Hope & Fury (Heroes & Demons Book 2)

The night passed without incident which disquieted her further. Sandy didn’t like waiting around but waiting around was all they had to do. Neither Ruth or Rick were in sight and the New Order probably quite purposefully were nowhere to be seen. The city that moved and woke up around them was normal, save for the bit of news about rumblings overseas – they always got people’s dander up a little bit.

Still, the internet fervour about how it was the underground mole rebellion was already beginning to subside, thankfully.

She had attempted to sleep some of the night and had paced for the hours where she could do so awake. Throughout all of it, she was pacing alone. Angel disappeared somewhere upstairs, Andrew and Louise to another part of the building where they thought people could not hear them having a loud argument (not realising the fallacy of this given the square courtyard around which Home Base was essentially a giant ring doughnut) – their voices floating over until they frostily ended at around eleven o’clock.

Daylight broke and by the time she’d had her breakfast, nervously checked her phone and spent an hour ignoring morning television she decided she’d had enough. She was about to call one of them when her phone pinged.

A short conversation later and Ruth had called for a meeting, in her office in ten minutes. She gave no explanation as to her whereabouts the night before, no further information about the content of the meeting – only that she was bringing someone so please wear pants. She knew that was a blanket message to everyone – although most assuredly to Angel who occasionally continued to have a distaste for them along with his aversion to sleeves. Luckily social convention worked most of the time – especially a polite request.

She did seem a little concerned when she heard Rick would not be present but said that the matter couldn’t wait. Sandy decided to spend her last mysterious ten minutes without answers having a cigarette, perhaps the only thing that she could enjoy more without Rick present. Well, the only thing she could do in public anyway.

Since the doors to the courtyard had been smashed they were now lined with wooden boards awaiting the builders to come and repair. So she headed out to the front of the building instead, practically lighting the tip of the cigarette before the doors had even closed behind her. She drew in the first puff, sighed and felt for a moment that the illusion of relief was better than nothing. She went to take a second drag and suddenly found herself struggling. She looked, the tip of her cigarette had fizzled out, grown wet. She looked up she was not near the edge of the building, certainly not close enough for a fat raindrop from the previous night’s rain.

Then it struck her.

“Those things’ll kill you, y’know,” a pained voice floated from the steps. She looked down and there, lying on the steps like a passed out drunk was Rick. His face looked a mess, a bruise under one eye and blood crusted under his nose. He was wearing his BioSuit, in public no less, which was smeared with dirt and grass. It looked like he’d genuinely been dragged through a bush. He cradled his shoulder and regarded her with a tired grin. “Little help?”

“What the hell happened to you?” she snapped at him, her worry coming out like anger as it always did.

“Oh a little of this, a little of that,” he replied, “Fought in a graveyard with the Horseman of War – it’s very ‘save it for the summarising scenes’. Did manage to dislocate my shoulder though, you mind doing me a solid and popping it back in like old times?”

She glared at him, determined to make him pay in different ways later for leaving her out of yet another loop, but she did as he asked and set down next to him, taking his arm gingerly in her hands. She knew how to do what he was asking for, mainly because of a small bit of first aid training and some drunken experiences they’d both rather not go on record. Mainly because table dancing was involved.

“Okay, this is going to hurt, are you ready?”

“That’s like saying I’m just about to pull a tooth, care to suck on a mint? Bloody do it already.”

“Cass?”

The new voice came from behind her – though it was not so much new as it was very old. From a period of her life long forgotten. She didn’t know why she felt such surprise after all had she not had a cheap cardboard herald stuck in the bottom of her bedside table for nearly a week? Did she not know that this was inevitable?

Just because it was inevitable, as was the ill timing, didn’t mean she had to sit back and take it. She twisted, pushed and felt the joint smack back into place with probably more force than was strictly necessary.

“MotherFatherSon, that’s bad!” Rick cried out, no doubt feeling agony, unlike anything he’d felt in a while. At least it kept him distracted as she turned,

“What are you doing here, dad?” she snapped at him.

The man standing in front of her at the bottom of the steps was exactly as she’d remembered. A little older, perhaps, a few more wrinkles and a surprising amount of salt rather than paprika in his closely trimmed red hair. The moustache and man stubble was a nice touch though, very modern. Almost made him look human. Almost made him look like someone’s father.

“Dad?” Rick finally looked up, managing somehow to get through the pain enough to take in the situation, “Oh hey Mr Harris.”

“Rick,” her father greeted him, awkwardly adding, “How are you?”

“Oh the usual,” Rick responded casually, managing to get into a sitting position, “Getting into emotionally devastating scrapes, but I get by. We also recently got a Virgin box, so there’s that. You?”

“Oh fine.”

“She got your card by the way,” Rick added, despite her thundering glare, “She hasn’t responded because she’s still a stubborn arse, but I’m glad you found the place okay.”

The one-hand which had remained bracing behind his shoulder squeezed suddenly and painfully. He bit down but Sandy didn’t stop.

“You’ve been speaking to my dad?” she growled.

“Sure because at the rate the world’s going and with you being an emotional leper, your heart will drop off before you talk to the man,” he responded, “Now would you kindly stop before you cause permanent damage, leave me fit to fight the apocalypse and all. Oh and calm down, you’re smoking.”

She caught the whiff of burning denim and realised that he was indeed right, so she relinquished the pressure on his shoulder. He managed to scramble into more of a standing position.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I believe we have a meeting in ten minutes,” he continued, “Or so my Apple watch tells me. Which gives me about fifteen minutes to appear human.” To her father he added, “Nice to see you again, Mr Harris, please disregard anything hateful your daughter may say. We’re all having a bad week.”

With that, he began to toddle off up the steps, while Sandy glared at him. When he was gone she levelled her glare back at her father.

“What do you want?” she snapped at him unkindly.

“I, uh, I suppose it doesn’t matter what I want,” he eventually got out. “I want whatever I can get, whatever you think I deserve. When your friend Rick contacted me last year…”

“This has been going on a year?!” She was disbelief, but somehow still knew it was entirely possible. With Rick, you never knew.

“Yes, bit out of the blue really,” her father admitted, “He managed to track me down on the Facebook; saw me and Jackie were now living in York and started chatting about the relief works. After the Blackout, all of us on the engines were brought in. We didn’t have it anywhere near as bad as you over here but still, it was a relief to know you were okay.”

It was the longest she’d heard her father talk, even before her mum died. The information floating around in her head, the idea that the man before her – Mr Keith Harris (and not the one with the duck) formerly of Greater Manchester Fire Rescue Service – was now a man in his fifties, with a second wife, a new life and Facebook. Not the man who stepped away from her life in every meaningful way when her mother passed.

“Over the past month or so talk turned to more about you. He seems to be grappling with some things himself and said you were…well, frankly never going to make the first move. And rightly so, you shouldn’t. I’ve had a lot of time to think and…”

“Are you kidding me?” she interrupted him. He stopped dead, she was unused to seeing his father’s gob shut like a stunned fish. He was always the one in charge, always the great man. “You show up after all this time and a crappy misdated birthday card and think you can worm your way back into my life? Now? Like some deadbeat dad coming back from the past to make amends before he dies. What was the reason, dad? What have you got? Six months to live? ‘Jackie’ kicked you out? What finally pricked that little conscience of yours after all these years?”

“It doesn’t matter because it doesn’t change things. He may think he’s doing his psychobabble bullshit and helping me to heal or whatever the hell he’s doing but that won’t work on me. There’s nothing to heal. There is a giant gaping hole in my life where a human being should have been, where you should have been and I have filled it up. With my friends, with my work, with the rest of my life – and there is no more room for you in there.”

“So whatever you came here for you won’t find it. Go home, go back to Jackie, go back to York and make your peace with whatever God you have. Because if I’m wrong and you’re not dying, we’re all pretty much still screwed anyway.”

She turned and allowed the remnant of her past to stay behind where it belonged.