S. Bolton - Dead Scared

He smirked and his eyes fell to my chest. ‘Why, are you planning revenge?’ he said.

‘Just want to know which shins I have to kick when I see them in daylight,’ I said, before I could stop myself. There was something about this guy that was really bringing out the Lacey in me.

‘To be honest I’ve not seen that lot before,’ he said. ‘A lot of freshers get dunked in the first few weeks but not usually by Lone Ranger lookalikes. So did you enjoy the experience of being chained up?’

God, this bloke was a twat. Fortunately, at that moment, people began appearing with loaded dinner plates.

‘I’m starving,’ I muttered. ‘Catch you later.’

Evi had been abandoned by her admirer. ‘Can I get you something to eat?’ I offered. She started to shake her head, then seemed to change her mind.

‘That would be great,’ she said.

Back in the kitchen I joined the small queue. The curry I could smell was a mildly spiced pheasant casserole served with roasted root vegetables. People were still tucking into the first course, though, which was some sort of pâté.

I cut Evi a slice of pâté, found some bread and a knife and carried it back through, meaning to ask her how long she’d known Nick Bell and, if I could do it discreetly, what she thought of him. It probably wouldn’t hurt to find out how good his IT skills were.

It wasn’t to be. Two men were talking to her now. She was beautiful and fragile, like a princess in a fairy tale. They just couldn’t help themselves. I reached around one of them to hand over the plate.

‘Thanks, Laura,’ she said. ‘Can we catch up later?’

I left her to her admirers and went back to the food. The pâté was great, then the dark-haired woman started serving the casserole. I made polite conversation about nothing with people near by and was just wondering whether second helpings were acceptable when my host reappeared.

‘How you doing?’ he asked me.

‘Bursting out of my jeans but otherwise fine,’ I told him. ‘Fabulous food.’

‘Liz and I have an arrangement,’ he said, nodding towards the dark-haired woman. She caught her name being mentioned and gave him the sort of look a son gets from a mother who is just a little too fond of him. ‘I kill it, she cooks it,’ he went on. ‘What we don’t eat she sells at the Third Tuesday Farmers’ Market.’

I was not in Kansas any more.

‘When you say kill it, you’re speaking figuratively, right?’ I said. ‘You mean you pop down to Waitrose, stalk the aisles in a predatory fashion and wrestle the last piece of frozen chicken from a single mum with toddler twins.’

‘You’re in the country now,’ said Liz, who’d crept closer. ‘Jim wouldn’t eat a piece of meat that’s seen the inside of a supermarket.’ She nodded towards a wiry, silver-haired man by the window and Lacey had an urge to ask if Jim were her husband or her brother, or both. Laura, though, gave her a tight-lipped smile. Without returning it, Liz picked up a stack of dirty plates and left the room.

‘So you’re a killer?’ I asked Nick, looking into his eyes, trying to see if there was anything not quite right in there. They looked steadily back, a rich golden brown. Beautiful eyes. With a light in them that I couldn’t interpret.

‘Got a problem with that?’ he asked.

‘Depends what you kill,’ I said. ‘And, I guess, on how you do it.’ Oh, I had to be careful. Lacey was standing on tiptoe, arms outstretched, desperate to be out of her box, and if this man had anything to hide I was probably putting him on maximum alert.

He was a cool customer, I had to admit. He gave me a very wide grin and took my empty plate from me. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you my lethal weapons.’

*

Jessica Calloway opened her eyes to find she was no longer in her room at college, the scene of so many dreadful nightmares lately. She was in a forest. She got to her feet slowly. She could see stars shining down through impossibly tall trees. The ground was covered with a soft sprinkling of frost that gleamed silver in the starlight.

‘Jessica,’ called a voice from somewhere among the trees. A high-pitched, tinny voice that didn’t sound quite human. This was just another bad dream. She’d wake up soon, trembling and sweating and screaming, but awake and safe.

She was standing on a rough path that had been formed by the constant passage of footsteps. Every few yards or so a small light was half hidden amidst the undergrowth, each giving off a soft glow. The lights seemed to invite her on, deeper into the woods.

A movement above her head made her jump. She looked up to see a creature, a very large bat, swooping down from the trees towards her. Jessica started, then stared at it in astonishment. The bat was the palest shade of blue and it left behind a trail like a silver moonbeam. As Jessica watched, the bat disappeared and the trail shimmered away to nothing.

In the boot room, Nick was holding out an oilskin coat for me. I slipped my arms into it and we stepped outside to find that snow was falling. I felt a flurry of nerves and told myself to chill. We were surrounded by people. This was his home. Nothing was going to happen.

‘I didn’t bring a torch,’ he said. ‘Stay close.’

We followed a flagstone path that led away from the main house towards a row of outbuildings. Some of them looked like stables. As we drew closer the long, pale face of a horse appeared.

‘This is Shadowfax,’ Nick said, stopping to stroke the horse’s nose.

‘You really are a Lord of the Rings fan,’ I muttered, as he pulled keys from his jeans pocket and slid one of them into the door of the next building.

‘They’ll be asleep,’ he said. ‘Keep your voice low.’

Inside the shed was darkness, a strong smell of animal waste and an odd, expectant silence. Then a flapping just over my left shoulder. Light began to grow. I could see Nick’s hand in the corner of the room, adjusting a dimmer switch. I was being watched by ten pairs of soft, black eyes.

I’d stepped back against the door. Too quickly. I’d startled them. They jumped, squawked, flapped and grumbled.

‘Are you OK?’ asked Nick, frowning at me. ‘Sorry, should I have warned you?’

‘What are they?’ I asked, my eyes flicking from one creature to the next, taking in that they were all tethered to their perches. I still wasn’t moving from the door.

‘Peregrine falcons,’ Nick replied, approaching the nearest bird. The creature bent its head towards Nick’s outstretched hand, as though it would nuzzle against him. Or bite. Nick pulled out of reach before either could happen.

The birds differed slightly in size but were identical in colouring. The feathers on their backs and upper wings were the colour of rain-drenched slate. Those on their breasts were cream and cinnamon, dappled with black. ‘Fastest creatures on the planet,’ said Nick. ‘Haldir, this is Laura.’

The falcon looked at me. Its eyes were black, rimmed with yellow. I’d seen people with less intelligence in their eyes.

‘I thought that was the cheetah,’ I said. The falcon hadn’t taken its eyes off me.

‘Cheetah, shmeetah,’ said Nick, lifting his fingers towards the bird again, pulling them out of reach as the bird ducked its head. ‘The cheetah can run at seventy miles an hour for a couple of minutes. Peregrines have been recorded diving at two hundred miles per hour.’

At the far end of the shed, on a separate, raised perch, a bird that I was pretty certain was an owl jumped and spread its wings, as though clamouring for attention.

‘Well, I would be impressed, but isn’t that just the same as falling?’ I said. ‘If you’re high enough, don’t you just gather speed ad infinitum?’