Shadowhunter (Nephilim Quest Book 1) (4 page)

I have to say his pure joy made me feel slightly better.
 

I put Muffin down and he scooted forward, yanking the leash with such force I almost fell. He was really strong, despite his small size. I started running too, not wanting to stay by the garden gate in case someone from Kitty's family surprised me.

Muffin seemed to know exactly where he was going, and I realised pretty quickly where it was, and why. He was going to our secret place to see if Kitty was there. Perhaps it was no bad thing that I couldn't explain to the little guy that Kitty was gone forever. He'd have to figure that out himself and maybe it would be less painful for him that way. For a moment, I sort of wished I was a dog or a cat, but then I realised that it was no easier for them, either, just different.

I heard a car approaching from behind and moved closer to the edge of the road. It took me all my willpower to force myself not to jump frantically onto the verge and I started to tremble. The driver hit the brakes and the sound of the car sliding on the road was too much for my nerves. I screamed and crouched, covering my head with my arms, waiting for the impact.

"You thought I'd run you over?" I heard a familiar voice ask.

In a second the fear was gone and I jumped up to see Grandma's huge smile.

"Grandma!"
 

She was still smiling as she stepped out of her spiffy red sports car.

"Come and have a hug!"

I flew into her outstretched arms. I never really hugged my mom, but I loved hugging Grandma. Maybe it was because she loved hugging me. Mom was more reserved. I knew she loved me, but she had never been much of a hugger. If she had to hug, it was one of those awkward, one-armed hugs, and she even patted my back just like men always do. I was sure it was embarrassing to look at, so I let Mom off the hook and did not hug her in public.

No such problems with Grandma. I squeezed her with all my strength, and she did the same back. She had really developed hugging into an art form. Despite her small frame she grabbed you like a bear and laughed with joy as she hugged, making you feel like you were the only important person for her at that moment. And to be honest, that was probably the case. She hugged you as if she was not sure if she would ever see you again.

Suddenly I felt a surge of happiness. Surely things would be better now that Grandma was here.
 

"And how are you now?" she asked me, pushing me to arm's length and looking me in the eye.

She knew, of course, but she didn't pity me, I could see that. She was simply asking a question, knowing what had happened. She knew exactly how to interact with me. I hated all that mushy pity talk that was going down.

"I'm OK, more or less," I shrugged.

"Well, it gets easier with time. But were you on your way somewhere nice?"

"I was going to our special place. Or in fact, it seems Muffin is headed there. We called it our den. Would you like to come along?"
 

Having someone with me suddenly felt like a good thing.
 

"Of course!"

Grandma left the car where it was - no one ever drove along that road really, and it wouldn't have done the neat little car's suspension any good to go offroad - and we jumped over the ditch onto the path that encircled the hay field. Grandma always wore jeans and trainers and never acted her age ("How should I know how to act my age? I've never been this age before!"). She was the wild child of the family. How or when this had happened I never really knew. Her early life as far as I could tell had been quite staid and rural, in a farming community, but at some point she had kicked back and become the glamorous and rather intriguing figure that I knew. She was sure fun to be around.
 

Our trainers and jeans got all wet from the still dewy grass that brushed against us as we followed the little footpath around the turn towards the forest, across the meadow. It entered the forest through some old oaks, and led, curving gently among the trees, to our secret place, mine and Kitty's.

It was Kitty who had originally found it, a little abandoned hut, big enough for two people to take shelter in. It stood at the edge of what had originally been a cultivated field that was now almost overgrown with small trees, and we had concluded the hut had been meant for agricultural tools. Its roof was still whole, and someone had taken the trouble to cover it with felt. It was overgrown with moss now, but still waterproof. It even had a little gas stove.

We had brought two old plastic garden chairs to the hut, and a little table, from our garden shed – the kind you see all around the world in cafeterias and on beaches. My mother was a bit of a pack-rat, and never wanted to throw away anything that wasn't broken, and these chairs and the table must have been from the early days of my parents' marriage, gone into storage when they travelled around and then brought back into service when we came to live here. The white plastic had darkened into a dirty gray that no cleaning could remove. My parents never noticed they were missing. Not that I had ever expected them to. Dad always tried to chuck old stuff out without my mother noticing, and was quite successful at it too, being careful to throw only those things away that had not met her eye for a while. If he had noticed the furniture gone, he'd never have said a word anyway.

There, in our shed, we had sat and talked and laughed... Watching the forest change from season to season, through the open door. We had tamed some curious squirrels, and they frequently came to see if we had brought any nuts for them. I thought about them now and wondered how they were doing. They probably missed us - we must have seemed to have disappeared from their lives quite suddenly.
 

"So this is where you and Kitty used to hang out?"

I nodded, lifted the latch, and pulled the door open. Grief hit me in the face with such strength I could not help a little sob from escaping. Grandma's hands were on my shoulders instantly.

"Come here. Sit down. You need to talk about it." She turned me towards the chairs and gently pushed me down on one.

"I miss her so much," I cried.

"Of course you do. You were the best of friends." She squeezed my hand. "Now; you need to get it out of your system. Tell me how it happened."

I drew in a ragged breath.

"We were walking by the road and that... drunk driver just hit her. There was this noise and...She... She bled so much. She hit her head, you see..." I tried to describe my painful memories for her, even though I did not want to. It was agonising, but as they came out, forced out bit by incoherent bit, I could feel a strange kind of release.
 

Grandma nodded, not letting go of my hand, but giving it an occasional gentle squeeze, waiting for me to continue.

"She... She didn't die immediately. She clung to life for a week. That...that's how they described it. Clinging to life. In and out of consciousness. Then she slipped into a coma and died. It was for the best, they said. The doctors. The huge brain contusion meant she would never have been... normal... again, had she survived. Not the Kitty we knew and loved..."

"That is probably true," Grandma said softly. "It doesn't make it easier, though."

Tears rolled down my cheeks. It was more of a flood of tears than just a trickle. Grandma pulled out a clean tissue from her pocket and gave it to me.

"You know... they told me that when she was still half conscious, she talked to invisible beings... Like she saw someone who wasn't there..." I wiped my tears away, tasting their salt on my lips.

"Yes, that is quite common when people are about to die," Grandma commented in a matter-of-fact voice.
 

"Is it?"

"Yes, it is. They say the invisible people are our loved ones, coming to fetch us when it is our time to leave."

I couldn't think of anything to say to that.
 

"Did you see her before she died?"
 

I shook my head.

"She was in intensive care and they didn't allow visitors, other than her family. But her brother sent me a photo of her with his phone."

"Oh dear..." Grandma shook her head. "That probably wasn't a very good idea. I'm sure he meant well, but... "

She was right. The picture was forever etched into my mind. Her immobile bruised body under the thin hospital sheet, with a machine breathing for her, and her swollen face...I knew then what horror meant. Strange how you use a word all your life, but you don't really understand it until one day it becomes real for you. She was no longer conscious at that point. I didn't want to remember Kitty like that, but could not erase the picture from my mind. Kitty - my friend. My best friend in the world.
 

"He said it was like looking at a car whose engine is still functioning, though the driver had already left. She was no longer there."

We sat there in the summer morning, Grandma and I, on the old chairs outside the hut. She did not ask anything, and let me wander through the labyrinth of the memories of those painful days.

The night she died, I'd known it from the moment I woke up – I had seen her in my dream, with a winged creature that could only have been an angel. The wings had been odd, though. Not white, not feathery, but like a halo of blue around the angel's body. They were in deep conversation with each other, and walking away from me. My throat had constricted the way it does when you lose something or someone you love in a dream, and you can't call out.
 

Kitty had given the winged creature an object, which looked like a book. The angel had been male, with light colored hair, and, strangely, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt instead of the kind of flowing robes you'd expect an angel to wear, and he'd looked at me over his shoulder while he led Kitty away. I could still remember his bright blue eyes piercing the distance, and I had felt an odd burning sensation in my chest and back, and felt very much awake. And when the phone rang in the middle of the night, while I lay on my bed with my eyes staring into the darkness, I already knew.

The drunk driver who had killed Kitty would be brought to trial in the future and undoubtedly be convicted, but nothing would ever bring Kitty back.

Suddenly rage hit me. In my mind I saw the scared woman stumbling out of her car to almost collapse into the road because she was so drunk. I screamed out loud and slammed the table with my fist. I wanted to face her, I wanted to hit her, I wanted to kill her...
 

Muffin backed away from me, whining. I forced myself to stop, so I wouldn't scare him.
 

"Sorry." My voice shook.

Muffin stood for a while, observing me with his head tilted to one side, and then came back up to me with his rear end wriggling madly back and forth as though he should apologise, not me. I leaned down to pat him, and he licked the salty tears from my cheeks.
 

"Nothing to apologise for," Grandma said. "If you weren't angry at the driver, I would be worried. Now, do you have a mug here?"

"A mug? Yes, two..."

"Inside? Good."

Grandma rose and I noticed she had a bag in her hands. Not a handbag, she never carried those, but a worn backpack. She went inside the hut, and I heard her put the kettle on our small gas stove. After a while she came back with two mugs of steaming instant coffee, placed these on the small table, and then returned to fetch a cake she had brought from the village store.
 

"Food helps when you're sad. An age-old fact. All grandmothers know it," she declared. She broke off a big piece of the cake and placed it determinedly on a tissue on the table in front of me.
 

My mouth was dry, and I wasn't hungry at all, but if Grandma had gone to all this trouble, then I would eat her cake.
 

"That's better. Low blood sugar makes it worse." She was right. Forcing myself to eat did help, even though I didn't want to admit it.
 

Suddenly Grandma stiffened and turned her head towards the depths of the forest. She sat there, unmoving, for a few seconds, then noticed me watching her and smiled.

"Just thought I heard something. There are no bears in the woods around here, are there? Distant relatives of Winnie the Pooh sniffing about in search of honey?"
 

I bit into the dry cake and washed it down with hot coffee. Then I managed a smile at her little joke.
 

"No bears, as far as I know. I don't think any were stowed away in our bags when we left the States."
 

"Our cake is safe, then.
 
But I'll go and see if there's anything there. Perhaps it's a deer. I'd love to get a photo of a deer in the forest. Do you mind?" She took her phone from her pocket, and rose from her chair.

"No, not at all."

Grandma walked silently away, leaving me drinking my coffee, with Muffin pressed against my legs. I gave him the last bit of cake. Then I sat, looking down at the tiny ants marching over the wooden steps to reach the crumbs on the ground, tears falling silently down my cheeks and even dripping onto the knee of my jeans.
 

A little bee landed on the steps too. Bees seemed to like me; they were always flying around me, but I was never stung. I could hold them in my hand and not feel fear – something Mom never understood. Sometimes I even hummed to them and occasionally I imagined they answered me.

Muffin, who had been sitting looking hopefully at me wondering if I had more cake, turned his head and then got up and walked through the open door of the hut. I heard him sniffing and scampering about inside. He did not come out again. After a while I heard him scraping the floor and whining. An urgent, high-pitched whine, interspersed with little impatient growls.

 
"What is it, Muffin?" I asked with a thick voice. As if a dog could answer...

 
Well answer he did, in his own way. The scraping sounds were furiously rhythmical now, and he was positively howling.

 
I looked inside through the open door, and saw Muffin in the process of digging his way through the floor behind the little stove.