Hollow Oaks Page 14

  "What? It's just an urge, isn't it? My friend was killed, we found it in her kitchen. It's not even mine—"

  "That's enough," Seamus said, stepping away from the wall. "We delivered them as you asked. You have your proof. Now make what we need. We beg of the queen."

  I looked at Seamus, at the collapsing edifice of his face, and wondered what he was on about. What the hell was wrong with the three of them?

  "Silence," the speaker said. "The water of years cannot be bargained, only granted."

  The water of years? I turned to Gernaud, and on his face I saw a light go off. He turned to me, eyes wide, as if about to speak. "Don't," I whispered. "Just wait for—"

  A cry from the queen, and one of the fairies on the ground launched a knitting-needle spear at me. Before I could flinch it was jammed into my calf, burning like iodine.

  "Fuck!" I yanked it out, tossed it aside. "What the fuck? You didn't have to—"

  Spears jerked up to point at my face. I clamped my mouth shut as my leg burned and pulsed and the smell of damp dog drifted across from the wolves.

  "My queen," Ishbéal said, and stood. "This outgrown broke some rules. I accept that. But his actions were forced by others. The ones we should find. The killers—"

  "Lies," the speaker said. It leaned back to listen to the queen, then nodded and spoke on. "This friend you speak of is the dead one you left to burn? You break our rules, you go to places forbidden and brew foul liquids. You are not innocent. None of you."

  I caught a whiff of smoke. Maybe someone was smoking in the next room, a person put there to block us should we try to escape from what I realised was my trial.

  "Please," Seamus said. "Our payment is ready. Just take them, and make the—"

  A wolf snarled, causing Seamus to flatten against the wall. I saw him exchange looks of near-insane desperation with Lill and big Dónal. What the hell were they up to?

  "Look," Gernaud said. Twitching spears shifted to him. "Yes, we did some sneaky things, okay? But you have secrets too. And we have worked together now for a great long time. For centuries. Do you dare to risk that—"

  A bark from the speaker. "A vision was granted. A dark lady, a dark lake. The Dubh Linn is the lake. And you — your clothing, your hair. The darkest of dark things."

  I shot an angry look at the speaker. "Except I'm no lady."

  The queen, with a cruel look, leaned back to whisper in the speaker's ear.

  "You know what you are," the speaker said. "Do you not, Bren McCullough?"

  I swallowed spit. Fuck her, the feathered cunt. Fuck the shitting lot of them.

  "Listen, your highness," I said, with barely restrained bile. "I didn't burn my own house down, did I? That's fucking stupid. And we've found the people responsible—"

  "No!" the speaker yelled. "You are the one we look for. Who Ishbéal An Íbar pretends to look for. You make plots against us, both of you in this together. To deceive us all."

  "Take them," Seamus said, sounding close to tears. "Please. We must have it—"

  A bark came from one of the wolves. All the fairies turned to it. It seemed jittery as hell, trying to turn, and the fairy riding it was having trouble holding it in place.

  Another whiff of smoke. Was it coming from their side? I grabbed my chance and turned to Gernaud. When he looked at me, I mouthed the words: "Craft items. Pull them out."

  Gernaud shook his head. "What?" he hissed back at me.

  "Is that … burning?" Seamus stepped away from the wall, getting sharp looks from the spear carriers. He looked around, sniffing, as did the fairies. All of them, for a second, distracted.

  I leaned over to Gernaud. "Pull the fucking craft items. Ready? One. Two. Go!"

  My sudden movement caused the spear-holders to unload. One burning fucker of a stick jabbed into my shoulder, while another soared past my head. By the time it clinked, I'd already yanked two craft items from their niches, and I was sure Gernaud had done another, because in the storm of howling, the zone kicked and, with a flash of purple, died.

  I lay with my face to the floor, staring at the wall. The merest hint of a flicker, but no trace of fairies or wolves. The zone had been severed. But we were still in plenty trouble.

  I sat up, facing a floor with a few scattered craft items, and my bag, with its disgorged contents, just on our side of the middle line. I didn't get to say a word before something heavy and hard crashed across my face and sent me back to the floor in a shower of sparks, where I didn't stay for very long before I was yanked up into standing position and slam-crashed against a wall. It was Seamus, all up in my face, his eyes big and bloodshot.

  "You fucking stupid fuck," he screamed at me in a red-faced rage, spraying spit. "Now we'll never get them to make more. You've killed us, McCullough, you fucking—"

  "Wait. Seamus." It was Lill, standing to his side. Behind her, I saw Gernaud, who had been likewise pressed up against the wall by Dónal, his arm twisted up behind his back.

  "We'll open it again," Lill said. "It's easy, right? Remake the connection."

  The rage cleared from Seamus's eyes. He looked around. "Smoke," he said, as if he'd forgotten the fact and had just relearned it. He turned to the curtain. "Oh, God in hell. Look!"

  They looked. I yanked the fairy spear with a grunt from my shoulder, and looked too.

  Silvery smoke curled under the curtain that lead to the other room. Lill stepped over and whipped the curtain back. From the short passage came not only more smoke and a stronger smell of burning, but also an insistent peeping sound in the distance.

  "That's a fire alarm," I said, as I weakly struggled. "Are you deaf? Fire."

  "No," Lill said, sounding unsure. "The water of years, we must—"

  "Out!" Dónal bellowed. He swung Gernaud around from the wall, sending him lurching into the middle of the border zone. "Get the hell out, you fucking useless shower!"

  That kicked them all into gear. My bag lay on the floor and I didn't think to go for it, but Gernaud did, sweeping it up as we ran in a panicked crush for the curtain and the passage. Inside, with sweaty people behind and ahead, the smell of fire swelled, and when we stumbled into the outer room, the air was rancid with the stink of burning.

  Seamus reached the door, and turned. "Leave those two, the traitors—"

  Lill barged him aside and grabbed the door handle. She turned to us, gathered behind her in a wide-eyed knot. "Keep low. Crawl if you have to. Cover your mouth and nose, make for the exit, and don't stop. Ready? Deep breath. One. Two. Go!"

  She yanked the door open, and in gushed smoke in rolling swirls. Lill coughed and shoved Seamus, the man with the key, towards the gate. We staggered after him into the stink, smoke thick around us in the dim light, the beeping louder and more terrifying.

  "Open," came a yell from up ahead. We stampeded up the passage, through grey swirls, and my shoulder stung and I was limping on the leg the fairies had stabbed, spluttering on air that burned like knives. And as I ran, a thought pulsed along beneath my screaming panic, a thought just as sharp as the pain from all my various wounds.

  People of all sizes were now out to kill us, and maybe some were about to succeed.

  The cool kiss of the outside. I staggered up the alley, one hand tracing a wall I couldn't see through stinging eyes. Sounds rang out — breaking glass, yells, the blare of emergency vehicles, the roar of hose-water muffled by the walls and buildings between me and it.

  Another step, gazing at my boots, heavy in limb and head and every other way. Wanting to fall down, to stop. Find Gernaud's flat, that was the plan. Or just hide. Seamus and his lot were probably after me. I'd have to work out how to deal with that later. After I'd found a place, some cold corner, with water, and—

  "Help you, sir?" I was looking down and saw only dark shoes. I should have looked up at who spoke, but I heard ambulances and fire engines, and I thought it was one of them.

  I let the man — from his size it was a man — sling my arm across his shoulders and wa
lk me a few steps, as I coughed up the taste of smoke.

  But … wait. The sounds were all behind me, the blare of an ambulance, the yells. Why were we going all the way around the building?

  "Water up ahead," he said. A Dublin accent. We turned a corner, but the wrong way, and I looked up, squinting, and ahead was an ambulance … no. Not an ambulance. A van. The back door was open, and someone, a blurred outline, was looking out.

  I stiffened. This was wrong. If I gathered strength I could run for it, scream, fight—

  "Don't you think about it," he said, pressing something into my side. A knife. "Now, one fucking word, and this goes into you, and you're one less problem. Got it?"

  I looked up into the face of the moustached man, who we'd chased from Brufort House, who'd very likely set the fire behind me. And I couldn't find a single word to say.

  He pressed a meaty hand to my neck. Squeezed. "Good. Now keep walking. Someone wants a word with you. And the good sister don't like to be kept waiting."

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I sat on the floor of the van, in the corner furthest from the door. Paint tins and brushes rattled in a crate nearby, along with fat rolls of tape. The same tape that had been twisted around my chest to strap me to the vertical bar running from ceiling to floor behind me, and around my wrists to lock my hands together in my lap, leaving only my wiggling fingers free.

  A creak and a clatter, a sharp swing to the left.

  Breathing was painful, and not just from the smoke, but from the tape across my bound breasts. Always a hindrance, those breasts. Always fucking me over in new ways.

  Across from me, on a small fold-down seat, sat the nun. She hadn't said a word when I'd been shoved into the van and pressed down and taped, or when Bruno the moustache had slapped me when I'd yelled, before he'd gone up front to drive.

  She looked about sixty, small and bony, with short, lifeless brown hair. Her narrow eyes were a slate grey. Her mouth, thin-lipped. She wore a blue shirt under a black cardigan, a long black skirt, and a small gold crucifix around her neck. No headdress, no veil. But from those clothes, definitely a nun, or an ex-nun.

  But what the fuck did she want with me?

  I shifted, pressing against the tape. She continued to ignore me. And after ten minutes of silence, when I was close to screaming, the van swung once more, then slowed, then came to a stop with a bounce and a creak.

  I looked around, soggy with terror. "Hey, Sister. Listen. How about you let me go, and I'll forget I saw you, and we'll just go about our business. How's that sound?"

  The engine cut off. The driver's door opened and the van gently bounced. Then came voices, of Burke and another man, speaking softly.

  "Hey," I yelled at lung-bursting volume. "I'm in here, they took me, I'm—"

  An explosion of stinging light send my head snapping back to wallop against the bar. For a second I was sure something was broken but when I squeezed open my eyes, nothing rattled or flapped. I spat blood, which landed on my trousers and started to soak in.

  The nun stood there, holding the brush extender she'd whacked me with. Her expression was neutral, almost peaceful. I yanked at the tape that encircled me and spat again, missing her blurry face. "You fucking wrinkled bitch, just you wait till I—"

  "Hoy!" The clank of the door, the suspension creaking, and then he was squatting in front of me, bent nose and moustache. Bruno Burke. "No way to talk to a lady, you hear?"

  Behind him, I caught a glimpse of a person with a black woolly hat and eyes covered by sunglasses, and beyond that a big space, maybe a car-park, wet and shimmery dark. The door slammed shut.

  "But not the only lady," the nun rasped. "Am I, Brenda?"

  I turned my pain-pulsing face to stare at her, willing my anger to rise, but it didn't. These people had burned down Crafters Lodge, and my house, and murdered Vesta. They'd tried to kill me too. And I couldn't even squeeze from my stuffed head a drop of rage.

  "That's not your business," I said, pulling at the tape, "so do me a favour and—"

  "No? Oh Brenda, it is my business. It really is. The gift you were given, the body created for you, rejected, in your sickness. A spit in the face of God."

  "Look … Sister. Please. I was just in a fire. If you have water—"

  "You'll ask us for nothing, and you'll get nothing. Until you cooperate."

  "Cooperate with bloody what? What do you want?"

  She smiled, like a crease in a foam mattress. "You were at that meeting. With dangerous people. That makes you dangerous too. But you can help us to see past that."

  "Listen, I'm just a small time poacher. I don't know anything—"

  "No?" she said. "Then why does that Cavan man confide in you? You know what he dabbles in. Dark deals, with those little … demons. What did you talk about in there? Plotting against us, maybe?"

  So she didn't know about the border zone. She thought we were only talking.

  "We didn't get a chance," I said. "Someone burned it down, didn't they?"

  Bruno, squatting a few steps away, slid out a red-handled knife and started turning it over, wearing a glued-on grin. On his knuckles sat the faded dots of prison tattoos.

  "You know him," she said, almost sweetly. "The Gregory woman too. And plenty more in your … business. So you will call them all, and gather their items. However you get them is up to you. When that is done, and done quickly, you will help up with a task that only one of your sort can perform. Then, we let you go. Simply. Without pain."

  "But I can't." I put more pressure on the tape encircling my chest and felt a tiny jag. A rip? "I barely know Seamus Cavan, I told you. I swear to God—"

  "God?" the nun hissed. "God? How dare you, you perverted little—"

  From outside came a sudden beeping, like a car alarm. She looked up.

  "We okay out there?" Bruno yelled at the wall dividing us from the cab.

  A muffled reply came back. "It's all fine. Nothing to worry about."

  "That's him, isn't it?" I said. "Vesta's killer?" They both turned to me. "I know it is. Because we know about him. And about you too, Bruno Burke."

  "Do you now," Burke said, grinning, but a bit too stiffly.

  "The one up front, he kills old ladies. Did you know that? I saw the body."

  No reaction. Shit, they already knew he was a killer. And they didn't care.

  Another noise from outside, this time a car horn. The nun stood. "I'll check." She went to the back door, opened it, stepped down. To talk to Sunglasses, I assumed. Leaving us alone.

  "Bruno," I said, softly. "She's off her rocker. Evil and demons. You're a practical man, am I right? Paint and, and tools. You're not the kind for this mad stuff."

  In a flash, he was standing, and leaned over to stab a meaty finger into my shoulder. "You" — stab — "don't" — stab — "tell me" — stab — "what to think. Arrogant shits, thinkin' you're better because you can go through a fuckin' tree. Scrounging for rubbish in the fairy's shit."

  He stepped to the opposite wall, crouched at a crate and popped the lid, sending papers, one that looked like a map, sliding off and out of sight. While his back was turned I jiggled against the pole, trying to rub the tape against the sharp edge I thought I felt.

  A slight shift. I pulled forward, until I felt my ribs creak, and up and down and up—

  "Since we don't have all fucking night," he said, rummaging through the tool box, "I'm thinking we hurry this along. Ladies feel more pain, don't they? We should check."

  "Fuck you," I said, and regretted it as soon as he grinned. I'd just given him permission to do his worst. But they'd find me first, Debbie, Gernaud, they would, I knew it.

  The door opened. The nun climbed in, and closed it. Across the door she folded a hinged clasp, slid in a padlock, slapped it shut. She tested it and turned. Locked in.

  "Look," I said, "fine. I'll help you. No problem, I was thinking of changing branch anyway. Let's just be reasonable here. We're all reasonable, right? Aren't we?"

  "
I'm not fucking reasonable," Bruno said, clunking around in his oversized toolbox. "And you called the sister a nut-job behind her back. Didn't you?"

  The nun stood by the door, calmly watching, making my skin crawl.

  "The others," I said, "they'll find you. They know your van, there's security cameras, we've photos of everyone. And Debbie's got a proper big shotgun, and…"

  Bruno turned from the crate, and my voice stuck when I saw what he had — a secateurs, for lopping off branches. Rubbery orange handles. Black steel blades. An adjustable screw-widget at the join and a logo that kind of looked like a bird or maybe it—

  "Come on," I said, with a feathery laugh. "Seriously. Okay, how about this, I get you all the craft items you want. No problem at all. I'll start calling now. No need to—"

  His meaty hand grabbed my throat. I wriggled like a fish in a vice.

  "Hold the legs, Agnes," Burke said, and swung my legs towards the nun, jerking at the tape in the process. "We should … actually, fuck it. Sit on the knees. Keep him still."

  With a sweaty hand gripping my throat, and the nun's weight pressing my legs down, all the squirming and writhing I could manage got me precisely nowhere.

  I shot a desperate look at the nun. Her skinny face, when she met my eye, displayed nothing but disgust. "Please," I gargled through the iron-like grip. "Just … let me…"

  My mouth froze as I registered the cold press of the secateurs around the little finger of my left hand. Lines of ice, squeezing their cold into flesh and bone. Pressing down.

  "Now," Bruno said, inches from my face, the salty, unwashed stink of him. "Wouldn't take much for me to close them, would it? And taking off a finger would hurt. Toes are worse. You try walking without the right toes, and it's hilarious, right, but not very fancy. Takes a few toes to make someone black out. Maybe four. You hearin' me there, Brenda?"

  I couldn't speak beyond a squeak, and my eyes were balls swelling from their sockets. I nodded — up-down — and Bruno, on his haunches, leaned in. "So let's hear—"

  The blare of a car horn again, this time shockingly loud, and in that moment of distraction I yanked my legs to try to get free, and the nun lost her balance, falling onto Bruno, shoving him from his poorly-balanced haunches onto the handle of the secateurs.