The Thirteen Hallows (11 page)

I
n the time after the Last Battle, there was only darkness.

Those who had survived—and there were few enough—cowered in the darkness.

And hungered.

The flesh of the humankind was close enough. Close enough to smell, to taste on the air, but not close enough to touch, not close enough to feast upon.

They had been cast away, cast out, cast down, and sealed into their prison by the Halga, by the boy who was not a boy, who was humankind and more than humankind.

Those who survived did not age, and though they had no concept of time, they were aware that a great number of seasons—tens of hundreds and more besides—had passed by.

But now there was light.

A speck in the darkness.

A tiny bloodred pulse, a heartbeat.

As one, they moved toward the light.

For where there was light, there was food.

And they hungered.

Sarah was shocked by what she saw.

Catching a glimpse of her reflection in the dark pond water, she did not recognize the wild-eyed woman who stared back at her.

When she had left for work a day earlier, she had carefully applied her MAC foundation, mascara, and nude lip gloss. The makeup was gone now, washed away with tears and sweat. Now, the dots of her unconcealed freckles were connected with dried blood. Her eyes were sunk deep in her head, black smudges etched beneath them, the whole effect startling against the pallor of her skin. Her hair, which had been pulled back into a tight ponytail, now hung loose and wild about her face, sticking out at all angles, and when she ran her hand through it, flakes of dried blood—Judith’s blood—spiraled away.

Sarah knew that she should go to the police. When she’d seen the skinhead, seen the evil in his eyes, she knew that he would have no compunction about killing her, so she’d panicked and run for her life. She knew without a shadow of doubt that this was the man who had killed Judith and butchered her family.

She needed to get to the police, to talk to the blond sergeant and the gruff inspector. Yet there was something she had to do first. She needed to keep her promise to Judith, to fulfill a dying woman’s last wish.

Seated once again on the park bench, Sarah lifted the bag onto her lap and began to systematically sort through it. She laid out the items on the bench beside her. She pushed aside the newspaper-wrapped iron sword before examining the rest of the contents: a cardboard folder stuffed with sheets of printed paper, a padded manila envelope filled with newspaper clippings, and a bundle of letters tied in a faded purple ribbon. Somewhere in this mess she hoped she’d find Owen’s address. Sarah turned over the letters; each bore the return address of Beatrice Clay. The stamps dated as far back as the fifties, and the last letter had been sent only a few months earlier. Judith’s wallet was at the bottom of the bag. It contained twenty-two pounds in notes and change and her British Library reading card.

Sarah was getting so cold. Although the last few days had been unseasonably hot, the autumn nights quickly grew chill. Now, as the sun dipped, the early evening air turned crisp, making her wish she had something warmer to wear. She needed to get this to Owen so that she could…so that she could what? What was she going to do? Where was she going to go?

She felt the dark stirrings of panic and the scream beginning to bubble at the back of her throat. She had nowhere to go and no one to go to. She was…she was…

Sarah forced herself to concentrate on the bag. What was Owen’s address? What was his last name? She couldn’t find anything with an address on it. The old woman had been in great pain; maybe she’d only imagined the address was in the bag. Sarah shook her head. No. Judith had been lucid, terrifyingly so. She knew exactly what she was saying. And Sarah couldn’t even begin to imagine the pain she must have been going through as she’d given her the message.

She began to return the items to the bag, quickly rifling through the bundle of letters in case one was addressed to someone called Owen. The typed pages in the folder seemed to be notes for a novel. Judith had been a writer, so perhaps these were research notes. The padded envelope…She turned it over. It was addressed to Owen Walker, with an address at a flat in Scarsdale Villas, just off Earls Court Road.

SKINNER DROVE
in sullen silence, glad of the mirrored sunglasses that concealed his red eyes, aware that the other three in the van were watching him closely. The red line where the window had cut into his throat was still visible on his flesh. They had all witnessed his humiliation, and he knew that was what Elliot intended. The short, unassuming-looking man enjoyed causing pain: the ultimate passion, he called it. Skinner’s knuckles tightened on the steering wheel of the battered Volkswagen van. He didn’t blame Elliot; Mr. Elliot was untouchable, and Skinner wasn’t afraid to admit that he was terrified of him. Skinner blamed Sarah Miller. She was at the root of his humiliation. And she was going to pay. Elliot wanted Miller alive, but he wasn’t too fussy about her condition.

“What now?” Larry McFeely drawled. He twisted in the passenger seat to look at the skinhead.

Skinner swallowed hard, the action painful against his bruised windpipe. “We find Miller,” he grunted, his voice harsh and rasping. He swallowed and tried again. “We find Miller and the bag. And we take her to Mr. Elliot.”

“The bitch could be anywhere,” McFeely muttered.

“She’s just out of hospital, she’s on foot. She couldn’t have gone far. Mr. Elliot suggested that we watch the trains. If she’s heading back into the city, she’ll take Bath Spa to Paddington.”

“She could’ve taken a bus or a taxi,” McFeely suggested, brushing long, greasy hair out of his glassy eyes.

“As far as we know, she’s never been to Bath before. She won’t know the buses. And she won’t go for a taxi in case the cabbie remembers her.” Skinner shook his head quickly, parroting everything Elliot had said. “She’ll go for the train.”

McFeely shrugged, unconvinced. He was wired and jumpy; all he wanted to do now was head back to his flat and crash, do some hash and mellow out. The old woman had died hard, and while McFeely had had no problems killing her, he had found her silence disturbing, almost threatening. He loved listening to the screams, he got off on them…but the old woman hadn’t screamed. Her cold gray eyes had continued to stare at him even as he’d used the knife on her.

Traffic lights changed to red and Skinner stopped the van, rear brakes squealing loudly. He twisted in the seat to look at the two blank-eyed young men in the back. They were passing a crack pipe back and forth, oblivious to everything else, the memories of their bloody afternoon’s work already fading, mingling with the crack cocaine dreams. In an hour, they would have forgotten everything.

Perfect puppets.

Skinner snatched the pipe away, watching as they both reached blindly for it. He dropped the glass pipe on the floor of the van and ground it underfoot. He had nothing but contempt for addicts. It was a waste of a life. No focus. And one thing Skinner had was focus.

“I want you two inside the station watching for Miller. You do remember what she looks like, right?” he demanded.

They looked at him blankly.

“Jesus! You take idiot one with you,” he said to McFeely. “I’ll babysit idiot two.” The light changed to green and he pulled away. “And don’t let Miller get past you. Mr. Elliot would be very upset.”

“And we wouldn’t want that.” McFeely bit the inside of his cheek to prevent himself from smiling.

SARAH FOLLOWED
the train signs. She walked slowly, head down, clutching the shopping bag to her chest, feeling her heart thump solidly against the hard metal of the sword. She stopped once, popping into a shop as a pair of uniformed bobbies hurried past. Sarah ignored the ambulance and police cruiser that sped down the road, sirens blaring, probably en route to Judith Walker’s…. She found she didn’t want to think of the old woman again, because thinking of her brought back the images of the pitiful creature in the cellar. And suddenly there were tears in her eyes, the world dissolving into rainbow-hued patterns. She blinked them away, feeling the moisture trickle down her cheeks. She glanced up, but no one was looking at her except for a small child who was holding his mother’s hand. The boy smiled at her, his missing tooth punctuating his youth and innocence. She envied him. The little boy pointed at her and the mother looked up, caught Sarah’s eyes, then quickly turned away, eyes clouded with embarrassment, not wanting to get involved.

Sarah dragged her sleeve across her eyes, suddenly realizing what she must look like: wild-haired, red-eyed, dirty clothing. She was just another lost soul, one of thousands who wandered the streets. Only she was more lost than most.

Through shimmering tears, she spotted the sign for the train station and headed toward it. All she had to do was deliver the bag to Judith’s nephew, and it would all be over.

Inspector Tony Fowler was mesmerized by the bloody print on the glass. Forensics were swarming all over the crime scene, but he did not need modern technology to tell him that they would find Sarah Miller’s prints, hair follicles, and clothing fibers intermingled with the remains of Judith Walker’s bloody corpse.

“I’ve spent my life on the force, and I’ve never seen anything like it,” Fowler admitted shakily. “I’ve seen the Yorkshire Ripper’s handiwork; I was part of a special contingent of officers who went to the States in ’74 to observe the aftermath of the Ted Bundy killings firsthand. I’ve see Chinese choppings and Mafia hits, I’ve seen the aftermath of a Jamaican posse’s handiwork, I’ve cleaned up after IRA bombers…but I’ve never seen anything like that poor woman. How she must have suffered.”

Victoria Heath tipped back the plastic bottle of water and took a long swallow, trying to wash away the foul taste in her mouth. She had been a police officer for only seven years and in that time thought she’d seen everything. She was only a few years older than the Miller girl, yet they were on opposite sides of the law. Of morality. Of humanity. Because whoever did that to Judith Walker was a certified psychopath. “What would motivate someone to do that?” she asked softly. “It’s inhuman.”

“Exactly,” Tony breathed. “Inhuman. After a while the killer stops thinking of their victim as a person. It’s no longer a living human being, it’s simply an object.” The detective reached up to place his hand on the inside of the windscreen, matching the bloody print on the glass. “And once they get a taste for the kill, they can’t stop. The killings get more brutal as the killer spirals out of control.”

“But Miller seemed so…so normal.”

Fowler grunted. “So did Ted Bundy. I saw the aftermath of one of his killing sprees. He attacked four sleeping girls at Florida State University: bludgeoned two of them to death with a log of wood, battered another two until they were almost unrecognizable. Within the hour he’d beaten another girl to a pulp in an apartment a couple of blocks away. And yet everyone who knew him said what a really nice guy he was.”

“Just like Miller,” Victoria muttered.

“Just like Miller,” Fowler agreed. “At least this should be a relatively simple case. We’ve caught her red-handed.” He grimaced at the unintentional irony. “This shouldn’t have happened,” he said quietly, climbing out of the car. “We shouldn’t have left her alone in the hospital.”

“We weren’t to know.”

“We should have known,” Fowler snapped. “This is our fault. We made a mistake. And it cost this woman her life. But I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he added grimly.

“That sounds like a threat.”

“A promise.”

Sarah knew that she was not alone.

The air smelled hot, stale, and metallic in the train station…the same metallic sweetness of spilled blood. Sarah felt her gorge rise and she swallowed hard, images of wet meat appearing before her eyes, an advertisement for the Tate Gallery on the wall opposite dissolving into patterns of raw flesh.

She’d caught the flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye, and the chill autumnal air carried with it the faint stink of unwashed flesh and warm blood.

How many were there?

She dared not turn to look as she ducked into the shadows.

Next Train Two Minutes.

The train station was almost deserted, fewer than six people waiting on the platform. Sarah walked toward the far end of the platform, distancing herself from possible danger. She glanced back over her shoulder, pretending to check the electronic notice board…and spotted the two men as they stepped onto the platform. One wore his hair cropped close to his skull and was dressed in a faded army vest and combat trousers, while the second was wearing nondescript jeans and a Rolling Stones T-shirt. Sarah recognized the young man’s hair: She had seen the same mop of matted blond hair the day Judith Walker had been attacked, and again, this morning, among the group at the house. The killers.

Next Train One Minute.

She stepped back into the shadow of an arch and prayed they weren’t looking for her…but she knew they were.

Train Now Arriving…

The train appeared in the distance, clicking over the points. It seemed to take ages to reach the station, and at any moment Sarah expected to feel a hand on her shoulder either pulling her back into danger or pushing her onto the tracks toward death.

She remained motionless, barely breathing, and didn’t move as the train clattered into the station and doors hissed open almost directly opposite her. A tiny Malaysian woman stepped off, pulling a huge shopping bag behind her. A few people stepped forward onto the train: A young woman pushed a toddler into the carriage before her, then folded an enormous stroller and lifted it aboard. An elderly woman close to Judith’s age hobbled slowly aboard, leaning heavily on a cane. A tired worker in stained coveralls slipped in just behind her.

Stand Clear of the Doors.

At the last moment Sarah darted forward and onto the train, barely squeezing through as the doors hissed shut. She managed a single glance down the platform, but the two young men had vanished. Had they left the station or were they on the train? She flopped into a seat, staring straight ahead, heart thumping, chest heaving, stomach cramping. She was bathed in sour sweat, and when she rubbed her hand across her forehead, it came away greasy and stained. When she caught the grandmother staring at her with an expression of disgust, she immediately stood up and turned her back, staring intently at the map on the wall above the window. She kept glancing back down the train.

Had the two men got on? Were they even now moving toward her?

She turned back to the map, needing to work out the shortest route to Earls Court Road. If she transferred at Paddington onto the District Line, it would go directly to Earls Court. And once she had given the bag to Judith Walker’s nephew—she pulled out the envelope and checked the name and address again—she could finally go to the police. She could clear her name and move on with her life. Sinking back into a seat, she sighed. A few hours: It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.

Then it would all be over and she’d be free.