Ruins (17 page)

Nicholas squinted, attempting to peel away the invisible layers that shrouded the man. To see inside. An image flashed before his eyes.

The man wears a business suit and holds his head in his hands.

Nicholas pushed harder, attempting to understand what the image meant.

He’s lost all of his money and his wife has run off with his friend. He’s bankrupt and alone and his house is being reclaimed...

The image faded and the park sounds returned. Nicholas blinked, emerging from the trance, his head fuzzy.

“He lost everything,” he said, still reeling over the fact that he’d managed to read the man. It was almost easy, and he hadn’t felt nauseated like before. “His job, his wife, his home.”

Liberty was looking at him strangely.

“What?” he asked uncomfortably.

“You’re a natural,” Liberty murmured. “You have a powerful gift.”

“I can’t always do it. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes I feel sick. And I can’t–” He stopped himself. He’d almost said:
I can’t find the girl Esus wants me to find
. His power was fickle, unpredictable. The Sentinels had so many secrets, he wasn’t sure if he was expected to keep them, too. Could he tell Liberty why he was in Bury?

“That will pass,” Liberty said. “Like any talent, you must take time to hone it, focus it, and learn from your mistakes. Use the seeing glass. The man you just read has few barriers, little protection against us. Reading him is easy if you know how. The same doesn’t apply to the agents of the Dark Prophets. They don’t like to share their secrets and they have ways of hiding them.”

“Something bad is happening here,” Nicholas said. “Can you help?”

“I can try.”

“I need to find somebody. A girl. But I don’t know where to start.”

Liberty’s eyes were kind. “Finding people’s the hardest. Ever heard the phrase ‘needle in a haystack’? Try ‘needle in a field of haystacks’ and you’re halfway there. You can’t just throw your thoughts out there and hope they land on the person you’re looking for. You have to be more specific. You’d need to know something about them. Their name. Or you’d need one of their possessions.”

Nicholas sagged. “So basically it’s impossible,” he said.

“Nothing’s impossible.” Liberty winked at him. “Use the glass. Keep trying until you can’t try any more. Then try again.” She checked her watch. “I should see if Sam’s back at Aileen’s. Coming?”

“I’m going to stay here for a bit,” Nicholas said. “See what else I can do.”

“Look after yourself, Nicholas. Make your own barriers, protect yourself. Build a wall. You don’t want the Dark Prophets in your head, trust me.”

He spent another hour in the park, dipping in and out of people’s lives. By the time he’d tapped into a fifth person’s memories, he could do it almost without thinking. But he began to feel guilty. Even though the things he sensed were surface-level, everyday problems, he was intruding on people’s privacy. He knew he had no right to.

Nicholas watched kids frolicking through the park. Was this what the Dark Prophets wanted to destroy? Any semblance of happiness? He had to find a way to prevent that from happening.

Liberty had said he needed something of the girl’s to find her. A name or a possession. He had a name. Lydia Green. Esus had said she wasn’t called that anymore, but it was a start.

Closing his eyes, he held the name in his head. He tried to imagine what she might look like, or where she might be. Supposedly, she was here in town. But where?

He tried until his head began to pound again and sighed in annoyance.

The museum. He’d go to Moyse’s Hall Museum and research the Tortor. The Market Square was just a five minute walk up Abbeygate Street and he might be able to sense something about the girl on the way. He just had to keep trying.

He became aware of snuffling snores coming from beneath the bench. He prodded Isabel with his toe and she shot up as if she’d been electrocuted.

“What? Where?” she hissed, unsheathing her claws.

Nicholas laughed. “Come on,” he said.

He wandered through town with Isabel on his shoulder. The images from the seeing glass continued to flicker in his mind. The burning red triangle. The bowler hat. The raven pendant. Were they connected to the girl?

Every girl he passed in the street caught his attention. Could she be the one? He really had nothing to go on. He didn’t know what she looked like or how old she was, let alone what name she was going under. Unless the girl at the school really was the one he was looking for. He should be so lucky.

Five minutes later, he was inside Moyse’s Hall Museum. It was an unusual place. The floor of the long, low lobby was an uneven patchwork of stone. Sand-coloured columns supported an odd ceiling that swooped and fell in shallow arches.

On his shoulder, Isabel sneezed and Nicholas was glad that there were no museum workers about; they’d surely throw the cat out. Their absence struck him as odd. Were they all on a break? He seemed to be the only person in the building.

The collections were equally odd. The further he went into the museum, the more gruesome surprises it divulged. When it was built in 1180, Moyse’s Hall was used as a gaol, and a gibbet still swung from one stony ceiling – a man-shaped metal cage used for displaying the rotting cadavers of criminals and pirates. This gibbet was created in the 1700s for Jonathan Nicols, a man who had butchered his sister.

The contents of one particular glass cabinet gave Nicholas further cause to shiver with revulsion. Inside rested a shrivelled-looking brown book. It was an account of the trial of William Corder, who was found guilty of the infamous ‘Red Barn Murder’. The barn itself was in Polstead, Suffolk, and was the meeting place of Corder and his lover, Maria Marten. When they met at the barn one night in 1827, Corder shot Marten dead and fled. After his death by hanging, the record of Corder’s trial was bound in his own skin.

“A ghoulish curio,” Isabel observed quietly. “Imagine your skin being used to bind a book recounting your death.”

The placard said that after he’d been hanged, Corder’s body was cut down and taken to the courtroom at Shire Hall where five-thousand-strong crowds were permitted to look in as his corpse was carved open.

“Sick,” Nicholas murmured.

“Who’s the sicker man – the man who commits a devilish crime of passion, or the man who watches as another is put to death?” Isabel mused.

There was nothing in the museum about the Tortor. He hadn’t really expected there to be. Nothing was that easy.

As evening drew in, Nicholas paced through the town, increasingly frustrated that another day had passed and he was no closer to finding the girl.

On Angel Hill, he peered at the Abbey gate; a squat tower with a portcullis and weather-worn statues. He felt a gentle pull toward the park and wandered back inside. His parents had brought him here as a child. Grief spasmed his stomach. He hadn’t realised how fresh it still was. The Sentinels and their enemies had been a distraction ever since his parents died, but the pain was still there, needling under the surface.

Isabel hopped from his shoulder and scampered through the bushes. She was growing wilder every day, succumbing to her animal instincts. He was sure he’d spotted her eyeing a bird with a hungry glint in her eye earlier.

They were the only two left in the park. Dusky light washed through the gardens, lending them a magical air. Nicholas’s thoughts returned to the images from the seeing glass and frustration moiled in his chest. He kicked a stone that almost hit Isabel.

“Careful, boy!”

“I can’t do this,” he grunted, slumping against a tree.

“Do what?”

“Any of it, it’s useless. All I have to go on is a load of pictures I saw in my head and some vague orders from a guy whose face nobody’s ever seen.”

“Now now,” Isabel tutted. “Feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to help anybody.”

Nicholas grit his teeth and kicked the tree. People were counting on him. A lot of people. And Esus had made it sound so easy.
“The knowledge resides dormant in you. It is your duty to unlock it by any means necessary.”
But how? And what if he was too late? What if he never figured it out?

“Breathe, boy,” the cat said. “We’ll tackle one thing at a time. First the girl, then the Trinity.”

A chill crept into the air and the sky darkened. Something was wrong. Isabel’s mirror-like eyes brightened with concern. What had she sensed? Around them, the trees rolled in the wind, their soft
‘shhhhh’
sounds a warning that they shouldn’t be there.

A mournful shriek echoed through the park.

Nicholas froze. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

“What was that?” he whispered.

An answering howl reverberated through the air. It was a haunted sound, like a creature in pain, high above their heads. It couldn’t be the shadowy murklings, though. They hadn’t made sounds like that at the school.

“We must get away from here,” Isabel urged, her tail puffing up.

A shadow tumbled out of the sky and rushed past Nicholas. He threw himself to the ground instinctively, dodging sharp talons. The creature – a solid, living thing, not a shadow at all – swept up into the sky again and became lost in dark clouds.

“What the hell was that?!” he exclaimed.

“Something that doesn’t seem to agree with us.”

He’d seen it before. It was one of the visions from the seeing glass. A swooping monster.

“Great,” he muttered. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

Another plaintive cry shivered above them, and more winged shapes plunged from the evening sky, soaring toward them. Nicholas raced out of the way, running for the trees. A gust of air blasted at him, accompanied by the flap of large, leathery wings beating just over his head.

His foot jammed into something and he collapsed awkwardly to all fours – just in time for the creature to whorl overhead, screaming in annoyance. It looked like a gargoyle brought to life.

Nicholas looked back and saw that he’d tripped over a branch. He snatched it from the ground and brandished it like a sword.

A winged beast flew at him, yellow eyes piercing the unnatural murk that had descended on the park. Nicholas drew the branch back and buried it in the creature’s chest. It emitted a piercing shriek and toppled to the ground. Nicholas tentatively approached, and the monster unfurled its coriaceous wings, turning a squashed, diamond-shaped face in his direction. Slick fangs were bared and the creature hissed. The sound made the hairs on his arms prickle.

Nicholas hit it again and again until the beast lay still.

Enraged whoops battered him from the skies and Nicholas was under attack again. He couldn’t tell how many there were, it was impossible to see as the winged things swooped toward him. He wielded the branch in front of him like a sword and took down another.

“There, boy!” Isabel yelled. “To your left!”

Nicholas struck out again, slashing at a third monster’s wing so that it tore and the creature toppled awkwardly from the air.

The furious screeching gave way to another sound. Slow, deliberate clapping.

“Not bad. Not bad at all.”

The voice came from the side. Nicholas whirled about.

A man stood at the centre of the path. In the gloom, his skin was like ice.

“Who’s there?” Nicholas demanded. “Who is that?”

The man smiled.

“The aledites have a very distinctive cry, don’t they? They originally hail from the stormy wastelands of the demonic Eld Regions. I believe you’ve already encountered a demon from that domain. Nasty, boiling hell pit of a place. Small wonder they’re so eager to reclaim our world.”

The branch felt heavy in Nicholas’s hands. Laurent. The Sentinel traitor. He attempted to hold the branch steady in front of him, but he wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be able to. Sam’s training echoed in his ears.

Hands up. Hands up!

“I had to see for myself the boy who fought Diltraa and lived. Not many can attest to that.” Laurent’s blond hair was slicked back and he wore a fitted navy jacket. He stood so still that he could be one of the Abbey gate’s statues.

Something brushed Nicholas’s leg and he almost jumped out of his skin before realising it was Isabel.

“How do you know about that?” he demanded.

Laurent bared perfect white teeth. A row of bleached gravestones.

“I know a great many things about you, Nicholas Hallow. Your mother was a nursery worker; your father a publisher. Both perished in a train crash. Tragic, tragic accident. At school, you received average grades and you were predicted a ‘B’ in Maths. Not bad, but hardly what one might expect from a boy of your intelligence.” The man paused. “Were you distracted at school? That’s one thing I don’t know. Was it girls? Boys? Or perhaps the sense that you were meant for something bigger than classroom studies. That certain... abilities were going to waste.”

The branch drooped in front of him. Nicholas couldn’t hold it up any longer.

“Alright, you’ve read my bio, big whoop,” he said. He had to get away. Laurent had killed his entire family. Nicholas didn’t want to think about what he might have in store for him.