The Colour of Death (32 page)

She didn’t watch him fall or check he was down.  She just ran as fast as her legs would carry her toward the forest, desperate to get as far away from Kaidan as possible.  She looked back only after she had climbed the rise at the rear of the settlement and reached the first sequoia.  To her surprise and relief, he was still down, out cold.  She quickly scanned the deserted settlement below but couldn’t see anyone raising the alarm or chasing her.  Zara and the others could appear at any moment, however, so she carried on into the forest, not knowing what to do or where to go.  Her mouth was parched.  She would have to find water soon and then food.  In the green shade of the looming sequoias, she shivered at the thought of spending the night out here in only a T-shirt and jeans.  She couldn’t even think about how she was going to negotiate her way through the countless, seemingly identical redwoods and find civilization.  Or what she would do if she did.

A sudden noise startled her.  Someone was coming down the path on horseback.  Fast.  She ran for cover into a bank of ferns.  She could use a horse.  She raised the rifle and automatically released the catch.  She had no conscious recall of firing a gun before, but some part of her evidently remembered how to handle a hunting rifle.  As she placed her finger on the trigger, the weapon felt familiar and oddly comforting in her hands.

The rider suddenly stopped, yards from where she was standing, reached for a pair of binoculars and scanned the settlement below.  She ran on to the path, heart pounding, rifle trained on his head.  “Get off the horse.”  It was only when he lowered the binoculars that she recognized him.  “Nathan!  I thought you’d gone!  What are you doing here?”

“As it happens, I was rushing back to rescue you.  But it looks like you’re doing pretty well on your own.”  He pointed to the rifle.  “Mind putting that down?”

She quickly lowered the weapon and replaced the safety.  “I might not need rescuing but you could give me a drink.”

He passed her a flask of the water, slipped her rifle into the saddle holster, then took his extended hand and pulled herself up behind him on the horse.  As Fox kicked the horse’s flanks and galloped into the forest, she wrapped her arms tight around him, inhaling his clean, musky smell, allowing it to purge Kaidan’s stench from her nostrils.

Chapter 48

Walking among his people as they ate lunch in the refectory, Delaney soaked up their devotion and fed off  their excitement.  This was their last major meal before the Esbat feast began at sunset tonight; it would end with the feast tomorrow evening.  As he stopped to speak with members of his flock he kept thinking about Sorcha and what was planned for tomorrow night.  The anticipation thrilled him but also made him more apprehensive than he liked to admit.  He found himself looking for his daughter but could only see Maria and Deva on the top table.

“Where’s Sorcha?”

“In the bathroom,” Maria said.

“Zara’s with her,” said Deva.

He frowned, a small alarm bell ringing in the back of his mind, and walked out of the refectory.  Maria and Deva looked at each other, then followed.  When he reached the restroom block he found Zara knocking on one of the doors.  “Sorcha, speak to me.  Are you OK?  Answer me.”

Delaney strode over.  “How long’s she been in there?”

Zara shrugged nervously.  I don’t know.  Fifteen, twenty minutes?  She’s got cramps.  She wanted some time.”

Delaney frowned.  “You left her alone?”

“I’ve been waiting out here.  She can’t get out.”

“Have you looked under the door?”

“Her robe’s covering the gap.”

He pushed past her and banged on the door.  “Sorcha, it’s me.  Let me in.”  He waited a beat then kicked the door hard.  It took two kicks to break it down.  When he saw the missing floorboards his heart skipped.  Zara visibly wilted.  “Cramps?  You stupid bitch.  She’s gone.”

“She won’t get far,” a voice growled behind him.

He turned as Kaidan appeared.  The side of his head was swollen and bloody.  “What do you mean?”

“She has no horse, food or drink.  Only a rifle.”

“Where the hell did she get a rifle?”

“She took mine.  I caught her by the tower but she…”

“You let her get away again?”  Delaney couldn’t believe it.  It was as if Kaidan was doing this on purpose.”

Kaidan pointed to his head.  “I didn’t
let
her.”

“How long’s she been gone?”

“A few minutes.  The Watchers in the gatehouse saw no one go over the bridge or enter the corral so she must have gone up into the forest.  I’ve got the Watchers mounted up to help me look.  We’ll get her back.  She hasn’t got a horse and won’t get far on foot.”

“You saw her by the tower?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t she run straight from here into the forest or cross the river?”

“She wanted to get her locket back.  She asked about her mother, the Great Work and what made her run away last time,” said Kaidan.  “I think she believes the answers to all her questions are inside the tower — and all her lost memories.”

Delaney nodded slowly.  Perhaps all was not lost.  “Go, take the Watchers and search the forest.”

“You want me to saddle up a horse for you?” said Kaidan.

His father considered for a moment.  He wanted to play back CCTV footage from the hard drive, see if it shed more light on what had happened and where she had gone.  He had no cameras in the forest, though.  “No.  I’ll stay here.  In case she comes back.”

“Comes back?” said Zara.  “Why would she come back?”

“Because she knows she won’t get far by herself.”  He thought of the locket and her mother.  “More than that, she’s not only running away from me, the settlement and her fears — she’s also running away from her past.  From herself.  And that’s not easy to do.  Not easy at all.”

Fox had been riding for some minutes when he abruptly reined in the horse.

“What are you doing?” Sorcha asked.

Fox dismounted.  “This won’t take long.  We’ve got a little while before they discover you’ve gone and when they do they’ll assume you’re on foot and won’t have got this far.”

“Why here?” she asked, noticing the small hut.

He walked to the center of the clearing.  “I need to show you something before we head off.  I want another witness to this.”  He bent down and began digging with his hands, scooping away the soft earth.

Sorcha gasped in shock when his digging revealed a skull and bones.  “What is this place?” she said.

“It’s where your Indigo Family disposes of its dead.  I saw the big guy you knocked out burying something here.  When I dug around I found loads of human bones:  adults, children and babies.  Deformed babies.”  Sorcha remembered Eve telling her how Delaney had tried for more violet children with Aurora but all had been stillborn.  Fox pointed up at one of the trees.  “He brought the bones down from up there.”  He told her about the platform on the roof of the forest where bodies were placed to be picked clean by the birds.  He walked a few feet across the clearing and dug another small hole, revealing more bones.  “This whole area is a shallow bone pit.”

“But there are so many bodies.  How can so many people from the settlement have died in the last few years?”

“I don’t think they all just died.  It looks like some were murdered.  Possibly in some kind of ritual.  One of the fresh bodies I saw up there had been strangled with a ligature.”  Sorcha shuddered when he told her about the hoop earrings on the female body.  As she looked down on the bones discarded in this unmarked pit a heavy guilt pressed down on her.  And shame.  At his moment she wished she were still Jane Doe, with no knowledge of her past life or her family and its terrible legacy.

“I need you to tell me something, Nathan.”

He looked at her.  “Yes?”

“The man I fought just now, the man you saw burying the bones, was the killer in Portland.”  Fox nodded like he’d guessed that already.  She swallowed hard and continued.  “He’s also my half-brother.”

As Fox absorbed what she’d said she searched his face for shock or disgust but saw no sign of either, only a quizzical frown.  “Do you know why he killed them?”

“No, but my father knew about the killings.  He strangled Eve.  It was her body you found up there.  I saw him do it.  My family professes to be descended from angels but they’re demons. 
We
are demons.”  She pointed down at the bone pit.  “My family’s responsible for this.”

Fox placed a hand on her arm.  “You aren’t, though.”

She shrugged his hand away.  “How do you know?  How do
I
know?  I can’t remember anything.  Perhaps I knew about all this.  Perhaps I was part of it before I ran away.  IF I didn’t know about it I should have.  Something terrible happened in that tower that changed my life.  Something I desperately need to remember.  I might not
want
to remember it but I
need
to.  I have no memory, no identity, nothing.  The only family I have left appear to be monsters.  I need to know if I’m like them.”

“You’re
not
like them.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know you.”

“How can you say that? 
I
don’t know me.  I’ve no idea who I was or who I am.”  Needing to make some connection with the dead and perform some penance, she bent down to the pit and reached for an adult skull.  She hoped the intensity of its death echo might somehow purge her guilt and shame.  But the echo was faint, as if its life energy had departed at the time of death, leaving only a vestigial trace in the desiccated bone.  “Why do this?  Why kill these people?  How can this possibly help my father’s Great Work?”

She sensed Fox kneeling down beside her.  “I don’t know,” he said gently.  “But we’ll find out.  Come, it’s getting late and we need to tell Jordache about this.”

“About what?  He didn’t believe you before, why should he believe you now?”

Fox took the skull from her, returned to the pit and replaced the soil.  “We’ll tell him about his place.”

“Jordache will say it’s a private graveyard.  And if we tell him about Kaidan we can’t prove my half-brother was the killer or that he was even in Portland.  I saw him in my death echoes but that’s legally irrelevant.  Besides, even if Jordache does believe us, by the time he brings the police back here my father and Kaidan will have realized I got away and removed any incriminating evidence.”  She thought of her mother and a surge of panic gripped her.  “My locket’s in the tower.  I must get it back.”

“We’ll get it when we return with Jordache and his men.”

“It might not be there then.”

“It’s just a locket, Sorcha,” he said gently.

She shook her head angrily.  Why didn’t he understand?  “It’s not just a locket.  It’s my past.  It’s my mother.  It’s all I have.  It’s who I was and who I am.  I
have
to get it back.”  She took a deep breath, trying to stay calm.  “I need to get into the tower.  Now.  Not just to get the locket but also to find out what happened to my mother and uncover the truth about the Great Work before the Seer has a chance to dismantle or hide what he’s been doing in there.  What he’s
still
doing in there.”

“It’s too dangerous, Sorcha.  Let the police handle this.  I came here to take you to safety.”

“There’s no such thing.  I’ll never have safety.  Not until I know why I originally ran away.”  She pointed down at the bones in the earth.  “I don’t
deserve
safety until I know why my father and half-brother are doing this and what my role in it was.  Once I’m inside the tower I hope I’ll recover my memories.  It’s the one place that contains all the answers:  to my past, my mother’s fate, my father’s Great Work and the part he wants me to play in it.”

“You identity isn’t defined by your past or your memories, Sorcha, and certainly not by what your family may have done,” Fox said quietly.  “What defines you is what you do and the choices you make
now
.  You decide who you are.  You and fate determine your future.  No one else does.”

“In that case I
choose
to go back into the tower.  I’ll hide until it gets dark and then go in.”

Fox shook his head.  “I didn’t come all this way just to watch you walk back into the dragon’s lair.”

“You haven’t got to come with me, Nathan,” she snapped.  “You prefer
avoiding
the place that changed
your
life, and putting your head in the sand might work for you.  But not for me.”

Fox glared back at her and for a while neither spoke.

She softened her voice.  “Please, Nathan, I
need
to walk back into the dragon’s lair, if only to discover if I’m one of the dragons.  It’s not just about the locket.”  She reached into her jeans back pocket and pulled out the iPhone Fox had given her.  “This has got a camera.  I’ll take pictures of what I find, show them to Jordache and then we’ll have all the proof we need.”

Fox said nothing for a moment, then he sighed.  “How are
we
going to get in?  The tower’s locked.”

“We?”

“Of course.  I didn’t come all this way for the fun of it.  How are
we
going to get back in there?”

She smiled.  “I think I know a way.”

Chapter 49

That evening it began raining hard.  In the forest, the trees provided some shelter from the summer storm but the temperature dropped rapidly.  Fox gave Sorcha his fleece and waterproof jacket and donned the oilskin provided in the saddlebag.  As Fox had expected, the riders searching for Sorcha had assumed she was on foot and confined their search efforts to the area near the settlement.  It had been relatively easy to keep out of their way and now the rain made it easier.  The downpour washed away their tracks and drowned out their sound, and as night fell they could see the searchers’ sputtering torches illuminating the forest.

As Fox and Sorcha rode from one sheltered vantage point to another, they pooled their information, but it didn’t help them divine the true nature of Delaney’s Great Work or Sorcha’s role within it.  In the moments of silence Fox found himself reflecting on their earlier exchange.  Sorcha’s adamant decision to return to the tower to recover her locket and confront her past had forced Fox to re-examine his own reluctance to re-enter the Chevron garage where his family had been murdered.