Jon Grimwood - redRobe

‘That one’s bullshit, too,’ Axl assured her. ‘But you know who I’m talking about?’ He paused to check she did. ‘Well, I’m the kid.’

The pupils of Kate’s eyes exploded with shock, only to pinprick immediately with fear, as if blinded by light. And the gasp she swallowed almost choked her. He was waiting and there was nothing she could say.

Within her silence, Kate could hear the call of circling kites and the mutter that running water makes as it slides over gravel. The air reaching her outside was cold and fresh, but oxygen-poor and stretched gossamer thin. The world, this world, felt very new and fragile.

Axl watch faint goosebumps spreading along the inside of her wrist, while she held one hand to her mouth, knuckles pressed hard against her lips. A strand of black hair curled down her forehead where it had escaped from a steel barrette keeping the rest of her hair in place.

Low down to the side of her neck, and just above the briefest glimpse of breastbone seen through the open collar of her shirt, beat an artery that slowed even as Axl watched it.

She was getting her courage back. And the slow butterfly beat of her blood told him something that Kate was working her body hard not to let him know. She was afraid of him, but there was no way she going to admit it.

Instinct told her to step back. And she was fighting her instinct. Axl found himself being impressed by that. Stamping down gut reactions took training or tight self-control.

‘ You are Axl Borja?’

Axl nodded. And watched as Kate tried to make sense of something that didn’t, could never make sense.

‘I thought you were dead.’

‘And Hell was flipping burgers,’ said Axl, nodding again. ‘So did I.’

Sad songs. Not ersatz, but real.

‘I killed someone,’ Axl added after a while, when the notes were gone. ‘People say you should never go back. Well I did. I ended up here.’

‘Mexico has the death penalty.’ It wasn’t quite an accusation but it was definitely a question. One that wasn’t too difficult to answer.

‘I have friends…’

‘The Cardinal?’

Axl thought of the old bastard, probably still sat in his octagonal study. Staring longingly out of that stone window at tiny butterfly boats dotted like dust on the silver surface of the Caribbean, while thousands of petitioners waited for his attention in the sweltering anterooms, dressed in their best clothes.

Friends in high places…

This time Kate did comfort him, with a feather-light brush of her fingers against his shoulder. He wanted to tell her everything then. To warn her against himself, against what he would do in the old bastard’s name to her life and her world.

Outside the dining room someone slammed a door loudly, and inside the room silence settled. One of those embarrassed, awkward silences that happen when a person you don’t like or hardly know has said too much.

There was a gap opening between them, almost visibly. A gap bigger than the hand’s breadth of floor that either could have stepped over. Except Kate didn’t know how—or if she even wanted to—and Axl didn’t dare.

Axl desperately needed to say something, but his major problem was he had no idea what, because the truth didn’t seem like an intelligent option… Falling for the person you intended to betray wasn’t an area that any episode of Black Jack had ever covered. And though everyone knew about Stockholm Syndrome, Axl had a nasty feeling he’d just been memed with its flip side.

No matter that Kate wasn’t beautiful. Nor was he. She wasn’t, even that clean. Her black hair needed washing. She smelt of rose water over sweat as if she hadn’t had the time recently to bath. And there were scratches on both wrists and blisters on her fingers, painful evidence that she wasn’t used to manual work. Her hands trembled so hard it looked like she was headed straight for the brick wall of a sulphate come down, except drugs weren’t her style.

This was the woman who’d hit Mai, Axl reminded himself. And if Rinpoche was right and somehow the Pope really was here in some form, rather than just being data on some memory beads, then this was who he’d need to pressure for the information.

It made no difference to the way he felt.

And he wanted her approval so badly his stomach hurt and he could taste the need like blood in the back of his throat.

In a second she would turn away from him, find a reason why she needed to be in some other room. And the slowly-tearing spider’s web of understanding that had briefly been spun between them would finally snap. He could see it in the tension seeping back into her face. All that held Kate there now was politeness. Inside her head, she had to be inventing excuses to go.

By the afternoon they would be worse than strangers. If she thought of him at all, it would be as a killer, as what was left if you took away fame from a child star. No more than the wind-blown husk of that blue-eyed, deadly blond boy. And all the half misremembered rumours would shoulder their way out of her subconscious to push aside what fragile sympathy she had for him.

That he was a clone Kate already half believed. And if not the Cardinal’s bastard then surely Axl had been his catamite, the old man’s bum boy. Or else Axl somehow had his claws into the old man: as if it was him and not the Cardinal who only had to pull back his thin lips to reveal sharp teeth.

That’s the way it would go, Axl just knew it.

And she wouldn’t even come close to getting the rumours right, to digging far enough through the shit to hit real truth. Because no one else but the Cardinal knew that. All of it had to be visible, Axl knew that. Why else did anyone think he hated mirrors so much? Or loved guns, for that matter…

‘Come with me to the village,’ Kate suggested, standing up.

Axl stared at her.

‘I need to check the situation. PaxForce…’ Her voice trailed away. She’d seen and heard enough of them in action the previous night to be scared of what she was going to find at Cocheforet.

Axl nodded, suddenly understanding her jumpiness, cursing himself. ‘You need me to go as your bodyguard.’ He didn’t make it a question, just a simple statement.

‘If that’s the way you want to think of it. Though Clone won’t like the idea.’ Kate’s smile was so slight Axl thought he’d imagined it. ‘Wait here while I get changed…’

She returned to the dining room wearing black jeans and heavy leather boots that buckled across the ankle. On top she wore a vest, black enough to swallow light and fitted so exactly it had to be grown for her alone. Spider’s silk could stop a knife. Better than that, bullets could be extracted by pulling on the threads they’d wound-up on their way in.

If Kate noticed Axl register how tightly her vest fitted or the fullness of her breasts she didn’t say anything, merely shuffled herself into a loose black jersey.

‘Are you ready?’

As if checking, Axl touched his hand to the small of his back, feeling for the wooden handle of his revolver. Yeah, ready and willing. Hell, he’d been both for as long as anyone could remember…

Scrub that. Half his life he’d been so drunk or wired the only person to believe he was ready for anything was him. Just as he’d always believed that deep down he was rational, well-mannered and emotionally balanced, no matter how untrue all that was turning out to be.

Blackjack was a kid’s show. US skins over Japanese-designed frames, cheap Chinese coding. WarChild was a battlefield soap that used real meat. That was the truth.

‘Sure,’ said Axl, holding the door open for Kate. ‘I am now.’