Chapter Sixty-Nine
Nicole
WHEN NICOLE AWOKE, IT WAS TO FIND DR KANER HOVERING above her, fanning her with someone’s essay.
‘She’s waking up. Oh, thank god,’ she said to someone else. ‘I don’t know, he just attacked her! He’s gone,’ Chloe assured Nicole. ‘Just rest, I’m going to call an ambulance and the police.’
Nicole tried to tell her no, but couldn’t make a sound. Her voice was a wheeze and her throat razored with pain as stars danced in her vision.
‘Stop,’ she croaked.
‘Just relax,’ said another voice: a woman in her forties who came into Nicole’s vision as Chloe darted back to her desk. ‘Just lie still, we’re getting help.’
Nicole reached up for the woman and, as they helped her, she put all her energy into her Influence.
‘Forget everything she’s told you.’ Her voice was thready, but her Influence seemed to work. ‘Leave.’
‘Woah, hey—’ Chloe said, her phone forgotten in her hand.
‘Where did he go?’ Nicole rasped, struggling up. Her body was swiftly healing, but Alexander’s grip had been so intense she was surprised he hadn’t killed her.
‘I don’t know. He got spooked when I – I stabbed him.’
Nicole shook her head. He’d been impaled with a metal bar, it wasn’t the blade that had spooked him. ‘Did you speak? Did you say some strange words?’
‘I – I’ve been trying to reconstruct the Pictish language.’
‘I thought it was a lost language?’
‘I just spoke my best estimation, there are many theories. I saw the tattoos and …’
Nicole’s blurry vision righted on her phone. She needed to warn Kyan. If Alexander had just left, there was no telling where he was, and if he might come back. If they had found her, they could get to Kyan next.
‘You need to tell me what the hell is happening,’ Chloe said.
‘Can I have some water?’ Nicole asked.
As Chloe spun to reach the water dispenser, Nicole dialled Kyan.
‘Any news?’ he asked immediately.
She was hit with such relief, such bone-deep affection that tears almost sprang to her eyes.
‘Alexander was here.’ The words were little more than a rasp, and she heard the increased footfalls as Kyan started running.
‘Where are you? Is he there? Are you—’ He bit off, as if he almost couldn’t ask it. ‘Did that piece of fucking shite hurt you?’
‘I’m still with Dr Kaner. He’s gone, I’m healing. But he might come back, or find you.’
‘Don’t hang up, I’m coming.’
Nicole put him on speaker, taking the slightly shaky paper cup of water from Chloe.
‘Tell me why I shouldn’t call the police right now.’
‘Because that man was not human and neither am I, and calling the police will only result in you losing your memories, or worse. So I’m going to give you a choice, Dr Kaner.’ Her throat burned, building up to Influence. ‘Either I can wipe your memory—’
‘What—’
‘—and get you sent away somewhere safe in case he comes back. Or you can remember this but not do anything about it, and contact me if you can think of anything that might stop him.’
‘You’re telling me he … he wasn’t human?’
‘Did he seem it to you?’
Chloe’s chest was still heaving, and she looked to the debris of her office, one hand still gripping the bloodied knife she’d used on Alexander.
‘His tattoos were Pictish,’ she said at last, as if the only thing in this moment that made sense to her was her scholarship. Nicole could relate.
‘Could you translate any of them?’
She hesitated, and Nicole was too overwhelmed to parse if that was because Chloe was going to keep something to herself.
‘Not really. They were probably nonsense, like people that get tattoos in foreign languages and have no idea what they mean.’
‘They’ll be real.’
Chloe shook her head. ‘You don’t understand. If it’s real, that would make him over one thousand five hundred years old, at least.’
Nicole only gave her a bleak look.
Chloe let out a shaky breath as her shock made way for surprise. ‘Why would saying anything stop him in his tracks? He was going to kill you.’
‘Perhaps because he hadn’t heard it spoken in over a thousand years.’
Chloe swallowed. ‘One of them might have been a name, but it was too warped.’
When Kyan joined the Wake, he changed his name from Cú Chulainn to Kyan. Not just leaving behind the name his king had given him, but even the Irish spelling.
That in itself was an important part of Kyan’s life, and revealed his mentality when he joined the Wake. Could it do the same for Alexander? Give them some insight they could use against him?
‘Any idea why he would change his name to Alexander?’ Nicole asked, sinking into the other, surviving chair, needing a moment. The memory of the sheer, bone-crushing power of his grip still made her head fuzzy.
‘Alexander? That’s his name?’ Chloe was lost in thought for a moment, as if now realising that the deadly warrior who’d been in here was real enough to have a name.
‘I mean’ – keeping an eye on the now splintered door, she lifted one hand to rub her temples – ‘Alexander the Great was before his time. If that assassin was in – from? – ancient Scotland, it would be the only Alexander he’d have heard about.
It’s not a name of Scottish origin. Alexander the Great was …
well, a tyrant. A power-hungry young man who had a lot to prove. ’
That wasn’t promising for Alexander’s personality.
‘I’m going to need information on that knife,’ Nicole said, nodding to the bloodied item still in the archaeologist’s grip, her knuckles white.
‘Oh – I – I can’t seem to let go of it.’
‘That’s okay,’ Nicole said, rising to move shakily around the desk.
Chloe blinked a few times. ‘I feel funny all of a sudden.’
‘It’ll be the adrenaline leaving your system,’ Nicole said as Chloe began to tip. Nicole grabbed her and helped the woman sink into her chair so she didn’t smack her head on the large wooden desk.
When Chloe looked up, her eyes burned, not just with the shimmer of tears, but with fervour. ‘Don’t make me forget.’
Nicole took a moment to consider. She needed to call her family. Get away from here. But there was no guarantee Alexander wouldn’t come back and Influence or kill Chloe.
‘All right, but I need you to send me everything you have on what name that tattoo might be. Send it to the email I contacted you with. Details of Pictish life, culture, magic, and supernatural things. Anything that might get through to him, like whatever you’ve reconstructed of the language and if there are more knives like that one. Keep it, for now, just in case.
‘But first, get somewhere safe and as far from here as you can. Make sure you’re not followed and go out the back exit if there is one. Don’t wait.’
Chloe nodded, as if clearing her mind. ‘All right. Okay. But, his tattoos were scarred, like he’d been through botched attempts to get rid of them.’
Had he wanted them gone, or the Wake?
Nicole wouldn’t put it past them to have tried to erase Alexander’s identity, his origins, and any link to his true past.
But if they’d succeeded, any chance at stopping him may be gone with it.