Triskellion 3: The Gathering (35 page)

Wing smiled and turned back to his son. “When I found out you were still alive, I was … happy. I have spent the last two years not knowing; living like someone who can’t wake up from a nightmare. Now, though, seeing what you are…”

Crane’s laugh was cold and empty. “What
I
am? I am not the useless old man who can barely walk. I am the one who is about to be reborn. Remade…”

Wing gazed past the son who had become a monster at Ralph Newman. A monster of a different kind and the stepson he had not seen for more than forty years. “If I had known all those years ago at Alamogordo what the two of you would become,” he said, “I would have killed you myself. I would have driven you away from the base and left you in the desert to die.”

“Hindsight is wonderfully convenient, don’t you think?” Newman said.

The blood rushed to the commodore’s face and he raised his walking-stick.

“I may have cut those brake cables,” Newman said, “but it’s
your
fault my mother died.”

“Watch your mouth, boy—”

Newman smiled. “If you had not been cheating on her with that woman, it would never have happened.”

“
None
of this would be happening,” Crane said. He pointed at Rachel and Adam. “Those two would not exist.”

“Then I’m happy,” Commodore Wing said. He beamed at Rachel and Adam. “More than anything in the world, I’m glad of that. Glad of
them
…”

Looking down at Rachel and Adam, he did not see Crane launch himself across the room at them; the perfectly manicured fingernails clawed at the air and a cry of naked fury rose up as he lunged in desperation at eyes, throats,
anything
.

Wing did not see, but Gabriel did.

Crane froze mid leap and the cry died in his throat when flames bloomed suddenly at his chest. He gasped in horror at Gabriel, seeing the reflection of fire in the boy’s green eyes and the outstretched hand that had casually conjured it.

The fire spread quickly, catching easily in the synthetic fabric of Crane’s silver suit and licking down past his shattered knee and up towards his face.

He began to shriek and wheel around, only stopping when he was face to face with Ralph Newman. He held out his arms. His voice, taunting and mock-tender, was just audible above the crackle of the flames and the spit of burning flesh. “Come here, brother,” he said.

“No, for God’s sake…” Newman backed away, but there was nowhere for him to go and he was quickly gathered into the inferno, his own flesh blistering in the heat. They screamed in unison as Crane’s artificial hair and face were consumed by the flames engulfing them both.

The temperature in the room was soon as unbearable as the smell. Rachel couldn’t watch Crane and her father staggering around; she covered her ears to block out the noise of them bouncing off the glass walls. Adam and Laura looked away too.

“Please, someone stop this!” Kate shouted.

She was staring at Gabriel, but it was Commodore Wing who came forward. Moving as fast as he was able, he pushed and beat the human inferno with his outstretched walking-stick; pushing it back and hard against the window, which shattered into thousands of pieces. The sudden gust of wind that came through fanned the flames.

Their burning bodies entwined, the brothers rolled out onto the narrow walkway that supported the giant metal wings several storeys above the street. Ralph Newman thrashed and struggled to get to his feet, but the wind was high and strong and it blew him backwards until he was only centimetres from the edge. The soles of his shoes were melting and his legs gave way. Screaming, he slipped, grabbing on to Ezekiel Crane as he fell; he held on to Crane’s burning leg and tried to claw his way back onto the platform.

Commodore Wing crawled gingerly out onto the walkway, and was just in time to see the weight of Ralph Newman pull the man who was once Hilary Wing slowly towards the edge. Crane pawed desperately at the metal, searching for a hand-hold, and for one brief moment Gerald Wing saw the pleading in his son’s blue eyes. He saw something he recognized shining from the molten face. He saw the little boy who had cried by the lake.

“Hilary…” Wing yelled.

But the blackened fingers had lost their grip and the burning brothers fell together, their screams fading fast as the fireball span and tumbled towards the street below.

W
ind howled around the skeletal steel framework that had held the glass of the observation tower in place and rain lashed through the void that was left. After what they had just witnessed, Kate was doing her best to comfort Rachel and Adam, who were in turn doing their best to comfort her.

A husband. A father. Gone…

Gerald Wing limped back across the room, horrified at his own actions, his hands held tightly to his head. Kate took his arm and pulled him towards her and the children. Suddenly, he looked very old.

“This is all my fault,” he groaned. “Hilary and Rudi. God, I’m so sorry…”

“No. It was always going to happen,” Gabriel said. “You know that.”

They all knew. This moment had been predicted thousands of years ago by a Traveller in a cave in Morocco whose paintings has spelled out their destiny.

The orbs of light in the sky had been coming closer and closer and were now beginning to circle the tower. They weaved in and out of its frame, creating a lattice of light that protected those inside from the wind and the rain and bathed them in a warm golden glow.

Gabriel looked around. Triumphant. “We made it.”

Adam straightened up. The tears he had shed for his father were drying on his face. “You always knew we would,” he said. “Didn’t you?”

“No. Even today, I thought I had failed, but you never failed
me
. And that’s what made it happen.”

They looked at the three Triskellions, pulsing with light and energy in Ralph Newman’s safe.

“But what
has
happened?” Rachel asked.

Gabriel stepped forward and took her in his arms. “It’s really what’s about to happen,” he said. And then he whispered something in her ear. Rachel pulled her head away so she was able to look into Gabriel’s eyes. He nodded, and then he took Rachel’s head between his hands and kissed her.

It was only a matter of seconds, but time –
everything –
seemed to stop, and Rachel could feel the new power surging through Gabriel’s body.

“I need your help with one more thing before I go,” he said, releasing her head. He took her and Adam by the hand and walked over to where the Triskellions glowed.

Kate Newman suddenly stepped in front of them, blocking Gabriel. She was crying. “Please don’t take them with you,” she pleaded. “They are all I have.”

“It’s OK,” Gabriel said. “They’re safe now. I’m not taking anyone.”

“Take
me
,” Laura said suddenly.

“You can’t,” Rachel said, shocked.

Kate and Adam looked equally horrified. They were both about to protest – but the expression on Laura’s face stopped them. She was excited, buzzing.

“I’ve dreamed about something like this my whole life,” she said. “I mean, digging up fossils is one thing, you know. But
this
…”

Kate Newman took her friend’s hand. “We’ll miss you.”

The twins stretched out their hands towards Laura. She nodded. She did not need their powers to know exactly what they were thinking.

“I want to come with you,” she said to Gabriel. “Wherever it is you’re going. There’s so much I want to know.”

“That’s your choice,” he said. “It’s not a decision I can make for you.”

He took one of the amulets from the safe and asked Rachel and Adam to do the same. Standing in the centre of the tower, Gabriel held his hand out, a Triskellion resting in one palm. Rachel placed the second Triskellion on top of it and Adam placed the third on top of that. Gabriel briefly pressed his other hand down on top of all three and they began to spin.

They span in opposite directions until they hovered above his palm, each of the nine blades shooting out beams of light that reached into the darkening sky, and then, like golden helicopters, the amulets swirled around the outside of the tower, creating triple wheels of light. The orbs that had been circling and weaving in the sky multiplied until they filled the tower, expanding and contracting.

Rachel could see the phosphorescent filaments inside begin to change. They transformed into faint images; transparent and ghostly, like X-rays.

Faces.

They circled Rachel and Adam, coming close to their heads, before spinning away again. Rachel was certain she saw the faces of Morag and Duncan; Jean-Luc and Jean-Bernard; Inez and Carmen inside them. Smiling.

Twins. Friends who had helped them, then sacrificed themselves so that the journey could be completed. Rachel could hear their voices chattering and laughing in her mind.

Other shadowy faces were materializing within the orbs. Faces she did not recognize, but which she guessed from the almond eyes were other Travellers like Gabriel: knights, saints and shamans whose energy had remained on earth after their deaths.

The Triskellions had generated three wheels of light that now began to intersect like a gyroscope; in the centre, one of the orbs stretched and grew. It floated in front of Gabriel. Limbs appeared to be pushing out from the inside, expanding and reshaping whatever membrane, or energy, it was that held the orb together. Arms developed first, and then legs. A torso, a head, until a translucent figure stood in front of them shimmering and not quite solid, skin building up over its body in layers of light…

And then Rachel knew who it was.

She looked around at the astonished faces in the tower, hovering over her grandfather’s expression. He had dropped to his knees, and she realized that Gerald Wing also knew who it was; he had recognized the friend he had blown from the sky half a century before.

The memory of Gabriel weeping in front of the glass cylinder in the lab at Alamogordo popped into Rachel’s head, and in a sudden, clear vision, she could see that that cylinder was now empty.

The figure in front of them had formed fully, jagged scars visible on its wet, naked body, its head fine and domed and its eyes almond-shaped. The same shape as Gabriel’s.

She heard Gabriel’s voice clear in her mind:
You weren’t the only one looking for your father, Rachel
.

I’m so glad you found him.

I’m sorry that your search turned out the way it did.

It’s not your fault.

Goodbye,
Gabriel said.
I…

Rachel did not need to hear
these
words to know what Gabriel meant.
Me too,
she answered with her mind.

Then the buzzing started. Bees in their billions were flying over the building, forming a throbbing black cloud that threw the tower into darkness. The only illumination left was coming from the wheels of light created by the Triskellions.

Gabriel embraced the figure in front of him, and one of the Triskellions span a halo round their heads, joining them together, spiralling down their bodies until it reached their ankles. The second amulet did the same, weaving another ring round their chests.

Laura suddenly rushed at them, breaking through the bands of light and clinging on to Gabriel as the third Triskellion also bound them together. The three amulets spun faster and faster, the wheels rushing laterally and vertically until the figures were contained within a ball of tangled light moving so fast that it appeared to be in flames.

High above, the swarm began to regroup, creating a hole in the black cloud through which a shaft of bright white sunlight shone.

Like a door being left open.

Rachel could still just make out the three figures contained within the sphere. She saw the smiles, clear through the glare, just before a surge of power threw her to the floor. Just before the jagged stream of energy flew from the sphere and shot around the room’s steel frame, dancing across the building’s vast metal wings, arcing between them like a bolt of lightning.

Suddenly the sphere was taken. The orbs followed it; all were sucked out of the tower by a huge vacuum. They popped and dispersed like bubbles of light in the slipstream.

Finally, the bees flew through the hole they had created and within seconds were all gone. It was as if they had evaporated or drifted away like dust into the beautiful blue sky that now stretched over the entire city. Bright as a summer’s day, even though it was night.