Keeping to one wall, they started silently towards the main stairs.
Madeline suddenly stepped out of the bathroom in front of them. Entirely unaware of her surroundings, she was looking down at her phone, tapping it with irritated tuts of annoyance. They literally bumped into her.
Before she could react and make a sound, Ben scooped her up with his hand over her mouth and carried her back into the attic.
She was strong, an international competitive rower, and she fought him, but Aleksey knew there was hardly a man alive whom Ben would have difficulty subduing, so this woman was no contest for him at all. He just completely overpowered her.
Safely back in the second attic, the door firmly closed, Ben whispered into her ear, ‘Does my hand feel sticky against your mouth?’
The women stilled at the odd question. After a moment, she grunted and nodded assent against the gag.
‘That’s the blood and brains of one of your men. I just put my fist so far into his skull I could read his thoughts with my fingertips. Do you want me to try and decipher yours?’
Aleksey’s eyebrows rose a little, but he didn’t intervene—he was truly impressed: it was the kind of bullshit he usually liked to spout. Ben had obviously learnt from a master and had this situation nicely in hand.
‘Nod again if we understand each other.’
Ben got the anticipated response, and he cautiously eased his hand away from her mouth and let her stand on her own feet.
She staggered a little, putting a hand out to the horse for balance but withdrew it sharply when she saw what it was, absurdly as if it had bitten her.
Given the strange night he was having, Aleksey wondered if it actually had.
They were at something of an impasse now, he realised.
She smirked, apparently realising the same thing. He didn’t think she had any reason to smile: she could hardly demand they return the canister.
‘Your friends will return for you.’
She had picked on the one potential weakness in their position: these events were contained and isolated now, but this situation would change when someone came for them. Even if Harry and the moron had not made it, and this was something Aleksey could not bring himself to consider, eventually DS Mailer would work out something was wrong, and she would come. And that would give this woman and her husband access to a boat. Was it possible they could find the chimera if they had enough time? With a metal detector? He didn’t know.
‘We have everything we need to wait it out.’
This also was true. She didn’t look hungry. They’d possibly been sitting by the fire, enjoying some wine.
‘You could join us. If you give us the chimera, we’ll give you and your family the vaccine.’
Aleksey almost laughed. ‘Are you entirely insane? I cannot decide. Evil and insanity are closely allied and so resemble each other. Your men were talking of imagined futures where they would own slaves, where they would be the new global elite. Have you all entirely lost your minds?’
She put her hand out once more to the horse, but more thoughtfully this time, stroking its mane. If she was thinking of distracting them and making a dash for the door, Aleksey wished her the luck of the deluded. He’d never seen Ben so poised, so ready to strike if she even put a foot in that direction.
‘Imagine the work that went into making this, all for one child to sit upon. Dozens of men and women toiling over the minutiae of stitch details on the saddle, measuring the scale of the stirrups, and then deciding on the paint scheme—which breed to choose to depict. And all for a spoilt little human grub they would never even know. It’s all you people think about, isn’t it? Children. Bringing them into the world. Buying things for them, consuming resources. Food, toys, plastic junk in landfills and filling the oceans, and all just for them—the maggots of the human experience. You people make me sick.’
She’d said it twice, and he couldn’t stop himself asking, perplexed, ‘You people?’
‘Yes,breeders. She’s yours, isn’t she? The brat who stole our chimera.’ She stared challengingly at Ben who didn’t respond but only continued to study her, the green in his eyes muted to an almost menacing black by the darkness of the room. When she got no response from him, she turned back to Aleksey. ‘Are you married?’
He found it incredible that she didn’t know. It seemed to him that their passion glowed, physically illuminating any space, but apparently not. And yet it was only a year or so ago when he’d have been mortified if he’d thought anyone would assume he and Ben were together. Sometimes he puzzled himself. He just shrugged and replied, ‘Yes. To him.’
He would have smirked at the slight eye flick of astonishment from his other half, but kept his face neutral and enjoyed the woman’s more obvious surprise and discomposure. ‘Oh. Really? Huh. You don’t look— Well then you must understand what we’re trying to achieve. We have to do this or there’ll be nothing left. Your daughter—all children—are being abused by being born into a world which will see them starving, fighting for resources, sea levels rising, mass species extinction. When she’s thirty, there’ll be no cities left. Wildfires will have destroyed the rainforests. Hundreds of millions of people will have been forced to leave Africa and India and South America and they’ll be scavenging for food in what’s left of the world. We would spare all the children the burden of this existence. Don’t you see? We’re in the sixth mass species extin—’
‘Maddy? What the fuck’s keeping you?’
Ben clamped his hand over her mouth at the exact moment she opened it wide to scream. He pulled her tight against him, her back to his broad chest. He held Aleksey’s gaze over the top of her head. She struggled, kicking against his legs, trying to wriggle out of his grasp.
Ben was waiting for permission.
Aleksey couldn’t give it. He told himself she might be more useful alive, but he knew this was probably a lie—but he could not burden Ben with such a killing.
