Wild Blue Yonder (The Ceruleans: Book 3) (24 page)

After sending a one-word text to Jude –
Alley
– I
followed Sienna across the heaving dance floor. She moved quickly, impatiently,
and I struggled to keep up in my heels. It was a familiar scenario – Sienna
striding ahead, me hurrying along in her shadow. How quickly we’d fallen back
into our old roles: she the wolf, me the sheep. I thought I’d given up being a
sheep this past year. I thought I’d developed moxie.

So what the hell are you doing following her?
some
angry part of me yelled.

Because I had to. Because everything was a mess, and I
didn’t know up from down, and if whatever we were rushing towards would bring
some answers, I was impelled, like a homing missile locked on its target, to go
there.

Sienna stopped at the door in the far corner which, I knew,
led into the alley behind the club. She turned to check I was behind her and I
had a flashback to last summer, when I’d looked across this crowded room and
seen a vision of my sister standing right under the FIRE EXIT sign, right where
she was now.

Not a vision, I realised now. She’d been there. She’d really
been there. And she’d walked away from me.

How? Why?

A wave of pain rose up inside me, but there was no time to
feel: already Sienna had turned away, opened the door and disappeared into the
alley.

I hurried forward, pushing past a gyrating girl.

‘Hey!’ she shouted, and shoved me so that I staggered.

I righted myself and went to move on, but a hand in my hair
hauled me back. I grabbed my hair at the root to cut off the pain, and then
sent an elbow sharply back into my attacker’s ribs.

The girl howled and let go of my hair.

I didn’t bother to turn and look at her. I steamed to the
exit door, which had slammed shut in Sienna’s wake, shoved the bar to open it
and flung myself outside.

I half-expected to be met by a deserted alley. After all,
last time I’d seen my sister at this club, she’d been gone once I got outside.
But there she was, standing motionless by a large industrial bin and bathed in the
red of a flickering wall light.

‘Sienna…’ I began, but she paid me no attention. Her gaze
was fixed on something behind me, and I swung around to see what had her gripped.

Jude. He was standing at the entrance to the alley, eyes
locked on Sienna.

For a moment, we were frozen in time, the sisters and the
one who’d been there for them both. And then Sienna turned and ordered ‘Follow
me’ and strode off down the alleyway.

Jude began walking, never taking his eyes off her, and when
he reached me I think he’d have walked right by if I hadn’t stepped in front of
him to stop him.

‘Sienna,’ he said. ‘Sienna!’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I did the whole “Hooray, we found her bit”
too. Only according to Sienna, she doesn’t want to be found.”

‘What?’ Jude eyes snapped to mine at last.

By the time I’d finished the potted account of my sisterly
reunion in the VIP room, he was grim-faced. He turned to my sister, who had
stopped at the end of the alley and was watching us, arms folded.

‘Sienna,’ he called to her, but before he could say any more
she’d turned and walked out of sight into the adjoining alley. ‘This is wrong,’
he said. ‘Something’s wrong. This isn’t her, I
know
it.’

‘What do we do?’

He said nothing, but he started walking again, deeper into
the shadows of the alley, and for want of a better option, I followed.

When we rounded the corner, I had a very disturbing moment
of déjà-vu. Last summer, in this alley I’d found one of the Fallen, Daniel,
holding some poor bloke against the wall by his throat. Now, in this alley Jude
and I found one of the Fallen, Daniel, holding some poor bloke against the wall
by his throat. Only this time, Sienna was standing by, not ten feet away,
looking on and… was that a smile on her face?

Horror rooted me to the spot, but it propelled Jude
forwards. ‘Get off him! Get off him!’ he shouted as he ran.

The captive man was crimson-faced, but he wasn’t struggling.
Given his age (his hair was grey) and his physique (slight – wasted, even), I
doubted there was any fight in him.

Jude had lurched to a halt by Daniel. For a moment, as his
hands reached out, I thought he meant to grab Daniel, fight him. But it was the
old guy he grabbed hold of. ‘You can’t kill him,’ he told Daniel. ‘I won’t let
you! Whatever you do, I’ll heal it.’

‘Good versus bad, eh, Jude? A battle of the lights? He’s not
worth it, this one.’ Daniel thrust his forearm forward hard, and the man’s eyes
bulged horribly.

‘Stop!’
yelled Jude, and I saw blue leaking from his
hands, which were gripping the man’s arm.

Daniel smiled and relieved some of the pressure, and his
captive gulped in air with rasping breaths.

‘You can let go, Jude,’ said Sienna. ‘Daniel’s not going to
kill him.’

I thought Jude would never let go of that man, but he did
then, without question. He believed Sienna. As the old man slumped in relief
that this would not, after all, be the day he was murdered in a dingy alley,
Jude walked quickly to Sienna. He stopped when he could look her right in the
eye. She met his glare unflinchingly.

‘What is this, Sienna?’

‘This is my world. The one I chose. Not Cerulea. Not you.’

‘But you don’t need to choose it
now
. You can come
with Scarlett and me.’

‘Three’s a crowd, Jude.’

‘
What? No, Sienna. You know what I said to you, that
last night, the night you –’

‘The night I died in the water. With
Daniel
. Yes,
Jude, I remember your last words to me.’

‘Then you know –’

‘I know I made the right choice when I chose the Fallen.’

‘For Scarlett! But she’s safe now! She can Travel; no one
can hold her against her will. Come with us, and I’ll teach you to –’

‘To Travel?’ Sienna’s voice was cruel, mocking. ‘Oh, Jude,
really…’

She was gone.

Daniel laughed, and Jude began looking all about
frantically, and then there she was, behind him, saying, ‘See?
Not
captive. I chose the Fallen, and I choose them still.’

I’d been silent, a spectator, locked on Jude and Sienna,
Sienna
and Jude
, and flooded with new understanding. But my sister’s little
display jolted me into a more pressing realisation.

‘You can Travel.’

The alley fell silent. All eyes turned to me. Her eyes. The
green I saw when I looked in the mirror.

‘All this time. All the grieving and the worrying about you.’

My voice was all wrong, trembling and thick, and it was
terrible to be in this place, with these people, saying these words, choking on
tears, but I had to – I had to get this horror out of me.

‘You could have come to me. You could have come to me at any
time. But you didn’t. You left me. You left me thinking you were dead. You left
me thinking you were lost. You left me. You left
us
.’

My sister didn’t move towards me. She didn’t move at all.
She just stood there, watching me struggle, and that made me cry all the more.
The last words I managed before I couldn’t speak for sobs weren’t for me, but
for our mother:
‘You broke her heart!’

Jude moved away from Sienna then, to me, and he put his arm
around me.

‘She’s right, Sienna,’ he said, and his anger vibrated
through me. ‘What were you thinking? You must have known what we’d think –
disappearing that night and then nothing from you, no contact at all.’

‘It was for the best. Scarlett has you, you have her, and
you both have your innocent little world and your nice little happy-ever-after.
I don’t fit into that. I’m with
them
!’ She pointed at Daniel and the
man, still pinned against the wall.

‘No,’ said Jude. ‘You’re
not
one of them. You’re
better than them.’

It all happened so fast. One minute Sienna was halfway along
the alley, hands on hips, glaring down Jude; the next she was at the far end –
the opposite end to us – with Daniel, with the old man.

Daniel dropped his arm, and stood back.

The old man lurched forwards.

Sienna shoved him back, hard, against the wall.

Blue light drove away the darkness.

Sienna’s hands on the man’s chest.

Blue.

Jude began running, and at first I didn’t understand why.
She was healing the man; that’s what it looked like. But then I saw: the man’s
face was going slack, his arms were drooping at his sides, his eyes were
dimming. And even as Jude was still sprinting, screaming
‘NO!’
, my
sister thrust the old man away from her as if he were a piece of trash, and he
impacted, hard, with the ground.

He lay still. Very still.

Jude threw himself down and slapped his hands onto the man’s
chest right where Sienna’s had just been.

Sienna looked down on her victim, her face a mask of grim
satisfaction.

Daniel flicked his eyes skyward and muttered something under
his breath.

As for me, I fell to my knees and I stared at the corpse and
I let the terrible truth spill out of me:

‘My sister’s a murderer.’

And then – and then I wasn’t in that alley any more, I was
someplace else, separate, detached. Watching a scene play out that couldn’t be
from my life, just couldn’t be.

Jude: No, no, no, no.

Scarlett: My sister’s a murderer.

Daniel: Jude, it’s no good. Save your strength.

Jude: He has to live. He has to.

Scarlett: My sister’s a murderer.

Sienna: Scarlett…

Daniel: Jude, he’s gone. You can’t heal him.

Jude: I won’t let you do this. Breathe, dammit!

Scarlett: My sister’s a murderer.

Sienna: Shush.

Daniel: Jude, let go. He’s gone. You know that, mate.

Jude: Don’t you ‘mate’ me!

Daniel: Easy now…

Scarlett: My sister’s a murderer.

Sienna: Snap out of it, Scarlett.

Jude: Get off me!

Daniel: Jude, I’m not going to let you punch me. That’s
not you.

Jude: And killing isn’t her!

Sienna: ‘Her’ makes her own choices, thank you.

Jude: That’s not a choice! That’s murder!

Scarlett: My sister’s a murderer.

Sienna: Quit it, Scarlett!

Jude: Why should she? That’s what you are now, Sienna.

Sienna: You know what? Fine. You want to think of me that
way? Fine.

Scarlett: You shall not kill. You’re damned. Damned now.

Sienna: Perfect. I see our great-gran’s been busy
brainwashing you too.

Jude: What?

Sienna: Oh, did she not mention that?

Daniel: Sienna…

Sienna: Your dear, blessed, butter-wouldn’t-melt
Evangeline isn’t just THE Mother, you know. She’s our grandfather’s mother.’

Jude: You’re lying.

Sienna: Am I? Go ask her then, Jude. Ask her what became
of her son, Peter. Ask her why he hated her so much he ran away and married a
human girl and lived out his days shut up in a house on a cliff, hiding from
everything he was.’

Daniel: Sienna…

Sienna: Ask my great-grandmother who exactly the Fallen
are, and why Gabriel left her, left Cerulea.

Daniel: That’s enough.

Sienna: Ask her why she was so desperate for me and
Scarlett to join her little baby club.

Daniel: Sienna! Stop it. Now.

Scarlett: I can’t be here. I can’t look at her. Jude.
Please.

Sienna: Go then. Run along. Off you go, do your GOOD
works. You don’t belong here. You don’t belong anywhere near me.

Jude: Take my hand, Scarlett. There’s nothing for us
here.

Sienna: Go on, sis. And don’t ever look back.

Scarlett: Sis.

Sienna: What?

Scarlett: You called me sis.

Sienna: So?

Scarlett: You don’t get to call me that.

Sienna: Whatever, Scarlett. Just go.

Scarlett: I will go. We will go.

Sienna: Then –

Scarlett: We will go. But first, for the first time in
your life, Sienna Elle Blake, you will stand there and you will listen. You
will STAND THERE AND YOU WILL LISTEN TO ME. Because I am not your pathetic
little sis any more. You don’t get to call me that. You don’t get to call me
that ever again.

When we were kids, and we played together in the
forget-me-nots, and we protected each other, and we fought for each other, and
you called me Lettie and I called you Enna – then I was your sister. Now, I am
nothing to you. Nothing. You have made that clear.

I am not your sister. Because a sister is someone you
love and respect and worry about. Not someone you abandon. Not someone you hurt.
Not someone you lead to a dark alleyway and make watch while you commit MURDER.

I am not your sister. And you are not my sister. My
sister committed suicide last April. My sister was lost in the sea. My sister
is stone-cold dead, and she is never, SHE IS NEVER, coming back.

Jude: Scarlett, take my hand.

Scarlett: Get me out of here. Now.

Sienna: Scar–

Jude took us to the living room of the apartment. But all
the normality there was unbearable. ‘Can’t breathe,’ I told him between gasps.
‘No air.’

So we Travelled to the beach. He sat me down gently on the
sand, looking out to sea, but I didn’t let go of him, I clung on with shaking
hands, and he let me, sitting right against me, his arms wrapped around me
tightly, his shuddering breath warm on my cheek.

We sat for a long time, until the surf crashing on the beach
brought an even rhythm to our breathing, until the cold night blew away the
tremors, until all that remained of our tears was the taste of salt on the
lips.

‘Come on,’ said Jude at last. ‘Let’s go home.’

‘Home?’

He sighed. ‘Home for tonight – the apartment. It’s freezing.
We’re exhausted. We need to sleep.’

‘I need to sleep,’ I said.

*

I dreamt the man in the alleyway was resurrected as a
zombie, and he was chasing me around Club Infinity with a machete.

Jude shook me awake. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘Just a dream.’

*

I dreamt a tiger was mauling me, ripping into me with tooth
and claw, and my sister was looking on and smiling.

Jude shook me awake. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘It’s not
real. You’re safe here.’

*

I dreamt my mother and Luke and Cara were in St Mary’s
church, dressed in black and sobbing over a coffin in which a body lay, a body
dressed in my favourite jeans and shirt, and with long blond hair just like
mine, only where there should have been a face there was a swirling black
vortex from which an evil voice called, ‘Scarlett, Scarlett, Scarlett, what did
you do?’
and I screamed at it, ‘Nothing! I stood by and did nothing!’
and the devil laughed and commanded, ‘Then down you come, little sis.’

Jude shook me awake. ‘Scarlett,’ he said. ‘Shush. Shush. I’m
here.’

‘I can’t take any more,’ I sobbed.

‘It’s okay.’

‘It’s not okay.’

‘No, it’s not okay. But you’ll be okay.’

‘Please don’t go.’

‘I won’t go.’

He lay down on top of the covers and I turned away and he
held me.

*

When I woke it was morning and I was alone in the room at
the top of the penthouse. I could hear Jude downstairs in the kitchen, the
chink of china, the whistle of the tap. I got up quietly – I wanted time alone
for now – and moved to sit on the sofa at the window. I stared out at a blue
sky fragmented with grey clouds. And I thought.

Sienna. The Fallen.

Jude. The Ceruleans.

Luke. Twycombe.

Me. Who I was. Who I wasn’t.

I thought until I could push past all the anger and hurt of
yesterday, until all the confusion and indecision of the past months fell away,
until my head was clear and focused. I thought until the blessed realisation
struck that I didn’t need to think any longer, because I knew – I
knew
in some powerful, centred place inside, I
knew
with an unshakeable faith
the like of which I’d never experienced before – I knew what to do.