Ruins (26 page)

She imagined how it probably looked to them. A building exploding and some kid –
some homeless nobody, a trouble-making out-of-towner
– running away, leaving behind half a morgue’s worth of dead bodies. They’d think she did it on purpose. That she’d
wanted
to blow the shop up.

Her head pounded. There were too many people. She’d never get away if she ran. She couldn’t run if she tried.

She cursed her own stupidity and chanced a look down the platform. The police were closing in. Her eyes locked with one of the officers and his face changed. His jaw hardened into a line and he shot a glance at his partner. They both stared at her.

No.

Rae tried to push her way through the crowd, away from the officers.

“Move! Out of the way!” a voice shouted. Confused mumbles rippled along the platform and Rae was afraid. There was no way off. The police were between her and the exit. All she could do was hurry to the other end and hope there was another way out.

“Move!” one of the officers shouted. He sounded close.

Rae shouldered between people, mutters and tuts following her. And another sound. A faint vibration. The train was approaching. She’d never make it aboard now. Even if she managed to clamber on, the police would follow. Then she really would be trapped.

A hand clenched her arm. A man wearing a baseball cap. One of the passengers.

“I think they want a word with you, love,” he said.

“Leave off me!” Rae yelled, wrenching her arm free.

“Hey–” the man protested, but Rae elbowed past him.

“Stop her!” the officer hollered.

Rae heard the train approaching. The tracks shuddered and she was only halfway along the platform. It was impossible. She’d never escape. The crowd parted to let the officers through and they closed in, now barely ten feet away.

The tracks.

Rae teetered on the edge of the platform, watching the train rattle closer.

The officers were almost upon her.

Steeling herself, Rae knew there was no other option.

She jumped onto the tracks.

Horrified gasps fizzled above her and Rae ignored them, staring down the train as it thundered toward her. The vibrations shook her bones and she braced herself on the tracks.

“Get off there!” one of the officers cried.

Rae ignored him. Heat raged through her, but she couldn’t let go. She’d controlled her power with Laurent, she could do it again. But she didn’t trust herself here. Not with so many people around.

Stand your ground.

She had to wait for just the right moment. If she jumped onto the other platform as the train arrived, it would block the police. By the time they made it to the other side, she’d be long gone.

The train’s whistle screeched and the boys on the platform whooped like gorillas. Were they cheering her on or desperate to see her steamrollered into a gory mess?

One of the officers clambered down onto the tracks and Rae knew she had to move now.

As the train bore down on her, she hopped out of the way and breathlessly clambered onto the other platform. The crowd stood dumbfounded. Mouths hung open. Others sobbed.

Rae pushed into the throng, hustling people aside, but a hand snatched at her and she found herself staring into the exasperated face of one of the officers. He’d followed her across the tracks.

“That’s enough,” the policeman huffed, sweat pouring down his face.

“Let me go!” Rae yelled.

Don’t do it. Don’t.

The heat raged. Molten lava coursed through her veins. The roof above the platform shook and Rae tried to calm her pulse, but everybody was staring at her and the officer’s grip was iron.

Freak.

People peered nervously at the roof as it shook more violently.

No. Don’t.

The people on the platform backed away from her. She was contagious. Dangerous. She might as well have a bomb strapped to her chest.

The roof rumbled like thunder. The metal supports shrieked.

“Get off me,” Rae warned the policeman. He began dragging her through the crowd.

The roof peeled open like a tin can. Debris rained down and the officer released her. Terrified howls reverberated through the station and Rae seized her moment. She barrelled down the platform, shoving anybody who got in her way, blindly tearing away from the officer. A din of shouts buffeted her from all sides.

She didn’t stop until she was out on the street, pausing only to scan the car park for more police officers. There weren’t any, so she ran.

She ran, ran,
ran
, her breath catching in her throat, the screams of the people on the platform deafening her, even though she’d left them far behind.

Finally, she was forced to stop. Rae crouched in a side street, hiccupping up sobs. The faces of the people she’d almost killed filled her vision. Their derision turning to fear. The wails as she tore away the platform’s roof.

She hadn’t wanted to. She hadn’t meant to.

Were they hurt? Dead?

Rae forced herself to breathe deeply, to curb the sobs.

It had been a glimpse of the future. If she didn’t get herself under control, she’d become even more volatile. She’d already killed, and she’d kill again. She couldn’t let that happen.

Run
, the familiar voice urged.

No
.

She couldn’t run anymore. She’d run her whole life and where had it gotten her? She had to find a way to control whatever it was that churned inside of her. It’s what Twig would have said. He’d seen what she could do in the alley and he hadn’t run away. But he was dead, and there was only one person left in the world who wasn’t afraid of her.

In a daze, Rae staggered up the street. The museum wasn’t far. Filled with resolve, she hurried into the Market Square and finally reached Moyse’s Hall. Sweaty and bleary-eyed, she careened into the lobby.

A man looked up from the desk and relief washed through her. He was still here.

“You’re back,” Laurent smiled.

*

An hour later, Rae sank onto the edge of the camp bed in the office, her hands wedged under her legs. She’d told Laurent everything. She hadn’t cried again. She felt more clear-headed than she had in years.

“I’m going to help you,” Laurent said softly, his arms crossed as he leaned against the wall.

She stared at her lap, broken, sapped of any defiance. “Thanks.”

“You have a powerful gift, Rae. You can help people.”

She caught the scoff before it blurted out.
All I do is hurt people
.

“I killed Kay,” she whispered, unable to keep it inside anymore. “She was my friend. The only one... She taught me how to get by on the street. I killed her.”

“Tell me what happened,” Laurent said. There was no judgement in his voice.

“She wouldn’t stop going on. She wanted to know how I ended up on the street and she wouldn’t leave it alone.” Rae’s throat constricted. Her rules for survival fell apart before her eyes.

Don’t make friends.

Don’t talk about your past.

Don’t tell anybody what you can do.

Don’t show weakness.

Don’t let the monsters see you.

They were useless now. They’d been useless all along. All they’d done was cause her pain.

“She kept pushing and
pushing
... I got angry...”

Laurent crouched before her. “The world is sick,” he uttered mellifluously. “There are things out there far worse than you, believe me.”

“They sound terrifying.”

He laughed. “You have no idea. What I said about monsters is true. They’re everywhere and they’re multiplying. If you directed that power at them, there would be no stopping you.”

Laurent wanted her to become a fighter? Rae didn’t know what to think. She was so tired. She’d fought before – the streets were a breeding ground for petty squabbles – but never using her power. She didn’t think she’d ever want to. She’d seen the monsters that scrabbled about at night and they were hideous, stinking, terrifying. She couldn’t possibly face them.

If Laurent helped her control the churning, though...

He didn’t need to know that she couldn’t fight.

“What do we do?” she asked.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

BREAKING IN

N
ICHOLAS EXAMINED A WALL IN DAWN’S
purple bedroom. It was plastered with more documents than he could count. Posters. Maps. Newspaper clippings. Photographs. Star charts. There were pins and bits of string zigzagging in determined lines. It was exactly like the walls he’d seen on cop TV shows where the movements of serial killers were tracked in desperate, meticulous detail.

“Do you believe in fate?” he asked.

“I didn’t used to,” Dawn said, seated at her desk, bathed in the glow of her laptop. She was so quiet, but he didn’t mind. He sensed that Dawn only spoke if there was something important to say. She wasn’t like other teenagers, most of whom seemed to spend their time making as much noise as possible.

“But you do now?”

Dawn took a swig from a can of fizzy drink. “I don’t want to. It’s stupid and sentimental. A way of explaining something we don’t understand.”

“Like?”

Dawn shrugged. “Vikings rationalised things that couldn’t be explained by creating the
norns
; they were mythical beings that wove the fate of men and gods like it was a grand tapestry, a story in cloth.” She paused. “I don’t believe in fate... but how do you explain the fact that I’m here at the same time as Laurent and you and that girl. We all ended up in the exact same place for different reasons, but we’re all connected somehow.”

“Maybe it’s like a mathematical equation,” Nicholas suggested. “Probability or something. No matter how improbable something seems to be, there’s still a probability, no matter how tiny, that it could happen.”

“I like that.”

“Or Laurent’s here because he wants to throw me the goriest birthday party ever.”

“It’s your birthday?”

“In...” Nicholas counted in his head. “Two days. Wonder what he’s going to get me.”

Dawn fiddled with the can. “At first I thought he’d come for me,” she admitted softly. “I saw him for the first time last week and I thought maybe he’d come to finish me off.”

Nicholas didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t offer any comforting words, so he inspected one of the newspaper clippings tacked to the wall. “That why you didn’t talk to me when I got here?”

Dawn picked at her nails. She shrugged. “Scared, I suppose.”

“Of me?”

“No. That it was time to fight again. I didn’t want to be part of it.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“Like I have a choice anymore.”

Nicholas understood. The stage was being set for a battle that would affect everybody. Dawn had as much right to fight as he did.

“What’s it like?” he asked. “Growing up knowing about all of this stuff?”

“What’s it like not knowing?”

“Good point. Your nan know you’ve done that to your wall?”

Dawn shrugged again. Nicholas leaned in closer to one of the newspaper articles. It reported a robbery at a rich bureaucrat’s home in France. An expensive Chinese vase had been taken.

“What’s this?” he asked.

Dawn swivelled her chair. “Oh, just something I thought might be relevant.”

“How?”

“Well, you know I tracked Laurent after Cambodia? Or, tried to. Paris was one of the places he stopped off at. I don’t know how long he was there, but nothing particularly interesting happened in that period. No bombs, no strange deaths. But that vase was stolen from Andre Bisset’s home. He’s some important art collector. The vase is old and valuable, but nobody’s seen it since.”

“You think Laurent took it? Why would he do that?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Dawn said, returning to the laptop and typing. “But it has a strange history. Ah!” She slumped back in her chair, apparently defeated by something. Nicholas ambled over. Dawn had hacked into the local council’s database and was attempting to find the entrances to the catacombs beneath the town.

“Find anything?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Dawn said, sounding annoyed. “I think the tunnels were built before anybody ever heard of a blueprint. The monks used them.”

Nicholas lowered himself into the wicker chair by the window. So much for Sentinel training. He couldn’t even find something a layer of tarmac away. And Esus thought he was capable of raising the old gods. With his broken arm, he could barely even tie his shoelaces. They had looked online for anything about the word ‘Tortor’, too; the word the hideous old crone at the school had uttered. All that came up was that same Latin definition: Tortor meant executioner or torturer.