Napier's Bones (20 page)

It was an old
stone church, with three beautiful stained glass windows behind the pulpit,
facing the road down below, and more stained glass windows on the two side
walls. Unsure if he was looking for another badger or some other animal, Dom
looked about the place, but there was no sign of any life.

“What do you
suppose we’re looking for?” asked Billy.

Dom got down on
hands and knees and looked underneath the pews. Nothing, not even a bug.

He stood up,
hands on hips, wondering what to do next. From behind him came a soft wheezing
sound, and he turned to see Jenna asleep already on one of the pews, head back
and slumped to one side.

“Hell,” he
whispered. “Now what?”

Billy shrugged
Dom’s shoulders. “Have a seat, I guess. Arithmos told us the familiar would be
here and present itself to us, so we wait. And I can feel it, you’re every bit
as tired as Jenna.”

Dom nodded and
eased himself into the pew in front of her and stared at the stained glass
windows until they blurred and darkened.

The sound of a
door slamming shut startled him awake. Lights came on overhead, and from around
the corner came a small man wearing John Lennon glasses, grey hair in a U
around the back of his head, mostly bald everywhere else. He wore casual beige
slacks and shirt with a blue sport coat over top, and carried a green cloth bag
over one shoulder. Even through the haze of interrupted sleep, Dom could see
the man wasn’t surprised to find them here.

“It’s after
midnight,” he said. “I imagine the cricks in your necks must be fierce painful
by now.”

Dom leaned
forward, rubbed at the back of his head and his neck, silently agreeing with
the little man. He stretched and twisted, trying to pop out the kinks. “We
shouldn’t have fallen asleep,” said Jenna. She sounded worried.

“Ah, but you
did,” said the man. He set the bag down on the pew in front of her, pulled out
a thermos and three scratched and pitted old plastic cups, poured coffee into
one and handed it to her. “Cream and sugar are inside the bag,” he said, then
poured another cup for Dom, who took it with a grateful nod. He shuffled out of
the pew and got himself some cream and sugar, took a sip and felt the heat and
caffeine work its way into his system. From the corner of his eye, Dom saw that
Jenna pretended to sip from the cup, a gracious gesture, but then she let it
rest on the pew beside her.

“My name’s Ewan
Ivey,” the man said as he poured himself some coffee.

“Dom. And this
is Jenna.”

“You’ve been to
the Ballachuan Hazelwood.”

Dom spat the sip
of coffee he’d just taken back into the cup, surprised. He sank down into his
seat, and Jenna came over and sat beside him. “How do you know?”

Ewan looked
around him. “The kirk told me,” he said. “Caught me way far away and on foot,
it did, which is why it took me almost five hours to get here, as first I had
to find an automobile.”

“The church told
you,” said Dom, at the same time that Jenna asked, “We’ve been in here for five
hours?”

Ewan nodded and
took another sip. “I no longer live on the island,” he said, “nor do I pay much
attention to the word of God anymore. But the land around the kirk and I keep a
close bond, and things that happen in the Hazelwood have always been worth
noting.”

“And so you came
all the way back here, just because we’d been to the wood?” Something about all
this didn’t seem right to Dom, but so far Ewan hadn’t made any overt moves
against them, so he didn’t know just yet how far he should let this
conversation go.

Ewan smiled.
“Aye.”

“But why?” asked
Jenna.

Ewan sat in a
pew opposite them and watched Dom use his sleeve to wipe away a ring his coffee
had made. “Most who are here or who have been here know nothing about what goes
on in the wood below their kirk, and that has been for the best, I think most
would agree.”

He leaned back
in the pew, took another sip of coffee. After a moment to savour the taste, he
said, “You’ve walked out of that wood with a package. The numbers that surround
this building are no friend to Napier, but they are to me.”

Dom pushed the
coffee cup away from him, regretting having taken a sip. “They made us sleepy,”
said Billy.

Ewan grinned.
“They just knew what you needed most that would keep you in place until I
arrived. You needed to sleep, so you slept.”

Jenna looked to
the door, then stood. “We have to go.”

Ewan shook his
head. “First you have to give me what was given to you in the Hazelwood, and
then you have to show me what you were to collect in here.” New numbers began
to float up from Ewan, irrational numbers spinning themselves into a small,
tight ball. Dom jumped, spilled his coffee over the pew in front of him, tried
to squeeze by Jenna, at the same time reaching down to grasp the hockey puck
and hoping to hell it would be enough to stop this guy. He felt himself rush
across the floor, almost skating, and slammed into the little man, sending the
ball spinning wildly out of control into a corner.

Ewan stood back
up and looked around, then, not seeing Dom, turned his attention on Jenna. More
numbers bubbled out of him, and a swarm of them rained down on her, pushing her
back into her seat and pinning her there, even though Dom could see that most
of them were missing their target. Once again Dom swung around and hit Ewan,
wishing he had more knowledge of how to go on the offensive. He’d spent all his
time learning how to be a sneak and how to defend himself, and until this puck
had never had any mojo that took the fight to someone else. He hit Ewan again,
watched the man look around in confusion, blood running from his nose. But
again he stood, and this time he managed to spin up a new group of numbers and
fling them in Dom’s general direction.

In
panicked response, Dom threw up a wall of Euclidean space between the two of
them. The numbers from Ewan quickly found themselves halving the distance
between the two men with each second, but the number of halves had stretched
out to infinity. As long as Dom could keep that wall up between them, any
numbers thrown his way would find themselves lost in forever, even as they came
close enough that he could feel their metaphoric breath on his face. But the
longer Dom fought to keep Euclidean space open, the longer he would go without
being able to pull down any other numbers; it was likely to be an exhausting
stalemate. Just then the front doors banged open, and with a couple of flickers
most of the lights shut off. A shaded blur rushed across the church and slammed
into Ewan, who managed one explosive whoosh of breath before he crashed into
the opposite wall and dropped to the floor, blood already pooling from the back
of his head.

Dom let the
numbers he’d been using dissipate, stood beneath the pulpit, breathing hard
from the effort. The ram they’d seen down at the farm stood in front of him,
and after one loud bleat, it turned and ran from the church.

Dom turned, saw
the numbers still spinning in the corner, somehow still not vanishing now that
their creator was dead or unconscious. He ran over, coaxed patterns out of the
chaos, cast them away to dissolve as he managed to pull out each new set of
numbers, watched as they flattened themselves, reintegrated, once again became
commensurate, before finally rejoining the ecology, no longer a threat.

Done there, he
walked back to Jenna, careful to step around the body on the floor—Ewan did
indeed appear to be dead. She was sitting up, head turned to avoid looking at
Ewan’s body. Her face and hands were covered with dozens of very fine cuts,
each one still slowly seeping blood.

“How are you?”
asked Dom.

Jenna
didn’t answer, although she turned to look at him. The look in her eyes was
vacant, lost. She opened her mouth and blood leaked out, a giant bubble of it,
bursting and dribbling down her chin.

“Jesus!” Dom
sprang back, then caught himself and jumped towards her, but she seemed to come
back into herself and waved him off.

“Animal,” she
managed to say, more blood spilling from her mouth.

“What, the ram?”

Jenna shook her
head and pointed with a wavering finger at the ceiling.

Dom looked up,
but in the ill-lit space of the church he could see nothing. But with
everything silent, he could hear it. A rustling, followed by a couple of
echoing chirps.

“A bird,” said
Billy. “It must be the familiar Arithmos told us about.”

Dom held out his
hand, and with a lazy loop through the air a small bird, about the size of a
sparrow but with a reddish breast and cheeks and blue-grey crown, fluttered
down and landed on Dom’s finger. It pecked at his hand, two gentle taps at the
web of skin between his thumb and forefinger, and then flew across the church,
coming to rest on the floor in the corner behind the altar.

“I don’t suppose
the stone is going to part as easily as the tree did,” said Dom, but when he
got there he was surprised to see that indeed it had, one piece of stone
bending inwards on itself and revealing another package, similar in size and
shape to the other in his pocket. He picked it up and pocketed it beside the
other, and the small bird immediately launched itself into the air to disappear
into the shadows high above them.

“Let’s
get out of here.” He went back to the pew and took Jenna’s hand, helped her
stand. She still looked stunned, but followed him out of the church with no
problem, stepping around the body on the floor without looking down. There was
a second car on the road below, probably Ewan’s, and the cows and sheep at the
farm across the road were kicking up a fuss, and lights had come on at both
farms down the road.

Arithmos was
waiting outside, about fifteen feet away from the door. “Get to the car as
quickly as you can. We’ll soon have more company.”

Halfway down,
Jenna stopped and leaned over, vomit and blood spilling out in the moonlight,
splattering on the gravel and some splashing back onto their shoes and pants,
taking heaving breaths that for a moment turned into sobs when she was done.
Dom rubbed her on the back, and when she was done he helped her straighten back
up and kept walking. “You okay?”

Jenna
turned her head to look at him, tears in her eyes. He rubbed gently at her chin
with his sleeve, managed to get the puke off, but the blood just smeared.
“Fine,” she mumbled. “Not too much pain.” She turned her attention back to
walking, and a few seconds later they were at the car.

Arithmos was already
in the back seat. “Let’s move,” hissed the numbers as Dom helped Jenna into her
seat. “We need to get off this island now.”

Dom yawned as he
raced down the road. He was exhausted, and not even the coffee and the recent
fracas had managed to shake the cobwebs from his head. He looked over to Jenna,
saw that she had leaned her head back and had closed her eyes. The bleeding
seemed to have slowed, maybe even stopped.

“Who
the hell was Ewan?” asked Dom.

“Nobody but a
pathetic little treasure hunter,” replied Arithmos. “He’d sell his grandmother
for a good artefact, and apparently he knew that one was there.” Here Jenna
opened her eyes and looked over at Dom, but he did his best to ignore her. “We
think he knew that Napier’s shadow is back on native soil, and wanted in on the
action. What we hadn’t expected was that he would lay a trap for anyone coming
into the kirk looking for the artefact.”

“Why didn’t you
stop him?” asked Billy.

“He’s a
numerate. He controls numbers.”

Dom nodded and
turned his attention back to the road. Ahead were a set of headlights,
seemingly coming straight towards him. “Lights,” he said. “Looks like someone
doesn’t want us to get off the island.”

Jenna opened her
eyes and said, very quietly, “You’re driving on the wrong side of the road.”

“Jesus!” Dom
swung the car back to the left and needlessly waved his hand as the oncoming
car flashed its lights and rushed past. He lifted one hand from the wheel and
rubbed at his eyes. “Wake up wake up wake up wake up,” he muttered. His heart
was pounding, a loud and rolling rhythm that threatened to jump out of his
chest.

“I’m sure you’re
not the first tourist to forget what side of the road he was driving on,” said
Jenna. Her eyes were closed again.

“Tourist or
not,” said Arithmos from the back seat, “I think it would be best if you don’t
die in something as common as a car accident while carrying those artefacts in
your pocket.”

“Right,”
answered Dom. “Sorry. It won’t happen again.” They rode in silence for awhile,
crossing the bridge without having to stop for any oncoming traffic, and soon
enough Dom brought the car to a stop by the highway. “Which way again?”

“North,” replied
Arithmos. “Left.”

He waited for
two cars to go by and then followed them, quickly gearing up to the speed
limit. Wouldn’t do to be caught by the cops breaking the speed limit, not with
blood all over Jenna like it was.

“Speaking of
cops . . .” he whispered. Three sets of flashing lights were approaching from
ahead. Two police cars and an ambulance whipped by, sirens wailing. “On their
way to the island?”

Arithmos
grunted. “Yes. Someone’s found the body by now. We can only hope that nobody
identified your car while it was parked there.”

Dom frowned.
“What are the chances of that?”

The numbers were
silent for a moment. “Twenty-seven vehicles drove past while you were in the
kirk. Chances are good at least one paid attention to your presence.”

Dom signalled,
then carefully drove into a pullout set beside the road, stopped and yanked up
the emergency brake, but left the car running. “I know your mom has been able
to follow us by zeroing in on any numbers we use, but there was no sign of her
or Napier after the numbers I used back in the church.”