J.

  xxviiij

  THE yellow-white beam of a searchlight erupted into the night sky. Jargo and Veda dived into the bushes and knelt motionless but for the quivering of nervous excitement and racing pulses, watching as the beam crossed traversed the gravel path and the scrubby bushes and moved on to the garden.

  "How long do they keep that thing on?" hissed Veda.

  "Dunno," said Jargo. "It's random."

  "So we're stuck."

  "For the moment," he said. "We just have to wait."

  A dark shadow fell across the light beam, a figure hunched, crouching, sniffing the air. It was Tantivy. Jargo clutched Veda's arm, his fingernails digging into the flesh. Veda could smell the boy's fear. And so, it seemed, could Tantivy. He raised his face and licked his lips and gave a guttural groan.

  Then there was a sudden, sharp, piercing ♫. Tulchan tossed something black, something feathered through the light beam. It fell with a soft thump at Tantivy's feet. He pounced on it eagerly and crammed it into his mouth. Veda could hear something CRUNCH like gravel crushed underfoot. She felt sick. Then the pug-faced boy scampered back to the house. Veda recoiled, feeling the nausea rise in her throat. What was this Tantivy, this pug-faced boy? What in the name of God was he?

  "He'll be going to perform for Avermann," hissed Jargo in a faint, chilled voice. "Oh God. It's unspeakably vile, what he does to amuse that creature."

  Veda did not want to imagine such horrors. Instead she replayed their escape in her mind, how Jargo had sawed through each of the three bars, brushing the iron filings and concrete flakings away to cover his tracks, how he had noticed the narrowness of the casement, about two square feet, how he had concealed a large tub of butter behind the pipes for lubrication purposes should either party get stuck, whilst Tantivy apparently preferred slippery margarine.

  Veda had reached up to the window, taken hold of the iron bars and given them a tremendous yank. With a crack, the bars had come away from their concrete foundations. "We're free," she had breathed.

  Jargo had clambered up the wall, using the sharp jagged ridges of the bricks and the scraped-out gaps in the mortar as improvised rungs in an improvised ladder, and put his arms through the window, digging his fingers into the concrete frame to give himself leverage.

  "I always knew it was better to be skinny," he had grinned. "I can squeeze through a coat-hanger, you know. It's an entrance requirement for my caving club." Then he had heaved his sparrow's weight from the floor with one bulge of the biceps and wriggled through the space. She had watched as his pale legs and feet kicked briefly and vanished, mentally thanking the aerobics teacher and her former friend Anthea who had dragged her unwillingly along to those sweaty-leotarded keep-fit sessions once a week for seven months. She also recalled, wistfully for the first time, a boy she had dated at university who had insisted on roping her (as it were) into the badminton and tennis clubs, mainly, as he had admitted, because Veda's short navy sports skirt had turned him on. Veda had consequently found victory easy to secure in singles meetings, because her opponent's capacity to move fluently around the court and play penetrating shots had been hampered by his shorts-straining erection. In doubles, of course, the same erection had become a huge obstacle to serious progress in competition. Still, all this chasing to retrieve balls from tight corners had kept Veda fit and relatively slim.

  "Come on, Ved," Jargo had whispered urgently, his curly hair silver in the moonlight. "The coast is clear."

  Her stiffening bruises screamed as the base of the window dug into her stomach and thighs, the rough brickwork chafing her shoulders, fraying her blouse, impeding her worm-like wriggle, and then she was out, rolling in the dew-laden, silver-struck grass with Jargo Jaconet, stark naked, grinning and capering like a madman and pointing towards the sea crashing against the shingle half a mile or so through the bushes.

  Tulchan gave another whistle. Tantivy cocked his head like a pointer, gurgled something and bounded through the woods towards the sea.

  After what felt like an hour but was probably less than ten minutes the searchlight switched off and the area surrounding the big house was returned to the darkness. Veda and Jargo scuttled through the bushes following the sound of the sea until they arrived at the edge of the scrub. Together they stared out over the grey shingle beach at the leaden black waters and the low black humps of the mainland away across the Sound.

  "We can't possibly swim it," Veda said. "We have to find a boat. You go that way, I'll go this." She could see in the moonlight the concern etched on his face and kissed him briefly on the cheek. "I'll see you shortly."

  The boy nodded gravely and scurried silently over the scrub. Veda watched until his pale figure was swallowed up in the shadow then turned away.

  A twig snapped loudly under her foot. She froze. Silence. Her progress along the scrub had been slow and frustrating. Razor-sharp dune-grass had slashed at her calves and the sand beneath the bushes had shifted at every step. Added to that the necessity of moving silently through rustling leaves and brittle twigs, avoiding the pale cast of light from the moon and the stars and the occasional burst of raking and searing illumination from the searchlight on the roof, and the twenty minute hunt for a boat had been immensely stressful. Satisfied that no-one had heard the twig snap, she began to move forward.

  Suddenly,

 

  the still night-air

  was

  to r n a p a r t,

  the silence

  rrrripppppped

  o pen,

  the daaaarrrknessssss rrrent by a blood-curdling

  howoooooooooooowwwwwl.

  Veda felt her

  Stomach hammerthump violently the base of her throat.

  Vision blur momentarily as she almost passed out;

  Feet nailed to the ground;

  Lips stuck together, mouth so dry;

  Marrow penetrated by spears of ice;

  Bladder stabbed by sudden jabs of pain giving her a desperate urge to urinate

  then

  her legs trembled quivered shook wobbled (turning to jelly) and almost gave

  way in response to

  an

  unearthly,

  terrifying,

  blood-freezing

  sssssccccrrrrreeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmm

  which pierced her to her very soul. Forgetting all sense of place and purpose, she crashed through the undergrowth towards the scream, breaking down bushes, smashing down stalks, battering groping leaves aside as she plunged forward. She was hardly aware of the searchlight blazing across her and hurling a golden shaft onto the surface of the Jura Sound beyond the grey shingle, or of the sudden shouts and blare of a siren. All she could hear was that unearthly sound ringing in her ears and all she could see, when she flicked a branch away with the back of her hand, was Jargo Jaconet, sprawled on the grass, his blood flowing blackly into the earth beneath his skin.

  He lay on his back. His skin had been lacerated. Blood oozed through the tears which ran at angles from knee to groin, and across his stomach and chest. But worse, infinitely worse, a huge lump of flesh just above his left nipple was missing, in its place a blood-filled crater. The flesh had been ripped from the body.

  As Veda fought the vomit rising into her throat, Tom stirred weakly, murmured something incomprehensible, muttered, head flopping to one side. Veda went to him, knelt, wondered where to begin. She slid her hand beneath his back and lifted him slightly. Blood slopped from the crater.

  A nearby shrub rustled. Veda looked up. Tantivy was crouching in the undergrowth, resting on his knuckles. His clothes were torn and dirty, his pug-face filthy, streaked with mud and caked with blood.

  "Tantivy," said Veda. She half-stood. Tantivy growled in the back of his throat. "Tantivy," Veda repeated. And then the boy grinned. Sticky blood was covering his teeth, dripped from his lips, smeared round his mouth and over his chin. Veda felt her sick
ness return in an overwhelming tidal wave.

  "Poor Tom," gurgled Tantivy. "He didn't make much of a meal. Too much bone." The pug-faced boy spat some gristle at a tree stump. "Still, something to gnaw."

  Veda went cold. Tantivy's eyes flickered in a brief appraisal of her body, fixed on her breasts, returned to the prostrate, murmuring, delirious Tarboy. Veda shook herself out of her stupor, scrabbled for a handful of pebbles and flung them at Tantivy's head.

  The stones peppered his face, and, as Tantivy raised his arm to deflect them, Veda seized Jargo round the waist and heaved him upright, slinging his arm round her neck, and ran. In spite of his light build, the boy was a hindrance. She half-dragged, half-carried him through the bushes. Jargo tried to walk but each step became a stumble as he lapsed in and out of consciousness, his head jerking up and lolling alternately, muttering incoherently.

  Veda could hear the bushes flattening behind her as she blundered forward. She glanced over her shoulder. Tantivy was not to be seen. He was in the shadows. Stalking them, like a raptor stalks a roe-deer.

  Suddenly, Veda's feet hit the beach. The abrupt change from soil to shingle made her stagger. Jargo's weight bore down, his dangling hand scraping the stones. Veda dropped him. The sea was a only few yards away.

  "Come on," she hissed. "Get up. Get up." His head rolled and a soft hnnnnnnnn slipped from his mouth. "Come on!" She shook him. "Get up, Jargo. Get up!" Then a white, shattering burst of pain exploded inside her head as, with a savage Grrrrrrr, Tantivy lashed at her face.

  There on the beach, kneeling on the grey pebbles, the grey sea crashing behind her, a half-naked, blood-stained, delirious, part-eaten boy sprawling before her, Veda watched as Tantivy crouched, swaying, a tiny arc of movement on the other side of the body. He growled, another low grrrr in the back of his throat. Veda saw the blood-reddened tongue-tip flick over the teeth, saw the pupils, yellow in the half-light, glow, dilate, black holes. He looked at Veda in a proprietal manner, nodded appreciatively, looked at the other boy,

  then

  sprang,

  launching himself into the air with a powerful thrust of his thighs.

  Crashing into Veda, he knocked her over, crushing the breath out of her lungs.

  She

  felt his hands clawing at her face,

  felt a nail split the skin on her cheek,

  felt his knees thud into her thigh,

  felt his bloody saliva dribbling warmly on to her face,

  felt the sharp teeth,

  closing closing closing against her left cheekbone, under the eye,

  closing closing closing,

  felt the hot harsh breath explode in her hair

  teeth

  closing closing closing closingclosingclos

  Veda squirmed and wriggled and got her knee between Tantivy's legs, brought it up with a sharp savage unnnh, sensed the soft testicles squashed between bones. Tantivy rolled away with a whimper. Veda grabbed the heaviest tree branch at hand and brought it crashing down against his skull

  AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN

  and again and again and again until

  she felt something give way, a hard surface crush into stickiness, and

  all of a sudden

  a huge explosion shattered the air. Veda abandoned the two boys on the beach and ran back towards the house, the blood-caked tree branch swinging in her fist.

  The house was ablaze. The bricks were engulfed, surrounded by fire. Tiles jumped from the roof, as though trying to escape the licking flames, and shattersmashed on the concrete below. Timbers and window frames creaked, groaned and cracked in showers of splinters. A rumbling boooom sounded as a girder dragged a floor on to the staircase. The magnificent carpet and wonderful banister whoossshhhhed as the fire took hold. Flames burst through the windows, sending glass flying as though desperate themselves to get out of this Hell. Like a madness, a poison, the tarantula bite which causes gyrations, every object in the path of the fire twisted and turned, this way and that, until, exhausted, it crumpled to ash and fell to the ground.

  Veda stood and watched in a daze. From somewhere to her right came a burst of shouting and yelling was that gunfire? People charged past, crazed, waving weapons. Cheering and whooping, the members of JASOn swarmed over the shingle and up to the house. Jemadar Jannock, Jarrah Jambres, Jonquil Jabot, a host of others she barely recognised.

  Tulchan broke from the garden, his sea-boots flapping as he ran for the boathouse, a dozen heavily armed guerrillas in determined pursuit. One of them launched a flying tackle and brought him down in the flowerbed.

  "Are you all right?" A solicitous figure, gentle-voiced, took her wrist and prized the tree branch out of her fingers. "We thought we had lost you." It was Jumbuck Jorum.

  "See to Jargo!" gasped Veda. "On the beach. Badly hurt…"

  A wheelchair-bound figure appeared in the doorway, the fire raging behind him.

  Jumbuck Jorum shouted his name. "Zutphen Avermann!"

  It was too late. One of the curtains twisted, spiralled, fell to the ground, sparks leaping up to touch the tartan rug wrapped round the knees. Avermann shrieked as the tartan sparked and, suddenly, an inferno erupted and he became, in a flash, in an instant, a twisting clawing screaming doll in the seat of his chair. He heaved himself upright and stood at last on his own two feet, his enormous bulk grotesque and shapeless. He tottered and screamed, a leaping dancing figure black and shrinking in an orange-yellow blaze. Then he sank to his knees, the skin and flesh shrivelling fast, a seared, mummifying shell.

  As the flames danced triumphantly round Avermann's body, which twisted slightly and then fell back, Veda felt the heat on her face and ran back down the shingle. Tantivy lay where she'd left him, curled like a foetus, blood leaking onto the pebbles. Jargo lay on his back, eyes trying to focus on the stars above him. Veda, kneeling, scooped him, cradling him gently, whispering his name. He twitched, smiled weakly. Someone somewhere was shouting for a doctor. Jargo whimpered, a scared little child and muttered something about being cold.

  Tears rolling down her face, Veda cradled him tenderly, and rocked him to sleep.