Go. Nothing bad will happen now.
He stepped between the trees and the world behind him turned white and silent. A noiseless wave picked him up, carrying him through the air, so fast that he couldn’t even scream. Then he fell on to the soft, sandy ground, and life went dark.
He didn’t know how much later it was when he opened his eyes. He lay there, on his back, staring up at a sky that was halfway between day and night. His ears were ringing, as though he’d been at a concert all night, but beyond the annoying whine he could hear voices. He tried to sit up, feeling like every fibre of his being was bruised. Even his eyeballs were sore, his vision watery. He tilted his head to the side, blinking away the tears. Something was moving over there, maybe several somethings. He couldn’t be sure.
He pushed himself up on to one elbow, running his other hand across his eyes. When he looked again the shapes had solidified into figures, people, one running in his direction. A bolt of adrenalin rocked through his exhausted body. The Fury.
It’s gone, he tried to tell them, his mouth refusing to form the words. The angel, it’s gone.
The shape thundered towards him and he clambered to his feet, managing one step before falling on his face. Were they screams he could hear? Choked, feral cries? After everything that had happened, after all he’d done to fight the man in the storm, was this how it was going to end? Teeth in his throat, fingernails in his eyes? He tried again but there was nothing left inside him. Hands grabbed him, rolling him over, the black hole of a mouth dropping towards him. He prayed it would be quick. It was the very least he deserved.
‘You okay?’
He almost couldn’t hear the words over the whine in his ears.
‘Mate? Can you hear me?’
Brick lay still, his heart trying to beat its way out of his chest. He blinked until the face above him came into focus.
‘Cal?’ Brick grunted. The other boy grinned, looking bruised and tired but otherwise intact.
‘You okay?’ Cal said again. Why did he keep asking? It was pretty bloody obvious that he wasn’t. Brick struggled to sit up, trying to recall how he’d got here. Everything in his head was white noise, but he remembered running with Cal and Adam, remembered Daisy floating out over the ocean. What had happened to her? Had she exploded? He grabbed hold of Cal’s arm, hauling himself to his feet.
‘Daisy,’ he said. Please let her be okay, please don’t let her be dead.
‘She’s there,’ said Cal, pointing. Brick hung on to the other boy, the world spinning. He could have been standing in the middle of the desert. Only the sand here was a million different colours, and dead ahead was the ocean, so foamy somebody could have poured a thousand tonnes of detergent into it. The sun sat on the horizon, high over the water, but when Brick turned back around it also hung over Cal’s head. The impossibility of it made him reel.
‘You need to sit down,’ said Cal.
Brick shrugged himself free, staggering across the beach towards the first sun, her sun. There were more people ahead, silhouetted by the glow. He had to get closer before his watering eyes could identify them as Adam and Howie. They were both filthy, their clothes in tatters, but their angels had looked after them well, repairing the worst wounds before jumping ship. They were smiling.
‘Hey,’ said Howie, his voice like sandpaper. ‘You look like crap.’
Brick laughed, even though it hurt to do so. Howie was black and blue, his hair silver.
‘Don’t look so good yourself,’ he said. ‘You look like my granddad.’
‘He must be a very handsome man,’ said Howie, making Adam giggle.
Brick looked back towards the sun. It was forged of light, of colours he had never seen before, waves of energy shimmering back and forth over the surface. He couldn’t see anything inside it, but a crystal chime emanated from the sphere, the sound unmistakable.
‘She’s laughing,’ said Adam. ‘She’s happy.’
‘You think?’ Brick said. But the kid was right, there was no doubt about it. How many times had he heard that laugh, had it pulled him out of his anger, made him human again?
‘Daisy,’ he said, and the thought of her there, trapped inside that bubble of fire, made him angry. Why did it have to be her? She was just a little girl, it should have been someone else. She should have been allowed to go home, to live her life. It wasn’t fair, it just wasn’t—
He felt a hand on his shoulder, looked to see Cal there.
‘You made her a promise,’ he said.
Brick realised his fists were clenched, his nails digging into the flesh of his palms. He had promised her something, he’d promised not to be angry. But how the hell was he supposed to keep that?
‘Seriously, mate,’ said Cal, nodding out over the water. ‘You really want to risk her coming after you? She’ll fry your ass.’
He laughed again, despite himself, letting his body relax. The truth was he was just too tired to be angry. The deep breath he took was full of the smell of the sea, the smell of home. He could try, for Daisy. She had saved them, after all, time and time again. He owed her that much.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘You’re looking at the new me, one chirpy arsehole coming right up.’
Cal laughed at him, and for a while they stood there, squinting into the brilliance of the second sun. It seemed impossible that less than a week ago he had sat on this very beach worrying about money, petrol, Lisa. How could so much change in such a small space of time? The thought of it made his legs shudder and he almost fell, Cal’s hands holding him up.
‘Hey!’ the voice came from behind them, and they all spun round together to see a man in a police uniform walking over the dunes. Brick took a step back, calculating the distance between them. Thirty metres. Please don’t, he thought. Please don’t turn. The man – not a cop, a fireman – was running now, pointing up at the new sun. ‘What are you guys doing?’
Twenty-five metres. Twenty. The man stumbled, groaning. Oh no, it can’t be. Fifteen metres, and Brick had almost turned, almost started running, before the fireman found his feet again.
‘You kids need to get out of here,’ he said, running right past them, kicking up sand. ‘Go on, get home.’
Brick remembered to breathe, watching the fireman as he ran into the woods, yelling something into a radio. Thank you, he said, to Daisy, to the angels, to anything else that was listening.
‘We should go,’ Cal said.
‘Go where?’ Brick asked. ‘What are we supposed to do after that? Pretend it never happened? Pretend it might not happen again?’
Cal shrugged. ‘The only thing I know is that I’m desperate for a can of Dr Pepper. Everything else can wait.’
‘You know that stuff is poisonous,’ said Brick. ‘Nothing but sugar and chemicals.’
‘I know,’ said Cal. He turned, walking up the beach, away from the sea. The others followed, each of them carrying two shadows from the two suns. ‘But if I can survive today, I can survive a can of fizz.’
Brick shook his head, then found that he was smiling, so hard that his cheeks ached. Cal was right. It didn’t really matter what happened next. Right now they were safe, they had survived. He glanced back towards Daisy, hidden inside her bubble of light. Was she watching him now? He raised his hand and waved to her.
‘Goodbye, Daisy,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you soon. Be safe.’
Then he turned, running after the others, hearing her laughter fill the air behind him as he chased his shadow into the sun.
Alexander Gordon Smith is the author of The Fury and the terrifying Furnace series, as well as The Inventors (shortlisted for the Wow Factor competition) and The Inventors and the City of Stolen Souls. He has also written a number of non-fiction books, as well as hundreds of articles for various magazines. He is the founder of Egg Box Publishing, an independent press that promotes talented new writers and poets, and is the co-owner of Fear Driven Films. He lives in Norwich.
by the same author
The Fury<
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THE INVENTORS
The Inventors
The Inventors and the City of Stolen Souls
FURNACE
Furnace: Lockdown
Furnace: Solitary
Furnace: Death Sentence
Furnace: Fugitives
Furnace: Execution
First published in 2013
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2013
All rights reserved
© Alexander Gordon Smith, 2013
The right of Alexander Gordon Smith to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978–0–571–29738–2
The Storm Page 30