Wolfsbane: 3 (Rebel Angels) (5 page)

The bite marks on Lauren’s face were red and savage and magnificent, and I wasn’t planning to deny it anyway, so Marty had cornered me in my room on the pretext of giving me a
talking-to; it was more than clear – and this is how close he got – that he’d have preferred a seeing-to. I was big, mean and vicious enough now to call his bluff and scare him
off, but I knew one day he’d call my bluff right back, and I’d lose my nerve. I didn’t want to lose it at a bad moment, like when I was alone with him in the house. Like next
Friday.

I scratched the back of my neck, and turned again to look at my friend with the psychopathic eyes. It wasn’t that they made me uneasy, however hard they burned into mine. He looked
positively understanding. He was more a father figure than the real one.

And that was quite enough soul-searching for today. I shook myself and decided that what I
really
wanted now was to go to the stables.

Funny how much I wanted to get there. So much, I nearly ran.

They’d rebuilt the stone walls and the stalls, they’d put on a timber-and-turf roof and laid some hygienic-looking straw on the old cobbles, and they’d installed a couple of
ropey life-size figures in sixteenth-century fancy dress – I suspected old department store dummies – together with an unrealistic carthorse, its mane all plucked and moth-eaten.

I thought: if I do a runner, I could bunk down here. The place wouldn’t be too spooky; it wouldn’t even be that cold. And it would certainly beat The Paddocks (I ask you – in
the middle of suburbia) during Aunt Sheena’s forthcoming Girls’ Weekend Away, which would inevitably also be Groper Marty’s Boy’s Night In.

The elderly tourists were trailing into the stables now. There was no getting away from them, or indeed from the imperious little guide, who looked very much as if he was going to ask to see my
entry ticket. I sidled behind a fat man chewing a Mars bar, so that even when the guide bounced on his heels, he couldn’t catch my eye. He soon forgot about me – it was a talent of
mine, making myself unobtrusive – and launched into a long-winded drone about conditions for rural workers in the eighteenth century.

Time to go.

I wriggled through the throng towards the last row of stalls, which I happened to know backed onto the toilets, that led to the café, that was home to the fridge, that held the beers. I
nearly jumped out of my skin when I backed into a guy with wild eyes and hair like a bogbrush, until he swayed and I grabbed him and realised he was a dummy. All the same, he unnerved me, and I
suddenly needed fresh air. I steadied Bogbrush Man, put my finger solemnly to my lips, and turned towards the toilets.

I halted, amazed.

‘Shit,’ I couldn’t help exclaiming. ‘That one’s good!’

Silence fell. The guide’s jaw opened, then shut, and the tourists stared at me. With grudging admiration, I pointed at the life-size horse in the end stall.

‘Now that is clever,’ I said. ‘That is really clever.’

The guide’s face was stiff with contempt. ‘I don’t know what you…’

‘That blue one. Brilliant!’

He finally looked where I was pointing, and screamed.

The horse was blue, sort of, but that could just have been the way its pearly-opal hide caught the light. Not all of it was blue. Its face was black, and so were its mane and tail and powerful
feathered legs. It was such a bizarre colour, no wonder I’d thought it was a fake.

Because it was obvious, now, that it wasn’t. It took a violent leap forward, the bit digging into its foam-flecked mouth as it fought the blond boy on its back, who was clinging on with an
air of desperation. Abruptly the brute screamed like a demon, reared, and shot out of the stall.

I had fifteen-year-old reflexes, so I had enough presence of mind to get out of the way. The formerly catatonic tourists staggered aside, screaming and yelling and shoving each other in a
magnificently Darwinian fight for survival. Most of them went sprawling as the horse lunged forward, striking sparks from the cobbles.

I could only gaze at the chaos in admiration as the horse swerved out of control through the stable archway and into the car park. The guide’s face was the colour of wet cement, but once
he got his voice back he hung onto the door jamb and positively screamed at the boy in fury.

‘I remember you! I REMEMBER! YOU’VE GONE TOO FAR NOW! You little–! YOU–! I’ll see you PROSECUTED this time, I WILL THIS TIME. You’ve BITTEN OFF MORE THAN YOU
CAN CHEW!’

Yes, I could hear how much he’d bitten off. The car park was a chaos of noise: a ring and clatter of hooves, unearthly howls of rage, the wailing of under-fives and over-seventies.
I’ll be honest; it thrilled me to bits, like a tiny lightning bolt throwing switches as it travelled down my vertebrae. Wild excitement sang in my blood and I felt a sudden intense longing.
Crazy, really. I never got excited about anything. I prided myself on sheer insolent cool. And yet the funny thing was, I
had
to see that horse. Now.

Ignoring the bellowing guide I darted outside, then slid to a halt, staring.

The boy was clinging on for dear life, his heels clamped so hard on the horse’s flanks I wasn’t surprised it was annoyed. It was just a matter of time before its flailing hooves
started doing serious damage to the parked cars, but for now it was thrashing and plunging in the centre of the car park, spinning in a tight circle of fury as it arched its great neck and strained
to snap at its rider. The boy’s white-knuckled fingers were wound so tightly in the beast’s mane there was no way he could let himself be thrown off, or he’d be dragged by the
fingers along the tarmac. All the same his yells had an edge of excitement, and a big grin was plastered on his face.

My mouth had hung open too long for dignity, so I clamped it shut. I didn’t take my eyes off the horse, though. Now I didn’t like the look of it so much. Catching sight of me it
paused in its crazed plunging, and greenish light sparked in its blank black eye.

I said, ‘Uh-oh.’

It sprang for me, head snaking forward, its bared teeth looking very like a grin. I’d have liked to shut my eyes at this point, but as the monster came at me all I could see, between its
ears, was the white alarmed face of the boy. I knew instinctively there was no point shutting my eyes. No point moving. Slaver spattered my skin, and I smelt its hot breath, and I saw its teeth
open for my face.

And then someone stepped calmly in front of me. As he held up a hand to catch the horse’s muzzle, it skidded to a clattering halt, confused.

‘Your master is hunting for you.’ Thin and tough, the man wore ripped jeans and a scruffy t-shirt, but he had a soft voice, and his hand was light on the horse’s nose.
‘Wait for me,
eachuisge
.’ He glanced back at me.

I blinked. A sharp-boned face like a fox, wild black hair and a trimmed beard. Vicious curved scars slashed on each cheek. And a strange silver light in his brown eyes that I did not like at
all.

At last, unhurried, he looked back at the horse. ‘And leave that girl alone. She is not for you.’

The blue horse gave an eloquent snort of disgust. I watched in disbelief as the scarred man grabbed the blond boy’s wrist and dragged him roughly off it, sending him crashing to the
tarmac. That was bad enough, but I gasped in anger when he gave the boy’s ear a hard stinging flick.

‘Ow,’ said the boy without rancour, sitting up.

‘You little git. How many times you going to do this?’

Even in trouble the boy was seriously beautiful, with his penitent grey eyes, his sharp-tipped ears and his elfin face. His sun-bleached hair was unruly, curling down past the nape of his neck,
and when he blew a lock of it disconsolately off his brow, it fell straight back into his eyes. He didn’t look at the man or the sweating horse, fiddling instead with a circle of silver on
his wrist. A little silver charm hung on it, set with a lump of dull green stone.

‘Your father will want a word with you, Rory Bhan.’

The boy raised huge spaniel eyes to the man. ‘Sionnach, give us a break,’ he wheedled.

I barged forward, incredulous. ‘This guy isn’t even your dad? You could
so
take legal action.’

They stared at me in bewilderment before looking back at each other.

‘Stay
there.
’ Sionnach pointed at him as the guide came storming out of the stables towards him. ‘So help me, Rory, don’t you
move
.’

‘Where would I go? Keep your beard on.’

He’d nearly let his stupid pony run me down, but I still felt sorry for him: lonely and glum, slumped unhappily on the tarmac, waiting for Sionnach to calm the tour guide down. Maybe the
boy was traumatised by his domestically-violent carer, but it was a funny kind of nervous tic he had: picking at thin air with his fingers, tugging on nothing.

Sionnach was busy, mumbling apologetically to the guide and getting an earful of indignant abuse in return. Sighing, I glanced sympathetically at Rory, still wrapping thin air absently round his
fingers. He needed support. He needed a friend, preferably a friend with a lawyer. My eyes were so misted over with fellow-feeling, I thought I imagined it when he scuffed backwards on his bum,
winked at me, and vanished.

I started, and blinked in disbelief. He’d tugged aside a curtain and scooted behind it.

Only we were in a car park, in the breezy open air.

And there wasn’t a curtain there.

I slammed the front door and stood in Aunt Sheena’s hall: bare wood and cream sofas and the smell of polish. I had a screaming urge to get right back out of it.

Truly, a
screaming
urge. I had to hang onto the hall table to anchor myself.

Now, it’s absolutely a fact that I had no idea why I stayed. Between Sheena, Groper Marty and Lauren of the Bitten Face, it wasn’t as if I liked the company. But leaving for good
– I refused to call it
running away –
was a decision I wasn’t ready to take. Shop doorways were not my preferred sleeping place. And besides, my mother might get it into
her head to come back for me, and then how would she know where I was?

Unlikely, but possible.

I was ten when she dropped me off at The Paddocks, and my most abiding memory of that day was her desperation to get back in her boyfriend’s car. She’d checked her watch and fiddled
with her jacket and sworn she’d be back, even as I curled on the sofa and pretended I wasn’t crying. I didn’t beg, of course – begging wouldn’t have made any
difference at all – but the woman could hardly pretend I was glad to see the back of her. She couldn’t weep and wail that I’d never liked her, so she had a right to
Self-Fulfilment and the Pursuit of Love and the Road Less Travelled.

Well, to hell with her and the boyfriend both; tonight at least I had something more interesting to think about. In fact I was so preoccupied with events at the castle, I had entirely forgotten
that Sheena had told me this morning, at about ninety decibels, not to bother coming back.

‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’

I halted, foot on the bottom stair. Aunt Sheena stood at the door of her granite kitchen in tracky bottoms and a jogging bra, bared shoulders as lean and muscly as her folded arms, glossy
caramel hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her hard painted face was bright with distaste, and that expensively buffed aura of hers was not looking good.

‘Don’t you go
near
my daughter again.’

‘Nothing could make me happier.’ I smirked.

‘I’ve called the police. They’re going to come and talk to you.’

Shit. Had she? I didn’t fancy getting taken into care. Turning on the stair, I had the satisfaction of seeing Sheena blanch and take a step back. I hovered menacingly for a few seconds,
leering towards her, then laughed in her face.

She flushed angrily. ‘Oh, your father made the right decision. I told him so at the time. It was the least I could do. We were
good friends,
you know what I mean?’

‘What?’ My guts went cold, and my brain swam.

And then my brain righted itself, and I thought:
she’s lying
. I don’t know how I could be so sure, but I was; the horror evaporated. I grinned. ‘Would my father not
have you?’

The blood drained out of Sheena’s cheeks. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I accept your apology.’ The grin stayed put on my face. ‘Did he not fancy you? Would he not give you a fu–’

‘Get. Out.’
Sheena could barely speak. ‘Before I
hit you
.’

‘In your dreams.’ My face twisted unpleasantly.

I stalked back out of the front door with an air of world-weariness, refusing to bolt despite the assault on my eardrums.
When your cousin comes tomorrow,
I made out through the
incoherent screaming,
when Shania gets back with Darryl, she’ll sort you out. She’ll know what to do about you, you little REJECT.
Right: in her dreams and all. Older and even
fouler than her little sister, Shania still knew better than to mess with me.

‘And you can sleep
in the gutter
as far as I’m concerned.’ With Sheena’s final flourish, the door slammed behind me, and despite my fury I felt a shiver of
unease.