Erebos (52 page)

Nameless continued on, along the stream. At a point where three stones formed a small bridge, he crossed it. The path led downhill, and Nick felt the strong urge to drag Adrian away from the computer – he could already see the flickering of the fire down there. The dead man was not sitting this time, and he wasn't staring into the flames. He was standing upright and looking expectantly at Adrian's Nameless.

‘Adrian?'

‘Dad,' Adrian whispered.

Nick saw how Adrian's hand clenched around the mouse. Nameless swayed and stood still.

‘You took our path. Tell me whether you are Adrian.'

Adrian put his hands on the keyboard. He took a deep breath. ‘Yes. I am.'

The dead man smiled. ‘That's good. I hoped that you would come when everything was over.'

‘Should we leave the room?' Nick asked.

Adrian shook his head. Several times he made as if to type, but seemed not to know how he should begin.

‘How are you?' he typed finally.

‘My plan has failed. If I were still around to see it, I would probably be very angry.'

A sound between a snort and a laugh came out of Adrian's mouth.

‘I'm angry too. At you. Why did you do it?'

‘Do what?'

Adrian's fingers were almost flying over the keys.

‘Well, what do you think? You deserted us! Do you know how awful it was? Mum was under sedation for days – she found you. You didn't even leave us a note. Nothing. Why?'

For the first time it seemed that the dead man hesitated. ‘I wouldn't have known what to write. Erebos was finished, and everything was perfect. I'd created something unique. You can see how good it is, can't you? All that could possibly follow was battles, court cases, probably prison, a life in ruins. Erebos was perfect, but I wasn't. I was disgusted by everything on the outside.' ‘You didn't even know what was on the outside any more,' Adrian wrote. Tears streamed down his face, and he let them fall, as if he didn't notice. ‘You didn't leave the house for almost two years.' ‘No. I couldn't bear the world any more. All that coincidence and unpredictability. That is why I withdrew from it, but I left Erebos behind. The best thing I had ever created.'

‘The most brutal thing you ever created. A friend of mine is lying in hospital, and nearly died. Kids may go to prison because they tried to kill Ortolan. Dad? You knew that something like that would happen, didn't you?'

‘I left things open.'

‘How could you do that? They're not much older than I am, and they've got nothing to do with your revenge plans.'

The dead man sat on a rock by the fire.

‘Erebos was the coin that I tossed. By the time it was spinning in the air I was already gone. The players always had a choice; they could stop at any time. They all had to pass by me at the start, and I warned them. Every single one.'

A spark flew up and reflected in Larry McVay's green eyes, the eyes that were so similar to his son's.

‘Those who had scruples were saved. Those who were left I used. But they had a fair chance, like everyone else.'

Nick remembered how close he had been to poisoning Mr Watson. Then he thought of Helen's contented, sweaty face, and felt like howling.

‘Nothing about it was fair, Dad. You influenced them, you changed them and exploited them for a revenge that you weren't even going to witness.'

The dead man shook his head slowly.

‘I warned them all.'

‘You didn't really warn them, Dad. Not in a way that they would believe, did you?'

‘I warned them.'

Adrian's fingers slipped from the keyboard.

A gust of wind pushed back the dead man's hood and tousled his sparse blond hair. There was a pause. Adrian didn't take his eyes off his father's face for a second. It was as though a wordless dialogue were taking place between the two that the others couldn't follow. Then a shudder ran through Adrian's body.

‘Let's get one thing straight. You didn't do this for me. I don't agree with it, and I don't understand how you could ask me to circulate the game.'

A smile played on Larry McVay's lips.

‘No blame is attached to you. Don't reproach yourself.'

‘I'm not! I'm reproaching you. You thought of me like a character in one of your games.'

The dead man averted his gaze, looked into the fire.

‘I protected you.'

Adrian gave a laugh.

‘If you had wanted to protect me you wouldn't have killed yourself. That was cowardly, Dad. So cowardly!'

‘I'm sorry. But I can't change that now.'

‘No. Or make up for it.'

‘No.'

Adrian lifted a hand from the keyboard, and for a moment Nick thought he was going to stroke the screen where the dead man's brow was. But Adrian checked his movement and let his arm fall.

‘Dad?'

‘Yes?'

‘You actually prepared everything that you're saying to me now specially, in case I came. You thought about how you would answer my questions, depending on how the game turned out. Is that true?'

‘Yes.'

‘When?'

‘Do you mean which day?'

‘Yes.'

‘It was the 12th of September, at 1.46 a.m.'

Emily drew Adrian close as he gave a loud sob and hid his face in his hands. She held him for more than a minute while the dead man kept looking at them with the same friendly smile from the screen.

McVay had hanged himself on the 13th of September, Nick recalled.

‘He could still have changed it then. Everything, he could have changed everything,' Adrian whispered.

He took the tissue that Victor offered him and blew his nose without averting his gaze from his father's face. His hands found their way back to the keyboard.

‘The game was more important to you than we were, wasn't it? Ortolan was more important to you.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘You didn't say goodbye, Dad. That was almost the worst thing for me. That you didn't leave a message.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘I missed you so much. The two years before as well.'

‘I'm sorry.'

It seemed that the dead man had come to the central theme of his message. Adrian nodded mutely. Again they looked at each other for a long time. It took a while for Nick to realise that only one of them was actually looking, but that didn't make it any more bearable. The fire crackled and the wind rustled in the treetops of the forest where Larry McVay and his son Adrian had long ago encountered a fox.

‘Farewell, Dad.'

‘Are you going now?'

‘I think so. Yes.'

‘Farewell, Adrian. Look after yourself.'

The dead man smiled, lifted his hand and waved. Adrian waved back. Then he turned the computer off, collapsed against Emily's shoulder and cried himself to sleep.

The festive season had London firmly in its glittering grasp. Illuminated Christmas trees, snow flakes, candles and stars lit up the shopping streets; in each and every shop customers were blasted with
Jingle Bells
and
Last Christmas.

Nick and Emily had arranged to meet in Muffinski's in Covent Garden. When he arrived, she was already there.

Her greeting was wordless and tender. Nick would never get used to the fact that he and Emily were together; every time they kissed, he almost drowned in a wave of happiness.

‘I've got good news,' he said, and pushed the hair off her forehead. ‘Yesterday I got a whole new stack of material that the exes have collected. There are notes on a conversation between Ortolan and a certain Tom Garsh, in which he's being given clear instructions by Ortolan about burgling the offices of a competitor.'

‘Sounds good.'

‘Apart from that we've got photos showing Ortolan and Garsh together. Victor checked it out; Garsh has been inside three times for burglary.'

‘Okay, but it's still not proof.'

‘No. But evidence is stacking up.'

They ordered coffee and muffins. Judy Garland was singing
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
.

‘Do you know what your photo assignment that time in the car park was about?' Emily asked.

‘I think it was the fact that the lady at Ortolan's side wasn't his wife. But we can't do anything much with the photos now; his wife has already left him. I think Erebos's revenge plan has come true, at least in part.'

‘Yes,' Emily said. ‘But he's alive, at least.'

‘Yes, he is.'

When they set off it was starting to snow lightly. They wandered through the streets arm in arm; stopped occasionally, kissed, laughed, walked on.

‘I haven't got a Christmas present for Victor,' Emily declared as they were looking at the window of a comic book shop where coffee mugs were displayed alongside the magazines and figures. ‘Did you see the one back there?' She pointed to a yellow mug with round indentations in it that looked as though someone had fashioned it from Swiss cheese.

‘Bingo,' said Nick. ‘He'll love it.'

Emily invested five pounds in the yellow monstrosity. ‘Do you want one?' she asked, grinning. ‘Or would you prefer a voucher for a haircut?'

Nick took her by the shoulders and pretended to shake her. ‘I've already got my present,' he said, when they were outside again. ‘No, you haven't.'

He placed his hand under Emily's plait and left it there. He couldn't feel it, of course, how would he. ‘To me, it was a present,' he said. ‘The nicest one you could give me. Better than a ring.' She smiled at him.

‘Yes, and much harder to lose.'

‘Exactly.' He bent his head to her, pushed her hair to one side and kissed the raven on her nape.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank . . .

. . . first of all, Ruth Löbner. She is the official godmother of this book heaven book, a true friend and quite simply a gift from heaven. Without her
Erebos
wouldn't be what it is (and quite possibly wouldn't be finished). She supported me through the writing, motivated me, and always said ‘Stop!' at the right moment. In actual fact she deserves her own Loebner Prize – not for artificial intelligence, but for every other type . . . Wulf Dorn, another godsend in my life, for the years spent sailing together on the same wavelength, for repeated encouragement, and for manuscript comments that were as perceptive as they were merciless. In short, for his friendship . . . my agents Roman Hocke and Dr Uwe Neumahr of AVA International for their great support and dedication . . . my editors Susanne Bertels and Ruth Nikolay for their keen eyes and for the enthusiasm they brought to
Erebos
. . . the members of the Montségur Authors' Forum for a virtual writing home, and for countless suggestions and tips . . . and last but not least, my parents, for many things, but above all a childhood full of books.

URSULA POZNANSKI was born in Vienna in 1968 where she still lives and works. In 2003 she published her first children's book,
Buchstabendschungel
, and in 2006 she was awarded the Children's and Juvenile's Book Prize of Vienna for
Die Allerbeste Prinzessin
. Ursula has been thinking up stories for a very long time, although at first she preferred to write poems and stories that were as short as possible. Gradually she moved on to writing early readers, children's crime, teen romance, and a fantasy manuscript, before her first thriller arrived:
Erebos
. A runaway international success,
Erebos
has now been translated into over twenty languages and won the 2011 German Youth Literature Prize – Youth Jury award.

JUDITH PATTINSON was born in Melbourne and at an early age her reading transported her (in spirit) to the other side of the world – to chalets with flower boxes and hay-filled attics, and school hikes through the Swiss Alps full of friendly strangers who greeted you with ‘Grüß Gott!' or ‘Bonjour'. As a consequence she couldn't wait to study European languages, which she did in Australia and on the shores of Lake Constance in Germany. She has remained in love with German and reading ever since. Translating German fiction is her idea of heaven.

Judith has worked as a translator, production editor, web designer and bookseller; her early working life included stints in a shoebox factory, as a London barmaid and as a checkout chick in her grandparents' grocery stores.