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  Chapter 7

  Amber yawned as Mrs Dole called the class to attention. She hadn’t gotten much sleep, and what little sleep she had managed to get had been haunted by the face of the creature. She felt annoyed at herself for not going back to sleep that morning when she had woken up before sunrise, but she had been so afraid that the nightmare might pick up where it had left off. And she had definitely not liked where it had left off.

  It was the day after the dance-the last day of term before the Christmas break began. The school was filled with an excited buzz as people boasted about where they were spending their holidays, or shared their views on the dance. Amber tried to avoid these conversations, not wanting to be asked how she’d found the dance, or why she’d disappeared so early. Unfortunately these conversations did not avoid her, and she was only half way through her first lesson when Eva brought up the subject.

  “So what happened to you last night?” she asked whilst Mrs Dole wrote across the board in the scrawling writing.

  “Family crisis. I went home early.” That was the excuse Amber had decided on last night, although a large part of her had wanted to tell the whole school about Darren, but she was worried Will would get in trouble. After all, he wasn’t meant to be there at all, and then, though it wasn’t really his fault, he’d ended up fighting with Darren. The family crisis card was the safest bet, and if anyone asked what the crisis was, she would say she didn’t want to talk about it. It was perfect-sometimes Amber was impressed with her own genius. Of course, Eva didn’t ask what the crisis was, because she cared more about herself than other people.

  “What happened to Matt after I left?” Amber asked. She felt guilty about leaving him without any explanation, and she was worried after her nightmare from the night before. Matt hadn’t shown up to English.

  “I thought he left with you,” said Eva, leaning forwards conspiratorially.

  “No, I…called a taxi to take me home.” Well, thought Amber, someone called for the taxi that took me home.

  “Well, I didn’t see him after I came over to say hello,” Eva said.

  “I wonder where he got to?”

  “You really think I’m going to buy-“

  “Do you have something that you would like to tell the class?” Mrs Dole interrupted the whispered discussion, her black hair quivering dangerously.

  “No Mrs Dole,” both girls muttered, looking at the floor.

  “Well then, I suggest that you pay a little more attention to the lesson, and a little less to each other,” Mrs Dole huffed as she ambled back to the front of the classroom. “Now, Romeo is an influential character because…”

  Amber zoned out again.

  She didn’t see Matt around school, nor in registration or the French class. Amber was starting to get worried. No one seemed to have seen him since the dance, and her dream kept nagging at the back of her mind. But that was stupid-no creature like that existed on earth, or everyone would know about it.

  Darren hadn’t shown up to school either, though Amber suspected that was more down to an injured ego than any other reason. She didn’t care whether Darren showed up or not any more. He wasn’t a friend, and she didn’t have time to keep enemies.

  Amber found that she missed Matt. She hadn’t realised what a big part of her day-to-day life he had become. She had had no partner in English. On the other hand, Amber could now safely say that she was not a clumsy person, and that it was Matt’s fault that she fell over so much, as she had stayed on her feet all day, without the need of anyone to catch her. Which was just as well, because Hannah was rather dainty and Amber doubted she could hold her weight.

  But it was with a hopeful heart that Amber followed the back of a black-haired head all the way from the Geography block to Science. She was very disappointed when she found out the head belonged to a tall year ten, whose hair wasn’t quite the midnight black of Matt’s.

  Amber traipsed up to the library, hoping to escape the general buzz of pre-holiday activity that was going on everywhere she turned. The last day of term was usually one of the best school days of the year, and Amber could sense the excited buzz in the atmosphere around her, but wasn’t affected by it. She felt alone as she watched everyone else running around together and planning their holidays.

  The library was completely empty apart from Amber; every piece of last-minute homework done, no more tests to revise for.

  She sat for a while just feeling sorry for herself, doodling on the back of her history file. Then she saw the tall figure with jet-black hair walking gracefully through the snow, his head bowed against the bitter cold wind. Amber virtually heard her head go click.

  “I want answers,” she said fifteen minutes later after finally managing to corner Matt at the bottom of the red-banistered stairs to the Geography room.

  “Answers to what exactly?” he sounded bemused, but there was an edge to his voice that Amber couldn’t quite distinguish.

  “How you always know when I’m in trouble. How you always save me.”

  “Firstly, this is you we are talking about.” Matthew sounded almost angry and he gritted his teeth as he spoke. “There always seems to be something wrong with your life. Secondly, I didn’t save you last night so I’ve only saved you twice.”

  “How did you know about last night?” Amber asked suspiciously. “You disappeared half way through the dance.”

  “I…was busy.”

  “Busy?”

  “I had a family crisis.”

  “A family crisis?” Amber doubted that Matt had really had a ‘family crisis’ although she did think it was a bit of a coincidence. “Also, unless you like to use the girls’ bathroom a lot, I don’t see how it could be a accident that you happened to walk in when I was in trouble.” Amber wasn’t going to let him shake her off with excuses like he had so many times before. He still hadn’t even explained how he knew what had happened to her at the dance. Even Eva hadn’t found that out, and she knew pretty much everything that went on in the school.

  “Jamie asked me to see if Carla was in the bathroom, and at that moment it was you who was in there.”

  “And I suppose that he couldn’t have asked one of the many girls that were crowded around him to do that job?” Amber knew Matt was lying, and she knew that he knew she knew. The only reason they were playing this game was that Amber didn’t know why he was lying.

  “He’s a ladies man, he sent me to do the dirty work.”

  It was a good explanation, one that could easily be true, but there was just some nagging feeling at the back of Amber’s mind telling her not to believe it.

  “Why aren’t you telling the truth?” she accused. Of course, if Matt really was telling the truth then she was going to look really stupid.

  “Amber,” Matthew looked her straight in the eye, and she was lost for a moment in a sea of blue. “I am telling you the truth.” He spoke each word clearly and surely, and Amber’s head began to spin. She suddenly remembered to breathe.

  “Oh,” was all she could manage when she finally got her breath back.

  Matt turned away, satisfied now that he thought Amber believed him, allowing her to think free from the pressure of his gaze. Another point of her argument came back to Amber.

  “What about that time I fell down the stairs?” she called as Matthew was about to step out of the door. This memory was the most unclear of all. Amber wasn’t sure what parts she’d imagined and what parts had really happened due to the hockey ball that had hit her on the head a few hours later. She hoped Matt wouldn’t catch her out and accuse her of being delusional.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said through his teeth.

  “Why are you lying?” Amber was mad now. Did he really think that he could dissuade her from the truth?

  He didn’t respond, instead he turned and walked up the concrete staircase.

  “Hey!” Amber yelled, running after him. “Don’t just walk away from me.” She g
rabbed Matt’s arm to stop him walking away any further. She suddenly flashed back to the day a few months previously when they had made their fateful truce.

  Matt exhaled loudly.

  “All I want is some answers.”

  “You want answers now,” Matthew breathed, bringing his face right up to hers. “But if I told you everything-“

  “That’s all I’m asking.”

  “I can’t tell you.” Matthew looked like he was fighting some intense internal battle. “I should go.” He strode away quickly, and Amber’s head cleared enough for her to remember the point of their discussion.

  “You haven’t told me anything yet!” she called.

  Matt froze mid-stride.

  “You don’t want to know,” he murmured.

  “Yes I do! I’m tired of the riddles and feeling like I only understand half of the conversation. I want to know everything. Do you know how much it sucks to not have a clue what you’re on about all the time?”

  “Fine!” he half-groaned half-snapped. “I’ll tell you, but you’re not going to like it.” Matt grabbed Amber’s arm and pulled her down the hall into an empty classroom, pushing her down gently into a chair and then beginning to pace angrily.

  “I shouldn’t tell her,” he mumbled to himself. “But I don’t see what other choices I have any more.”

  The pacing stopped and he came to stand directly in front of Amber.

  “I never thought I’d be telling you this-I never even thought I’d have to speak to you. I should have thought, should have foreseen….I’m dangerous, Amber. That’s the most important thing that you should know about me. Every moment you spend with me puts you in danger, and if I tell you my story you’ll be in even more.”

  “I don’t care-“

  “Well you should! Just by saying that you don’t care shows how little you understand. Being with me could get you hurt, but knowing about me could get you killed. I don’t know what else I can do now, though. You deserve to know what you’re getting yourself into.”

  “What are you-?”

  “I suppose you’ve heard of a guardian angel.” He had gone crazy, or this was some complex prank he was playing on her. Either way, Amber was freaked out.

  “Yes, I’ve heard of them,” she said dryly.

  “You wanted the truth. I’m not saying I’m an angel, but it’s the closest thing to explain it with. I’m here because of you, assigned to protect you, but you were never supposed to find out. I take it you’re not familiar with the term Daemon?”

  “No,” Amber said, her voice cracking. He was so intense; it was like he truly believed what he was saying. But it couldn’t be true, could it? Matt had always been cool and collected, and all of a sudden now he was acting all chaotic. Amber was scared.

  “A Daemon is like a mythological version of a guardian angel, existing only to protect. But the one they protect must never acknowledge them, should never know who or what they truly are. I guess that ship has sailed for us now. They have powers, weapons I suppose you could call them, to help them to protect their…assignment.”

  “What do you mean powers?” Amber couldn’t help asking, though the whole thing was ridiculous to her.

  “They’re strong, think like superman kind of strong. And they can run faster than the eye can see, and they can sort of turn invisible.”

  “What do you mean sort of?” Another question slipped out before Amber could stop it. If she was taking this news seriously, she would probably have passed out by now, but in Amber’s mind this was all a joke. She supposed she would humour Matt and play along.

  “It’s not invisibility as such, it’s hard to explain…. It’s like the world comprises of different planes, and life as we know it is on one of those planes, but others are empty. If a Daemon wishes to be unseen, if I wish to be unseen, I can shift my existence to another plane. But it’s hard for us to do, because it means we loose connection with the one we protect-that would be you. It’s a very uncomfortable experience, and not one that I would do if I had any other option.”

  “You say that like you’ve felt it yourself,” Amber said sceptically.

  Matt raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh please, you don’t really expect me to believe that you’re one of these-these things!” She knew what Matt was getting at, and it was completely ridiculous, even if it did explain a lot of the weird things that had been going on recently.

  “Think about it Amber! How do you think I always know when you need me? It’s like a sixth sense!”

  “If what you’re saying is true, then prove it,” she challenged.

  Amber was surprised when Matt pressed both palms down on one of the wooden desks.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, bewildered.

  “You wanted me to show you.”

  He leant forwards gently, and Amber watched wide-eyed as the wooden legs splintered under the pressure.

  “How did you-?”

  “I told you, I’m not human. Not anymore.”

  Slowly but surely, what he was saying started to sink in. How Matt always knew when to save her, how he had gotten through the fire when no one else could, the rushing sensation of flying when she had fallen down the stairs-it wasn’t flying, it was just moving at an incredible speed. Understanding crashed over and over Amber again, like tidal waves.

  “What do you mean ‘not any more’?” she asked, her brain buzzing with all the sudden information that had been piled onto her.

  “What?”

  “When you said about not being human, and you said ‘not any more’.”

  Matt sighed and came to sit beside her at a desk, less tense now. He wrapped a comforting arm around Amber’s shoulders and quickly withdrew it again, as if the contact might scare her off. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  “I used to be like you, utterly clueless and unaware of how big the world around me really was. But then one night it all changed. I owed the wrong people money, and when I couldn’t pay it back they came after me. I can still remember lying there, waiting to die-I assure you it wasn’t pleasant. But it’s one of the few human memories I have left now.” Amber tried to move past the way Matt made it sound like he wasn’t human himself. “And then he spoke to me, the voice of authority.” Matt made a sneering laugh. “He told me he would let me live, but that there were conditions. I was a selfish person, so I agreed, anything to save myself.”

  “But it’s good that you’re here.” Amber had known him for only a few months, and they been on speaking terms for even less time, but it was still impossible for her to imagine a world without Matthew Pryer in it. Strangely, she thought he had become her best friend.

  “I used to tell myself that. I thought I was doing good, protecting you-you of all people need protecting, the way danger seems to be attracted to you. But now you know…you would have been safer if you’d never met me.” He looked lost in his own pool of sorrow, and Amber wanted to do something, anything, to help him. She stood up. There were two reasons for her doing this. Firstly, she wanted to comfort Matt, and secondly, she wanted a chance to discreetly push down on the desk to make sure the splintering thing he’d done wasn’t just a trick; if this turned out to be some sick joke, she wanted to make sure she backed out now before she made more of a fool of herself. She leant forwards on the desk as hard as she could, but it held. Amber’s stomach sunk as she thought more and more that all Matt was saying was true.

  “I would be dead if it wasn’t for you,” she stated. She knew it was the truth, and that if Matt hadn’t come the night of the fire or that time she had fallen down the stairs, she would be long gone.

  “You could still die, and it would be all my fault.” Matt buried his head in his hands, and grabbed his jet-black hair in his pale hands. Amber tried to prise them away, but he was unwilling to move, and his strength was inhuman. Amber almost laughed as she thought that last part.

  Neither of them talked, and the barrier of silence between them built up. The on
ly noise in the room was the quiet buzzing of the electric lights above their heads.

  “What about this ‘voice of authority’ you were talking about? What’s that?” Amber was amazed at how calm her voice sounded when she was screaming inside. There was still a part of her brain that was battling to tell her that this was all a lie-

  “It’s not,” said Matt.

  “Not what?”

  “Not a lie.”

  “How did you…?”

  “Our minds share a link, that’s how I know when you’re in trouble,” said Matt. “You’re thinking rather loudly at the moment.

  “Oh, sorry,” said Amber. The part of her brain that had been denying the truth was now silenced. There was no way to deny what he was. She had often thought Matthew was perfect, maybe too perfect to be real. Now Amber knew he was just too perfect to be human.

  “So who is this voice of authority guy, then?” she asked, perching on the table.

  Matt sighed

  “The voice of authority is the controller, the overseer of everything I ever do. It gives me commands, and I have to follow them or this half-life it granted me will end.”

  “What does it look like?” Amber asked, picturing the evil angel from her dreams, towering over the cowering Matthew. She didn’t like to think of him being hurt that way. Now that he had confided in her his secret, Amber felt like Matt was the brother she had never had.

  “He looks like the darkness, and the cold.” The pain in his voice scared her, and she started shaking violently, so much so that Matt said, “Amber, calm down. It’s going to be okay. That whole darkness and cold thing made it sound worse than it is. He’s everywhere, and I’m not really sure what it looks like. Every time I meet him, it’s cold, and it’s dark. It scares me sometimes, but look at me, I’m fine.”

  Amber wasn’t sure why she was sobbing into the sleeve of her jumper, and she wasn’t sure why she couldn’t stop. The boiling tears just kept forcing there way to the surface.

  “Shh,” Matt murmured, wrapping his arm around her shoulder again. “I promise, nothing’s going to happen to you.”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about,” she blubbered.

  “Amber, don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I won’t let it happen.” The determination in Matt’s voice was overpowering.

  The bell rang. It was an oddly anticlimatical sound, and Amber only realised as she heard it, chiming as though from far away, how wrapped up in her own little world she was.

  “You should go,” Matt murmured, pulling Amber to her feet. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Are you going to be okay?” she challenged, sounding surprisingly blasé having just recovered from a crying fit. Matt laughed.

  “I think I can survive by myself.”

  “I’ll see you later then.” Amber was reluctant to leave, but she knew somehow that Matt wanted to be alone.

  “Yeah, later.”

  As Amber walked back towards her class all alone, the whole conversation from the deserted classroom began to sink in. It seemed foolish that she had never considered that Matt might be more than human, given how perfect he was and how strangely he acted. Now Amber was alone, the fears and doubts that had been kept at bay by Matt’s presence began to spread through her like wildfire, poisoning every thought she had until she felt sick and unsteady. Tears started flowing again before she could stop them, and Amber had to dash into the nearest bathroom to stop herself breaking down in the middle of the hallway.

  The bathroom was mercifully deserted, and Amber hurried into the first cubicle, locking the door behind her. Her hands shook as she tore a wad of toilet role out of the dispenser to wipe her eyes with. Amber felt like she could have thrown up, or screamed, or passed out, but she clung to the cliff of sanity with her bare fingertips, still comprehending all that she had seen and been told. As much as Amber wanted a friend in that second, as much as she needed someone to be there to tell her that everything was alright, she was glad she was alone, because she knew anyone would freak out if they saw her cracking up like this. She knew what was wrong with her; she had seen films about it. Amber was going into shock, and if she had any sense she would have gone to the nurse. But she wasn’t thinking sensibly, and so she sat there all alone trying to reason with herself and failing miserably.

  Amber heard another bell ring and ignored it, she held her breath when a first year entered the cubicle next to hers, and she didn’t flinch when a spider spun down in front of her on a thin piece of thread-she knew now there were worse creatures in the world than a tiny little spider. The only thing that kept Amber from surrendering to the pain and tears was the knowledge that she was still sorting through in her head. Everything came down to seven simple-or as simple as things could be at a time like this-facts: Matthew was strong, he was fast, he could become- Amber stuttered mentally on the word-invisible, he was watched constantly by the ‘voice of authority’, and he had been ‘assigned’ to protect her. And then there was the small fact that he wasn’t human, which didn’t seem to bother Amber as much as it should have. She realised as she came to terms with these things that the more she thought it through, the more the hysteria seemed to calm down, and soon Amber was able to unlock the door and face the world again.