Lights blazed on overhead, striking painful red flashes behind Katie’s eyelids. There was a splash and a hand on her shoulder. Weight. Grabbing her, holding her still.
My green eyed cowboy...
Can’t save me now…
She floated a hand out. There was no-one within reach.
And then there was nothing at all.
BREATHE!
Yeah, breathing was good.. Breathing was important. Breathing was impossible. There was air all around for once. And it was doing Katie absolutely no good. She clawed at the cold tiles underneath her but couldn’t get a grip. Hands gripped her shoulders and nudged her onto one side. Convulsively, Katie coughed and spluttered and spat up as much of the poison bubbling around her respiratory system. The shock of it made her back arch and eyes fly wide. The fluorescent lights stabbed straight through her eyes and made the already present headache blast into fireworks. Tears that didn’t come from pain sprang out of her. Katie struggled to sit up but she never quite made it.
“You’re okay.”
Okay was quite a strong word for how she was feeling but it was close enough. More important – who the hell was speaking? Water in her ears was making her own voice sound robotic. Katie raised her head and moved to slap it out, decided her head hurt enough already and lay back down.
“One down, one to go.”
Craning her head a few more inches to the right – an oh my God, that fucking hurt! – to track down the voice showed Jaye sitting on the floor with her back to the wall and wrapping as towel around her as tightly as a second skin. Barely a drop of water clung to the girl but her eyes were red rimmed and mascara streaked.
“Jaye?”
“Don’t move yet. Your muscles won’t be working right.”
As if there was any danger of doing that without pneumatic joints and marionette strings on every limb. A memory of a half-remembered biology lesson at school sparked. Re-oxygenation. Blood, muscles, organs – no part of you functions properly without a good supply of oxygen. And, following that, a completely not-listened to physics class: everything needs energy and everything has energy. Even nothing. It sounded important. Nostalgic for the school days she had been so glad to leave behind? Not bloody likely! Remembering a time when things were simple. Back when the worst of her worries was overdue homework.
“Hey! Stay awake Katie!”
The sting of a firm slap on her already sore cheek broke Katie out of her thoughts. And woke up the pain crashing through her. She felt it like an earthquake deep inside, trying to tear her apart. She wished she had enough energy to cry about it. Instead, she touched her left cheek and felt it all scratched and abraded.
“Yeah, your knees are all messed up too. I think you caught the wall on the way down.”
Finally. An injury that could be easily explained. If that was what – yes, that was what happened. “I tried to get out.”
“Well, you weren’t gonna do it from the foetal position. That’s what they call it, right?”
“I thought you were at the hospital.”
“I went for a while. Couldn’t stay. They’re doing more tests.”
“Why didn’t you come home?”
Jaye shrugged. The towel fell to the floor and she knee-walked over to Katie. “I love hearing you call it home. It took me months.”
Katie used her elbows to push herself up and ran a hand through Jaye’s hair and then traced her cheekbone – tear stained but not tear wet. “You’re bone dry.” The pool was most definitely wet so how-
“It’s a Shade thing. Water just goes through ghosts if we concentrate. Forces of nature can’t act on things that shouldn’t really be here.”
Katie left her hand up. “You should be here, Jaye. Uh, clothes?” she was sitting ther in dripping underwear, suddenly aware that she was freezing, the borrowed t-shirt floating around the pool somewhere. Jaye returned with her rucksack, a pile of clothes and a clean towel. Between them they managed to mostly dry and dress Katie without jostling her too much. Every expected – and unexpected to be honest – movement made something else hurt or go alarmingly numb. “I’d’ve drowned without you.”
“I don’t know. It was a pretty good distraction.”
Katie used both hands to grasp the metal runner of the ladder by her head and pulled herself up, holding on longer, until the world stopped turning cartwheels. She didn’t trust herself to let go or to open her mouth and ask for help without throwing up. Luckily, she didn’t have to risk it. Jaye tucked herself under one shoulder, braced to lift the heavier girl and supported her all the way home. Luckily, although her feet were still lazy, Katie was just about awake enough to take most of her own weight. Tiny Jaye would have been squished like strawberry jam otherwise. It was nothing short of a miracle that enough lights were on in the house to get the door open without some interesting key-related disaster. Surprise, surprise, there was a welcome party waiting by the stairs when they got in. Jaye tried to ignore Lainy and propel Katie up the stairs at the same time.
“Don’t ask!”
“Think I’m gonna have to sweetie. She looks trashed.” What was going on with the poor girl? It was the strangest, if not the quickest, self-destruct of a student she had ever watched. Not that there wasn’t a good reason.
“Drowning has that effect.” Lainy sent Jaye a sharp look. “Later, okay? I’ve got to get her to bed.”
Katie shrugged away and gripped the banister, swaying slightly. Up was hard. “I’m going. I’m fine.” Must work on convince face.
“Babe, you are so very not fine. Let me help you.”
“Okay, get her to her room but we need to talk, Jaye.”
“I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”
“This isn’t about you, Katie.” Lainy put a hand over hers. She looked up at the too-young face hovering above, fearing this was another Dina, speeding towards the edge but not knowing quite why. “You sure you can manage the stairs?”
No. “Sure.”
“Okay then. Bed. Stay.”
“Nothing I want more.”
“God, your dad’s gonna kill me when he sees you in this state.”
“I won’t tell if you don’t.” Katie gave her a tired smile and hoped it didn’t look it. She turned to Jaye, remembering she hadn’t thanked her, but she had already vanished into the front room. “Night.” Her phone beeped midnight – it had been doing that way too often of late – reminding her that it was almost as close to her regular getting up time than to bedtime. Katie enjoyed the touch of a friend, not just some-one whose house she lived in, looking longingly towards her room and let Lainy take the hint.
“We need to talk about how you got like this. Later, I know.” Yes the girl was legal. Yes the girl was mature and independent but, Christ, she was still a child. Who looked as though she had been chucked through a plate glass window. A hospital bed would have been more appropriate than the one Katie was heading for but Lainy put that right at the top of the PROBLEMS FOR TOMORROW list. “Now, about Dina.”
For some reason, Katie wasn’t surprised to find Jack sitting at her desk when she got there. “I don’t want you here,” she told him. “I need a pee. Don’t be here when I get back.” It didn’t provoke any strong emotion to see him – not anger or lust. If Katie had to sum up her feeling, she’d go with absent. Her body hurt but she didn’t feel it as much as be academically aware of it. Her brain was at a temporary standstill but she didn’t mind as long as the bad thoughts couldn’t get in.
When she came from the bathroom, Jack was still sitting at her desk, his eyes half closed in concentration and his body was just starting to mist at the edges. His breath was coming shallow and fast. She’d never seen him try to leave and didn’t know how it was meant to work but surely it wasn’t meant to be this hard. Jack held onto the edge of the desk and groaned low in his chest. A pained moan, Katie could tell. He looked up at
her and put his head in his arms. Something was stopping him moving. Wisps of mist blurred Jacks’ fingers and slowly the rest of his hand began to fade into black tinged fog. But that was all, and after a second, the process stopped and Jack was left half solid and half ghosted away. Katie stepped forward, plunged her hand into the mist and grabbed something solid. There was a jolt of energy between them and Katie froze. Nothing should ever feel like that. The pain, the red-hot pain, the complete void, empty of anything else but that bright agony. And it wasn’t hers this time. This was his. This was what Jack felt every time he had to go back into his own world. Where-ever that was. No wonder he had wanted to share that with some-one. It couldn’t be easy knowing you only had this endless agony waiting for you when the time came to leave the living world.
A scream echoed through Katie’s head so loud that she wondered the whole house didn’t come running, but she realised no-one else could hear. And suddenly, she understood. Her hand slid down whatever was left of his arm and twisted their fingers together. She took a breath and stepped into the mist, cursing her own stupidity. She had done a dozen stupid things recently but she had to do this one too. Unless she was willing to give Jack up. Whilst she wasn’t sure that would exactly break her heart, she couldn’t live with herself knowing she had condemned him to this life of hurting forever. “Where are we going?”
“You tell me.” Oh goody. Another decision she had to make.
“I don’t know how to fix any of this, Jack.” There was something, though – a tiny slippery idea that didn’t yet have words. “What did I do to deserve any of this? I wanted to learn, compete, make friends, maybe fall in love. Trying not to get killed never even registered.”
“I know you blame me.” Katie started to protest but Jack put a finger over her lips and began to talk once more but his words were whipped away as her room fell away around them. Air rushed through her ears as the work got suddenly dark and cold. Some change in the atmosphere told Katie that she was going somewhere she didn’t want to go and that when she got there she would be all alone.
“Wakey, wakey, little girl,” a voice singsonged a few feet away. There was no joy or music in it, just meanness and hate. “There’s fun to be had.”
Katie felt the press of rough concrete against her face, the tightness of her muscles where she had been curled in a foetal ball on the ground. It was to be expected and Katie only felt a mild sense of annoyance. She kept her eyes closed a while longer and let her mind roam. Thinking of anything was better than having to open her eyes and see the bad man’s cruel face and see that whip again. He knew how to use his weapon of choice.
“I’m gonna make you scream until your voice breaks and no-one can hear you.”
“Screw you,” she threw at him, knowing her words had less strength to them than a feather lifting a lead weight.
“Not right now,” he replied. “But a nice thought. And the question you’re afraid to ask… What did Jack do?”
Please. I don’t want to know this.
“Well, you see.” As the man spoke he began pacing in front of the gated circle. Katie watched him stride up and down, up and down, his boot heels beating a rhythm hat never seemed to slow or quicken, the steady bumf bumf bumf she remembered from her dreams. More pieces of the jigsaw clicked into place but she couldn’t tell what the picture was yet. She was trying to work out what to do next when the swish of the man’s coat revealed a metallic glint about waist high. Knife. She knew it as certainly as anything before. He was carrying a knife – a weapon that could deliver death in one well-placed blow.
If he got close enough to use it.
“Your precious Jack, the innocent little boy with the bright green eyes, isn’t all that he seems. He stole from me, he broke into my house, he took my money and my horse and then he tried to run away. Like he thought I’d never know.”
“it was a hundred… two hundred years ago. Whatever.”
“Oh, it was a time ago.”
“And that was punishable by death?”
“Those things were MINE!” he roared, angry now. “And now I’m gonna take something of his.”
“You’re killing him every night. He relives the night you killed him all the time; the same pain, the same blood, the same storm. Every time it’s exactly the same and I – I think I get it now.”
The man flicked the whip out and the sonic boom rang in Katie’s ears. She flinched, yelped and tried to scuttle even further back. At least she had a tiny bit of safety in her mesh cage.
“I was there. Not just the other night but all the time. You didn’t know it was me. Hell, I didn’t know it was me, but you knew there was someone else watching.” Katie sat up straight, ignoring her reluctant muscles, quite proud of herself for having worked that part out. “And once you knew who I was, it was just a matter of hunting me down.” There was a dull ache in her stomach – hunger. Her body didn’t like the way she was abusing it. And yet knowing that she had put herself through the past few days without completely falling apart filled her with happiness. “So. I’m here now. What’re you gonna do to me?”
“I’m gonna-“
“Make me scream? Yeah, you wish.” Katie knew she was borrowing heavily from what Jaye would say in this situation but she reckoned she had just about enough attitude to make it sound believable. In one movement, fast and fluid, the man with hate in his eyes had strode over to force his fingers through the chain link gate and was grinning down at her. There were calluses across his knuckles. They were strong, sure hands – those of a man who had earned his living from them. There was something beautiful about that – dying at the hands of a man who knew how to use them. Poetic. Terrifying. Katie scrambled to her feet – aware once again that she was almost the same as him. Were people that much shorter in the olden days? She curled her legs up to her chest and spent a few minutes tying and retying her running shoes. She had a feeling moving fast was going to be the order of the day - night – and she had no desire to trip and break her neck. Then, when they were as secure as they could possibly be without using superglue, Katie raised her head and stared the man straight in the eye. Not glancing away from the blind anger she saw burning there was almost impossibly difficult but worth it. After a minute or two, the man let his smile slip, the anger faded to a violent shade of confusion.
“Don’t worry, little girl. I’ll make it quick,” he promised. There was no doubt that he meant it too.
Katie fixed her eyes on that piece of metal she could see glittering at his waist. If she could reach over and grab it maybe she could stab him with it. Or slice her way through the string that kept them apart and make a run for it through the other side. Why hadn’t he grabbed for his knife yet, used it and left her to bleed to death in this place where no-one would ever find her? Because this wasn’t the real world and he could do what he wanted.
He saw where Katie was looking and tapped it with the end of his whip. “My badge of honour,” he said.
“Why don’t you use it, then? I’m standing right here.” Not close enough, hopefully, to use it to much effect.
He finger-walked down the gate and rested on the latch to open the gate. He seemed to toy with it for an eternity. Katie watched every twitch of his fingers, fascinated. All it would take was a minute. Probably less than that, just to slip the catch out of the hook, push the gate open and plunge that evil glittering blade int her heart. How long did it take a person to bleed to death from a hole in the heart. Minutes? Moments? That’s why he won’t do it. It’s too quick, too easy. He wants to make you suffer for as long as he can. “Come on in,” she offered, stepping to the side. “Sorry, I dint bake a cake but sweet treats for murderers are where I draw the line.”
“Murderer? I’m more of an executioner.” He stepped back and brought his whip down on the lock. It popped open and the gate started a slow swing as he walked forward, slow and menacing.
He had given her an escape to her cage, she bounced off her feet and got about one step to the door when she realised he wasn’t giving her an escape. He was going to stand in the door and kill her right here so she could just see her route to safety a couple of feet away as she died. No, this can’t happen here. It’s not meant to be here. “JACK!” she yelled, instinct more than anything else.
But he didn’t come.
Instead, the man stretched out with his free hand grabbed her by the wrist, spun her hard into him, and they misted out of the stadium. It felt like forever being trapped in his arms. They were locked together and she looked into his face. He was about the same age as Dad, maybe a little younger, there were lines on his tanned, weather-beaten face and a square, determined set to his jaw. She closed her eyes for a second and let her muscles fall limp. There was nothing to look at although she had the loosest feeling of moving. The worst the hateful man could do while he was holding he was strangle her and she would feel that long before it began to present serious problems. There was no use in being hyper-alert, tensed and ready to run, if there wasn’t even any solid ground in sight.
The man, the mist, the moving, it all disappeared. Very suddenly, the world was hers again and there was a weird feeling as Katie’s own body turned to solid. It was as though her bones didn’t fit so exactly any more. Bizarre. But she pushed it to the back of her mind and concentrated on the matter at hand. Which was not falling to a horrible, messy death. She had a quick second to question where the man had gone and why when she was so vulnerable in his grip. It had felt like… like he was taken rather than just abandoned his victim. At least he was off her back for a few minutes. The reprieve might not last long. Katie was determined to make the most of however long she had.
Why do things never go to plan?
It took a second or two for the shock of hitting ground to kick in. Truthfully, hitting ground was a bit of an over-statement. Falling to the floor was a bit more accurate. The impact jarred Katie’s muscles but she bounced lightly on the surface like collapsing onto an unbroken mattress. Everything was tired. No rest for the wicked. She rolled over and sprang to her feet, looking wildly around her trying to figure out if anyone was near her and where the hell she was. It looked familiar. The dark of night was so total out here that only the moon and stars illuminated the endless empty ground around here. A few patches of scrubby grass marked the edges of the land. The thrum of power in this place was so strong that she decided to call it an arena. In the daylight, this place would be instantly recognisable, but now it was strange and new, however anciently powerful it felt. Katie crossed her legs beneath her and pushed up, using the position to twist right around and get a full view. No. there was nobody else here. She was on her own out here and-
The storm is coming, Lady Katie. The storm is nearly here.
And I’m standing right in the middle of it, she thought, with a certainty she didn’t know she had. The skies opened their lungs and let out a rumble of thunder somewhere over the next town. She dropped into a crouch, trying to make herself as small a target as possible. “Come on,” she screamed at the sky, distantly conscious of tears coursing down her cheeks. Well, she was entitled to cry after the week she had had.
“Jack, help me!”
Unsurprisingly, he didn’t turn up. What was she expecting? Him to come out of the mist on a white steed and take her away from this madness? When her dreams weren’t so damn dangerous the image might feature.
Footsteps drilled the ground, a poison red whip mark carved the sky, a scream howled through the night, endless and ear splitting. But no-one was in this empty arena. For now, it was her and the coming storm. She was just waiting for the onslaught to arrive.
You’re not meant to feel us, you know.
Katie whirled, trying to see where the voice had come from..
You shouldn’t be able to hear.
And she knew. Like everything else tonight, she had visions of the knowledge slipping away from her as soon as it appeared. So she sprang on it. The voice, dark but peaceful, not friendly but not mean, a thousand voices but just one tone.
Death is coming for you. It came to us all.
“You’re all ghosts. Lost souls or something.”
We were the unlucky ones. It is not time for you to join us yet.
“I don’t think I get to decide that one.”
You must find a way to change that, to set things back as they should be.
“But-“
You must find a way. you will.
Didn’t expect much of her, did they? Katie began kicking her legs up behind her, trying to coax her muscles into co-operating. The second – could be third – wave of wakefulness crept into her, bringing with it fresh rolls of agony from parts of her that had shrieked themselves into silence. It hurt so much! Red Bull had a lot to answer for. “I can’t!” Didn’t they believe her?
Child, you have no idea what you can do. So few humans truly do. If this voice of many could hold any emotion, it would have been sad, grieving almost. We will help you all we can. But this is not our fight.
“It’s not mine either. I never asked for it.”
Thunder rumbled a way off but still a way of. The rain hadn’t even – yes, yes it had started. Through squinty eyes, Katie could see hard lines of rain driving slices through the air all around the make shift arena. The collected ghosts here had pooled their energies against rain and formed some kind off forcefield above her to keep the rain off. Otherwise, it would be like a giant mud bath in about five minutes flat. “He’s so much stronger than me.”
Stronger yes. Older too. He thinks the crime justifies the punishment, the ever-lasting punishment. He believes in justice. He believes in the law and in his sense of right and wrong. He is misguided.
Katie grunted and fell back to the floor, feeling as though an invisible fist had punched her in the stomach. The breath whooshed out of her lungs and she felt image after image, sound after sound, being shoved into her head. Acid poison pain screaming help mercy blood stinging no stop crackle lightning noise hate everywhere… Katie saw the back of a man, his shoulders hunched and tight, in the sick yellow glow of a lamp. She looked down and saw her off-white trainers staining with blood. The man took his long coat off and slung it over a bale of straw in front of her. She dashed forward and hid behind it, not doubting for a second that the man would take her down if he had half the chance. Although x-ray vision was a superpower she didn’t have, Katie was sure Jack lay beaten and broken in the main area of the barn, where the madman was focusing, slumped in front of the same pile of dried grass. And she couldn’t save him.
The knowledge tore through her like a sticking plaster being peeled off, fast but damn painful no matter what your mother said. Something incredibly cold and numb swept through her. Every ache and pain faded, still burning her inside and out, but Katie paid no attention. The sounds she could hear – the soft grunts of a man too tired to yell out, the incessant lashing of leather on flesh, the dark laughter of a murderer and his victim refusing to give in. All of that was coming to her. She bobbed her head up and had to bite back a squeak when something glinty, silvery and horribly pointy came whirling towards her. It landed heavily on the crumpled hide coat in front of her. She held her breath for a few long seconds and tried not to move until the bad man had thudded away and returned to his torture then shot her arm out and grabbed the silvery disk. It didn’t feel like a knife but there were sharp points on it. Good for stabbing, or at least holding him at a distance so he didn’t get stabbed. Her fingers rubbed over some uneven ridges in the metal disk. She brought it to her face and then angled it this way and that until it caught the light enough to see.
Oh, crap. He thinks he’s justified to do this.
Or, maybe the man with hate in his eyes was acting outside the law and he wanted to silence her before she could te
ll anyone what she saw. And maybe he just wants to kill you because he’s a sadistic bastard. Because, lying in her hands was a sheriff’s badge. The man was enforcing 19th century law. Was capital punishment acceptable back then? Katie rubbed her fingers over the badge and suddenly felt it disappear. She even felt herself disappear. There was blood soaking through the straw she stood on, seeping under the wooden wall between her and them. it was getting ground into her sole. It would probably never come out.
Katie opened her eyes and stared up at the swirling, grey-blue sky. She didn’t want to move. Or think. In fact, just keeping breathing was making her lungs ache. Lactic acid was flowing through her now. The desire to just roll over right here and now and fall asleep for a very long time was almost irresistible. Almost.
Just as the internal debate was raging, a shadow – black on black – shimmered off to her left. Her face hurt when she rolled over to get a better look.
He is coming, the voice said.
She shielded her eyes with one weak hand and hoped that her frazzled mind was playing cruel tricks on her. The shadowed figure looked – it looked like Dina. What the hell was she doing out here?
It’s nearly here. this isn’t right, Katie.
“Help me, Dina.” Katie needed to shout to make herself heard over the storm now but her vocal chords were so raw that a hoarse whisper was all she could muster. Dina seemed to hear though, it even looked as though she smiled as she reached out to the girl with one hand and thrust the other into the darkness behind her.
You must be ready, she said, her voice becoming more alien with every step she crept back, more ethereal, more voices joining hers as purple-black fingers began to cover Dina. The air was crackling with dark power. These dead things, this sense of death all around her, was so powerful. There should be nothing here but here it all was shooting out of Dina’s out-stretched hand in a shimmering black stream, jumping with purple sparks, filling her up with the good, natural energy she had used up long ago, rejuvenating her entire body and mind and healing all her cuts and bruises… and given her a little extra go juice besides. There was a well of life inside her and it was filling fast. She rolled to her feet and started running on the spot just because she could.
We have done all we can. It is up to you now.
Couldn’t they have included a plan with their little gift? Katie was about to ask when Dina stepped back – into the soup-thick storm, over-taken by the dark power that pulsed and suddenly the flow of energy from them broke. She had been taken by all these ghosts, all these dead things. Did that mean Dina was dead too? There was no time to mourn. There was a palpable sense of the ancient life leaving all at once. The invisible cover that had been keeping the storm at bay peeled back and started soaking the ground; the wind ripped holes in the air – might have blown her back down if she had felt it. But the dark power was threading out of her skin, thin as hair but sparking like tiny electrical currents grounding through her, casing her in the protection against the forces of nature they had. A body of calm in the maddening storm. In the next instant, there was a tearing at her insides – hard, fast, desperate and Jack misted into being a few metres from her. He lay on the ground, not moving.
“Jack!” Katie yelled over the thunder. “Please!” She didn’t know what she was asking for. She ran over to him, sending silent thanks to whatever spirits still lingered that they had given her the energy to do even that much. It would have been just her luck to be still lying drained on the ground, unable to even be with him as he breathed his last. If he was still breathing. The blood soaking through his beige t-shirt was dark red and fresh. That was good, right, his heart was still pumping blood. God, she wished she had paid more attention in biology. But rain was drenching him, the wind was trying to blow the clothes off his book. No energy of his own to save himself from this spiralling summer squall. It had to be possible to extend her borrowed cover to him. She was puzzling over the physics of this, hesitantly trying to get hold of one single spark, when strong, rough hands circled her neck and hauled her to her feet. Just when her breathing was becoming shallow and distressed, the hands shoved her flying through the air, over Jack and a yard or two further where she landed with a bone-crunching thud on the ground. Getting up, Katie saw the man standing over Jack, whip at the ready, silver glinting at his belt. He had put his long coat back on too. He looked every inch the psycho with an upside down sense of right and wrong. Why hadn’t she heard him coming up behind her? Because you were too busy worrying about the boy. Lose focus for a second and he’ll use it. Great. This was sounding more and more like a fight she couldn’t win. Not for the first time, Katie wondered why she was even in this fight at all. It didn’t matter, she was inn it now and wishful thinking was not going to change that. Besides, if not her, Jack would have only fallen for some other poor girl and sentenced her to this.
I didn’t mean to, Lady Katie. I only tried to buy you time.
Jack was still thinking. Thinking strange thoughts, things that were vague and meaningless but he was thinking and he remembered her name. That had to be good.
“Stop!” she shouted. “He’s had enough! You want to kill me. I’m standing right here.”
The bad man spared her a glance and them appeared to dismiss her, curving his arm back.
“NO! Jack’s dead. What’s the point in killing a guy with no defences, huh? You want me. You want the challenge, right? And I’m a screamer.” The two of hem started circling each other around Jack. “If you can catch me.” Katie bent her knees ever so slightly and took off at a gentle backwards run luring him into following. If she could wear him down just a tiny bit… okay, that was as far as the plan went but there was the distinct possibility she wouldn’t live past Phase One. Developing a Phase Two was a moot point. “Come on, I’m a distance runner. I can do this dance all day.”
“Same here,” he growled. “I’ve had 200 years to get ready for you little girl.”
“200 years? You should be better at this then. Death at the hands of an incompetent. It’s embarrassing really.” Frightening was a better word but showing fear just seemed like a bad idea. Katie reached into her pocket and found two things; her phone, a bit scratched and the screen was cracked but otherwise fine, and her house keys. She tossed them between her hands, thinking. She didn’t want to lose her keys but her phone had already taken a battering. A sudden close encounter with the ground might absolutely bust it. Oh well. She took aim and chucked it at the bad man, kind of amazed that her throw was on target for once. Unfortunately, accuracy didn’t make much difference. He didn’t even flinch as the missile hurtled towards his head, just side-stepped at the last second and let the phone sail right on through his chest. And it was gone. Useless. Her only weapon was floating somewhere inside the bad man. She watched as the man started moving her way, inching back but wanting so badly to turn tail and run as far and as fast as she could. Especially when he gave that low chuckle that started deep in his chest and then went lower, aiming for the lower levels of hell. There was evil in that laugh but a degree of humour too. As if he knew the bravado was just a front. Katie dropped to a crouch as the bad man started running for her and thrust her arm out to dislodge his legs. It always worked in the movies. The plucky heroine swept her opponents legs and his momentum – it was always a him – carried him into a sprawling forward roll, putting him on the losing side. Shame, then, that this was real.
Oh God, was this real.
He stopped inches before Katie. There was an instant before she realised he should have tripped over her and hadn’t where she didn’t move. She pulled herself up and, “I’m not living in fear of you.”
“Smells like you are.”
“I’ve had enough of running away. I used to run for fun. So, can we just stop this game and get to the fighting?”
“Fighting, killing. It’s all fun for me.”
Katie
had basically just challenged this man to a hands-down dogfight. The paper-thin power of these – what had Jaye called herself, a Shade? – against twisted justice and a weapon that had killed a thousand times or more. How the bloody hell was she meant to win that? She threw her hands up as the man charged at her. If the bad man had been completely solid then she might have been able to protect herself from s fraction of the pain she suddenly felt tearing through her abdomen. He had faded his leg to pass right through her arms and then willed it back into flesh to connect firmly with her stomach. A boot in the belly was one of the most painful things Katie had ever experienced. It made her angry.
“Gonna cry, little girl? Gonna curl up and cry for your momma?”
“You’re not worth the tears,” she bit off. “I cry for love, loss, joy and pain. Not for pathetic little freaks with nothing better to do than terrorise teenagers.” But Katie felt like crying. It was hard to squeeze back the hot sting behind her eyes. It did match the hot sting of blood in her mouth.
The rain stopped for a brief second and a streak of lightning split the sky in two. The man took advantage of the instant to crack the whip at her. Something warned her a millisecond before and Katie jerked back and the leather strip missed her by an eighth of an inch. Too close.
The dark power swirled around Katie, and she tried to wrap it around herself tighter. The wind and rain still didn’t touch her. But the life the dead things had sent her was beginning to trickle out – dodging the whip cracks and advances, trying to keep out of reach, was not helping. Much longer and nervous exhaustion would come knocking – the Shades had only suppressed her tiredness, not taken it away like they had her cuts and scratches – it was still there, pushing the edges of her brain, biding it’s time before it could take her over once more. This had to be over before then.
He was definitely getting the closer. Katie thought fast. There had to be some weakness.
“Your family, friends, any of them left? Bet this is making them proud. Hey Daddy, what did you do today? Well son, I killed a kid.”
“No-one’s left. Just you, me and right and wrong.”
“I killed a kid because she saw me murder some other kid.”
“Got no-one to be ashamed of me. I’m already dead, little girl. Ain’t nothin’ no-one can do to stop me.”
So, what was he waiting for then? He was playing with her. The sicko was enjoying this! “What would your superiors think?” It was loud and dark but Katie was positive he paused for just a second; shadows blacker than the night flickered to life. Yes! Got him! “I mean, that’s why you’re hellbent on finishing me off, isn’t it? You killed a kid for stealing – and from the sheriff, of all people! You thought you were fireproof. And then you realised you had a witness. Which would be me.” Her mouth was working faster than her mind but these words seemed to be hitting all the right nerves so she was more than happy to let her mouth continue. She just wished she had known what she was about to do next before she did it. Because it was monumentally stupid.
Her arm shot out, grabbed something cold and uneven and yanked, risking him probably breaking her fingers if his reactions were quick enough. They were but some reflex of her own overrode the dark crackling energy and used whatever she had had grabbed to slice upwards feeling a satisfying resistance as the points of the sheriff’s badge caught on and carved through flesh.
“Bitch!”
So I’m told. “Yeah, that’s me. Anyway, you decided to find me and kill me because you couldn’t risk this. I might have told your boss and I’m guessing the murder of a minor, whatever his crime, was frowned on.”
“Give that back. It’s mine!” he bellowed.
“Hmm…”
He made a grab for it. Katie held it tight to her chest with both hands, understanding on some level far below her consciousness that things were going to plan. Someone’s plan, anyway. Still holding tight, Katie felt his hand brush her cheek gently, almost tenderly. She closed her eyes against the touch, her mind rushing back almost four months to when another man had touched her that way… and how violent/intimate that touch had turned. It’s happening again,, she had time to panic, as rough fingers turned into claws, held her chin in a vice-like grip and forced her to her knees.
“Say please.”
Katie held the badge towards him but the bad man just glared at it like the inanimate object was responsible for all this trouble. To give it its due, the badge probably had been.
“You first.”
A weak moan cut through the howling storm. Jack. It hurt to admit it but Katie had forgotten about him. She glanced over. He sounded kind of pathetic. A kicked puppy had more fight in it and that moan had sounded suspiciously close to his last breath. The bad man used the distraction to walk up until he had forced the girl back onto her elbows and was straddling her chest. He flexed his strong hands around the handle of his whip and readied himself to deliver the killing.
“I said, scream for me!”
So she did.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Running Shoes (The Shades of Northwood) Page 18