Dark Vision (37 page)

I stood up and pointed at the door. I really needed to be alone with my aloneness.

‘Leave,’ I said. ‘Now.’

He ignored me, and reached out, tilting my chin up so I was looking into his eyes. Eyes that were filled with a sadness almost as big as my own.

‘I did as you asked,’ he said. ‘I was honest. And now you’ll punish me for it?’

‘Yeah,’ I replied, slapping his hand away. ‘Sometimes life sucks, doesn’t it? Just ask Philip and Coleen about that one … Now, please, get away from me. I can’t bear to be near you right now. As final pitches went, that was the world’s worst.’

‘I know,’ he said, ‘and I didn’t come here intending to make you suffer. Or fight with Luca. Or scream at you. I came here to tell you how brave you were last night. To thank you for saving me, even if it wasn’t the sensible thing to do. To tell you I’m sorry, for everything. To tell you that … I … that I …’

He hesitated, and I could sense it coming. I could hear the ‘L’ bomb hovering in the air between us, burning fiercer than the fire and stronger than the stone and brighter than the jewels beneath the dogs’ coats.

‘I know,’ I said, turning away before he could say it. ‘I know you do. I just don’t know if it’s enough.’

Carmel threw herself back on the bed, and rolled around laughing. Literally rolled around, disappearing beneath a cloud of black hair and bearskin as she drooled into the pillow.

‘I’m glad one of us finds this amusing,’ I said, sharing my glares between her quaking body and the view I could see in the full-length mirror. The view of me, goddess-style. The one that had so affected my friend, the laughing policeman over there.

Shortly after Gabriel had left, I’d been attacked – and that is the only word I can use for it – by Tara’s version of Tracy and Cheryl from the salon. Not that I know a Tracy and Cheryl from the salon, but you get my drift. They might not have had the Scousebrows and Botox needles, but they had exactly the same appraising glint in their eyes as they looked me up and down. The one that said, ‘Shit – we’ve got our work cut out for us tonight, girls.’

So now, after several hours of torture, here I was. Wearing a long white gown straight out of the Druid Girls’ Guide to Fashion, coated in oils and potions, and with my hair knotted up in dozens of tiny plaits. The plaits were pinned around my head, apart from the one white streak, which had been decorated with miniscule red berries and left down to flow over my left shoulder and fade into the fabric of the dress. I looked … faintly ridiculous, by modern standards. Certainly by Carmel’s, looking at the state of her. But, well, I kind of liked it. As long as I didn’t trip up, wee myself in public, or swear, I’d at least appear dignified – even if I didn’t feel it.

I’d drawn the line at the stupid sandals, though, and insisted they let me wear my Docs instead – I definitely needed a bit of grounding on a night like this. Never mind the fact that it was the end of October, and bloody cold out there. I wasn’t sure they really went with the rest of the outfit – but then, neither did I.

They’d left us, then, with plates of food, a bowl of fruit and carafes of wine, so we could get on with the important business of eating, drinking and bickering.

‘You know,’ I said, sitting down next to her, ‘this is a pretty important night. The Feast of Samhain. The moment when I have to do all my goddess stuff. You could be a bit more … supportive?’

She sat up, leaned back against the wall, and wiped tears from beneath her eyes. The dog was curled up at my feet, and leaned over to lick my ankles. At least one of the bitches in the room understood.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Carmel. ‘It’s just … well, look at you! And it’s not just that – it’s everything. Everything that’s happened over the last few days. The madness of it all. How I’m feeling. How we’ve both changed. I mean, it’s wild, isn’t it? If I didn’t laugh, I might lose my mind.’

I nodded. Wild. That was one word for it. I’d add insane, horrifying and fucktarded beyond all recognition to the list.

‘It’s all been kicking off at home as well,’ she said. ‘I checked the paper’s website at the airport, and did you know they’d put all that crap last night down to some kind of performance-art piece? Some super-expensive performance-art piece that has the boffins at the museum salivating over all the genuine historic artefacts that ended up in the river? Don’t know what happened to the dead people, but some of the swords floated up in the Albert Dock! I kind of wish I was in the newsroom right now …’

I knew exactly what she meant. Newspapers are crazy places, and the buzz is never buzzier than when a big piece of news is floating around. Big events – tragedies to anyone else, like Princess Diana dying, or 9/11 – are torn about by the hungry newshounds, a bunch of borderline alcoholics and overgrown students working as one well-oiled machine to produce the stories that everyone wants to read.

I felt a stab of nostalgia for it: the way they’d all be scurrying around now, getting photos and expert comments and witness accounts using the inevitable phrase, ‘I heard a big bang …’ Except that wasn’t my life right now. Maybe it never would be again. And depending on what happened tonight, maybe it wouldn’t be anyone’s life ever again.

That whole idea felt ridiculous. How could I – Lily McCain – have ended up with this kind of responsibility? How could I, who’d only ever dipped her little toe into the great pool of life, now be asked to decide what happened to it next? And how could I separate my feelings about Gabriel, and the things he’d done, from the fate of all humanity?

Rejecting him meant accepting Fintan – and his version of the way the world should be. Accepting him meant … well, I didn’t know what it meant. Not happy ever after, that’s for bloody sure. Not for me, or him, or the world, I suspected. It’s not like I’d say yes, and suddenly planet Earth would be wrapped in a big blanket of rainbows and unicorns, with the whole of humanity acting like they’d taken an E. It all felt impossible to judge.

Life would, as Gabriel had always known, be a lot easier if I’d just been a good little girl and done what I was told. Never questioned his version of events, swooned into his manly arms, and thought myself lucky to be there. Oops.

‘So,’ said Carmel, serious again, ‘what are you going to do, then?’

The dog jumped up, and laid her long face on my lap so I could scratch her ears. I did exactly that as I pondered Carmel’s question.

‘I … don’t know,’ I replied. ‘In all honesty, I don’t know. Fintan is, well, a sicko. No doubt about it. But I’ve been to the Otherworld, and it’s kind of beautiful, in a
Logan’s Run
sort of way. It definitely beats walking through Bootle on a Saturday night, anyway.’

She opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it. I smiled – I knew exactly what she’d been about to say. That she’d had some cracking nights out in Bootle on a Saturday night. I, though, hadn’t. I hadn’t had those many cracking nights out anywhere, which is exactly why this decision would have been much easier for her: her life wasn’t perfect, but she loved it. It loved her. It was full of friends and fun and her unspeakably fantastic family. This would’ve been a no-brainer for Carmel. Me? Very much a brainer.

What I’d seen of this world was ninety per cent pain. What I’d seen of the Otherworld wasn’t, because that’s where my parents lived. I knew I wasn’t seeing the full picture – Fionnula had shown me how the Otherworld would be for some, and I’d had enough glimpses of normal human life to realise that it, too, could be totally awesome. And stuck right in the middle of the two was Gabriel. My High King and mate. My saviour and my tormentor. My wannabe lover and potential jailor.

‘I’m hoping,’ I said, thinking out loud, ‘that when I get out there, I’ll just know. Some pretty weird shit happened last night—’

‘You mean like you turning into a glow-stick and speaking in stereo?’ she interrupted.

‘Like that, yeah. I didn’t plan any of that. It just … happened. And maybe it’ll happen again. That I’ll just know what to do, as if by magic.’

‘OK …’ she replied, pulling a face that told me exactly what she thought of my devious master plan. ‘But what about the really important stuff? Forget all this saving the world crap – what about him? What about Gabriel? I’ve seen the way you look at him, and it even confuses me. I never know if you’re planning to eat him or stab him.’

She was right. That was exactly the way I looked at him – because that’s exactly the way I felt.

Before I could answer, she plunged back in: ‘I get that there’ve been a few untruths, Lily. I get that you’re angry with him, with fate, with everything. And it’s not like I’m a fully paid-up member of the High King Fan Club or anything … but, well. You know, don’t you, that he loves you? That if it wasn’t for his sacred duty, blah blah blah, he’d still love you? That you two could have a chance at … God, this sounds like puke, but a chance at being really happy together?’

At that point I’d have quite liked to take an apple from the fruit bowl and stick it in her mouth. I didn’t want to hear all this stuff – not now, not ever. Because again, damn her, she was right. If life had been different, I could so easily have fallen for Gabriel. The head over heels, happy ever after, love of my life kind of fallen. Maybe I still could – but there had been too much, too fast, for me to have any sense of balance about it.

‘Um … yeah,’ I said, eloquently.

She nodded, realising she wasn’t going to get anything more from me, jumped up from the bed and went to look at herself in the mirror. She’d fared a lot better than I had on the ancient mystical ceremony wardrobe – tight black pants, long-sleeved black top, and kind of funky knee-length boots made of soft brown leather, with black leather laces criss-crossed all the way around them.

‘These,’ she said, lifting up one foot and pointing a toe at me, ‘are a bit on the kinky side, I think. Which may be why I like them. So … what you seem to be saying, Lily, is that your master plan consists of: (a) wait and see, and (b) hope for the best?’

I nodded. When she put it like that, it did sound kind of lame.

‘Why? What do you think I should do?’ I asked.

‘I can’t answer that,’ she replied quickly. ‘You know what I’d do. But I’m not the Goddess for a reason. That’s your job, and I wouldn’t want it. But I know this – whatever you do, it’ll be from the heart, and it’ll be right. I think so, and I’m pretty sure the Diamond Dogs agree.’

The Diamond Dogs … I looked down at the mammoth head on my lap, and the way her coat seemed to sparkle with jewels you could only see from the corner of your eye. She was right. They were Diamond Dogs. I couldn’t believe the thought hadn’t occurred to me earlier. Only I could fall through the rabbit hole and land in the middle of a David Bowie song.

‘Just in case you need it, though,’ she said, ‘I want you to keep this.’

She handed me something, and I took it. It was a pocketknife like the one she’d been carrying the night before, the twin sister of the one I’d dropped in the river. I had a small looped purse hanging from the belt of my dress, which for some reason was full of keys to doors I’d never tried to open. I tucked the knife in there, and looked up at her, wondering how she’d managed to fish the knife out of the Mersey.

‘It was buy one get one free at Assassins R Us,’ she said, grinning.

I was halfway to a giggle about that one when a bell started to chime, deep, loud, and rattling with vibrato. The kind of bell that told the puny villagers the Kraken was on its way to eat them all, and to run for their lives. It echoed through the room, rattling the mirror on its uneven ground, and making the dogs restless.

Carmel walked over, and gave my hand a quick squeeze.

‘Ooh,’ she said, pulling a face, ‘it’s all a bit Hammer House of Horror now, isn’t it? I suspect that’s our call – are you ready, chickie?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘But we’d better go anyway.’

We opened the heavy wooden door to be met by two men brandishing burning torches – the kind that don’t need batteries. They led us through a maze of low-roofed tunnels cut from rock, and eventually to a long, dark corridor, lit by chunks of built-in stone that glowed eerily in the dark. Without a word, the men stopped, and gestured us forward.

I looked at Carmel, my friend and my Champion, and she gave me a jaunty little salute as we walked on.

‘Now,’ she said, as we neared the end of the corridor, ‘when we get out there, stand up tall, stick your boobs out, and in your head, sing the opening chords of “Foxy Lady”. It never fails.’

Against the odds she made me laugh, and after a couple of very deep breaths, we stepped out. Out on to the Hill of Tara, and the rest of my life. I felt like lion-bait entering the arena.

The night sky was glittering with what looked like millions of stars, and the full moon was bright enough to make me blink. As we emerged, we walked into a central clearing, damp grass squishing beneath my boots, dark flutterings overhead as birds circled around us. Or bats. Or possibly pterodactyls. The air was cold and frosty against my cheeks, and smelled of damp earth and freshly burned leaves. The scent gave me a sudden yearning for a cigarette, the first in weeks. Stress reaction, I suppose. Nothing like facing those lions to make you want a Marlborough Gold.

There was a circle of enormous upright stones standing in front of us, jagged and crooked and each casting their own twisting moon-shadow. Some of them looked firm, solid, earthbound. Others shimmered and wavered in and out of vision, like they couldn’t make their mind up which world they belonged in. That, I suspected, was pretty close to the truth – this was Tara, on the night of Samhain, when the veils between the worlds grew thin.

Standing in front of each stone – both the present and the not-so-present – was a person. Male, female, different ages. All dressed in grey, and staring at me intently. The Witnesses, I thought. Chosen from both worlds to watch the ceremony unfold. To watch the Goddess choose.

At the centre of the circle was one giant stone, standing alone. It was very, very real – firmly rooted in this earth, as though it had stone roots that spread underground like the stretching subterranean tendrils of an oak tree. Despite its solidity, it shone white in the darkness, casting silver light on the faces that surrounded it. The Lia Fail. The Stone of Destiny.