Authors: Nerine Dorman
The receding siren blotted out all rational thought.
A hand clamped itself around her upper arm and she was jerked to her feet.
“You gotta run!” a woman yelled.
Helen swerved to face this new menace, her hand raised to punch, only to find herself face to face with Bijou.
“What?” Helen cried out.
“We don’t have time! Follow me!”
Sweat glistened on Bijou’s round face, her almond-shaped eyes wide with fear. Helen’s heart raced in sympathy, her mind refusing to follow the order.
“Why?”
“There’s no time! I’ll explain later!”
Was Bijou crying?
“I can’t!” Helen wailed.
Bijou growled, yanking a reluctant Helen after her. “No time! You white girls make useless magicians.”
Magicians? What the hell did she mean by that?
Summoning energy she did not know she possessed, Helen obeyed, for even as they stumbled on down a side road, a brooding presence seemed to build, still far down the main road they had just left, but approaching fast.
Chapter 31
Dancing on Old Scratch’s Soul
Even though he’d parked the Hudson beneath an acacia, the car grew abominably hot during the day. This did not cause Trystan any great discomfort since his body did not need to regulate its temperature. Despite the blankets and the tinted windows, however, no matter how he shifted, he could not escape the sun’s questing fingers that somehow found their way through the leafy canopy. Little stabs of sizzled flesh, every once in a while, contributed to his already foul mood.
As his kind was wont, he immersed himself in memories, and allowed the sounds from outside to wash over him as he slipped into a kind of waking trance. Was that a lion roaring?
Men and women laughing, the throb of dance music, the cough and grumble of cars’ engines sent his thoughts skittering from scene to scene. He recalled the favorite horse he’d ridden during the late eighteen hundreds, when he’d first arrived in the Cape. He’d drifted through an encampment of San tribespeople, their shaman pausing in mid chant to make eye contact from across a crackling bonfire.
I know
, those eyes said.
So many faces, names.
Rose
raised a number of eyebrows.
One or two people paused outside to gawk at the vehicle. He knew when curious hands reached out to trail a finger longingly across the car’s paintwork.
She was his! And she would still be plying these roads long after they were dust.
The two young humans didn’t return during the day and he hoped they’d behaved themselves, and did not end up in some form of trouble.
What of Helen? Would
they
have allowed her any peace? Had Mantis tracked her down at all? He hated traveling blind, not knowing what awaited him. His impatience settled with an itching pall.
By late afternoon, a typical Lowveld thunder storm built. Trystan could almost taste metal on his tongue as the pressure grew. The air thickened and the sun grew dimmer.
At the first grumbles he forced himself up, and tried to push aside the lethargy that had turned his limbs leaden. The world outside the windows was bronzed, the clouds vicious, bruised.
Dare he? Trystan checked the clock on the dashboard, every inch of his flesh crying out against movement, for him to stay hidden.
Four o’clock. Three more hours of sunlight at the very least, but he daren’t risk lying low anymore.
He’d pulled this kind of crazy stunt before, had walked about well covered during some of the heavier Cape winters, but not up here in Gauteng, where a thunderstorm was apt to dissipate as soon as it threatened to tear the world asunder.
“For the love of God.” He had an old coat and wide-brimmed hat under the driver’s seat in the back, as well as an old pair of jeans. He’d look like something out of a Wild West movie but it was better than developing blisters that flaked to telltale ash.
Where the hell were those kids?
He could leave them here.
Yes, he’d do that. Trystan pulled on the jeans–stiffly caked with old blood from a past kill, more muddy brown and black, leaving dusty brown marks on his skin. The hat, an old leather thing that had seen better days, fit perfectly–an old friend. He let his hair down on either side, and hardly recognized the pale rogue with bloodshot eyes who grimaced back at him in the rear view mirror.
Not bothering with the coat, he swung into the front of the car. Now, where in hell’s name were the keys? Futile pats at the ignition and by the pedals did not deliver the expected comfort of shaped metal.
Then he spotted the folded paper, a torn scrap from the map-book–
TRISTAN
written in smudged black eyeliner. He unfolded the paper.
Dear Tristan. In case you’re wondering, I’ve taken the keys. Etienne.
“Bleeding dwarf!” Trystan slammed his hand hard on the dashboard and stared into the middle distance until he’d calmed down. “Well, there goes that plan.” Damned dwarf could’ve at least spelled his name right.
A flash of lightning bleached all color for an instant and was shortly followed by loud grumble of thunder. The first heavy drops landed on the roof and bonnet, as if nature wanted to puncture the metal.
He had to laugh. “Imagine that, playing babysitter to a couple of misfit teens. Just what I bleeding need.”
Trystan got out, shrugged into the coat and walked into the steady fall. Where were those children? He stood still for a moment,
reaching
, only to recoil immediately after encountering a maelstrom of Essence that blinked and twined in the dim afternoon. How had he missed that when they’d arrived? Unless whatever it was had not wanted to be seen. Then. Now was another story. The source of the power was saying, “Here I am,” loud and clear.
If Helen had given off a flare, this was a bonfire. He could become intoxicated with the various strains. Trystan pulled back, and formed a barrier between himself and the wildfire. Only one collective had this much impact, and he hadn’t expected to run into them so soon. If Thorn Paladin’s circus invited him in then there were bigger issues afoot than Darwin, Mantis and all the others.
The mud sucked at his feet as he made his way around the decrepit prefabricated building to find a laager of trailers, trucks and caravans. Weathered canvas bore the imprint of the Paladin circus.
Trystan shivered although he no longer felt the cold. The circus. Looked almost innocuous in the late afternoon brightness. Asleep. Waiting.
Thorn Paladin Senior, in his heyday during the late eighteen hundreds, had run a tight crew, and had offered sanctuary for a bareback rider with a past.
The roaring twenties, girls in short fringed dresses, ostrich plumes and Irish whiskey, sweat, tobacco smoke and sawdust, horseshit and perfume–a heady combination. If he closed his eyes he still heard Arnold the accordion player, saw him standing solitary beneath a spotlight, squeezing out wheezy tunes.
The circus with its burlesque girls, big cats leaping through burning hoops and parading elephants still marched down Kimberley’s main drag.
He’d lived without fear then, somehow beyond the reach of the law, until the
jagters
tracked him down, sent him into hiding.
Here and now, almost a century hence, the circus still crouched. Sure, it was tatterdemalion now, but it pulsed. The magic ran bone deep.
Trystan wanted to turn away this instant, take the road and place as much distance between himself and the traveling folk as possible.
His keys. He would go nowhere without
Rose
. In the days before immobilizers he could have hotwired her. Sometimes he could be too clever for his own good.
“Modern technology. Bah!”
This fizz of static that was Arwen had gone to ground in a long silver Airstream trailer–the kind he’d seen in American movies from the 1960s. Terribly trendy, however now, in the pelting rain and thunder-flashes was not the time to be concerned with coolness factor.
He had to find Arwen and Etienne and get his keys back. Even now Mantis would be closing in on her prey–Helen.
The Black Pope, also, had been far too interested, making Helen’s return Trystan’s condition for freedom and he hoped the pint-sized terror could not reach farther than the Garden Route.
“
So, she’s strong in Essence
,” Darwin had said. “
How strong?
”
“
As strong as Ingrid, Barney Barnato.
”
“
Then find her.
”
“
What are you going to do with her?
”
“
That’s none of your concern.
”
He sincerely hoped he could wiggle his way out of this one. As to what he’d do, he hadn’t given that much thought either. Just get Helen away from Johannesburg to start, the rest would fall into place. Maybe.
People moved about the covered trailers, eyeing him. Circus folk. Their expressions told a tale of life spent on the road. Despite their hard faces and lined skin, their truth would later be masked beneath greasepaint and glitter and illuminated by colored spotlights.
No smiles were aimed at Trystan, just gazes that slid away from him. Mud squelched between his toes and he recognized no one from the old days.
How could he? They’d all be dead by now. Well, most of them, anyway.
He
reached
again, spreading his awareness like a blanket. Too much strangeness assaulted him. Another vampire, yes, two, perhaps, the faint buzz of Arwen and...
others
.
Thorn Paladin’s circus had changed much over the years and he wasn’t sure if it was for the better. He rounded a corner and recoiled with a hiss. The small woman he’d almost bumped into had the slit eyes of a cat, her face triangular with a sharp chin and too-wide mouth.
Green eyes gave him a cool once-over, her posture relaxed. She was not surprised to see him, and brushed past him carrying a sealed crate.
What was that? He had to get his keys and get the hell out of here, with or without those two kids. He paused by the silver trailer’s door. Arwen and Etienne were inside with...something else. They were alive and he could not detect any signs of distress.
Trystan raised a hand to knock.
A woman spoke in his mind. “
No need to knock. Come in, Essence wight, we have been waiting for you.
”
Part of him wanted to spin on his heel and run back to his car but for the keys. This situation was growing far too complicated. First Essence-strong teenagers, meddling witches and manipulative vampires, and now what?
The kids were fine despite the fact that they kept company with that thing in the trailer. He’d experienced much weirdness in the past two hundred years, strange things and dangerous beings. What would one more encounter matter as long as he got out the other end with his hide intact?
Trystan squared his shoulders and shook out the worst of the water in his hair then pulled open the door. The trailer’s interior was warm and dimly lit, the only source of illumination a lamp draped with a red scarf. The ruddy light painted the interior with its unholy hue. Burnt patchouli clung to the air. Books covered every available surface and the kids sat at the far end of the trailer, around a small table at what could be considered a bedroom-cum-dining area.
Arwen beamed at him. “You’ve woken.” It was as if she designed her smile to irritate him in particular for he’d never seen her smile before.
A tall figure, draped with a veil, merely nodded at him. What manner of creature radiated waves of Essence-not-Essence?
“I’d like my keys back.” Trystan kept his voice flat.
Etienne sniggered. “You were going to drive off without us, were you?”
Trystan clenched his fists. “It would have been for your own good. I thought I told you to keep out of trouble.” He gestured at the veiled figure.
The being spoke, the voice deep yet feminine. “When you got them into trouble the first time? I think not, Essence wight.”
“Jesus, Arwen, what have you told that thing?”
“She didn’t have to tell me anything, wight. Those who know how to see need no explanation.” The being’s tones rang in his ears and his head, bell-like.