CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE #2
‘No.’ Not a lie, he’s not hurt, he’s not, he’s not, he’s not because nothing can hurt him, and no one can touch him, and he became who he needed, he became the man who might have kept him safe had he been brave enough to ask.
‘Tell me the truth.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Yeah, except I know what fine means,’ Jules hisses, feeling Lachlan’s forehead with the back of his hand. ‘You’re burning up.’
‘I just need some water.’
Jules is searching Lachlan’s face for the truth. The boy is rendered in softer, sweeter shades of his father from only minutes before. Lachlan can’t stand to see resemblance between them in any degree right now.
‘He did something?’
‘No.’ Not a lie, he didn’t do anything. ‘I’m just tired.’
‘I’ve been telling you to sleep.’
‘There’s no one else to take over.’
‘Lachlan, it’s safe here, OK? It’s completely safe,’ Jules tells him, a little impatient. ‘They’re all incredibly private people. They wouldn’t let a fucking pleasure yacht sail on by with a telescope, so a full-on attack isn’t—’
The door opens.
‘Oh my, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise this room was occupied,’ Madeline Delacroix simpers with poorly concealed glee as she stands in the doorway for several excruciating seconds. ‘Carry on. My mistake.’
Lachlan watches her go, breathing slow.
‘Don’t worry about her,’ Jules says. ‘My father hates the twins anyway.’
Lachlan nods, physically pulls himself together and that means pulling away from Jules. ‘I’m fine. Just need to change my clothes.’
‘Why? Please tell me. I can help if you let me. I can—’
‘Get out of my face, Julian!’ Lachlan snaps.
Jules steps away, shuttered. ‘Fine.’
?
The party is held inside the mansion, but it freely spills outside too.
Balloon arches rise between pillars of white marble, glittering streamers catching the lights while crystal trays drift endlessly through the crowd loaded with champagne, edible gold and diamonds worked subtly into jewellery, glassware and even the table displays themselves.
Savannah Alderwyck wears a white silk dress and a ruby necklace around her throat. Guests orbit her constantly, offering gifts, embraces and words of affection as the night stretches on.
Photographs are taken almost nonstop of her beside Jules.
Dancing together. Laughing together. Posing shoulder to shoulder beneath the arches. Even eating together. Private moments staged to look real.
Sorrenko has clearly said something to Roman beforehand. The boy looks carved from stone all evening, visibly unhappy beneath the surface, but he still performs when required. They all do.
Beautiful. Controlled. Perfect.
It’s how they were raised.
Jules is ignoring Lachlan, who feels increasingly untethered.
Before, Lachlan could have gone numb and endured, but not anymore.
Something has changed in him. A creature locked away, now shown sunlight and sky, cannot go back into the darkness.
Not without a fight at least.
He’s fucked up. Unstable.
It’s better that Jules stay away for now.
Lachlan notes how much everyone is drinking, except for Ariadne, who sticks to bottled water and Savannah, who isn’t allowed to drink alcohol despite it being her twenty-first. Lachlan wonders at the hypocrisy of such a decision.
Alistair is constantly encouraging Jules to drink and Roman has free rein too, although he’s more balanced than Jules.
Replaying the first part of his conversation with Sorrenko out by the water isn’t advisable while Lachlan is in such a state of mind, so he locks in and focuses on the necessary, tells himself to forget it.
Everyone but the two Alderwyck women are drinking heavily.
More than Lachlan has ever seen, even during the height of the summer parties in the West Wing.
Lachlan is dangerously close to exhausted at this point.
Without his customary four and three hours a day, always split, his body is reacting to sleep deprivation the way all bodies do, by shutting down.
Lachlan can forestall it, knows all the tricks, just needs to stay sharp. There’s cocaine absolutely everywhere. He won’t consider that unless it’s serious.
With Jules ignoring him, the first part of the night passes quickly, at least because without distractions, Lachlan can access the slipstream of his mind to become a machine. Nothing marks time like feelings, even good ones.
Without them, it flies by.
At around eleven PM, Ariadne proposes a toast to her daughter, champagne in hand, music lowered. She’s wearing white too, form fitting, dripping in sapphires.
‘I’d like to thank all of you for being here to share this momentous occasion with us.
’ Savannah smiles at her mother. Ariadne looks out at the rest of the group.
‘Twenty-first birthdays are so special to us and must always be marked with the traditions befitting the elite beings that we are. Society evolves into dilution, and we…’ She smiles wide, inclines her head.
‘We refine.’ Her gaze lands on Jules. ‘We unite. Great families are born of legacy, and legacy is carried by more than just love. I am proud to wish my beautiful daughter, my precious ruby, my darling treasure, a happy twenty-first birthday. You’ll never know how proud I am to be your mother.
’ She raises her glass high. ‘Your life has only just begun.’
‘To a new cycle,’ Prescott Delacroix calls out.
The group echoes the toast, drinking.
The music resumes.
Photographs are taken.
Wake is becoming more demanding in his suggestions for poses, moving Jules and Savannah together increasingly until Jules whispers something to her and she nods.
They kiss for the camera.
It’s light, barely there.
Chaste, picture perfect and sweet.
Lachlan has to look away.
He’s not doing well.
He needs… well, fuck. What doesn’t he need?
Sleep, food, Danya, Mimi, Blaire, home, Jules, Jules, Jules…
‘Mr Lachlan? Sir?’
He opens his eyes, blinks hard.
Paola is standing in front of him. ‘Huh?’
‘You were asleep on your feet,’ she tells him quietly. ‘Eat some cheese.’
‘I will, thank you.’ Once he gets eyes on Jules, confirms he’s fine, Lachlan then scans around for a silver platter of something with cheese on it, but they stopped serving food a while ago.
He’ll need to go to the kitchen.
It’s that or pass out.
He spies one of the two security units and pulls him aside.
‘I’ll be gone for two minutes,’ he tells the man. ‘Are you capable of maintaining safety for two minutes?’
The man scoffs. ‘I don’t answer to you.’
‘Yes or no?’
‘Yes. Now fuck off.’
The kitchens are winding down for the night, but a few people remain for whatever is needed or wanted later.
There’s a platter of all different kinds of cheese in the fridge.
Lachlan helps himself, washes it down with a sugary fruit drink and then a full glass of water.
He takes a fork with him, slips it into his pocket planning to prong his thigh if he feels drowsy again.
He was headed to check the perimeter when he hears voices nearby.
Lachlan creeps closer like he did with Whitlock and Kessler only this time it’s the Delacroix twins and Richard Vale.
He stays perfectly still, breathing slow and low.
‘…for years, and only now he’s finally listening to me?!’ Richard Vale complains, giving a protracted sniff. Cocaine for sure. ‘He’s been blind for so long about his “darling Mikki”. Haven’t we all warned him?’
‘Alistair has a blind spot for him, but it’s the same for her,’ Madeline agrees.
‘They’re disgustingly involved,’ Vale declares.
‘Meaning what?’ Prescott asks.
‘No, not like… not like that, of course. I just mean his inability to assess allegiance. His own nostalgia for the good old days weakens him.’
‘You ought not to let him hear you say such a thing, Dicky.’
‘I would hardly say it to his face, but we all know it’s true. For years I have tried to bend his ear to the concept of Mikhail playing dual sides. He’s ignored me entirely until now.’
‘So it was you who convinced him Mikhail is up to something?’
‘Well, no, but I was the one saying it for years.’
‘Yes, but it came from you wishing you were Mikhail, not any intelligent data of credible threat,’ she giggles. ‘Anyway, how do you know for sure? Alistair is always playing more than one person at more than one game.’
‘Because Alistair told Kessler to watch him and Roman.’
‘That’s because Roman is too close to the girl.’
‘It is a shame about the age gap,’ Prescott sighs.
‘Nothing to be done. The Volstead cycle was a one off.’
‘Those were the days, my God.’
‘Yearning for a time gone past will lock you into it.’
‘You sound just like him, Dicky. Anyway, it’s not that big of a gap,’ Madeline says, takes a long sniff of her own. ‘Alistair should count himself lucky he can even still have children.’
‘What’s the latest on the research?’
‘He’s confident that Helixx can reverse host attrition, but the research isn’t quite syringe ready yet, so I’m told.’
‘When will it be?’
‘Who knows? Paranaturals are a nightmare to study.’
‘He’s been running tests on them for decades now.’
‘I’d give it five years. Ten at most. Their DNA is a goldmine, but like I said, a nightmare to study.’
‘Why?’
‘Because to control them, you have to use hypochlorite, but it breaks down their power to the point that you’re studying dead cells. A fine line to walk.’
‘What about the other kinds? Easier, harder?’
‘Incredibly rare to capture and even more so keep alive. I’ve only ever seen one Morph up close, and it was already dead. No one’s successfully captured a Resonant since the nineties. Paranaturals are everywhere, though. With access to the genome data, they’re not hard to flag.’
‘Do you think it’s true, about Julian?’
‘Be careful, Dicky. He’ll skin you alive.’
‘I’m just saying…’
‘All of them are a perversion of the natural order,’ Madeline says. ‘They sicken me to my core, even if they are useful.’
‘That’s a little rich, isn’t it?’ Vale snorts derisively.
‘Be careful,’ Prescott warns softly, ‘not to confuse innovation with aberration. They are not of God.’