Chapter 42
A loose sheet of corrugated iron roof banged in angry rhythm to announce that the wind was picking up. The light grew stronger, and with it came the inevitable screams of hundreds of cockatoos, stirring Tessa from her exhausted daze. I’d been watching her tremors build and had been wondering how long it would take for her compulsion to overtake her fatigue. Counting the seconds between tremors was my way of assessing the timing of events, much like the time between contractions would be used to measure the progression of her labour in the near future, if all went as planned. I knew what we were up against now, seen Jake’s drug-addled memories, his half-arsed plan to steal his dad’s rifle and abduct me. His touch, as he’d taped my hands, had revealed his madness, but my plan hadn’t altered. It would work. It had to.
Tessa’s head snapped up as she met my eyes. Another, more violent tremor rocked her. Her black eyes reflected the rage she felt, interrupted by short bursts of sheer panic as her mind tried desperately to resist the compulsion to fight. The tangled hair across her face made her look like a snarling cave-woman.
‘Stay with me, Tessa,’ I whispered, trying to wriggle some blood into my frozen fingers. ‘All will be well. Just stay calm.’ I tried to sound optimistic.
‘Lainie, did you tell him to come here?’ she accused. ‘Why?’
My nod was only half apologetic. ‘I nearly brought him with me, but I was hoping I could just trade myself for you instead. It was worth a shot.’
‘Was it?’ she mouthed, glancing over to where Jake was half dozing near the door. Another tremor rocked her, and as she pulled at her bonds I could see bright bruises all along her wrists, as well as dried blood from where Jake had cut her, to test if it would make Noah or Bane appear to heal her, just as he had seen Bane appear out of nowhere to heal my arm three years earlier. Apparently he wanted to wait for daylight to try it on me too. I almost wished he would get on with it because I was getting worried that I had put a bit too much sleepy potion into my Words. What if my plan worked and we all arrived home safely and I couldn’t wake my Guardian to join in the celebrations? I would no longer be able to access any good Words to help, I was certain. Maybe Bane needed a wake-up call.
Still, at least Noah was on his way. Not much longer now until we were all together. I longed to get Tessa out of here so I could see to her every need. Nothing in this world or the other could ever justify the sight of her suffering this way.
‘Jake,’ I begged, and he opened his eyes blearily. ‘She needs water. Badly. Please.’ My teeth were chattering so much that I could hardly speak.
‘We’ve run out. There’s only dam water here. Do you really want her to drink that?’ He was huddled in the corner of the shed with his thick jacket pulled up around his ears and his dad’s rifle on his lap. His breath misted when he spoke, like he was trying to expel a ghost.
‘Surely you have some sort of a plan? We need water. You will too, eventually.’ I wanted to sound reasonable but it sounded far too critical. I was making things worse.
With cold, stiff movements, he laid the gun down and stood up. When he came up close to me, his breath stank of stale cigarettes. ‘Of course I have a plan. This will all be over soon. You managed to find us so I have no doubt that Bane can too. I made a mistake taking Tessa. I thought maybe she and Noah might have had a similar thing going to what you and Bane have. The signs were all there, if you paid attention. Not enough for me to act on before now …’ He hit the heel of his hand on his eyebrow a few times, like he was angry with himself. ‘I didn’t want to hurt anyone … there were hints when you watched them together … then you came back, and I had to know, so I came to see you, to see if Bane could do it again, but you weren’t there.’ His bloodshot eyes flicked around the room, unable to focus properly on anything. ‘Taking Tessa was my only option. A better option. That way I didn’t have to hurt you, Lainie. So I took her, but Noah didn’t come. Instead I heard the calls over the police scanner … I should have waited for you. You were the one.’ He noticed my glare, and shook his head, his expression full of innocence. ‘I would never hurt Tessa. We, we did a … a geography poster together. With Kiara.’
It sounded like he was trying to convince me that he hadn’t abducted and tortured her. The guy’s brain had turned to mush in the last three years. It was amazing how illicit drug use could mess a person up so quickly.
‘On Wednesday, at the bakery, when I heard you and Bane were both back in Nalong … I had to find you. To find out how he did it. That day by the river. Do you even remember?’
I flinched as he grabbed my forearm and pushed my sleeve up, looking for a scar from a dog bite that wasn’t there.
‘Bane knew something was going to happen to you, didn’t he? How else could he have made it just in the nick of time?’
I remembered all right, and the memory was sharpened by his touch. That scene had been such a strong emotional point in his life that there was room for nothing else in his head. That miracle had changed all our lives forever. The miracle that had become an obsession for the drug-addicted university dropout.
‘Where were you the other day, Lainie? If you’d been there like I’d planned I … I wouldn’t have really hurt you. I could have just stolen you away from Captain America instead, and Tess would never have needed to get involved.’
Stolen me away from Bane? Somehow I doubted that. It had taken considerable supernatural effort just to steal myself away from him.
‘Where were you?’ he asked again, sniffling from the cold air.
For a second he looked taken aback, but then roared with laughter, as if it was the funniest thing he had ever heard. Just then I saw Tessa’s back arch in agony, and desperation shone from her wild eyes. Noah was close. If Jake hadn’t been cackling like a maniac we probably could have heard the sound of an engine. He was now close enough for me to sense clearly, and for the first time I noticed that he and the baby had a similar feel, both of them bright and sparkly, but his son was like a feather-light version.
Closing my eyes, I tried yet again. I was in danger, the baby was in danger, and now Noah was approaching the danger zone as well. Jake might not have any plans to injure him like he had with me, but he was close enough to risk being caught in the cross-fire, wasn’t he? All three Cherubim under threat at once. Enough to wipe out the line altogether. Enough to threaten Eden. I tried to concentrate. Eden. Jake. Jake had seen Bane heal me. Jake had a gun … yet the Words still wouldn’t come. Not yet.
Our old high-school mate was still chuckling when he distracted my focus by wrapping my plait around my neck like a noose and twisting it painfully. Hilarious. His voice was both amused and menacing as his cracked lips brushed my ear.
‘Do you have any idea how useful it would be to learn to heal people the way he does? Is it him or you, though? I’ve been thinking a lot about it over the last couple of years. I reckon if it was just him I would have heard something about it by now. Rumours, at least. But you? You’ve been hiding, haven’t you? Tell me, Lainie, tell me how it works or else I’ll just have to make sure I get to see it again for myself.’
His grip tightened and I felt his other hand slide around my throat as well. He squeezed, and I struggled to suck in my next breath. So much for his assurance that he didn’t want to hurt anyone. This was not exactly how I’d hoped things would go and a part of my mind refused to accept what was happening. The idea of someone deliberately causing me pain simply didn’t fit inside the nice little perception of the world I had sought refuge in for so long. The rest of my mind was frantically trying to remember how to fight back, but with my wrists taped to the post, all I could do was wriggle around, which did absolutely nothing to help dislodge him. My lungs began to ache and then convulse as they tried to suck air from nowhere, and it hurt so much and his fingers squeezed and squeezed and squeezed and then something soft gave way in my neck, which hurt even more and yet not as much as the fear that screamed with no voice and no breath and which darkened the world and I couldn’t see and the dark was so heavy …
Beside me, Tessa screeched something to him that I couldn’t pay attention to, while bright spots danced in the darkness. Whatever she said, it worked, because a few seconds later Jake snarled, released me, and then went to check the chamber of the rifle—again—while I coughed and wheezed like a half-drowned puppy. His eyes took on an evil glint as he held the loaded weapon. When he looked back at me, there was something new in his gaze. Something that terrified me to the depths of my non-human soul. Something I had only glimpsed the half-formed edge of when I had read him earlier.
Sucking in sharp shards of blessed air, I fought to blink away tears. What was I crying for? I wasn’t sad, I was scared, because my plan wouldn’t work if I was unconscious or dead. Timing was crucial. I needed to delay him but I couldn’t think of any information I would be able to force out as a distraction. Was I really going to have to encourage him to cut my arm just to prevent him from shooting me instead? But as the wind dropped back slightly I caught a new sound. A car approaching, so fast that there was a solid chance it might ram straight into the shed. No, two cars, and Noah was in one of them. Jake heard them too, and his eyes lit up as he lifted the rifle higher.
‘Right on time!’ he crowed. ‘I knew it!’ He stepped over to the door as the cars skidded to a halt, and I winced at the thought of all that perfectly good winter pasture they were tearing up. I heard a door slam, and then another. My heart was pounding too loudly to hear much else.
‘Come on, Bane!’ Jake yelled, slamming his free hand against the door frame. The whole shed rattled in protest. ‘I’ve been waiting for you! Now the show can start. Get your butt up here so I can watch you heal her again!’
I tried to crane my neck to see around the door but the angle was all wrong. I could see Tessa though. If she’d been a dog she would have been foaming at the mouth. She was yanking at her bonds and her arm was bleeding again. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate. Still nothing. My powers were not magic. Not some spell I could recite whenever I wanted to. They were based on an authority granted to me for one purpose only, and until that purpose was clear in my heart and my head, I was stymied.
A deep voice boomed through the brisk morning air.
‘Jake Evans. Please remain calm. I need you to put the gun down.’
‘Loxwood? I’ve missed you. The Melbourne cops never knew me by name. Their warnings just didn’t have the same feeling of country hospitality. Great to see you again, now piss off.’
‘Jake, lower your weapon or I will be forced to disarm you.’
‘Ha! As if I give a rat’s arse what you do to me. Send me to jail if you want, it’ll be better than where I’ve been living lately. I don’t care what you do so long as I get to see the show again. Hurry up, Bane! You know what’s going to happen already, don’t you? How much injury can she sustain before you run out of healing juice, I wonder? And can she heal you too? Who should I try first?’
Try first? No. Hurting Bane was unacceptable. Fury began to bubble up from within and I welcomed it gladly. Righteous justice curled itself around my will as I closed my eyes and scrambled for Words that I could use, but before I could feel them form, I was distracted by a deafening bang, and was thrown backward so violently that one of my taped wrists cracked, and my entire right arm went from excruciating, to numb, in the space of a hitched breath. Then I heard a scream of rage that was frighteningly familiar. I’d heard that sound before and the memory of it tore something loose inside me. Disobediently, my eyes sprang open. Jake was fumbling his attempt to reload the gun while he stumbled backward, and he backed right into one of the internal walls because my Guardian was leaping in through the doorway like a striking snake. There was fresh blood smeared on Bane’s left fist and a large knife in his right. Death and violence were in his beautiful grey eyes and then all I saw was the sharp promise of the blade as it flew from his hand.
Knife … Blood … Fire and screaming.
In a flash of clarity I realised why I had chosen not to deal with those memories. My actions had killed Noah’s mum. I had watched her body become engulfed in bright silver flames, hotter than the sun. My eyes had burned and stung as her flesh had caught fire and her screams had cut off when she fell and she had died in agony.
Heavy shadow had fallen to blackness then. Just as it did now.