Alchemy, Book Two of the Mercian Trilogy (8 page)

Fairburn nodded, having been given approval, and said, “William of Mercia, this is your vile truth – the bloodlines of the four vampire kings meet within your person and yours alone, making you the one of whom these evil prophecies speak.” He gestured to the inscriptions on the walls around them. “That is why your mother was murdered, to ensure there would not be another to challenge your uniquely wicked claim.”

As he spoke, Fairburn began to look less solid, a thin mist emanating from him, reducing him to transparency, to vapour.

“What about my destiny? What do you know of it?”

At first it seemed there would be no reply, but at the last, Fairburn’s voice emerged from the final swirling fragments of his form.

“It is not in front of you.”

Fairburn had gone and Will was alone in the chamber. He tried to think what Fairburn might have meant by those words, trying to imagine how his destiny might be behind him rather than ahead of him. It took Will a minute or two to see a different meaning, one that was not a riddle but literal.

He turned and looked with horror at the painting in front of which he’d been standing all this time. There, among countless inscriptions, was a picture of a king sitting on a throne, and though the art was primitive, it
was undoubtedly intended to be Will’s likeness.

Surrounding him, just as they surrounded the boar’s head relief in the neighbouring chamber, forming a cross, were the four swords. Most disturbingly, the throne sat on top of a small hill, but on closer inspection, the mount revealed itself to be made of naked and mutilated bodies, blood-spattered, faces wracked with anguish and pain.

Will recoiled from it, but he was angry too. He had already been dragged down into wickedness by this sickness, but he would be dragged no further. He refused to accept that this image represented anything of his future and he strode out of the chamber – he had done evil things, but he was not evil, and evil would not, could not be his destiny.

It left him more determined than ever to press ahead. As troubled as he was by seeing his victims, as shocked by the possible truth of destroying their souls, he had to keep going or everything, including those eight hundred and forty-three deaths, would have been pointless.

With nothing more that he could do for the time being, Will simply walked, fast, exploring passage after passage until each one and the overall pattern of the labyrinth were familiar to him. There was no other feature in there and all paths led back eventually to the pentagonal chamber.

He reached it again and again, but even though he had been in the circular chamber once, he could not bring himself to walk the once-dark corridor to look at it a second time. The memories already associated with that second chamber, of the wall painting, of the soulless faces of his victims, of his mother, were still too troubling.

Yet as he stood for the last time next to the bronze relief, staring at the tunnel which had taken him there, the thought of his mother offered some reassurance. She had recognised him, had she not, suggesting her spirit had watched over him as he’d grown. And she had tried to impart some advice, even encouragement, something she surely would not have done if only evil awaited him.

Will thought of her clutching the pendant round her neck, but he had not seen the item of jewellery and could not now know what it had signified. Unless … He reached up and held the broken medallion round his own neck, wondering if this was what she’d been trying to tell him, to think on this medallion and all it promised. It was cold in his hand now, but it had been warm, and somewhere else its twin was warm against Eloise’s skin. It promised a different future to the one painted by Fairburn, and that different future was the only one Will dared imagine.

W
ill returned to the house, put the sabre back where it belonged and descended into the cellars. It was another hour before he felt that slight telltale prickling on his skin, warning him that the sun had struggled above the eastern horizon.

Now his imprisonment here was total, for the next eight hours or so anyway. He paced from cellar to cellar, trying and failing to take his mind off the needling hunger for blood that swept over him, carrying him along. It was a craving made even more unbearable by the recently rekindled memories of his many past victims.

Helen, whose name he had not known, had been taken in the late autumn of 1988, around the same time of year that he’d met Eloise. And her sacrifice had been made for what now seemed the most meagre of reasons, sustaining him only through the winter months and into the spring when he’d hibernated again.

Then he’d slept for twenty years, during which time a boy called Stephen Leonard had grown into a man,
unknowingly preparing himself for the role of Will’s next victim. Nor did it ease Will’s mind to know that the boy, Jex as he’d become, had been chosen by other forces before Will had found him.

It was painful to think back on it, and worse to know that there would be an eight hundred and forty-fourth victim, that there had to be because Will’s own spirit seemed to be gnawing away at him, crying out for the sustenance it needed.

At some point during the morning hours, he heard someone in the house above, a man, whistling as he went about his business. Will’s hunger for blood intensified and it was a relief to hear the slamming of an outer door, the removal of a temptation he could only have resisted for so long.

It felt at times as if these daylight hours would never end, and he left the cellars and the house almost as soon as darkness had fallen. The moon was already above the horizon, approaching its full state and creating a small amount of discomfort on Will’s skin, but he didn’t care, such was the liberation of being out on the frozen landscape after being trapped since the beginning of the day.

He walked about the woods for a couple of hours and once night had firmly established itself, he strolled towards the school. He knew that Eloise was busy this
evening, but he had to go, if only to see her from afar, to be near her.

Even as he came close to the school, he could hear music, but the hall it came from wasn’t visible from the outside. He returned to his usual spot, looking into the Dangrave House common room from a safe distance.

It was half empty tonight, but there was Marcus Jenkins, sitting at a table playing chess with his friend. Marcus picked up the black queen, hesitated for a moment and then used it to take one of his opponent’s pieces. His friend said something, shaking his head in irritation, but also acknowledging the skill of the move.

Marcus answered, smiling, but then turned and looked directly at Will, returning to the pattern that had been broken only the previous night outside his bedroom. It was unnerving, his eyes appearing to reach out beyond the window, and even if Marcus could only see his own reflection, Will wondered what it was exactly that he saw there.

Marcus turned away again, but it left Will uneasy, thinking back on the empty book, the sleepwalker’s stare. Marcus was Wyndham’s spy, but it was more than that, some mysterious quality that lay within the boy, something Will had sensed even the first time they’d met.

Will watched for a few moments more before heading
off into the woods that bordered the drive, exploring them for anything that might explain the attack of the previous evening. He could hear crows roosting in the branches high above him now, but they seemed to pay no attention to him, just as they had failed to notice him the night before.

By the time he headed back to the school, the night was drawing on. He came within a hundred paces of a female teacher standing by one of the doors, huddled against the cold as she whispered into a phone, talking to a boyfriend. Will caught the scent of her on the crisp air and veered to the right to escape the ever-present temptation – she was young, and healthy.

The common room was empty now and as he stood there, a male teacher came in, did a quick check of the room and turned off the light before leaving again. There were some lights on upstairs, though not Marcus’s, and the evening was drawing to a close for Marland Abbey School, just as it was beginning for Will.

He remained for a minute longer, as if the common room was still full of people, but then got the uncomfortable sense once more that someone was watching him. He looked up – the same darkened window on the top floor – making a mental note of which room it was.

He took a few more backward steps, and a little
while later, as more lights died in the windows and sleep descended, he accepted he wouldn’t see Eloise tonight. It was for the best – he worried that he was depriving her of sleep as it was. Reluctantly he turned and strolled back towards the new house, heading for the stand of trees that obscured each from the other.

And he’d almost reached the trees before he realised he was not walking alone. Silently and without ceremony, robed figures had appeared a little way to the left and right of him – two of the witches Eloise had asked about only the night before.

Will stopped and turned. Four more of the witches followed behind, but stopped now at a slight distance, their heads bowed, obscuring the absent faces.

“What do you want of me?”

At first there was no response, and when it did come, it was from behind him. “To do your duty, nothing more.”

He turned to see the seventh standing facing him, close to the trees he’d been approaching just a moment before. She alone showed her face, almost featureless, only darker shadows where her eyes and mouth had once been.

“My duty?”

“To protect.” The other six spirits had started walking towards her and left him behind now on the
frosted park. “You need the girl, and the sorcerer knows it, which is why the girl needs you.” Will was about to speak when she raised her arm, pointing past him to the school, urgent as she said, “Now, William of Mercia, she needs you now!”

He felt a sudden surge of fear for Eloise and glanced over his shoulder at the school, an ominously dark outline against the moonlight.

“She’s in danger right now?”

But when he turned back again, the spirits had gone.

He ran at full speed across the parkland, his nerves torn, fearing what he might be running towards. The spirits hadn’t intervened the previous night, an attack that had been serious enough in itself, so what was happening to Eloise now that they had felt the need to come to him?

He entered through the side door Eloise had showed him, leaping up the stairs and along the corridors with little concern for being spotted or disturbing anyone. He reached Eloise’s door, opened it, turned on the light so as not to alarm her and closed the door again as his eyes smarted.

Even when he could see, he struggled to believe what he was looking at. Eloise lay on her back, asleep, wearing a long red cotton nightshirt – but she was not on her bed, she was floating above it and moving slowly
as if drawn by a magnetic power. The window had been thrown wide open and Eloise was drifting towards it.

This wasn’t just an attempt to harm Eloise, but to kill her. If this was Wyndham’s determination, to kill Eloise, it meant that Will needed her alive to fulfil his destiny, whatever that destiny proved to be. He would not let Wyndham win, but he knew something else too, knew it in every fibre of his being – he would kill himself before he allowed any harm to come to Eloise.

This time at least he could keep her safe. He closed the window first, pulling hard, as if against another hand that was struggling to keep it open. He locked it and drew the curtains lest her light be seen from outside. Eloise seemed to stop moving as soon as the window was closed, but still she hovered shoulder-height above the bed.

Will moved his hands around her, trying to find signs of whichever force held her like that. There was nothing he could detect. He said her name quietly, moving his mouth close to her ear and saying it again, but she would not wake.

He needed to get her back on to the bed, so he placed one hand on top of her stomach, the other across her thighs and gently pressed down, once again fighting against some unseen force, but gradually winning. And all the while he was tormented, by her warmth, by the
softness of her flesh through the thin material of the nightshirt. Nor was this a longing for blood, that hunger almost disappearing when he was with her, but a longing for that other life he dreamt of.

Finally she touched the bed and the force that had held her up seemed to subside, her weight easing into the mattress. At the same time, she opened her eyes, waking. She looked up, taking a moment to register his presence, then she smiled, puzzled and bemused.

“Will? What are you doing?”

“Forgive me,” he said, taking his hands from her body. “This is not what it seems.”

She laughed and said, “Sadly, I know that to be true, but … how weird. I’ve just realised I was dreaming about you. Sorry, forget that, what are you doing here?”

“The witches came to me. They told me that Wyndham knows I need you – that’s why he’s attacking you.”

Eloise sat up in the bed. “So it
was
him last night? And by the way, it’s been the talk of the school today – sixteen dead crows found on the drive. But …” She smiled again, saying, “But just now …?”

“The window was open and you were floating towards it.”

“Floating? You mean, like levitating?”

“Yes.”

She shuddered, and said, “I don’t believe it – that’s
what I was dreaming. I dreamt you were calling from outside and I flew down to you.” She looked at the window as if finally taking in that his presence here was serious, that she had come close to being thrown to her death.

“Wyndham’s trying to kill me?” Her voice was small, laced with a fear that concerned Will because she had been so brave, so fearless until now, and he realised that he needed her bravery, even relied on it in some way.

“I won’t let that happen.” He looked around the room and took a small wind chime that she had pinned to a cork noticeboard. He tied it round the window handle and said, “Make sure you hang this here each evening. That way, if the window is opened, you’ll hear the chimes and wake.”