means something to you. I see that you understand we will avenge him.’

I wrapped the unseen protection around us, shutting him out, shutting out the knowledge that we were in the stronghold of the group who’d unleashed the pandemic. They killed without compunction. They’d killed Grif, Nixie, Ginevra’s mother and hundreds of others. They had tried to blame it all on Taris.

Stay strong. Do not give in to fear
.

I kept silent.

The people watching from the sidelines stirred, fear and bloodlust intensifying in equal amounts. Callie was among the watchers, standing with her head down. The man on the throne stilled them with a single glance, but their movements seemed to have goaded him into action. ‘Enough!’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Take her away and prepare her for the death ceremony. The child will witness it.’

He watched me. I returned his stare, and without knowing I was going to do so, I began talking, saying things I scarcely knew the meaning of. I surrendered to what was happening. If this was how help would come, then I would take it.

I heard my own voice ringing through the room.

‘If you kill me, then know this: I will haunt you for all the rest of your days. There will be no peace for you – not waking nor sleeping, for I will hunt you down wherever you are. I will make your existence a living hell. This I promise you.’

I heard the determination, I felt the absolute intention to do what I’d vowed – and so did he. I watched him blench and rear back as if the very words would kill him.

Stalemate. I knew he was struggling, scrabbling around to protect himself, but I watched his every move and I let him see that I understood I’d shattered his power.

A different voice thundered through the room then, but I was beyond surprise and it didn’t startle me. Hera didn’t react either. ‘Bring her to me – without the kid. I’ll deal with the bitch.’

A man ran in from the sidelines, arms out to take Hera.

I spat at him, ‘We stay together. Get away from us.’ He slowed but kept coming. I turned to look him full in the face. ‘If you take one more step, then I swear by all you hold holy that you will suffer.’ Where were these words coming from? Whatever – whoever – was sending them knew what would strike deep into the hearts of our captors, for the man stopped dead and came no further.

The disembodied voice said, ‘Bring them both. The kid can listen while I tell the bitch exactly what the sacrifice will entail.’ His laughter snapped off with a click of the intercom.

‘Follow me,’ the throne man said. He sent me a look of pure hate before he turned to walk to a door set in the wall behind his table.

So. There was another leader. One whose word was obeyed without question, without hesitation.

Hera whimpered. ‘No!’

‘Shh, darling. I’ve got you. It’s okay.’ And it would be. If I had to kill her myself to save her, that was what I would do.

The throne man held the door open, and I walked through holding Hera in my arms. He closed it behind us, shutting us in with the one whose commands he and all the others would obey without hesitation or question.

I carried my sister forward into the wellspring of cruelty, going to face the one who could order the time and manner of our deaths. I felt my dead at my shoulder, and I walked with my head high, every sense alert, poised ready to do whatever it took to set us free.

T
he leader was old, probably older than Willem. He looked withered, and disease had knotted his hands, curling them in on themselves.

‘Sit.’ He indicated a hard stool set down about two metres in front of him. He sat behind a wide desk on a chair that looked soft and velvety. ‘Put the Sacrifice on the floor.’

I sat on the stool, but kept Hera on my knee. His eyes narrowed, and although he didn’t say anything his power rolled over us. I faced him, focusing my mind, stretching it to reach out to those I couldn’t see and inviting in their help.

He started talking. I shut his words out, but I knew he was telling us how he would kill first me, and then Hera. I drew the force shield around us so that his threats bounced off, slid to the floor and died.

When he realised what was happening, he stopped in mid-sentence and snarled, drawing his lips back to show long yellow teeth. ‘You won’t beat me, girlie.’ He barked out a laugh. ‘Didn’t you know that we planned this? Your sister was the bait to get you here. We’re fully aware of your pathetic mind power, and we will extinguish it. As we have done with others.’ He sneered at me. ‘Your grandmother was an easy target.’

Those words cut through my defences, just as he’d intended they should. Hera tightened her hold on me.

Stay strong
.

This man had killed Grif, but she would help us survive. I drew on her love and her strength to gather the protection back around us.

He leaned forward, wincing as pain caught him somewhere. ‘We knew you’d be the one to work out where we’d taken the brat. We’ve known from the moment you set out that you were on your way.’ He eased himself back in his chair, studying the pair of us. I felt the iron of his will, the brutal determination to hurt me before he killed me.

I braced myself, waiting for him to call in a henchman, somebody strong who would do his bidding. But he chose another way.

‘Physical torture is so clumsy.’ He smiled and waited.

I concentrated on shutting him out.

My silence irked him. He spat his next words at me, pointing with a knotty finger for emphasis. ‘You shouldn’t have got in the way of my plans. I’d rule this country by now if you two hadn’t meddled. You will suffer for that.’

We will survive. Help us.

He waited, wanting me to protest, to ask what we’d done, to beg him to spare us. I kept silent, pushing him away, holding him out. He snarled, then thumped a switch on the desk in front of him. It hurt him and he hurled a barrage of hate at us.

A voice came over the speaker system. ‘What is your will, Leader?’ It was the man from the throne.

‘Bring me a vial of the pathogen.’ All the time he watched me, wanting to be sure I understood what he meant to do.

A picture flashed through my mind: he would make me swallow it while the throne man held a knife to Hera’s heart.

‘The pandemic pathogen, sir?’

‘No, Secondus. The new one. The virulent, unstable one.’

The loudspeaker amplified the throne man’s hiss of surprise. ‘Yes sir.’

Hera tightened her grip around my neck, but she didn’t say a word.

I tensed, ready to act on whatever order would come from my unseen protectors. I waited, trusting them to help me. The leader’s triumph and loathing rolled over us in waves. I would think about that later, about why he was so desperate to kill us, why he’d plotted to destroy the people of Taris. But right now I kept my mind open only to those who would help us, and I smashed his thoughts right back at him.

It maddened him, ramping up his urge to kill me as cruelly as he could. I would not give in. He would not torture my sister. I fought his mind with my own.

The throne man – Secondus – came in holding a small glass vial in his gloved hand. He put it down with great care on the desk in front of his leader.

‘Call in the others.’

Secondus gasped. ‘Sir? It’s dangerous. Lethal.’

The leader smiled. ‘But Secondus, the human experiment. At last we have a guinea pig to test this on.’ He let his eyes rest on Hera, then on me. ‘Two guinea pigs, I think.’ He picked up the vial with his bare, twisted hands. ‘Yes, Secondus, we’ll conduct the sacrifice here and now. Bring them in.’

Secondus turned to leave.

Now. Act now
.

I stood up, still with Hera clasped in one arm. With my free hand I seized my stool and threw it straight at the leader. He screamed as it caught his chest and fell clattering onto the desk. The blow shattered the vial, splashing its contents onto his hands and face. He screamed again, a high-pitched wail of terror.

I pushed Hera’s head into my chest so that she couldn’t breathe till we got clear. I held my own breath and ran for the door.

Secondus tore through ahead of us. He swung the door to shut us in. Too late – we were out.

‘The vial! She broke the vial!’ He babbled the words, all the time swiping his hands over his face as if he feared the pathogen had splashed onto him as well as his leader.

The leader’s howls tore through the room from the sound system. ‘You’ll die for this! All of you.’

The people seemed dumbstruck, shocked into immobility. I just kept running straight for the big doors at the other end of the room. No one made any attempt to stop me; no one moved as their leader’s cries reverberated around them. We heard his footsteps, shuffling, stumbling.

Then one of the women shouted, ‘He’s trying to come out! We’ll die if he gets out!’

I was nearly at the door. Somebody was behind me now, running hard.

You will not stop me
.

‘Juno! Wait! Come this way.’

It was Callie.

‘They’ll blow the place apart!’ She grabbed hold of my arm and tugged me through the door and into a side room. She didn’t stop to open the window, just picked up a chair and smashed it out. She jumped out first and held out her arms to help me and Hera.

I had to trust her.

‘Hurry! We’re not safe this close.’

I gave up trying to understand what was happening, and followed her through a garden and out onto the road I’d been brought in by. She kept glancing back at the building, her face screwed up as if she was expecting to be hurt. Other people were outside now too, and running faster than I could with Hera in my arms. All were terrified, as Callie was, but she stayed with me, helping me and catching me when I stumbled.

‘They’re too scared to worry about you,’ she said as yet another person tore past us.

‘You go on,’ I told her. ‘I can’t go any further. Legs won’t work.’

She shook her head and yelled at me. ‘We keep going! Just keep walking.’ She pulled me so that I had no choice. She didn’t offer to take Hera – probably because she knew I was still wary of her.

We stumbled on for about a hundred metres. Nobody else ran past us and all I could hear was the thudding of feet ahead. Then an almighty crash filled the air, and we whirled around just in time to see the house we’d escaped from explode in a torrent of flame.

As we watched, tears ran down Callie’s cheeks. Others who’d run further than we had crept back, their faces appalled, their eyes never leaving the blazing building.

There would be nothing left of it. The whole place was burning right along its length.

At last Callie said, ‘It was the emergency procedure. That pathogen was deadly. Leader had us wire the place to burn if there was ever an accident.’ She shook her head. ‘I thought he did it just to frighten us with his power. I’m sure he never intended it to be used.’

No. Especially not against himself.

Secondus appeared then, striding towards us from the direction of the house. He carried a spent fire extinguisher and his clothes smelt of smoke. His face was an ugly mix of rage and grief. ‘You!’ he spat at me. ‘You did this and you’ll answer for it. I promise you.’

Hera dug her head into my shoulder sobbing, ‘Go away, go away.’

But I was tired to my bones. I had no fight left in me. It was Callie who came to my rescue. ‘Don’t touch them, Sec. They could be contaminated.’

He jumped backwards, dropped the fire extinguisher and flung his arms over his head as if to ward off stray germs. Then he ran.

‘Is that true?’ I asked.

Callie shrugged. ‘Who would know? I guess we’ll find out, though. It only takes an hour for the infection to show up.’

I sank onto the road. ‘Not much use trying to outrun it.’

She laughed and sat down beside me. Hera was quiet but not obviously distressed, although she kept a hold of my jacket and every few seconds looked up at my face as if to make sure I was still there.

I asked Callie, ‘Why did you help me? You could easily have left the two of us to burn. Will the others be angry?’

She nodded, then shook her head. ‘The workers will be glad. Not the bosses though. They’ll be like Sec.’

‘Good. I hope they’ll be scared witless that we could infect them.’

For ages we watched the flames, wincing as explosions sent fresh energy blazing upwards. Eventually Callie began talking. ‘Going to Fairlands – it started me thinking.’ She gestured at Hera, who was building a tower from road stones with one hand. ‘You told me what she said about me. That I had a little bit of good down deep. It made me begin to question if Leader was right. He said people out in the world were evil. He said we had to labour until we’d worked the evil out of our souls.’ She shuddered, wrapping her arms around her body for comfort. ‘When I got back I wanted to leave, but I knew they’d kill me if I did.’

Hera looked up. ‘Callie is my friend now.’

Callie said, ‘Yes, Hera. I’m your friend now.’

I rested my head on my knees. ‘I don’t understand any of it. Why they made the pathogens. Why they wanted Taris to get the blame for the pandemic. Why did he want to kill me?’

Callie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. The workers – we didn’t get told anything.’

I knew I should send Marba a message, tell him we were safe. At least, I hoped we were. But I was too tired. Too tired to move. Too tired to make my mind do anything except send silent thanks to my unseen army.

‘Will he still be alive? The leader?’

Callie shook her head. ‘No. He could hardly walk. That chair he sat in – it was designed so that four people could carry him everywhere.’

I didn’t even try to feel sorry. He’d brought about his own destruction. He’d killed Grif, Nixie and hundreds of the people of Aotearoa. ‘How many pandemics did he cause?’

Callie gaped at me. ‘What? None! It would be beyond evil to do that!’

I turned my head sideways, still resting it on my knees. ‘You didn’t know about the trial? About Brighton Hainsworth and the lie-detector test proving he deliberately infected people?’

She didn’t know any of it. She hunched her arms around her body again. ‘I knew nothing. I was scum. After I found Hera, I thought they’d advance me to the next level. Take me out of the fields. But they just sent me back to work and told me nothing.’ She sounded bitter.

Hera snuggled up to me. ‘I’m hungry.’

I put an arm round her. There was nothing I could do about it.

Above the growl of the flames we heard another noise, a motor of some sort. Callie turned to listen. ‘They’re going off in the boat. It’s not big enough to hold all of them. I don’t know what the others will do.’

I only hoped those who’d been left behind wouldn’t decide to find us and kill us.

The fire burned for a long time. And no one came in search of us. Secondus must have spread the word that we could be infected. At last, once the flames had begun to die down, Callie gave a slight laugh. ‘Okay, what do we do now?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘The police are coming. We wait for them.’

‘Then I should leave. Hide somewhere.’

I took her hand. ‘No. You come back with us. You can live at Fairlands. If you want to?’

‘I’d like that. If they’ll have me.’

Hera reached up and kissed her cheek. ‘You’re my friend.’

‘See?’ I said. ‘You’ve passed the test.’

We didn’t talk much after that. I was too tired and she was too shocked. I was happy to sit and wait. The sky was cloudy, but the sun nipped out every few minutes to warm us. It was peaceful with just the noise of the fading fire. Eventually, the birdcalls started again.

I got up. ‘Come on. Let’s sit where we can see the river and the bridge.’

Callie pulled a face, but she followed me to a spot at the top of the hill with a clear view of any arrivals. There was no sign of the people left behind by the boat.

Callie shaded her eyes and looked towards the paddocks beyond the ploughed fields. ‘They’ve left the animals shut in. They’ll starve to death. We should open the gates.’

‘Before we left Taris we slaughtered all our livestock. Let’s leave them until people come. Jasper’s folk might take them.’ I told her about Jasper and how he and his people had helped me.

‘I’d like to be with good people again.’ She swallowed and scrubbed at her eyes. ‘Sec was so charming at first. Until he brought me here, and then everything changed. I was just another worker.’

She’d fallen in love with him. My heart twisted. Love couldn’t be trusted. I wondered where Ivor was – if he’d made it home yet and what he’d tell my family. How strange that love could dig so deep a wound, whereas the hatred and the loathing poured on us hadn’t harmed us.

Time passed. We didn’t fall sick and we didn’t die. Late in the afternoon, two people came out from the
gorse-covered
hill and onto the road beside the paddocks. Each led a horse, and when they reached the proper roadway they stopped to remount.

‘It could be Jasper.’ I screwed up my eyes, trying to see more clearly, but it was impossible to tell. The other man was more slightly built but equally as tall. I tried to recall anyone like that in their group, but it was impossible to tell, especially from such a distance.

We watched the men’s progress, and I felt apart from the world. I’d used all my strength. These two had better be friendly, because if they weren’t I’d just lie down and let them kill me.