Desolation (21 page)

The path curved slowly around to the left and became more overgrown. Fresh leaves scattered the ground, just visible in the fading light, and Cain smelled the sap of recently broken stems. The stench of dog shit came to him, and a second later he saw a glistening footprint in the center of a huge dog turd.

“Peter!” he called again.

Cain heard footsteps behind him. They ran in concert with his own. Stopping suddenly, he crouched down. The footsteps stopped as well, but it took one or two extra paces for their owner to react. Peter was ahead of him, and now someone was following on.

A
swish
marked the passage of something through the air just above him. He glimpsed only a shadow against the darkening sky, moving quickly across the narrow path, and it was impossible to distinguish its shape.

As if frustrated by the long pause, the footsteps behind him recommenced, slower this time and more cautious.

Cain ran.
A trap
. Peter had led him into a trap, a network of paths and alleys they had not used on their journey to the pub, dark places, narrow places, and now that he was totally lost the trap
would spring and he would be caught within its as-yet-unseen jaws. What those jaws would do to him—hold or chew—he had no wish to find out.

“Stop!” The voice came from behind, and Cain had no intention to obey. He was scared and excited at the same time—scared that they were closing in on him at last, and excited because he did not truly believe that they would hurt him. Not after what Peter had said. They were weird, they were strange, perhaps they were not even wholly human. But they were not murderers.

Vlad?

Cain shook his head and ran on. There was no point calling ahead at Peter now. If the landlord was going to stop at his behest, he would have done so, and Cain had no wish to reveal himself to his pursuer more than he already had. He came to a junction in the path, one way leading back to a main road, the other plunging into a confusion of allotments and houses. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, not concentrating at all, letting his mind wander until it pictured Peter taking the path toward the road. Cain smiled, pleased that he would soon be somewhere where there were other people.

The footsteps were gaining, a shape flitted by above him again, much closer than before, and this time he caught the scent of honey. Sister Josephine's magic cream. The main road felt like the safest place to be.

The path to the road was maybe two hundred paces long, overhanging with plants and obscured here and there by collapsed timber fences where undergrowth had weighed them down. As Cain be
gan running, a shadow occluded the far end, blocking off his line of sight to the main street. The shadow moved quickly toward Cain, and the footsteps came from behind as well, closer and closer and never letting up.

He was trapped, caught in front and from behind.

Maybe this is it
, Cain thought, but even then he did not truly fear for his life.
Vlad, there was dead Vlad, but he was something totally different. He did not know the Way
. The implied admission in that thought shocked him, scaring him more than the shape rushing at him along the path.

“Cain!” the shape shrieked, and it was Peter, his voice high-pitched with terror, pleading, and maybe warning as well.

“Peter? What—”

“Cain! Stop!” Cain spun around as his pursuer finally caught up with him. Magenta! But not the Magenta he had met before, nor had he ever imagined her like this. Her leather trousers and jacket gleamed where they caught street light, and her black T-shirt was stretched across breasts much smaller than he remembered. Even in the dusky light of the overgrown path he could see that she was taller than before, leaner, and her hair was now long and blond. Her face had changed, too, in some subtle way that he would have put down to weight loss had it not been only days since he had last seen her. The eyes were the same. Perhaps, windows to the souls that they were, she could never change her eyes. On her belt he saw the handles of knives, the tips of throwing stars, and the dull black butt of a pistol.

Magenta the impersonator faced him down, sweating slightly from the exertion.

“Cain,
please
!” Peter said. Cain turned to Peter, and over the running man's shoulders he saw something else at the end of the path. Something impossible. It was a dog, but the largest he had ever seen. Easily five feet tall at the shoulders. Big head, wide jaws, and eyes that glittered with fury. Even at that distance, Cain could make out the eyes.

It ran.

“Cain!”
Peter threw the photograph album, and Cain plucked it from the air. The landlord's face was filled with dread and loss, terror and sadness, and Cain took one uneasy step toward him.

“No!” Magenta said, and she shoved Cain along the path leading into the allotments.

“I'm sorry, Cain!” Peter shouted. “I should have told you everything.”

Cain stumbled for the first few paces and then found his footing. He glanced back just in time to see the huge dog leap on Peter's back.

“Peter! We have to—”

“No,” Magenta said again. Her fingers bit into his shoulder and pushed him along, but Cain could not help but look.

Peter screamed. It was a long, high cry, and it surprised Cain so much because everything about today was secret. He had that unshakable feeling, the sense that all of this was taking place below the surface of understanding, somewhere darker than these alleys and much less known. He was certain that even if people heard the scream they would attribute
it to children playing, or someone's TV turned up too loud. And when a gardener next came along this path, he would see—

The dog clasped its jaws around the back of Peter's neck and bit hard. It shook its head, raked at the fallen man's back with its claws, growling and salivating and crunching its teeth into gristle and bone. Cain thought he heard a whisper from the dying man: “George.” But it may have been air escaping his shredded lungs, or the sound of clasping plants scraping along Cain's own clothing.

A second later, the path curved and they lost sight of Peter. But he was not out of mind.

And when that gardener came, he would see a splash of blood and imagine it to be evidence of a cat's nighttime kill.

No!
Cain tried to drive his visions away. He wanted to ignore them, he hated the Way, despised Pure Sight, but right then he knew things he should not, and he could not control that. He knew the pain and terror in Peter's mind, the sensation of his spine and ribs being splintered from behind, the dog's claws raking flesh from his legs, its jaws grinding to gain a better purchase on the back of his neck. Cain cried out and closed his eyes, but he saw the bloodied mud in front of Peter's face and felt the last ragged breath leaving his body in a cry of pain and total, utter betrayal:
“George . . .”

“Come on!” Magenta snapped. She slapped Cain's face. He dropped the album and bent to pick it up, and Magenta slapped him again. “Come
on
!” She led them through the allotments, across small streets that Cain had never seen, and all the while
something was following them. It darted across the open sky, leaned out from behind chimneys, squatted down on rooftops, giggling, laughing as they passed by.

“Ignore her,” Magenta said.

“Her?”

“I think you know by now. Stop doubting yourself.”

“Sister Josephine.” He looked up as they ran along the next street and there she was, sitting astride the ridge of a roof, smiling down at them. Her habit flowed about her, her wimple catching the sinking sun's light, and a second after Cain saw her she slipped from view behind the house and rose again into the sky, little more than a shadow.

“I'm seeing things,” he said, “it's my imagination.” But he knew that was not the case.

“Did you imagine the dog tearing Peter to sheds?”

“George?”

“George.”

“You. Your weapons. You have a gun and knives—why didn't you use them? Who the hell are you today?”

Magenta slowed and glanced over her shoulder, and her eyes would have told the truth even had she not spoken. “Your savior.”

They ran on. Sister Josephine no longer seemed to be following, although Cain still scanned rooftops for her telltale shadow. He also kept glancing behind, expecting to see the mad dog on their trail, running them down and doing to them what it had
done to Peter. He was terrified. This was as real and bloody as his life had ever been, and his senses were in overload.

Now they
are
murderers
, he thought.
George—or whatever George is—is a murderer
. What he had just witnessed cast a whole new light on the night he had followed George into the garden. But he had heard the others laughing at him, mocking him, and he wondered whether Magenta had been one of them. Magenta as she was then, at least.

Magenta led them left and right, through streets and alleys, gardens and parks. She ran like an athlete, her movements spare and assured, her body comfortable with the exertion. She was little more than a shadow herself, and he almost lost her a few times. But she was always waiting around the next corner.
She
never lost him. By the time they slowed to a fast walk, it was dark. The sky was clear, the moon was half full, and starlight bathed them.

“Are we going back to the house?” Cain asked, gasping for breath. It was the first time he had spoken in half an hour, and even then Magenta seemed disinclined to answer. But he persisted, grasped her shoulder and spun her around. She snorted, and he gasped; he felt such power in her knotted muscles, so much potential. And as her eyes bore into him, he withered beneath their gaze.

“Where else would you have me take you!”

“Magenta, I don't know what's happening here. I have no idea! I've just seen a man killed by a . . . a whatever. George? A dog? I'm so confused! Please, don't take it out on me. I need your help.”

“Face up to your fucking life and you'll help
yourself.” She looked over Cain's shoulder, making sure they had not been followed. Even though her eyes were wide and her breath came in harsh gasps, she seemed unafraid. That, at least, was a comfort. Cain looked again at her tooled-up belt and wondered whether he had any choice but to obey her. She was his savior, but he'd had little say in the matter.

“I've been trying to do that ever since I came here,” Cain replied. “And you . . .
all
of you have been trying to drive me out.”

Magenta raised her eyebrows and held her breath. “You really think that?”

“Yes!”

She stared at him as if examining a curiosity. Then she shook her head and turned away.

“Wait!”

“Come on,” she said. “I'll take you back to my place. They won't do anything while you're there. Not that I believe George would ever touch you anyway, even when he's . . .” She trailed off, leaving so much unsaid.

“George just killed Peter, and you're going to go home? What about the police?”

“We're beyond all that,” Magenta said quietly. She stopped again and turned, held Cain by the shoulders so that she could stare him straight in the eyes. He found it extremely disconcerting and yet he was mesmerized, held there by the budding understanding that she was as different to him as George, Whistler, and Sister Josephine. This Magenta exuded danger in rich, red waves.

“You've changed,” he said.

“It's what I do. It's what happens to me along the Way. Now listen, Cain, and listen well. I like you. I liked you from the moment we met when I was clowning about, because . . . because I
have
to like you. However I try to drive my feelings, that's only natural. I don't like many people, but when Peter told me you were coming here, I knew we'd be crossing paths more than once. That's destiny. Peter's mistake was in telling you more than he should and revealing us to danger.”

“Us? You're in with them. I knew it. I've heard you laughing at me with the rest of them. But why save me if you're with them?”

“I'm not ‘with' them, Cain. There's something you still don't understand. Actually, there's plenty you don't understand, but one of the main things is this: Knowing the Way is a lonely thing, because it changes us beyond all recognition. All of us take it in a different way, and none of us are right or wrong, because we're so far removed from what you think of as civilization. That's why we don't need to call the police. Laws are for sheep.” She spat that last word as if it stung her mouth.

“And sheep are normal people, is that right?”

Magenta glared at him, then away again.

“And that makes them less than you, because they don't have Pure Sight?”

“They're not less, they're just different. They are to mice as we are to them.”

“How humble.” Cain wanted to leave her then, flee this woman who thought she was way beyond the law, outside society. There had been a murder, and he should report it. But deep down he knew
that what she had said made some terrible sense, the idea that all this was happening out of sight of normality, in a place where the extraordinary was ordinary. The nun flew, George changed into a wild dog, Whistler played his hypnotic tunes, and Magenta was someone different each day. The Way had taken them along strange paths, routes untrodden by all but a few. Cain imagined his own future opening up as wide as theirs, and just as far away from the beaten track of predictability.

“So what the hell do you know about my father?”

“Let's just get back,” Magenta said. “You have a lot to learn about yourself.”

Cain looked at the photograph album tucked under his arm. He had resisted the temptation to stop and open it ever since seeing Peter so savagely killed, as if looking would bring him the same fate. Now the chance to sit down and look through the album was close at hand.