Darker London

The scene smelled of spilled petrol and Stephie clutched Marie tighter, gagging not from the smell itself but the sense memory of the Templar splashing Thomas with petrol. She pressed her face against Marie’s hair, and clung. Marie was wailing and clinging too, Stephie could feel her tears hot on her neck in heartbreaking contrast to the icy shock as they were both soaked completely in the rain.

( ... )

Blind with fury, Imogene rode. Immortality lent a certain amount of confidence to riding a bike, something she hadn’t done for over forty years. The thought of crashing or falling did not occur to her because crashing or falling would slow her down, and that was unthinkable. She must catch up to her husband, the liar. The cheat. The irredeemable bastard. She must catch up to him and tear open his whole life as punishment.

As she caught up with him, she forced clarity upon herself. Blind fury would not work. She need lucidity if she was going to come out of tonight on top. She needed to be clear sighted and goal orientated. Imogene took a long, deep breath, and asked herself what she wanted.

She wanted every lie he’d ever told revealed, wanted the weight of them to crush him, utterly destroy him. That had been her mistake, she realised. She should have destroyed him earlier, in order to rebuild him into the kind of man she wanted him to be.

Well, she would destroy him now, but she had no plans to waste any more of her heart in trying to redeem him this time. He was past help. Their marriage was in its death throes, and all Imogene wanted was to make it as messy a death as possible.


As he drove, Harley made frantic plans. London was over. London was done. He must get home and grab anything of value, and grab Rachel, and get them all back into the car and leave. He did not give a shit where they went, so long as it was far. Maybe America. You could really hide from your past, in America. You had the right to protect yourself properly there, too. Imogene wouldn’t have fucked with him if he’d been carrying his gun.

Harley was not immortal, but tonight, he drove like it.

( ... )

Rachel scrolled through the pictures Danny had sent her of his new home, the way he'd decorated his bedroom, the cakes in the kitchen, the backyard, the cat, Deirdre making a ridiculous face at the camera, barely dressed even though it was the dead of winter. Alex was in the background of a couple of them, and Rachel stopped scrolling for a few moments to look at her. She couldn't tell if Alex looked more relaxed than before, couldn't tell what her feelings were about living in this new place just from two pictures. But god, Rachel wanted to know.

Zoe had told Rachel all about what they'd done; going to Alex's house to strip it of her stuff, make a clean break from her awful mother. Zoe hadn't hidden how proud she was of Alex, as if there was any pride to be had in a family's final death throes.

( ... )

Noise woke Rachel up, a slam of a door and heavy footsteps somewhere in the building. That wasn't weird, the walls were thin, pipes in the wall behind her head rattled whenever someone down-or-upstairs was having a shower, the whole complex was full of stompers and shouters and criers and people who dragged furniture across their floors at two in the morning, people who played distant thumbing music. If her life had a soundtrack it was this chaotic mess.

Rachel's head hurt, and her ankle complained sharply as she rolled over to grope for her drink bottle and her phone. The bottle only had a mouthful left in it and her phone was on fifteen percent. She rubbed a bit of the sandpapery feeling out of her eyes and plugged it back in, scrolling through messages and updates before her eyes had really cleared.

( ... )

Rachel had been lying on her back under her quilt, scrolling through her phone, but when she read Danny's post she had to put it down for a minute.

Alarm bells. Muscles across her chest, tightening.

She couldn't leave her phone face down for long, the pull was too strong. She picked it up again and his post still said the same thing. He wanted to move out of his house. And Rachel was convinced her was going to ask her because surely, he'd ask her, and she'd have to say - something...

( ... )

Rachel left her towering black of flats early the next morning, before her father woke up. Imogene had already risen and left, Rachel could only tell because the shower curtain was damper than it had been last night. Presumably she'd had breakfast, but there was never any trace of crumbs on the bench and Imogene couldn't stand plates left out after use.

Maybe if she'd left early she wouldn't be out very late, Rachel thought hopefully. Maybe she should see if Cai wanted to come back here for dinner. But what if Imogene was out? Rachel doubted her ability to look after Cai on her own. Cai had told her once that he thought she had some kinda power but somewhere along the lines Rachel thought it had all bled out of her. Maybe she'd outrun it the day she tried to run across the city on a damaged ankle, left it behind on the street somewhere. She certainly hadn't felt capable of looking after anyone after that. Not since Imogene moved in and all the highs and lows of life started to disappear.

( ... )

Zoe had had a difficult day already, but it wasn't any more difficult than any other day had been since she'd realised the funeral they'd seen had been Alex's. She'd spent the morning studying, lunch with Danny and Rachel at uni - that had been fun, or at least, didn't set off any new things to worry about - then a few more hours of studying because even though it was still early in the term Zoe was bracing for a death and if she was going to fail at keeping Alex alive then she'd rather not fail university as well.

Studying felt heartless, when she thought about it like that. But it was something she could do, so she did it, and chemical equations came together on her notes in ways that the rest of her life didn't.

( ... )

Rachel's dinner with Harley and Imogene had been pretty quiet - on her part. The restaurant they'd taken her too had been dimly lit, full of soft candlelight and Rachel felt like a third wheel on their romantic date. And it was romantic - Harley was going over the top with Imogene, touching her at any given opportunity, taking her hand or stroking her hair or leaning over the table and kissing her while Rachel stared at her food and tried to be invisible and blind.

She could barely eat, she was so uncomfortable. The wine, yes, she could drink, hoping that would settle her nerves. The glass was enormous, meant for swirling the wine around to bring out the scent, but it just made Rachel feel like she was very small. And once the glass was gone, she didn't have any more, because Harley and Imogene still had wine in their glasses and Rachel felt too out of place to try and ask the waited for anything.

The air hung heavily over her head, poised to shatter. She could destroy everything with a few words. Tear this family apart. He's cheating on you she thought, pushing a piece of sweet potato gnocchi through the sauce on her plate. They were only on entrées and Rachel had no appetite. Harley lifted Imogene's hand to his mouth to kiss it and Rachel thought He's lying.

( ... )

Alex went to bed the earliest, though it was far from early. In the living area, on their soft fat couches with the windows facing the beach open to the warm night air, everyone else was sitting around, legs and laughter all entwined. Rachel had come back from her dinner with her parents and things seemed okay but Alex's mood had changed, and she just kept thinking you're all so sick.

How could they laugh, and flirt, and order room service like nothing had happened.

How could Lydia and Dylan forget the sound of people screaming as they tried to escape the theatre.

How could Rachel forget she'd lived with that monster for so long before she snapped.

( ... )

When Cai and Zoe arrived on Danny's doorstep, Zoe was grinning in pure nerves. Sure, they had demon bodyguards was hanging close but in order to relax Zoe would have to have faith that someone like Rosa could keep them 100% safe and since nothing in the world could do that Zoe didn't think relaxation was really on the cards.

Cards, however, were on the cards. Cai had packed some. "Gonna park my butt under the air conditioning unit and play some poker!" Cai was trying to make up for Zoe's nerves by being overenthusiastic about everything and talking about his butt a lot.

Although currently he was poking his head through Wolf's dog door. "Dannyyyy!" he called. "We're heere!"

Zoe looked down at his butt, sticking out of Danny's door, then back down the road to check she could still see the bodyguard car.

Sitting around the table at Mariposa's with Danny and Cai, Zoe and Alex had been fun, but as it got later Rachel got quieter. She rolled her glass around and around on the table, making spirals in the condensation. She ripped one napkin into pieces the size of her little fingernail, and then another, but stopped at three when Danny noticed and took her hand. She'd smiled and arranged the bits into a heart on the table instead, hoping he wouldn't think she was being destructive just for the sake of it.

It got harder to keep up with the conversation, as time went on. It was like they'd all go silent for a while and then something world burst through and get her attention again "-full on rabid wedding planner mode," Zoe was saying, and Rachel realised she'd missed a whole lot of conversation, and spent the next few minutes trying to concentrate and work out who Zoe was talking about, but then Cai made a joke about corn and the conversation changed again and she was lost.

She wasn't freaking out about going home or anything. She was just... not there.

( ... )

Cai had the car for the day, providing that he picked up groceries on the way home, so he'd picked up Alex first on their way to Mariposa. Alex wasn't going to admit it, but she was relieved Cai was coming too. It was kinda weird to get an invitation to have coffee just from Danny. Kind, she supposed, rather than weird.

No, still weird. This whole group's unanimous adoption of her was weird. Still, Alex didn't have a lot of options. It was certainly better than hanging out on her own, and a hundred times better than hanging out with her mum. She'd rather be meeting at a pub, but coffee and something sweet would do for a while. She bet she could convince them to turn it into a pub crawl. Cai had been kinda cute when he was drunk.

They had to park a few blocks away and the walk to the cafe wasn't as shady as she would have liked. Stupid summer. "Ugh, I'm gagging for a cold brew," she muttered to Cai as they approached the cafe. Cai was looking at his phone and she leaned in to see, and Cai didn't try to hide it. "Rach saying she's late," he said, flashing the screen of the group chat toward her, then grinning as he caught sight of Danny already waiting at a table in the shade. "Hey bro," he said, holding out his hand for a fist bump. "All right?"

Danny was coming over! Danny was coming over and Rachel was so excited to prove to him how okay she was with Imogene now. He had been totally right when he'd said he hadn't been around her much, so how was he to know how much she'd actually changed?

Almost all the time when they were hanging out it was at Danny's or Zoe's or Cai's, though not Cai's so much these days. Or at uni, but it was holidays now. Hardly ever at Rachel's and Rachel did get it, because her house did used to be awful, but it was so much nicer now. Way calmer. And way, way cleaner.

And at the moment, way empty! She had the whole place to herself while her dad was out at work and while Imogene was out, probably searching for Indigo, but Rachel didn't know for sure. Imogene was out a lot and Rachel didn't want to ask, in case it was about Indigo, and in case it made her mad.

( ... )

After the service let out, Cai saw Alex break away from her mother while Ellen talked to their priest. His first instinct was to bolt through the elderly and plant himself in front of her, but she looked like a harsh breeze would blow her over, as Dom used to say. She was dressed neat, her skirt just long enough for church but just short enough to let her legs breath in the heat, the crochet lace cardigan long enough she could pull it nervously over her hands but airy enough she wasn’t dying. There was a pinched look on her face and she looked entirely alone. Cai restrained himself to some extent, and sidled over with a casual motion he felt must look altogether false from the outside, because it certainly felt false from the driver’s seat.

She spotted him; Alex was on the lookout for any kind of approaching movement. Cai pushed his hands into his pockets and smiled at her. She had not been at church since Indigo had put her in hospital and it wasn’t like she’d been a faithful every-Sunday attendee before that, but her absence since the massacre had been notable. Her mother’s presence in the congregation radiated even stronger, ever since, and Ellen had made sure that her daughter’s name was mentioned, every service.

( ... )

The floor in their house had never been cleaner. True fact: nothing in this house had ever been cleaner, but Rachel’s bare feet were on the floor - well, one bare foot, one bandaged one. All her toes were bare, and hadn’t picked up crumbs or hair or stepped in anything sticky, so it was the floor she was noticing at the moment.

Imogene had also bought a thick rug that lay on the floor between the couch and the television, so when Rachel sat on the couch she could bury her toes in it. She was trying to notice more nice things, like new rugs around her toes, soft and thick. If she began with the rug, she could spread the niceness out further and further, till it breached the walls of the apartment and spread out into the rest of the world.

( ... )

I promise! Now, I gotta stop replying because I'm in the car and about to start driving. See you soon!

Cai put his phone down on the car seat, and hit the eject button so he could put his own CD in. One day, he thought, they were gonna upgrade this car stereo so it would play iPods, and he’d probably kinda mourn that day, because there was something pretty awesome about a grand CD collection. He pulled out the CD and froze, because it was one of Dom's, and the thought that this was the last music he ever listened to in the car stole the breath out of his lungs.

( ... )

Once upon a time, Zoe had run all the way from her house to Rachel’s. She’d turned up in the dead of the night, covered in sweat and so high, as high as Rachel had ever seen her.

Collapsing on Rachel’s bed, Zoe had said to her ‘you can’t even imagine how perfectly clear everything is at this moment’ but Rachel could, now, Rachel did.

( ... )

Her dad had said no, but her friends were coming for her anyway. Danny and Zoe were coming and Liz and Deirdre were coming and Cai had reminded her to breath and this was a whole goddamn lot to take in. Her hands trembled with defiance. Well, they were trembling fairly often on the days she hadn’t taken her meds but it was fine, all she had to do was get to Zoe’s.

Rachel pulled on her backpack just as Harley opened the door. He’d given her a few minutes to cool off, but looking at her now it had been a few minutes too many. “What are you doing?”

“Leaving,” Rachel hiccupped. “Not staying here, with her, I’m leaving.”

( ... )

Rachel refused to admit that staying up all night talking to Danny could have been a bad idea. He had managed to stop her obsessing over all the terrible things Imogene could do to her and her father, and she’d stopped reading everything people were saying online about Indigo and the massacre, so there was that.

News sites did not name Indigo – she was still a minor – and there was no mention on anything official that their main suspect was an unarmed teenage girl, but if you dug a little deeper (and Rachel dug) then speculation was rife. One of the ambulances leaving the scene had been attacked as well. There’d been a robbery and stabbing a few blocks over – everyone was saying that was related, but Rachel didn’t think Indigo would have tried to hold up a McColls.

( ... )

Imogene came back to life a sobbing thing, weeping bloody tears as parts of her broken face rearranged themselves, and she was was forced to confront the reality of her new broken world. Her favourite hallway rug ruined, her relationship with her daughter smeared, cold and concealed, all over the hardwood floor.

Indigo was long gone by the time her mother could begin to peel her body off the floor, her hair hardened into a crusty helmet around her head. She tried to stand before she was ready and her legs trembled, lamblike, and collapsed beneath her. This sort of thing happened occasionally in the Dumitra family, but Imogene could not believe it had happened to her, could not believe she was forced to crawl out of the lake of her own blood that her daughter had reduced her to.

( ... )