Written in the Blood Page 12

  On the stage, József found his brother-in-law’s face. Clenching his teeth, the horologist straightened his spine. Briefly, he smiled his thanks.

  Blood slopped in the guttering. József’s right leg began to shake. A spasm passed through him.

  Incredulous, the Főnök saw a globe of phlegm arc towards the stage from the group of the city’s citizens. It spattered against József’s cheek.

  ‘You deserve to rot, Balázs!’ shouted a voice. ‘You and your bastard sons.’

  Some in the crowd gasped. Others surged forward, a hunger burning in their faces. Another missile looped through the air, this one striking József in the chest and leaving a bloody smear. Only when it fell to the floor did the Főnök recognise what it was: a purpled chicken liver. A handful now struck the man, one finding his neck, the others leaving dark stains on his shirt.

  Szilárd roared, twisting left and right. ‘What is this! Who does this?’

  On the stage, József’s legs buckled. The guards either side of him took his arms and held him upright, frowning as they scanned the crowd.

  A few feet away, a man hawked and spat a thick lump at József’s face. Szilárd roared again. He waded through the press of bodies, slamming his fist into the stranger’s skull. The man went down and the crowd cried out.

  ‘Enough!’ the Főnök shouted. ‘Allow him some dignity!’

  A coin bounced off the back of Szilárd’s head. The Bear ignored it. ‘József, look at me,’ he growled. ‘Only at me.’

  The horologist’s wrists shone red. His mouth hung slack but he raised his eyes and found his brother-in-law’s face.

  ‘It’ll be over soon,’ Szilárd told him. ‘You’ll be with Bernadett.’

  ‘She’s in a better place than I’ll see,’ József whispered. He began to gasp.

  ‘No. No, József. You did well. You did well. I’ll watch the boy, I promise. I’ll look after him.’

  József closed his eyes. Chicken livers hit his chest, his face.

  ‘Let go,’ Szilárd said. ‘You’ve done everything you can. Go on, József. Let go.’

  Izsák opened his mouth to scream as the Merénylő sliced into József’s flesh, but no cry formed in his throat. His fingers gripped the rough wood of the barrel top, and he could not tear them loose.

  Go out there! You can stop this! This is why you came!

  But he couldn’t move. And he couldn’t speak.

  His father’s blood hissed and spat as it boiled away on the coals. Izsák choked at the sight, gagged. Yet still he did nothing.

  They’re killing him. Right there. Your father, Izsák. They’re bleeding him out, just like the cripple told you they would. And you’re doing nothing about it. Nothing!

  He struggled for breath. Heard his uncle’s voice, coaching József to stand firm. At least someone was with him. At least someone in this crowd of ghouls showed some compassion, some bravery.

  The scene blurred, and for a moment it was a relief. Somehow Izsák loosened his grip on the barrel. He wiped his eyes, saw something strike his father’s cheek. A moment later a cluster of missiles curved through the air, hitting József’s chest, his face.

  Szilárd roared.

  And there, behind the barrels, Izsák found his voice.

  ‘Leave him alone!’ he screamed. As the words tore loose from him, his paralysis lifted. He slithered over the barrel and jumped down to the grass. ‘Stop! Stop it, all of you!’

  As the onlookers surged towards the stage, Izsák dove through spaces in the crowd, screaming his lungs hoarse. Close by, a man reached for him, but Izsák had pulled the déjnin knife from his coat and he slashed at the stranger’s fingers, severing one and opening deep cuts in the rest.

  ‘Grab him!’ a soldier yelled. ‘Get him out of here!’

  He whirled, holding the knife in both hands, slashing at anyone who came close. He opened a wide circle, and when he looked back to the stage, he saw his father staring at him, an awful look of grief on his face.

  ‘Oh, Izsák, no,’ he moaned. ‘Somebody, please. Somebody.’ His face crumpled. ‘Don’t let my boy see this.’

  The tramp of boots. Soldiers converging. ‘Let him go!’ Izsák cried. ‘It’s not his fault!’

  On the stage, the guards holding József’s arms released him, jumping down onto the grass.

  ‘You should not be here, Izsák,’ the Főnök said, eyes stricken.

  He brandished his knife. ‘Set him free.’

  Someone in the crowd laughed. A man grabbed him. Izsák struggled loose, turning and slashing. The man cried out.

  Now the Merénylő drew his sword and stepped onto the grass.

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ József shouted. He turned towards the Főnök. Don’t let this happen! Don’t let him hurt my boy!’ Eyelids flickering, his legs gave out beneath him. As he fell, his strapped arms dragged the guttering with him, and his right foot hit one of the braziers.

  It toppled. Burning coals tumbled onto József’s chest, scorching his shirt. They bounced between the folds of his trousers, into the creases of his armpits. Had he remained conscious, he would surely have rolled away.

  Instead, he began to burn.

  The Merénylő strode towards Izsák, black coat flowing behind him.

  The boy slashed with the knife.

  Effortlessly, the assassin sidestepped.

  One of the dignitaries turned to a nearby soldier and pointed at Izsák’s father. Face livid, jaw clenched, he hissed, ‘End this farce. Right now.’

  ‘No!’ Izsák screamed.

  The soldier unshouldered his rifle. Lifted the sight to his cheek.

  Szilárd bellowed.

  A single shot rang out.

  József’s head knocked against the wooden platform as the bullet smashed through his skull. His left leg kicked and then he lay still.

  On the stage, the Főnök lifted a hand to his mouth.

  Izsák dropped the knife.

  Stared.

  His father alive. His father dead.

  A boy with a family. A boy without.

  A future.

  A future lost.

  The Merénylő swung his fist into Izsák’s nose.

  The boy spun, thoughts loosening in his head. He saw the fluttering pennants on the flagpoles, vivid slashes of colour. Birds wheeling in the sky. Gaping mouths in the crowd. Dark eyes. He saw Szilárd, down on his knees. Soldiers surrounding him, weapons raised.

  He saw his father’s corpse, and then – even then – as his face punched the grass and he felt the cold press of earth against his cheek, Izsák heard that treacherous question ringing in the head, singing in his ears despite the horror he had witnessed, and it clove him, destroyed him, proved to him beyond doubt that he was a failed son, a disgrace, a creature utterly incapable of empathy or love.

  The question: What will happen to me?

  The last things he saw, before the darkness gathered him up, was the predatory grin of the Merénylő, and, on the stage behind, the dust-speckled soles of his father’s boots.

  CHAPTER 11

  Mürren, Switzerland

  The woman peering out from behind the chalet’s front door possessed a face of waif-like delicacy. At first, Leah thought they might be similar in age. But this woman’s eyes – liquid brown, fringed with gold and as deep as mine shafts – betrayed a wisdom and a wariness that could have come only from decades of experience far outweighing Leah’s own.

  On her feet she wore Chinese silk slippers embroidered with pink roses. She’d wrapped a long angora cardigan around her frame.

  The woman gazed down at Leah, and then she turned to Luca. ‘So, who are you today?’ Despite her fragility, her voice was hard. Strong.

  ‘Luca,’ he told her.

  ‘Very well. And your friend?’

  ‘I’m Leah Wilde,’ Leah said, wanting to make this introduction on her own terms. ‘Thank you for seeing me.’

  The woman nodded. She trailed back inside the house, silk-bound feet whispering
across the floor.

  Leah turned to Luca, eyes questioning. When he gestured at her to go inside, she stepped into the chalet’s hallway and followed the woman to the front room.

  It was a restful space, spartan and cool. A low table stood on the varnished floor, its legs supporting a single slab of glass. Four maroon cushions had been arranged around it, and on its surface three Chinese tea bowls rested on bamboo mats, beside a steaming pot.

  On the far wall someone had painted a mural of a woodland glade, rendered in pale green inks. A lacquered rosewood screen separated this part of the room from a dining area beyond.

  When her host gestured to a cushion, Leah removed her boots and sat. ‘I’ve never been to China.’

  ‘I was happy there,’ the woman replied. She shot Luca a dark look. ‘A long time ago now.’ Her eyes returned to Leah and she sank down opposite. ‘You can call me Soraya. Would you like tea?’

  ‘Please.’

  Soraya poured three cups of green tea and placed one before Leah. ‘Well. Now that we’ve made our introductions, you might tell me why you’re here.’

  Leah nodded, anxious now of how this woman might react to her, fearful of the consequences if this meeting did not go well. ‘I don’t mean to be blunt,’ she said. ‘But you’re kirekesztett. Aren’t you?’

  Soraya’s eyes narrowed, although seemingly more from pain than anger. ‘It’s a leash as good as any other.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I had to ask. And . . .’ Leah wondered how to phrase what she must ask next. ‘Is it just you here? Did you ever have children? A family?’

  The woman cringed. Hot tea splashed from her bowl onto her fingers. She laughed, and Leah could tell she had been stung by the question. ‘Does this look to you like a place where children might live?’

  ‘It doesn’t, no. Did you want them?’

  Another laugh, as brittle as matchsticks. ‘What, so that they, too, could experience the unique delights of a kirekesztett life?’

  ‘Soraya . . .’ Luca warned.

  Her eyes flashed. ‘You’d have me lie to her? Would that make you feel better? Would that ease your guilt?’ She turned back to Leah. ‘It’s an impertinent question from a stranger, I think, but since you seem to have come such a long way to ask it I’ll indulge you, why not? Yes, I wanted a child. Of course I did. The reality, as I’m sure you’re aware, is that it takes two to make a baby. I would have needed a partner. A lover. After the tanács made their pronouncement on me, how was I ever going to do that?’

  Luca bristled at her words. ‘We could have found someone,’

  ‘Oh yes? One of Father’s friends, perhaps. A murderer. Or maybe a rapist. That would have shortened the odds, I suppose.’ Soraya shook her head. ‘No. I wanted a child once, but it wouldn’t have been right. And now . . .’ She shrugged. ‘Now, it’s too late. And probably a blessing, in truth.’

  So that was what connected these two, Leah thought. They were siblings.

  Crouching forward on his cushion, Luca said, ‘Tell her.’ His eyes had darkened, the violet streaks escaping to the edges of his pupils. ‘Tell her why you’re here.’

  Leah put down her tea. She swallowed; laced her fingers together. ‘Soraya, what if I told you it might not be too late?’

  The woman stared, her eyes unreadable. For a long while she said nothing. Then: ‘You came here to talk. So talk.’

  Leah did.

  She explained, in the vaguest terms she could, the discovery, fifteen years earlier, that she and her mother were proof of something no one thought possible. She talked of how Hannah had assembled the group whose goal had been to unlock the mystery of the Wilde bloodline, in the hope that they could reverse the hosszú életek’s decline.

  She recounted the years of failure and heartache, and how, just when it seemed like no solution would ever be found, a child was born.

  Vita, they called her; the Latin word for life. Born as the result of an egg donated by Hannah Wilde, fertilised in vitro and carried to term by one of the programme’s surrogate hosszú élet volunteers. It shouldn’t have worked, and yet it had.

  It gave them hope. More births followed. For a while the future looked bright. But for every miracle like Vita, they experienced a multitude of failures. Slowly it became clear that despite everything they had achieved, it wasn’t going to be enough. While her mother had never admitted defeat, Leah could see the reality for herself. They simply did not have enough volunteers.

  ‘And that’s why I came to see you. If you want to be part of this, if you’d still like to have a child of your own, then I wanted you to know that it’s perhaps not too late. I can’t guarantee anything, and I haven’t even begun to tell you of the dangers, but a year from now . . .’ She shrugged. ‘A year from now you could be a mother. The child might not share your genes, but it would be yours in every other way. Yours to love, yours to raise. I just wanted to come here and offer you the chance of that.’

  She stopped, suddenly breathless, unprepared for the emotion that clenched her throat. They had done so much back in Calw, had come so far. And now everything they had accomplished, everything they could still accomplish, might rest on the reaction of a solitary kirekesztett woman, kneeling on a cushion, in this Mürren chalet at the top of the world.

  Soraya’s face had drained of colour. She placed her tea bowl down on a bamboo mat. ‘Get out,’ she whispered.

  Defeated, Leah bowed her head. She’d known the chance of a positive outcome had been slim. But to hear it confirmed still pierced her with sorrow.

  Grim-faced, Luca got up. ‘Leah, come on. Let’s go.’

  ‘Not her. You,’ Soraya said. ‘Leave us, Luca. Go find a coffee house or something. Entertain yourself. I want to talk to Leah alone.’

  Leah glanced up at him. She saw a tenderness in his expression, as he considered his sister, that melted her.

  ‘You’re sure?’ he asked.

  ‘Do as I say.’

  Luca kept his eyes on Soraya a moment longer, then put down his tea and walked out of the house.

  Leah sat staring at the table. When Luca had returned his bowl to its resting place he had knocked one of the bamboo mats out of alignment. She itched to nudge it back into position, but she kept her hands tight in her lap.

  Mouth closed, she waited for Soraya to speak, knowing that anything she added now would be superfluous, that she had made her plea as best she could, and all she could do was hope.

  Soraya said, ‘It’s a lot to take in.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve kept this well hidden, I must say. You’ve managed to ambush even Luca with these revelations of yours, and that’s not something that happens often.’

  ‘The tanács wished it to remain secret. They didn’t want to give anyone false hope.’

  Soraya tilted her head and stared, unblinking. ‘How old are you, Leah?’

  ‘Twenty-four.’

  She nodded. ‘How old were you when you found out you were hosszú élet?’

  ‘Nine.’

  ‘And when did you find out you were the last? That there were no more hosszú életek your own age?’

  ‘When I was fifteen.’

  ‘Not an easy thing for a fifteen-year-old girl to accept.’

  Leah laughed. It caught in her throat, perilously close to a sob. She felt a flush rising on her cheeks.

  ‘And yet,’ Soraya continued, ‘you had to accept it, didn’t you? Until years later you find yourself here, among kirekesztett, among a second hidden society of hosszú életek, of whom you know so little. The question must burn in you.’

  She could not trust herself to speak. Her hands, she noticed, had begun to shake. She plunged them deeper into her lap, feeling the strange woman’s eyes upon her, feeling as each second passed the layers of armour with which she protected herself – like the hard coating of a pearl – melting away until they exposed the single gritty truth at the heart of her: her fear, her utter terror, of ending this journey alone.

  She
remembered the unutterable sense of loss she had felt the day she grasped the reality of her future: that if she were indeed the last hosszú élet, that if she had inherited that dreadful honour from Gabriel, then she was staring out into a world which, uniquely for her, contained no possibility of a soulmate, no one searching for her until their paths, knitted by fate, interwove. No one to confide in, to wrap herself around. No one with whom she could share her life.

  At first she had refused to accept the brutal truth of it. Before his death, her mother had found with Nate the kind of closeness for which Leah yearned. Her grandmother Nicole, too, had created a relationship with Charles Meredith as fulfilled as any Leah had witnessed, unencumbered by the mismatch of their blood.

  Both relationships had ended prematurely, of course, before their bonds could be tested. What would have happened once it became clear that while Charles and Nate aged, Nicole and Hannah did not? What heartache might that have brought? What pain?

  Leah had seen one example of the anguish such an improperly balanced relationship could bring. She’d witnessed with wincing clarity the grief and the horror on Sebastien’s face the day he walked into the kitchen at Le Moulin Bellerose and came face to face with the woman he had loved all those years ago. Éva must have looked, to Sebastien’s tired old eyes, as beautiful as the last day he had seen her. How much must it have cost him to see his own face reflected in her eyes? How much must it have cost her to see Sebastien gnarled and beaten down by age, the ravages of time as visible as the actions of the ocean on a storm-tossed piece of driftwood?

  Then, when Leah turned twenty-one, she met Thibaut.

  He was a medical student, a surgeon’s son, and their paths collided while he was on vacation from his studies in Frankfurt. At first she found herself incredibly awkward in his company; Thibaut exuded an effortless confidence, a mastery of everything he touched or considered. But he quickly put her at ease.

  It took them two weeks to realise they were in love. Within a month, they had become like two heavenly bodies, orbiting each other in mutual fascination and worship.