Don’t let me hear you utter the word seamy. Something inside her knew my spirit was in need of repair. Intuitively, she understood how to mend the damage. Her eyes glinted as she shot me provocative glances. In that soft whisper of hers she sang to herself as she danced for me at the top of the stairs. With her back to me she eased the kimono off one shoulder to reveal bare skin, then eased it back up before sliding down the garment to reveal the other naked shoulder. Still with her back to me she opened her kimono. If I’d been at the front I’d have seen what she revealed. From the back I saw the garment resemble a pair of vast silken wings. Then closing it again she turned sideways before extending a leg forward, the toe pointing, until I saw as far as the stocking-top midway up her thigh. The woman knew. She stoked erotic fires inside me until they were incandescent. By postponing the moment of full sexual contact she heightened the anticipation. And I gazed up at her as if she really was the goddess of love.
Then the dance ended. She turned her back on me then whispered, ‘Mason. Come and take me.’
All the pain, anger, grief – the truckload of emotions that had been boiling inside of me were channelled into that orgasm. Every muscle in my body pulsated to the rhythm of me driving into Scarlett’s body as she lay there under me. Fireworks, explosions, a sense of discharging more than semen but electricity; a weird but wonderful – oh, so fucking wonderful electricity. There were torrents of sensations that made me forget entirely about who I was and what I’d experienced. As I lay down beside the beautiful redhead there was one of those moments of bliss that comes after sex, when you feel as if somehow you’ve melted into the fabric of your surroundings. There are no concerns. There’s only the throbbing ecstasy of living in that moment of now.
As we lay panting there, she turned to press her naked body against mine.
‘Mason?’
‘Hmm?’
‘In the morning, take me with you.’ Her cool lips kissed my chest. ‘Please. Pretty please.’
How can I refuse? I told myself, still deep in that sexual glow. Scarlett can come along. And we can do what we’ve done now over and over again. I smiled. Not for a moment did I think about repercussions. For that matter I didn’t consider what the others would say to a new passenger. Madeline, of course, would submissively accept Scarlett into our circle. With a cocoon of warm satisfaction all around me I merely smiled as Scarlett moved smoothly until she sat astride me. A moment later she ground her own body against mine. In the darkness her head formed a silhouette with tousled shadows where her hair had been mussed during our passionate meshing. She took a delicious twenty minutes to bring herself to climax. After that her mouth took over. When at last she lay down to sleep beside me I saw her lazily lift her arm to the glow of a street-light filtering through the window.
As I drifted into sleep she murmured in a way that was equally drowsy, ‘Look at that mark … I must have got lipstick on the back of my hand.’
I kissed her hand in the dark, the implication of what she’d seen slipping by me unnoticed at that moment. ‘Hmm. In the morning we’ll shower. And I’ll wash it away. Give it my personal attention.’
Nearly asleep now she whispered, ‘I’ll like that.’ She cuddled into me. ‘You will take me with you in the morning, won’t you?’
Daylight. Scarlett’s bedroom full of people … urgent murmuring … dry mouth … I awoke with those impressions. Yet even as I opened my eyes to people moving around the bed I thought: you’re still sleeping; this is a nightmare.
A figure lay on the bed beside me. It was wrapped so tightly in a white cotton bed sheet it had the appearance of a pale grub on the mattress.
‘It’s all right.’
‘Paddy?’
‘Stay there. We’ve nearly finished.’
I blinked against the glare of the sunlight streaming through the window. Paddy, Ruth, Dianne and Ulric were in the room. Paddy tied a thin red cord around the ankles of whoever was wrapped in the sheet.
Then the occupant of the shroud couldn’t be a mystery. ‘Scarlett.’
Ruth soothed me with, ‘Don’t worry, Mason. It’s over. Everything’s under control.’
Dianna perspired because she twisted a loop of flex from the bedside light around the neck of the figure inside the sheet. When the convulsions in the body stopped she released the noose with a sigh. ‘That did it.’ Dianna wiped her forehead with her wrist. ‘You can take it away.’
‘It?’ I grabbed hold of the cotton fabric that parcelled the head. ‘Why are you doing this to Scarlett?’
‘Why do you think?’ Ulric’s coldness made me shiver.
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘She was fine.’ In disbelief I wrenched at the sheet covering her face.
Ruth pushed me away. ‘Mason, stop it.’
‘I’ve got to see.’
Paddy gripped my wrist. ‘For your peace of mind, forever and ever hereafter …’ – Grim-faced he held my gaze – ‘you’re better off not looking.’
But as they hauled the body of Scarlett away, or what had once been Scarlett, I saw a bare arm slip free of the sheet. Nobody said anything; their eyes said it all when I saw what was on the back of that hand before Ulric pushed it out of sight.
I stared at the same Y-shaped scar on the back of my own hand. For a moment I wondered if my teeth would be strong enough to rip the skin away that bore the revolting stigmata.
They carried away the body in silence. I followed still buttoning my shirt. As they bundled the corpse into the back of the truck that stood just outside the front door I glanced back along the hallway. A door opened at the end of the passageway. What I had assumed to be a downstairs lounge revealed a single bed with a radio standing on a table beside it. A figure emerged from the gloomy interior to move down the hallway.
The man stopped five paces from me. Although his hair was mostly silver he still had red strands there, the same colour as Scarlett’s. His green eyes appeared to gleam in the dim light as he looked right at me.
‘Scarlett?’ He reached out. ‘I heard footsteps. Scarlett, is that you?’ He took another step forward, a white cane trembled in his hand. ‘I’m sorry I got angry with you yesterday. But it frightens me when you tell me you want to leave home. Scarlett?’ His blind eyes roved over me, then across to the kitchen. A note of fear crept into his voice. ‘Scarlett?’
On the stairs Natsaf-Ty appeared to look down his nose at me as I stepped into the sunlight.
When I walked away the blind man called out, ‘Scarlett? Where are you?’
chapter 32
Later in the truck, a brutal mood pushed its hooks into me. ‘Why did you have to kill her?’
‘You saw her hand.’ Ruth touched the back of mine where the scar wrought its crimson Y.
‘So she’d gone Echo on me. You still didn’t have to kill her.’ I buried my scarred hand inside the other.
I rode in the back of the vehicle with Ruth, Dianna and Ulric. Paddy called back over his shoulder as he drove. ‘If she’d woken first she would have killed you. Lucky we got there before either of you woke, old pal.’
‘Old pal? Don’t old pal me.’
Ruth began, ‘I’m sorry that we—’
‘Don’t apologize,’ Ulric said in his customary monotone. ‘We saved Mason’s life. He’s still under the spell of the woman’s vagina.’
‘Listen,’ I demanded, ‘when Scarlett turned Echo she was like Madeline, right? A female version of me?’
Nobody answered.
‘Well, was she?’
‘Here will do,’ Paddy announced. He turned the van off the main road into a lane that twisted away into a forest. Nobody looked me in the eye as they dragged Scarlett’s body, still wrapped in the sheet, out of the back doors then dumped it into a ditch.
Once more Paddy drove; the other three in the back with me and the passenger seat vacant.
‘I must be popular.’ My voice was grim. ‘Everybody wants to ride with me. Is it my new aftershave that’s so irresistible?’
r /> Ulric, the epitome of Scandinavian honesty responded by sniffing the air inside the lumbering truck. ‘You’re not wearing aftershave, Mason. The woman’s perfume rubbed off on you when you were having sex.’
‘You should have let me see the body.’
‘Bad idea.’
‘I needed to see the extent of the transformation.’
‘No.’
Ruth touched my hand again in a gesture of sympathy. ‘There’s no point in worrying about it, Mason. Put it out of your mind.’
‘Speaking of putting things out of mind what have you done with Madeline and Eve?’
Again nobody replied.
‘Eve hasn’t hurt Madeline?’
Ulric appraised me. ‘Would you mind if she has?’
I spoke doggedly, ‘Madeline’s on our side. She saved Eve’s life.’
They exchanged those glances again, as if they recalled secret conversations they’d had about me. Perhaps Eve had speculated for their benefit. ‘I don’t know what happened between them when they were locked up in that cell together – naked – but they’ve become very close.’ I pictured the knowing expressions, every single one of them visualizing the mating of man and monster: a monster who is a female copy of Mason Konrad. Very kinky, very Freudian. I punched the metal wall of the van so hard it clanged like a cathedral bell.
‘Isn’t anyone going to tell me anything?’
‘Mason—’
I yelled, ‘You’ve left Eve alone with Madeline! Do you know what my sister is likely to do to her? Do you! And where the hell are you taking me?’
‘We’ve already told you about the safe house,’ Dianna replied calmly. ‘Eve’s gone ahead with Madeline in the RV.’
‘That’s going to make some road trip.’ My voice became a growl. ‘Did you debate how long it’d be before Madeline’s butchered by my sister?’
‘Madeline’s safe,’ Paddy said, as he cruised the truck along the highway. ‘She’s important now. We’ve realized we have to …’ He stiffened as he realized he’d told me something he should have kept under mental lock and key.
‘You’ve realized you’ve got do what – exactly?’ Rage flowed freely through me again. ‘I’ve had enough of you people. Since the first day we met you’ve never treated me like I was part of your group. You never gave me weapons so I could protect myself. If anything, you behaved as if you were an armed guard escorting me to—’ Understanding detonated inside my head. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? I never was one of you, one of the gang, because I’m cargo, aren’t I? I’m a package you’re delivering to someone else!’
‘It’s not like that,’ Ruth said. But their expressions told me different.
‘Who are you taking me to? More importantly, why?’
Ruth gripped my arm. ‘Mason. They won’t hurt you.’
I tugged away. ‘Hey, Paddy! Pull over. My ride ends here!’
Ulric exuded permafrost, ‘Stop the truck? Don’t you want to see your sister?’
‘Or Madeline?’ Dianna made sure her question sounded suggestive.
‘Fuck you,’ I retorted.
Paddy slowed the vehicle. ‘What’s it to be, Mason? Jump ship here or find your sister?’
What else could I say? I sat with my back to the steel wall with my face set like stone.
Dianna smiled. ‘I figure Mason’s decided to stay with us for the time being.’
Listen. When you’re nauseous, you’ll happen upon a dead bird seething with maggots. If you’re suffering the leviathan of all hangovers, a neighbour will decide to hammer nails into solid timber. When you slip on a banana skin, it’s not only in your best clothes, it’s in front of the boy or the girl you’re trying to impress with your cool poise – not that stupid flop on to your fanny. Yeah, you get the drift of this. If something bad happens it’s never just one thing: there’s invariably the complimentary package of other woes just to add insult to injury, or another injury on top of the original injury. So, where I’m going with this line of thought is, as I sat there, experiencing nothing less than fury at the death of Scarlett, and tormented by questions of how close to resembling me she’d become … AND knowing that Paddy and his gang had duped me – that I wasn’t a fellow member but some kind of package to be delivered to a third party it … IT happened to me again. That rudimentary telepathic link established itself with the Echoman that Eve had shot yesterday. We’d left him to die under the bushes. Now, after all this time, he’d done precisely that. A sense of coldness filled me, then came a slow, wrenching drag as if the remnants of his life were ripped out of him – something I can only describe as the sensation of thorns that had been embedded in flesh being pulled one after another. As I stifled the groan at the aching sense of loss transmitted to me by the dying man I suddenly thought of Madeline. Just for a moment I saw through her eyes. In front of me/her my kid sister’s face hove into view, a second later pains shot through Madeline’s stomach. The pains reached across the miles to drive into my belly too. I winced as my knees rose in an involuntary spasm.
Eve’s been left alone with Madeline, I told myself. Eve’s making the most of the time. These pains … she’s driving a knife blade into Madeline’s belly.
I masked the torture in my stomach so the others wouldn’t notice. Madeline, whether intentionally, or not, telepathically transmitted the pains to me.
This went on for ten more minutes then Paddy announced, ‘This is it.’ He pulled over to the side of the road. ‘Mason, I promised you I’d take you to your sister, and here she is.’
With spasms of agony diving through my stomach muscles I had to lumber unsteadily from the back of the truck. Just in front of it was parked a silver RV with Eve leaning against it.
Eve looked me over. ‘You’re pale,’ she said. ‘You’ve not been eating prawns again, have you? They give you a bad stomach.’
‘Thank you for the touching reunion, Sis. No, I haven’t been eating prawns. I’ve just been through a whole universe of crap, though.’
‘Commiserations.’
‘Where’s Madeline?’
‘Inside.’ Eve appeared to be thinking for the right word before adding, ‘Resting.’
‘What have you done to her?’
I wrenched open the door of the RV. Straightaway I saw Madeline sitting on one of the sofas. Her lips were pressed together in pain, while she rested her palm against her belly.
‘Damn it, Eve. You didn’t have to hurt her.’
‘Ah …’ Eve understood. ‘So it’s that telepathic thing. You’re feeling what she feels?’
‘What did you do to her? Knife her?’
I sat beside Madeline on the sofa. Her dark eyes held mine, the hand with the Y-shaped scar pressed against her stomach as the hurt returned. Behind me, Dianna and Ruth climbed into the vehicle’s lounge area.
‘You really feel what’s hurting her, Mason?’ Ruth appeared amused.
‘Which means I know you’ve been torturing her.’
‘So, Mason.’ Eve spoke with satisfaction. ‘You’re feeling the pain in Madeline’s stomach. And it’s something you’ve never experienced before – not exactly, anyway.’
All three were smiling. I scowled.
‘What’s the matter, Mason?’ Eve’s smile broadened. ‘Haven’t you heard of period pains before?’
The three women laughed. Even Madeline allowed herself a timid smile. Outside the doorway of the RV Paddy and Ulric exchanged grins but noticeably refrained from avoiding any comment on menstruation.
My anger dropped. ‘You mean you haven’t hurt her?’
‘It’s her period, Mason, she’s old enough to take of herself.’ My sister enjoyed my unique, for a male, discomfort – a discomfort both psychological and physical. ‘As for you I can get you a painkiller, if you like?’
When the others had stopped laughing Dianna said, ‘We need to get moving. After what happened back in Tanshelf the police will be hunting for the pair of you.’
‘Unfortunately,’ Ulric added, ‘c
onsidering last night’s episode when Mason got drunk and left us for sex, we can not guarantee him willing to keep a low profile.’
Ruth turned to Eve. ‘We discussed this eventuality last night. Do we have your permission?’
Eve became grave as she nodded.
This caused my hackles to rise again. ‘Which eventuality, and what permission?’
Madeline leapt to her feet. ‘No! Don’t touch him!’
Eve wrestled Madeline to the couch as the others grabbed hold of me.
Ulric’s hand came into view holding a syringeful of pale-yellow serum. ‘Mason. It’s for the best.’ Then he plunged the needle into my face beneath the right eye. It seemed to me in the moments that followed I remained awake. Only the image had frozen in time of Paddy, Ruth and the others holding me down. However, the colours, one by one, slowly faded to monochrome, until it seemed I stared for hours at the scene in black and white.
chapter 33
‘Sleep well?’
‘I didn’t sleep, I was drugged.’
‘You’re healthy? No nausea? Double vision?’
‘Two questions: who the hell are you? And where are we?’
I scanned the room of a country house; bare floor timbers so ancient they were black; a stone fireplace big enough to spit-roast wild boar. Apart from three straight-backed chairs the most striking furniture was a gigantic plasma TV screen hanging from a white-painted wall. Twenty feet from it a woman sat at a small table, which accommodated a laptop. She wore a smart peach suit giving her the appearance of a business executive; without doubt, the most salient feature was that her hair had been plaited until it resembled a glossy black rope. Without a glimmer of grey it hung over the back of the chair until it almost touched the floor timbers. She’d not looked round at me when I asked the questions. Beside me stood Madeline, Eve and Ulric. From what I could see of the woman’s face it possessed a hardness, perhaps like that of an ageing cop who’d seen so many murders the veteran law-enforcer could read a mutilated corpse for clues like you can read a page. As she watched the six by ten foot plasma screen about a hundred different images appeared as thumbnails – shots of buildings, trees, open meadows, a walled garden.