Turquoiselle, Tanith Lee [100 best novels of all time .TXT] 📗

had previously been,was expressionless. “You haven’t. I haven’t.”

She was beside him. She had advanced so smoothly somehow he hadnot properly seen her do it. Her hand rested on his neck, was gone. Where herhand had touched, a coolness spangled. She smelled wonderful. Her eyes were notblue. Her hair hung to her waist. She was like a beautiful snake.

“Get up, Carver,” she said, and now her voice was metallic andcruel, and he had got to his feet.

The sunset stayed as they walked up the rise, a rich Burgundy red,diluting and sinking only on the right, while they climbed.

The sun was going down on the wrong side of the sky.

Or – the sun was going down – twice–

At the top of the rise, there were the sheds again, repetitions,facile. Carver saw the pieces of sky and the sun was already just down, and inthe proper quarter, westward, over there to the right. All else was twilight,and greying. But here.The rose-red varnish went on.

The central shed. To the left of them. Or course. The shed hadraised its profile through blue and green and yellow and orange. It was scarlet-crimsonnow. As he had predicted before: 6th Level Urgency Alert.

“Yes,” she said. “Car, the keys work the same on every shed. Openthis one.” This was the last shed to their right, nearest to the greying west,the seventh.

He found the keys, undid the central door of the seventh shed.When they were in he locked the door shut. It was dark inside, nothing in it,empty of tables and fridges and Croft. Just overthere, the stain of red soaking in, strengthening as all the dusk went out.

Velvet black of night, with a ruby fastened to the collar.

Anjeela had brought food, ham and cheese rolls, Greek salad, and athermos of black coffee – these self-evidently obtained from the (probably nowdefunct) take-out annexe.

He ate sluggishly, a sullen kid not wanting to give in. The coffeehad kept most of its heat. That was better. When he offered her a share sheshook her head. She stuck to the lukewarm litre bottle of water she hadbrought. They all knew him, his preferences. His weaknesses. They hadknown. Now she did. Just her. And himself. If he anyway knew anything – eitherabout himself or anything at all.

When they had finished their meal, about half of which wasuneaten, she set the leftovers neatly to one side, covered protectively bytheir wrappers. (He had seen Sara do this, never Donna. And not so many otherwomen. But they had never had to “Watch the pennies” as Sara had sometimessaid.) (Had Anjeela had to watch them? How did you, anyhow, watch a penny? Youwould lose interest.)

In the dark of the seventh shed, with only that red neon blotch toremind him, he watched this woman as carefully as any penny. Her own light-complexioneddarkness had an alluring visual effect. A figment of night made into a woman–

For a long time, aside from his thanking her for the food andoffering to share the coffee, he had not spoken. She had not spoken at allsince they came in here. She sat on the floor as he did, and across from him,again faintly side-lit by the glow, that also aureoled her hair. Which definitelywas much longer. Not extensions, he thought. A wig perhaps – but the hairlinehad no look of a wig. The hair had grown silky. It moved loosely when she did.She had very beautiful hands. The paleness of the nails against the darkskin... But neither her nails nor fingers extended themselves.

Without preface, a savage and raucous wailing and bellowing brokeout in the distance, the sound of exultant rage and agonised protest sogenerally and often heard – and seen – on such TV stations as Al-Jazeera or theBritish BBC.

“They’re still some way off,” she said at once, as the inhumanlyhuman notes quavered and abruptly fell apart to nothing. Was she reassuringhim? Seekingreassurance –?

“Yes,” he said, “How long for, do you wonder? Before they come uphere.”

She shrugged. “When they do, they do.”

“You’re happy with that.”

“I accept it will happen, sometime.”

“Pragmatic, then. You’re pragmatic. Christ, we shouldn’t be sathere, waiting forthem–”

“I am not,” she said, “waiting for them. I am waiting totell you something, Mr Carver. Something you will need, and ultimately mustunderstand. Though very likely not at first. That will be difficultfor you.”

“Oh, difficult. Sure.”

He got up and went to one of the windows. Any lights mightpossibly not be spotted through the red smoulder from the central shed. Wherethe ground descended, surely only the blackness of the moonless, starless overcastnight paid out its folds. The up-and-down building, what might be left of it,seemed now to offer no locating illumination. Even the smudges of fire haddied. It was, like this, invisible.

“Well then, Anjeela. What is it you have to tell me? You’repregnant perhaps–” He was astounded by what he had just said – redundant,crazy – oh, crazy, of course – “rather soon to know, isn’t it?”

“No, I am not pregnant, Mr Carver. Nor, incidentally, is yourpartner, Donna. She never was. As you suspected, I believe.”

“Why,” he said woodenly, “are you calling me Mr Carver.”

“What would you prefer?” she asked. Almost as Sunderland had saidit that time, so long ago, a hundred years, in the flat with Sara shut in thekitchen, and the world changing so fast – so fast – “Car?Andrew? Andy? Andreas?”

“I don’t care what you call me. I wondered why you’d alteredwhat you called me.”

“I thought you might prefer more formality at this moment MrCarver. Given what I have to and am going to say.”

“So now this is a hospital, and you’re the specialist, right? You’regoing to tell me I have three months to live. Or two. Is that it?”Between fury and unexpected terror – he felt such emotions sweeping in on him,and horror, that too, that extra primal sense of the darkness and the redness –the 6th Level Alert, only one below Armageddon – one quarter minute to midnighton the nuclear clock –

She kept silent. She let him fall silent. She let the silenceopen wide its awful wings and threaten to devour them