Zero

by Claire Stevens

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Flattening myself to the corner of the wall, I fumbled my stiletto from my boot. And okay, it was no broadsword, but they sure as hell wouldn’t be taking me down without a fight. Beside me, Etienne fumbled a homemade-looking cosh from his sleeve.

  The silent footsteps rounded the corner just as I raised my knife, hoping to have the benefit of surprise. I sprang forward, only to be faced with a blur of leather as Neve blocked my stab with an upwards sweep of her arm, knocking the knife neatly out of my hand. ‘Fuck! Shit!’ she gasped. ‘Roanne! What the hell are you doing?’

  Her words were cut off by Kallista. Barrelling past me, she flung her arms round Neve’s neck, burying her face in Neve’s shoulder. Kallista’s soft wailing was incomprehensible, and after an astonished moment, Neve closed her eyes and started murmuring back, stroking Kallista’s hair.

  Beside her, Oriel swept down and picked up my stiletto. ‘You dropped this,’ he laugh-whispered, holding my stiletto knife out to me, handle first.

  I looked at it for a second and then back at him. He cocked an eyebrow at me. ‘What?’ he said, ‘you didn’t think we’d just leave you here, did you?’

  ‘Just for the record,’ Raelthos broke in, ‘I probably would have left you here. This place is terrifying.’

  Oriel ignored him. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, worried now. ‘Are you hurt? Did they-’

  I looked up at him, shaking my head. ‘I forgot you,’ I said, my voice thickening with tears. ‘I forgot you over and over again. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,’ I whispered.

  His eyes widened. His lips moved soundlessly. ‘You remembered,’ he whispered. The naked hope on his face squeezed at my chest.

  I nodded shakily. ‘Yes... No. Some of it. Baeroth, he- He looked into my mind.’ Oriel froze, his muscles tensing. ‘I’m fine,’ I assured him, thankful that I hadn’t started with the bit about my wrist being smashed, ‘but when he was looking around, he stirred up some memories. Dreams, I think, I-’

  Raelthos hovered by our side, looking distinctly ruffled. ‘This is precious, it really is, but we really have to go. The longer we stay here, the more chance there is that we’ll be found and captured and Baeroth will do his ritual thing and then it won’t matter how many dreams you remember, because there’ll be an all-powerful psychopathic Psion on the loose.’ He started making flappy ushering motions back along the corridor towards the throne room.

  Oriel shot him a poisonous glance and nodded. ‘Let’s go and get Owen. And then later...’

  I turned to Etienne, who was staring stonily at Oriel. ‘Will you show us where Owen is?’

  ‘Owen? I- No. I just told you, you need to leave. Now.’

  Oriel stared at Etienne like he’d only just noticed him. ‘Who the hell is this?’

  ‘This is Etienne. He’s-’ I stopped. Who was Etienne? ‘He rescued us. From the dungeon.’

  Etienne smirked at Oriel, who glowered back. ‘We were literally two minutes away from rescuing you.’

  ‘But you didn’t,’ Etienne said softly.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ I asked in exasperation. ‘You’re having a pissing contest about who gets to rescue us?’

  ‘Listen, Edison-’ Oriel began.

  ‘It’s Etienne,’ he ground out through clenched teeth.

  Oriel shook his head dismissively. ‘Whatever. Clearly you don’t understand. We aren’t leaving without my brother.’

  ‘No, you don’t understand, boy. Baeroth knew you were coming. He’s expecting you. Now, I don’t know exactly what he’s planning, but he’s a psychopath, so I can guarantee it won’t be pleasant. You need to get her out of here right now.’

  I broke in. ‘Etienne, we can’t leave here without Owen.’

  Etienne stared at me in disbelief. I looked back at him unwaveringly and beside me I heard Oriel laugh softly. Finally, Etienne groaned, clutching the sides of his head in frustration. He took a deep breath and composed himself. ‘Right. Fine. I can’t tell you where Owen is, because I don’t know.’ Oriel and Kallista gave almost identical snorts of disbelief. ‘I don’t. Thornsvale is huge; Baeroth’s been moving Owen from room to room and I’m not in his inner circle so I have no idea where he is at the moment. We’ll start at the main atrium; from there the main staircase leads to all four floors. There are three corridors on each floor: two branching out from either side of the staircase, and a shorter one leading to the back of the house. We’ll need to sweep every room on each floor.’

  Neve, who had now disentangled herself from Kallista, waved her finger between me and Oriel and Etienne. ‘Are we good here?’ I nodded and after a beat, so did Etienne and Oriel. Oriel’s hand tightened around my waist. Neve jerked her head in a quick nod. ‘Good. Let’s go get Owen.’

  And so the search for Owen began.

  We padded for what seemed like miles along huge stone corridors hung with faded paintings, tapestries and curtains. Like the throne room, everything was muted into shades of dusty grey.

  Kallista shuffled ahead of us all, eyes fixed on her radar device. Every time we reached a door, she would hold it up to take a reading, flinching at the obscenely loud wheeze it gave off as it processed the life forms inside. The inhabitants of Thornsvale were human - technically - and not demon, so the radar readouts were blurry and indistinct.

  Most rooms were empty. A couple had people in, but they were all too big to be Owen, so we avoided them. My stomach churned at the thought of how close we were to the enemy.

  No one spoke as we crept silently through the grey passageways, all horribly aware that the longer we spent here, the more chance there was of getting caught.

  We were just about to pass a door which, according to the radar, contained just one occupant. Kallista went to move on, but Neve grabbed her arm, yanking her backwards. ‘There’s only one in there,’ she mouthed to Oriel, jerking her chin at the door. He nodded slowly, and bent down to whisper in my ear.

  The weaselly-looking man at the desk had the standard-issue bruised skin and white hair and before he could even register what was happening, Neve was pulling him out of his seat and propelling him backwards. She slid him up the wall by his neck so that his feet scrabbled for purchase uselessly beneath him. Before he could start shouting for help, Oriel clamped his hand over the man’s mouth.

  Weasel grasped at the restraints around his neck, but couldn’t shift them. I walked over to him. ‘You know who I am?’ He nodded jerkily. ‘Then you know what I can do.’ It wasn’t a question, but he nodded anyway. ‘Good. Now tell me where the baby is.’

  Oriel released the pressure on Weasel’s jaw, but his mouth stayed clamped shut. I could see in his eyes he was far too terrified of Baeroth to let anything slip. Damn. I was going to have to turn up the bitch.

  I positioned myself so that I was right in the minion’s face, my eyes locked into his, daring him to look away. I spoke slowly, letting just a hint of a growl filter into my voice. ‘You’re afraid of Baeroth. I get that. But you saw Baeroth in the throne room after he tried to hijack my mind. He’s scared of me. Now I’m going to ask you once and once only and I swear to the gods, if you don’t tell me what I want to know I’ll make any little punishment Baeroth can come up with seem like tea and biscuits. Tell me. Where. Owen. Is.’

  Weasel looked skywards and appeared to consider his options for a moment before choking out, ‘Tapestry room. That way.’ He jerked his blackened thumb behind him. Neve let him fall to the floor and he rubbed his throat, wheezing bronchially.

  Neve grabbed my arm and quickly started to lead me out of the room. ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

  She tried to look nonchalant. ‘Nothing. Just don’t look back.’

  There was a thud reminiscent of a coconut hitting a pavement and two seconds later Oriel had caught us up. ‘What did you do?’ I hissed.

  ‘I made sure he couldn’t run and warn Baeroth,’ he said lightly. ‘You were brilliant, by the way.’

  The doors to the
tapestry room reached all the way to the ceiling and were barred with iron. ‘Right,’ said Neve. ‘Here we go. Keep a look out for traps.’ She nodded, almost to herself and pushed the doors open.

  Our boots echoed noisily on the flagstone floor as the six of us clattered in. The tapestry room was long and narrow and while there were many faded tapestries lining the walls, it was completely empty of furniture. Empty of everything. Weasel had tricked us.

  I took Oriel’s arm, ready to pull him out of the tapestry room to resume the search, but something in his expression caught me and I followed his gaze to the ceiling.

  There, amongst the mammoth cobwebs and iron chandeliers a small blond child span lazily in a glowing bubble, his eyes closed. The bubble glowed in the low light, eerily reminiscent of the bubble I’d caught the demon in outside Rivermead. I could feel the raw power emanating from it from where I stood.

  ‘It’s a suspended animation cell,’ Kallista said slowly, wonderingly. ‘Shit. Shit! That’s- That’s big. I mean, huge. The power that thing will be using, where is he getting it from?’ She shook her head slowly and I could almost hear the cogs in her mind whirring. Her face fell as realisation dawned and she clapped her hand to her mouth to stifle a yelp.

  ‘He’s drawing energy from Owen,’ Neve whispered in horror. ‘Isn’t he? That’s how he’s running the cell. All the power he needs is coming from inside Owen.’ She turned to Kallista, who nodded miserably.

  I gulped, the saliva in my mouth tasting like pennies. ‘How do we get him down?’

  Kallista’s stare was still fixed on the cell. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  Oriel looked away from Owen’s chubby, red-sleepsuited form and started scanning the room. ‘There’ll be a release mechanism somewhere. Baeroth loves shit like that. Let’s start looking.’

  It didn’t take us long to find it. Four identical carved stone panels, two on each of the two narrow walls were looser than the others and gave slightly when pushed. ‘We need to push them at the same time to release him,’ Etienne said. ‘He’s made it so that you need five people to bring Owen down. Makes it harder for anyone to betray him.’

  ‘Well, conveniently there are six of us, so that works out well.’ Raelthos raised an eyebrow and looked doubtfully up at Owen. ‘Who’s going to volunteer to catch him?’ Everyone edged backwards.

  ‘I’ll do it.’ Neve swallowed visibly.

  Four of us each took a panel. Oriel stood across from me, a huge greying tapestry of a lion separating us. He winked at me and I managed a wobbly smile back.

  ‘Right, everyone got their panel?’ Neve asked. ‘Okay, one...two...three...go!’

  We pressed our panels, which gave a stony rumble and recessed a few inches inside the wall. I was expecting a flash of light or a sound, or anything really, but the bubble just winked out of existence and after a second or two Owen started to fall to the floor.

  White-faced, Neve gave a squeak as Owen tumbled straight into her arms. He jolted awake and blinked slowly, his mouth crumpling. He fixed her with a blue-eyed stare and focussed for a second or two before his little face crumpled into a grin. ‘Thank the gods,’ she whispered, eyes closed.

  Oriel ran to Neve’s side. ‘Is he okay?’

  She held Owen at arm’s length to study him. He squirmed and arched, trying to get her to cuddle him again before giving up and letting out an ear-splitting bawl, his little face scrunching up with annoyance. ‘He’s fine,’ Neve said. ‘Hey, shush, shush.’ She jiggled him on her hip, kissing the top of his head and his cries subsided into annoyed grunts.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ I asked.

  Neve shrugged. ‘We find somewhere good for you to create a portal and escape back home to the Jeopardy. Soon would be good. I don’t know if anyone was nearby to hear Owen hollering just then.’

  I almost didn’t want to ask, but the tiny voice in the back of my head just wouldn’t let it go. ‘Wasn’t this a bit too easy?’

  ‘Huh?’ Neve shifted Owen on her hip and held her necklace out the way of his pudgy grip.

  ‘No one’s guarding Owen, the only person we saw on the way here gave us the answers we wanted practically straight away and, okay, Owen was in a trap, but it didn’t exactly overwhelm us. And...and didn’t you say Owen was in a suspended animation cell?’ I turned to Kallista, who nodded uneasily as she saw where I was going with this. ‘Does that mean the same here? That time inside the cell stops?’

  ‘Owen wasn’t getting any older,’ Oriel said.

  Neve stopped jiggling Owen and frowned at us. ‘But that doesn’t make any sense. Owen was eleven months old when Baeroth took him. He needed to be a year old for the ritual to work. If he wasn’t ageing...’

  ‘We need to get out of here,’ Oriel said.

  But when we turned to leave the room, there in the doorway stood Baeroth. And like a billion of his minions.