I force myself to take slow breaths. Mara’s men have found the camp. Or one of the other factions has. It doesn’t matter who’s attacking, we’re under attack. At least two cabins are ablaze – including this one – and that means soon the entire camp will go up. I need to get out, escape into the woods, hole up somewhere and wait for the siege to pass.
Where’s Celene? And Frank? They could be dead. I’m not sure how that makes me feel, so I don’t think about it. All I know is that if I stay here, I’m dead, too.
Smoke pours down the stairs and I watch as the kitchen ceiling blackens, begins to buckle.
White lights flash outside. There’s the crackle of gunfire. Whoever it is, they’ve made it into the camp.
I can’t go out the front door. They’ll shoot me on sight. Same applies to the windows. Is there a back door? I peer round the banister rail into the kitchen, but there’s no way out.
My mind works quickly the way a trapped animal’s must. It’s growing unbearably hot and the thought of burning alive spurs me on.
Crouching low, I shove the photo album across the floor, into the kitchen. On all fours, I crawl after it and duck into the cupboard under the stairs. Not wasting a moment, I seize one of the backpacks and scan the shelves. Tucked into the back is Celene’s axe. I grab it and peek out into the cabin just in time to see a burning projectile smash through the front door and land on the sofa. It bursts into flames.
‘Great. That’s just great.’
I have even less time than I thought.
Squeezing the bag to my chest, I inch into the kitchen and fumble for the album, shoving it inside and zipping the bag up. Above me, the ceiling sags and crackles as the inferno in Celene’s bedroom spreads like some furious plague.
Hopping onto the sideboard, I throw open the kitchen window and immediately shrink back behind the wall, waiting for the frame to splinter and shudder under an onslaught of bullets. But there’s no gunfire. Whoever was in the woods earlier must have moved on. I peek around the frame.
Still nothing.
Are the odds finally turning?
You’re trapped in a burning building. I’d say the odds are as bad as ever.
It’s now or never.
I edge onto the windowsill, squatting low, digging my nails into the wood – which is made difficult by the fact that I’m still clutching the axe – and not daring to look down. If I look down, I won’t do this, not even with a wall of fire behind me.
The cabin’s on stilts. All I have to do is get my feet on them and I’ll be able to shimmy my way to the ground.
Positioning myself on the outside of the window, I find myself staring back into the cabin. It’s a vision of flames and smoke like velvet. There’s no going back now.
For an insane moment, I think of my bedroom – the one Celene made for me – and it’s like somebody’s skewered my gut with a hook and is tugging it to one side. Come sunrise, my room – the whole camp – will be gone.
The kitchen ceiling collapses.
I cry out as I slip. My heart stops as I’m momentarily airborne, but then I catch hold of the windowsill and my heart’s jerking around in my chest like it’s trying to escape a leash. I dangle there, my legs kicking thin air, my shoulders screaming.
‘Stop being a baby,’ I grunt, and heave my legs up, steadying myself against the side of the cabin with my feet.
I look down.
‘Shit.’
It seems more than thirty feet now I’m dangling from a windowsill but I don’t stop looking down because I’ve spotted the stilts. They criss-cross under the cabin, like the inside of a jack-in-the-box. If I can inch down just a few metres, I’ll be able to slide onto one of the beams and clamber to freedom.
Gritting my teeth, I take the pick axe and slam it into the wood below the kitchen window. Testing it to make sure it’s not going to wobble free, I suck in a few short breaths and then let go of the windowsill.
The axe creaks in the wood as I cling to it with both hands, but it stays firm.
My feet fumble for one of the props supporting the cabin, and for a moment I think I’m still too high up, I’ll never reach it and I’m going to fall and break my neck and that’ll be the end.
Then my feet make contact with something solid.
‘Come on, come on, come on,’ I whisper, easing myself down, splinters needling my palms. Then I’m on the beam and sliding down it, tumbling onto the earthy ground beneath Celene’s home.
I lie on my back for a moment, panting, staring up at the darkness of the cabin’s belly, knowing that at any moment the whole thing will collapse. But not yet.
Finally, I pry myself up.
For somebody who’s spent her whole life counting the ways the universe has screwed her over, I’ve been unbelievably lucky these past few days. Alright, I might have ended up in a pit and hunted by a ruthless mobster, but I’m still going. I’m still alive. That has to count for something, right?
The gunfire has been going on for so long now I’ve grown used to it, but then it abruptly stops, and only the snap of burning wood fills the silence.
I have to move. Getting out of the cabin was one thing. Now I have to get out of the camp. I can only hope that the fighters have all killed each other. At least that way I can just stroll out of this place.
Hands outstretched, I go from beam to beam, heading for the front of the cabin. Then, huddling low to the ground, I scan the area. Not a person in sight. Not a sound other than burning. Plates cracking in the heat. Things falling over as the fire eats away at everything it can fit its teeth around.
Is everybody dead?
This place has been Celene’s home for a decade. I turned up and twenty-four hours later it’s a pile of ash. Celene can deny the curse all she likes, but I know this place is burning because I’m here. For once, I’m glad. The camp’s an abomination. A hiding place for serial killers. They don’t deserve it.
I’m going to have to run for the gates.
If I head into the woods, I’ll get lost. Woods all look the same. At least the gates lead somewhere. The road will take me back to the motorway and then I’ll hitch a ride back to the city.
I count to ten. When there’s still no movement, I crawl out from my hiding place and skirt around the building. Then I hop to the next cabin. Still no sign of life. There are only three cabins between me and the gates. My muscles yell at me to run, but that’s the stupidest thing I could do. I have to move slowly around the camp until I’m at the gates.
I’m about to move to the next cabin when I hear something. Rustling leaves or a breath. My shoulders tense and I strain to hear so hard I’m sure my ears are bleeding.
Somebody grabs my arm and spins me round.
I stare into Celene’s face.
‘You got out,’ she pants, relief in her voice.
I nod. ‘We have to get out of here.’
‘The cars.’ I remember the jeeps parked outside headquarters and kick myself for not thinking of them earlier. Stealing a car is a much better plan than heading out onto the road unarmed.
She pushes me to one side and surveys the camp.
‘We should–’ she begins, but I see movement before she does.
There’s the angry clap of a bullet firing, and then we’re both on the ground.
Dazed, my ears ringing, I try to figure out what just happened.
Celene’s back up in an instant, aiming her gun at a figure on the other side of the camp. She fires and the man goes down in a burst of red. Then she’s looking back at me and she’s wearing an expression I’ve not seen before. Her mouth pushes up on one side and I remember what I did.
I saw the man rise from behind the steps, his gun trained on Celene.
I grabbed her and pulled her out of the line of fire.
I saved her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
I’m shaking as we make our way through the camp. My teeth rattle and my head’s full of raging fire. Celene’s a few feet ahead of me, swee
ping forward with the gun clasped in both hands, keeping it high so she can take out anybody who pops up to say hello.
I’m a bundle of raw nerves, my body following her, but my mind’s half here and half somewhere else.
The question keeps tearing chunks off me, exposing my bones to the freezing air.
Why did I do it?
Why did I drag her out of the bullet’s path?
Why did I save her?
I don’t have an answer, and the questions clang through me, like I’m a pinball machine and it can’t find the right slot to win the grand prize. All I know is that when I saw the man with the gun, my instinct was to stop him hitting his target.
Because I care about her?
That doesn’t feel right.
If you kill her, it goes away.
Dominic’s words surface in my mind. He told me I could break the curse by killing Celene. If the shooter had killed her, I’d have been robbed of that chance. I saved her so I could save myself.
‘Rumer.’
Celene hisses my name and I snap to attention. She uses two fingers to point at her eyes, and then she gestures to the right. A jeep sits outside headquarters a hundred yards away. The two jeeps behind it are already ablaze, their windows shattered, the metal warping into wretched shapes.
‘Quickly,’ she says.
I run for the vehicle, tearing the door open.
A crack like thunder echoes across the camp and the window shatters. I throw myself into the jeep, hearing Celene returning fire, and then she appears. I crawl over into the driver’s seat and Celene jumps in, slamming the door, slivers of glass shaking loose.
‘Here.’ She hands me the key and I gulp down the surprise, quickly shoving it into the ignition.
‘Rumer,’ Celene says, an edge to her voice. I catch movement in the rear-view mirror. Five masked gunmen fan out behind the jeep. Mara’s men. They fire at the exact moment I hit the accelerator. The back window explodes, but I don’t pay it any attention, revving through the camp. The jeep groans as it’s pelted with bullets; kernels of popcorn bursting all around us. I swerve a corner, the gates appearing ahead, and I speed up, preparing to bomb through them.
‘Seat belt,’ I say, hurriedly clipping mine in. Grimacing, Celene does the same.
I press my boot to the accelerator, the gate drawing closer and closer. We’re going so fast I have to clench the wheel to stop the jeep careening out of control, and then the vehicle shrieks and bucks, smashing through the gates, tearing them apart like pages in a book. I pump the accelerator and we shoot through, swerving out onto a dirt track.
‘Stay off the motorway.’ Celene’s voice sounds strange. I notice she’s pressing a hand to her shoulder, red oozing between her fingers.
‘You’re hit.’
‘Just keep driving.’
I don’t have any problem with that. As we zip down the road, I keep an eye on the woods either side of us, but there are no shapes racing between the trees. No gunmen. Perhaps they’re all in the camp. I wonder how many there are and if Mara’s with them. I doubt it. He’ll be relaxing in his penthouse while the others get their hands dirty.
There are no other vehicles on the road. Nobody chasing us. The track behind us is deserted, bathed in the jeep’s tail lights. Red like Celene’s hand. I try to concentrate on the road, but as I think of the red oozing between Celene’s fingers, I become aware of the blood hammering in my temples and have to remind myself to breathe.
What if it’s her turn to die?
Is the invisible clock counting down Celene’s life about to go bust? Spit springs and cuckoo feathers over the inside of the car?
It looks like she was hit in the shoulder. Probably just a flesh wound. If it gets infected, though, any number of things could happen. If the bullet’s still buried in there…
‘What happened to the others?’ I ask.
‘Frank escaped into the woods with some of the others.’ Her voice is fainter than I’m used to. ‘Others were shot or burnt.’
‘How many?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you think there’s anybody left in the camp? Alive, I mean.’
Her voice is smaller still. ‘I don’t know.’
‘How did they find the camp?’
‘They must have followed us…’
My shoulders ache and I realise I’m still wearing the backpack. The photo album digs into my back. I want to ask her about it, demand to know what the hell she’s been doing all these years, following me without ever showing herself. There’ll be time for that later, though. First we need to get to safety.
‘The woods,’ Celene says. ‘There’s camping stuff in the boot. We can pitch a tent. They won’t find us.’
‘No way. We’d freeze to death.’
‘Rumer–’
‘Just trust me on this.’
I already know where we’re going and she won’t change my mind. I just have to figure out where we are. When Celene took me to the camp, I was concussed, strung out with exhaustion. I have no idea what route she took away from the wreckage on the motorway. There’s a small screen on the dashboard that’s probably a GPS but when I dab it, nothing happens. Technology never liked me.
We’ve got a full tank, so I turn right at a junction and follow a country road through quiet fields, not worrying about where we’re headed, trusting that a road sign will turn up eventually. I resist looking in the rear-view mirror, not wanting to see the smoke rising from the camp.
Considering Camp Virtus was meant to be home to the kinds of people who can take down mob bosses, the place collapsed pretty quickly. They didn’t seem prepared for the attack.
Had they grown complacent? Celene said she’d been there for over a decade. If nobody had ever attacked before then, it stood to reason they would feel safe, tucked away in the countryside.
Mara proved them wrong.
Celene’s gone quiet and when I check her out of the corner of my eye, I see she’s barely conscious, staring intensely at the road, not blinking. She’s deathly pale and her breathing’s shallow.
Finally, road signs start appearing and I recognise the names on them. I steer clear of the motorway, weaving through the B roads. There are hardly any cars out here and, as the gloomy evening turns into night, I start to relax.
When we reach the outskirts of London, I take a breath. This is what I know. Not creaky camps and weird cults. The city is my home, corrupt as it may be. It’s good to be back.
I drive through the suburbs, not needing the road signs any more.
Forty minutes later, Celene’s eyelids are drooping as I pull up outside the house. The neighbourhood’s dark. Most of the street lamps don’t work and a shroud-like darkness has settled over the run-down houses.
I pop my door and go round to Celene’s.
‘We’re here,’ I say, tentatively touching her shoulder. She peers up at me, her eyes dull slits.
‘I didn’t mean it,’ she mumbles. ‘I didn’t– I–’
‘Come on.’ I cut off her rambling, helping her out of the jeep. Getting her into the derelict house is a struggle. I don’t have a key for the front door and I have to lead her around the back to the hatch I always use to get into the basement. After a lot of huffing, she’s in, clutching her shoulder protectively.
‘Just a little further,’ I tell her, shouldering her weight, taking her upstairs and leading her down the landing to the room with the black door. I settle her in the Dead Room, then go back to the jeep. The boot contains camping gear, a night light, some sleeping bags and weird foam pillows. I root around a little more and find a first-aid kit.
I grab what I can and lock the jeep.
When I go back into the Dead Room, Celene’s slumped against a wall, but she’s not unconscious. She’s staring at the wall opposite, which is plastered with newspaper reports and pictures of her. Her expression is torn between wonder and horror, like she’s not sure if she’s asleep or awake, alive or dead. The wall might as wel
l be talking to her. ‘CeleneCross, this is your life.’ I doubt she likes what she sees.
‘Here,’ I say, crouching down and attempting to pry her hand from her shoulder.
‘No, no.’ She fights me but she’s too weak and I firmly remove her hand. It flops into her lap, slick with blood. I pull down the shoulder of her jacket, revealing a war zone of smeared, gloopy red, and snap open the first-aid kit. As I clean the wound, I reveal the ragged circle of flesh where the bullet entered. There’s no exit wound.
‘I’m going to have to leave the bullet in there,’ I say, more to myself than her. ‘Safer that way.’
I bandage her up and then rock back on my heels. She looks up at me, raises her bloody hand and touches my face. Her fingers slide down my cheek.
‘My girl. What did I do to you?’
Then she’s unconscious.
I ease her onto her side, place one of the foam pillows under her head and cover her in a sleeping bag. Then I sit and look at her. She’s lost a lot of blood. If she manages to sleep, she’ll feel better in the morning. I’m sure it’s not the first time she’s been shot.
My gaze roams the wall opposite.
This is the only place I know is safe. Was I wrong to bring her here?
Maybe some unconscious part of me wanted her to see. Wanted to see how she’d react to the wall; her life pieced together from snippets and monochrome snaps. My unsettled history referenced in newspaper articles. It paints a pretty bleak picture of us both.
Grabbing the other sleeping bag, I wrap it around me and then sit flipping through the photo album again. Slower this time. Scrutinising every picture, seeing that some seem to have been taken through gaps in fences or from a high window. Across a street. If Celene took them, she was close when she did.
The thought of her following me around for years is darkly funny. I’ve always felt like my mother’s ghost was breathing down my neck. Now I find out she sort of was.
A strange sensation inflates my chest, pushes my ribs apart from the inside. An odd sort of yearning. I look from the album to the sleeping shape on the floor, then to the wall. I need to remind myself of all the awful things my mother did. Immerse myself in the reports of slaughter and destruction. Remind myself what she did to me. The people who died because of my curse.
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