Blood & Dust (39 page)

He gasped as he saw a pair of legs sticking out from behind a chair. Sandals. Bare legs, the hem
of board shorts. But he didn't dare move to get a clearer look. Not his mother, that was the main
thing. The only thing.

His focus was on Jasmine Turner, seated in one of her antique armchairs. She wore some kind of
mustard-coloured poncho. Willa stood by her side, dressed in jeans, work shirt and joggers. She wore
a long, wide-bladed knife in a sheath on her hip and held a familiar rifle - his father's .243 from
the Commodore. Another slice of his past stolen from him. She held it casually, barrel pointed at
him, stock against her side. He had no doubt she'd loaded a round into the breach. At this range,
it'd leave a hole in him the size of a cricket ball. Shotgun versus rifle: he favoured the
pump-action, but she had the drop on him. And then there was Jasmine. Let it play, he decided, until
he knew the score.

'The
Strigoi
wouldn't wait,' Jasmine said by way of greeting. She made Mira's title sound
like something unpleasant; fair enough. '
Couldn't
wait. She wouldn't say where she was going.
She did say you were still alive.'

'How could she know - ah.' His pendant. He was back to square one, Mira having unrestricted
access to him once again.

'I didn't think you'd leave,' Jasmine continued as though he hadn't spoken. 'Not while she was
still here.' She pointed to a couch. A lump lay stretched out under a blanket. He walked around so
he could see past the couch's obscuring arm, and recognised the pale face framed by mussed hair. His
mother, silent and still. He ran to her, folded to his knees on the timber floor at her side,
uncaring of Willa tracking him as he dropped the shotgun by his side.

'Family - I know its pull. Stronger than gravity.' A hand at Willa's elbow. The girl kept the
rifle trained on him. 'Where might our Christopher be, do you think?' Jasmine asked.

He looked at her, then at Willa. Held her gaze. 'Taipan's dead,' he told them. 'The chopper-'

Jasmine waved away his words as though erasing something written on a blackboard. 'You are of his
blood, and he is of mine. We would both know if he had been destroyed, and we both know that he has
not. So, son of my son - where would he be?'

He felt again Taipan's love, his implicit trust even after her betrayal, and something in him
broke. Maybe it was the fact his mother lay there dead, and he hadn't realised it. Surely part of
him should have felt it, that moment when she'd gone? Why should he be able to sense Taipan's
passing and not hers?

We'll be here for you. Always.

Always.

'He's at the gorge if he's anywhere,' Kevin said.

'Gorge?' Jasmine looked worried. 'Not Carnarvon, it's huge.'

'No,' Willa said. 'Not that far east; just a couple of hours from here. I know the place. From
this side, you can only get in by foot. There are rock pools, palm trees, caves; I've never been
there, but I
know
it. We both do. I'm right, aren't I?'

Kevin shrugged. But he knew it, too, her description conjuring vague impressions from deep in
Taipan's lifestream.

'Well, this will be interesting.' Jasmine stood, elegant but quick, and for a split second he
thought he had made a big mistake, that she was about to kill him, but all she did was adjust her
serape. Under it, she was dressed for travelling in slacks, long-sleeved blouse and rugged shoes.
'We'll leave you to your farewells. We won't be back. I have no desire to explain all this to
anyone.'

'All of this, because of a brother's love for his sister,' Kevin said.

Willa grimaced.

Jasmine gave the slightest shake of her head. 'Love should not be confused with obsession.' She
turned to Willa. 'Bring the car around, my dear. We have a drive ahead of us, but we should be able
to make it before dawn if we don't tarry.'

'What about him?'

'I don't think the young man will trouble us. He has his own family issues to deal with.'

'I don't trust-'

'Leave the firearm. Bring the car around, there's a good girl.'

Willa hesitated.

'We have no need of such base technologies,' Jasmine said. 'Not where we're going. I've never
liked them. Dishonourable things; they cheapen us.'

Willa yanked the bolt open with an angry gesture. The bullet clanked on the floor and rolled
away. She dropped the magazine and threw it onto the jumbled mess of the veranda, then extracted the
bolt and left it on the mantel where a long, thin stake with a blackened tip was the only adornment.
She propped the rifle in the corner, careful to avoid the body on the floor.

'Now the car,' Jasmine said.

Willa gave Kevin a stare that was part plea, part warning, and left.

Jasmine frowned as she watched the girl leave, then walked to the mantel and lifted down the
timber spike. She tapped it in her hand as though it was a policeman's baton.

'Family,' she said, more to herself with a half-smile. 'Our greatest hope, our deepest despair.
You know, I did warn Maximilian. I told him his daughter's appetites weren't sustainable. And once
Danica left, well, it was only a matter of time. Sad, really.'

She paused at the door and pointed to the body on the floor. 'We found him trying to sneak off.
Help yourself to a drink, if you can wring any more out of him.' Jasmine walked out, as though from
a ballroom rather than a ruined house.

Kevin checked the body. Nigel, stripped to his shorts. A duffel bag lay nearby, its contents
tumbled on the floor: clothes, a dagger in a sheath, and a resealable plastic bag of what looked
like dried grass. A set of car keys on a silver key ring showing sun and moon combined. Kevin
snatched them up; he took the dagger as well. Nigel's chest barely rose, his throat and arms marred
with fresh wounds. His wrists showed raw patches where he'd fought the manacles Kevin had left him
in. Someone had let him go, but he hadn't got far. Kevin wondered what had happened to Mira's
knickers.

Kevin sat back down beside his mother. Wished to God that she could tell him what to do now.
She'd been drained, he realised. Maybe she'd been shot, too; there was a suspicious blood stain high
on her chest where the blanket was pulled back a little. But her pallor was recognisable to him now,
and what a comment that was on his life, that he could even know such a thing. Exsanguination, they
called it. Bled to death.

Someone - Jasmine or Mira or someone else entirely - had finished her.

She tastes of sunshine

That was never going to happen

You've got time, Kevin, you're only young

Someone had taken her life and her memories.

Takin' somethin' and keepin' it are two different things

On her dead body, he promised her that he would have her back. How, he wasn't so
sure. Clearly he was no match for Jasmine, nor Mira. Not yet.

He'd found his gear from the Commodore scattered across a desk in a nearby room -
bargain, to be wearing his own clothes and boots. Nice to be well dressed for a funeral, a
procession of one.

He drove north, his mother's body on the back seat, buckled down with the sash belt.

Ahead, he saw flashing lights and he slowed. His Commodore was being winched onto a flatbed -
called in from EnCy, most likely, since neither he nor his father was able to take the call. The
scene was painted in orange from the tow truck's lights; red and blue from a cop car, the
four-wheel-drive from the Siding.

He saw Smithy yawning as he wrote in a notebook. The constable - he'd been in the cricket team,
medium-pacer and handy with the willow in the middle order - watched the Monaro drive past but made
no attempt to stop him, and was back talking to someone sitting in the cop car's passenger seat when
Kevin accelerated away.

If Smithy had stopped him…

His stomach growled.

He drove faster.

He'd feasted at the homestead on those two myxos, and yet his hunger was already stirring. It was
as though, now that he'd plunged into it, he couldn't go back. Like trying to drink cask after a
diet of fine wine, he supposed.
Hey Smithy, how about a bottle of red to go?

Once he'd got his mum in the car, once he'd searched the house and satisfied himself that it was
empty, once he was ready to leave, then he'd gone to check on Nigel. That's what he told himself. To
check on him. Just to check on him.

Help yourself to a drink, if you can wring any more out of him.

But the surfie had gone. Crept away like a dying dog, under the house most likely;
God knew there were enough hidey-holes with all that damage. How long would it be before someone
went out to the abandoned station to find, well, that would be the question, wouldn't it? What
headlines would explain the inexplicable?

He drove.

Déjà vu struck as he steered the Monaro over the train line.

You're a vampire

Piss off

BANG

He shrugged off the past and drove on, around to the rear of the silo. The Sandman
was parked out of sight of the road. The passenger's door was open, the cabin light off, but he
didn't need it to recognise the shape of Meg sitting in the seat, leaning against the doorframe, her
feet on the ground. Kala stood, arms crossed, against the bonnet. The urge to stop, to reverse, to
turn around and just drive, seized him, but all he did was slow and then pull up near the panel van.

The girls walked over. Kala waited near his door, Meg a little behind her. She looked scared,
hunched inside her coat.

He took a moment to find some calm, then stepped out of the car. Kala glanced at Meg, then off
into the dark then back to him.

'Brought you somethin',' he said, handing over the keys to the Monaro. Their fingers touched as
she cupped her hand to take them. She wrapped her arms around him.

'Didn't know if you'd make it,' she murmured.

'I did.' Taipan. Hidden in the shadow of the shed, standing with a motorcycle - a rugged dirt
bike covered in dust. A match flared. Taipan's face looked like black marble as he lit his
cigarette.

Kala pulled back.

'Kev,' Meg said. One side of her face was swollen into an almighty bruise, her eye a puffy slit.

'I didn't know what to do with-' Kala said, but he cut her off.

'It's okay. How you travellin', Megs?'

'Wake me up when we get there?' Her voice sounded fragile, like the rattle of glass from a broken
windshield.

'I tried to explain what I could,' Kala said.

Kevin imagined the two women in the car together. Meg, human Meg, dumped into the deep end with
her life on the line, had acted - she'd distracted Jasmine and saved him, even though it meant she'd
been smacked down, hurt. She was a hell of a girl, Megs. She would be safer without him.

'Did you find Diana?' Meg asked.

'She's in the car.'

Kala quizzed him with her look, the concern in her expression making him ache, then checked
inside the Monaro. 'Oh, Kevvie. I'm so sorry.'

'What is it?' Meg asked. 'What's happened?'

'She - they - she didn't make it.' And he stood there, a statue in his grief, and Kala's hand was
on his shoulder.

Meg took a single step forward. 'God,' she said. 'These people.' And turned away as Taipan joined
them. His jacket was little more than rags of leather over his bare chest; he wore a pair of baggy
GS trousers rolled up over his boots. His flesh showed fresh scars and bald burn patches. His skin
was pulled taut across his bones. Meg's instinct to stay away from him was on the money.

Taipan looked in the car, then across the roof at Kevin.

'Jasmine or Mira?'

He shrugged a dunno. 'Does it matter?'

'It should. Know where they are?' He looked over his shoulder, toward the highway.

'Mira had already left. Jasmine and Willa have gone, too.'

'Any idea where?'

He hesitated, then admitted, 'Jasmine, to the gorge. Mira, back to Brissie, I think.'

Taipan swore, threw his cigarette and ground it into the dirt with the heel of his boot.

'What does it matter? I thought you said Danica wasn't there?'

'She insisted on waitin' till dawn. Then that girl of 'Cacia's gonna drive her out.' He swore
again, muttered, 'Even if we lost, I didn't think they'd go there tonight.'

'What about the hotline?' Kala asked.

'Dead since you called home,' he said, 'even if she was in range. I can't shadow walk, either,
coz I made her shield me out, just in case I ended up on the table like Romeo there.' His
green-glowing eyes fixed on Kevin. 'How much head start they got, you figger?'

'Mira, a couple of hours, maybe. Jasmine, not long before me.'

'So we still got time. How many guns with Jasmine?'

'Just Willa, I think. But there's somethin' else.'

A nod to continue, clearly braced for bad news.

'Willa knew the place; she knows where to go. Mira had her fangs in me, Tai. She might know about
the gorge, too.'

'What is it with you and that woman, eh?' He sighed, rubbed at his hair. 'So, that old bitch for
sure, the bloodhag maybe.

Gonna be almost dawn by the time we can get there, but it's plenny rough. That bloodhag mightn't
find Mother before we do. Whaddya think, Kay?'

'Kevvie?' Kala asked.

'My mum's in there.' He pointed at the car helplessly.

'Kev, what's happening?' Meg stood by his side. 'What are they talking about?'

He looked at Taipan, pleading.

'My mum-'

'Ain't goin' nowhere. But them what did this - they'll be gone soon. Back to the big smoke where
we can't get at 'em. Scott free. With Mother's - with Danica's - head on a spike. And your mum in
their veins, eh.'

'Can't I just-'

'She ain't here, fella. She'll be long gone by now. But here's a question for you: what's more
important - who buries her, or how well she rests, eh?'

She tastes of sunshine