Mortal Love (36 page)

“Daniel,” said Juda. “Daniel, see me.”

She raised her arm. A flare of blue-green ran down it: beneath the skin were spikes of emerald lightning, forearm, fingers all aflame, and, where her heart should have been, a trembling green-black shadow like branching dendrites, neurons, a tree.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

“Give me your hand.” She was neither man nor woman but a thing that moved in light. “I will make amends, Daniel. You'll forget her, it will be better. You can go home.”

“No …”

He backed away, shading his eyes so he wouldn't see her, that slim figure flickering green and black against the night sky. “Let me come with you! Juda, please! I swear, just let me see her again—let me talk to her, I can help her, she knows me, she—”

“No!”
For an instant the flare of emerald nearly blinded him. Juda seemed immense, a tower of green flame rising from the hillside, streams of shadow racing toward the sea cliff. “You will
not
—”

Daniel cringed, yet even as he raised his arms, the violent blaze of green faded. He blinked, phantom bursts of gold and black flickering across his vision, but beside him there was only a slender young man, his tousled blond hair damp with sweat.

“Juda?” said Daniel.

The boy lifted his head, and yes, it was Juda, her skin moon-pale and sickly. She bent and retched, hugging her arms to her thin chest, then straightened, her entire body trembling.

“I couldn't have hurt you, Daniel.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “I no longer have any real power here. We have so little time. …”

She coughed, then weakly snapped her fingers. Fancy dashed back through the bracken, panting. From somewhere high upon the hillside came the querulous cry of a tawny owl.

“You're a fucking fool, lad,” Juda said. “She'll drive you mad, whether you have her or no. And you won't have her, Daniel.”

She turned and headed for the car. He stared after her, surrounded by the smell of crushed fern and the memory of Larkin beneath him, the scent of apple blossom, feathers brushing his cheek, Juda's mouth upon his brow.

“I will!” he shouted, and followed her.

In the car
he fought to keep anguish from overwhelming the memory of what he'd seen. Could the world really be as Juda said, permeable and malleable, combustible as dry grass, vulnerable to the smallest spark, then dangerous, even fatal?

Could
he
be like that?

Just days ago the notion would have been so absurd that he would never have considered giving voice to it. Now he could think of nothing else. The world had blown up in his hand, in his head, like a bottle rocket with a defective fuse. And here he was as he always had been, taking notes in the front seat, the detached outsider, the critic watching the show.

Yet he was no longer detached. Somehow—and this was the most incredible and terrifying thing of all—somehow, without wanting to or even knowing it had happened,
he
had become part of the show. And it was as he had always feared it would be: he had let his guard down just once, just for a few hours, and the entire universe had come crashing down around him.

“Shit,” he said.

He still had his wallet, plenty of cash, and a half-dozen credit cards; he could get out and start walking, and eventually he would come to a place where he could sleep for what remained of the night. In the morning he could take a cab to Penzance and hop the railway back to London. He'd find another flat; he'd finish his book, return to D.C., and await a modest success as a first-time author even as he resumed his work at the
Horizon.

None of this would ever have happened. His friendship with Nick would be pretty much as it always had been; Larkin Meade would be a woman he'd spent a hazy night with once in a narrow boat moored on the Regents Canal. He would call Balthazar Warnick and meet him for lunch, and they would talk about Daniel's book and the pleasantly dull details of university life. The world would be as it ever was, as it really was. And so would he.

They continued on down the coast. Juda said nothing, only stared at the road before them as it wound through a tiny village, a cluster of farms, and a pub, past a worn wooden sign that read
PADWITHIEL.
On one side stretched the endless moor, on the other the line of sea cliffs. Perhaps a mile distant, a rugged promontory extended from the headland. A narrow ridge of stone connected it to the coast, a natural bridge. On the point Daniel could just discern a ruined building.

“What's that?” He sat up. “Is it Tintagel?”

“No. Tintagel's that way.”

She pointed farther south and west, to where another spar of land rose from the Atlantic. “That's Sarsinmoor—what's left of it anyway. One of your insane asylums. Like Broadmoor, or Bedlam. It was destroyed by a fire in the nineteenth century.”

The car made a sharp turn down a long, deeply rutted lane. “This isn't a four-star B&B,” Juda warned. “There's a couch in the front room; you can sleep there. I was going to give you the bedroom, but I think I'm going to claim it. I … I'm not very well.”

She shivered, hunched over the steering column. For the first time, Daniel pitied her—or him; whatever Juda was. She looked ravaged, her eyes sunken, her hands a dark, dank blue. The awful thought came to him that what he had seen of Juda over the last few days was just a kind of disguise, Juda passing for whatever she thought humans looked like.

In which case, Larkin …

“Here,” whispered Juda. The car shuddered to a stop in front of a cottage. A single, wind-harrowed oak stood somber as a gallows where the drive ended. “We're here.”

She stumbled out and walked unsteadily toward the door. The cottage was set into a small declivity, like a stone tossed into a bowl; it was built of weathered granite, with a slated roof and shallow eaves, small recessed windows, a rotting rain barrel at one corner. Everything was overgrown, seemingly abandoned. By the front door were lengths of old iron pipe and plastic bags overflowing with moldering plasterboard and insulation.

“I've had the plumbing updated.” Juda unlocked the door and pushed it open. “It's a mess, sorry.”

He followed her in. A single, sparely furnished room, just a sofa and two armchairs with faded chintz upholstery, flagstone floors, a step down to a tiny kitchenette, two steps into a narrow hallway. “Bathroom's there,” said Juda. “My room's there. Couch is there. I have to sleep or I'll be ill. Don't try to leave.”

She stared at him, her eyes feverishly bright. “People get lost at their own doorsteps here on the moor. Mist comes up, you'll disappear forever.”

She ran a hand across her face, and he could see her fingers trembling. “I should never have let you come.”

“Where are they?”

She shook her head. “No, Daniel. Stay inside. It's not safe for you out there. Not now, not tonight.” She turned and started for the bedroom. “You can take the car back tomorrow.”

“Me? What about you?” he demanded. “What about
them?”

She went into the bedroom, closing the door after her. Daniel strode angrily toward the front door. The dog Fancy sat there. Its tail waved slightly and it whined, but when he reached for the knob, it got to its feet, growling.

“Right,” said Daniel.

He turned angrily and looked for another way out.

There was none. He saw a shallow fireplace filled with ash and charred turfs, an electric heater, a chair piled with camphor-smelling crocheted afghans. He went into the tiny kitchenette, grimacing, and tried to recall when he'd last eaten. Bread the previous morning, he thought, and absinthe. He wasn't hungry—on the contrary, he felt wired, edgy to the point of mania—but he looked around till he found a tin of Cornish gingerbread, stale, but he ate it anyway. He put some water in a bowl for Fancy, then wandered back into the living room.

“Here,” he said, setting the bowl down beside the dog. “Not that you deserve it. I should have let them shoot you.”

His watch read nearly 4:00
A.M.
Already the sky was growing pale, the green spring night draining into ultramarine and citron yellow, luminous as the streaked curve of an abalone shell. He peered out a window, could barely make out Juda's car through yellow-green mist. The lone oak was shrouded as with cobwebs. He turned and started to pace across the small room, his hand slipping into his pocket and closing around the little talisman he still bore: the acorn. He thought of Larkin as he had first seen her in the room at Sira's flat, thought of her staring through him, her arms tight around that tall figure on the motorcycle.

Valentine Comstock.

Daniel's stomach clenched. He stopped, made a fist, and slammed it hard against the wall.

“Shit.”

The pain was intense and satisfying. He bashed his hand again, and again, until his arm ached. When he finally stopped, he looked across the room to see Fancy watching him, head cocked and mismatched eyes narrowed.

“Just a little taste,” said Daniel. “Just a fucking hint.”

The dog's ears sleeked back against its skull. It growled as Daniel stared at it. Fancy stared back unblinking and continued to growl, a low sound that ran into the thrum of waves against the nearby cliffs.

She hadn't seen him. She hadn't seen him at all. And yet only minutes had passed—seconds—before she'd fled with Comstock. Daniel stood in the middle of the room, breathing hard.

She doesn't belong here. She doesn't belong with you.

“Yes she does,” he said under his breath. “She does. She will.”

He didn't know how long he stood there, talking to himself, or maybe he was only thinking. He didn't know, he didn't care. Only when he looked up again, the windows gleamed more brightly, a clear pale yellow veined with new green, like crocuses.

It was dawn.

He shook his head, then drew a long breath, to see if that changed anything. No. He stared at his hands. He felt strong; he extended his arms and felt the muscles tighten, flexed his fingers, then relaxed, and looked at the front door.

The dog Fancy sat staring at him. Its eyes caught a shaft of light and glowed, no longer blue and gold but a radiant emerald green.

“Fancy,” he whispered.

The dog scrambled to its feet. It turned and pawed at the door, whining.

“Fancy.”

He looked back at the door to Juda's room. It was still closed. Silently he crossed to the front door, wary lest the dog turn on him.

It did not. It remained where it was, ears canted upright, tail straight behind it, jaws closed tight as it moaned softly and gazed at the door. He reached for the knob, hesitating before he grasped it and turned. The dog whined louder as he cracked the door open.

Her scent overwhelmed him. Apple blossom, green apple, a smell of the sea that was not the sea he knew.

Closer,
the stolen notebook had read.

They were very near.

“Fancy,” he said softly. “Here, Fancy. Smell them?”

He slipped outside, the dog crowding after him. “That's it, Fancy—take me to her.”

With a low bark, the dog arrowed out into the dawn. He started after it, then stopped and ran to the pile of trash by the door. He grabbed a length of iron pipe and hefted it—heavy as a club and longer than his arm. It whistled as he slashed at the air; then, clutching it to him, he turned and ran after the dog.

A wind had risen from the sea. Mist whirled and lifted around him. He could see as clearly as though it were broad daylight.

There was the main road, there the downward slope that led to Sarsinmoor, there a sky the color of sunshot rain, there the shining sea.

And there was the dog. It stood at the edge of the road, looking back at him as he ran, and fairly somersaulted with excitement. He was near enough now that he could see its entire body shudder, as with a yelp it turned and, faster than he could have dreamed, raced across the road and on down the stretch of heath toward Sarsinmoor.

“Fancy, wait!”

He ran, his legs whipped by gorse and blackthorn. The iron pipe burned his hand as though aflame. Ahead of him the collie ran so fast it seemed to skim like a seabird above the moor. Daniel followed it down the hillside without stopping, until he reached the narrow spit of rock and turf that connected the promontory to the headland. He shoved the pipe into the ground and leaned on it, gasping.

Fancy was already a speck on the far side. Daniel watched as the dog angled off toward the ruins of the building. He could just make out the silhouette of a motorcycle, black beneath one tumbled wall.

“Fancy! Wait!”

But he knew it didn't matter now. He didn't need the dog. As he straightened, the wind came up from the sea, fresh and warm, so thick with the smell of apple blossom that he was dizzied and had to cover his mouth and nose until the faintness passed.

“Larkin.” He grabbed the length of pipe and began to walk across the causeway. “Larkin, wait.”

He did not look to either side. Far, far below he could feel the sea; droplets of spray dashed him as the spar of land beneath his feet shuddered. Ahead a gray-green veil clung to turf and stone, rising to engulf him, then falling away as he cleaved it, parrying the air with the iron pipe, and walked through. Only when he reached the other side did he stop, his breath coming fast as he stared at what was before him.

Once it must have been a marvel, beautiful as one of those stately homes he'd glimpsed from Juda's car: the other England that haunted this one, the realm he had dreamed of for as long as he could remember. Waterloo Sunset, Shangri-la, Logres—the world Nick had mocked him for falling in love with, the world Nick had always known was really there, the world Daniel had believed was forever denied to him, a place where he had no more right to be than the moon.

But he was there now. He gazed at the wrecked beams and joists of Sarsinmoor, and it was as though he had known it all his life, stones dark with soot and the blackened marks of flame, charred timbers and fragments of glass like eyes, a porcelain sign dangling from a split beam, its surface crazed, but he could still read the black letters.