Heller's Regret (38 page)

We stepped away to urgently discuss the
situation.

“We have to get them away from Malefic. He’s
not going to be a good influence and you can bet whatever he has in
mind for them isn’t going to be wholesome.”

“I can’t do anything with them if they’re
going to threaten me like that.”

“I can help push them into the room,” I
offered.

“Chalmers, you know the rule. Hands off the
clients unless absolutely necessary. Clive will not thank us if
these girls make a complaint about us manhandling them. And as a
male adult, it will look particularly bad for me to touch young
women. They have me by the balls. There’s nothing I can do. They’re
all yours.”

“Farrell,” I complained, even though I could
see the sense of what he was saying. Accusations like that from
some female teens for a man working towards promotion in a business
where he enjoyed working, would cripple his career. Didn’t stop me
whining though. “How am I supposed to get them into the hall? They
scare me. I feel like I feel like I’m at high school again.”

“If I knew that, I’d be doing it. All we can
do at this stage is keep an eye on them. We can’t
force
them
into the hall. But don’t let them out of your sight and let that
smug fraud know you’re watching him every second. It might pull him
up.”

Or it might fuel him on
, I thought. In
my opinion, Malefic had a huge ego that needed constant feeding in
order to survive. He
needed
attention every bit as much as
he needed oxygen.

At that moment, Miriam flung open one of the
hall doors, her face creased with panic, her voice high and fast.
“Please come and help! We think one of the attendees is having a
heart attack.”

I couldn’t bear to hear those words again,
ready to run in to offer my assistance. My father couldn’t be
saved, but perhaps someone else could.

Farrell, however, had other ideas. “I can
handle this, Chalmers. You stay here and keep an eye on the
teens.”

“But –”

“Just do what you’re told,” he snapped, not
wasting a precious second more on me, but dashing into the hall,
followed so closely by Miriam she stepped on the back of his
boots.

“That’s enough chatting, ladies. Time to
return inside. Make the most of your time at the conference because
it ends tomorrow,” I said.

“Good,” retorted the head teen. “None of us
wanted to come. Our parents made us.”

“They’ve sent you here because they thought
it was a message worth hearing for you. You should at least be
respectful of their intent and the money they’ve outlaid on this
conference to attend each session.”

“If you’re what it’s like to grow up, I’d
rather stay sixteen forever, thanks. You’re boring,” she replied,
turning her back on me.

“That can be arranged,” Malefic said in a low
tone to her, but loud enough for me to hear. The girl giggled at
his personal attention, but to me his words were nothing but
sinister.

“You’re quite a disrespectful young lady. You
should think about that,” I scolded like an irate grandma. Was I
ever that condescending and discourteous as a teenager? Perhaps I’d
airbrushed my memory of myself, but I couldn’t recall any precise
examples of me being as bad as this girl. However, vague memories
did surface of me frequently arguing with my parents about my
clothes, my schooling, my chores and my social life, and my
responses had probably been every bit as snotty and self-entitled
as this girl’s.

“Have you finished, Matilda? You’re
interrupting us,” Malefic asked.

I wanted to punch his supercilious nose.
“I’ll be over there, watching you.”

He laughed at that, and it wasn’t a nice
laugh. “Hope you enjoy the show.”

Pissed off, I stalked away, but not too far,
keeping an eye on him and the giggling gaggle of teens under
increasingly lowering brows.

Chapter 28

Miriam rushed from the hall, and I caught the
flurry of noise coming through the doors.

“I’ll be out the front, waiting for the
ambulance,” she explained in a rush, zipping past me to the exit
and dashing down the stairs.

“Okay,” I said to nobody.

Malefic, his acolytes and most, but not all,
of the teens moved in a group as if heading towards the bathrooms.
Two teens broke away from the group of eight, slipping back into
the hall. And though I was glad to see that, my focus was all on
the other six.

Peeking into the hall, Farrell was hard at
work in the far corner performing CPR on an older man. He lay flat
on the floor, his brightly patterned shirt unbuttoned and open.
Farrell’s face was serious as he pumped the man’s chest with his
palms. I couldn’t interrupt him from this potentially life-saving
task for advice, so would have to make this call myself.

Malefic stopped the group at the bathrooms
and entered the men’s, followed by his sole male acolyte. I hurried
to the teens.

“What’s happening? Where are you going?”

“None of your business,” the head teen
snapped. “Why don’t you just get off our backs?”

“Your parents think you are in a conference
where there are adults to supervise and watch out for you. Don’t
you be thinking for one moment you can leave this centre without
their permission.”

“You’re such a bore. Go away.”

The three female acolytes got in my face, not
doing anything aggressive or mocking, but merely looking at me with
detached, vague expressions.

“Get lost,” I said to them, discomforted by
their overly close proximity and their relentless staring. They
didn’t move, but remained in place in front of me, examining me
with no real interest, but with something else that made my skin
crawl. As an intimidation ploy, it was remarkably effective.

When Malefic returned, the head teen
immediately spoke up. “She’s being a pain in the arse. Can’t you
make her disappear or something?”

“It’s possible, but I’d prefer not to. I’m
quite fond of Matilda in my own way. She is a disappointment to me,
I won’t deny. I had great hopes that we could unite for the benefit
of both of us, but alas, it was not to be. You see, Matilda has a
great brute of a boyfriend who actually threatened me with violence
if I didn’t leave her alone.”

His comment caused everyone to laugh, though
I struggled to see the joke. Heller
would
have beaten the
crap out of him, maybe even worse, if he hadn’t left me alone. It
was his folly to underestimate Heller’s lust for revenge; a trait I
was coming to believe that was one of his main driving forces.

“But really, she won’t leave us alone,”
complained the head teen.

“I owe Matilda a great debt. She saved my
life and that comes with a heavy burden of repayment.”

“You can repay me by you and your acolytes
leaving this building peacefully and allowing these young ladies to
rejoin the conference,” I said.

He laughed. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that
way. The repayment for such a debt has been decreed in the
Grande Grimoire
, and edicts in the Greatest of Books can
never be changed, ignored or disobeyed. They say the
Grande
Grimoire
is written entirely in demon blood,” he informed as an
aside to the goggling teens. “No, Matilda, I’m sorry, but my
repayment must be in blood. For saving my life, I must take another
in gratitude. I must smite your chosen enemy.”

“Can I ask you to smite yourself?”

He laughed again. “Once again, I’m afraid
not. But if you don’t choose someone, my repayment hangs over me
for the remainder of my mortal years. I don’t care for that. It’s
rather messy and plays havoc with my blood reckoning.”

I didn’t know what ‘blood reckoning’ was and
I didn’t want to know. And I didn’t want this awful man thinking
that he owed me some sort of debt. Saving his life had been an
instinctive action – something any person would do for another in
the same situation. I didn’t expect, or want, a reward of any kind
for doing it. I didn’t want us to have any connection, regardless
of how tenuous and one-sided it was.

I lost my patience with this entire farce.
“Ladies, this game is over, do you understand? Go back to the hall
immediately. You are not leaving the building with this man. And if
you do, not only will I ring your parents, I will also ring the
police and report you as being abducted. Have I made myself
perfectly clear on this?” And though I addressed my comments to the
girls, I looked directly at Malefic.

“Perfectly clear, Matilda. But now it’s time
for you to listen to me.” He placed his hand on my shoulder. And
though I threw it off as soon as possible, the lingering feel of it
and the ‘tentacles’ of whatever he ‘injected’ into people had
already begun to worm through my skin into my veins.

“No,” I said, stepping back, averting my eyes
from him.

“Look at me, Matilda.”

“No. You’re not hypnotising me.”

“Look at me, Matilda.”

“No!”

I stumbled backwards into the arms of a
couple of his acolytes. I thrashed against them, thinking I had a
good chance with this couple of weaklings. But when the other two
joined their pals at the request of Malefic, my fight suddenly
became more difficult. I was reasonably fit, but my two illnesses
had sapped my core strength and I hadn’t had a proper chance yet to
bring it back to strength.

“Girls, return to the hall,” I implored.
“You’re not safe with this man. Please.”

One scared teen fled, ungracefully loping
back to the hall, standing fearfully at the door, looking back at
her friends.

“Matilda, I just want to talk to you.” I
squeezed my eyes shut so he couldn’t see them. “Open her eyes so I
can talk to her.”

“She must be crazy,” opined one of the
teens.

“She obviously has major issues,” said
another, with all the confidence of someone who knows absolutely
nothing about a subject.

“She probably just wants Malefic for herself.
She can’t leave him alone,” said the head teen.

“I know – what a cling-on.”

“Total desperado.
So
embarrassing. I
hope I never get old and desperate like her.”

The male acolyte propped open my eyes, and
though I made my best attempt to bite one of his hands, he captured
me in a headlock, so I couldn’t reach him. Malefic came close,
gazing into my eyes with his strange all-black eyes.

“You have lovely eyes, Matilda.”

“Stop calling me that.”

He only laughed again at my impotence,
burning me up with anger. “I believe you’d keep saying that until
the day you die.”

“Rather see you die first,” I said
gamely.

He laid his hand on my shoulder again, his
eyes piercing mine. To my complete disgust, I could feel him
spreading his evilness inside me, trying to take control of my free
will.

No way
, I thought. If it came to it,
I’d go down fighting rather than acquiesce to him. I lashed out
with my boot, connecting sharply with his shin, kicking him
backwards. Then I elbowed behind me, smashing into somebody’s chin.
Hands instantly released my eyes, so I guessed I’d struck a target
in the male acolyte.

I pushed Malefic out of my way and ran
helter-skelter down the foyer back to the hall. At the door, I
peered in, but Farrell was still working on the man, asking loudly
for someone to check whether the ambulance had arrived. There was
nothing we could do to help each other.

I had no choice but to stay with the girls. I
thought briefly of calling the cops, but what would I say to them?
That Malefic
might
commit an unknown crime? Nobody was going
to thank me for that call out.

The acolytes, under Malefic’s instruction,
swept the willing teens down the nearest staircase to the carpark.
With a desperate backwards look at Farrell, I decided to follow
them. I’d try to ring Farrell in ten minutes to see if he was free
to help me. Once the paramedics arrived, there was nothing more for
him to do up here, and I’d sure appreciate his help in the
carpark.

I reached the exit, creeping down the stairs.
I kept myself hidden behind a wall of the stairwell, daring to poke
my head out to scan the carpark. No one to be seen. I descended
another level, hearing the unmistakable giggle of the teens from an
even lower level. Because Malefic had arrived quite late at the
centre, he’d had to find a spot in the dark recesses of the
carpark.

The giggling grew closer as I climbed down
cautiously, step by step. Poking my head around the wall like a shy
turtle from of its shell, I had to jerk back when I caught sight of
the group. Luckily none of them had seen me. They moved further
away, so I was able to sneak out to shelter behind a parked
car.

None of them looked back in my direction so I
duck-walked to the next car and then to the next. Raising my head
over a bonnet, I had a good view of the group. They stood behind a
large van consisting of a dual cabin and a cargo area with a back
window. I wasn’t familiar with the make or model and couldn’t see
its badges at this distance. Malefic laid his hand on each teen,
one at a time, murmuring something in a low voice I couldn’t hear.
When he’d finished, the acolytes assisted them to step up into the
cargo space, where each disappeared inside. When all five teens
were ‘loaded’, the door was slammed behind them with a chilling
finality.

The acolytes and Malefic climbed into the
dual cabin, the male acolyte driving, Malefic in the front
passenger seat. The engine started, and though I’d scribbled down
the number plate and everything else distinctive about the van, I
was at a loss to know what to do next. Farrell had the keys to the
Heller’s
4WD and I couldn’t chase after the van through
traffic.

It was difficult to believe how easy it had
been for Malefic to abduct the five teens during daylight, no
matter how willingly they’d gone with him. He’d been so nonchalant
about it too, not caring that many people had seen him talking to
the girls in the foyer and security cameras had surely picked up
his movements with them. It was almost as if he intended to
disappear entirely after he’d done whatever evil thing he plotted
to do to them.