No Shelter from Darkness (40 page)

The whole family seemed happier than they'd been in a long time. With his arm in a cast, Oliver was enjoying the sympathy. He milked it for all it was worth; if Beth knew him at all, he'd continue to do so for as long as he could. She couldn't fault him though. He didn't shy away from recounting over and over again how his sister had saved him. Beth was thankful he could only tell the story based on what he'd heard, and not what he'd seen. But the story he told reaffirmed the goodness that Beth felt within herself.

In fact, his story did more than that. It also made her stop and think about every gruesome discovery she'd made about herself over the last four months. She realized it had all been worth it. Running through the events of the night before, she wondered if they'd all have made it out of that site alive without her cursed abilities. If she had to be “evil”, she had used that curse to do good.

With Mary's one and only half-full bag on her shoulder, she walked in the middle of the family as they entered Liverpool Street Station. It too had a few scratches of war, but as with everything it just got on with life. That's what they all had to do as well. With time to spare, they walked out onto the platform and Beth's father boarded Mary's carriage to secure her seat and stow her bag.

Steam gently rose from the elegant chimney of the engine and though the sun was just now starting its return journey to the horizon,
patches of damp still darkened the sheltered parts of the platform. Her father came back down the steps, patted Mary's shoulder and joined his wife and Oliver. Together, her parents told her brother about the different parts of the train, leaving Beth to say her goodbyes to her best friend. Neither of them really knew how to do it; it wasn't something either ever expected having to do. They ended up sporadically gossiping.

“Are you gonna contact Gibson, then?” asked Beth.

“I'll write to him, but I'm a good bus journey away from York.”

“So next time I see you, you'll be married then,” joked Beth.

“Shut up,” laughed Mary.

Down the platform the conductor blew his whistle. “All aboard! All aboard!”

The rest of her family turned back to Mary.

“Come and visit any time,” said Lynne.

“Thank you, Mrs. Wade.”

“Take care,” said Bill. “And thank you for all you've done. I know you've been a great help to Lynne and the family.”

Mary went quiet, seemingly taken aback by Bill's warm comment. She nodded her thanks.

“Bye, Mary,” followed Oliver.

“See you, toe-rag.” Mary had to split her sentence, to swallow and keep her voice from cracking. The three of them stepped back.

“See you later, then,” said Beth.

Mary looked at her and her eyes filled up. Thinking the same thing at the same time, they embraced and hugged each other tightly. Beth felt her eyes filling up, too. Then the conductor's whistle blew again, forcing them apart.

“Write to me, okay?” sobbed Mary.

“‘Course,” sobbed Beth. “You, too.” Mary turned, but Beth had to say one more thing. “Thanks.”

Looking back, Mary nodded and with teary eyes waved a hand at the rest of the family, before climbing the steps and going inside the carriage to her window seat. The train's own whistle blew, and with a screeching of iron and a puff of smoke from the engine up front, it slowly started to move along the platform. In the window, Mary waved goodbye to her extended family, and they all waved
back. The girls looked at each once more, until neither could see the other.

They were both alone.

The back of the train passed the end of the platform and Beth was startled with a shower of sunbeams. She held her arm up to shield her watery eyes, while a breeze picked up and swept back her wavy hair.

“Here.” Beth's father had walked up behind her and she turned expecting him to be holding a tissue for her, but instead he held a pair of round sunglasses. “I think you'll be needing these.”

She took them and put them on, feeling a slight headache subside.

“They look good, Beth.”

Beth was speechless. Never before had her father called her by her preferred name.

“Come on,” he said openly. “I think it's turning into kite-flying weather.” With one hand on his cane and the other around his wife's shoulder, her father turned around and led the way toward the exit.

Beth did the same with her brother, lifting her sore right arm and planting it on his shoulder.

“Ow! Beth!”

“Oops. Sorry, Ollie.” She moved around to his other side, looking forward to everything.

EPILOGUE

ON THE OTHER SIDE
of the shop front window was a dry, but bitterly cold December's evening. There'd been no snow or frost that day, but everything had just seemed to be whiter. With the time approaching the end of another day's trading, the sky had turned a dark royal blue. From his side of the newly fitted grid of small windows, Bill doubted the temperature was much higher than it was outside in that narrow, secretive alley. The cold green leather of his seat was finally beginning to warm up from his body heat. He was comfortable enough to sink his full weight into it and lean back. Using his right leg to help his left up onto the desk before crossing them, he was practically lying down with his hands behind his head. He stared up at the freshly painted ceiling.

It had taken almost a month to get Davies & Co. Carpenters back to a presentable condition. It was a long time for any other shop to be closed to trading, but what was another month? After over a year and a half since the carpenters last opened its doors, getting it ready for business again was, for Bill, a form of meditation. Doing everything himself that he was able to do, hindered only by his leg that was as mended as it ever would be, he sat now in his chair on the eve of the shop's reopening—despite the phone still needing to be reconnected.

The jobs he would accept would be nothing like the firm's usual business. Bill was, in actuality, no carpenter—at least not by profession. In the workshop behind where he sat usually worked the three true craftsmen, creating exquisite desks or beautiful tables of the highest quality—or when required, building elegant Ministry weapons in the basement below.

Bill was merely the manager; the man in charge. He took care of the clients and the paperwork, though after twelve years he'd picked up a thing or two and had become quite proficient in carrying out repairs, or building simple bunks in a shelter. Repair jobs would be all he'd accept, and there'd be no shortage of those. Even a couple of jobs a week would be enough to lessen the pressure on his wife so that she wouldn't have to flog herself so much at the hospital. On top of that, the work would provide distraction, as had getting the shop up and running in the first place. And that was exactly what he wanted.

It had been almost three months since Mary had left to move in with her war-wounded uncle up north. Immediately the house seemed incomplete, like a vital part of the unit had gone missing. Her departure was something Bill had wanted—for her own safety—ever since he'd learned she'd moved in, but now she was gone he had to admit he missed her presence, as he was sure Beth did.

But that wasn't what laid heavily on his mind.

Whether due to Mary's departure or not, Bill's relationship with his adopted daughter had grown stronger over the last couple of months, stronger than it had ever been. It was hardly surprising, though; he'd opened up and let her in. From the moment he took charge of her as a baby to the minute he sat in her room with a jug of fresh blood, Bill had been determined not to develop the fatherly love that Beth yearned for. As time went on, he found himself being harder on her; being more stringent and effectively pushing her away to overcompensate for his growing affection. But at a time when she should have been at her most repulsive to him, with signs of the demons he fought emerging within her, his connection to her grew and he could no longer hold back his fatherly instincts. So he embraced it. It made his worries lighter to bear.

His commitments to the Ministry now hung in the balance. Beth had been an experiment, and a volatile one at that. Only the High Minister of the British Ministry along with Jeff and Jorge were even aware of her. That could and should change now. The insights she continued to provide into her kind and the questions they raised should be presented and discussed. Over the centuries the Ministry had subtly changed their perception of the enemy. They'd come a long way since the ancient beliefs of blood-drinking spirits and digging up
graves, but although what they killed was undeniably flesh and blood, demonic possession or “demons risen from Hell itself” remained the accepted theories. Bill was fervently questioning that, but he wasn't so sure the Ministry as a whole would be so open to a challenge of their core belief. It meant Beth remained in danger, and if his love for her were ever to be revealed, he feared he would no longer be able to protect her.

Unfortunately, he suspected that his High Minister was already onto him; he was sure Jeff's sudden secretive assignment was more than mere coincidence when he factored in the precise timing: when Beth was at her most vulnerable. Had he been tested? Had Beth?

Had they both?

Bill snapped himself out of his thoughts and swung back up to a sitting position. It was high time he began making his way home and he was sure there'd be questions awaiting him, following the announcement over the wireless that morning. With the Americans now officially at war following the destruction of one of their naval bases by the Japanese, Bill felt a pang of guilt that while the war seemed to pick up pace, his role in it lessened.

He jumped at the sudden and comparatively deafening ring of the phone on his desk. There was no prior notification that it had finally been reconnected. He picked up the headpiece from the cradle, hoping that at this hour of the evening, it wasn't an urgent repair job. “Davies & Co. Carpenters, how may we be of service?”

“¿William?”

Bill gawped at the voice, forgetting himself.

“¿William Wade, erestú?”

It took him a couple of seconds for his brain to switch, but he found that once he started speaking, his Spanish came flooding back to him. “Jorge? Is that you, old friend?”

“At last! I've been trying to contact you all week,” said Jorge.

“Sorry, the phone's been … well, it didn't exist to be honest with you. How are you?”

“Me? Oh, I'm fine. All the better now. How are you?”

“Good. I think. I mean, my leg's a bit busted up—war wound, but, well … I-I just can't believe I'm hearing from you. It's been years. What's been going on? How's the hospital? Hell, how's the country?”

“You probably know as much as me, I just patch people up. It was horrific though. And now the rest of the world's at it. Did you say you were wounded? Have you been fighting?”

“Well, of course. I was called up at the beginning of last year.”

“You left … the family?”

“I had no choice, Jorge. I had to leave, by order of the Government. Apparently there are some things our lot can't control.”

“No, I suppose not. Anyway, I'm afraid this isn't so much of a social call, though I know we're overdue one.”

“Oh,” said Bill. “What's on your mind?”

“How's the girl?” asked Jorge abruptly.

Bill was a little startled at his bluntness. He knew of calls being monitored and he knew that though the chance was remote, the Ministry had the resources to do it. Cautiously, Bill answered his friend's question. “Elizabeth? She's good, she's fine.”

“Ah,
Elizabet
. It's a good name.”

Bill's suspicion was beginning to grow; something wasn't quite right. “Jorge? What's going on?”

“And what's become of Elizabet? Were my speculations correct? Is she … ?”

Bill sighed, trying to think of how he could explain this conversation to the Ministry. It was likely he was worrying for nothing; the link between Beth and the baby girl that Jorge was supposed to have terminated was weak after so much time had passed. But his brain started to brew up possible lies anyway. “Yes Jorge, you were right. She's one of them.”

“I knew it. Is she allergic to sunlight now?”

“No. It's odd. It's very gradual. She's changing almost as slowly as any girl might change into a woman. It seems to be in tempo with her adolescence.”

“And how is the family? Is everyone okay?”

“Yes, they're fine. It's all under control, Jorge. Now tell me what's going on. This isn't safe.”

“Don't worry, I very much doubt they even know where I am.”

Now Bill knew something was wrong. “Jorge?”

“I'm in Valencia.”

“Why?”

“I needed to buy myself some time to contact you.”

“Why?”

“She's after me, William. A woman who knows about your Elizabet being left on the steps of the church. She's coming after me. She's coming after Elizabet.”

“Who is she?”

“I don't know, but so far she's injured a priest and three nurses just to get to me. From what I've been told, it sounds like she's a Revenant.”

Bill wasn't so surprised, not as much as he knew he should've been. “She injured these people? Not killed them?”

“I assume she's making sure their information checks out before disposing of them. William, you haven't given the bracelet to Elizabet, have you?”

“No.”

“Good. The nurse who contacted me, she said this woman knew about the bracelet, knew everything about her. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was she who left the baby.”

Bill remained silent.

“William, did you hear me?”

“Yes, I heard. Jorge, you don't think it could be … her mother?” Bill offered.

“I've wondered the same thing, but surely it …”

Jorge suddenly fell silent, and all Bill could hear was the background noise of a public place. “Jorge?” Bill prompted.

“She's here.”

“How do you know?”