Star Struck (25 page)

‘I think one of the Skeel boys.' I carried on freeing Felix. ‘Fe knocked into one of them, I saw the cylinder fall …'

‘Leave me … alone.' Felix tried to roll away from under my hand.

‘Shut up. I have to move this to get you out.' I tried to push the rubble more gently off his body. ‘You can't stay here, the place is on fire.'

‘Maybe I want to. Die.'

His words made the mild night air chill down to near freezing. ‘Fe …'

‘Can you move him?' Jack put a hand on my arm.

I screwed up my eyes and tried for levity. ‘It's Felix. He weighs the same as a small dog.'

‘Are you sure?' Somehow his eyes were darker than the darkness. ‘Because I need to find out where that smell is coming from.' He helped me move another lump of box-beam from Felix's back. ‘If we can smell it, that means there's more.'

Felix took a harsh-sounding breath. ‘Go. Find it. We will … manage.' Jack gave me a long look and moved off through the darkness, still sniffing, and vanished. ‘Now. Your turn to … disappear.'

‘I am not leaving you.'

‘You would have done. Before.'

His words hit me like another explosion. I had been the sort of person who'd leave a friend. The sort of person who lied and deceived herself just to keep from hurting.
That had been me.
‘Not now.' I hauled another beam off his back. Thankfully the diner seemed to have been built on the cheap, all box-beams and boarding rather than solid wood. But this did mean that it was burning a real treat behind us. ‘Whatever happened changed all of me. But it's all right, you don't have to believe me, after all, why would you? Just let me do this one thing. Let me get you out of here.'

‘Bravery? That's … new, too.'

I freed the last beam and pulled him to his feet with my arms around his waist. ‘It doesn't matter now what you think of me, Felix. Truly. I know I can never turn back time. All I can do is re-make my life and try not to make the same mistakes again.' I leaned him against me, taking his weight. ‘Knowing I killed them.'

Felix sagged in my grasp. ‘Still just words,' he murmured, and with a small sigh he passed out, dropping back to the floor again.

I tried to get purchase for another lifting hold, carrying on my rambling theorising, while the smell of burning paint scorched the back of my throat. The adrenaline was beginning to wear off, leaving me free to feel the soreness in my arms and along my spine where my skin had been flayed through the torn dress as I'd been blown along the sandy ground. I tried to get another grip on Felix but my hands wouldn't obey, closing uselessly and feebly around his coat but unable to find enough force to grab him as shock paralysed my muscles and ordered me to freeze. Stay still. Wait for rescue. I gave a choked kind of sob as pain and weakness hit me together but I wouldn't …
would not
give up. Would not let this fire win.

The fire had taken full hold in the kitchen now. We had to get all the way across the ruined diner and out into the desert before it overtook us, and, at the rate it was moving, we had to get there
fast
. A whoosh, and I felt my hair begin to frazzle. ‘Eighteen months it's taken me to grow that back.' I tried again to clutch at the fur coat. ‘Come on, Fe, wake up and help.' The heat had begun to gnaw into my bones now, insistent, unignorable. The metal holes on the dress bodice were heating up like little buttons of pain across my cleavage, and I could smell the scorching material. ‘Fe!'

But his head was lolling and his skin was grey. I couldn't carry him, I couldn't drag him, and I could feel my skin starting to blister on the back of my neck as the fire ate its way across the floor towards us. Despite the heat I was starting to shiver and my breath wouldn't catch properly; it felt as though I was only breathing with the top third of my lungs and somewhere behind where the bar used to stand, I could hear an ominous ‘tick tick' noise, as though metal was heating up and not liking it very much.

‘Fe, we have to get out of here,' I whispered to the inert form slumped at my feet. ‘We
have
to.' But he didn't so much as groan or flicker an eyelash, even when a sudden spurt of flame flicked quickly over the top of both of us, retreating but leaving a smell of singed nylon and burning hair. It stung briefly over the backs of my hands and the pain made me clench tight, despite the sagging weakness in my wrists. The clench brought a handful of Felix's coat closer to me and I grabbed it with everything I had, arms into holes where the fabric had split, fingers into pelt, I even pushed a foot through a torn hemline. The pain spurred me on enough to move back, dragging Felix along the floor by his coat like a cat dragging a kitten; one step, two steps with the back of his head bumping along the wrecked floor, and we were away from the flames, three steps and he started to slide along on the rollers formed by the broken chairs and tables. I pulled him, using my bodyweight, bent double, dragging him behind me by the tattered material of his coat. Another step and I had to stop, coughing and gasping until I thought I was going to be sick. We were away from the fire now, but it was only a matter of time before it caught up with us; maybe I could get Felix conscious enough to help … I collapsed forward. If I could only catch my breath …

And then Jack was there beside me. He seized Felix round the waist and tugged him upright.

‘Great. Show up now and do the hero bit.' I coughed again, raising only my head. I was totally exhausted.

‘I've found the cause of all this. We'd better get out …'

Suddenly the ‘tick tick' was louder. Jack grabbed my arm, my
injured
arm and pulled me to my feet, then began to run. He ran through the wrecked diner, jumped down through the blown-out glass doors, hit the dirt outside, pulling Felix and me behind him, and accelerated for a few strides, then dived onto the sand, dropping Fe and throwing his own body over mine. I just had time to say ‘ow, you're really heavy,' before all words were drowned out by the second, louder, explosion of the night.

Chapter Twenty-Four

When I came back to myself I found I was walking. There was no sign of the motel on any horizon and my feet were bleeding, the dress was torn along the grain of the velvet across my shoulders and back and my arm was stiff and sore. The only light I could see was speckled on distant clouds from the town we'd passed through on our way to the motel. How long ago? Felt like months.

I stopped. How long had I been moving? What had happened after Jack had pulled Felix and me out of the building? I shook my head, feeling the crispy little curls drag at the back of my neck, and all I could remember was noise and panic. People moving around, paramedics arriving. Nothing else, nothing about how I'd come to leave the scene or where I'd thought I was going.

There was a faint golden wire lying behind some distant hills; either a distant town or dawn was coming up. As my eyes traced the far horizon I felt the familiar fluttering wings of panic start to beat alongside my heart. That breaking, bursting feeling that left no space for air or sense, the feeling that told me I was going to die, suffocated by my own fear as it rose up my throat and tightened my windpipe.
Where the hell was I?

I picked a direction and ran. It was like running through a dream, with the softness of velvet periodically soothing my feet as the dress trailed beneath me and alternated with the rocky viciousness of the desert floor. I think I might have shouted too, calling for help as I ran, my throat and lungs thundering with my breath and my heart a white-hot cable searing through my chest.

A sudden misstep and the ground opened underneath me. I fell in a whirling mass of velvet and scraped skull, landing at the bottom of a small gulley, with my vision blurred and my head ringing. My hands clawed out once, reaching towards a sky that seemed tiny and then a glossy kind of blackness crawled in behind my eyes and I stopped registering anything at all.

The next thing I knew was footsteps crunching on the sand above me. A voice said ‘Oh God,' and a figure jumped down to land alongside me, pushing fingers to my throat, groping for a pulse. Another exhaled ‘Oh
God
,' and something was being forced under my head, cushioning it from a rock I'd only just realised was there. ‘Oh my God, Skye, never do this to me again.'

‘Wha …?' My voice was almost non-existent.

‘Take it easy.' The silhouetted shape, backlit by the lightening sky, crouched down beside me. ‘You'll be okay. Here, have some water.'

My parched throat wouldn't allow more than the merest swallow, but my thirst forced me to gulp, and I ended up spitting and gagging to avoid drowning. ‘Jack?'

‘Yep.'

‘How did you find me?'

He was laughing, but it was a relieved laugh. ‘You left quite a trail. Bits have been falling off that costume all night; it was like Hansel and Gretel with fake jewels. But I'm surprised you managed to cover such a distance, we're a good couple of miles from the motel. And you've still got no shoes on.'

‘It would have been easier in stilettos?' I struggled into a half-sit with Jack's assistance. ‘What happened last night? The explosion?'

‘The boys dressed as Skeel stole their gas canisters from a breaker's yard near Reno; hadn't realised that they were old welding cylinders half-full of oxy-acetylene that had been marked for disposal. Not the most stable of substances, and when our friend Felix went barging into them … boom!' He pushed his hair away from his eyes. ‘But no-one died. Lots of cuts and bruises and broken bones, but no-one died, Skye.' For a second shock clouded his eyes, as though he was seeing it all again. ‘No-one died,' he half-whispered, again, then gave his head a tiny shake and his voice strengthened. ‘Even Felix got away with only two broken ribs and a head wound. Oh, and my fags got shredded.' I felt his arm slide behind me. ‘The paramedics were treating you, they turned around to check on another casualty, and when they turned back, you'd gone. What was all that about?'

‘I don't know. Shock.'

‘Figures. It was quite a night.'

I leaned against the wall of the gulley. Jack was so close that I could see the light flicker in his eyes when he blinked. ‘Yes.'

‘You want me to give you a hand up? We should get back, people are worried.'

‘I don't think I can walk.'

‘No need. I borrowed Antonio's car. He was too busy having hysterics to stop me.' The smile burst onto his face again. ‘He has got
such
a hairdresser's car!'

‘I thought you couldn't drive.' I remembered his anxiety when Felix and Lissa had gone off, his desperate impotence at not being able to follow them.

‘No. I
don't
drive. Never said I
couldn't
.' And now he was avoiding looking at me, pushing hands into his pockets, coming up with a solitary, dog-eared cigarette. ‘Never said I couldn't,' he repeated, as though he'd slid off into a parallel world of thought. His lighter flared and he spent an unnecessary amount of time staring at the flame.

‘Can we just sit here a while longer?'

‘Okay.' He still wasn't looking at me. ‘So, while we're here, want to give me the rest of the story?' He shook his fringe out of his eyes. A sudden breeze was playing havoc with hair that had no natural settling point.

‘You'll hate me.'

A direct look from those dark, dark eyes. ‘Will I, now?'

‘You heard Felix. I was horrible, Jack. And the only reason I changed is because I got on the wrong side of a windscreen at sixty miles an hour. Not because I realised the error of my ways or because I decided to change, but because I got hit on the head.' I touched the side of his face. ‘And I don't know now which is the real me. Am I nice now?'

His gaze deepened. ‘Yes. Yes, you are.'

‘No, I mean, is
this
who I really am now?' I smacked myself in the chest. ‘
Really?
Or is it a personality aberration that could switch at any time?'

The wind twitched his hair again but he sat silent and unmoving. ‘Do you know what I think?' He pushed his hair back now, impatient. ‘I think that the way you were was a defence. It was a learned behaviour, a way of coping with a situation that would have been unbearable otherwise, and I don't know what that situation was but it must have been pretty catastrophic for you to build an entire personality just to keep yourself safe. The real you, the
true
you that was underneath all the time – that's who I'm seeing now. So …' A raised hand and a shrug. ‘I like you. But then, judge of character I'm not. Writer and creator, well, that's a different matter.'

I looked at him, as he gazed out across the desert, jaw clenched as though underlining his words. ‘I like you too,' I almost whispered. I didn't think he'd hear me as the wind was beginning to whip across the dusty ground with a sound like a large brush being diligently applied, until he suddenly dropped his eyes to mine.

‘I guess it's time we had that talk.'

There was something in his voice, something deeper and darker than had been there before, a set to his body that changed everything, that moved him over from the ‘friend' category into uncharted regions. He was suddenly a stranger, with his defiant hair and decisive stare.

‘You don't have to tell me anything, Jack.'

‘Skye.' He moved slightly. ‘This is important. I've had times in my life … things I've done … that no-one knows about. I'm telling you so that you'll know – at least I hope you will – that people change. They
can
change, no-one is set in any particular mould, not if they don't want to be, okay?' My expression must have said ‘oh yeah?' because he shifted again and a blush crept up his face from his neck and the fingers of the hand not holding his cigarette hooked into that black leather lace around his throat.

I couldn't look him in the eye now, so I focused instead on the ash-tipped end of his cigarette, poised between his fingers like a death-pencil.

A deep breath. ‘I'm an alcoholic. Was. Am … When the network guys brought me over here to work on
North 
… before I started up the
Fallen Skies
team … I was pretty much out of control.'

I shook my head slowly and watched ash flutter down to the sand like shot birds. ‘I don't need to know this, Jack.' Or did I mean that I didn't
want
to know?

Another inhalation. This one stuttered. ‘I think you do. Please, Skye, I
want
you to know. I want you to know what I'm like, what I'm capable of, how much of a complete
shit
I am. Y'see, all this
thing
with Geth,' he drew deeply on the cigarette then threw his arms out wide, ‘it was all a sham, wasn't it? Maybe because you lack definition for yourself you fell for an image, for the look, for the words, not the real man inside them all. He's a troubled man, Gethryn, and some of that is because of me, and I want you to know that part of me that makes me behave like …' He pulled his arms back in towards his body and wrapped one around his waist. ‘I don't want you to have those false illusions about me.'

‘I don't …'

‘Oh, I think you do.' The bitterness of his tone made me glance up. ‘Gethryn is an illusion. Oh, he'd been good once, won an Emmy, once. But when I first met him he was about ten stone, pretty much selling his soul to anyone who'd got a part for him. When he got Lucas James, he hired a personal trainer to come and sort out the body.' Jack's eyes were darker than usual, a memory playing behind them in shadow. ‘His name isn't even real. He's built himself from bits and pieces of others, an accent here, a hairstyle there; he's picked up and used anything from anyone that he thought might help him along.' A sideways glance caught my eye and I found I couldn't look away. ‘He's a fabrication, Skye. A literal self-made man.'

I moved my lips but no words would come out. ‘What about you?' just about breathed out of my mouth.

A harsh smile. ‘Yeah, me too. A fabrication. A walking lie.' A last deep drag that had all the finality of death about it, and he bent to grind the remains of the cigarette almost viciously into the earth. ‘Okay. Let's see. Right, when they came over to England wanting to headhunt me for the writing team on
Two Turns North 
… I was running scared. Shut up in a little office writing – oh yeah, the books were successful but I was half-dead. Came over here full of crap about broadening my writing CV, working in TV to get some serious cash behind me. All bollocks, of course.' He was looking at his feet now, working them down into the desert dirt, digging to hell. ‘I was on the run from some nasty memories, that's all. Running like a coward. And then I came up with
Fallen Skies
and they gave it to me. Me. A bloody drunk with no real TV experience – but they said they had “faith”. And I
tried
, tried to tell them that I wasn't what they saw.' He worked a small rock loose and bent to pick it up. ‘But they'd made me into something by then. I was their great British success and they thought everything I touched turned to sunshine and awards.'

‘That's why the show nearly got cancelled after the first year?'

Jack nodded. ‘I was terrified. Drunk and terrified. Couldn't handle the crew, couldn't handle the writing team … God, it was a wonder we weren't cancelled half-way through …' He gave a small outbreath of a laugh. ‘Shows what happens when you trust people like me. Even the guy who made the fucking
coffee
had the drop on me.' Long fingers closed around the pebble, tossing it from hand to hand.

‘But they carried on giving you the money.'

A shrug and fierce concentration on the rock. ‘They liked what I was turning out, sometimes, somehow, some reason it just
worked
. And the fans got behind it, campaigned to keep us on air – that's part of the reason we have these conventions, it's our chance to say “thank you” for keeping us in work.'

‘But the fans didn't do it out of selflessness. They did it because they loved the show. Because you're good at what you do.'

For that I got a sudden, amazing smile which softened his eyes. ‘Thank you.' His hands were still for a moment. ‘Thank you,' he said again, ‘for reminding me what I could be.' Then he was back to fidgeting again, staring up out towards the sky while his fingers restlessly twitched over the surface of that stone as though reading Braille. ‘But I'm still a fraud. I let myself get sucked in, let the whole of my past define who I was. Let the memories have the run of my head. And things … things went wrong.'

‘But you got yourself sorted out.'

A small inclination of the head. ‘I chose to change myself. Again. You see what I mean? I stopped drinking so that I could keep the show on the air. Not because I
wanted
to give up, not for my health or my relationship or anything, but simply so that I could keep my characters on screen. So you see, Skye, I know how it is to be changed by circumstances.'