Blood Song

Oliver

When that call came and I heard that Rebecca's brother had been taken, I knew who was behind it. I hadn't been certain of her motivation, but I'd known who it was. Julia had paled. She knew too.

I'd taken the phone from Fergus as he'd stood there, his left arm still wrapped in bandages, and spoken to Angus. I want in, I told him. If there's killing to be done, I want in. And you know how good I am at it.

Angus hadn't hesitated, not for a second. Right, he'd said. Travel with Fergus.

And now I stood in this room where we'd had breakfast two days ago, looking at an entirely different spread. I felt a stirring in my soul as I regarded the equipment on the table, death in all its forms, all its singular beauty. I knew I would again bury that shiny steel in soft yielding flesh, and feel the wetness of hot blood licking at my hands, and hear the squelching as tissues parted under my steel. I closed my eyes, imagining the screams and the beguiling metallic smell of the iron in blood.

"You know what, Oliver," Fergus said, interrupting my reverie, and eyeing me sceptically. "You're a complete psycho."

I said nothing, just grinned at him. I saw Angus grin too, and knew he'd felt what I'd been thinking of a few seconds before. He'd given me a kind of a psychic high five. Angus liked to kill almost as much as I did. Almost.

I'd always wondered if my blood lust had been born in the violence of my conception. Or if it had been something much older. Jack had delighted in killing. And my grandfather, by all accounts had been just as deadly. Or maybe it was just the iron within us singing out, playing a song we could dance to.

"Nine Inch Nails," said Angus.

"Absolutely," I said. Fergus looked puzzled at first, and then disgruntled as realisation dawned.

"Would you two stop doing that," he grumbled.

It had been near calamitous for me to discover another person who could trespass on my thoughts and feelings as I had been doing to others for decades. It had been little consolation that I was able to intrude on his as much as he could on mine. But for some reason, now that we had become allies, the bond, the ability had become stronger. Instead of just getting the general idea of thoughts, I was able to pick up a few words from Angus' mind. And I knew he could sense the same from me. It was disconcerting and intriguing at the same time. And potentially very useful.