The Burning Page 14

  “Tu es vraiment speciale.”

  Morag nodded, then watched as the nun glanced up and the blood left her sunken cheeks. Morag followed the old woman’s gaze and saw a tall man in a long brown robe standing directly behind Gabriel and the others. Next to her, the nun crossed herself and lowered her head, clutching at her beads for all she was worth.

  “Michael!” Morag shouted.

  Gabriel, Rachel and Adam turned and found themselves staring into blackness; into the shadow beneath the thick hood, where the figure’s face should have been.

  He towered above them, his cloak giving him the look of a monk. There was nothing kindly about the figure, though, nothing benevolent, and Rachel and Adam began backing away immediately, only to find their escape route blocked by the crush of passengers behind them.

  “It’s OK,” Gabriel said, but he didn’t sound as though he meant it.

  The man in the robe did not move. One hand, the skin livid and blistered, was wrapped round the handle of a black stick. The other was slowly raised, reaching out towards the children.

  “Give it to me.”

  The man’s voice was broken and whispery, but there was no mistaking the insistence in his request. He waited a few moments, the shadow beneath the hood growing deeper as Rachel and the others stared into it. Then he spoke again, calmer this time and more dangerous, “Give it to me.”

  “No,” Gabriel said.

  Rachel knew straight away what the man was asking for. She pushed back harder against the crowd, reaching round to take hold of her backpack; to get as close as possible to the thing she knew was nestled at the bottom of it, among her T-shirts and dirty socks.

  Although the man’s face remained hidden, unreachable, Rachel could sense a smile growing within the blackness for the second or two before he lowered his hand.

  “Your choice,” he said.

  Gabriel stepped forward, putting himself between the older twins and the robed figure, then spoke to them over his shoulder. “Go,” he said. “Move out of the way.”

  They did not need telling twice. They turned and pushed their way through the crowd, grabbing Morag and Duncan as they went, pulling them along through a tangle of angry passengers who shouted and cursed as they were barged out of the way. Once they had reached the door at the end of the carriage, Rachel turned. She reached for Adam’s hand and together they peered back through the sea of heads at Gabriel and the hooded figure, straining to hear what was being said.

  “I know what you are,” Gabriel said.

  The hood quivered slightly, as the man in the robe cocked his head. “And I know what you are.”

  “So you’ll know that I’m not afraid then,” Gabriel said. “That I’ll do whatever it takes to protect what’s mine.”

  The hooded figure turned his head towards the window. Were it not for the impatient tapping of his stick against the floor of the carriage, it might have been the most casual conversation in the world.

  “I will have it,” he said. “You need to know that. And if you insist on protecting it … protecting those who carry it, people will die.”

  “They already have, and even if I gave it to you right now, it would not be yours.” Gabriel was sounding more confident now, inching closer to the man in the robe as he spoke. “Whatever you think it will give you, you’re wrong. You and the idiots who follow you like sheep.”

  The man’s head snapped forward. “Until now, you were just an obstacle, but I’m really going to enjoy … clearing you out of the way.” He glanced over to where Rachel and the others were huddled. “All of you. I’ll know where to find you.”

  The train was slowing for a station. “I think we’ll be getting off here,” Gabriel said. “Keep in touch.”

  The man in the robe gave a small shrug. “Like I said, your choice. We could have done this the simple way. The painless way.”

  Gabriel was already moving away from him, squeezing between the passengers, gathering up Rachel, Adam, Morag and Duncan as the train pulled into the Métro station and urging them out the instant the doors opened.

  “He didn’t have a face,” Morag said.

  “Yes, he did,” Gabriel said. “He’s just choosing not to show it to us yet.”

  They stood on the platform as the train pulled away, watching as the carriages rushed by them. The man in the robe was nowhere to be seen, but Rachel caught a glimpse of the nun, the black and white habit flashing past her, before the train disappeared.

  She was still frantically crossing herself.

  Laura Sullivan would not normally have been watching an early evening discussion show, but she’d been flicking through the channels on the set in her office and come across a face she’d recognized.

  Chris Dalton.

  The man with whom she’d been working just a month or so earlier, on the dig at Triskellion, had changed. It was as though he’d aged ten years in a few weeks. He was ranting at the cameras, red-faced and raving, while the programme’s host struggled to get a word in and the studio audience laughed and squirmed in their seats.

  “… they’ve been coming here for centuries! Coming here and breeding with us. I saw the bodies with my own eyes. You all saw them … it was on TV, for heaven’s sake. And they’re still here, and the children are here—”

  The host cut across him. “Come on, Chris, are you seriously asking us to believe that—?”

  “I’m telling you!”

  “Well, thanks for—”

  “It’s in their DNA, don’t you see? They look like ordinary kids, but they’re dangerous. They need to be stopped.”

  The camera panned quickly away from him, settling back on the perma-tanned host. Looking somewhat relieved, he tried to wind things up while Dalton continued to burble on in the background until his microphone was cut.

  “So, there we are. Chris Dalton. Once a trusted archaeologist, and now? Visionary? Nutcase? You decide…”

  Laura switched the TV off, then jumped slightly when the door opened. The image of Dalton’s face in her mind, wild-eyed and haunted, was wiped away as Clay Van der Zee marched into her office. He looked a lot calmer than Dalton had, but when he spoke, it was clear he was every bit as worked up.

  “We’ve lost them!” he said.

  “What?” Laura remembered her conversation with Kate Newman that morning. She felt something lurch in her stomach.

  “We knew they were clever,” Van der Zee said. “But even so…”

  “Tell me.”

  Van der Zee paced up and down Laura’s small office as he spoke, waving his arms around, more passionate than she had ever seen him. “Our equipment tracked them to a town called Honfleur. A small sailing port on the Normandy Coast.”

  “Sounds like a nice part of the world.”

  “Very nice part of the world, if you’re a tourist. Say a middle-aged couple on a caravanning holiday.”

  Laura got it. “They found the transmitters.”

  Van der Zee nodded. “Six hours ago our agents kicked in the door of a small camper van. Now we have two very frightened and angry tourists, and a lot of egg on our face.”

  Laura failed to suppress a smile at the absurdity of what had happened, and at the ingenuity of the children. Van der Zee caught her expression. He smiled himself, but there was no joy in it.

  “So, now it’s down to you, Dr Sullivan.”

  “What can I do?”

  “You can do something useful with all those years of research. You can get on your damn computer and call up all the data you’ve amassed on these sacred sites. I want you running location programs around every one of them. Every stone circle, every burial mound, everywhere anyone has so much as dug up an old coin, until you work out where those kids are headed. Is that clear?”

  Laura’s eyes dropped, but only for a second or two. What was clear to her, and becoming more so with every hour that passed, was that she was starting to root for Rachel and Adam Newman.

  “I’m not sure I want to.”

&nbs
p; “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t think I’m what you’d call ‘on message’ any more, OK?”

  “I thought we’d been through this, Dr Sullivan. I’d hoped I’d put your mind at rest.”

  Laura shook her head. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to get someone else to find the children for you.”

  Van der Zee nodded, as though he were seeing her point of view. “I did mention the other … mystery, didn’t I?”

  “What mystery?”

  Van der Zee strolled across to Laura’s computer, began tapping at the keys. “I think this might rekindle your interest.” An image appeared on Laura’s screen: grainy black and white. Four figures standing on a train platform. “This is CCTV footage from Ashford station, just after they jumped off the Eurostar.”

  Laura looked hard at the picture. The children were huddled close together. They looked lost. She wondered if they’d been cold. Van der Zee leant across her, jabbing his finger at the screen, at the image of each child in turn.

  “Rachel, Adam, Morag, Duncan.”

  It took a few seconds. “I thought there were supposed to be five of them?”

  “There were,” Van der Zee said. “Our agent saw another boy, got a good look at him. Quite the artist too…” He took out a sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it and handed it to Laura.

  She stared down at the picture of a dark-haired boy with green, almond-shaped eyes. Had she seen him before? He looked familiar…

  “So, we have a child who seems to be leading the others. A child who, for whatever reason, fails to register on CCTV cameras. I thought, you know, that might be … of interest.”

  Laura tried not to let her excitement show, but her heart was thumping against her ribs. “Can I keep this?”

  Van der Zee was already at the door. He knew he had her; that she was firmly back “on message”. “Sure,” he said. “We’ll need your initial findings on the route as soon as possible, OK?”

  Laura nodded as she heard the door close. She took a pin from her drawer and fixed the picture of Gabriel above her desk. She stared at it for a few seconds longer before opening the file she needed on her computer and getting down to work.

  “Who are these two?”

  The boys had been waiting at the gate when Rachel and the others had arrived at the Gare d’Austerlitz in the southeast of the city. They were sixteen, maybe older, and Rachel had disliked them on sight. They had long, greasy hair and wispy moustaches and wore matching nylon anoraks. A dirty, red beanie hat was the only thing distinguishing one from the other.

  Identical twins.

  The boys sneered at Rachel, and the one wearing the hat turned to Gabriel. “Ariel?”

  “Who?” Rachel asked.

  Gabriel looked flustered and began ushering everyone towards the platforms. “No time for introductions now,” he said. “We’ve got a train to catch.”

  As if on cue, Duncan rushed up and began tugging excitedly at Gabriel’s sleeve. “Platform seven, the Francisco de Goya express. Non-stop, overnight service. Departs 19.43. Arrives 09.17 tomorrow morning.”

  “Arrives where?” Adam asked.

  Duncan cleared his throat. “Chamartín station, Madrid.”

  It had been a long time since Rachel and Adam had slept in bunk beds. Rachel guessed it would have been when they were five or six, in the tiny apartment their parents had moved into when they’d first got married. She could remember green curtains at the window and brightly coloured posters on the wall and the furious race to get to the ladder each night at bedtime and claim the top bunk.

  They’d fought about almost everything back then.

  Neither she nor Adam had been able to summon the energy for any such competition when they’d eventually found their way to the tiny sleeper compartment on the overnight train. Once he’d kicked off his jeans and trainers, Adam had wearily hitched himself up on to the top bunk, giving his sister a little privacy to undress, and as soon as she was ready, Rachel had settled down on the bunk underneath without a word.

  Both were hoping that sleep would come quickly.

  Thirteen-and-a-half hours, Paris to Madrid; it was far and away the longest train journey that either of them had ever taken. They’d made the four-hour trip to Washington DC a few times – traipsed round the Smithsonian and had pictures taken outside the White House – but that was about it. A train journey through the night was a marathon by comparison, and, if there hadn’t been so many other things to think about – so many worries – they would both have been pretty excited.

  Rachel lay back and listened to the sound of the train, letting its gentle, rhythmic rocking carry her away. She knew that Morag and Duncan were in the compartment across the corridor and that the French boys were somewhere further along, towards the restaurant car. She had no idea where Gabriel was. She imagined him striding up and down the length of the train, his mind racing faster than the engine, unable to sleep.

  If he ever slept at all.

  The French boys…

  Jean-Luc and Jean-Bernard. It had taken over an hour of surly looks and inaudible grunting to get so much as their names out of them, and even then they had been given grudgingly. They’d sat huddled at a table with Gabriel, while Rachel, Adam and the younger twins had sat across from them, trying and failing to make conversation.

  “So where are you from?”

  “You speak English?”

  “You speak at all…?”

  The new boys had insisted on calling Gabriel “Ariel,” talking in whispers and tossing dirty looks across at Rachel and the others if anyone had so much as offered one of them a stick of gum.

  “Maybe they just don’t like us because we’re American,” Adam had said.

  “Maybe,” Rachel had answered.

  “Didn’t we fall out over Iraq or something a few years back? Remember, we weren’t allowed to call them ‘French’ fries…?”

  “We’re not American,” Morag had said. “And I don’t think they like us either.”

  Duncan had glared across at the two French boys. Jean-Luc, the one with the hat, had turned and stared right back, picking at something stuck between his dirty teeth.

  “Just ignore them.” But even as Rachel had said so, she had known she would find it difficult. She had been desperate to find out who they were and where they lived; not because she was genuinely interested in them, but because she wanted to know what their connection was to Gabriel. How long had they known him? What had he told them about himself? Why on earth had he invited them along?

  The guard had come by an hour or so into the journey, and, after a few words from Gabriel, had happily taken the children’s non-existent tickets. Everyone had ordered food from the buffet – sandwiches and cold drinks – and once they were eating, Jean-Luc and Jean-Bernard had begun talking to Gabriel in French but neither Rachel nor Adam had been able to understand what was said. The boys were obviously capable of understanding English and could translate a foreign language into their own as easily as Rachel and Adam, but it seemed they were also able to block the translation powers of others when they felt like it.

  “I can just hear … noise,” Adam had said. “Like some kind of interference.”

  “Me too.” Morag had pulled a face. “It’s not fair.”

  Furious, Rachel had sworn under her breath. She’d seen the look from Jean-Bernard. “They can still understand us, though.”

  “I bet we can do it too.” Adam had glanced across and seen a slight smile from Gabriel, who had looked as though he was enjoying himself, and Adam had known he was right. “Come on … concentrate.”

  Rachel had closed her eyes and tried to focus. After a minute or so, she’d begun to picture a barrier forming, layer upon layer inside her mind.

  Adam’s words had come into her head as the wall took shape. That’s it, he’d said. Keep going. It had been delicate yet powerful; a latticework of light that had hummed with energy and strength, and had twisted around every phrase and sentence, darting
between the letters like an insect in flight, until each had been bound up tight.

  Protected.

  Opening her eyes again, Rachel had looked at Adam and spoken with her mind. You want to try first?

  Adam had smiled. Chicken. He’d cleared his throat and turned to look at the two French boys. “Hey, you … doofus!” When he’d caught Jean-Luc’s eye, he leant across. “You two look like monkeys, you know that?”

  Rachel, flashing the pair her nicest smile, had added, “Smell like them too.”

  It had been clear from the shrugs that neither boy had understood a word, and Rachel and Adam had settled back in their seats, mentally congratulating each other. On the other table, Gabriel had only stopped laughing when Jean-Bernard had banged a fist on the table, like a small boy who was not getting enough attention.

  The conversation between the tables had become rather more animated after that, though every bit as unfriendly; Gabriel – the only one able to understand both sides – had done his best to keep the peace until darkness fell outside, and all three sets of twins had wandered off in search of their beds.

  Rachel lay listening to Adam shifting his position on the bunk above her. She knew that he was not asleep; that he was finding it as difficult as she was.

  “Adam, are you OK?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive. G’night.”

  Then, ten minutes later, Rachel heard her brother say, “You ever think about Dad?”

  “Course I do.”

  “Lately, though? I mean, it’s all been about Mom, hasn’t it? I know she’s the one who stuck by us, the one who’s in trouble, but it’s not like he’s … dead or anything, is it?”

  “No.”

  “So, do you?”

  Rachel realized that, although her father popped into her mind many times every day, she could not remember the last time she had really sat down and thought about him: how he might be feeling; if he was missing them. If she was missing him. He had been the one who’d walked out, who had decided that the marriage was not working, but still… She felt guilty for taking her mother’s side quite so easily. If it took two people to make a marriage work, didn’t it take two people to wreck it?