Ruins

by Joshua Winning

  Crippling pain crushed his ribcage.

  Sam’s skin prickled and flushed. His vision swam and he choked aloud as something beneath his ribs contracted painfully. His heart. It was gripped in steel claws.

  Malika’s expression hardened. “Doc warned you against hunting, didn’t she? You should’ve listened. You shouldn’t be poking around where you don’t belong.”

  “Sam.” Liberty’s voice.

  He gripped the work bench, sweat beading his brow. Through the unnatural fever, he saw that Liberty had become very still, her gaze fixed on Malika.

  The red-haired witch raised a finger and wagged it. “Uh-uh-uh,” she reprimanded, turning to face the Sensitive. “Stay out of my head, or I’ll snap that pretty neck of yours.”

  “Liberty,” Sam croaked. “No.”

  “Thomas,” Malika commanded. “Take his bag.”

  Sam felt hands at his side and attempted to push them away. Blood throbbed in his ears and pain locked his limbs. He clutched at his satchel, refusing to let Thomas take it. The other man grunted and wrenched. Sam balled his fist and swung. Thomas shrieked and released him.

  “Men,” Malika spat.

  A rustle of red fabric, and he sensed her approaching, but then there was movement. Liberty flew from the corner of the basement. She and Malika crashed against the work bench, Liberty scratching at the woman’s face.

  The pain vanished. The relief was a cool tonic in his veins. Sam shook his head, his pulse returning to normal. He wiped his forehead and focussed, seeing that Thomas was cowering against the wall.

  “You have to stop her,” he gibbered, and even as he said it, his gaze lingered lovingly on Malika.

  Liberty struck the ground with a thud and Malika clutched for her with blood-red nails.

  “I tire of this meddling,” she hissed.

  “Here!” Sam barked. Malika turned and he didn’t waste a breath, hurling the pouch that he’d retrieved from his satchel. It seemed to sail out of his hands in slow-motion. It cleared the work bench and exploded in Malika’s face.

  Her scream blistered the air.

  Sam winced at the spit of sizzling flesh. Malika’s hoarse screams made the apparatus on the bench shudder and the stench of singed flesh violated the air.

  “Hurry!” Sam yelled as Liberty scrambled to her feet. They staggered over to the steps and Liberty began upward. He paused, casting a look back at the gauntlet. Malika was in the way and he daren’t attempt to retrieve it.

  Thomas howled and hurried to Malika on all fours. In one swift movement, he unravelled the bandage at his wrist and crouched by her, prying her hands from her scarred face.

  Malika’s lips leeched around the bloody gash in Thomas’s wrist. Sam heard ravenous suckling and fought the urge to vomit. He dashed up the remaining steps, bursting into the dingy hallway. Liberty was waiting for him and they clung to each other as they bound toward the front door, emerging into the garden.

  The sunlight was blinding. Nale stomped his cigar into the ground and appraised them uncertainly.

  “Inside,” Liberty told him. “The basement.”

  Without a word, Nale bowled into the house with Zeus at his heels.

  “You’re hurt.” Liberty motioned at Sam’s arm.

  Surprised, he looked down and found blood smeared from his elbow to his wrist. Wooziness sapped his energy in an instant; he must have lost a lot of blood without even noticing. A small wound pumped red liquid. Thomas had cut him and he hadn’t noticed, lost in Malika’s icy grip.

  Liberty tore off his ragged sleeve and wrapped it around Sam’s arm, so tightly that he had to grit his teeth against it.

  “We need to close that quickly,” she said.

  Nale reappeared at the door, Zeus at his side.

  “Gone,” he gruffed.

  “They can’t be,” Sam uttered. “We have to check–”

  “I checked. They’re gone.”

  Liberty drew Sam away from the house. “Come on. We’ll summon Esus on the way to mine, he’ll send others to sweep the house. You’re in no fit state.”

  Sam cursed. She’d evaded them again. But where had Malika and Thomas disappeared to? He’d hoped the pouch would see her off, but he was beginning to accept it would take even more to eradicate Malika. Snelling had been a ruse all along. A puppet. Somebody to do Malika’s bidding and bow out early. Sam had been chasing the wrong monster. Snelling’s story ended here with Thomas Gray. Malika’s, it seemed, was only just beginning.

  Nale helped Sam over to Liberty’s car. As she unlocked it, the old man leaned in to the Hunter.

  “Stay with her,” he told Nale, nodding at Liberty. “Don’t let her out of your sight.” If Malika survived the day, Liberty might be next on her list.

  *

  Everything was so confused. It was as if somebody had taken a stack of papers and hurled them into the air. Now all Rae could do was watch them flutter to the floor.

  She’d awoken on a camp bed in a strange room, her tongue dry, her body aching. Then the events of the previous evening returned in a smothering rush. The fight with Damon. The explosion. Twig. Rae wanted to scream. Pull her hair out. Instead she sat and balled her fists.

  The moments after the explosion were a blur. The man from the museum had taken her to Moyse’s Hall Museum. She’d heard fire engines but nobody had seen them. They’d moved quickly. She vaguely recalled the museum man ushering her into the office and showing her the bed. She didn’t remember falling asleep.

  Were they all dead? Twig and Damon and the others? Just like Kay? Retro Threads was a singed, shattered shell when she left it. And Twig had been lying in the rubble not moving.

  Rae wanted to throw up.

  The museum man had woken her after what felt like five minutes, given her food, water. His name was Laurent, he’d said, and he needed her help. Then he started talking about monsters. She should have laughed at him, but she’d glimpsed things. At night, the cities came alive with things that didn’t want to be seen. She’d seen them. Glowing green eyes and claws that clattered over tarmac. They were rule number five. Don’t let the monsters see you.

  Am I a monster?

  He left her to sleep again, arguing that she needed her rest. Rae had resolved to escape as soon as she got the chance, but she was so exhausted. Her body betrayed her and she’d succumbed to sleep almost immediately.

  What was the time now? The clock on the wall said nine. Was that morning or evening? She couldn’t have slept an entire day, surely. But... the wrecked shop. The explosion was the biggest she’d ever caused, which explained the deep ache in her muscles and the fuzziness between her ears.

  She had to go. The police would be after her. You couldn’t incinerate a building in a town like Bury St Edmunds without getting noticed. She had to disappear again. Find somewhere else, even if it meant going back to the street. Where hadn’t she tried? The north, perhaps. She could sneak through the barriers at the train station and pretend she’d lost her ticket. In five hours she could have a new life.

  Rae listened at the door but didn’t hear anything. She drew it open.

  A man with a buzz cut and thin lips stood outside. She closed the door before he noticed her. She was being guarded? Who was Laurent and what did he want with her?

  Rae scoured the office for another way out. The room was window-less, though, and the bookcase against the wall looked too heavy to shift, even if there was a window behind it.

  She scanned the desk and her eye was drawn to a postcard. It was a painting of a man in a bowler hat. The man had no face.

  Rae shuddered.

  The door opened behind her and she jumped.

  “Rae,” Laurent said. “You’re awake. Do you feel rested?”

  Rae crushed her back against the wall. He was relaxed, pushing the door to and observing her calmly. His expression betrayed no judgement, no fear, despite what he’d seen her do.

  “What you want?” she demanded.

  “I know you must be v
ery confused,” Laurent said. A single lamp illuminated the room and he was disarmingly attractive in the soft light. “Let’s talk about the abilities that turned your home into a crater.”

  “Wasn’t my home.”

  Laurent didn’t seem fazed. “Nevertheless, if you wish to learn to control your abilities, I can help.”

  Rae looked down at her hands. Her fingers were knotted together. She didn’t want to talk about what she’d done. What she could do. But she’d never met anybody who wasn’t afraid. Did Laurent really want to help her?

  “Can’t,” she muttered. “I can’t control it.”

  “Nonsense.” He strode to a drinks cabinet, plucking an expensive-looking decanter from it. He set the decanter on the desktop. “Sit,” he said, pulling a chair out. She eyed him, then relented. Laurent strode in circles around her.

  “You have a switch, everybody does. All you have to do is locate the switch and flip it. First we’ll nudge it, just enough to ensure that you don’t black out as you did before.”

  Rae hoped he couldn’t see her trembling.

  “No,” she said. She couldn’t let anybody else get hurt.

  He paused on the other side of the table, hands clasped behind his back.

  “This is for your benefit, not mine. Do you really want to wake up in a bomb site again?”

  “What’s wrong with me?”

  She hated how she sounded, but Laurent’s confidence caused her guard to lower.

  “Nothing,” Laurent soothed. “There are others with similar abilities, though I’ve yet to meet anybody with your sort of fire power. No pun intended.”

  “I start, I won’t be able to stop. You’ll get hurt.”

  “Trust me, I can handle it.”

  Rae doubted that. But, then, Laurent had seen the shop and he didn’t seem scared. Could she really do this?

  “Concentrate,” Laurent instructed. “It’s going to take all the concentration you’ve got.”

  Rae balled her hands in her lap.

  Laurent stepped back into the shadows. “Concentrate on the decanter.” His voiced floated out of the darkness. “Ignore everything else around it. Pay attention to the beat of your heart, your breathing. Feel the pulse in your chest.”

  She attempted to do as he said, staring at the decanter until her eyes itched to blink.

  “Now think back to last night; what set you off?”

  I’m a murderer.

  “I can’t–”

  “You don’t need to tell me,” Laurent interrupted her. “Simply remember where you were, what you were doing. Try to build a picture in your mind, pretend you’re back there.”

  Rae imagined the shop. Damon and his friends cornering her.

  Twig.

  Her pulse quickened. Her palms were clammy.

  “You’re a freak!”

  She recoiled in the chair. Her stomach was alive with snapping scorpions.

  “Good.” Laurent’s voice rippled from the darkness. His eyes were pinpricks of light beyond the desk. “Hold on to that feeling. Pull it deep within you, let it boil and charge.”

  Rae felt like she was on fire. Her skin burned. Her insides juddered. Something was wrong. She couldn’t control it. She was going to lose it just as she had with Kay and Twig.

  Her head started pounding. An axe had been buried in her skull. It was being withdrawn and slammed back down again. Over and over.

  “Yes.” Laurent’s voice shivered in the dark. “Hold on to it, make it yours. Don’t let it control you.”

  Her hands fused into fists, nails slicing her palms. Every muscle felt like it was being torn in two. Prised stickily from her bones. She was coming apart.

  “I can’t!” she objected through gritted teeth.

  “Now, Rae,” Laurent insisted. “Let go now!”

  With a gasp, she unclenched her fists. It was as if something physically left her body. A pulse or blast of energy. It shot invisibly out of her. The desk and decanter exploded in a fiery blaze that sent shards of glass spearing upwards. Smoke engulfed the office and glass tinkled as it rained down.

  As the vapours thinned, Laurent’s face became clearer and clearer.

  He was grinning triumphantly.

  “Come,” he said, opening the office door. Her body twitching, Rae stumbled to her feet. She’d done it. Nobody had been hurt and she hadn’t passed out. Relief and a strange kind of euphoria flooded through her. She drifted after Laurent, climbing a staircase at the back of the museum.

  It’s not enough.

  Like the vapours, the euphoria evaporated. The secret didn’t belong to her anymore. For the first time in her life, somebody else knew. The thought filled her with dread. What did Laurent want with her? Laurent who wasn’t afraid. Laurent who understood.

  I have to get out of here.

  Laurent went ahead. Sunlight carved apart the shadows in the stairwell as he opened another door and Rae followed him out into the fresh air. They were on the museum’s roof and Rae could see streets away. Below them, people milled about like ants.

  “When was the first time you became aware of what you could do?” Laurent asked, staring off into the distance.

  “Dunno,” Rae said. She couldn’t help being cagey. Don’t talk about your past. She’d learnt the hard way that knowledge was power.

  “You don’t need to keep anything from me,” Laurent said.

  True. She’d be gone the first chance she got. It didn’t matter if she told him. She wasn’t sticking around anyway.

  “I was five. I woke up and the house was on fire...”

  She hadn’t understood why her foster parents were so scared after that. Paul and Elizabeth had looked after her since she was a baby, but after the fire, she caught their nervous glances. The house creaked with tension. A year after the fire, Elizabeth fell pregnant and they gave her up. She was taken in by an elderly couple who didn’t know the first thing about kids. She’d run.

  “You were scared.”

  Rae nodded.

  “You’ve run ever since.”

  It wasn’t a question. How did he know? She found his perceptiveness unnerving.

  Run, the voice in the back of her head urged. After she’d fled the couple in their sixties, the authorities had caught up with her and she’d ended up with another foster parent, Karen Stone. Another three years slipped by, but one night, she’d woken up and the house was on fire again. She was ten and she knew she was to blame.

  She ran again, and this time she didn’t stop.

  Run, run!

  “You’re safe with me,” Laurent said. “But other people, they won’t understand. Man always destroys what he can’t understand. If you were discovered, you’d be destroyed. You understand that, don’t you?”

  Damon. He’d come to the shop with his friends to taunt her. Humiliate her.

  For the first time since they had gone out onto the roof, Laurent looked at her. His blue eyes were shards of ice. Cold but beautiful.

  “You’re weak,” Laurent said. “I can make you strong.”

  Rae forced herself to stare back.

  “With my help, you’ll never have to fear those who would seek to destroy you.”

  He seemed so sure.

  Later, she was back in the office. Laurent said she needed to rest, but she couldn’t sit still. She’d killed Twig and the others. She was a murderer. She had to get as far away from Bury as possible. It didn’t matter that Laurent wanted to help her. The only person she could trust was herself.

  The buzz-cut guard lingered outside her door (“For your protection,” Laurent had assured her). Anxiously, Rae paced the room. There had to be another way out. She attempted to drag the bookcase away from the wall, but it was too heavy. With growing desperation, she knocked on the walls, searching for a weak spot.

  After five minutes, one of the knocks resounded hollowly.

  Plasterboard. There was something behind it. Casting a wary glance at the door, Rae punched the wall, her fist disappearing i
nto it. She pulled, tearing away the plasterboard to reveal an old-fashioned door. Her breath caught in her throat and Rae gave the door a shove. It opened stiffly. She glimpsed another room filled with display cabinets. Another of the museum’s rooms.

  Not pausing, Rae pushed her way through, hoping her guard wouldn’t hear.

  Covered in dust, she emerged into the other room. Not wasting a moment, she crossed the room quietly and peered out into the hall.

  The guard remained outside the office. He hadn’t heard a thing.

  Opposite her lay the lobby and beyond that the market square. In five seconds she’d be free.

  Not breathing, Rae listened. The building was quiet. Keeping her eyes on the guard, she hopped across the hall into the lobby. Blood thundering in her ears, she hurried to the front door and threw it open.

  Breaking into the searing afternoon light, she ran.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Ashes

  THERE WAS NO SIGN OF ISABEL in the Abbey Gardens. Nicholas and Dawn searched the whole park, but she was nowhere to be found. Nicholas’s shoulder twinged and he hissed through his teeth. He was still getting used to the sling. It dug into his flesh and he swore he’d get rid of it as soon as the throbbing in his arm subsided. There were far more pressing matters for now.

  The last time he’d seen Isabel was when the gargoyle hurled her from the air. She’d crashed into a tree and vanished. Nicholas steeled himself against the possibility that she was dead. The memory of her body toppling limply made his stomach flip.

  She’s got to be okay, he thought. When has death ever stopped her?

  They scoured the area for an hour before they gave up. It was useless. Nicholas kicked a tree and cursed.

  “If she’s not here, that means we have a limited number of possibilities,” Dawn reasoned softly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “If she died, either somebody found her body or an animal took it.”

  “Took it. Ate it, you mean.”

  “If she’s alive,” Dawn continued in a more optimistic tone, “she’s either crawled off somewhere or been discovered by somebody and taken.”