“The Keeper! We meet at last.”
The beautiful newcomer’s girlish voice resonated like tinkling bells. She managed a cultured facade even while clapping excitedly, as though applauding an opera. Raphaela persisted with her chants, sweat running down her face and plastering locks of hair to her cheeks.
“You have done your job well. Up to a point. Remind me … Running and hiding is your way, isn’t it? The coward’s route. Where are my manners? I am Finesse Apollyon. You know the origin of that last word. Biblical Greek for ‘the Destroyer’. Poetic, don’t you think? Oh, and I brought a guest. I hope you don’t mind?”
I wanted so much to save Raphaela, to reach out and brush away the annoying strands, but I was only a fleeting observer of this past horror. The girl called Finesse spun lightly, swinging an ebony curtain of hair, more graceful than a dancer. The door opened to her silent command. She gestured with one hooked finger and the figure of a man flew through the gap, catapulting across the room. He smashed into a glass cabinet, shards raining down and slumped to the ground against a far wall. He made no noise and I doubted he was conscious.
“Oops,” Finesse giggled. “Overdid the entrance! A bit theatrical, aren’t I?” Although Raphaela did not falter in her chanting, her face contorted in anguish. “Over here, mongrel. At my feet, although that privilege is more than you deserve.”
Finesse’s musical voice somehow amplified her vicious actions. She skewed her head and the limp bundle slid back across the room to a halt by a pointy-heeled black shoe. Unimaginable torture bloodied and bruised the man, his clothes ragged. But as I watched in mute horror it became clear: he was the sublime mirror of Finesse. Adonis to her Aphrodite. They were possessive of the same dark glamour in all but one aspect: his wide boyish eyes slowly opened, bluer than the Mediterranean Sea. I’d never had a full view before, and his beauty sucked the air from my lungs in a single glance.
I started with shock – Seth was young, maybe the same age as Smithy. He stared at Raphaela with ancient sadness and longing, a sharp contrast to his youthful appearance, and mouthed, “Sorry, I love you,” through badly split and swollen lips.
“I see there is no need for introductions. Traitor meet betrayer. Pathetic pair you make.” Finesse ground her stiletto into the back of Seth’s outstretched hand and his jaw tightened. He was clearly unwilling to provide her the satisfaction of hearing his pain.
“Now, down to business at last. Where is my Stone?”
She slashed the air with a finger and a jagged gash ripped the man’s chest from shoulder to hip. Blood rapidly spread the once-white front of his shirt. Raphaela’s distressed voice increased in volume.
“Leave her, Finesse,” he gasped. “She will never tell you where the Stone is. No matter what you do to me. And I welcome death.”
She laughed and bent down, clutching his shirt in her fist to raise him close. “Silly, naive, hopeful, Seth!” She slapped his face to punctuate every word and then propelled him forcefully to the floor. “Whoever said anything about dying? No martyred end on the horizon for you. Non placet. Your penance is to live forever by my side, doing my bidding as always. Only now, we add pining for another lost love to spice up proceedings. No second chance at fatherhood for poor discontented Seth. A thrilling climax.”
He grimaced in confusion. Finesse watched him curiously, her face gradually lighting up. “Oh, it is too precious. You didn’t know about the life squirming in her belly.”
“What?” Seth risked a glimpse Raphaela’s way. Tears streaked her cheeks and she conveyed her apology to him with pleading eyes.
“Yes, my dear Seth, your whore is with child.”
At this, his control crumbled. “No, no, no. Kill me, please! Please. Take me instead.”
Finesse tisked. “Hmm, begging. You know how arousing I find that. But I like to linger over such things and there is no time presently. Where’s the fun without the suffering? We’ll save it for the celebrations. My Stone, thieving harlot.”
Raphaela’s chanting reached a crescendo, her throat rough with exertion. She glared at Finesse with bottomless hatred. And suddenly, her voice boomed out as though from the heavens, a separate disjointed strand echoing about the room, even as her lips continued the incantation.
“I have opened the Delta Gate. Come to me and receive your prize.”
It was an order, impossible to disobey. Finesse’s arrogance vaporised, replaced by an expression of disbelief. She stumbled towards the triangle. Awareness dawned as she failed to fight the summons, shaking her head.
“No! You can have Seth, blubbering little liar. I don’t want him. I discharge him from my service.”
“Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin. Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin!”
Raphaela’s smile was triumphant as the words tumbled forth. Seth sagged to the ground in a faint, sapphire eyes no longer seeing.
“Come to me,” Raphaela sneered with loathing. “To me.”
Finesse stumbled inevitably towards Raphaela’s trap. She attempted to back-pedal, waving her arms uselessly in search of a solid anchor, before reaching the tip of the red-wax triangle and teetering on the edge. The dagger materialised between Raphaela’s hands. Her invocation ended with an unyielding declaration.
“I. Did. Not. Steal. Your. Stone. Join me in oblivion, repugnant hag!”
Finesse snarled – a deep, otherworldly sound. Then, she overbalanced and one foot slipped inside the triangle. The candles blew out, wrapping the two women in a dense haze. With all her might, Raphaela plunged the knife through her own heart. Finesse collapsed and dissolved into a column of pitch smoke.
Raphaela used the last of her failing energy to open her mouth and suck the evil mist into her body, as blood poured from the gaping hole in her chest. There was a ghastly howling moan and the furniture shook. A sulphurous reek tainted the air. Raphaela’s lips slammed shut, followed by a crackling noise, as though plastic shrivelling in flames.
A pearlescent shell travelled over her and, at its completion, Raphaela sat encased in a cage of her own making, imprisoning Finesse within. A thick silence descended, interrupted only by the quiet sobs of the broken boy.
“No,” he whispered. “Why? Why did you not tell me? WHY!”
My eyes flew open with the sound of his anguished scream ringing in my ears. I surged upright from the kitchen floor of the warehouse. I did not recall falling down.
“Raphaela. Seth!”
I glared wildly about, clutching at my sternum. I had to work to steady my frantic breathing. Bea prised my hands from my chest and Fortescue handed me a glass of water. Mrs Paget hovered in the background, looking petrified.
“Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.” Aramaic. The ancient language from the time of Jesus. I wasn’t aware I understood it. “It means, ‘You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting’.”
“Indeed,” said Fortescue.
“Non placet. ‘It is unpleasing.’ Latin,” I added.
My butler nodded. Okay. I was speaking in previously unknown tongues, an unlikely diagnostic marker for a brain tumour. Or epilepsy. A spiritual awakening? Psychedelic chemicals in our tap water? Visitations from aliens?
“What’s happening to me?”
The self-pity was impossible to hide. I could not bring myself to raise my head. I knew what I would see. A semicircle of kindly faces, committed to feeding me crumbs of information, when they knew. Yes, I was sure Bea or Fortescue or even supposedly mute Mrs Paget could eliminate my ignorance and explain the whole thing in a way that made perfect sense. They were conspirators in the plot to drive me mad. I would never have believed it of them. I picked myself up off the floor and made sure to keep my gaze lowered, cultivating a view of the floorboards.
“I’m going for a walk. And under no circumstances is Hugo to tag along.”
The irritating mobile phone was thrust into my hand. But still I did not look up. No one spoke a word as I made my leave. Plodding down the stairs, Mrs Paget’s panicked voice drifted behind.
“Bea, Seth is no longer shackled to Finesse. He is loose and able to act of his own free will.”
“Yes, and he is grieving for Raphaela. Heaven knows how he will choose to wreak vengeance. We must guarantee he does not remain at liberty for long.”
Whatever. Even the combined attempts of the cats failed to improve my dismal frame of mind, as they trailed me through the collection. To lighten the burden all I had to do was recall the harmony of Enoch. This I refused. Remembering any aspect of my latest delusion only reinforced my fear of insanity.
For hours I trudged the streets of Sydney, immune to the sparkling harbour with its coat-hanger bridge and zipping white-flag yachts. The vibrancy of the Rocks Markets on a Saturday afternoon, the majesty of the curvaceous Opera House, the free jazz at sunshine-drenched Darling Harbour held no fascination. Nor did I admire the centuries-old sandstone architecture, which mixed agreeably with modern buildings of glass and steel.
Teasingly exotic food aromas wafted by, neglected. Likewise Bea’s increasingly frantic voicemails. The journey took me bodily from the strange events of that morning – of the last few days – yet thinking forced the actions of my guardians under the microscope. They were the security I’d clung to across the crazy, nomadic years of my childhood. If I’d flown with a commercial airline and earned frequent flyer miles, I could travel to Neptune by now. So what if I was alone? Bea often said “While we’re alive, we belong to each other, no matter the distance between us.”
While we’re alive. I’d always thought it an odd way to begin a saying. I guess it encouraged an appreciation of every next breath. She’d been on the planet long enough to track its entire surface, so I thought she knew best. The three of them were always with me to buffer the worst of the outside world, though they’d never exactly been unreserved in their affection.
Aunt Bea showed her devotion in more proactive, less fuzzy ways. She took paralysing vengeance on any who slighted me. If I couldn’t handle a persecutor and finally fessed-up, her wrath froze the sun. She made certain those involved were transferred to Afghanistan, or at least that’s what I believed when they were never heard from again. And unlike Tiffany’s father, who intervened on his daughter’s behalf at her every whim, most of the people Bea punished deserved it. Their exile spared other victims as well.
But even this had ceased in the last year and I’d fended for myself. Since we’d settled in Sydney, I’d believed the erratic, roaming phase was over. But my minders kept more secrets than imaginable and I got no closer to finding out why.
The city I loved began to feel strangely hostile, spurred by an irrational sensation that I was watched. There was nothing to inflame the suspicion, yet all around me the impenetrable shadows appeared to breed monsters in the dying light. I began to hear things.
A surge of skittering legs and thrumming wings seemed to pursue me, as if thousands of crawlies amassed just beyond my range of vision. I spun several times to catch sight of them, and was relieved to find nothing there. But every time my vigilance wavered, the sinister vibrations gained volume, close enough to swallow me. By the time I reached my neighbourhood, the atmosphere of palpable menace goaded me to sprint towards home.
Once, I thought I glimpsed a streaking black shadow with glowing eyes pacing alongside me and the dread eased. But it returned when the fake Vovo disappeared. As dusk fell, I pelted down the alleyway concealing the entrance to the warehouse, panting hysterically. Nothing could lift the depression. And smothering fear. Or so I thought.
