Chase the Morning

Her eyes closed. The whole night seemed to tremble with a growing vibration, the clear singing note of an infinite violin string that swelled louder than the silenced drums. It blew through us like a great wind, shaking us. I felt it whip my hair about my face, send hers billowing and streaming out like smoke. Whether it was in her or me, I couldn’t tell – but as her eyes snapped open again a spark flashed between us, and light leaped up within the very heart of her, so bright that the skull blazed out beneath the flesh. Clare gave a high-pitched shriek, then clapped her hands in laughing delight. The gouts of clotted blood about Mall’s head dried, crumbled, blew away. The bruised flesh paled and cleared; the depressed gouge left across her temple by the Carib club swelled and filled. She convulsed with the force of it, then sagged back with a deep breath of infinite relief. ‘My thanks, my lord! But i’the name of all hates ill, stay not! Go settle the viper, and I –’ She swung her legs under her, and rose smoothly, unhurriedly to her feet. ‘By thy grace, I’ll shield those here for now!’ Her eyes flamed with alarm. ‘Go! Go now!’

I turned –

Clambering high on the white rock behind the altar, casting about, I saw Don Pedro. In the same instant he saw me, and across that space our gazes locked. A card turned in the air – a two of spades merged to become an ace, a pool of infinite blackness drawing me on – in – and down. Falling. Falling …

My elbow slipped sideways, my head jerked; I stopped it barely an instant before my nose hit the keyboard of my terminal and scrambled everything on the screen. My coffee-cup, untouched, teetered on the edge of the desk, and I retrieved it hastily; we’d had enough mess and breakages round here lately. Dozing off at my desk! Serve me right for spending half the week-end in discos, and not getting enough sleep. Some daydream! Some damn daydream! It’d left me still ringing with the violence of it. I struggled to pull myself together. I jumped when the intercom buzzed.

‘Steve?’ inquired Clare’s voice.

‘Y … yes?’

‘You sound a bit funny, You’re all right?’

‘Sure. Just … wrapped up in something, that’s all.’

‘You shouldn’t overdo it, really. Your four o’clock appointment, remember? Mr Peters is in Reception.’

I shook my head, swallowed a sip of the cold coffee and straightened my tie. ‘Well, then. Show him in!’

Chapter Eleven

I stood up automatically as the door opened. The man who stepped through looked like most of the clients I saw – no, like the cream of them, the ones who usually arrived via Barry’s office, suitably stoked with hospitality and charm. His dark three-piece suit was cut like an Armani diamond, his white shirt crisp and smooth, its collar tailored precisely to his throat, his ruler-straight tie as silkily iridescent as a grey opal. The sheer sleek perfection of the ensemble, down to his finely tooled dark shoes and soft glove-leather attaché case, created an air of the exotic, the foreign which exactly fitted his face – high-browed, hook-nosed, sallow, with a slender drooping moustache and eyes like sunken inkwells. Foreign clients almost always meant serious money.

‘Mr Peters,’ I said, and his thin lips curved in a smile. He held out a long hand, and I reached out –

Blackness. Noise.

I jerked back my hand, without the least idea why. It’d been the weirdest feeling. Like the time I nodded off in my first big meeting, lulled by the heat and the monotonous droning voices – and then snapped awake, flushing with guilt and adrenalin, wondering how long I’d been out for, if anyone had noticed – like that. Only here I’d been dipping down into a nightmare, hellishly vivid – like that damn daydream again. Dark, firelight, screaming and shouting, and one voice, much nearer, speaking words I couldn’t quite make out. It left me shaken, just when I didn’t want to be. Peters’ smile didn’t change, but somehow it left me in no doubt at all that he’d noticed; bad start. I hastily tried to cover up my embarrassment by waving him to a chair.

‘Er – won’t you sit down? If you’d like some coffee – or a drink, perhaps? Sherry? An excellent fino, cooled –’ Sherry seemed to go with that face, though I felt the urge for something a lot stronger myself.

‘No; no, I thank you. You are most kind, but I regret I have very little time. I would prefer, if you will forgive me the discourtesy, to proceed to our most urgent business.’