The Harrowing of Hell, part 14
The next day took shape much as the last, with rejected meals, and visitors pounding on his door and shouting at him. He let the disturbances flow over him, until one more persistent than the rest cut into his stupor.
“Derek!” It was Alex again, thumping on his door. “Derek, it’s London. The Ruling House are on the phone - they want to speak to you.”
“Go away.”
“Derek, they’ve been calling for hours! I can’t put them off any longer...” she paused, waiting in vain for a reply. “Please, Derek!”
“Tell them I’ll call back.”
“I did that,” there was irritation mixed with the concern in her voice. “Three times. Derek, you have to talk to them. It’s Sloan.”
Derek sat up and shook the wave of dizziness out of his head. “Tell him I’ll call back in five minutes... no, make that ten. I need to get dressed.”
That simple task was harder than it seemed. There were clothes scattered across the floor, but they were soiled with mud and bloodstains...
Blood - her blood.
Derek picked his way over to his closet and pulled garments from their hangers; the jacket he’d worn that first night at her apartment, the tie she’d scolded him for choosing, the things he’d taken to London... He consigned them all to the floor, almost overcome by the tide of memories. At the far end of the rail he found something safe to wear; an open-necked shirt in a drab shade of grey and a pair of 501’s that were frayed around the hems and had been too tight, although his thirty-six hour fast had solved that problem. No socks or shoes - he couldn’t be bothered with such trivia, so he went barefoot. He unlocked the door and emerged warily.
Alex was alone. She glanced at his unusual attire and said nothing. Her lovely face was pale and burdened with anxiety, which only increased as she saw the state of him. His eyes were hollow, ringed around with shadow and a crop of uncharacteristic stubble was thick on his chin. His misery trailed behind him like a storm cloud. She escorted him to his office and left him there, but he guessed that she waited just outside the door.
Derek sat for several minutes, composing himself, before he put the call through to London using the video-link. Sloan answered as soon as the connection was made; one look at his old friend’s expression was enough to tell Derek that the freed soul had made it safely home to its owner’s body.
“Christ, Derek, you look like something the cat dragged in!” William accused. “I’ve been calling for two days - what kept you?”
“It’s good to see that you’re back to normal,” Derek said, not even attempting a smile. “How do you feel?”
“Fine, great, wonderful - the flipside of the way you look.”
Derek ignored the implied question. “Your family must be glad to have you back, and the London House - have you noticed any changes?”
“Patti’s over the moon and the girls are delighted. Imogen’s learnt to drive and Sophie’s grown six inches - they’re young women now, not children. As for my House, most of them are pleased to have the old war-horse back in harness, except for Wallace, who’s as sick as a parrot, spitting feathers at my return from the dead. Thought that the place was his - if we had a House in Coventry, I’d send him there and be rid of his incessant whining!” Some of the good humour slipped from Sloan’s face; there was regret and confusion beneath it. “I’ve mislaid almost a year, Derek! A year - a sizable piece of my life - gone!”
“What do you remember of your time in...” Derek shied away from the word. “The time you spent away?”
“I have no memory of being absent,” William frowned. “Nothing at all - not even the sense of something deeply buried, something painful that I don’t want to face right now. I recall that terrible night out on Angel Island, when I recognised Winston’s madness in your eyes, I recall stepping into the pentagon between the sepulchres - and then I was back here, sitting at the breakfast table with Patti. The transition was seamless. It’s as if my mind has been edited and all the horrific bits are on the cutting-room floor.”
“Better by far you forget...” Derek halted, as the words made him think of El... - her.
“I might try hypnosis,” William said. “It would be an interesting exercise to see if the memories are there and if they can be reached.”
“That may not be wise,” Derek warned.
“Wise or not, it’s my mind. You don’t understand what it’s like - I’ve had a year taken away from me, stolen... Lost, beyond recovering...!”
“Others paid a higher price to rescue you,” Derek said bleakly.
“Ah, that’s it, is it?” Sloan’s eyes narrowed. “Our ‘consultant’, the DuBois woman. Are you sure she’s dead?”
“Am I sure?” Derek laughed, but even to him it sounded more like a sob. “Yes, I’m sure! I... I mean, it was me...“ he couldn’t form the words, couldn’t make his confession. “Yes, she’s dead.”
“I wouldn’t be so certain,” Sloan said. “She isn’t your average person and she’s died before...”
“Fake deaths, perhaps, but this was real. And I know what she really was - an alien shape-shifter.”
“Oh, she fed you that old line, did she?” William was unimpressed. “She tried that one on me, but I never did see her alter shape. She claimed to be a telepath too, and to be able to move things with her mind... wait a moment, did I forget the psychic healing and the immortality on the side?”
“Are you saying that she lied?” Derek asked coldly. “Or that she was mad?”
“I wish it was all a pack of lies or paranoid delusions or whatever,” Sloan sighed. “But I’m very much afraid that every damned thing I know about that woman - and I use the word loosely - is the gospel truth. Listen to me, Derek - there’s no need for you to mourn Elise DuBois. She’ll turn up again, with a fresh new face and a fancy new name; anyone who could get me out of Hell can certainly get herself back from the dead!”
Derek said nothing, lost in his vision of the knife and her blood.
“Derek, take some time out to get over this,” that sounded like an order. “I’m going to - I owe it to Patti and the girls. Be gentle with yourself, and don’t freeze your friends out - you know that they only mean well. Let them take care of you, heal your hurts...”
“They can’t help me with this,” Derek insisted. “It’s my pain, my sin...”
“Ah, Derek, always so selfish!” William grinned. “No easy way to salvation for you, eh? Well, it’s your chosen path...”
“If we’re done here..?” Derek lifted his hand to end the call.
“Wait, there’s one more thing,” Sloan said quickly, warmth flowing back into his blue eyes. “You went out on a limb to get me back, you and that infuriating girl I used to think was my enemy - you embarked on a foolhardy enterprise far above and beyond simple friendship. I’m not sure I’d have risked as much to rescue you, but then, I’m not a Rayne. The words seem totally inadequate - thank you, all the same.”
“You’re welcome, William,” Derek almost smiled. “Just wait until I call in this favour!”
Sloan waved and broke the connection. Derek sat in front of the blank screen for a while. Eventually there was a knock at the door, which he ignored.
After a respectable interval, Alex entered and occupied the chair on the other side of the desk.
“You should eat something,” she said. “Dominick says he’ll cook you anything you want.”
“No,” that was too harsh. “Not yet. I don’t feel like eating yet.”
Alex brightened a little, cheered by his response. “If you want to talk this through with someone, Rachel’s available...”
“Again, not yet.”
He could see that she didn’t understand. She was still too young to have been stricken with such devastating loss, such enervating sorrow. She frowned. “We were all there, Derek - we know how terrible it was, but it was the only thing you could have done. Nobody blames you for Elise’s death...”
“I do,” he scowled. “I blame myself. I should have known what she was planning, seen through her duplicity - and if I’d known, I could have prevented it...”
“And who would you have sacrificed in her place?” Alex demanded. “One of the witches, or Kristen, or me - or yourself?”
You can’t save everybody, Derek, Elise’s voice whispered from his memory - but she had; she’d saved all the people important to him and also to Jacob, buying their survival with her own life. Personne, she’d said, no-one important will die...
Derek shrugged and it seemed to Alex that something came back to his eyes, something of himself. A little of the madness left and the first hint of practicality returned. “What happened to her body? Is it still in the house?”
“The witches took it with them, back to the mainland.”
He found that almost amusing, Jacob smuggling a body across to the city in his battered VW bus, especially when, as far as the police were concerned, the body was that of a kidnap victim. If he’d been caught - but that hadn’t happened, or Alex would have told him. “Then I need a phone number - can you find it for me? It won’t be an easy search, as I don’t know the surname and all I have for you to go on is an address in Pacific Heights.”
“If you want to call Jacob, he gave me his number,” she grinned at his amazement. “Actually I have three numbers - the land-line, his mobile and the secret one to his retreat in the mountains - not to mention three e-mail addys and his ICQ number. Which do you want?”
Derek raised that eyebrow - oh God, she’d missed that! “So you did sleep with him?”
“I’m only releasing that data on a need-to-know basis,” she said sweetly.
“And I don’t fall into that category?” Derek pushed the phone over to her. “Use the number for the house - and don’t tell me that either.”
She pressed the keys, switching the thing to speaker-mode so she could hear the warlock’s voice. It rang for a while, then Jacob picked up. “If it’s you again, Terry, and you want to speak to Sula, you can’t - she’s out!”
“It’s Derek Rayne.”
Jacob’s whole tone and manner changed, returning to mild and civil. “Hi, Dr Rayne. How are you? What can I do you for?”
“The funeral,” Derek said, bleakly. “When is it?”
The warlock’s double-take was almost audible. “Whose funeral?”
His voice shook as he said her name. “Elise DuBois.”
This time the silence was so long that Derek thought the line had gone dead, then Jacob sighed. “She didn’t want a funeral - she had no use for religious beliefs. In strict accordance with her wishes, I had her body cremated and scattered the ashes into the ocean. We cleared her studio yesterday - the contents will be shipped to Europe. You’re too late. Everything’s done.”
“Why the rush?” Derek demanded. “Why the need to settle her affairs with such indecent speed?”
“It was what she wanted - no more, no less,” he sighed again. “There’s no need to upset yourself over this, Dr Rayne. She was Galadriel - remember all that ‘diminishing’ and ‘passing into the west’ stuff? After all, it isn’t as if she’s really dead...”
Derek hit the key and killed the call.
Alex glared at him. “You didn’t have to do that!”
“Should I have sat and listened to all his weird New-Age beliefs about life and death? What does he know, anyway?”
She considered arguing, then dismissed the idea. The silence flowed back, a wedge between them. Derek wondered if he should say something, but Alex beat him to it. “I almost forgot - you’ve got a weird e-mail. I sent it to this terminal.”
He called up the program and scanned through the inbox. London had been mailing on an average of once an hour, but there was one black sheep in the flock from a mysterious source, Queen@Elfland.co.uk. When he put it on the screen and scrolled down to the signature there was only a single letter, T.
“It’s a poem,” Alex said, moving around to read over his shoulder.
“No, it’s the lyrics to a song,” Derek skipped through the lines, frowning. He couldn’t bring the tune to mind but odd phases seemed familiar. “For I have loved not as I should a creature made of clay...”
“Trust you to go straight to the dismal bit!” Alex scolded. “How about this piece? - I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way, and I said ‘Let grief be a falling leaf at the dawning of the day’ - that’s sweet. Who’s it from - do you know?”
“Titania.”
“Now, there’s a fancy name!” she wrinkled her nose. “Who is she and how does she know you?”
“I met her in England - she protests against projects that despoil the environment...”
Nick entered the office without knocking.
“You look terrible,” he said. “I’m glad you’ve come out of your room - I was working on taking the door down.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t abseil down from the roof and kick in the window.”
“Thought about it,” Nick confessed, claiming the chair.
“Dominick talked him out of it,” Alex added. “He said we’d never find a craftsman able to restore all that leaded glass.”
“I must give that man a raise.” Derek made a mental note.
“I suppose you’d like a report on what’s been going on around here?” Nick asked. “The lawn’s clean; the witches went over the grass practically blade by blade. Even Frances couldn’t find anything out there now. Arkadi’s thugs played rough with our guys on the gate - multiple bruises and a couple of cracked ribs - they’ll be on sick-leave for a week, maybe two.”
“What about Victor? Did he go to the cops?”
“My sources say that he’s fled the city. Took a plane out to Brazil yesterday,” Nick’s grin had a nasty edge to it. “Running like the coward he he always was - whatever magic or manifestation chased him off the island, it scared him good!”
Alex shook her head; that was a dangerous topic.
“We do have one urgent problem, “ Nick continued. “The media have worked themselves up into a feeding-frenzy over your kidnap case, and they’re leaning on the cops hard to solve it. You can’t stay hidden for much longer. We need to get you back into circulation fast and that’s going to take one hell of a good cover story!”
Derek paused, frowning as he ran through a selection of plausible scenarios. “I think we should keep it simple - sneak me across the the mainland and dump me somewhere so I can be found. I can tell them that I was blindfolded and never had the chance to see my captors.”
“You certainly look as if you’ve been shut in a basement for four days,” Nick observed.
“The cops will assume that the Luna Foundation paid your ransom and that’s why the kidnappers released you,” Alex added. “And if we deny it, they’ll be certain. It should work like a dream.”
Nick steeled himself and tested the water. “What will you tell them about Elise?”
Pain coiled in Derek’s eyes at the sound of her name and he clenched his teeth, biting down on his grief. “I’ll say that we were separated, that I don’t know what happened to her, that I’m afraid for her... that I think she might be dead...”
Alex wanted to hug him, appalled by the broken note of sorrow in his voice. “That ought to convince them... it convinces me, and I know it’s a fake!”
“Where do you want to be dumped?” Nick asked.
For a moment he had no answer, then in came to him in a surge of rightness, a circle of completion - the place where this journey had started. “Corona Heights.”