Power Games (48 page)

Mitch spoke. ‘Do you remember what Tawny said?’

‘Don’t,’ Angela warned.

‘Cannibals.’ Mitch’s mouth formed around the exotic word. It was magical. Voodoo.

‘We don’t know what these people are,’ said Angela.

‘But they won’t be like us.’

‘They might be,’ said Jacob. ‘Besides, I thought your demons came from above.’

‘People are the worst things to be afraid of,’ said Mitch. ‘Why have they stayed away? If they wanted to help us, they would have come forward.’

‘Unless they’re as afraid of us as we are of them.’

‘We have to trust that they mean us no harm,’ said Angela. ‘They won’t—not when they see Eve.’

‘Or especially when they see Eve.’

‘Go to hell, Corrigan.’

‘The others are our final hope,’ Angela said.

‘It’ll bring about an ending one way or another,’ said Jacob.

His words hung in the steaming air.

None of them slept that night. In the dead hour, it began to rain.

95

N
oah dreamed. He lapsed in and out of that heady escape, hot with fever and cold with fear, pockets of emptiness that hurtled him back to an unknown present.

Angela was walking in the dark; he could hear her breath and the sigh of leaves on her skin. Her hands were in front of her. Up ahead shone a dazzling light. She was reaching for it, getting close, but Noah had to stop her. The light was bad. It meant to hurt her. He shouted her name but she couldn’t hear. She kept going, seduced by the glow. Noah was with her, right behind, near enough to touch and he went to do just that, a graze, a brush, anything to bring her back … but she was gone.

When he called, no sound came out. He screamed her name into silence.

It was raining. Hard.

Spots on his face were cold and harsh, yet gloriously fresh after days boxed up below deck. He tipped his neck back to meet them, mouth open, drinking the storm. The wide black sky churned and growled.

The boat rocked. Men held him beneath his arms. Noah’s shoulders, elbows and wrists ached beyond the point of reasonable pain, numb in their sockets, trapped in place. The rope around his ankles was searing as wire.

The pirates spoke in short, hostile bursts.

That word again:
Koloku.

Noah wished he understood what they were saying. He struggled to break free and a thump landed on his back, knocking him forward, his cheek slamming on the deck. A boot descended, holding him down.

A scuffle broke out. Their leader was angry. Noah saw why. It wouldn’t do to damage him. They had to keep him well—it was why they had been feeding him, watering him, bringing him up on deck for air. Why they could not afford to beat him.

What for?
What did they plan to do?

The scuffle turned into a brawl. Rain slashed across Noah’s vision and this time when the boat tipped there was no one to hold him in place. He crashed into a heap of sacks, kicking his legs out in front of him, his chest pounding as he watched one of the men get thrown against the mast, the man’s head cracking and a jet of blood leaping free, staining the wooden pole red.

Above, the sail whipped and flapped.

Adrenalin came from nowhere. Noah had thought his muscles wasted, his will shattered, but when he saw his chance he had to take it. His hands groped across deck, locating a rusted cleat, its point sharp.

Sharp enough.

He worked the rope against it. By the time they came to retrieve him, it was already undone. Noah sprang, catching them off guard. Pulling free the bind at his ankles, he jumped from the deck of the boat and hurtled towards the roiling sea.

The last thing he heard was gunfire, and then he hit the water.

The ocean was freezing and oil-dark. Noah ducked under, partly survival and partly lack of strength to stay afloat. Bursts of black lasted a second and an hour, stinging cold and yawning deep as the roar of bullets ripped into the night.

The pirates’ beam flashed across the churning waves, searching, searching, then gradually moving further away, the pouring, churning rollers hiding him from sight. Ice paralysed. Air escaped. His arms flailed.

There was nothing around him, nothing below, only the bobbing light of the boat as it grew smaller and fainter, and the men’s shouts diminished.

Noah tried to swim. He failed. His body would not work. He knew he would die now.

Drowning was meant to be kind. As the oxygen left his body he would start to hallucinate—he hoped he would see Angela, the first day they had met and he had fallen fast into her green eyes, a deeper shade of green than he had known existed …

She had been lost for too long now. He had to go and find her, someplace they could be together again.

Noah let go, and went under for the final time. The ocean closed over his head and pulled him into her arms.

96

Szolsvár Castle, Gemenc Forest, Hungary

V
oldan Cane wheeled his chair into the library. He brought it to a halt beneath a gilt-framed mirror, the glass dappled and gloomy. No matter how many times he confronted his reflection, the horror never lessened.

He had to trust that the battle had not been in vain.

Still he had heard nothing from his contact.

It made his blood catch fire.

The explanation he kept returning to was that the man had been found, and forced. He had given himself away—and Voldan knew, no matter how impressive the man’s track record, it was only a matter of time before Voldan himself was given away too.

The media was stumbling on from the tragedy—strange how in a matter of weeks a cataclysm could become the past, consumed by the tides of history. But once the perpetrator was found, interest would come rushing back. Voldan wasn’t hanging around for that.

Janika materialised behind him.

‘Finish me off,’ he bleated. ‘That’s an order. I don’t care how you do it.’

The maid emerged from the dusk. She bent to kiss him. ‘You don’t mean that.’

‘I do,’ said Voldan. ‘It’s over. My work is done.’

Janika knelt. She took his hand and pressed the pale, crepey skin to her cheek. She smiled up at him, her eyes filled with wonder.

‘Never, Mr Cane,’ she soothed. ‘I’ll never do that. I’ll never let you go.’

97

Day 63

D
awn came. The fire was smouldering. Grey light seeped through the trees.

Weary, the band trooped on. The climb was slow. As they got higher, the tree shield parted and the sky was revealed, an angry, swirling ash. Thunder rolled across the clouds; crackles of light sparking between.

From the plateau they scanned for smoke. The sea was heaving; the pitted caves dimpled into sheer rock menacing and ominous. Everything told them to leave. Had it said the same to Kevin? Was Kevin here, camping in the jungle, facing those dangers alone? Angela regretted their fight. He was a kid, just as Grigori Cane had been. They had forced him to fend for himself.

Was Kevin still alive?

What if they had got him?

Mitch pointed. ‘There it is.’

A single funnel of smoke: a beacon.

The group scrambled down the cliff, tired but indomitable. Finding the others had become an obsession; they couldn’t think beyond breaking the mystery. Celeste and Jacob helped Eve, who groaned with the effort.

‘Stop,’ Angela said. ‘She has to rest.’

‘No,’ Eve objected. ‘Go on. Keep going. I’ll catch up.’

‘We have to follow the fire,’ said Jacob, ‘before it disappears.’

Angela nodded. ‘We’ll be behind you,’ she said. ‘Go.’

They watched their companions vanish into the trees.

They were close now. They could feel it.

Jacob, Mitch and Celeste were spat out onto the beach. It was raining heavily, drops that speckled the sand and pattered the water. White froth rolled on the ocean. A bundle of sticks burned in the cove, abandoned and dying.

‘Whose is it?’

It was then they heard the sound. Chanting. A dreadful song that came at them through the forest, above and behind, growing all around. At the far end of the beach, a line of shadows crept towards them: black shapes moving, unfathomable through the pouring rain.

Angela left to find water. They needed it.

She said ‘we’ but she meant Eve. Her companion was bent double, her face grey, wincing through spasms.

It was happening. They had to be ready.

Alone, Eve released the cry she had been keeping in check since waking. She knew her baby was coming—and she wanted to be on her own. It wasn’t an instinct she had counted on. Like an animal, she craved a dark place: quiet and dark, a private stage for this miracle that had been performed since the dawn of time.

Now, it was her turn.

Angela told her to stay put. Her body told her to go.

She crawled off the stump, panting, and moved on all
fours. Her back ached. Her bladder was swollen. Her womb tensed, each contraction rawer than the last. Each time it brought her to the point of passing out, the pain lapsed and she could see again.
You’re coming.

Through brambles and ribbons she found her way, skidding down a dirt bank and sloshing through puddles, rain pooling from the tips of leaves and turning the earth to sludge. Brown clay caked her arms, slick and greasy, and she slipped and landed on her front. Pain shot through her belly. A raging clap of thunder drowned her scream. Another contraction, this one devastating, and she moaned and panted, panted and moaned, as her palms gave way and she tumbled down a verge onto a bed of leaves. Her waters broke.

The sky reeled. She crawled into a hollow, the entrance draped in fronds. Inside, it was cool and silent.

Eve put her hands on the rock wall, hauling herself up on her knees.

Her cries shook the cave. Nobody else could hear.

98

America

T
wo months after a Challenger jet carrying seven celebrities disappeared over the Pacific Ocean and was never seen again, the world accepted the facts.

All across America, services were held. The funerals attracted rampant media attention; several lawsuits were brought against breach of privacy, though most acknowledged the rituals were in the public interest. Each name had been written about, each face recycled, each life story engineered: it was inevitable the mourning had to be shared. Denial offered no more comfort. Hope was over.

Joan Chase cut a glamorous silhouette at her son’s memorial. In couture Valentino with a black birdcage veil, her slim figure and pale, tear-blushed face was every inch the mourning beauty. Headshots of Kevin surrounded the empty grave: if they could not have him in person they would copy his image twenty-fold. From plump-cheeked, wide-eyed baby to the nineteen-year-old sensation he had latterly become, Kevin’s posters were tacked to billboards that chronicled his too-short life.

Joan was stoic. Trey shivered in her arms. At the perimeter, fans wept openly.

A film crew taped the whole thing.

Sketch touched her arm. ‘You OK, Joanie?’

Joan didn’t reply, but was gratified when Trey released a low growl in the back of his throat. Sketch’s stooped figure melted away.

It was bad, but while the priest went droning on she couldn’t help going over the lyrics to her forthcoming single: ‘
You brought me right out of the wings, boy, and made me step into the light. All it took was a leap of faith, boy, and now I know I’m right …
’ Cut N Dry had advised her against the use of ‘boy’—they said it wasn’t ‘age-appropriate’. Age-appropriate her ass! Joan had slapped that concern away. They hadn’t a leg to stand on when it came to telling her what to do.

One image of Kevin pinned her with its stare. It was a still from one of his videos. He had mounted a white tiger and was flexing a pea-small bicep. His expression seemed to say:
Thank you.
After all, she was doing it for him, and for the Kevin Chase he might have become.

Joan accepted her cue. She stepped forward, stopping at the grave to release a sob. Elegantly she pressed a tissue to her nose, and with the other hand threw in Kevin’s beloved debut album sleeve,
Untouched
, along with Trey’s studded-diamond collar. The priest dipped his head. The fans sobbed to the sky.

Goodbye, son.

It wasn’t meant to end this way, but Joan accepted the cards she’d been dealt. While Kevin was alive, she had taken her place in his support act; now he was dead, she took her place on his stage. It was a stage they had both worked for and she was darned if she was letting it go.

Finally, Joan Chase possessed the celebrity she had always wanted.

Three hundred miles away, in a bar on the Las Vegas Strip, Dino and Carmine Zenetti watched Angela’s procession unfold on TV.

Carmine popped the cork on a magnum of champagne.

‘An’ there it is,’ he said, filling the flutes, the signet on his pinkie twinkling as bubbles crawled up the sides. His sometime girlfriend, a big-breasted lounge singer called Mufti, kissed him on his cheek. Carmine looped an arm round her waist and grinned lustily. ‘All tied up.’

Dino’s Cristal tasted sour. As images of Angela appeared onscreen, interspersed with those of her mourning brothers, he thought of her soft mouth and big eyes and the sexy curve of her hips, and, despite what his father said, would trade in this eventuality, however profitable, with one night in bed with a lady like that.

‘You wanna go celebrate in private?’ Mufti asked Carmine, brushing her tits against his arm and batting her eyelashes suggestively.

Trouble was, thought Dino, there
were
no ladies like that.

‘Gimme a minute, baby.’ Carmine drank, satisfied. ‘Somethin’ tells me you and me are gonna have a lot to celebrate for a lot of years. Ain’t that right, son?’

Dino mustered an answering smile. Just as everything else that had been decided in his life, there his father was at the helm, the eternal orchestrator.