Jelly Cooper: Alien (18 page)

Humphrey rolls his eyes.

“Well, duh!  You’re on Earth.  How many people are there that can do the things Jelly can?”

Thorn grins.

“More than you think.”

He puts his hands out and closes his eyes.  I see silver tendrils snake towards Humphrey and wrap themselves around his body.  Quickly, Thorn lifts him into the air.
  Agatha squeals.

“Wow.” Rhiannon
whispers.  “He can do it too.”

“Put me down!”

Thorn chuckles and lowers Humphrey to the ground.  “Sorry, couldn’t resist.”

This is fascinating, but I need to move things along.  There’s much to be done.

“What did you mean, Eustasia’s vision?”

Thorn looks into my eyes and it’s captivating.  It’s like looking at
Javoria, or myself.  I feel a sense of calm and I wonder if that’s a power that Gregory Thorn has that I don’t; the ability to influence people’s emotions.

“It’s a long, long story Jelly, but you need to hear it all
.  You’re playing catch up against a highly skilled killer and the more knowledge in your armoury the better equipped you are to survive.”

Once a teacher, always a teacher!

I nod, once, and wave my hand.  “Go on.”

“
Right, so Winston was planning to put Eustasia in an institution.  Eustasia knew what her father was plotting without ever being told.  She packed a small bag and left.  She walked for days and then stumbled onto a small camp.  The fire was out, but the ashes were warm, so she sat down for a rest.  Maurice and Cal returned and found her sound asleep.  Cal delved into her mind and discovered that their sleeping visitor had something to offer them and their quest.  When Eustasia woke, she was offered a new life with two strangers, travelling the world seeking out people like herself.  She didn’t hesitate.

Maurice
fell in love with Eustasia straight away and couldn’t believe it when, a few months later, she told him that she loved him back.  They never married, but lived as husband and wife for the rest of their days.  They had two sons; David and James.  David Thorn later married a woman from the Kavalrion group and had a son called William.  William is my father."

I’m way confused now.  “But that doesn’t explain the other stuff
, like the memory retrieval and that thing that you did with the shoes and the vision of Javoria, how did you do that?”

“
And the eyes,” Agatha says.  “Your eyes are the same as Jelly’s.  I mean exactly the same.  I noticed it yesterday when I was bathing your head.”

Thorn holds up his hands. 

“I’ll get to it, don’t worry.”  He checks his watch.  “We still have forty minutes.  There’s still plenty of time.  It’s not like Jelly can do any training here at the school anyway; she’d give herself away.”

“
I’m
not interrupting, unlike
some
people.”  Rhiannon says, smiling prettily at Thorn. 

Once a vamp, always a vamp.

Thorn looks at me and raises his eyebrows.  My eyes widen.

You can hear my thoughts all the time?

Thorn smiles.

Only when I’m trying to!  Shall I continue, or are you going to leave me at the mercy of the vamp?

I growl and Humphrey, Agatha and Rhiannon turn in shock.

Thorn chuckles and lifts his arms in surrender.

“OK, OK, the story.  They travelled together for years, scouring the country.  Along the way, they picked up six others with varying talents.  Then Eustasia fell pregnant with my grandfather.  Maurice refused to travel any more; he wanted to set up a home for his new family.

Cal
remembered the debt that he owed Maurice.  He agreed that they would find somewhere to settle and set up an office, which Maurice and Eustasia would run.  So, Kavalrion planted roots in a small village on the border between England and Wales and Cal built himself a house not far away.  He travelled a lot and the house was mostly empty, so Maurice looked after it for his friend while he was away.

S
hortly after the birth of Maurice and Eustasia’s second child in 1916, a massive storm broke.  Eustasia hadn’t seen it coming and she was frightened.  Cal had called at their home and was trying to calm her down.  He explained that the birth of the child may have temporarily weakened her senses.  Gradually she calmed down and slept.  Maurice invited Cal to stay the night, as the storm was raging outside.  He agreed and bedded down on the floor in front of the fire.

H
e woke in the night and saw Eustasia stood by the window, her eyes wide open, staring out across the valley.  Concerned and frightened, Cal went to her.  He took her arm gently and tried to lead her back to her bedroom, but she wouldn’t go with him.  She stood, statue-like and looked out at the storm.

Cal
was about to go and fetch Maurice when she turned to him and grabbed his arm.

“She’s coming
,” Eustasia whispered.  “She’s coming to you.  You and your people will be set free.  She comes.”

Cal
questioned her, but she would say no more. 

The next morning,
Eustasia couldn’t remember what had happened.  Cal pushed the whole episode to the back of his mind and focused on finding a way to return to Javoria.

Eight months
after the storm, Cal was at home, working late, when he was interrupted by a knock on the door.  Stood on the doorstep was a young woman, barely twenty years old.  She wore a thin cotton dress with a ragged shawl draped around her shoulders and trembled with the cold.  Her skin was pale and her eyes looked dead. 

She collapsed in the doorway before Cal had the chance to
say one word.  He took her in and looked after her, much in the same way Maurice had looked after him back in 1896. 

Megan became
Cal’s saviour.  Six years after she turned up on his doorstep, they had a child; a little girl they named Ellie.  Every day spent with Megan and Ellie seemed to banish a little more of the darkness in Cal’s heart. 

Megan knew who he was: what he was.  They spoke of it often and wondered about little Ellie, with her piercing green eyes.  She soon confirmed that she was her father’s daughter.”

Thorn smiles and his whole face lights up.  It’s quite remarkable.

“What?” I ask.

“It’s just so wonderful to re-live the story that’s such a part of my life with you.  I’ve been waiting for so long.”

He pushes on
while I blush.

“Ellie’s skills were amazing.  Her mother had no abnormal gifts, but
Cal had passed down every one of his skills to his daughter.  Though they were never as developed as his own, Ellie had inherited a Javorian bloodline.  She could read minds, levitate, run, jump and climb.  She could project visions, like I did back there with you, Jelly, and she even turned invisible when her battery was low, just like –

“She
what
?”

“
Agatha, shush!  Thorn, what do you mean, she turned
invisible
when her battery was low?  You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Jelly can turn invisible?”

“No, Humphrey, I can’t turn invisible.  There’s some mistake.”

Thorn gestures for us all to be quiet.  He turns to me.  “Of course you turn invisible when your powe
rs are exhausted.  It’s a defence mechanism used as a last resort when you are too weak to fight, or to run.  At this point you hide.  You didn’t know that?”

“
You didn’t know that?
” I mimic in a squeaky voice.  “No I didn’t and I don’t believe it for one minute.  How do you know that’s true anyway?  Did you ever see Ellie do it?”

“
Many times.  Ellie Sakiiri is my mother.”

“Come again”.

“Ellie is my mother”.

“The math doesn’t work”, Agatha says with a frown on her face.

“It doesn’t seem possible, I know, but it is. Trust me, I’m living proof.  Ellie was born in 1933.  Two years later, David Thorn and his wife, Betsy, had William.  Ellie and William were inseparable; a bond which developed as they grew older.  They married in 1955 when William was twenty and Ellie twenty-two.  They waited for ten years before trying for a child so that they could work for Kavalrion full time.  I came along in 1965, just in time to catch the swinging sixties.”

He laughs at our faces as we struggle to make sense of the math.

“That makes you over fifty.”  Agatha scrunches her nose.  “You don’t look over fifty.  You look the same age as my dad and he’s only forty.”

“
You wouldn’t look your age with parents like mine either.  Jelly, that’s something you can look forward to.”

“And you knew that Jelly was here because...”

Is it me, or is Humphrey’s not warming to Thorn like the rest of us?

“Ah, that’s back down to
Eustasia and Kavalrion.  I felt Jelly’s presence the minute she landed on Earth twenty years ago.  Descendants of Sakiiri are all linked, we can feel each others presence.”

“Just how
am
I related to Cal?” I ask.

“I think that I should leave that explanation to your father
.”

Humphrey and Agatha frown at Thorn.

“Mr.
Cooper
?”

“No,
Crin; Jelly’s biological father”.

“Huh?”  Agatha’s mouth hangs open.

Thorn’s head snaps around.  He looks at me with alarm.  “You did know that, right? 
Right?
Please tell me you knew that, Jelly.”

If you’re looking for an example of the most awkward moment in the history of
mankind then look no further: this is it.  I clear my throat.

“Yeah, I knew.  Sorry guys, I guess I left that bit out
.”

“Don’t apologise to me, I didn’t even know that you were adopted
,” Rhiannon says, “before the whole alien thing, I mean.”

Humphrey gives me his best disgruntled stare and I mouth ‘sorry’.

I turn back to Thorn. 

“But I couldn’t feel you.  I didn’t have a clue
who you were.”

“I had an advantage.  I was expecting you.”

“You were expecting me?”

“
Uh-huh.  Three days after Ellie’s tenth birthday, Eustasia had another vision.”

“Go on.”

“It was in the middle of a storm.  That year, the summer had been unusually hot and the ground had hardened and cracked.  Eustasia went missing and Maurice went to Cal for help.  They agreed to split up and search the surrounding fields. 

Cal
remembered a premonition made on another stormy night, long ago.  Calming himself, he closed his eyes and focused.  He sensed Eustasia and headed towards her.

Battling against the
storm, he made slow progress; picking his way across the uneven ground.  When the sky exploded with each bolt of lightening, he set his course.

When he reached
her, Eustasia was lying in the wild grass, muttering under her breath.  Her body was rigid and frozen, though the air was dry and hot.  Cal knelt over her and gently tried to bring her round.  Her eyes were open, but she didn’t see him.  She was chanting the same thing, over and over.  He moved closer until he could make out the words:

The Hunters are
coming, the Hunters are coming, the Hunters are coming.

Cal
swore that his heart stopped beating for a couple of seconds. 

Eustasia
looked at him from far, far away and spoke.  She said,

“
The Hunter will come again. It will not be in your lifetime, nor that of your child. He will come, searching for the one.  You must help her and protect her until she is strong enough to fight, for she is the future, Cal.  She is Javoria.  Teach your children.”

Gregory Thorn turns and
speaks directly to me.

“
Cal taught his children well, Camille.  We have been waiting for you for a long time”.  He takes my hands in his.  “I felt your arrival twenty years ago, but I couldn’t pinpoint your location.  You could have been anywhere in the world.  Then a couple of months ago, I felt an irresistible urge to visit the coast.”

He grins suddenly, his whole face lighting up.

“Your twentieth birthday was looming, Jelly.”

“Why does he keep saying your twenty?”

I glance at Humphrey.  It’s hard to break eye contact with Thorn and I turn back as soon as I can.

“He’s using
Javorian years.  On Javoria, I’d be twenty.”

“Oh.”

Humphrey sounds like he’s pouting, but I ignore him and beg Gregory Thorn to go on.

“
The first time I saw you, I forgot to breathe.  I told myself to keep calm; that we’d had false alarms before, but I couldn’t help feeling that it was the real thing.  When I saw you on the track, running like the wind, my heart soared.  Then, yesterday, when the three of you were missing from school, I knew that something was up.  I spoke to some of the teachers and learned that none of you are the type to skip classes, so I decided to do a little investigating.”