It was a porno mag. Bush League. Two mostly naked women entwined on its cover, pelvis grinding against pelvis, the body of one twisted ridiculously to display her gigantic breasts to the best effect.
‘You want to see?’ the girl said, holding it out. Samal recoiled from the image as though it were a snake. And then a number of impossible things happened in swift sequence.
From under the magazine, which tilted suddenly in the girl’s hand, two glittering threads arced up to hit Samal in the centre of his chest.
There was a sound like a clock ticking, but too fast and too loud. Samal did a clumsy moonwalk, moving backwards across the room in three jerky half-steps, until his shoulders hit the wall. He slid down it, expelling breath in a grunt of agony.
Meanwhile, Abydos had lunged for some weapon of his own, but the young girl had dropped both the porno mag and the spent Taser, leaped across the bed like a hurdler and was up in his face, darting whip-swift punches at him that forced him to use both hands to defend himself.
Both hands were enough, at first, but the girl was in constant movement, her body swaying back and forth, her flickering hands weaving in and out like the shuttle on a loom, forcing Abydos back. Then there was a moment when he warded off two low blows, leaving his upper body undefended. The girl stepped into the gap and drove her forehead into his face.
Abydos staggered back, blinded and in pain, and the girl pirouetted, her left leg swinging round with balletic grace to smack into the side of his head with a muffled crunch. He sank to his knees, then toppled full length.
A movement closer to hand diverted Kennedy’s attention. Samal was groping for the fallen gun. Acting purely on instinct, Kennedy twisted round on the bed and dropped her legs over his head. Then she drew up her knees, so that the hobble bar hit him in the throat.
If he hadn’t been groggy from the Taser, he’d have dealt with the clumsy assault in a heartbeat. As it was, he had to wrestle with Kennedy’s dead weight for a few seconds before he succeeded in lifting her bodily and throwing her off. In that time, the girl had crossed the room again, snatching up Izzy’s bedside lamp en passant. She hadn’t even slowed to look at the lamp, it seemed to Kennedy, but with its stainless steel base, its weight and its heft, it fitted her needs exactly. She swung it back behind her like a bowler, then brought it round and up, gathering her body under it, and delivered it with appalling force to the point of Samal’s chin. The blow lifted him an inch off the ground and dropped him flat on his back on the bedroom floor, which shook under his weight.
The girl circled him cautiously. The big man was still conscious. He rolled to his side, trying to get up yet again. Unhurriedly but with clinical precision, she delivered three devastating blows to the back of his head, which drove him into Izzy’s shag-pile carpeting like a hammer driving a nail into a board. After a moment’s further appraisal, she hit him again.
Then, finally, she dropped the lamp and flexed her hands as though gripping it so tightly had hurt her a little.
Somewhere during those last, terrifying seconds Kennedy had drawn in a panic breath so deep and sudden that she’d partially inhaled Abydos’s handkerchief. Now she was suffocating on it. She writhed on the bed, trying to draw in air that wasn’t there.
The girl was checking the two sprawled bodies with quiet, detached interest, but she noticed Kennedy’s plight at last. She put down the lamp and reached into Kennedy’s mouth to fish out the handkerchief by the end that was still visible.
Kennedy took a raw, shuddering breath, converted — when she let it out again — into the ragged sobs of shock.
‘You’re fine,’ the girl said, sounding exactly as Abydos had sounded a moment or two before. ‘It’s over. But you have to go.’
‘Who …’ Kennedy wheezed, ‘… are … you?’
‘I’m Diema,’ the girl said simply. She was searching Samal’s pockets, and then Abydos’s, for a key, but Kennedy didn’t make the connection until she saw it, until the girl was unlocking the cuffs at her wrists, the bar at her ankles. ‘You need to get out of here,’ the girl repeated as she worked. ‘These men came here alone, but there will be others. Probably soon.’
Kennedy sat up and began to massage some life back into her numbed hands and forearms. She glanced down at Samal, afraid in spite of what she’d seen, in spite of what her rational mind was telling her, that he might rise up and attack her again. ‘I’m sorry but I’m not getting this,’ she said, when she felt she could trust her voice. ‘Who are you? Why did you help me? Are you — are you really a friend of Izzy’s?’
The girl gave her a slightly startled look, momentarily thrown. ‘A friend of your lover? Don’t be ridiculous. Just listen to what I’m telling you. Find a place they don’t know about. And then another place, and another. Keep moving. Change your habits. Don’t give them an easy target.’
The police, Kennedy thought. I’ve got to call the police.
The bedside table had gone over and the phone was lying on the floor. She reached for it, but the girl’s foot came down on her wrist before she could touch it. She let all her weight fall onto Kennedy’s hand, making Kennedy gasp in pain and shock.
‘No,’ the girl said.
Pinioned, Kennedy looked up at her. The girl’s face, calm and detached despite the violence she’d just meted out, was folded into an uncompromising frown.
‘You know who I am?’ she asked Kennedy. ‘Where I’ve come from?’
Kennedy pushed the answer out through clenched teeth. ‘No. I r-really don’t.’
The girl’s eyes flicked momentarily to the bodies on the floor, then back to Kennedy. ‘The same place they came from. And we’re all sworn to keep that place a secret. So you know what I’d have to do to you if you picked up that phone and dialled.’
She took her foot away. Gingerly, Kennedy flexed the fingers of her hand. They hurt like hell and she could barely make them move, but none were broken.
‘Think about this,’ the girl said. ‘These men came here to question you and then to kill you. They failed, so others will be sent. Assuming you did speak to the authorities, I doubt they could help you very much. It would be hard for them even to believe you. Get out now. Leave behind everything you don’t need. Think about where you go. Who you talk to. The trail you’ll be leaving behind you. Because there will be people following that trail, people who are very skilled at what they do.’
‘So I shouldn’t go back to Ryegate House?’ Kennedy asked. ‘You’re warning me off?’
The girl’s frown deepened. She stared at Kennedy as if she were mad.
‘Of course you should go back. Finish the job you were given. Find the book and do what has to be done. Why do you think I’ve been wasting my time watching your back? Why else would you be worth saving?’
She turned on her heel and left, treading the porno mag underfoot with contemptuous disregard.
15
In Scotland, four clergymen reported missing are found dead. Their deaths mirror the deaths of four of the twelve apostles of Jesus: Matthew (stabbed through with a spear, in this case an athletics javelin), Thaddaeus (beaten to death with a rock), James (beheaded) and Peter (crucified upside down). Scottish police classify the murders as hate crimes.
In Umbria, a road bridge collapses. Cars fall like heavy rain into a steep gorge, at the bottom of which there is another road, carpeted with rush-hour traffic. Two hundred are killed.
In California, every warm-blooded animal in the San Diego zoo dies over a three-day period, showing symptoms similar to Ebola. When the viral agents are isolated, they are found to be different for almost every species, individually tailored or adapted for maximum susceptibility. The birds are simply gone, one morning, their cages open to the sky. A state-wide search fails to find a single one.