I open the door of the building Vann lives in and run to the lift. At the lift my bag catches on the stair banister. My bag falls, opens, things spill out. I crouch down to pick them up.
Fate is a strange thing.
Whether you turn right or left when you walk out of your front door can change your life forever. I don’t know how the future might have played out if my bag had not caught and the contents spilled out. But those few seconds meant I look up and see Lana coming through the doors. She appears distracted. She sees me and comes up to me.
‘Hi, Julie. Are you coming or going?’
What, I wonder, would have happened if I had said coming? Instead I say, ‘Going.’
She looks relieved. ‘Shall we do lunch sometime next week?’
I feel anger in the pit of my stomach. What the hell are you doing here? Is the billionaire not enough for you? This is my man.
‘Yes, let’s.’ I press the lift button. The doors open immediately.
She steps in. The cheek of the woman. She smiles at me. I smile back automatically, but fucking hell is she having an affair with my man? The doors close on her and as if I have winged ankles I race up five flights of stairs. I stand at the fire door, breathing hard.
When I get my breath back, which occurs surprisingly fast, I march down the corridor. I take my shoes off and turning my key, quietly slip into Vann’s apartment. I tiptoe to a little alcove that leads into the living room, and crouching behind a cupboard watch them. What I hear is nothing like what I had expected!
‘I love him so much. I just want to help, but he won’t tell me anything,’ Lana is saying. Her voice sounds distraught and desperate.
‘It is not because he does not want to tell you. Nothing that happens in the circle can be told outside it.’
She paces agitatedly, coming in and out of my line of vision. ‘Can he step out of the circle?’
‘There is no escape. The circle has no end. Besides, he would not want to. Coming out would put you and Sorab in grave danger. He makes his sacrifice gladly.’
‘Can I enter the circle?’ Her voice is a whisper, full of terror. It makes my hair stand on end.
Vann’s reply is instantaneous. ‘Never.’
What the hell are they talking about? Suddenly, I remember the crazy notes I saw about the brotherhood of El. And the unbelievable things that Victoria had screamed about.
‘What must I do then?’ Lana asks desperately.
‘The fight between good and evil is as old as time. It will never be won by either side. Involving yourself will bring great personal loss to you.’
‘Should I do nothing, then?’
‘No matter what you do, the brotherhood will carry on holding their great balls for El. You will not be invited. Neither will I. Blake will always be invited as an honored guest, but he won’t go… Because of you. Because of your love for him from outside the circle.’
‘Loving him from outside the circle doesn’t stop the nightmares.’
‘Nightmares?’
‘Every once in a while when he has had a particularly stressful day he has a nightmare. Then he screams out in the voice of child. He told me that the memory is blur and dream-like, but when he was a small boy he took part in a ritual and killed another child.’
‘The first rule of control is to hijack history.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Blake didn’t kill anyone. The child that is being programmed usually never does. It just wakes up alone from a drugged state with a bloodied knife and a dead child. And then it screams and whimpers for its mother for hours.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘Because when I was seven years old I stumbled upon the ritual. I accidentally got locked in the same room where the ceremony was being performed. I saw what they did. I saw his little body stiffen up when he was being stabbed. I felt dirty for not looking away. When they left it I sat frozen for hours. When the other boy awakened and began to scream I wanted to come out and comfort him, but even then I knew that if I showed myself I was dead, and the instinct for self-preservation is strong even in a child. But the shock was incredible. It changed me. The world became a frightening place. There was no one I could trust after that. I always knew they did that to both Marcus and Blake.’
‘They never did it to you?’
‘No. I was never the right material. They choose their victims very carefully.’
‘How do they choose them?’
‘That knowledge will not serve you.’
‘Is there anything else you can tell me?’
‘The rest cannot be told. Only remember that they want you to believe he is like them, but he is not. He never has been and he never will be.’
‘I’ve been doing some research on them, and—’
‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’
‘Stay away from them. They have existed from time immemorial. They will be here when you and I are gone. You cannot defeat them. When you gaze at something long enough you become it. Even what you fight, you become. Keep away from it. Stay pure. What they hate more than anything else is a pure heart. When you are pure they cannot touch you. And the longer that Blake gazes at you, the purer he, too, will become. You are not here to take them on. You are here to protect your son and every child that your charity can reach. Go and tell Blake he did nothing wrong.’
‘I will.’ Lana walks up to him and, standing on tiptoes, kisses him on his cheek. ‘Thank you, Vann.’
He says nothing, simply looks at her kindly.
She goes to leave and then turns back towards him. ‘Have you told Julie who you are?’
‘No.’
‘She may seem like an air-head sometimes, but you can trust her. I would.’
She walks to the door. When the door clicks shut I come out of my hiding place and stand in the entrance of the room.
‘Who are you?’ I ask, but I already know. Of course, I know. It should have been obvious to anyone with eyes. I should have known from the first day.
Invictus
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
—William Ernest Henley
Twenty-nine
I, Quinn Adam Barrington
‘You’re Blake’s brother, aren’t you?’ she accuses, her voice, a shocked whisper.
She is wearing scarlet. I love her in scarlet. I can hardly remember her from the days she used to dress in shades of pink. She has changed so much. Her hair is loose and she is wearing red lipstick. In the glow of the light from the lampshade her creamy skin glows with the luminescence of the polished ivory sword handle that had hung in my father’s study.
She is my beautiful love. My heart feels heavy. Why didn’t I tell her myself? Something has always held me back. I know why. I know exactly why.
I incline my head. ‘At your service.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
I shrug. To tell her would be to leave me defenseless.
She smiles suddenly, brightly, and advances into the room. ‘It doesn’t matter, I realized today that I love you,’ she says excitedly.
I freeze. I actually freeze. Now I know why I never told her. But I thaw surprisingly fast. There is no pain. Maybe later. Definitely later, I will think of those words and how much I wanted them to be true. Now I am like the man whose shoulder is inside the lion’s jaws. The pain is so great that shock cracks a whip, and a weird flat state of being takes over; it is notable only for its total absence of pain. I always knew she was shallow, but this shallow? Not even I could have expected that.