Free Din Eidyn Corpus (Book 2): dEaDINBURGH (Alliances) by Mark Wilson Page A

a familiar prickle at the base of her neck and cut a sidelong look back to her mother. Jennifer had risen to her knees and was sucking in litres of air with loud rasping breaths. Alys had assumed the little prickle was danger, but as she shifted her eyes along The Gardens and up the slope to the North Gate, she smiled broadly at the source.
    Before she disappeared into the tent, she waved to Joey who was standing part way down the sloping grass, looking stunned. She beckoned him to join her.

Chapter 10
     
    Joey
     
    Wandering along Princes Street, his step lighter than it had been for days – weeks perhaps – Joey whistled a tune Jock used to sing often enough to drive his young charge crazy with the repetition. Now, the simple song brought the comfort of Jock’s presence.
    Having left Suzy’s place the day before, Joey had strolled through the West End towards The Gardens, taking his time for a change. The absence of Ringed in the city-centre, whilst unsettling, made his walk to Alys’s home less hurried than it may have been otherwise.
    As he walked, Joey pinched at his coat pocket with thumb and forefinger, reassuring himself that the little rubbery flash drive containing his mother’s message still lay securely zipped inside. Each time he thought of her – of Michelle – he smiled.
    Suzy had been right. He needed to overcome the darkness, pain and anger he’d allowed to grow. It had been consuming him. Those feelings, the despair, weren’t entirely gone but he was in control of them. He was using them now, instead of them using him. He was consuming them as fuel, the energy he needed to do what he planned.
    Joey sighed, content with where and who he was, perhaps for the first time in his short life. Purpose did that to a person.
    With his purpose foremost in his mind, Joey had a change of heart and spun around on his heels, away from The Gardens, up Lothian Road to The Meadows and towards the little house where Suzy had told him her friend Tricia lived.
    Her friend, Tricia Ferguson, the former computer technician.
     

     
    Standing in the centre of the narrow cobbled street, Joey gazed up at the faded black and green sign of the former bar: the Banshee Labyrinth. Above the next window, another sign bore the legend ‘Scotland’s Most Haunted’. Joey smirked and nudged Tricia’s arm.
    She followed his eye-line up and gave out a chuckle.
    “Sure, I had a pint in here once, son.”
    Joey smiled politely and let the reference he didn’t understand pass. He was used to ignoring wee idioms and phrases like that from his time with Jock. It was one of the things he missed most about his mentor. Spending time in Suzy’s and now Tricia’s company, their use of the same ancient-sounding phrases warmed his soul.
     
    Tricia had welcomed him into her home, after an initial threat to gut him with a butcher’s knife for being on her property. Once he’d hurriedly explained Suzy had sent him, Tricia had ushered him through her perimeter defences and up the stairs into her small apartment in the former student residences.
    She was perhaps sixty years old. The young people of Edinburgh found it fairly difficult to judge the ages of people over fifty since there were so few of them, but having spent much of his life surrounded by older men in The Brotherhood, and being brought up in later years by Jock, Joey was perhaps a little keener than most in guessing.
    Tricia was a small, sturdy woman with faded red hair, lively green eyes and a quick smile. She frequently reached out to his head and ruffled his hair, in the way you might praise a child. It was an odd gesture from someone he’d just met and one that could be an annoyance in certain circumstances. Delivered with an enthusiastic smile and genuine excitement at his presence, Joey found it strangely comforting and entirely endearing.
      Her overriding feature was that she couldn’t stand still. Her face, hands, eyes mouth and limbs were a lively, busy flurry of