Ruins (23 page)

“Hurry,” he urged quietly, beckoning them into the hall.

Uneasily, Sam followed. He found himself in the grubby hallway. Thomas lingered outside a door under the stairs, his skeletal frame hunched. Sam shuddered, recalling the basement in Snelling’s house.

Thomas cast a glance up the stairs, then drew the cellar door open.

The scent of burnt copper rose up a set of cement steps. Thomas gestured at him and disappeared inside.

Without hesitating, Liberty went after him. Heart hammering in his chest, Sam followed.

The basement was full of strange gadgets. A single strip light illuminated an industrial-size chemistry set that monopolised a large work bench. Metal machinery proliferated every other surface. Jars held pickled body parts. Potted plants slumped.

Sam noticed an object covered in a white sheet on the work bench.

“Look if you want,” Thomas wheezed. He leaned against a chair, clearly struggling to stay upright. Walking downstairs had taken it out of him. What was wrong with the man?

Shakily, Sam drew the sheet back.

A metallic device like a glove rested in a wooden cradle. It was pristine, shimmering in the fluorescent light. Overpowered with dread and curiosity, Sam reached for it, his hand hovering over the gauntlet.

A floorboard creaked above him and Sam froze.

“Should’ve got out when I could,” Thomas muttered. He seemed to grow paler and more ghoulish with every passing second. He inspected his bandaged wrist. A speck of red stood out against the white material.

“You’re hurt,” Liberty observed, reaching for his wrist.

Thomas clutched his arm. “No,” he warned. He peered down at the speck of red, his gaze distant. “I thought she wouldn’t stop, but she did. She always stops.”

“Who are you talking about?” Liberty asked.

He glared at her. “She comes and goes, but she loves me. When she needs shelter, I give it to her.” He shook himself, appeared to become more lucid. “I knew you’d come eventually. Somebody has to know what we did. Somebody has to stop her.”

“You made this?” Sam asked, referring to the gauntlet.

The look on Thomas’s face was awful. Pride and guilt and horror mixed into one.

“It was meant to be used to separate atoms,” he murmured. “A tiny reactor that blasted particles apart to be studied. But... it did something else. It unleashed an electrical current that peeled back the very fabric of existence...”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked.

“I’m the scientist, just the scientist,” Thomas murmured. “She’s the alchemist. She completed it. She completed me.”

“What does it
do
?” Sam demanded, desperation knotting his stomach.

“It lets the darkness in,” Thomas whispered.

“Demons,” Liberty said. She hovered by the wilted plants in the corner, the strip-light catching in her dark eyes as she contemplated the gauntlet. Sam knew that look: she had sensed something. “It opens a portal
inside
a person. Lets a demon claw its way in.”

A noise. The shriek of a door opening. Or the lid of a coffin.

Thomas’s sallow gaze snapped to the ceiling.

“You have to stop her,” he hissed.

It was too late. Even as Sam started for the steps, he found a figure blocking his path. He felt her before he saw her. His skin began to hum and his arm hair bristled.

“Thomas, you should have said we had guests,” Malika purred.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Sickness

S
AM IMAGINED A SPIDER AFTER IT
had discovered an insect wriggling in its web. Despite the gloom of the stairwell, Malika radiated an icy vitality. Her auburn hair was coiled atop her head, her wiry form clad in a berry red dress that was square at the neck and cut off at the knees.

“I’m beginning to think you can’t get enough of me.” The velvety quaver of her voice sought to smother him. They were trapped in the cement-walled lab. She was blocking their only way out.

“So many people interested in my whereabouts,” Malika murmured, idling at the foot of the stairs. “How blessed I am.”

She knew. Of course she knew. Sentinels across the country had been dispatched to track her down, to contain her, and she was here, under all their noses, making a mockery of them once more. How many had found her? How many had been killed as a consequence? Sam recalled what Nicholas had glimpsed in the seeing glass. Malika drenched in blood.

A chuckle spilled from the woman’s throat.

“I do believe I have rendered you speechless,” she teased. “Old man, is it possible you fear me now? Do you finally understand that I cannot be stopped?”

“You will be stopped,” Sam grunted. “If not by me, then somebody else. There is only one end for you.”

“You seem so certain.” Malika’s teeth flashed ivory white. “Even the most certain of men can be proven wrong.” Her attention turned to Liberty. “Still following this old goat. Surely you’ve learned by now? Or perhaps you’re a glutton for punishment.”

Liberty
. Malika had used the Sensitive to gain access to Hallow House. She’d wormed her way into Liberty’s head, tapped into her powers and exploited them. It had left Liberty bed-ridden and Sam had feared she’d never recover.

“Stay back,” he warned the thing by the stairs. He pressed the satchel to his side. “What’s he got you doing? Laurent never liked getting his hands dirty. You on the other hand...”

“Such suspicion,” Malika drawled. Her attention bent to Thomas. The blood had drained from his face. His eyes were wide with – what? Adoration? What spell had Malika cast over him? She was the one responsible for his sickness. She’d manipulated him, just as she manipulated everybody. His brilliance had been twisted, wrecked, and he’d forged an abomination in her name.

“Thomas,” Malika murmured softly. “Do it.”

The man’s lower lip trembled and spit dribbled from his chin. He started toward the work bench; toward the gauntlet.

“Thomas, no,” Sam said firmly, standing in his way.

“Would you keep a man from his creation?” Silver sparks danced in Malika’s cat-like eyes. “I owe Thomas everything. We’re changing the world together. Such loyalty is rare these days. Why do you think we created the gauntlet? People don’t want to be recruited, they want to be ruled. Commanded. Controlled.”

“Spoken like a true dictator,” Sam spat. His hand crept up the side of the satchel, feeling for a way in.

“What is a dictator if not an agent of change? A driving force. Somebody who confronts the world with itself and sets a new order in motion.” She fixed him with an unflinching glare as he slipped his hand into the satchel. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Her gaze intensified. “Tell me, how’s the ticker?”

Crippling pain crushed his ribcage.

Sam’s skin prickled and flushed. His vision swam and he choked aloud as something beneath his ribs contracted painfully. His heart. It was gripped in steel claws.

Malika’s expression hardened. “Doc warned you against hunting, didn’t she? You should’ve listened. You shouldn’t be poking around where you don’t belong.”

“Sam.” Liberty’s voice.

He gripped the work bench, sweat beading his brow. Through the unnatural fever, he saw that Liberty had become very still, her gaze fixed on Malika.

The red-haired witch raised a finger and wagged it. “Uh-uh-uh,” she reprimanded, turning to face the Sensitive. “Stay out of my head, or I’ll snap that pretty neck of yours.”

“Liberty,” Sam croaked. “No.”

“Thomas,” Malika commanded. “Take his bag.”

Sam felt hands at his side and attempted to push them away. Blood throbbed in his ears and pain locked his limbs. He clutched at his satchel, refusing to let Thomas take it. The other man grunted and wrenched. Sam balled his fist and swung. Thomas shrieked and released him.

“Men,” Malika spat.

A rustle of red fabric, and he sensed her approaching, but then there was movement. Liberty flew from the corner of the basement. She and Malika crashed against the work bench, Liberty scratching at the woman’s face.

The pain vanished. The relief was a cool tonic in his veins. Sam shook his head, his pulse returning to normal. He wiped his forehead and focussed, seeing that Thomas was cowering against the wall.

“You have to stop her,” he gibbered, and even as he said it, his gaze lingered lovingly on Malika.

Liberty struck the ground with a thud and Malika clutched for her with blood-red nails.

“I tire of this meddling,” she hissed.

“Here!” Sam barked. Malika turned and he didn’t waste a breath, hurling the pouch that he’d retrieved from his satchel. It seemed to sail out of his hands in slow-motion. It cleared the work bench and exploded in Malika’s face.

Her scream blistered the air.

Sam winced at the spit of sizzling flesh. Malika’s hoarse screams made the apparatus on the bench shudder and the stench of singed flesh violated the air.

“Hurry!” Sam yelled as Liberty scrambled to her feet. They staggered over to the steps and Liberty began upward. He paused, casting a look back at the gauntlet. Malika was in the way and he daren’t attempt to retrieve it.

Thomas howled and hurried to Malika on all fours. In one swift movement, he unravelled the bandage at his wrist and crouched by her, prying her hands from her scarred face.

Malika’s lips leeched around the bloody gash in Thomas’s wrist. Sam heard ravenous suckling and fought the urge to vomit. He dashed up the remaining steps, bursting into the dingy hallway. Liberty was waiting for him and they clung to each other as they bound toward the front door, emerging into the garden.

The sunlight was blinding. Nale stomped his cigar into the ground and appraised them uncertainly.

“Inside,” Liberty told him. “The basement.”

Without a word, Nale bowled into the house with Zeus at his heels.

“You’re hurt.” Liberty motioned at Sam’s arm.

Surprised, he looked down and found blood smeared from his elbow to his wrist. Wooziness sapped his energy in an instant; he must have lost a lot of blood without even noticing. A small wound pumped red liquid. Thomas had cut him and he hadn’t noticed, lost in Malika’s icy grip.

Liberty tore off his ragged sleeve and wrapped it around Sam’s arm, so tightly that he had to grit his teeth against it.

“We need to close that quickly,” she said.

Nale reappeared at the door, Zeus at his side.

“Gone,” he gruffed.

“They can’t be,” Sam uttered. “We have to check–”

“I checked. They’re gone.”

Liberty drew Sam away from the house. “Come on. We’ll summon Esus on the way to mine, he’ll send others to sweep the house. You’re in no fit state.”

Sam cursed. She’d evaded them again. But where had Malika and Thomas disappeared to? He’d hoped the pouch would see her off, but he was beginning to accept it would take even more to eradicate Malika. Snelling had been a ruse all along. A puppet. Somebody to do Malika’s bidding and bow out early. Sam had been chasing the wrong monster. Snelling’s story ended here with Thomas Gray. Malika’s, it seemed, was only just beginning.

Nale helped Sam over to Liberty’s car. As she unlocked it, the old man leaned in to the Hunter.

“Stay with her,” he told Nale, nodding at Liberty. “Don’t let her out of your sight.” If Malika survived the day, Liberty might be next on her list.

*

Everything was so confused. It was as if somebody had taken a stack of papers and hurled them into the air. Now all Rae could do was watch them flutter to the floor.

She’d awoken on a camp bed in a strange room, her tongue dry, her body aching. Then the events of the previous evening returned in a smothering rush. The fight with Damon. The explosion.
Twig
. Rae wanted to scream. Pull her hair out. Instead she sat and balled her fists.

The moments after the explosion were a blur. The man from the museum had taken her to Moyse’s Hall Museum. She’d heard fire engines but nobody had seen them. They’d moved quickly. She vaguely recalled the museum man ushering her into the office and showing her the bed. She didn’t remember falling asleep.

Were they all dead? Twig and Damon and the others? Just like Kay? Retro Threads was a singed, shattered shell when she left it. And Twig had been lying in the rubble not moving.

Rae wanted to throw up.

The museum man had woken her after what felt like five minutes, given her food, water. His name was Laurent, he’d said, and he needed her help. Then he started talking about monsters. She should have laughed at him, but she’d glimpsed things. At night, the cities came alive with things that didn’t want to be seen. She’d seen them. Glowing green eyes and claws that clattered over tarmac. They were rule number five.
Don’t let the monsters see you
.

Am I a monster?