Scenting Hallowed Blood (9 page)

Then there was Israel, whose
skin was a soft, satiny purple-black. He came from a far Grigori
family whose ancestors had been worshipped as demons in the dust
and heat of a famished land. His people were very enclosed, he
said, which was why he’d chosen to flee them. He had travelled much
about the world and had seen many strange and disturbing things.
For a while, to obey some facetious urge to mimic art, he’d lived
as a vampire, although admitted he didn’t much like the taste of
blood. Israel possessed a beautiful, foreign, stringed instrument,
which he took out onto the street and played. People threw him
coins. Unlike some of the other residents of the building he did
not appear to have recourse to his family’s assets, although the
others tended to share what they had without thought.

Money, Lily had quickly
learned, was never a problem for Grigori, even the outcasts. They
treated it without reverence. It was as vital to them as air, but
just as easily obtained. Not for them the life-long love/hate
affair with the demons of lucre, the humiliating entreaties and
prayers of desperation, the draining offerings of time and energy
for meagre rewards, spiced by the occasional god-like yet sardonic
windfalls. Lily too had money — a legacy from her mother — but Emma
had told her not to try withdrawing it from her account, because it
would make her easier to trace. Naomi gave her money sometimes: ‘Do
you want this?’ Offering a crumpled twenty pound note, as if it was
some little bauble she’d found and did not want to keep. Lily
always took these presents, feeling that one day she might need
them.

Her favourite new friend among
the Grigori was Johcasta, although she was perhaps the most
threatening. Johcasta had a sharp tongue and often resorted to
slapping people if they annoyed her, which was often. But her fiery
temperament, flashing and dashing about the dour halls and
corridors of the Rooms, fascinated Lily. Also, she seemed to have
taken a shine to the fey hybrid twin, and asked her questions about
what it was like to be half human, half Grigori. Lily could not
answer with any great honesty, for she had no comparisons to make,
but she made up twisted feelings and dark angst, which seemed to
satisfy her friend.

Johcasta’s hair looked like
gold wire, and glinted metallically in artificial light. She wore
it tossed up on the top of her head, where it was loosely confined
with tortoise-shell combs. This abundant shining mass reminded Lily
of the hair on a doll she’d possessed as a child; unreal. She’d
always wished it could be possible to have hair like that.

Johcasta made divining tools
from many different materials. Once, in the green darkness of her
room, where the windows were occluded by coloured blinds, Johcasta
had held out her white hand to Lily. A spill of semi-precious
stones lay there in the dry palm, gleaming dully. Johcasta cast
them onto the floor, where a fringed cloth lay.

‘This,’ said Johcasta, picking
up a dark stone, ‘is Mevanya. See her green veins. She has great
power, but her plans are always sabotaged by her jealousy, which is
insane.’ She placed the stone in Lily’s hand.

‘And this pink crystal is
Marmoset, the child of love. When he touches the red flank of
Garibaster, the angry, he bleeds and love turns to hate.’

Lily handled Marmoset; the
stone felt warm to the touch.

‘And here,’ said Johcasta,
lifting a smooth tablet of turquoise, ‘is Fairuzi, a lady of
protection. Evil eyes close in her presence and she drains the
poison of Aglax, the black stone. Falling next to him, she drives
his negative influence to sleep.

‘Now look at this,’ said
Johcasta, and put a piece of cold green stone into Lily’s hand.
‘Mark her well, for it is the guardian, Zahtumuzgi, the Serpent
Lady. Scorpions, snakes and bees do her bidding, as do the spider
and the lizard, for good or ill.’

Lily let the stones run through
her fingers.

‘There are more,’ said
Johcasta, indicating the fringed cloth. ‘I will tell you their
stories another time. Now gather them all and cast them, and I’ll
read you their messages.’

Lily felt nervous of doing so.
She was sure Garibaster, Aglax and the less clement aspect of
Zahtumuzgi would gang up against her and pronounce evil omens.
Still, she was equally nervous of Johcasta’s displeasure, so threw
the stones onto the cloth.

‘Ah,’ said Johcasta, peering.
She rested her hand on one raised knee and leaned forward to
inspect the falling. ‘Zahtumuzgi stands alone, although her eyes
are directed towards the Maiden stone, Melandra, the lapiz lazuli,
which represents yourself. But the sick lover, the androgynous
pearl, rolls close behind you. He is Tarturophane, and his still,
stagnant waters can drag you down.’

Lily had a sinking feeling. ‘Is
there anything good there?’

Johcasta laughed. ‘But of
course, Aglax the black gives you his power of dark manipulation,
while Marmoset lingers back, wondering whether Tarturophane will
wither his feathers of love. But he will wait until the androgyne
swims away on a river of tears. What seems to be drained of all
hope will be restored.’

‘Oh,’ said Lily. She wasn’t
sure how good that sounded.

Johcasta carelessly gathered up
the stones and jingled them loosely in her hand. ‘Each day brings a
new falling. Don’t be depressed. You’re probably affected by some
crisis within your group.’

‘Mm,’ Lily said, nodding
glumly. She was thinking of her twin brother, Owen. Ever since
they’d left Little Moor, he’d spoken little. The bright spark of
his being was eclipsed by memories so dark they could only be
repressed by catatonia. Peverel Othman had destroyed Owen and
ruined his relationship with Daniel. Guilt afflicted Lily, because
she knew she had assisted Othman. He had seduced her and she had
loved him, but that was no excuse. His dextrous love-making had
concealed the message ‘give me your brother’, and she had willingly
held Owen out to Othman, saying, ‘take him, take him, but still be
mine!’ Sacrifice, desire, lust and sin; Othman’s heady cocktail of
subtle demands. Daniel insisted that the dark presence of Peverel
Othman was gone now, although Lily was not convinced of that. She
had tried to talk to Emma, who simply told her that everything
would sort itself out in its own time, but Lily could not stand
seeing Owen as he was now. Avoiding the sight of him, she spent as
much time as possible in the company of the other Grigori in the
Rooms. Sometimes she wished Shem and the others would leave, so she
could stay behind with her new friends. She could imagine herself
drifting into their lifestyle so that her past life would become a
blur in her mind. She wanted to sit all day and do things like
Naomi and Johcasta did, hiding away from the world, half-existing,
but safe.

One day, after she’d been in
the Rooms for about two weeks, Israel asked her about her
companions. They were walking down a dusty gallery, where lighter
spaces on the yellowy walls showed where paintings had once hung.
The windows that ran down one side, and overlooked the square, were
cracked in the corners and dusty. When the wind blew, they
rattled.

Israel padded light-footed
beside her, taller than Lily by over a foot. ‘What are you doing
here?’ he enquired. His voice, like his body, was dark and
velvety.

Lily shrugged. She wasn’t
surprised at the question, only at how long it had taken someone to
ask it. ‘We have nowhere to go.’

Israel sighed. ‘Such is often
the case. The Grigori, Shem, is your father? And the woman, Emma,
your mother?’

‘That’s right,’ Lily lied. She
thought it best to.

‘Dangerous,’ said Israel, ‘the
mating of one kind with another. It is why you are estranged, of
course.’

‘I expect so,’ Lily answered.
‘We lived in one place for a while, but it became...
difficult.’

Israel frowned. ‘The human boy,
Daniel, is your half-brother?’

Lily thought it was all getting
too convenient, so decided to tell a little truth, to lend
authenticity to her story. ‘No, he was, is, my brother’s
lover.’

‘Your brother is unwell.’

‘Yes,’ said Lily. She hoped
Israel wouldn’t ask what his illness entailed. ‘I don’t know what
we’re going to do,’ she said quickly, if a little lamely. ‘We can’t
stay here for ever.’

‘Your father is in trouble.’
Israel smiled widely. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.’

Lily grinned awkwardly, but did
not answer. ‘I would like to stay here,’ she said, ‘but not with my
family.’

Israel didn’t know who Shem was
or what he represented. If she came out with the truth and said,
‘He is Shemyaza,
the
Shemyaza,’ Israel would laugh, and
believe Shem’s guardians had only called him that as a child
because it was a powerful name. Many Grigori were named after the
fallen ones. She had learned that her own father had possessed such
a name: Kashday. She had never met him, nor had any hope of doing
so. She presumed he was dead, perhaps reunited with her mother, a
woman who had dared to love an angel.

In Little Moor, Lily had
thought she was in love with Peverel Othman, only now the infection
had left her. She felt empty of love, dried out; free but somehow
melancholy because of it. Shem was beautiful, the ultimate
desirable object, yet she could not love him. Whatever he was now,
she knew too much of his past, the killing, the deceit and
corruption. She could not feel sorry for Shemyaza now. He had made
himself in his own image, a warped and bitter reflection. Daniel
believed Shemyaza was some kind of messiah, but Lily could not
share that belief. She admired Daniel’s courage and tenacity, his
determination to push and bully Shemyaza into
caring
about
the world and his as yet unspecified destiny, but ultimately, she
thought Daniel was wasting his time. If Shemyaza was so powerful,
why didn’t he do something about Owen?

It was only a short time ago
that Lily and Owen had learned the truth about what they were, and
who their father had been. All their lives, they had listened to
their mother’s various tall tales about the man who had loved her
and either left her or died, depending on which story she was
using. She had kept back the truth, which ironically would have
been the most outrageous and least credible story of all. Kashday
Murkaster had been Grigori, and his family had virtually owned the
village of Little Moor for centuries. Twenty years ago, Helen had
gone there to work for a local farmer, and had attracted the
attention of Kashday. Inevitably, perhaps, they had become lovers,
but once Helen learned the truth about Kashday, she had wanted to
share his Grigori power. A ritual had been enacted, which had
decimated the Murkasters, and dispersed the survivors. All that had
been left was the old empty house, Long Eden, and a bank account
full of money for Helen and her half-breed children. Lily and Owen
might have never discovered what they were, but for the arrival in
Little Moor of Peverel Othman. He had sniffed them out, prompting
Emma, an old dependant of the Murkaster family, to reveal the truth
to the twins. Emma had demanded back her lost youth from Othman,
and he had apparently given it to her without question. Lily still
didn’t know how he’d done this, and shrank from asking, sensing the
answer would not be pleasant. Since then, Emma had appointed
herself as the twins’ guardian. Lily wasn’t sure what the woman
thought of Shemyaza, but doubted she shared Daniel’s view.
Probably, to Emma, Shemyaza was simply a resource, like food or
water. If forced into making a choice, she would undoubtedly choose
him and discard the twins. Lily didn’t care.

‘Israel, where do you go when
you go out at night?’ Lily asked. They had come to the end of the
gallery. She wanted to ask him to take her with him some time.

Israel chuckled. ‘Nowhere,
child, you would want to see.’

‘How do you know that?’ Lily
snapped. She did not like being referred to as a child.

Israel shrugged. ‘You are
sweet,’ he said, which could have meant anything.

Lily sighed. She wasn’t bored,
because she spent most evenings with either Johcasta or Naomi, or
else watching TV with Emma and Daniel, but she wanted to become
part of the Grigoris’ lives in this place. She wanted to become
strange, and wear eccentric clothes, do something unusual to her
body or hair, smile like a cat.

‘What would your parents
think?’ Israel said, and a certain tone in his voice suggested he
didn’t believe her story at all.

Tamara walked the coastal path that
rose from the village and snaked high above the sea. The sun was a
watery halo over the dark surge of the waves and the nipping wind
snatched at Tamara’s long coat. The brightness of the day was
unseasonal, and served only to illuminate the bleakness of the
winter land, the greys, duns and muddy greens of sleeping verdure.
Tamara knew that today Delmar Tremayne was not in school. She had
meditated on his whereabouts only an hour earlier and discovered he
was down at the shore in Quoit’s Cove, grubbing through the
rock-pools. Often he took Agatha with him on these forays, but
today he was alone. It was almost as if Tamara had planned the
whole thing, but if anything was working for her, it was
synchronicity.

She made her way down the steep
path, pausing to watch the boy who was sitting on the sand, his
straightened legs pointing towards the waves. His hair blew around
his head and shoulders, spray-dampened into weedy tendrils. Delmar
was sea-born and fey, having spent too much time attuned to the
goddess Seference; he seemed hardly conscious of reality. Tamara
wondered how he coped among people his own age. Not every Cornish
youth was aware of the strange and magical things that went on
around them, and those who didn’t must consider Delmar very
peculiar.