Alchemy, Book Two of the Mercian Trilogy (16 page)

Higson looked bewildered, but said, “Yes, yes, I know that.”

“Good.”

Will left by the same door and headed back across the park to the new house. He would call a taxi from there. He had no family, not any more, but he had described Eloise as his family earlier, and it was true in one sense at least, because she was the first person in over seven centuries for whom he would be prepared to die, and the
first for whom he would be prepared to kill in anger. His words to Higson had been a promise, and not intended for Higson alone.

A
s Rachel had promised, The Whole Earth was closed for the day and Will couldn’t make himself heard at the front of the property. He made his way to the back and as he walked past the kitchen window, Chris saw him and waved, then came to the door to let him in.

As he opened the door, he met Will’s concerned expression with a smile and said, “She’s fine. Rachel’s with her. She slept all night and most of today, then woke a couple of hours ago and she’s been talking.”

“The trauma has left her?”

Chris looked hesitant, but said, “It’s early days. I think she’ll recover, but she still looks … I don’t know, like someone recovering from a fever or something, you know, like she’s had the stuffing knocked out of her.”

“May I go up?”

“Of course. She’s in the guest room – you’ll probably hear Rachel.”

Will walked through and climbed the stairs, picking
up Rachel’s voice immediately, then perhaps a single word from Eloise. As he got closer he could hear Rachel more clearly, saying, “Oh, this was a favourite of mine …”

She started to read, poetry – Byron, he thought. He stood outside the door and listened as she finished, lulled by Rachel’s beautiful, slightly musical reading voice.

Will knocked and opened the door. He couldn’t help notice, and was stung by it, that Eloise recoiled in fear for just a moment before realising it was him and smiling.

She was sitting up in bed in borrowed nightclothes. Rachel was sitting on the bed next to her. There was a chair beside the bed and Will walked over and sat on it as he said, “You’re feeling better?”

Eloise smiled again, but looked groggy as she said, “I don’t know that I’ve been ill. I just feel like I’ve woken up after a really long sleep, like I’m still only half awake.”

“You had a terrible shock,” said Rachel. “But your mind’s probably blocking it – that’s why you feel confused.” She stood up, leaving the anthology of poetry behind as she said, “I’ll go and make that tea.”

She left the room and Eloise said, “Chris said you saved me.”

“Not really, and I shouldn’t have endangered you in
the first place. You were trapped, that was all, and I broke down the wall to get you out.”

He suddenly realised she was making as little eye contact with him as one of Wyndham’s disciples. But she turned and looked at him directly now as she said, “I remember what I saw, Will. I haven’t told Rachel and Chris because it’ll just confuse them and make them suspicious. But I do remember.”

“Make them suspicious? But why, what did you see?”

“I saw you, Will, I saw you.” Her eyes were pleading now, wanting him to reassure her in some way, but he couldn’t imagine how seeing him might have traumatised her like that.

“I was on the other side of the wall, you know that. Anything you saw inside that chamber wasn’t real, it was created by Wyndham. If he showed me dead or injured, that’s just his attempt to weaken you.”

“No, it wasn’t that. You weren’t hurt. I mean …” It looked for a moment as if the vision had flashed back into her memory and she had to steel herself before continuing. “I know it was probably Wyndham’s work, and I know I should ignore it because it’s lies, but it looked so real, felt real. It was you as you’ll become, when you achieve your destiny. And it was frightening, really frightening.”

“It was a lie,” said Will. “He knows nothing of me or
my destiny, and you will never have reason to be afraid of me.”

“I know that.”

How could she know that? She had known him weeks and had seen only the better part of him. She wanted to believe in him, he understood that much, but something of what she’d seen in those tunnels had shaken her belief.

Will shook his head, and said, “No, you don’t know that, neither of us do – how can I know what my destiny will mean for me? What will become of me? If you saw me a devil, then perhaps a devil is what I will become.”

“That’s impossible,” she said, suddenly full of conviction.

“It is possible – if it was not, you wouldn’t have been so disturbed by the vision he put before you. It serves neither of us to pretend it couldn’t happen – vigilance is the only way of ensuring that it doesn’t.” Eloise looked downcast, but then he said, “Wyndham has already tried to harm you, and now he has tried to poison your thoughts, as he will no doubt do again. The only thing I ask is that you think on the witches. Have they not always put your interests first? They didn’t want you to go to Puckhurst, remember? They alerted me to the attempt on your life just the other night. They have
questioned my loyalty too, but have they ever warned you to stay away from me?”

Eloise smiled and looked up, reaching at the same time for her pendant, panicking when she realised it was gone. She looked on the bedside cabinet, on the bedclothes around her.

“Where’s my pendant? Did I lose it in the tunnels?”

“Not that I remember.” He heard Chris and Rachel coming up the stairs and along the landing, and as they came into the room, Eloise looked ready to jump out of bed in a frenzy.

“What happened to my pendant, do you know?”

Rachel was carrying a tea tray. She smiled and said, “Don’t worry, I’ve got it. You were having some sort of nightmare while you were sleeping and you tore it off. I put a new leather strap on it.”

She put the tea tray down on the bed and crossed the room to a tall, narrow chest of drawers. She opened the top one, took the pendant out and brought it back to Eloise.

Eloise looked at it, checking nothing was wrong, then slipped it back over her head. She looked immediately relieved to be wearing it again, the significance of having torn it from her neck apparently passing her by.

Will understood the action perfectly. He’d described Wyndham as having tried to poison her thoughts, and
realised now that he’d already succeeded. Yes, Eloise had come back to him, the attack had not been fatal to their relationship, but a small stubborn residue of that poison remained, just enough that it would be harder for her to be certain of him in future. She didn’t know it, but she would be always watchful, looking for signs of the evil that might be within him.

Chris was standing at the bottom of the bed and now he said, “You’re looking much better. How do you feel?”

Eloise smiled, once again a schoolgirl, embarrassed by all the fuss. “I feel fine, honestly. I’ll go back tomorrow, if that’s OK with you. I mean, I don’t want you to close the café or anything.”

“Not at all. When do you want to go back?”

“In the morning?”

“Well, we don’t open until ten, so we could take you back before that without having to close.”

“Great.” She smiled, and glanced awkwardly at Will. He knew what she’d done, choosing to return in daylight, and could hardly blame her for wanting to go back without him. He smiled back, letting her know that it didn’t matter, that he understood. She looked helpless and a little ashamed in response, but he could offer her no other reassurance.

Rachel said, “What about you, Will? When can we take you back?”

“Please, don’t worry about me. I have some things to attend to here in the city. I’ll go back late tomorrow night, but I’ll take a taxi – one driver in particular is becoming quite used to me.”

They laughed, and so did Eloise in a distracted way, and she looked surprised when Will stood.

“In fact, I will need to go now.” He reached for Eloise’s hand, but she instinctively withdrew it. Then she caught herself and held him, her fingers warm, a warmth which had made him feel alive, but which now made him feel all the more dead and frozen. “I’ll be back too late to see you tomorrow, I suspect, but the next night?”

“Of course.”

He nodded and Chris said, “I’ll see you out.”

As they walked down the stairs, Will said, “Try, if you can, to find out where Wyndham lives. He’s a mortal man, whatever his powers, so he must live somewhere.”

“I’ll try, but he seems to be an expert at keeping under the radar.”

“Perhaps if you check which buildings are owned by The Breakstorm Trust – he might use that as a way of concealing where he lives.”

“I’ll do that. You’re sure you don’t want a lift tomorrow night? If it’s late, the café will be closed anyway.”

“It might be even later than that, but I prefer to go
alone when I can – I will no doubt call on you enough in the months ahead.”

Chris nodded, and then as they reached the back door, he said, “Don’t take it personally. You know, Eloise being a bit awkward around you all of a sudden – she’s had a shock, that’s all.” Will smiled and Chris laughed as he said, “Of course, how stupid – I’m giving relationship advice to someone who’s seven hundred years older than me.”

“Not stupid at all,” said Will. “Goodnight to you.”

And he left and walked the streets for a little while before heading to the cathedral. It was cold again and the shelter was recruiting – he saw the same young woman who this time offered him a friendly wave, but didn’t speak. Perhaps it was less cold and there would be potential victims, but he did not want to feed; he wanted the hunger to consume him.

There was destiny, and the centuries of leading up to this point, but Will couldn’t help but think that the best thing for Eloise would be if he took to the earth now and rose again after she’d died. Yes, her own destiny might be thwarted in the process, but she would lead a short, happy life and marry someone and have children, and remember these past weeks as if they’d been a dream.

But he could not go back to the earth, it wasn’t within his power to choose, and so he would keep going until
this had come to a conclusion of one kind or another. He would spend the rest of the night and the following day in his chambers.

He’d go back to Marland as soon as it got dark. He’d told her otherwise only to excuse her the obligation of having to meet him that evening. Nor did he want to meet with Eloise. If he wanted to talk to anyone now, it was Marcus Jenkins.

H
e didn’t have the taxi drive him up to the new house but had him stop on the road nearby. It was just after five and Will preferred to be cautious, allowing for the possibility of some caretaker or other being there late into the afternoon.

But the house was in darkness as he approached. He made his way to the side of the building, but as soon as he opened the door, he realised someone was inside. He could pick up the scent on the air and then, as he hesitated near the door, he heard a voice.

He walked slowly through the rooms, and as he neared the large room that now served as the gift shop, Will spotted a torch beam and realised there was only one person, and that he was talking and laughing to himself as he went about his business.

Will stood to the side of the door and looked into the room, ready to step back out of sight, and out of harm’s way, if the torch beam moved in his direction. It was a boy of sixteen or seventeen, dressed in dark clothes,
including a dark woollen hat pulled down far enough that only a little of his hair was visible from behind.

Will wondered how he’d got here, whether perhaps there was a bike left nearby, because he had to have come from one of the nearby villages, or from the outskirts of the city itself. A bike seemed most likely because as the boy looked through the items on display, he took only those small enough to fit into the bag he was carrying.

He was robbing the place, that had been immediately apparent. The cash till had been opened, the tray thrown aside on to the floor, though Will knew no money was left in there during the closed season. Now he was helping himself to various cheap souvenirs, perhaps unaware that the house contained many more valuable items.

The boy was mumbling to himself, laughing at some private joke. He reached a table laid out with various books for sale and tipped it over without looking at any of the volumes that fell to the floor in a small avalanche of pages. He moved to look at another display and the torch beam jumped towards the doorway. Will stood back against the wall, but his mind and body were racing against each other now, both heading towards the same conclusion.

His body told him that this was someone young and healthy, his blood carrying enough life force to last for
months, even in these heightened times. Will’s hunger intensified, the need feeling all the greater now that there was a potential way of feeding it.

His thoughts tumbled over each other too because this was a perfect victim. Yes, he probably had a family and would be missed in that sense, but what were the chances that he would have told anyone he was coming here to commit a crime? And if he had told anyone, wasn’t it even less likely that they would reveal as much to the police?

Will could feed on this boy. He would be just one more of those many young people to walk out on an unprivileged life, to disappear without trace. People might search for him, but it was unlikely they would search for him here.

The boy headed to the door, but stopped as he got there and turned round to take one more look at the gift shop. Will took the opportunity to step out from the doorframe and stand behind him. The boy was looking at the wreckage, pleased with himself.

He produced one last little laugh at that private joke of his and turned directly into the path of Will’s gaze. There was a moment of shock, of terror, as if he understood intuitively that this was about more than being discovered in the act of committing a crime, and then he was locked in and the torch dropped to the floor.

Will took the boy’s gloved hands and lowered him until he was sitting on the floor, looking baffled, as if he couldn’t think why he’d decided to sit down, only that he had. Will knelt down beside him, pulled off the gloves, pushed up the sleeves on the boy’s top.