CHAPTER 100
‘Give me the cards,’ he said.
Meredith’s heart leapt into her mouth at the sound of his voice.
She spun round, clutching the cards tight, then instantly recoiled. Always immaculate whenever she had seen him before, in Rennes-les-Bains and in the hotel, now Julian Lawrence looked wrecked. His shirt was open at the neck and he was sweating heavily. There was the sour smell of brandy on his breath.
‘There’s something out there,’ she said, the words bursting out of her mouth before she had a chance to think. ‘A wolf or something, I’m telling you. I saw it. Outside the walls.’
He stopped, confusion clouding his desperate eyes. ‘Walls? What walls? What are you talking about?’
Meredith glanced. The candles were still flickering, sending shadows outlining the shape of the Visigoth tomb.
‘Can’t you see them?’ she asked. ‘It’s so clear. The lights shining where the sepulchre used to be?’
A sly smile moved across his lips. ‘Ah, I see what you’re doing,’ he said, ‘but it won’t work. Wolves, animals, ghosts, all highly diverting, but you’re not going to stop me from getting what I want.’ He took another step closer. ‘Give me the cards.’
Meredith stumbled back a pace. For a moment, though, she was tempted. She was on his property, she was digging up his grounds without permission. She was the one in the wrong, not him. But the look on his face turned her blood cold. Piercing blue eyes, his pupils dilated. Fear trickled down her spine when she thought of how isolated they were, miles from anywhere, in the woods.
She needed to keep some kind of leverage. She watched cautiously as he glanced around the clearing.
‘Did you find the deck here?’ he said. ‘No, I dug here. It wasn’t here.’
Until now, Meredith hadn’t bought into Hal’s theories about his uncle. Even if Dr O’Donnell was right, and it had been Julian Lawrence’s blue car on the road just after the accident, she could just about believe he might not have stopped to help. But now none of it seemed so crazy.
Meredith took a step back. ‘Hal will be here any moment,’ she said.
‘And what difference does that make?’
She glanced around, trying to figure out if she could run. She was much younger, much fitter than him. But she didn’t want to abandon Léonie’s workbox on the ground. And even if Julian Lawrence thought she was just trying to scare him with talk of wolves, she knew she had seen something, some predator, skulking around the edges of the clearing just before he had arrived.
‘Give me the cards and I won’t hurt you,’ he said.
Meredith took another step back. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I don’t think it matters whether you believe me or not,’ he said, then, like a light being switched, he suddenly lost his temper and roared, ‘Give them to me!’
Meredith stumbled further back, clutching the cards to her. Then she smelt it again. Stronger than before, a stomach-churning stench of rotting fish and an even more pervasive smell of fire.
But Lawrence was completely oblivious to everything but the cards she was holding. He just kept walking towards her, getting closer and closer, holding out his hand.
‘Get away from her!’
Both Meredith and Lawrence spun round in the direction of the voice, as Hal came running out of the woods, shouting, heading straight for his uncle.
Lawrence twisted round and charged to meet him, drew back his arm and caught him under the jaw with his right fist. Taken by surprise, Hal went down, blood exploding from his mouth and nose.
‘Hal!’
He kicked out at his uncle, striking him on the side of the knee. Lawrence stumbled, but he didn’t go down. Hal struggled to get up, but although Julian was older and much heavier, he knew how to fight and had used his fists more often than Hal. His reactions were quicker. He gripped his hands together and brought them down with combined force on the back of Hal’s neck.
Meredith dashed to the workbox, threw the cards inside, slammed the lid, then ran back to where Hal lay unconscious on the ground.
Julian has nothing to lose.
‘Pass me the cards, Ms Martin.’
There was another gust of wind, carrying the smell of burning. This time, Lawrence smelt it too. Confusion flared briefly in his eyes.
‘I’ll kill you if I have to,’ he said, in so casual a tone that it made the threat all the more believable. Meredith didn’t reply. Now the flickering candlelight she had imagined on the walls of the sepulchre was turning to leaping orange and gold and black flames. The sepulchre was starting to burn. Black smoke was enveloping the clearing, licking over the stones. Meredith imagined she could hear the crackle and spit of the paint on the plaster saints as they started to scorch. The glass in the windows exploded outwards as the metal frames buckled.
‘Can’t you see it?’ she shouted. ‘Can’t you see what’s happening? ’
She saw alarm flood across Lawrence’s face, then a look of pure horror leap into his eyes. Meredith turned round, but she was too slow to see it clearly. Something rushed past her, some kind of animal with black, matted fur, a strange jerking movement, and leapt.
Lawrence screamed.
Meredith watched in horror as he fell, trying to propel himself backwards on the ground, and then arching his back like a grotesque crab. He threw up his arms, as if wrestling with some invisible creature, striking out at the empty air, screaming that there was something ripping at his face, his eyes, his mouth. His hands were clawing at his own throat, tearing at the skin, as if trying to free himself from the grasp of a hand.
And Meredith heard the whispering, a different voice, deeper and louder than Léonie’s, reverberating inside her head. She didn’t recognise the words, but she understood the meaning.
Fujhi, poudes; Escapa, non.
Flee you may, escape you cannot.
She saw the fight go out of Lawrence and he fell back to the ground.
Silence immediately descended on the glade. She looked around. She was standing on a bare patch of grass. No flames, no walls, no smell of the grave.
Hal was stirring, raising himself up on one elbow. He put his hand to his face, then held out his palm, sticky with blood.
‘What the hell happened?’
Meredith ran over and put her arms around him. ‘He hit you. Put you out for a while.’
Hal blinked, then turned his head to where his uncle lay on the ground. His eyes widened. ‘Did you . . . ?’
‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘I didn’t touch him. I don’t know what happened. One minute he was . . .’ She stopped, not knowing how she could possibly describe to Hal what she’d seen.
‘Heart attack?’
Meredith bent down beside Julian. His face was chalk white, tinged with blue around his lips and nose.
‘He’s still alive,’ she said, pulling her cell phone from her pocket and tossing it to Hal. ‘Call. If the paramedics are fast.’
He caught it but made no move to dial. She saw the look in his eye and knew what he was thinking.
‘No,’ she said softly. ‘Not like this.’
He held her gaze for a moment, his blue eyes flickering with hurt and the possibility of paying his uncle back for what he’d done. A magician, with power over life and death.
‘Make the call, Hal.’
For a moment more, the decision hung in the balance. Then she saw his eyes cloud over and he came back to himself. Justice, not revenge. He began to punch in the number.
Meredith crouched down beside Julian, no longer terrifying, but pathetic. His palms lay exposed to the air. There was a strange red mark on each, much like a figure of eight. She put her hand on his chest, then she realised. He was no longer breathing.
Slowly, she straightened up. ‘Hal.’
He glanced over at her. Meredith just shook her head. ‘It’s too late.’
