Victoria Jane Montgomery
I get into the car and watch him through the window. How very strange. The voices in my head have all fallen totally silent. Could it be that I have left them all behind in that wretched place? I watch Blake’s large, lightly tanned manly hand close the door—I’ve always loved his hands—and a single tear rolls down from one eye. I touch it and look at it with amazement.
I must still love him… Shame he will be dead soon.
A twinge of something hurts my heart, but I will not meddle with it. It will make a sniveling, timorous coward out of me.
The car pulls away, and I turn back to look at him through the back window. Framed against the hospital he stands very still. Seems such a waste. Such a contradiction to kill that which you love so deeply. Such a beautiful man, too. But I’d rather stand by his grave, below a hill, where a sentinel Cyprus tree stands guard and mourn a loss love than watch her victorious.
‘Where are you taking me?’ I ask the driver.
‘Longclere Hall, Lady Victoria,’ he replies politely.
It will be good to see my parents again. I sit back and cannot help smiling. I’m out and I’m free. I look down at the papers in my hands. I did it. I crushed him and next I will crush her. But her death will not come easy. I will make her beg me to die. I turn my head to look out of the window and my smile freezes. A tall, souped up SUV with large metal guards is speeding towards us. They planned it well. They knew which side I’d be sitting in. As it crashes into the side of the Bentley with a sickening sound of crushing metal, and a white hot pain, my gasp simmers in the air.
Once, a long time ago, I had a laugh like the tinkling of chandelier glass. A sweet sound. It’s not lost. There it is in the distance, but coming nearer. The light gets brighter and whiter than anything I have ever seen.
It’s a relief to let go.
Thirty
Blake Law Barrington
Our highest truths are but half-truths; think not to settle down forever in any truth. Make use of it as a tent in which to pass a summer’s night, but build no house of it, or it will be your tomb.
—Earl Balfour
I watch the car bearing Victoria move away from me until it turns the corner at the driveway and disappears from view. Across the road Tom is waiting for me. I take a step toward him, and I see a long black limousine, its windows tinted black, crawling toward me. I am not afraid to die, I never have been. It comes to a stop beside me. I lift my face toward Tom, let him know that all is fine. Perhaps I won’t be long, but even if I am, all is fine. I did the right thing. No more will I bloody my sword.
I open the door and a blast of air-conditioned, gently perfumed air hits me in the face. The perfume is disconcertingly familiar. Sick to my stomach, I bend my neck and look into the dim interior.
‘Hello, Blake,’ my mother says.
I look at her with dazed eyes. In the rubbish and the flotsam of the memories discarded as unimportant, tiny events, little snippets of conversations, a look here, a gesture there, bubble to the top and demand recognition. Delicate nuances of a language I did not understand until now. The darkened cold interior of the car yawns. I fall into it, feeling sick to my stomach, and close the door with a soft click.
‘I killed the wrong parent, didn’t I?’
She smiles. ‘You killed the right parent. You just didn’t kill the power behind the throne.’
‘You?’
‘Your father, as powerful as he was, was nothing more than the visible, coarser grains in the suspension of particles that is this war in our matterium. Power is never where you think it is, and never kept where one can see it. The value of anonymity for continuous power is incalculable. If you see something then you can reach out and take it.’
I stare at her with astonishment. I could not have been more amazed or shocked if she had grown horns. Nobody could ever have imagined that behind the scenes she is the hidden hand. The invisible power in the grand scheme of things. It is impossible for me to describe what I feel. Even the thought that my own mother is one of a handful of the most powerful people in the world, known only to the highest initiates, sitting at the pinnacle of the pyramid of world domination and directing the agenda of all the secret societies in the world, is too fantastical to believe. And yet here she is.
‘Why are you here?’ I ask, dazed.
‘Your car is due for an accident.’
‘I canceled the hit on Victoria,’ I say dully.
‘We did not.’ She glances at her watch. ‘It should have been done by now.’
‘Why?’
‘Because her plan was to kill my son, then my grandson, and finally my dead son’s wife.’
I am transfixed by her haughty, magisterial eyes. Something flashes into my mind, something indefinable. Fuck, there is just no escape. No matter which way I turn, how far I run, I always end up at the same door. I turn away from her and press my palms into my eyes. Oh, Victoria, Victoria! It seems you will have your revenge, after all.
‘Would you like some iced tea?’ my mother offers kindly.
‘No,’ I say, slowly. I take my palms away from my eyes and face her. ‘And what do you want in exchange?’
‘A successor. A hidden hand to hold the power after me.’
‘Me?’
She shakes her head slowly. ‘It was never you.’
Something inside me shrivels and dies quietly, but my voice remains calm and distant. ‘Why not one of Marcus’s sons?’
She shakes her head again. ‘The die was cast. By you.’
‘No,’ I state firmly. ‘You can’t have Sorab.’
‘He is not yours to give. Children come through us but they do not belong to us. The decision to join us is his to make.’
‘He won’t join you. I will teach him different from what I was taught. I will bring him up to know right from wrong.’
She nods as if conceding. ‘By all means. You may educate him in any way you wish, but if he decides, when he is able to, to join us, you must not stand in his way. That is all I ask.’
‘Why would he ever want to join a brotherhood of death and destruction if he had choice?’
‘You have your role to play. I have mine. He has his.’
‘And if I agree, you will leave my family alone.’
‘Until Sorab is eighteen, we will never contact him.’
‘What will you do? Trap him into committing some crime or scandal and then blackmail him?’
‘No. That won’t be necessary.’
I frown. ‘Offer him money, power and prestige?’
She seems amused. ‘Sorab is a catalyst. Offering him such things would be a waste of time.’
‘What then?’ I ask, frustrated.
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you more.’
‘Thanks, Mother.’
She smiles gently. ‘It’s all a beautiful and intricate game. Be courageous in the path you have chosen. There is nothing to fear. You have within yourself all that you wish to become and much more that you cannot yet even imagine. May our infinite creator bless and guide your path.’
I can hardly recognize her. I have only ever known her for malicious wit and vicious gossip, the spoilt wife of an astoundingly rich man, the unrivaled queen of the Kingdom of Snobbery. The transformation is too great to comprehend. ‘Why have you chosen the path you have?’
She looks at me as if I was a child again. I can barely remember her like this. Perhaps one little memory when I was five survives the brutality of my upbringing.
‘I was born into it. We are obliged. It is our divine destiny and we play the part given to us by our creator. We help prepare the harvest, by separating the wheat from the chaff, for want of a more eloquent metaphor. If there were no protagonists in this world, there would be no opportunity for a human soul to choose ‘good’ over ‘evil’. The negativity we perpetuate is a tool. Everything is a tool. This conversation is a tool. Use it as such.’