Sanctifying Grace (Resurrection) (18 page)

Whereas I? I was retreating deeper and deeper into myself
, as my body slowly shut down and refused to function. My mind dimmed and stuttered like a candle in a draft, until one day soon that draft would blow just a tad too hard and my light would go out for good.

I ate very little, partly from the pain hammering enthusiastically around in my head and the residual sicky feeling from the morphine, but mostly because I hated the ignominy of being fed like a baby. I had very little dignity left. I could clearly see my mother wondering what had caused such a sudden deterioration, but she said nothing in front of our visitor, contenting herself with worried frowns in my direction.

It was lucky for Leticia that both my parents’ concentration was on me, albeit surreptitiously on my father’s part, and Ianto kept his eyes and his attention on his dinner, as always. He didn’t like to see me having to be fed either, so Leticia was able to move her food around on her own plate and dispose of it without anyone noticing.

She was quick, I’ll give her that. Even I couldn’t see what she was doing with it and I was trying to watch her closely. Her hands moved faster than my eyes could track, but I could have sworn that whenever Ianto blinked, Leticia slipped a little something from her plate on to his.

I saw my brother frown a couple of times as he discovered he had one more potato than he remembered, but the vampire was so slick and practiced I wasn’t one hundred per cent sure that’s what she was doing.

Perhaps she was filling her pockets like Roman used to, I mused, and that brought me back to thinking about him. The relief that flooded through me, setting my almost numb fingers and toes tingling, was nearly as good as the morphine I so craved.

In those few seconds after I had returned to my own world I had been tortured with visions of him being burned to death, or evaporating in the explosion.

But he was alive and no matter what else was wrong in my life, I was extremely grateful for that particular mercy. I didn’t know how I could have carried on if I’d found out he had died in the crash. And the most distressing thing was I may never have discovered what had happened to him. If, as I suspected, my time travelling was so entwined with his existence, if he no longer existed, then I would no longer have my visions. But the phenomenon was so unpredictable, and my own death was so close, I might not have another episode again
, anyway. The not knowing would have been unbearable.

One thing I did know, though, apart from Roman having survived the accident, was it appeared I couldn’t die in my alternative universe. On both of the occasions where I had come so close to death, I had been transported back to my own time before I actually lost my life. So that was one question answered: I wasn’t going to die in another time and leave my empty shell of a body, possibly with a still beating heart, for my family to find. When I died
, it would be in my own world.

I ate little, but not as little as Leticia, because she ate nothing at all. It hadn’t been the best of ideas to meet Ianto’s girlfriend over a meal when I had the greatest of difficulty in eating, and the said girlfriend had an altogether alternative diet.

My mother shot me concerned looks as she tried to entice me to eat another minuscule mouthful. I set my lips in a firm line and turned my head away, infant-like. I knew she worried about me: I was all skin and bone, but I couldn’t help my fading appetite and the fact that a two-year-old had better hand-eye coordination than I, and so it was small wonder the weight was dropping off me.

Awkward meal finished, I clumsily and with considerable effort wheeled my chair to the kitchen door intent on returning to the conservatory. This was my favourite room; I could almost feel part of the outdoors in there.

‘Let me,’ Leticia offered, grasping the handles of the wheelchair and deftly turning it so I didn’t keep banging into the door frame, ‘unless you would like some help with the washing up, Mrs Llewellyn?’ She smiled sweetly at the older woman.

‘Please, call me Bethan.’ My mother made shooing gestures with her hands. ‘You go with Grace. I’ll rope
David and Ianto into helping clear the table.’

Leticia smiled her gorgeous, sharp-toothed smile and gave Ianto a significant look, before pushing me out into the hall. I felt too unwell to argue with her. I could have wheeled myself
… probably.

‘You never did answer my question,’ I said.

‘What question?’

‘What the hell you are playing at, coming here, dating Ianto…’

‘I did. Roman.’

‘That explains nothing.’

‘On the contrary, it explains everything. Why do you think I am a haematologist?’

‘Because you like blood?’ I was being sarcastic.

‘That is only part of the reason. I know Roman has explained to you what he is trying to achieve?’ I nodded. ‘I am working with him. I am part of Gaia Industries, although I do most of my research in the field, so to speak.

I looked questioningly at her.

‘I obtain samples, many, many samples. We could not rely on volunteers alone; there would not be a wide enough range.’

I was very tempted to follow the conversation down this path, but I stuck to my guns. ‘You still haven’t answered my question. Why are you seducing Ianto?’

‘My, you are persistent.’ She shrugged delicately. ‘Roman,’ she repeated yet again.

‘Roman
what
?’ I was getting cross.

‘Roman instructed me to keep a close eye on you without you being aware of it.’

‘I’m most definitely aware of it now,’ I retorted dryly, ‘so that little plan hasn’t worked.

‘On the contrary, it has worked perfectly. However, the game has changed.’

My heart did a little flip-flop in fear. ‘Changed? What do you mean changed?’

‘Roman has had an idea.’

‘Why doesn’t he come to see me himself? Why is he staying away?’ I was woman enough to feel hurt that he was avoiding me, but contrarily, also woman enough to be thankful he hadn’t seen me in this sorry state.

‘He feels you will return to his time at least once more, so until then –’
She stopped and shrugged. I wished she would stop doing that: it made her look far too cute.

‘Doesn’t he know for certain whether I go back?’ I asked.

‘Apparently not. His memories alter frequently in relation to when you appear to him.’

‘Huh?’ I was even more confused.

‘Look,’ she tried to explain. ‘Time is convoluted. You alter it when you travel back to his world. His perception of what happens depends on you. If you return to the past, then it changes his future. If you reappear to him again before your time and his converge, then his memories are altered to compensate. The last time he remembers seeing you is in 1934 and the plane crash. It is possible you will appear to him again before the day of your birth.’

‘Are you telling me I alter time?’

‘Yes, but not in a significant way. I, too, have read Ian Bradbury’s story and I don’t think you’ve trodden on any butterflies.’

‘But how would you know?’

‘I wouldn’t, and neither would anyone else, but you would.’

I considered the conundrum. It was making my already aching brain hurt even more.

‘Roman wants to try something,’ she said. ‘I will return tonight to explain.’

‘Ok
ay.’ I was doubtful about Leticia’s nocturnal visit, yet also curious. But there was one more thing I had to say to the beautiful creature in front of me. ‘Stay away from my brother,’ I said, ‘he doesn’t deserve you.’

She knew exactly what I meant and it was no compliment to her.

She gave me a steady look. ‘Don’t concern yourself, Grace. He is safe enough from me. I promise you. I have not harmed him.’

‘But you have!’ I protested.

A pitying smile crossed her lips. ‘He is easily enthralled,’ she said.

I had to be satisfied with that.

I was still awake when she materialised in my room. One minute, all was quiet and dark, the next minute, it was still quiet and dark, but she was there, a deeper shadow, camouflaged by the night.

‘What is this idea?’ I asked, breaking the silence.

‘Roman wants me to take your blood.’

‘Whoa, now, lady. You are
not
drinking from me!’

‘That’s right, I’m not.’

I narrowed my eyes at her, suspiciously. ‘So, what do you mean?’

She sighed, a human sigh of exasperation. ‘I am a haematologist. That’s what I do. Not take blood,’ she added, ‘the nurses do that, but I analyse it. I want to analyse yours.’

‘Why? Surely mine can’t be any different than thousands of other peoples’. Or have you found something? Is there a difference between enthrallable and non-enthrallable?’ My voice rose along with my excitement and Leticia shushed me.

‘You don’t want to wake your mother,’ she said, and she was right. I didn’t. Not in the middle of the night with Leticia in the room. I wasn’t sure when she had last eaten.

I snarled silently at her, letting her understand I was aware of her meaning. The vampire simply smiled back.

‘Well?’ This time my voice was much quieter.

‘No, we have not, but Roman wants me to try. I think it is a waste of my time, but I will do it because he has asked.’

‘Gee, thanks, don’t force yourself.’

‘Can I take some?’

I held out my arm. ‘Help yourself,’ I said, then regretted my flippant comment when her fangs lengthened. I snatched it back as quickly as my atrophied muscles would let me, only for her to laugh silently at the look on my face.

I frowned, not appreciating the joke and held out my arm once more. She fished around in her bag and came up with the materials for the job. I looked away as she siphoned off a full vial, not wanting to see what expression might be on her face.

When she finished
, she curled my arm around a wad of cotton wool and held it in place to stop the bleeding.

‘Doesn’t this bother you?’ I asked.

‘Yes. Very much.’

‘Yet you still do it?’

‘Yes.’ She let go of my arm and pocketed the vial of blood. ‘I will go now. If I need more I will return.’

That was fine with me; as long as she didn’t drink it, she could have as much as she liked. It wasn’t much use to me.

I just hoped she would find something. Anything. Before time completely ran out.

It must have been a week later when the gentle tug on my mind pulled me back to the past once more. It was a night in early April, windy and rain-lashed outside, calm and snug inside. Everyone was asleep, including my mother who was wrapped in her duvet in the recliner. It annoyed me that I spent so much time sleeping, yet when I wanted to sleep, I was wide awake. Like now. I had nothing to occupy me and was fed up with my own thoughts. I could no longer see to read easily, and the tv would have disturbed my mother, so all I could do was lie here and watch the inside of my own head. It wasn’t pretty, because I wasn’t in a pretty mood. However much I tried to turn my thoughts to nice things, they kept circling back to the darkness and despair within, like a vulture waiting for its victim to die. It didn’t matter how many times I threw a virtual stone at it, it kept on coming back.

Then there was the oh-so-familiar tug in my mind and I had a second’s warning, emitting a deep sigh of thankfulness, before I sank into the depths of time past and emerged in almost total darkness.

I was flat on my back in bed and someone was snoring heavily next to me, my already night-adjusted eyes registering little.

I froze in consternation. Who the hell was I in bed with – it certainly wasn’t Roman: he didn’t snore, what with not breathing ‘n’ all. I had to get out of here before sleeping beauty woke up and found a complete stranger cuddled under the blankets with them.

Carefully, so not to jiggle the bed, I slid first one foot then the other out from under the bedclothes and draped them over the side of the bed, then cautiously inched the rest of me closer to the edge.

The snorer stopped breathing, hitching in a deep gasp. I stopped and lay motionless, hardly daring to breathe myself. A loud snort and the snoring began again, the noise resuming at its previous level.

I let my own breath out in the faintest of sighs and carried on with my painfully slow escape from the bed, and as soon as my feet touched the floor, I pushed the sheets and blankets off and slid the whole of my body out, dropping quietly to the carpet in a crumpled heap.

I still couldn’t see much but there was a lighter square where t
he window was, so I figured the door was probably on the opposite wall. Synchronising my movements to the noise from the mystery sleeper, I levered myself to my feet and groped, hands outstretched, feeling along the wall for the tell-tale wood.

It was during a brief exhalation I heard it.
There was someone outside the room
.

A faint shuffling footfall filtered underneath the door, and just as I put my hand on the latch
, it lifted under my fingers and the door was slowly pushed inwards.