Ruins (41 page)

He slumped against metal bars, resisting the urge to vomit as he cradled his broken arm. Panting, he wiped the sweat from his face. He was soaked through. As his vision cleared, the sharp pain in his arm dulled to a persistent throb and he became aware of where he was.

The gibbet. He was in the gibbet.

“A perfect fit,” Malika smiled, clicking a padlock shut. She inspected something in her hand.
The Drujblade
.

Nicholas sagged against the side of the gibbet. There was barely any room to move, especially with the backpack still on. The metal cut into him, forcing him to stand upright. He could hear crackling fire and realised that the museum was already ablaze. Smoke roved up through the stairwell and he saw orange, flickering glows swelling.

And through it all his arm pounded like nothing he’d ever felt. If he could tear it from its socket to escape the pain, he would.

Dawn
. Nicholas remembered the thumping sounds as she crashed down the stairs. He dreaded to think what sort of state she was in. If she’d landed awkwardly, she could even be...

No, he wouldn’t let himself think it.

Malika’s gaze drilled into him.

She’s changed
, Nicholas thought with growing dread. Before, she had been terrifying. Now, her eyes glinted with a cold, clear-sighted determination he’d not seen before. As if everything she had been planning was coming to pass exactly as she’d hoped.

Malika dripping with blood
. The image from the seeing glass surfaced in his mind, but he still didn’t know what it meant.

“What are you doing?” he demanded. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing that he was afraid. He wouldn’t shake the cage or try to break it open. He’d remain calm. Show her he wasn’t a child. That he wasn’t afraid to die.

“You need me,” he added. “You said before. If I’m dead...” He stopped short, cowed by the look that Malika gave him. It almost seemed to be pity.

“You could have been a powerful ally,” she purred, stroking the Drujblade. “Laurent is foolish. He believes you will see the light when the Prophets arrive. I know better.”

Hopelessly, Nicholas watched Malika handle the Drujblade.
His
Drujblade. His only defence, taken from him.

“This is the blade that you destroyed Diltraa with,” she observed. “I owe you my gratitude.”

“Gratitude?” The pain was still so intense that Nicholas couldn’t be sure he’d heard Malika correctly.

Malika had served Diltraa, an Adept of the Dark Prophets. Esus destroyed the demon at Hallow House, tore the monster’s head from its shoulders. And now Malika was thanking him for Diltraa’s demise? It didn’t make any sense.

“You freed me,” she hissed.

“I saw you in the room, the pentagon room,” Nicholas murmured, recalling his vision that night in the garden. He’d glimpsed her past. He couldn’t remember it all, but one image stuck fast in his mind: Malika, naked, cowering in the corner of the pentagon room. He still didn’t know what it meant. “What were you doing there? What happened?”

“Such things are of little importance.”

“You wanted Jessica dead,” Nicholas continued. In the days following the break-in at Hallow House, he went over and over what had happened in the gardens, attempting to make sense of it all. He’d assumed Malika simply wanted to eradicate the Sentinels’ guardian, usurp Jessica and send the Sentinels into a panic. “There’s more to it, isn’t there? You wanted her dead for a reason.”

Malika’s gaze threatened to burn right through him.

“Manchild, there’s so much you don’t know. And you never will.”

In a flurry of red she was beside the cage. A pale hand flashed through the bars and seized his free arm, yanking it forward. Her hand was like stone. The blade bit into his palm. Blood pooled and Malika collected it into a vial.

“Mind if I keep this?” she murmured, examining the Drujblade once more. “A souvenir. A reminder of the man you could have been one day. When the world burns, you’ll be by my side; in spirit, at least.”

He wanted to scream. Unable to help himself, he rattled the cage angrily, his bloody palm slipping on the metal bars, but it was futile. He was stuck in there.

Malika turned her back on him. She muttered something under her breath. A prayer or a spell.

Nicholas wasn’t sure if the wooziness was making him imagine things, but the flames that lapped up the stairwell seemed to move slower, as if they’d grown tired.

Time stood still.

Malika shrieked a foreign-sounding word and hurled the bloody vial to the floor. A rush of energy blasted through the building. It shook on its foundations.

With a jolt, he understood what Malika was doing – she was performing the ceremony to open the trikraft. He’d walked straight into it. It was his blood. Laurent had used demon blood to empower himself. Whatever powers the Trinity had placed inside of Nicholas must be in his blood – and Malika was using it to summon the Dark Prophets.

“The knowledge resides within you,”
Esus had said. And his power resided in his blood...

A blinding flash of red light erupted from where the vial lay shattered and the ceiling came away.

Through the hole above their heads, Nicholas saw a glimmering red star burning above the museum. It stayed suspended in place like a beacon.

I have to get out of here,
he thought.

He shook the cage, but it was no good. He eyed Malika. What had he done in the garden that night? He had broken through her defences, found a way into her mind. If he could do that again, perhaps he could find a way to escape.

“That is how you will fight,”
Esus had said. The phantom wanted Nicholas to fight with his mind, not his fists.

Attempting to shut out the thundering pain in his broken arm, he mustered his strength and focussed on Malika. He felt the vibrations in his skull and tried to direct them at her.

Fresh pain tore through him.

Nicholas screamed and his knees gave way. It was as if somebody had split his head open. He slumped against the cage, his vision swimming.

“Now, now,” Malika tutted, wagging a finger at him. “You know it’s rude to pry.”

Through the agony, Nicholas watched her glide to the centre of the room. She had built new defences; ones that his feeble abilities couldn’t hope to overcome.

Apparently satisfied, Malika went to the door. She paused, cast him a look. The flames from the stairwell bathed her in hellfire.

“I’ll give your regards to Jessica,” she murmured. Then she swept away and Nicholas watched in horror as, finally, the room succumbed to the fire.

*

Rae peered around the tree trunk at the police station. She watched as the police cars out front lit up one by one and tore off into the night, their sirens keening. Remorse stabbed unexpectedly in her chest as she realised that whatever was happening to the town was her fault. She’d let that thing loose from the tunnels. She was responsible for whatever damage it caused; whoever it killed.

A familiar nag filled her ears.

Run. Run away.

The time for running had passed. Perhaps her running days were behind her. She was part of this whether she liked it or not. She wondered where Laurent was. What he was doing. She’d trusted him, accepted that he had wanted to help her. Now she saw that he was one of the monsters he’d spoken about. Perhaps the worst one of all.

Twig
. She’d let him down.

“Now what?” she asked the cat.

They had escaped the Harvesters and made for the police station. People seemed to have gone mad. They were fighting in the streets. Setting fire to things and smashing up buildings. Rae, the cat and an elderly woman called Aileen had moved quickly, heading for the station. The others were on their way to the school where the teachers had been killed.

Isabel was perched in a branch above her head, golden eyes set intently on the police station. Rae wondered what her story was. How was it possible for a cat to speak?

“We must locate Samuel’s cell,” Isabel said.

Rae chewed the inside of her cheek. “I blow things up. Could get him out.”

“Too dangerous.” Isabel dismissed her sniffily. “This is something that requires a touch of the old-fashioned.”

“What do you suggest, dear?” asked Aileen. The landlady stood on the other side of the tree. With the sword strapped to her back and her bag full of weapons, she was an incongruous sight. A battlefield granny.

For a fleeting moment, Rae wondered if she was dreaming it all. The monsters, the talking cat, the sword-wielding old lady. She almost wished she was.

“Diversionary tactics,” the cat said.

They listened as Isabel briskly outlined her plan. Rae had no choice but to go along with it, though it sounded crazy. Surely it would be easier to demolish the exterior wall of Sam’s cell? She decided to stick with Isabel’s arrangement, suspecting the cat would flay her alive if she refused.

A few moments later, Rae pulled open the door to the police station and walked into the brightly-lit reception.

“Sorry, love,” an officer said, hurrying past her into the car park.

Rae remembered the cop shows she’d seen as a kid. The officers at the front desk were always simple-minded. Glorified office monkeys. She doubted she’d be as lucky, especially not with the town burning around them.

The officer behind the desk was probably in her early forties. She didn’t look bored or doughy, as Rae had imagined; she was smart, her hair pulled tight in a bun, the sparest of make-up masking the odd wrinkle.

Rae surveyed the reception. A door beside the desk was open and she glimpsed a corridor that led to the rest of the station. They were lucky. This was a small, local facility – the most the Bury police probably dealt with was drunks and the odd thief. There was no need for Fort Knox-style security.

“Can I help you?” the policewoman asked as Rae approached.

“I can’t find my phone,” she said. “Think somebody pinched it.”

A thief reporting a robbery
. So long as it kept the officer distracted.

A framed poster on the wall behind the officer reflected the contents of the front desk. Rae saw two screens that showed CCTV footage of the rest of the station.

“Okay. Do you mind coming back in the morning? We’ve got a bit of a situation here at the moment.”

This town won’t be here in the morning
, Rae thought.

Out of the corner of her eye, Rae glimpsed a black shape scampering silently through the reception. It disappeared through the door to the back of the station. Isabel was in. Now all she had to do was keep the officer from looking at the surveillance cameras.

*

Sam grasped the bars at the window and tugged hard.

It was no good. They refused to be forced either way.

“Blast,” he groused. Through the mottled window he glimpsed distorted orange flickers. Laurent’s grand finale was well under way and Sam was damned if he was going to sit in his cell and listen patiently as the world ended.

“Old man,” a voice said.

Sam jumped. It sounded like…

“Isabel?” he ventured, going to the cell door. He peered through the rectangular window halfway down. The cat sat in the middle of the corridor.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Saving the day, as is my lot,” Isabel replied.

“You’re getting me out of here?”

“Your faith in me is astounding.” The cat’s ears flicked and she looked off down the corridor.

“Somebody approaches,” she hissed. “Step away.”

Sam shuffled away from the door. Just how Isabel intended to free him was beyond his comprehension. She seemed to have forgotten that she was a cat. What use was a cat in a situation like this?

A sudden fizzing sound came through the door, as if a firework had been lit, and sparks spewed into the cell through the small window. He heard a peculiar humming and the edges of the door glowed gold, as if somebody had taken a blow torch to them. Sam’s mouth fell open as the door collapsed inward.

It smashed to the cell floor, barely missing him.

Through the smoke, he saw two flashes of gold. Sparks sizzled in Isabel’s eyes. Then they were gone.

“Come.” The cat’s voice punched through the haze. “Quickly!”

Sam hurried into the corridor. He heard footsteps approaching and two officers appeared.

“What the–” one of them began, but then a furry black shape flew at his face. Isabel attacked the officer like a thing possessed.

The other officer, in his thirties and built like a bodyguard, approached Sam stealthily.

“Come on, old man,” he said. “Let’s not make this into a–”

Sam buried his fist in the officer’s face.