Chapter 39
‘What would you like to know?’ Dallmin asked, biting at each word. His dark eyes looked haunted and for the first time I was able to believe that he really was over a hundred years old. The childlike wonder had all but gone from them. It left a chasm that might never be filled again.
Instead of answering straight away, Sergeant Loxwood stepped out through the broken door to see who else might have noticed the commotion. Luckily the weather was terrible and therefore it was quiet, even for Bendigo. He came in and tried to close the door again, but it was a lost cause. The whole frame would have to be replaced.
‘Perhaps we should move into the bedroom,’ he said. ‘I get the feeling this conversation is going to be one that none of us wants overheard.’
Bane picked me up like I was a tiny doll and carried me to the bed. He must have put on some serious muscle because although I wasn’t overweight, I was quite tall. He sat on the bed with his back to the wall and cradled me against his chest. I could still feel tremors passing through his body and he looked kind of feverish. Dallmin sat on the floor while Nalong’s most senior police officer stood by the closed door, legs apart and arms crossed, as if he was ready to prevent us from trying to leave.
The silence that fell once we’d all settled was a bit awkward.
‘Are you sure you can’t give me back my gun?’ Sergeant Loxwood said eventually. ‘I’m not going to shoot anyone.’
‘Your gun is now dust. You can sweep it up if you want it back.’ Horrible thing.
Bane gave my elbow a quick squeeze to tell me to back off a little. As if he could talk. More uncomfortable seconds passed.
The sergeant broke first. ‘Okay. So how about I start with what I do know, or at least suspect.’ His hand drifted toward his empty holster before he realised and crossed his arms again. ‘You can fill me in on anything else you think might be relevant. Fair?’
Despite his professional demeanour I could hear a slight tremor in his voice. My power had thrown him. Not surprising—it still threw me too. I was grateful that he seemed to be willing to play nice.
He cleared his throat. ‘Three years ago Alex Beckinsale had a run in with Harr—’
‘Don’t say his name,’ I interrupted.
The policeman flinched, throwing me a nervous look, which was just a bit gratifying. ‘Right, sorry. I forgot. Anyway, someone stopped Mr Beckinsale’s attack by blinding him, and messing with his memory. I’m assuming the method used to do that was … was not … natural.’ This time he seemed too nervous to even dare to look at me. Clearly, he knew who to blame, but I could hardly even remember the incident. The details I tried to recall were very difficult for me to interpret, as if my memories had been written down by a doctor who’d been running late for his round of golf, and I was left to decipher his handwriting. My mother had been there. Tessa had been in danger then too.
Bane held my hands to stop them trembling.
The sergeant continued, flicking his eyes to me every few seconds but addressing my Guardian. ‘By the time you brought the knife to me, Bane, the Gracewood’s farmhand had already died and I had closed the case. Until I realised that Lainie had disappeared.’
Bane’s head jerked up. Apparently that part was unexpected.
‘The knife had been cleaned,’ the officer said slowly. ‘Despite me asking you not to touch it, you had cleaned it and brought it in to me rather than let me come and get it. If an official inquiry had been underway you would have been charged with interfering with the evidence, but there was no reported crime, so I couldn’t act.’
I could feel Bane’s gaze burning into the sergeant’s face, as if he wanted to warn him off. He interrupted just as the policeman was about to continue.
‘Dallmin. Tell the sergeant where Lainie has been for the last three years,’ he said, still not breaking the officer’s gaze.
Dallmin looked at me for confirmation. Are you certain, child? You are the leader of this dance. Do you want me to talk?
I nodded once, defiantly. I would take responsibility for this if it would help Tess. I had ‘read’ Sergeant Loxwood’s character numerous times that day and I had to trust that I was making the right judgement.
‘Lainie has been in my homeland. The Garden of Eden, you would call it, although I have been told that stories about my home have developed in many different places on this side of the Boundary, under different names.’
The sergeant blinked, and waited.
‘There is a path that leads to it from a place near the farm. It is not permitted for humans to go there, which is why Lainie can’t make herself speak of it, even if she wants to. It is her task to keep humans away.’
We let that sink in for a little while as we watched the man’s expression move from disdain to anger to confusion and finally sheer surprise. I tried to imagine his thought pattern. He needed something to explain the gun, and he couldn’t deny it was supernatural, so why not Eden? At least it was biblical, so he was being invited to believe something that millions of other people throughout history agreed had existed at some point. Maybe not in present day, and certainly not in Nalong—even I had no idea how to explain that. Like everyone else, he would just have to find a way to reconcile his experiences with his theology in his own time.
His eyes darted down to his empty holster again. ‘And if you’re not human, what are you?’
I shrugged back at him helplessly.
‘She is a Cherub. It is her job to guard the way against those who would try to pass. She must keep people from knowing the Garden is even there. You are a very honoured person to be allowed this knowledge. Knowledge can be very … dangerous.’
‘And Bane? He can’t speak either?’ The officer leant against the bedroom door as if unsure that his legs would continue to support him.
‘He cannot say any words that might reveal the existence of Eden. He is human, but he is linked to Lainie as her Guardian. It is a life-bond that cannot be broken. That is why he can find her and why he suffers pain when she is in danger. He trusted you to care for her today, and yet we found her upset. Why was she upset?’
‘Dallmin,’ Bane soothed. ‘This is not the time for anger. This is the time for helping him to understand.’
‘Damn right it is,’ the policeman agreed. ‘So Eden is the secret that the abductor mentioned in the note? How does Tessa tie into all of this? Does Bane have a way of tracking her down too?’
‘No. Only Lainie does,’ Dallmin said. ‘She can sense another Cherub. Tessa’s baby is Noah’s firstborn son so he is a Cherub and must be protected. She can sense where they are but it is difficult for her because he is not yet born. She must be given room to concentrate.’
I could hear the condemnation in his voice and it bruised my soul to hear that tone coming from my gentle friend.
‘Noah Ashbree is a Cherub?’ the officer asked incredulously. Of all the parts of the story that he had the most trouble with, the idea that Noah was supposed to be a supernatural being in charge of guarding anything at all was the apparently most difficult to swallow. I understood perfectly well how he felt. Noah and I had never been known for our responsible behaviour. I shrugged again. Apologetically.
The solid character who had led our town through numerous natural disasters and emergencies for twenty-five years without batting an eyelid, finally slumped to the floor, rubbing his hands through his short hair. He looked up at Dallmin and sighed.
‘No wonder I couldn’t place your accent,’ he said.
We arrived back at the farm just after midnight. The sergeant had followed us the entire way, which probably hadn’t helped Bane’s stress levels much, but had at least kept him alert and within the speed limits.
As I stood under the stars, leaning against the petrified wooden gatepost by the home paddock, I could feel the baby off to the west, and there was considerable discussion around whether to continue until we found them or wait until morning. No one wanted Tessa in danger a second longer than was absolutely necessary, yet even Dallmin was starting to see the logic in waiting until daylight. We really had no idea what we would be walking into.
Sergeant Loxwood was pushing hard to be allowed to call for his team and do things the ‘proper way’, but he still needed me to come along to pinpoint Tessa’s location—which Bane flatly refused to agree to. The other option was to get Noah to find them, but Bane didn’t want to call him, even though Tessa should be close enough not to suffer too badly if he returned. Bane explained to me why. It got me thinking. There had to be a way for us to use our compulsions to our advantage—they were never intended to be a hindrance.
I tried to convince Bane to let me at least try to narrow down the search area without getting too close, but he wouldn’t back down. For starters, we were no longer in the sort of place where we could do a casual drive-by without getting noticed. And even if I could narrow it down, how would the sergeant let his fellow officers know where to go without telling them how he knew? At least now the policeman understood the problem we’d been having all along.
We were going to have to do this with very cautiously controlled help from the police, which meant we all needed to be, if not at our best, then at least functioning at a reasonable level. Bane was beyond being of any use to anyone. Between all the driving, nausea and strain, he had pushed himself way too far.
With a gentle tug, I pulled the car keys from his trembling grip, and mumbled in his ear. ‘Tim is also on his way, don’t forget. If he’s been driving for nineteen hours straight to get here, then he’ll need tonight to recover too.’ I tried to sound reasonable. Even I could see that getting me closer to danger now would push Bane too far over his limit. I needed him to sleep.
While Lily sorted out the sleeping arrangements for everyone else, flustering about which bedroom would be the most appropriate to offer a senior police officer, Bane finally agreed to let me lead him down to the cottage. I even managed to convince him to take a quick shower so he could relax a little. He was still so tense.
A few minutes later he crawled under the covers, the unnatural heat from his body melting my frozen toes in a welcome side-effect of his healing power. He sighed in relief when our skin touched, and drew me close to his still damp chest.
‘I’m so sorry, Lainie, that I sent you with the sergeant today. I honestly thought I was doing the right thing. It killed me when I realised I might have put you in even more danger.’
I tried to stay very still and not give in to the sudden thrill I felt as his arms enfolded me. Somehow I would have to learn to stop following my instincts here. We were playing with fire by sharing a room again, but with the strength of the compulsion Bane was suffering from, there was no way he was going to get any sleep unless he was holding me.
‘I wasn’t in any more danger. You have nothing to apologise for,’ I assured him in my best attempt at deception yet, because what I really felt like doing was yelling at him for having forced me to leave him. But that wouldn’t be fair. Not given what I was about to do to him.
‘Any more danger,’ he sighed, stroking the mess of wavy hair that I had released from its braid. ‘Any more than you are now. I can’t take this for much longer, it hurts too much, thinking about what might happen to you.’
‘So don’t think about it. Think happy thoughts,’ I suggested with a tired smile.
He rolled his eyes but his frown did relax. ‘I could think about Eden,’ he said. ‘I’ve tried, you know, over the last few years. Wondering what you might have been up to.’ Delicately, he played with my fingers, entwining them in his own.
‘I know you can’t tell me anything, it’s okay. I don’t need you to. My dreams were always filled with images of you, laughing and dancing. Safe and happy.’
‘So then you tell me,’ I suggested. ‘Tell me what you think Eden is like.’
He was quiet for such a long time that I thought he’d drifted off, but then he yawned. ‘I imagine that Eden is full of music. And light. Summer all the time. There are flowers there, and birds, and no carnivores. Only soft, cuddly creatures. Obviously there are faeries and unicorns,’ he added with mock sincerity. ‘Definitely no spiders. And everyone there is beautiful like you.’
‘No spiders?’ I laughed. ‘Except the sentient ones. And they all have a terrific sense of humour.’
His eyes snapped open and he searched my face. ‘After all these years, don’t you think I know when you’re messing with me?’
‘You can’t tell me anything real about Eden, so that can’t be true,’ he argued. His shoulders loosened a little, so I chose to let the matter go.
After a moment I prompted him further. ‘What do you think the air smells like?’ I asked, thinking of the honey-sweet freshness of my sleeping tree.
‘Peppermint,’ he decided, ‘and the water tastes like rainbows, and it never rains.’
I smiled at how childish it all sounded, even in the mind of a grown man. ‘And what did I do there, in your dreams?’
‘Other than dancing? Oh, you don’t want to know. They were dreams, after all.’
Perhaps not all so childish then. ‘So I take it you were there too?’
‘Of course. What would be the point of dreaming if we weren’t together?’ he mumbled, his hands falling slack as his eyes drifted closed again.
For a long time I watched him sleep, enjoying the way his long eyelashes twitched in rhythm with all my slightest movements. He looked excruciatingly kissable. What I didn’t like was the fact that he was still beset by intermittent tremors that continued to warn him of the danger to me. It was time to refine my half-formed plan. He had two wants, which made things complicated for everyone. He wanted to rescue Tessa and also keep me safe, and he couldn’t easily do both. It was a tricky puzzle. Tessa was compelled to protect Noah, and Bane was compelled to protect me, regardless of the danger to themselves. Both Guardians had some limited pre-cognitive skills when it came to us, but neither Noah nor I could use our really good powers unless we were convinced it was necessary to protect Eden. Nor could I bring myself to put Eden at risk in order to trigger my abilities. Even if I could, there was no magic formula that would guarantee when I would have access to the powers I needed. It all came down to how I reasoned things out—how I articulated my own arguments in my head, and how much I believed them. And with a healthy dose of heavenly grace thrown in. There had to be a way to get through this safely, if only we all worked together. For that to happen, we would all need to be in the right place at the right time. First I needed a few hours of sleep. Then all would be well.