Authors: Catherine Fisher
Crossroads.
A weathered fingerpost leaned in a triangle of frosted grass.
EXETER 12 OKEHAMPTON 11
And in smaller letters underneath, pointing up a narrow lane:
Wintercombe 2
The wolf howled; it had her scent. She turned and saw it streaking toward her, unleashed, a low shape
hurtling through the twilight, eager to pin her down. She was running and it was behind her and she couldn’t stop the terror now, it rose up within her like a red, snatched pain, the frozen lane quaked with it, the hedges roared.
And then it slid alongside her—a vast scarlet machine, stinking of diesel.
She flung her hand up, grabbed a metal pole, and leaped on board.
“Hold tight, love,” the driver said.
The bus roared away. Bent double, she dragged in air. The driver, his eyes on the road, said, “Where to, then?”
“Sorry?”
“Where to? Where are you going?”
The lane dwindled behind her, the wolf snarling in the dark. She whispered, “Wintercombe.”
“One forty.”
Baffled, she turned. “I don’t have any…currency.”
His eyes flicked to her in the mirror. “I should put you straight off.”
“Oh give her a lift, Dave,” a woman said. “You were young once.”
People laughed. There were five on the bus, all elderly, all watching her.
“Okay. This once. And I still am young, compared to you lot.”
She said, “Thanks,” and went and crumpled onto a seat behind the pensioners. A man glanced at her, disapproving.
The moor was the same. But nothing else. She’d never seen a bus before, was alarmed at how it scratched down the lane, its windows clotted with dried mud. The rattling motion and the smell made her feel sick; she held tight to the metal rail in font of her, her bleeding foot braced on the floor. On the next seat was a discarded newspaper. The page was upside-down; she turned it quickly. It showed a picture of a blond girl in a gray dress. The headline was
Patient still missing from Secure Unit.
She read the article carefully, feeling her heart rate thud to slowness. This was just what she needed. She folded it and dropped it under the seat.
The bus ran over a small humpbacked bridge and stopped on a street.
The driver peered around his screen. “Wintercombe.”
It was far sooner than she’d thought. She scrambled to the door, looked out cautiously, and jumped down. “Thanks.”
“My pleasure.” His voice was dry. Doors swished shut in her face. The bus roared away.
It was the village, but intact. People lived here. Over the huddled houses, the sky was already darkening.
Shouts made her turn, fast, but only a few men came laughing out of the pub. The Replicant and his wolf could be here in half an hour. She had to hurry.
Avoiding the houses, she slipped down a footpath marked
Wintercombe Abbey;
it led into woodland. Great trees creaked overhead. She felt tiny under them, and uneasy because the wolf wasn’t the only danger. Getting into the estate would be difficult. Through the Wood.
It was so silent, the rustle of her own footsteps scared her.
The path descended into a deep hollow, banked on each side. Broken winter umbels lay snapped and trampled in the mud. After about a mile she stopped, holding her side, and listened. Everything seemed quiet. Then, as she turned to go on, she heard the sudden, excited howl.
Too close.
She ran, the momentum of the descent pulling her so fast that she almost tumbled out of the end of the path, and there were the gates, high black wrought-iron gates, streaked with rust, each of their pillars crowned with a sitting lion, one paw resting on a shield. She threw herself against them, but to her despair they were securely locked, and only a battered mailbox with
WINTERCOMBE ABBEY. STRICTLY NO VISITORS
leaned in the hedge.
She’d climb. As she put her hands to the metal, a click alarmed her and she stared up. A small white camera, mounted on one of the lions, had shifted. It swiveled down. The round blank lens scrutinized her.
“Let me in. Please! I need to speak to you. It’s urgent!”
A low growl. She spun around, back against the wet metal. Something was creeping through the dim undergrowth of the wood.
The gates moved.
A bolt slid. They shuddered apart, just a fraction, but it was enough, she’d squeezed through and was limping up the dark, overgrown drive, leaping logs, ducking under the untrimmed boughs of trees. The path twisted, all gravel and mud; above her a mass of branches tangled against the twilight. She looked back, saw the wolf’s snarling silhouette, stumbled and crashed headlong over a fallen trunk, sprawling in nettles and mud.
The wolf’s belly was low to the ground. Its eyes gleamed ice-cold, as if they caught the arctic sun.
“Go back,” she whispered. She groped in the leaf-litter; clutched a brittle branch.
The wolf slavered, its spittle hanging. Then, quick as a flicker of moonlight, its eyes darted to the left. She turned her head. And held her breath.
In the eaves of the Wood a shadow stood. A boy in a
green coat, barely visible in the gloom. He leaned on a spear tipped with a flake of sharp flint. He wasn’t even looking at her, as if she didn’t matter at all, but he had fixed his gaze on the dog and his lips were curled in scorn.
One-handed, he swung the spear and pointed it. “Puppy,” he whispered. “Little scared puppy.”
The wolf whined. It cowered, hunkering down as if it wanted to sink into the earth. It scrabbled, panicky, at the mud.
Sarah said, “What are you doing? How are you doing that?”
The boy glanced at her. She scrambled up, watching the terrified beast abase itself in the dead leaves, watching it scrape itself backward. Then it turned and fled.
Amazed, she stared. “I don’t know who you are, but…”
“But I know you,” he said. “Don’t I.”
“No. You can’t. I…” Her eyes widened. There was no boy. Just tree shadows. Gnarled and twisted.
For a moment she stood there. Then, slowly, she turned and limped on down the path, to the house that waited for her in the moonlight.
Wintercombe Abbey was no burned ruin. It stood tall, a rambling manor house of gables and twisted chimneys, its darker, medieval stonework jutting
out—the silhouette of a tower, a row of arcaded windows, all unlit. From gutters and gables waterspouts leaned, the long-necked griffins and heraldic yawning dragons she had imagined for years in her dreams. The house crouched in its wooded hollow; its murky wings ran back into gloom, and with a deep roar somewhere beyond, the river crashed through its hidden gorge.
She moved carefully from tree to tree, as if the house watched her coming.
There was a lawn of waist-high grass; she would have to cross that, and she would prefer it if no one saw her from the high dark windows.
It was time to become invisible.
Sore and muddy, she summoned up the small itchy
switch
in her mind, just as they had taught her in the Lab.
Done.
Now no one could see her.
She stepped out and limped painfully through the dead grasses until the house loomed above, the moon balanced on its highest gable, then slipped around the side of the building, over frost-blackened flower-beds, through a small wrought-iron gate.
She came to a window, ground floor, but higher than her head. It was ajar. A fragment of curtain gusted through it in the cold breeze. She waited, secret and
shadowless, listening. Nothing. The room must be empty.
She stretched up and grabbed at the sill. Barely reaching, she gripped it, then had to scramble onto a narrow rib of stone and climb the brickwork, hanging by toes and fingers, until she could haul herself up and peer over into the room.
It was shadowy. A fire burned low in the hearth, flickering red on dark paneling and shelves of old books.
She edged the casement wider. It creaked. Carefully she pulled herself up, getting one knee on the crumbling stone. She squeezed her head and shoulders in through the wide bars.
Then she saw him.
He was reflected in a glass clock-face. A man in a high armchair with its back to her, legs stretched out, feet propped on a low table that was piled with documents, papers, books. In his hand was a glass of what might be whisky, but he wasn’t drinking it or reading.
He was listening.
She kept completely still, not even breathing. To see him was astonishing. As if a character from a book had come to life, there, right before her.
With a sudden lean unfolding, the man stood. He turned and his face was a sharp silhouette in the gloomy room. She caught the puzzled, wary tilt of his
head. He put the drink down on the table, and said, “Who’s there?”
The curtain gusted between them. She was invisible but all her weight was on one hand and it was already trembling.
“Answer me. Is it you, Summer? Do you really think you can get in here?”
His voice was scornful. He came straight toward her; she had to move. She slid through the casement onto the broad wooden sill, and he stopped instantly.
His eyes, ice blue, stared right at her. He was so close she could see the shocked recognition come into his face, a spasm of stricken stillness. He reached out, till his hand was touching her cheek. He whispered,
“Leah?”
She shook her head, devastated, her eyes blurry with tears. “How can you see me? It’s not possible.”
His hand jerked back, as if she’d slapped him. The shock went from him; replaced with a vicious anger that took all the life from his eyes. “Who the hell are you?” he snarled.
She jumped down and stood in the room in front of him, defiant, cold hands at her sides. “Sarah. And you must be Oberon Venn.”
He didn’t answer. All he said was “Your foot is bleeding all over my floor.”
I first met him on a remote glacier in the high Andes. A friend and I were climbing and had gotten into trouble; we had frostbite and the weather had closed in. We curled in a snow-hole, freezing. Late in the night I heard a sound outside, so I crawled out. The wind was an icy rattle against my goggles.
Through the mist I saw a man walking. At first I thought he was some creature of the snow, a phantom of the tundra.
I must have been in a state of delirium because I called out that he was an angel.
His laugh was harsher than the wind. “My name’s Venn,” he said. “And I’m no angel.”
Jean Lamartine,
The Strange Life of Oberon Venn
J
AKE GAZED OUT
of the plane window at the blue sky.
Far below, the snowfields of the Alps glittered a brilliant white; the plane’s tiny shadow moved over glaciers and secret valleys where only explorers would ever venture.
Explorers like Venn.
He focused on his own blurred image in the glass. The plan had worked. He was out of the school forever.
He felt strangely tired, though he should be elated. After all, there was no one at Compton’s he cared about. He had said good-bye to them all with cool politeness, and then been driven away. Davies and Alec and even Patten had watched him go, standing in a silent group on the steps. He hadn’t looked back.
They were probably at games by now. They’d probably forgotten all about him.
Fine. But there was still a problem, and it was a big one.
Wharton was sitting next to him, reading a book. Jake watched the man’s reflection. Big for a teacher. Ex-rugby international. Having him along was not an option. He’d have to get rid of him as soon as possible.
As if it was Jake’s mind he was reading, Wharton turned a page and muttered, “Whatever you’re planning, forget it. I’m coming with you to the very door of the Abbey.”
“I can look after myself. I’m sure you want to get back to glamorous Shepton Mallet.”
“I do.” Wharton looked up. “But the Head’s instructions were crystal.
Hand the scheming little brat over personally.
”
Jake almost smiled.
Wharton watched him. Then he put a marker in the book and laid it on the fold-down table. “So, are you
going to tell me what this is all about? This ridiculous…”
“It’s not ridiculous.”
“Murder? A man like Venn? Come on! You’ll have to convince me.”
Jake held himself still, but the old cold anger crept over him. “What do you know about him? Only what you read in the news. Venn the Boy’s Own hero. Don’t you think someone like that—out there in the wilds, on the edge of survival—don’t you think he could kill if he had to?”
“I suppose it’s possible.” Wharton watched the boy’s reflection. “Tell me about him.”
Jake was silent a moment. Then he said, “I’ve read everything on him I can find. He was the best. Explorer, mountaineer. Doctorate in plate tectonics. Virtuoso violinist. Collector of Cycladic pottery. You name it, he’s done it.”
Wharton nodded. “I’ve seen him in a few things on TV. A series on volcanoes.” Venn’s rugged face, his ice-blue eyes and dragged-back tangle of blond hair were familiar from documentaries and interviews. “A very intense man, I remember. Driven.”
Jake laughed, but it was a mirthless laugh. “Good word. But his life crashed. Four years ago he was driving a hired car along a narrow coast road in Italy. His wife was in the car with him. There was some sort of
accident—an oncoming truck. The car went down the cliff. Venn survived. His wife, Leah, didn’t.”
The cold, cruel way he said it made Wharton very uneasy. “That’s a terrible thing for a man to have to live with.”
Jake shrugged. “He was in the hospital for weeks. When he came out he seemed to have been like a different person. No photos, no interviews. He sold his London flat and went and holed up at Wintercombe Abbey, an old place deep in Devon that’s belonged to his family for centuries. He set up some sort of secret project and works on it obsessively. He never leaves the estate or speaks to anyone outside. Except my father, David Wilde.”
Now we’re coming to it,
Wharton thought. But he kept his voice neutral. “His best friend.”
Jake nodded. He kept his eyes on the sky. “They’d been friends since they were kids. Been in some bad situations together. Dad used to say he was the only one Venn trusted.”