Scenting Hallowed Blood (4 page)

Listening to these words, in
the dark, before the sparking fire that burned for her day of
birth, Tamara had been filled with a sense of purpose and resolve.
As soon as she was able, she left her parents and moved back across
the ocean to Cornwall.

It had taken her very little
time to discover the legends of the ancient land, and how they
aligned with the prophecy she had been given. The serpent had
chosen her. At night, she felt it stir in its sleep, and its dream
voice called out to her. Her passion and her sincerity enabled her
to infiltrate the Pelleth, and she had spoken openly about her
experiences, sure that the women would recognise her as the sea
priestess, the chosen one who would guide Shemyaza to the serpent.
But while the Pelleth had been happy to initiate her into their
group, they felt her passion was the misguided zeal of youth. The
Pelleth were
all
chosen ones, and would guide the Hanged One
together. Tamara had been bitterly disillusioned at first, and it
had hardened her. She realised she’d have to play the game their
way until the time came when they’d be forced to recognise what she
was. Her powers as a scryer and as a shamaness far outranked that
of any of her Pelleth sisters. In her mind, she was clearly
destined to be Meggie’s successor. But Meggie refused to
acknowledge Tamara’s abilities, and would not promise her
succession. Tamara felt this was not because Meggie doubted her
powers, but that she was, in Meggie’s eyes, a foreigner. Tamara
considered this discrimination small-minded and inexcusable.
Surely, the welfare of the Pelleth overcame such considerations?
Meggie would never admit that Tamara’s upbringing in America was
behind her decisions, however. She would talk about the need for
experience, and point out that if Tamara’s childhood absence from
Cornwall was really seen as a problem by the Pelleth, she wouldn’t
have been initiated into their ranks at all, never mind reach the
Conclave. Tamara did not believe these excuses.

Now, Meggie’s opinions no
longer seemed to matter. Another had come into Tamara’s life, who
recognised the power within her. A dark sister had come, and in her
veins ran the royal blood of angels.

Two days before, Tamara had
been outside her cottage, tidying autumn debris from her garden. A
woman had stopped at the gate, a tall woman wearing a pale raincoat
and a headscarf, her eyes hidden by dark glasses. Tamara had felt
the scrutiny before turning round, a prickle on the skin at the
back of her neck. She saw the long, ungloved fingers resting on the
gatepost, the red smile splitting the attenuated, white face. She
had known immediately: Grigori! And her heart had convulsed within
her. Like all of the Pelleth, Tamara knew where the Grigori
families lived around the area, and had watched the limousines with
darkened windows gliding in and out of the gates of their estates.
Sometimes, she had seen tall, charismatic men and women in shops or
pubs, whom she’d been sure had been Grigori. As a rule, they tended
to avoid the local community, for the native Cornish were attuned
to their frequency, and would undoubtedly recognise them, if not
for exactly what they were, then as being unusual or fey. Quietly,
Tamara had been calling out to the Grigori for some months. She’d
never been truly convinced they would heed her call, but she’d had
no doubt at least some of them had heard it. And now: the response.
The woman at the gate knew her measure. She was a powerful
creature, a daughter of a powerful family, yet here she was, in the
flesh, cool and seductive as a ghost of desire. Tamara had not been
afraid or filled with disgust, as Meggie might have been. No.
Curiosity and excitement had bubbled up within her, and the tall
woman had nodded at her, as if recognising an affinity between
them.

‘You are Tamara Trewlynn?’ Her
voice was low, beautiful. When she took off her glasses, her eyes
would be large and deep as ocean pools.

Tamara’s mouth had gone dry.
She rubbed her soil-seamed hands on the front of her jacket. ‘Yes.
What can I do for you?’

The woman laughed — a full,
secret sound. ‘May I come into your garden? I’d like to talk to
you.’

‘All right.’ Tamara wasn’t sure
if the gate opened, or if the Grigori woman walked through it, but
suddenly she was looking up into her face, only inches away from
the heat of her body. The dark glasses were removed, and there were
the eyes: full of history and forbidden knowledge. Tamara felt
sucked of breath.

‘We have lot in common,’ said
the woman. ‘My name is Barbelo.’ She held out her pale hand, a
giant’s hand, which enfolded Tamara’s grubby fingers like a
muscular team of serpents. ‘I don’t want to waste time. Let me tell
you the point of this contact. My people know of the Pelleth, as
they know of us. We all know the Shining One is coming to us. The
Grigori look down upon the Pelleth, and the Pelleth despise the
Grigori, yet we should be working together at this time. The
destiny of the Hanged One affects humanity and Grigori alike. Old
quarrels should be buried now. This is a crucial time.’

Tamara knew her face had gone
red. ‘But that’s exactly what I feel!’ she exclaimed.

‘I know. That’s why I’m here.’
Barbelo coiled an arm around Tamara’s shoulder and began to lead
her towards the cottage door. ‘I know we will be friends.’

Inside the cottage, Tamara made
tea while Barbelo sat at her kitchen table, seeming to fill the
room with her body and her presence. She spoke openly about how she
felt the Grigori had become stale and staid, almost to the point
where they had forgotten the reason why Shemyaza would return.
‘They are obsessed with conspiracies and politics,’ she said. ‘Smug
little cabals of pompous power-mongers, whose magic is bled of
life.’

Tamara interjected excited
remarks to illustrate how her own opinions of the Pelleth mirrored
Barbelo’s of the Grigori. ‘They live in the past,’ she said, waving
her arms for emphasis. ‘They hate and fear change. It is absurd,
for that is exactly what Shemyaza represents.’

Barbelo smiled a long, thin
smile and nodded. ‘Oh yes! I heard your dreams, Tamara Trewlynn. I
heard your lonely call. We are both renegades, and I respect your
abilities. However, I do have more knowledge of this subject than
you, and am prepared to help and guide you. We must work together,
as outsiders in the dark.’

Tamara warmed to the image
conjured by these words. A Grigori woman was sitting here in her
kitchen, talking to her as if they’d known one another for years.
She could hardly believe it was happening. ‘Nothing would please me
more,’ she said.

Barbelo put her head on one
side. ‘Of course, our association must remain secret from both
sides... for now.’

Tamara nodded.
‘Absolutely.’

‘We must use them without them
knowing it.’ Barbelo delicately took a sip of tea. ‘We work only
for the good of the land.’

Tamara’s trust in Barbelo had
been instant and all-consuming. After the woman had left, Tamara
had felt as if she’d met someone with whom she was destined to fall
in love. She’d been unable to relax, pacing her cottage like a
restless cat.

Now, Tamara knew instinctively
that the voice that had spoken through Delmar Tremayne that night
had been the voice of Barbelo. The Pelleth, in their blind faith,
hadn’t even questioned where it might have come from. Meggie’s talk
of dead ancestors was pathetic. The Pelleth lived on the same land
as Grigori, yet seemed to think they were invisible to them.

Tamara parked her car and went
into her garden. She saw a light burning low in her kitchen and
knew that a visitor was waiting there for her. Before she entered
the house, she paused to look out upon the night, extending her
senses to read the currents and vibrations that flowed through it.
The dreams of the serpent were faint music in her mind. It dreamed
of the sun chief and of those who would guide him to it. Tamara
expelled her breath in a shuddering sigh. She was smiling when she
entered her kitchen.

Daniel Cranton slipped out of the house
into the grey twilight that presaged the dawn. This was the time,
for him, when ghosts walked the ageless streets of the city, and
myriad overlays of past times were visible to his eyes. There was
no interference, no white noise, and the traffic sounds were muted.
Occasionally, a dog might bark or a cat yowl, and sometimes he had
heard screams, cut off sharply, or sobbing, but mostly, he supposed
these were memories replayed upon the resting air, oozing from the
relaxing stones of the buildings. London thinking about its
past.

The house where he was staying
did not look like a house, but a hall, a gathering place. It had a
double flight of steps running up to the double front doors, and
railings at the front. Above the lintel were the words Moses
Assembly Rooms, carved into the likeness of a folded ribbon or
sash. Large, uncleaned windows reared up for three storeys, while
in the roof small gables peered out like squinting eyes. Daniel
rarely ventured onto the top floor because it screamed at him. It
was a place where heart-broken domestics had hanged themselves in
the cold, stillborn children had been delivered, blood steaming in
the cruel winter nights of the Victorian age, and harsh voices had
uttered condemnations. Daniel could still hear the muffled echo of
those words. At night, they escaped down the stairs; a man’s
unforgiving tone, a woman’s trembling, desperate pleas. He could
never make out the words, even when he left his room and stood in
the hallway, listening. Altogether, it was not a good building, for
it would not let go of any of its history, and most of its history
was cruel. Perhaps this was why the outcasts of the Grigori
congregated there: the shunned seeking a shunned residence. It was
like a commune or a squat, inhabited but not loved or cherished.
The rotting rooms were full of finery — drapes and antique
furniture — but the walls were crumbling and everywhere smelled of
mildew. Daniel, the most purely human of his group of companions,
did not like the people who lived there. They seemed to him to be
like mannequins, sequinned and painted, but only representations of
living beings. Their eyes were shallow and their movements were
jerky, making them all the more eerie for their semblance of life.
When any of them looked at Daniel, he could sense their hunger, but
for what they hungered, he was unsure. What did they do when they
were alone? Did they speak, eat or sleep, or simply sit staring at
the walls? Was it his own presence, or that of Lily, Owen and Emma,
which made them come alive? It scared him to think that might be
true, even though he had seen clusters of them sneaking out into
the night through the alley door. During the day, he had heard the
front doors being opened and closed, but he liked to keep to his
room then or spend time with his companions, for he was
uncomfortable with the thought of running into any of the other
residents. They might speak to him, and he did not want to hear
what they might have to say.

What was Shem thinking of,
bringing them to a place like this? It was a sideways step into the
dark, and Daniel could think only of light.

Out on the streets, he could
breathe more easily. He was not afraid of the Assembly Rooms, and
in fact was fascinated by the dark, cavernous rooms and endless
corridors. But sometimes, it stifled him.

Lime trees edged the road,
leafless now. The Rooms were situated on Black Lion Square; a small
quadrangle of white Georgian houses, hidden away from the bustle of
city life. In its centre was a Garden of Remembrance, where a robed
statue stood pointing at the sky. Sometimes strange figures in
black would huddle on the benches there among the trees. Daniel
would watch them from a window on the second floor. They never
seemed to move, nor could their faces be seen, but they appeared to
be very old. Most of the other buildings in the square housed
offices; nobody lived in them now.

Daniel walked around the
square, feeling cold. He wondered whether he was lonely, for his
life seemed to have frozen. He was held in this place, hidden away.
Several weeks ago, he and his companions had arrived at the Rooms:
Emma, the rejuvenated Grigori dependant and self-appointed leader
of their group: the hybrid twins, Lily and Owen Winter, and the
shattered remains of the Grigori, Peverel Othman, whom they must
now call Shemyaza. Daniel was sure that Shem had been to the Moses
Assembly Rooms before. He seemed to know the deranged Grigori who
lived there, even though he rarely talked to them. He must have
visited them during the shadowy, unknown and frightening time he
had lived as Peverel Othman. Neither Daniel, nor any of his
companions had yet ventured beyond the square into the city itself,
unless you could count the times when Emma scurried out at dawn to
the news-agents a short way down the main road to buy cigarettes,
or magazines and papers. Daniel supposed they had all contracted a
kind of agoraphobia, perhaps because they were afraid of pursuit,
although it seemed silly to fear that. Even if other Grigori had
followed Shem’s trail from the north and had guessed he was in
London, no-one came to the Moses Assembly Rooms, no-one who wasn’t
wanted or invited. It was a bleak and invisible place.

After the first circuit of the
square, Daniel paused at the street, which led to the outside.
Already, faintly, the city was waking up, but then it never really
slept. Crows roosting in the trees in the Garden began to squawk.
Presently, the sun would come heralding another day during which
nothing would happen. When he’d followed Shemyaza out of the north,
or more accurately allowed himself to be led, Daniel had been sure
that unbelievable and wonderful things would happen to him. His
life could never be the same as it was. Shemyaza had
become
and the world must change. But it seemed Shem was not going to
accept what he was, which was why he was hiding himself in the
feathery, powdery shadows of the Moses Assembly Rooms amongst the
discarded outcasts of his kind. Soon, Daniel knew, Shemyaza would
shrug off his apathy, but Daniel was not convinced he would then
become anything other than what he had been before; Anakim, a
madman in Grigori terms. How long would they stay here? Daniel knew
that nothing was keeping him there other than his own loyalty, a
loyalty to an ideal that was long dead. The candle had been ignited
but the flame had fizzled out. It would take more than one attempt
to keep it burning bright and true.