The Exiled (21 page)

27

Grainger groaned, tried to stand but couldn’t force his aching muscles to respond at first. Simon leaned down and offered a hand. Grainger swatted it away.

“I’m fine. No thanks to you.”

He pushed himself to his knees with his good hand even as fresh pain shot across his back and through the injured shoulder.

Simon and Sandy were near the balcony edge, bent over the still body of the young girl.

“Is she alive?” Grainger asked.

“She’s doing better than you, big brother,” Alan replied. “But she’s out cold.”

Grainger stood, groggy and pained…

But far better off than I should be, given the battering I had.

Alan was looking at him strangely. The younger brother left Sandy’s side, came over and looked John in the face before turning to Simon.

“What’s happening to him?”

Simon smiled sadly.

“What will happen to you all if you stay here.”

“What do you mean?” Grainger asked.

“Over there—look for yourself,” Simon said, pointing.

Grainger turned and saw a tall mirror in the corner. It was only as he walked towards it that he saw what the others meant—and a possible explanation for his relative well-being.

He was taller—thinner too, although some of that might be attributed to his recent ordeals. What couldn’t be explained away was the new slant to his eyes giving them the same extended oval look as Simon’s—and the small, but definite, signs of pointing at the tips of his ears.

He turned. Simon smiled sadly again.

“This place gives us strength—but it also molds us into what it wants us to be,” he said. “You saw what it was doing to Galloway?”

“I thought that was a result of his ritual—something to do with the dead kids?”

“Only in part—the Cobbe is giving Galloway more than the land is giving you. But if you stay, you will all change, in time.” Simon paused, as if wondering how much to say. “As I did when I came over.”

* * *

“I can see there’s more stories that need to be told,” Grainger said, and spat on the floor in front of the mirror. “I could do with a decent smoke—and a drink.”

“I can help with that,” Simon said. “But let’s get the girl seen to first.”

Grainger held back a sarcastic remark. He wasn’t finished with Simon—the man still had to answer for his earlier refusal to help—but for now, he agreed that the girl must be priority.

“I’ll put her in my room,” Sandy said. “That way we’ll hear her if she wakes up.”

Simon and Sandy both left, Simon carrying the girl, who showed no signs of waking, her eyes still open, staring sightlessly straight at Grainger as Simon took her through the door and out of sight.

Grainger heard the two talking, not far off down the hallway. He turned to see Alan still staring at him.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Alan said. He had fresh tears in his eyes. “First when we ended up back in the farmhouse without you, then again when you tried your John Wayne shite with the flare.”

He strode over and the brothers embraced, somewhat awkwardly, both trying to protect Grainger’s wounds. Grainger gently pushed the younger man away.

“You don’t get rid of me that easily,” he said, and walked to the parapet so that Alan wouldn’t see his own tears. The view over the plain below washed away any sentimentality that might have been welling in him.

The Cobbe sat on the tallest spire of the ruined cathedral, clearly visible in the moonlight, a darker black against the shimmering sea beyond. Its constant barking carried in the wind, like a drum beating a martial rhythm. Below it, in the doorway, a figure stood. At first Grainger thought he might still be dazed and lacking depth perception, but no matter how he squinted, it was perfectly clear—Galloway had grown again, now almost as tall as the doorway itself, and nearly as broad.

“We didn’t kill him, then?” Alan said at his side.

“I think we just made him angry. I’m guessing we won’t like him when he’s angry.”

Simon spoke at Grainger’s shoulder, having returned so quietly that they hadn’t noticed his approach.

“Alexandra told me what happened,” he said. “He will need some time to heal. Then he will come for the girl. We must get her back to the other side—straightaway.”

“Won’t he just find another?” Grainger asked.

“No. There is a pattern to these things—he has chosen this one. He needs this one.”

“Then, if we take her home, he’ll just go after her again, won’t he?”

Simon didn’t reply.

“We need to make a stand,” Grainger continued. “Either here, or there, it makes no never mind to me. But it seems to me that we have a defensible position here. You’ve managed to keep the Cobbe at bay so far, haven’t you?”

Once again Simon looked like a badly scared man.

“The Cobbe is afraid of the fortress,” he replied. “I doubt that Galloway shares its fears.”

“That’s something we’ll have to wait and see,” Grainger said. He had one last look at the Cobbe, then turned away. “But first, you owe us a story—and a smoke. I’ll take the smoke first.”

* * *

They sat around the table. Simon had gone for twenty minutes and returned with a plate of cold meats, cheeses and breads, and beer in a pitcher.

“This,” Simon said, waving a hand over what he’d returned with, “all came from Safeways in Cumbernauld—Alexandra’s been bringing it over since Galloway blocked the gate from me.”

Grainger poured himself a beer—it tasted of caramel and malt and was instantly recognizable as Caledonian Eighty, brewed in Edinburgh. Simon pushed a packet of twenty Embassy cigarettes and an old-style petrol lighter across the table to Grainger.

“So, this stuff about your people being old before our side was young? That was just bullshit, was it?” Grainger said as he lit up and sucked a most welcome drag of smoke.

“I thought you might believe me easier if I pretended to be what I looked like, rather than who I was…”

“Which is?” Grainger said.

“You might find this hard to take in…” Simon started.

Both Grainger and Alan laughed at the same time.

“You think so?” Grainger replied. “Just try us.”

Simon sighed.

“My full name is Simon Seton. I’m from Perth originally, and I first came over from Loch Leven in the nineteen twenties. I’m a hundred and eleven years old, and I’m the only human being, apart from you three and Galloway, currently on this side of the gate.”

That proved to be a conversation stopper, and Grainger didn’t reply for a time as he mulled over the implications.

“So, who built the fortress and the cathedral?”

“I don’t know.”

“And what is the Cobbe?”

“As far as I know—and this is only what some of the exiles told me—the story I told you earlier is the truth.”

“And the exiles? Are there really thousands of them?”

“I don’t know. I was told there were many, but I myself have met maybe twenty.”

“And why are the three of us special?”

“Again, I don’t know.”

Grainger’s cop instincts were telling him the man was telling the truth. That didn’t make it any easier to take.

“You don’t know very much, do you? Why did you stay? Why not go into exile with the others?”

“I didn’t want to surrender this place to the Cobbe without a fight. So I stayed, and for a while there was a certain balance—people came and went through the gateway and I was able to stop any of those who might try to use the Cobbe—people like Galloway. But Galloway is a bit like you three—he is special, in a different way. I don’t understand it, but I believe that the exiles have been taking magic over your side, and somehow it has leeched into you four.”

“It’s a theory, at least,” Grainger said. “So you’re some kind of copper? Just trying to keep the peace—is that your story?”

“In a way, yes.”

“Then, tell me,” Grainger said softly. “Why did you abandon me when I needed your help?”

“Fear. Pure and simple,” Simon said without hesitation. “You haven’t been here as long as I have—the Cobbe would—”

Grainger cut him off.

“It’s just a fucking big bird. I’m more worried about what Galloway’s becoming. We’re going to need better weapons.”

Simon looked like he wanted to reply, but Grainger was in no mood to listen, and by the look on the tall man’s face, it showed.

“We can only use what’s over here,” Sandy said quietly. “Galloway and the bird control our access—they’re too strong to push through.”

“Maybe not,” Grainger said. “You had four on your side when you came over—you two and the two brothers—and we have four here now.”

Simon shook his head.

“But if we send someone over, we won’t be strong enough to get them back.”

“Jonas and James?” Sandy started.

Simon waved her away.

“They’ll be back in their hideaway by now. As I said—we have to make do with what’s here.”

“So what is that then?” Grainger said.

“What we have in the armory—you’ve seen that. Beyond that, there’s only what we have in the larder, and I don’t think throwing tins of soup and stale bread is going to get us very far.”

Alan spoke—he’d been silent for so long that Grainger worried he had retreated into a shell, but his question showed he was still thinking in the right direction.

“When you’re cooking…what do you use for fuel?”

“We have a woodstove,” Sandy replied. “And I see what you’re thinking—we’ve also got about ten gallons of oil.”

Simon again looked like he wanted to speak, but Grainger could see that he had cowed the man—he wasn’t the first to be intimidated by a copper’s stare-down. Grainger raised an eyebrow, signaling that the tall man could talk, at the same time coming to a growing realization. The balance of power had shifted.

I’m in charge here now.

28

Alan also saw that his older brother had now become the man in control. Simon looked more timid—and a lot older—than the man they had talked to the previous day on this same balcony. And his fear was showing.

“The Cobbe is more than just a big bird,” he said. “It is a power—you would be wise not to underestimate it.”

“And you would be wise not to underestimate my big brother,” Alan said. John acknowledged that with a grin, lighting up a fresh smoke as Simon continued.

“You’ve all seen it—Galloway and the Cobbe are intertwined, and together they have control of the gateway. Without that, we are stuck here—and this place will not sustain us for long. There is precious little to eat but berries—there’s fish in the sea, but the Cobbe controls the cliffs. Whatever your plan, you’d best do it soon, for we will only get weaker as they get stronger.”

“I’ve seen Galloway’s idea of strength,” John said, angrily stubbing his cigarette out on the surface of the table. “If killing kids is its source, then I call it a weakness. And it’s one I’m going to exploit. I might never get him back to the other side—but that doesn’t mean we can’t see that he gets the justice he deserves. The only way to do that is to take the fight to him. At heart he’s a coward—he has no stomach for a real fight. I intend to show him that and rub it in his face. Are you with me?”

Alan wasted no time in replying.

“Wherever you go, I go, you know that.”

Sandy nodded.

“All for one and one for all, right?”

Simon stood and backed away from the table.

“I’ll see to the girl.”

“Aye,” John replied, not bothering to conceal his contempt. “You do that.”

The tall man left. John watched him go, then turned back to Alan and Sandy.

“This might get hairy,” he said. “I have a plan. But it’s risky.”

“As long as it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg,” Alan said, deadpan. Sandy looked shocked but John’s face lit up in a wide grin.

“That’s what’ll get us through this, wee brother,” he said. “Together we’re stronger than any nutcase with a big pet bird.”

“So what’s this plan then?” Alan replied. “Just no more Cowboys and Indians shite—that didn’t work so well last time, remember?”

John smiled—there was little humor in it.

“I was thinking more along the lines of blowing shite up this time,” he said. “But first we need to visit that armory again to see if any of what I’d like to do is feasible.”

* * *

On the way to the armory they walked past the room where the girl lay, unconscious and staring. Simon stood in the doorway, refusing to look any of them in the eye as they passed.

“He might be able to help with some local knowledge?” Alan said after they were out of hearing range. But John refused to countenance it.