Wildewood

Chapter 30

NICK

There was no mistaking the voice. Or the effect it had on Alex.

Between the notebook and the dahlias from her stalkers, she was already wound up tighter than a spring.

And then Theo screamed at them both out of a piece of technology which could not have recorded him at all, let alone saying the words he said.

Don’t touch her!

It was like a slap to the face. The anger that surged up in Nick’s chest startled him. How dare he? Him, of all people…

Alex staggered back, white-faced, and her legs simply went out from underneath her. She was still clutching the notebook so she dropped like a stone.

Nick moved on instinct alone, catching her before she hit the ground, turning to shield her from the bed and whatever was rising there.

But nothing happened. There was no attack, no force battering into him. Nothing flew across the room under its own steam. No wind, no wall of icy cold, nothing. He was holding her. No, cradling her. And she felt so right in his arms. Like she belonged there.

She looked up into his face, blinking, eyes wide. Her mouth parted and the need to not just touch her, but draw her to him, kiss her, possess her was almost overwhelming.

A loud pop fractured the silence, and a hiss, followed by a sharp acidic smell, and then smoke. And…

‘Oh shit!’ Alex exclaimed, twisting out of his grip, as the recorder in the middle of the bed belched out foul-smelling black smoke, the plastic of its cover bubbling and melting onto the bedclothes. ‘No! Shit!’

Nick grabbed the topmost blanket and pulled it off the bed, taking the recorder with it.

He threw it over the smoking equipment and brought his foot down on it hard, two, three times to put out any flames.

Then he picked up the whole thing, and heading for the ensuite, threw it into the shower and turned on the water at full blast, immersing the remains of the lithium-ion battery before it could fully ignite.

It was deathly quiet in the room behind him. He looked around at Alex, who was staring up at him, speechless.

Slowly, Nick looked back at the mess in the shower. Her recorder. One of the ones that had been express shipped here by her team, probably at great expense. Brand new equipment which must have cost a fortune.

Shit.

It had probably been destroyed from the moment it started to smoke anyway. And a fire could have taken the whole room with it, maybe the whole Hall. It was always a risk in a building like this. A constant danger.

But still. He’d stamped it to death, smothered it and drowned it, in seconds. Acting on instinct alone.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.

Alex shook her head, swallowed hard and then an expression of resignation took the place of her fear.

‘Better that than the whole place going up in flames.’ She drew in a breath and slowly let it out again, closing her eyes.

Her lips moved as if she was praying, or counting.

Begging for serenity and patience perhaps.

He’d just destroyed her equipment. And her evidence as well. He simply couldn’t do anything right around this woman. Not from the first moment he had met her.

Sasquatch, her friends had called him. And he felt like it, stumbling around, in her way, breaking things.

‘You heard him, didn’t you?’ she asked in a very small voice.

Theo, warning Nick off her. Oh yes, he’d heard that all right.

Nick couldn’t dredge up an answer. He just nodded instead.

She held out her hand. ‘I think we should go downstairs. Give it a rest for the night. Maybe have a drink. I don’t think either of us should be in here. Or alone. Not now.’

‘Are you sure? You heard him.’

He waited, expecting him to tell him no, or to go to hell. Her brother certainly didn’t want him anywhere near her, did he? And Theo had always said that the two of them even thought the same way.

But why? Why would Theo warn Nick off Alex like that? What had he ever done to Theo? If anything, it was the other way around…

No, that wasn’t fair either.

Nick closed his eyes and tried to push away memories of his friend and his wife and all the misery this place had inflicted on the three of them.

Alex’s hand slipped into his. He hadn’t heard her get up, but she stood in front of him now, holding onto him. Or maybe he was the one holding onto her, clinging to her like a lifeline.

That had been Theo’s voice. Shouting at them. Warning her. About him.

God, it hurt.

‘Come on,’ she told him, her voice so gentle. ‘There’s got to be something to drink in this place somewhere. My grandfather used to have all the wine in the world in the cellar and barely touched a drop. Is that still there?’

‘I’ll have to deal with that first.’ He nodded towards the ensuite.

‘I think it’s dead, Nick. You killed it.’

How did she manage to make him smile at a moment like this? But she did. ‘All the same. Just in case it reignites or…’

Alex slipped by him and scooped the remains of the recorder up before he could stop her. She marched to the window, pulled it up and tossed the sodden, melted mass out onto the gravel driveway below.

‘There,’ she said, wiping her hands together. ‘Nothing for it to set fire to out there, okay?’

She was right. Nothing but gravel. Not known for burning. ‘Okay,’ he agreed. ‘Let’s get a drink. But Alex—’

‘I heard him. We both did. And once we’ve had that drink maybe you can tell me why my brother would say something like that to you.’

Nick lit a fire in the drawing room while Alex poked around in one of the dressers and emerged with a pair of wine glasses that were probably Georgian. It was later than he’d thought. Night was settling in.

‘Are these okay?’ she asked.

They probably weren’t worth that much, plain and simple as they were. Her grandfather had sold anything especially valuable.

‘They’re yours,’ he said. It shouldn’t feel like such a big thing, but it was true. He had to accept that now. Wildewood Hall was hers. It didn’t react to just anyone like this. Neither did the woods.

She flashed him a smile and set them down on the small Victorian side table by the sofa. ‘Wine?’ she asked.

‘In the cellar,’ he said and almost swallowed the word, shooting back up to his feet. ‘I’ll get it. Stay here.’

‘I can—’ she started.

‘No,’ he said, probably too sharply. ‘I’ll go. It isn’t safe.’

An understatement. But he really didn’t want to get into that. Not right now. And not after what had happened upstairs. The house was too active by far, and Alex was a focal point. And the cellar… it was a bad place, just like he’d told Maeve all her life. The worst place in the whole house.

Alex gave him another of those very knowing looks but obviously decided it wasn’t worth arguing.

‘Right then,’ she said and settled down on the sofa, opening the notebook and starting to read.

That might be worse, of course. But not by much. What had the professor put in there? He had known more about the house and its history than anyone else. Still, she needed to know.

She frowned, a tiny line drawing between her eyebrows as she focused. God, she was beautiful. Intense. Perfect.

And Nick shouldn’t be thinking about her like that. Not right now. Perhaps not ever. Theo had been clear enough. Horribly clear.

‘I’ll only be a minute,’ he said as he left.

‘If you aren’t back soon, I’ll come after you,’ she called out. She tried to make it sound more like a threat than a promise. He wasn’t fooled.

She would too. That was a given. If there was one thing he had already figured out about Alex O’Neill, it was that she would charge into a raging fire if she thought she would solve a mystery, or help a friend.

Was that what they were becoming? Friends?

Was that all?

Well, it had to be all. And it had to be enough. He had no right to be thinking any of this, and how did he even know if what he was feeling was real anyway? And Theo had just made his feelings known. The house had a way of playing with you, Sally had always said.

Like now. Like then.

And friends? What had he ever done to deserve friends?

It was much later than he thought. He stepped into the kitchen and…

The door to the cellar was standing wide open.

A dark and endless hole, a mouth waiting to swallow him up. He was sure he had closed it the last time he was in here, but that was the way of this building. He turned on the light and took a deep breath.

It was always cold down there. Icy. Part of that was by design, of course. It was a cold room, storage. And part of it…

Well, this was Wildewood Hall. And the cellar was the oldest part of it. Deep under the earth, small for so big a house, a pocket of malice in the depths of it, clad in ancient stone…

Stone far older than the house itself.

Some of the stories said Blaise Chambers had died here. Right at the bottom of those steps.

Nick steeled himself and stepped into the cellar, closing down every emotion as he crossed the threshold and felt the touch of something old and vast.

Was this where the stones from the cairn had been used? That was what the professor had thought, but he had never found any real evidence. Just stones. And surely it wasn’t big enough. But it was where Nick felt the darkness most keenly.

Sally had always said, whatever happened, it couldn’t touch him. He was protected. She had woven the charms which still hung above the door, and were strung above the steps leading down. She had refreshed them year after year. Layer upon layer of protection.

He wasn’t sure about any of that. He never had been. But he had to believe her. She was all he had.

Like the protection the wild offered. But this came from Sally. It was woven with love and all the more powerful for that.

Her protection had been everything to him. And he had lost it.

The hiss beside his ear was bad enough. He could imagine teeth and claws on his skin, waiting to sink in, to end him.

It came close, that malevolent presence, but it couldn’t touch him.

He descended the stone steps and his feet hit the compacted earth at the bottom.

The wine was only the reach of his arm away.

He should have moved it up to the kitchen.

But he had to come down here every so often. It was necessary. A sacrifice that needed to be made. A test of will. And a way to make sure everything was still intact.

‘Why not just lock the door and throw away the key?’ he asked Sally once.

She’d smiled. God, he missed her smile. ‘Because then he would just get more powerful, like a pot with the lid left on. It would boil over eventually. And we don’t want that, mo stór.’

So that was why he still kept things down here, still offered that small sacrifice of coming down here once in a while and facing the darkness. He wasn’t sure it was working. Not anymore.

It was boiling over anyway. Just because Alex was here.

With Theo it had been hungry, needy. But Alex… Alex was a whole different thing. It was ravenous. Like her presence was feeding an addiction. Like it had been waiting for her all along.

And not just in the house. Not just Blaise Chambers. In him as well.

‘Help me, Sally,’ he murmured. ‘I need you now. More than ever.’

He felt the teeth press close again, sharper, far more vicious. And then…

A scent like wildflowers. He breathed it in, relieved to sense her presence at last.

‘Go to her, mo stór. It’s all right. It’s meant to be.’

Sally, his Sally, still here. It was all right. She was still protecting him, protecting this place. She had promised that she would always be there for him when he needed her. Her presence was a blessing. Sally was a joy.

He welcomed her in, feeling her sweep over and through him as he grabbed a bottle of wine from a case and turned back to the door at the top of the stone steps. The lightbulb flickered as if it was a candle.

Old house, old electrics… one desperate scrabbling thought, frantic for an explanation. He locked the door as firmly as he could.