The Children of Black Annis Read online

  "Then why don't you?" I say.

  "Because I want to know what you are," he says, "and they wouldn't tell me. They'd just turn up, take you away, and tell me to forget all about you. They'd keep you to themselves and I'd have to live the rest of my life knowing that I had something unusual in my grasp, and I let it go. I'm too inquisitive. I want to know the truth, and that means getting it from you directly."

  "I guess I must be a werewolf," I say.

  He smiles. "Interesting. I was thinking earlier that if I was in your situation, I'd probably make a joke about the truth, to try to put me off the scent. Is that what you're trying to do, Emily? Are you trying to make me assume that you're lying?" He stares at me, clearly trying to figure me out. "Are you, in fact, a werewolf?" He laughs. "I know, I sound crazy even saying the word. But there's clearly something unusual about you."

  I start to tense up a little. I can't quite get a handle on this guy. He seems friendly, but at the same time he's handcuffed me to the bed and he's getting a little too close to the truth for comfort. "Maybe I should just leave," I say.

  "Not just yet," he says. "I'm still trying to work out if you're some kind of monster, or a genetic anomaly, a mutant perhaps? Or maybe you came down from space in a flying saucer? There's something wrong with you, Emily Smith, and I'm going to find out what it is. Look at things from my point of view: I could win the fucking Nobel Prize if I play my cards right here. I might have discovered a new species. Or maybe I could sell your secrets to the military for billions?"

  "I'm not a lab animal," I say firmly.

  "No, you're not," he replies. "You're a girl. You seem human enough. One might even say that you're attractive, in the right light. So I'm wondering if you're a hybrid of some sort. Part human, part... something else. I'm a man of science. I'm not given to flights of fancy about werewolves and vampires, but at the same time I have to be open to the possibility that the natural world is continually coming up with new ideas. I also have to face the proof that's right in front of me. I need to know what you are, and therefore I'm willing to offer you a deal."

  "I don't do deals," I say. This guy is seriously starting to piss me off now.

  "Consider changing your policy," he replies. "I've already taken a blood sample from you, and some DNA. I also got some X-rays done, though they didn't show me anything. I'm still waiting for the results of the blood and DNA tests. But I imagine it'll take me years to understand what you are if I have to do it the hard way. So here's what I'm going to suggest. Tell me everything. Tell me the truth about what you are, and then I'll let you go. I'll carry on with my studies, and then I'll claim I encountered you out in the wilderness and that's how I got the samples. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours." He stares at me a little longer, as if he's trying to work out what I'm thinking. "Do we have a deal?"

  "No," I say, finally getting tired of this guy. I grab the handcuff and, as expected, I'm able to peel it easily from around my wrist, freeing myself so that I can finally stand up and face the doctor. "No deal." I can immediately see that he's surprised at my strength. He looks over at the door, but I lean close to him. "I'm going to walk out of here now," I say, "and you can do whatever you want, but there's no way in hell I'm gonna stick around here so you can poke me. Got it?"

  "Yes," he says, swallowing hard.

  I turn and walk towards the door. I hear him moving behind me, and for a moment I just ignore him before it suddenly occurs to me that he might be more dangerous than I realize I turn and look at him, just in time to see him lunging at me with a syringe. Fortunately I'm able to step out of the way in time and he clatters into the wall. Feeling the anger building inside, I grab his arm and break it over my knee, which causes him to drop the syringe and cry out in pain as the bone breaks.

  "I'm going now," I say, turning and walking out into the corridor. As I get to the double doors at the end, I hear an alarm start to sound, and I look back to see the doctor staggering out of the room.

  I run. Almost colliding with several people in the next corridor, I get to the stairs and race down to the lobby. I'm immediately confronted by two security guards, but I manage to catch them by surprise so it's pretty easy to knock them to the ground. In fact, as I punch the second one, I feel his jaw break. I wasn't planning to hurt him, but I guess I don't know my own strength sometimes.

  "Sorry," I say, looking down at him as he writhes in agony on the floor. He's clutching his face, with blood pouring from his mouth. It looks like I nearly knocked his lower jaw clean off his face.

  "Seal the doors!" shouts a man on the other side of the lobby. I look over to see some guards locking the doors. I could break through, but I don't feel like hurting anyone else today, so I run straight ahead and jump over the reception desk. Someone nearby screams, and I hear a couple of gunshots go off. There's a sharp, splintering pain in my shoulder and I drop to the floor; it takes me a moment to get my breath, but finally I decide that there's no time to be neat and polite here so I run towards the window and throw myself through the glass, which shatters under my force. I land outside in the parking lot, my skin cut to shreds by the shards all around me, and then I turn and bolt off towards the trees in the distance. As I run, I figure there's no point looking back to see if anyone's watching me, so I remain in my human form until I'm out of sight and then I switch to become a wolf. I run and run and run.

  Jess

  It takes me a couple of hours to get back to Herne, which I'm not even sure is a good idea. I could just keep on running and head away, but I feel that I should go back and find Duncan. He's not at the hotel, so I head over to Brian Martin's house, staying in my wolf form so that I won't draw too much attention. It's possible that people from the hospital will be out looking for me, and they might have traced the car back to Brian Martin's daughter by now. But I have nowhere else to go, so I figure I'll go and find Duncan and we can work out a plan together. My injuries from the gunshot wound and the glass are almost healed, so I should be able to run if necessary.

  Reaching the house just after dawn, I leap over the fence in the back garden and cautiously approach the back door, which has been left open. I poke my snout inside, sniffing the air for a moment. Everything smells okay, so I decide to go in. The house seems strangely still, and I quickly discover Meredith asleep on the sofa downstairs. She looks peaceful, as if she's lost in a deep sleep. I guess she and I got off on the wrong foot before, and I kind of feel bad for destroying her car. Maybe she's not so bad after all.

  It's not hard to find Duncan. He's in one of the rooms upstairs, watching TV as if there's nothing wrong.

  "You're back," he says. "That's good. Hang on, we'll talk in a minute."

  I stare at him for a moment before switching back into my human form. Duncan is sat in the corner, watching Jerry Springer and eating a bowl of cheese biscuits. He seems to be completely absorbed by the TV show, as if it's the most important thing in the world right now.

  "You want to know what's been going on?" I ask.

  Duncan swallows his latest mouthful of biscuits, keeping his eyes fixed on the TV. "The guy on the left slept with his cousin, but then it turned out she wasn't his cousin, she was his long-lost brother, who'd had an operation to remove his -"

  "Not that!" I say, sitting up. "Do you want to know what happened to me?"

  "Hang on," he says, still not looking over at me. "There's only five minutes left. I want to find out if the baby is -"

  "I just fought my way out of a hospital" I say.

  "Ssshhhh!" Duncan says. "Just a few more minutes."

  I stand there as Duncan finishes watching the show. It's as if he doesn't really care where I've been, which makes me realize he probably didn't even notice that I was missing. He probably thinks I've been sitting in the hotel all night, being a good little girl and not getting in his way.

  "I knew it!" Duncan says, smiling as the credits roll on Jerry Springer. He turns the TV off and then he turns to me. "Their kid's going to be seriously
screwed up," he says. "Abby Hart's got her work cut out for her if she's going to beat that."

  "So do you want to know where I've been?" I ask.

  "You drowned," Duncan says. "Fortunately you're a werewolf, so you're a bit stronger than the average human. If you were just a regular person, you'd have been dead long before they found you." He pauses. "That's all I know so far, so you're going to have to explain it a little better. Meredith got a phone call telling her what had happened to your car, and we pieced most of the story together from that."

  "You knew I was in hospital?" I ask.

  He nods.

  "And you didn't come and rescue me?" I say, kind of shocked that he chose to sit and watch TV rather than help me out.

  "Did you need rescuing?" he asks, smiling slightly.

  "That's not the point!" I say. "You could have at least shown that you cared!"

  "Oh," he says, "so you wanted me to make a futile gesture and put us both at risk, did you? I see. Well, I decided that you'd be fine. But if you hadn't shown up by this afternoon, I promise I would have come and checked on you." He pauses. "So what happened? Why did you end up driving Meredith's car into the sea?"

  "I..." I pause. "I did it on purpose."

  "You did, huh?" he says.

  I nod. "I felt like..." I pause, suddenly remembering the creepy kids. "There were these kids -"

  "With black eyes?" Duncan asks.

  "Yes!" I say. "How did you know?"

  "Were the kids in the car?" he asks.

  "No," I reply. "They were... they were at the hotel, and then I drove away and they turned up at the payphone. They kept asking if I could take them home."

  "So you drove into the sea instead."

  I shake my head. "It wasn't like that," I say. "I started thinking about my family. All the stuff I've tried to ignore, I just couldn't stop thinking about it and everything seemed so hopeless. I even called home and heard my mother's voice. It's insane, but -"

  "It was like your mind was overwhelmed by every negative thought and feeling you've ever had?" Duncan says, as if he knows something that I don't know. "And then you decided to just give up and end it all?"

  "Kind of," I say. "I know it sounds silly now." The truth is, it does sound silly. I've been through some crap in my life, but I've never considered ending it all. Even when I was living on the streets of London, I never thought of killing myself, and my (considerable) emotional baggage from my crappy family life has always been buried deep down where it can't do much damage. And another thing: I know that I was partly to blame for what happened with my family, but last night I was overcome by the feeling that it was all my fault. It felt as if I'd been building a dam in my mind for years and years, and that dam finally broke. But this morning, I feel fine again, as if nothing happened.

  Duncan stands up, walks across the room and picks up a couple of folders from a little table over by the window. "I was watching Jerry Springer for a little light relief. I spent most of last night looking through Brian's folders, reading about the stuff he'd been researching." He holds up a thick, untidy folder stuffed with papers. "This one was about werewolves. Quite comprehensive, though he missed some big stories. No mention of werewolves who became famous in human society, prime ministers, members of The Beatles, that sort of thing..."

  "One of The Beatles was a werewolf?" I ask.

  Duncan nods. "But I'm not going to tell you which one." He pauses. "Not the one you're thinking, that's for sure. Anyway, I'll have to burn this folder. Far too much information. But then there's this." He throws the other folder, which is much smaller, into my lap. "Black-eyed children. Brian was looking into them. He wasn't focusing on them, exactly, and I don't think he got very close to the truth, but it seems there were quite a lot of sightings around Herne, and Brian was documenting them. But then he noticed something unusual. The three people he interviewed about their experiences all killed themselves, separately, within a few days."

  I open the file and flick through the pages. Eventually I come to a sketch of two children, and I immediately recognize them. "I saw these two kids last night," I say, kind of shocked by the drawing. "This is them."

  "And then you tried to kill yourself," Duncan says. "I wouldn't mind betting that all the people who've killed themselves had recently seen these two kids."

  I pause. "What are they?"

  "I have no idea," he says. "Not a clue."

  "Why would they want to kill people?" I ask. "It doesn't make sense."

  "No," he replies, "it doesn't. Which is why I don't think that's what they're doing. Think about it. There have been a hundred victims so far. You'd think that if they wanted something, they'd have it by now, so I don't think they're in control of what's happening. I think the deaths are a side-effect, and perhaps an unwanted one. Also, they're children. Children often don't have control of their powers. And what are children?"

  I stare at him.

  "Jess," he says, as if he's prompting me. "What are children?"

  "Offspring?" I ask.

  "Exactly," he says. "Offspring of parents. These children are lost. They want to get back to their parents."

  "They asked me to take them home," I say.

  "That's what they asked the people Brian interviewed as well," Duncan says. "And I bet you turned them down, didn't you? Because of their creepy little faces and their black eyes and all that stuff."

  "Well..." I pause. "Yeah, I turned them down. You fucking bet I did."

  "So imagine you're them," Duncan says. "You're separated from your parents. You're lost and alone. You keep asking strangers, adults, to take you home, but they won't help because you look a bit weird. On top of that, every time you go near anyone, they get overcome and end up killing themselves. These children are in a complete mess."

  I take a deep breath, trying to work out what he's getting at. "You're saying that they're not evil?" I ask. "They've killed a hundred people, and they have jet fucking black eyes like... like the fucking Devil himself, and you're saying it's all a big misunderstanding?"

  "It's possible," Duncan says. "At the same time, I'm not sure I want to meet the parents any time soon."

  I put the file down. "You have no idea what it felt like," I say. "The sheer, overwhelming feeling of doom was... impossible to overcome. It's like not only were all my real feelings brought to the surface, but there were all these new ones as well. I kept thinking about my family, all that stuff I've been very carefully not thinking about."

  He stares at me. "Like what?" he asks.

  "Nice try," I reply. Duncan's been trying to get to the bottom of my dark family past for a while now, and there's no way I'm gonna tell him. A girl's allowed to have a few secrets, isn't she? And besides, I don't want him to start looking down at me, or judging me.

  "We have to go and find them," Duncan says.

  "My parents?" I say, shocked. "No fucking way!"

  "Not your parents," he says, "although we can do that some other time. No, we have to go and find these children and help them get to where they want to go."

  "No way," I say. "I'm not going anywhere near them again."

  "We'll find a way to protect ourselves," he says.

  "How?" I ask. "Are we gonna put metal hats on? There's no way I'm going anywhere near them ever again."

  "Then I'll go alone," he says.

  "Yeah, that'll go well," I say. "It's not like you've got any repressed feelings that could come bubbling up to the surface, is it?"

  "What else can we do?" Duncan asks. "If we don't do anything, they'll just keep going until this whole town is dead. And besides, I'm a well-balanced individual. My negative feelings are kept in check, and I'm fairly sure I can withstand anything they throw at me. I've got more experience as a -" He pauses. "Why are you laughing?"

  "Sorry," I say, feeling bad but unable to stop myself, "but... are you sure you're well-balanced? I mean... Come on. I've met you. I see through all the jokes and the stupid stuff."

  "I'm fine," he
says, "and I'm going to prove it by going to talk to these black-eyed children."

  I sigh. "Then I'm coming with you."

  "Me too," says Meredith. I turn to see that she's been loitering by the door, listening to us talk.

  "Jesus," I say, "do you ever knock?"

  "Sorry," she replies, "but I want to come with you. I heard what you said, and I don't know if I believe it, but I want to see everything for myself. I want to see what's really happening."

  "It might be a little... difficult," Duncan says. "I don't know what these children are or what they want."

  "I have to see for myself," Meredith says. She smiles at me. "I'm glad you're okay, Jess. You looked like you were in a bad way last night."

  "I guess I was," I say. "Sorry about your car."

  "It was my father's," she says. "I mean, it was mine now, but I'll sort it out. The police said they thought someone had stolen it. I just agreed with them. It seemed easier. I'll get it back on insurance, I guess."

  Duncan heads over to the door. "I'm going to grab some things from the hotel room," he says. "Jess, you stay here. I'll be back soon." He pauses. "So... on a scale of one to ten, how much chaos did you cause at the hospital?"

  I consider the question for a moment. "Seven," I say. "It could have been a lot worse."

  "Seven?" he replies, clearly surprised. "I'd have thought you'd manage at least a nine."

  "Well maybe it was a nine by your standards," I say, "but by mine, it was a seven."

  "That's better," he says, smiling.

  Once he's gone, there's an awkward moment as I sit there and try to think of something to say to Meredith.

  "You hungry?" she asks eventually. "I can make you something. How do you feel about egg and bacon?"

  "That'd be good, thanks," I say, and she heads off to the kitchen. I pick up the file Duncan showed me, but then I spot the other one, the one about werewolves. Grabbing it, I flick through until suddenly I find a photo of Duncan and some other girl. It's an old photo, looking like it's from the mid-twentieth century. Hand-written on the back are words that make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up: "Duncan and Anna."