Rising out of golden light
The woman I will be
Venice
Micol forbade herself from thinking. Had she stopped and pondered what she was about to do, she would have never gone through with it. Where did the golden spiral lead? Where had Alvise gone?
Micol closed her mind and her instincts and opened her heart, her caged heart that only wanted one thing: freedom. She pushed open the heavy wardrobe doors and bolted in what felt like a single jump towards the iris, vaguely aware of someone shouting and Lucrezia’s endless lament. She knew she had to touch Lucrezia’s hand before she jumped, because that was what Alvise always did.
Out of the corner of her eye, Micol saw Vendramin re-enter the room and take a step forward, his arms outstretched, trying to stop her, but Lucrezia’s bed was between them, and before he could go around it, Micol had already taken hold of the sleeping girl’s hand. She felt something burn her palm, but the adrenaline coursing through her steeled her against the pain. She launched herself towards the spiral, and for a moment her body shivered. Half of Micol had disappeared into the iris already; it was too late for anyone to stop her. She was gone into the twirling gold and into darkness, towards what she hoped was freedom and not death.
Rising out of the golden light were a slim young man holding a bow and an almond-skinned girl with cropped hair and a long white dress. There was something shiny and crackling, like blue lightning, wrapped around the girl; the man tumbled for a moment and then jumped up, ready to shoot an arrow.
Sarah sprang to her feet, hands flushed with Blackwater, eyes narrowed and gleaming, ready to kill.
“Who are you?” shouted Sean, his sgian-dubh in hand.
“Who’s asking?” the blond man replied. He spoke in heavily accented English. The girl with him stood, immovable, her hands raised and crackling blue, her gaze filled with what she hoped was menace, but looked a lot like fear.
Sean saw no reason to hide his identity. These strangers weren’t demons, clearly, and if they were there to harm Sarah, he’d soon see to them. “My name is Sean Hannay, Gamekeeper of the Midnights.”
“A Gamekeeper!” the stranger said, his voice dripping with relief. “I am Alvise Vendramin, of the Vendramin Family from Venice. And this is Micol,” he replied, shooting the girl a murderous glance.
“Vendramin,” whispered Niall, recognition spreading all over his face. Of course! He remembered the blond, slender boy and the gilded palace, and the light of the moon on the canals. Many years ago.
The girl called Micol took in the scene, her eyes wide. She studied them one by one as they talked. Micol could see auras; they told her the inner thoughts and history of people. Over the years, she had developed a kind of book of auras in her mind, instantly reading what they had to say about people – red for anger, white for loneliness, blue for sadness – and the happier colours, the yellow and orange of vitality, the green of hope, the pink of gentle love.
She saw a slender young woman, black hair about her shoulders like a waterfall, eyes glistening the greenest she’d ever seen. Her aura was white with a hint of red. Purity, anger, and loneliness, Micol thought.
The strong-looking man named Sean stood next to her, and his face said he could have killed her in an instant. His aura burnt scarlet with blue edges. A gentler-looking guy with grey eyes stared at Alvise, and at his side was a girl with hair as silver as moonlight. Their auras were very similar: blue and aqua and grey, the auras of people who might be reluctant to fight; but the man’s was darker, suggesting a power that ran deeper than the eye could see. And then there was a slight woman, small as a bird, exquisitely beautiful. She reminded Micol of a porcelain doll. Her aura was blue, grey at its edges, as if it were losing strength slowly. Beside her, there was someone who made Micol’s heart tremble. Someone tall, pale, eyes as black as coal. He was blind, she guessed by his posture and by the way his eyes seemed unfocused.
Someone whose aura was completely black.
She’d never seen anything like that. Terror streaked through her. Who was that man? Was he a man at all, or a demon about to tear them apart? Where was she? What had she done? What kind of trouble had she jumped into in her haste to escape Palazzo Vendramin? She took a shuddering breath. Whatever she was about to face, she’d show these people what Falco heirs were made of. She stood steady, her chest rising and falling in a crazy rhythm, green electrical charges shooting intermittently from her hands. She had to tell Alvise about the guy with the black aura.
“Are you a Secret heir?” Sean asked Alvise.
“Yes. Both of us are. I don’t understand. Where are the demons?” He looked left and right, still not lowering his bow.
“I’m sure we won’t have to wait long to see them. They’re everywhere,” said Sean, bemused. “We mean you no harm. Unless you’re here to harm us,” he added, his sgian-dubh still poised.
Alvise shook his head. “I’m a Secret heir. I kill demons, not human beings,” he declared, and lowered his bow and arrow an inch and no more.
Micol shot a nervous glance towards Nicholas. They weren’t all human.
“My sister sends me through the iris wherever there are demons to kill. But here we are.”
“That’s the iris?” asked Sean, nodding towards the twirling golden ribbons. They were still there, though fading slowly as they spoke.
Niall gasped, but nobody noticed. His hand took hold of Winter’s. “What’s beyond the iris?” he asked urgently.
Alvise met Niall’s gaze. “Palazzo Vendramin. In Venice. My home.” Then he paused. “I . . . I think I know you. Yes, I remember you!”
“Our families knew each other. I’m Niall Flynn.”
Alvise’s face broke into a smile. “Yes! Niall! It is you!”
“Is your home safe?” Niall’s voice was shaky.
Sean studied his friend’s face. What was he thinking?
“My home is as safe as any place can be these days.”
“Who lives there?”
“Niall, what does this have to do with—” Sean began, but Niall raised his hand to interrupt him. Something in his friend’s expression quietened Sean at once.
“Who lives there?” Niall repeated.
“My father and my sister.”
“And you said it’s safe?” Niall enquired again, a strange, pleading note to his voice.
“Niall . . .” Sean questioned.
“My father does his best to keep it safe,” answered Alvise.
Niall didn’t let him finish. He grabbed Winter by the waist, whispered something in her ear, and pushed her through the fading iris as she called his name one last time. She disappeared at once, the golden ribbons fading and then finally disappearing. Winter was gone.
“What did you do!” shouted Sarah.
“I had to,” whispered Niall, his arms limp at his sides and his eyes opaque, like he’d lost all reason to be. “I had to,” he repeated, running a hand through his hair. “It was a mistake to let her come in the first place. I knew it when the moon-demons attacked. I knew she would die here.”
“You don’t know who those people are!” shouted Sean.
“Actually, I do. I told Winter what to say.”
“And what would that be?”
“Onoir, clan agus farraige. They’ll know,” he said, the pleading tone in his voice once more. Looking at Alvise, he hoped he’d say that yes, Winter would be safe. That he hadn’t made another terrible mistake.
Alvise nodded. “The Flynn motto. Honour, family and the ocean. Winter will be fine. The second she says the words, my father will look after her.”
Their eyes met, Niall’s full of tears he felt no need to hide. There was a moment of silence as they digested Winter’s disappearance, when without warning the electrical charges around the girl who’d followed Alvise through the iris increased, crackling blue and green and red. She was holding her right hand in her left one, grimacing with pain.
“Are you hurt?” Sarah asked her.
“Just my hand.” She looked at Sarah from under her eyelashes, still suspicious of them all, even if one of them had turned out to be an old friend of the Vendramins.
“If you stop that . . . lightning,” Sarah gestured to the multi-coloured sparks all over the girl’s body, “I can have a look at it.”
The girl shot Alvise a frightened glance, asking him a silent question. Alvise inclined his head. The charges crackled once more, shining brightly around the girl’s body, and disappeared. She stepped towards Sarah, her hand extended.
“You are burnt,” said Sarah taking her hand gently. “Something is burnt into your skin.”
“Mine too,” said Alvise calmly, looking at his palm. The symbol of a spiral was imprinted on his hand, the skin blackened and weeping. “I hadn’t noticed . . .”
“It’s like the symbol Nicholas imprinted on our palms,” said Sarah. “But we weren’t burnt. It just hurt for a moment. Does your sister burn you every time she sends you through? You’d have no hand left.”
“No. It’s never happened before.”
“It’s because they are not supposed to be here,” Nicholas intervened. “That’s why they were burnt. The iris was not supposed to take them into the Shadow World, and I have no idea how that Vendramin girl did it.”
“The Shadow World?” Alvise whispered. All colour drained from his face. “As in . . . the world of the Surari? We actually are in the Shadow World?”
Micol took a sharp intake of breath, her eyes surveying the scene with more terror. The world of the Surari. The man with the black aura, was he one of them then? She’d never seen a demon’s aura; she’d always thought they didn’t have them. But human beings didn’t have black auras . . . She took a deep breath, trying to stop panic from spreading in her chest.
Sarah nodded. “That’s where we are. That’s where your sister sent you this time, apparently.”
Alvise frowned. “How did she . . . I mean, I didn’t know this place existed in the first place. I thought it was a legend, one of those Secret history things we learn as children.”
“Look, I hate to interrupt your chat, but we need to move,” Nicholas interrupted. “Unless you want to sit here waiting for another attack.”
“And you are . . .” Alvise threw his chin up in a gesture of challenge.
“Alvise,” whispered Micol, a feeble warning. She had to tell him about the man’s aura. She had to find a way to tell him.
“Long story,” Niall intervened. “Come on, I’ll fill you in,” he said, taking Alvise’s arm.
“We need a minute,” said Sarah, gesturing to Micol. “She needs her burn seen to. Also, she can’t walk dressed like this.” She gestured to the girl’s long white dress. Micol was shivering already, her bare arms covered in goosebumps. “I have a change of clothes with me. Come on,” she said and led her behind a tight cluster of trees.
“Alvise,” Elodie began as they waited for Sarah and Micol. “You are Italian. Do you know anything about the Frison family? They’re Gamekeepers from Val d’Aosta, in the north-west. They hid me for a while. One of them died . . . Marina.” She winced, remembering her black-haired friend, her warm smile, the prophecy she’d made about her, Elodie, loving again one day. “Frison, her father, ran to the mountains with a Japanese heir, a little girl called Aiko Ayanami.”
“I know about the Frisons, but I haven’t had news of anyone for a long time . . . anyone except a Sicilian family, the Montanera . . . but that was months ago. We are completely isolated, I’m sorry. As soon as my sister gets us back I’ll try to find out.”
“Your sister will get you back? How?” Sean intervened.
“She sends me through the iris to kill Surari, and then she knows when I’m done. Somehow. She opens an iris wherever I am and I can get back. I’m sorry about your friends,” he added towards Elodie. She nodded, mute with disappointment.
Sarah crouched in the undergrowth, carefully took out packets of biscuits and tins of beans from her backpack, and unearthed a pair of jeans and a purple top. Both were perfectly folded, Sarah’s way. Micol’s dress, muddy already, went in their place back into Sarah’s bag.
“My jeans are a bit long for you, but they’ll do.”
“Thank you,” said Micol, zipping them. They were also loose around the waist. Sarah was slender, but Micol was tiny. “I don’t know your name,” she continued.
“My name is Sarah Midnight,” Sarah replied and looked at the girl’s face for a moment. She probably wasn’t much younger than any of them, but she looked it – there was something childlike in her eyes, brown and deep like a doe’s. Her cropped hair was dark brown, without the blue shades Sarah’s hair had, and her skin was a golden amber. She reminded Sarah of a fawn, still not quite steady on her legs. Sarah felt instantly protective of her.
“Sarah . . . listen. That man . . . the blind one. With the . . . vampire skin. Who is he?”
“It’s a long story. No time now. But don’t worry about Nicholas. We have him under control. Get changed and Niall will fill you in. Hurry. And you can start that electric thingy again . . .” She wiggled her fingers. “We’ll need it.”
Micol resolved to ask Niall about the mysterious man. As long as he kept away from her. She zipped up the black fleece Sarah had found her, all the while contemplating the green-eyed girl’s aura, its translucent white and its scarlet edges; and, she noticed only now, a core of blue. A core of sadness. Alvise’s aura had a core of blue too, and she’d learnt long ago what his sorrow was – the loss of his mother. She wondered what was Sarah’s story, because they all had a story of sadness, didn’t they? All heirs had lost somebody, or everybody, since the culling had begun. Finally, she gratefully wrapped Sarah’s scarf around her neck. It felt good. She’d been freezing.
“Ready?” Sarah asked.
“Ready.”
What she could have never imagined was that all along, as she changed her clothes, Micol had stood a few yards away from her brother’s mangled corpse, covered with mossy stones, waiting to be eaten by predators, animals or otherwise. And that he’d been killed by the green-eyed, striking girl who had been helping her, the girl with the white aura and its blue core of sadness.