“The villagers,” Nicholas said suddenly.
“Eh?” Snelling barked. He seemed to have forgotten the boy was there.
“The villagers,” Nicholas repeated, moving casually away from the wall. “You were trying to help them. Save them from that thing.”
Snelling’s top lip curled upwards in scorn. “Boy, you’re even thicker than I give you credit for,” he scoffed, the loose skin under his chin shuddering. “Is there nothing rattling around in that skull of yours?”
“That Garm thing was killing villagers,” Nicholas continued, “and you said you’d been hunting it. Was all of that a lie, too?”
Snelling regarded the boy icily. “Do you know what Garm eats?” he spat with relish, spittle dribbling down his chin. “Souls. That’s why he loved Orville so.”
Nicholas had almost managed to reach the table, but this new bit of information threw him. “Why?” he asked, genuinely intrigued.
“It’s a dead town,” Snelling explained in a detached voice. “Packed full of dead souls.”
Nicholas studied the other man’s fleshy face and wondered if he was lying. Everything Snelling had said as Melvin Reynolds had probably been a lie. Then Nicholas recalled how nobody in Orville had been able to see him. They’d stared right through him, even as he’d screamed in their faces.
“They’re all dead?” he said slowly.
“I’m not surprised she hasn’t told you,” Snelling sneered. “She’s probably been sitting on that dirty little secret for years.”
“Who? Who are you talking about?”
“Why, Jessica,” the chubby man said, savouring the confused look on Nicholas’s face. “She’s the one who destroyed that place, did something terrible there. It killed everybody. Every living soul perished in that forsaken place.” He paused, smiling a toothy, rapturous grin. “At least Garm appreciates the place. To him, there’s nothing tastier than a tortured soul. All that pent up hatred and anger, distilled into its purest form over the years like a fine cabernet. The older the soul, the more delicious. He’s enjoyed hunting them down all these weeks, never seen him so wild and malevolent.” The man paused. “Don’t think he’s ever tasted cat before,” he added nastily. “He probably gobbled Isabel up in one go, snapped her little cat bones like twigs.”
Nicholas balked at the thought – against Garm, Isabel was as helpless as a butterfly. He dared to hope that she was okay, that she’d managed to evade the hellbeast. She was a tough one, after all; maybe even right this minute she was running to Jessica for help. But then… could Jessica help? Snelling had just accused her of a massacre. After their encounter in the garden, when Jessica had seemed to be teetering on the knife edge of sanity, Nicholas didn’t know who to believe anymore.
Determined, the boy’s hands curled into fists at his side and he eyed the knife on the table. He didn’t fancy getting hit with another pulse from that glove, but he had to do something. Like a soldier plucking up the courage to leap over the trenches, Nicholas felt the pressure building in his chest, felt the blood thundering in his ears, and with a cry he hurled himself at Snelling.
The man threw both his arms up and Nicholas clenched the wrist with the metallic gauntlet, forcing it away from him. Then he kneed the fat man in the groin and elbowed him in the ribs. Snelling spluttered and coughed.
“You… you spiteful brat,” he gasped, clutching at his chunky side. He attempted to squirm free, but Nicholas had worked himself up into a frenzy. He clamped his hands around both of the squat man’s wrists, staring into his face with pure hatred.
“Not so cocky now, are you?” the boy panted.
Snelling thrashed about like a mad pig and together they crashed against the table. In its chair, the shrunken corpse pitched forward, a toothy, smirking witness to the brawl. Nicholas ignored the cavernous eye sockets and went to reach for the knife.
It was a fatal mistake. As he released his grip on one of Snelling’s hands, the other man lashed out, seizing Nicholas’s hair until the boy’s eyes watered. Wrenching the gauntlet free, Snelling forced it against Nicholas’s chest. A blinding, white-hot force barrelled into his ribcage and the boy hurtled back through the air, landing in a heap on the floor.
Crumpled and in agony, the pentagon room became nothing more than a faint blur as Nicholas dipped in and out of consciousness. Only dimly aware of what was going on, he felt Snelling drag him across the dusty floor. Then he was heaved unceremoniously into something upright and hard, and his arms and legs were bound.
“Be thankful you’re needed alive, boy,” Snelling’s voice hissed in his ear. “If it was up to me, you’d be in pieces by now.”
Nicholas attempted to raise his head, but it was suddenly made of lead. He struggled against his body’s pounding complaints, blinked open his eyes, tried to focus. His vision swam frighteningly, but he was able to discern that he’d been strapped to a chair in a corner of the room. Opposite him, Snelling had returned to his spot by the table.
“Sit back and watch, boy,” he snarled. “You’re about to witness the true extent of our power. When the time comes, you’ll beg for your pathetic life on your knees.”
Dismissing the boy, Snelling took up the knife and held his hand over the shallow bowl on the tabletop. Without flinching, he dragged the blade over the palm of his hand. Instantly, blood welled in the crevices and he squeezed his hand into a fist, smiling triumphantly as his blood dripped into the bowl.
Dismally, Nicholas struggled against his restraints, but they held fast. Every muscle in his body throbbed dully, sluggish and spent after the second gauntlet blast. Grimly the boy realised there was nothing he could do.
Setting the knife aside, Snelling pressed a finger into his bloody palm and drew a peculiar symbol on his forehead. He began muttering strange words, and Nicholas cringed away from the sounds. The words reverberated deafeningly inside his skull. They were ugly and evil, charged with ancient power, and the boy’s ears rang as Snelling uttered them.
Still murmuring, Snelling uncorked the green bottle and poured a slick, gloopy black liquid into the bowl. Through his daze, Nicholas saw the liquid moving of its own accord, circling the bowl’s rim and bubbling poisonously.
Snelling looked ill. He was sweating profusely, beads of perspiration clinging to his flabby face. Dark bags bulged under his eyes. Yet he continued ardently, shrieking those ugly words. As he took up the velvet pouch, the floorboards quivered and bucked underfoot, and an unnatural wind blew into existence. Screaming now, Snelling tossed the contents of the pouch into the bowl – it looked like a glittering powder – and sparks danced across the black liquid, spitting and fizzing like fireworks.
As the wind shrilled in Nicholas’s ears, the entire room came alive. The walls rocked back and forth as if they were made of nothing but paper and the floor convulsed. Whatever Snelling was doing, it was affecting the very fabrics of the house, causing them to strain violently apart and then spring back together.
Just when Nicholas thought he was going to vomit, the sparks hopping around the inside of the bowl blazed higher and there came a mighty explosion. Searing heat caressed Nicholas’s cheeks and a wall of fire shot up from the bowl. Yet instead of burning itself out, the column twisted and turned, a mixture of fire and light, threads of yellow forking through its murky depths.
Snelling threw his arms wide as if to embrace the funnel of blistering light, tossing back his head to let loose a screaming whoop of delight.
It was the last thing he would ever do.
As the dazzling light flickered and pulsed, an explosion of flame scorched through the air and blasted right through him, consuming the man whole. In an instant he was gone, reduced to a pile of smouldering ash. Only one thing survived the furious discharge – the gauntlet crashed to the floor, scattering the cinders that only moments before been Snelling.
The room fell silent. Nicholas sat frozen in the chair, mesmerised by the sputtering luminescence that was spiralling in the centre of the room. It ha
d stabilised, and now the column of light was almost tranquil.
Nicholas sat watching, transfixed and horrified, flushed by the fierce luminescence. He blinked and shook his head. Perhaps he was imagining things, but it seemed a shape was forming in the rolling crimson curtains. Before his eyes, a vague shadow took form and slowly became more solid with every second that passed.
Then somebody stepped out of the fire and onto the tabletop.
It was like a nightmare born flesh. The woman. He recognised her. It was the woman from the bus. His insides squirmed uneasily, both aroused by and terrified of her. Where had she come from? What was she doing? As she stepped elegantly down from the table, the enchanting creature reached up and helped a smaller figure onto the floor. A boy, ashen and ill-looking, dressed in a black suit.
The boy looked at him and Nicholas cried out. Those piercing white eyes scorched into him and horrific images flashed in his mind.
Hellfire and erupting volcanoes, children lying dead and frozen in the countryside, animals with their insides spilling from their buckled bodies.
The beast’s named burned into him. Diltraa. It had done all of that. Killed children. Drained them for its own needs. Destroyed them so it might live.
Nicholas howled.
“You have done well, Malika.”
An arcane voice sliced through the depraved visions like a wet blade, and Nicholas was free of them. The little boy was still looking at him, and those icy eyes stabbed right into his gut.
“So, this is the child.”
Nicholas cowered as the boy approached him, curiosity warping his sallow features. No, it wasn’t just curiosity contorting the boy’s face. Somehow he looked wrong, as if the bones of his skull were being pushed from the inside out, stretched beyond their means by something awful under the surface. Nicholas felt immediately repulsed, like he was looking at something that shouldn’t exist, something that defied the laws of nature.
As the boy got closer, Nicholas saw that his skin was flaking away in pieces, exposing raw, dried-out flesh beneath. And always the empty white eyes were on him, turning his muscles to stone.
“Nicholassss,” the little boy rasped. He reached out a shrivelled grey hand and pushed Nicholas’s chin up with his index finger. Nicholas felt caged by the boy’s soft, probing glare. “Handsome child, by man’s measure. Seems Snelling’s been having some fun with you.”
“Snelling’s dead,” surged a caramel voice.
Behind Diltraa, the red-haired woman it had called Malika scraped at the ash-strewn floor with a delicate shoe. “Burnt to a crisp,” she noted. Stooping, Malika fished the gauntlet out of the charred residue and slipped it into the folds of her dress.
“Such is the price,” Diltraa wheezed in a non-committal tone. “He was not built to work such potent forces. Unlike this one.”
Dry lips peeled into a smile.
“You don’t even know what you’re capable of, do you human child?”
Nicholas stared blankly back, the scarlet blaze of the portal making him nauseous. Or maybe it was the way that the boy was looking at him that made him feel sick. There was a covetous leer on those rind-like lips, and though Diltraa’s face was falling apart in pieces, Nicholas read confidence and triumph there.
“We’ll speak again,” Diltraa promised. “For now, there are other things to attend to. I’ll leave you in good company.”
The eyes released him and Nicholas took a welcome breath. It had felt like he was being strangled. He watched the boy go to the door, shoot a brief, jagged look in Malika’s direction, then disappear into the hall, closing the door behind him.
Malika stepped forward. The candlelight caressed her slender form and she sashayed slowly toward Nicholas, biting her bottom lip.
“Look at me, child,” she purred.
In the chair, Nicholas attempted to avoid her gaze. Heat seemed to come off her and he felt like he was burning up. He recalled only faintly what had happened on the bus that day – that feeling of rapture that had bubbled over him in a warm, welcoming rush. It had been like a soothing, smothering embrace. He didn’t trust himself.
Malika crouched before him, touched his knee. Behind her, the portal flickered and died.
“Nicholas,” she soothed. “I have something very important to tell you. But I need you to look at me.”
Nicholas struggled against her, but the woman’s will was strong, that voice so tender and inviting. Nicholas shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut.
“Get away from me,” he warned.
“There’s no need to be afraid,” Malika assured him. “I’m not going to hurt you; that’s the last thing I want to do. Look at me so that I know you believe me. You know you want to.” Nicholas fought against it, but Malika’s caressing words were too seductive. Unable to take it anymore, the boy relented.
He opened his eyes and his breath caught in his throat.
“Mum,” he croaked.
Before him, Anita Hallow smiled kindly and stroked his cheek.
“Nicholas,” she said softly, her pretty face framed by dark brown curls. “I’ve missed you so much.”
Confusion flickered across Nicholas’s face. Something wasn’t right. What had he just been doing? A minute ago he’d been afraid, he was sure of it, but now he couldn’t remember why. Hadn’t there been somebody else here? He stared into his mother’s open, familiar face, her green eyes crinkled in the corners just as he remembered them, and he surrendered to the promise of her comfort.
“Mum!” he cried again, wrenching at the restraints. “What are you doing here? It’s not safe.”
Anita nodded, sadness in her eyes. “I know,” she said sombrely. “You must forgive me, Nicholas. I’ve put you in terrible danger. Your father and I both have. We wanted the best for you and we thought we were protecting you by sending you here.”
“What do you mean?” Nicholas asked.
Anita clutched at the boy’s bound hands, entwining her fingers with his.
“We had to go off in secret,” she explained, desperate for him to understand. “We couldn’t tell anybody, not even you. But our work is over now and we can go home. All three of us. Would you like that?”
Nicholas’s eyes shone with tears and he nodded.
“We can be a family again, you, me and your father,” Anita promised. “Just like before. We can be happy again.”
“Yes,” Nicholas murmured.
Anita blinked back the tears and threw her arms around her son. Nicholas pressed his face into her shoulder, smelling her – that familiar scent of heather, her favourite perfume. Everything was going to be okay. His parents were back and all this craziness was finally going to end. He didn’t have to stay here with Jessica, stranded in the middle of nowhere, lonely and miserable. His mother had come back for him. She hadn’t forgotten about him. She still loved him. Tears rolled down the boy’s face.
“Mum,” he whispered. “I thought you were dead.”
“I know,” Anita said, wiping the tears from his cheeks. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, I truly am. I hope I can make it up to you.”
Nicholas nodded.
“There’s something we have to do first, before we can go home,” Anita said urgently. She began swiftly untying the restraints that bound Nicholas’s arms and legs to the chair.
“What? What do we have to do?”
“It’s Jessica,” Anita told him darkly, finished with the restraints. “We have to stop Jessica.”
“Stop her from doing what?” Nicholas asked. He rubbed at his wrists.
“She’s a very bad woman,” his mother replied, her expression deadly serious. “She’s done terrible things.”
“What?” Nicholas said, unable to believe it. “What kind of things?”
Anita bit her lip. “She’s… she’s killed children,” she said. “Poor, innocent babes. She snatched their lives away before they’d even had a chance to live. She must be stopped.”
Nicholas frowned, still unsure.<
br />
“She’s strange,” he said, “but has she really killed children?”
Anita stroked Nicholas’s cheek once more.
“That’s what I love about you,” she smiled, running her hand affectionately through his hair. “You’ve always seen the good in people. I know this is difficult but you have to believe me. That woman has committed the most terrible of deeds.”
Anita paused before determining grimly: “Nicholas, we’re going to have to kill her.”
CHAPTER TWENTY–TWO
Devastation
DILTRAA STALKED THE HALLS OF HALLOW House with a look of rapture splitting his slowly-cracking features. Everything was going according to plan. Five hundred years he’d waited for this. The creature’s bone-white eyes flashed at the memory, peering up at the sightless statues that guarded the grand hallway. He passed unnoticed beneath their noses and his small, inconspicuous form continued through the house.
Moving silently through the lobby, Diltraa swept stealthily down another hall, this one bronzed by subdued lamplight that made everything glow softly. With his head held high, the demon child appraised the surroundings, a supercilious air about him.
These were the sacred spaces within the Sentinel keep, then. These antiquated halls, filled with long-forgotten treasures, all sealed behind glass. A look of disgust crossed the child’s face, but that quickly vanished when he came to what he had been seeking.
“There you are,” Diltraa trilled. Head tilted to one side, he peered up at an immense glass box that rested on a mahogany base. Within the cabinet, the skeleton of a mighty beast was posed as if in battle, its huge, knuckled front claws – easily the size of a man’s head – swiping through the air. Its emaciated jaw stretched wide in a noiseless roar.
The demon child reached out an ashen hand and tapped the glass lightly. The glass shivered and then shattered into pieces, shards tinkling across the marble floor.
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