Zero

by Claire Stevens

  Part of me wanted to stop and ask the roaring crowd exactly how cheating at a drinking game made me demonspawn, but the other part, the part that didn’t want to have the shit kicked out of me, put on an extra spurt of speed. The heroes were still being held back by my force-field, but I knew from the searing pain in my head that I wouldn’t be able to keep it up for much longer.

  As Neve wrestled with the handle, the girl with the scarlet hair shouldered her way to the front of the crowd and was standing with her fingertips resting on my barrier. Was she expecting to come with us? Oriel was jumping on the balls of his feet like he wanted to shove Neve out the way and open the door himself and when I looked back to the girl, to my surprise, she wasn’t looking at him at all. As he yanked me out of the bar and into the evening sunshine, she grinned at me and blew me a kiss.

  ‘Nice one, Zero,’ Kallista groaned as we sprinted across the green and down a side road.

  ‘The drinking game was YOUR idea,’ I wheezed. ‘It’s not my fault if I don’t have the drinking tolerance of a lifelong alcoholic!’

  ‘Why didn’t you just forfeit?’ Raelthos enquired. Even at full pelt he managed to look as graceful as if he was going for a quiet turn about an ornamental garden. ‘You could have sidled onto that one-eyed chap’s lap and played with his lustrous beard. All I needed was a diversion; I didn’t need you to actually win.’

  We pelted through the streets, skidding round corners, arms flailing like only those who are running in genuine fear of their lives can do. In the distance I could hear the roar of pissed-off warriors and realised that my force field had fallen. Neve peeled off left from the main road, down an alleyway and across someone’s vegetable garden, the rest of us following hot on her heels.

  We didn’t stop until we were a couple of miles out of town and buried deep in the woods at the shore of a small lake. I immediately flopped onto the floor burying my head in my hands. ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry, okay? Just give me a chance and I’ll figure out a way to fix it,’ I wailed, distraught that I’d wrecked things so badly.

  Neve shook her head. ‘It’s too late. We can’t risk your safety by letting you go back there.’

  Kallista, who had been pacing back and forth, now came to stand over me, hands on her hips, shaking her head in furious disbelief. ‘I knew this would happen! I knew you’d manage to completely screw this mission up. Seriously Zero, how do you even get dressed in the mornings? We’ll never find Owen now, you complete bloody useless IDIOT!

  ‘Yeah? Yeah, well at least I’m not a complete bloody pain-snail!’ I panted.

  ‘What are you talking about, idiot?’ she sputtered. ‘Pain-snail? That’s not even a thing!’

  ‘Yes, it is!’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘It’s a word for someone who whines and moans and complains their way through life, carrying all their pain and woe around on their back like a great big snail shell of misery! Their entire existence is one big wangst-fest and they wouldn’t have it any other way. And THAT. Is YOU!’

  Kallista’s jaw fell open. ‘Oh no,’ she laughed angrily. ‘No Zero. First off, you know nothing about my life. Second off, I don’t bitch about everything; just about you. I would have been absolutely fine if you’d just stayed where you were and never come here!’ She swiped her hand through the air and shouted something guttural. The muddy puddle next to me splashed as if an invisible football had hit it, splattering my breeches with muck. When she saw what she’d done, Kallista’s eyes lit up and she snorted with laughter.

  I was so angry the words wouldn’t even come out of my mouth. My searing rage seemed to condense down into a prickling at the back of my neck. I seized at it, drawing it out and releasing it. Mud from the path flew into the air and splashed Kallista from head to foot.

  For a second I was too surprised to do anything. Then the wind was knocked from my lungs as Kallista launched into me spitting like an enraged cat.

  ‘Stop it! Stop it at once,’ shouted Neve, bounding up behind us. Neither of us paid any attention to her. The showdown that had been brewing since the minute I stepped through the portal had begun.

  We grappled, grabbing bits of jacket and breeches and occasionally the odd bit of face, but neither of us managed to gain an advantage before we tripped over and fell to the floor. Screeching like a pair of fishwives, we rolled around on the sludge at the edge of the lake, getting far dirtier than we were before.

  Vaguely in the distance I could hear Neve and Oriel shouting coupled with Raelthos’s hoots of glee, but nothing could slow me down.

  Just as I managed to get a strong grasp on her hair, a pair of hands that felt like iron inside kid gloves pulled me up by the neck of my tunic. I swung round, struggling and kicking, but my fingers clawed into thin air. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Oriel stared at me with an equal mixture of horror and astonishment.

  ‘It was her! She bloody started it!’ I pointed angrily at Kallista, who was being similarly restrained by Neve.

  ‘Why don’t you piss off back to your cosy little Zero life back in the Sanctuary?’

  ‘Why don’t you piss off back to your pain-snail life back in the Citadel? After all, like Oriel said, you’re not even really needed here.’

  My rage was threatening to consume me whole and again I could feel a tingling pressure build up, begging to be released. It was building up quickly; too quickly.

  Panicking now, I pulled away from Oriel, backing towards the lake, unsure what to do to calm myself down. I turned only to see Kallista finally escape Neve’s grasp and leap towards me with a shriek, claws outstretched.

  Just as she grabbed my shoulders, something inside me exploded and the world seemed to turn white. The explosion of power knocked us both off our feet, high into the air and we sailed backwards towards the lake.

  Time slowed as we arced high over the water. The branches of the tall trees surrounding the lake threw shadows over the water, backlit by the bright shine of the moon. Two branches stood out clearly amongst the others, thick and dark, making the shape of a neat cross exactly where we were about to make contact with the water.

  My eyes widened in realisation. X marks the spot. Finally understanding how Wile. E. Coyote used to feel when he ran off the edge of a cliff, my arms and legs pinwheeled madly mid-air.

  I barely had time to shut my eyes and mouth before we landed, but we had hardly broken the surface of the lake before the water disappeared and we were falling through the air again.

  With a loud thump we landed on the floor of a large, stone hall, to the astonishment of the small crowd of people clustered around a tall man on the throne.

  It seemed like we’d managed to find the jail dimension after all.