Sentinel: Book One of The Sentinel Trilogy

by Joshua Winning

  Liberty came to with a start. A smell of damp and mould hit her solidly. The cloying reek curled up into her nostrils and she gagged, tying to put her hand to her face. Except she couldn’t. Her hands were chained. Confused, she tugged at her restraints, but they held fast.

  “Sam?” she called. Her voice echoed up into what must be a high ceiling, getting lost above her head.

  Where was she?

  It was too dark to see anything, and deathly quiet. Only her own short, nervous breaths came to her ears. She attempted to calm herself. Centre her mind. Where was she? She could feel dirt beneath her. She was crouched in it on her knees. Liberty tried to focus, but the blackness was so thick, so absolute that it choked her, and she stared wildly into the nothingness that pressed suffocatingly around her.

  She tried to remember how she’d arrived here, but there was nothing. She had a vague recollection of a woman and lots of shouting. The insistent pounding in her head hinted that she’d come to blows with somebody, but other than that…

  A faint shuffling sounded nearby, and Liberty turned her head in its direction.

  “Hello?” she called. Her voice disappeared up into the invisible ceiling once more.

  There came a high-pitched chuckle, and Liberty stiffened.

  “Malika?” she ventured uneasily, attempting to blink away the dark.

  “You know my name,” a soft voice whispered. It was so close that Liberty felt the warm breath caress her neck. Every hair on her body stood on end and Liberty cringed away, attempted to wrestle free from the chains. It was useless.

  “What fun we’re going to have!” called Malika, her jubilant voice now further away. It glanced off hidden surfaces and battered Liberty from all sides.

  “You’re the final piece!” the voice rang. “Always two, there have to be two.”

  Liberty shrank into herself, attempted to block out the witch’s goading words. She evened out her breathing and reached out with her mind, striving to sense where she was.

  There was something wrong. She couldn’t sense anything at all.

  It was as if some dark magic had shackled her mind, just like the chains that fettered her wrists. Liberty suddenly felt very cold and very alone. This had never happened before. There were people who referred to her abilities as a sixth sense, and Liberty had used them often as just that – another set of eyes and ears, another way of deciphering the world. Now even that had been denied her.

  “Don’t worry,” Malika’s voice called merrily. “It’s not long now. Not long at all. Soon it’ll be time to play. Aren’t you excited?”

  Liberty didn’t answer. She closed her eyes against the darkness and waited.

  *

  It was quiet as the grave. Sam crouched behind a low stone wall and hazarded a swift glance over the top. There was the church. The bell tower spire jabbed up at the wintry sky, as if attempting to spear the heavy clouds that had rolled in, and the trees that lined the gravel path wore their snow-white coats with conviction.

  Sam frowned. There was something about this place that was nagging at him. Had been ever since he’d read the note from the Ecto. What was it? Then it struck him like a slap to the cheek. Of course! St. John’s Baptist Church. It was the very same building that Nicholas had sleepwalked to in the middle of the night a week ago. The old man shivered. If ever he’d needed a demonstration of Nicholas’s latent abilities, that was the one to beat.

  The old man didn’t have time to marvel at the boy’s talents, though. If anything, the knowledge that Nicholas had been here filled him with dread. Nicholas’s burgeoning abilities had drawn him here against his will, which meant that something very powerful must be here, waiting. It had probably been here all along.

  Sam couldn’t see anybody, though. The church appeared as deserted and derelict as ever. Its front doors were boarded over with graffiti-stained panels of wood, and the building was still. It made Sam nervous.

  Had the warning that Liberty sent over the Ecto reached the other Sentinels? Was that the reason the site remained abandoned? Or had Sam simply missed whatever activity had taken place here? Hoping it was the former, Sam crept towards the building, moving around its considerable bulk until he was at a side door. He tried the handle. Locked. Sam kept going, reaching the immense graveyard at the back of the church. It stretched out as far as he could see, a jumble of dark stones. Still no sign of life. Sam cursed under his breath. Then froze.

  There. A flicker. Through the drunken muddle of headstones, off to one side of the cemetery, there was a glimmer of light. Sam watched, waited, but the light didn’t move. Carefully, he made his way through the graveyard, picking his way in between the tipsy stones. Then he saw where the light was coming from – a mausoleum. It was pushing its way out from the inside of a grand old mausoleum, through a crack in the ancient door.

  Two men stood either side of the entrance. One had a scar running from his chin to the back of his head. The other was younger but had a steely glint in his single eye.

  Harvesters, Sam thought. They couldn’t be anything else. What were they doing guarding a mausoleum?

  Sam pressed close to a stone, his shoulder disturbing the snow that had crusted over it. What if Liberty was in there? Grimly, Sam realised there was nothing for it – he had to get inside the crypt. He was too beaten up to take on both of the Harvesters, though. His skull still pounded and his ribs felt, if not broken, then severely bruised. How to get inside? The Harvesters prowled about outside the decrepit tomb, panther-like in their movements.

  Sam fumbled about on the ground and soon found what he was looking for. His hand closed around a small rock. When he was sure the guards weren’t looking in his direction, he hurled the stone into another part of the graveyard, away from the mausoleum.

  The rock cracked against a headstone, and the sound rang sharply into the night.

  The heads of both guards snapped in the rock’s direction. They shared a steely look, then the one with the scarred face took off through the cemetery.

  “A classic never dies,” Sam breathed to himself. “Maybe you’re not too old for this, old boy.”

  Keeping low, he hurried between the headstones and then around the side of the mausoleum. Bracing himself, Sam took a breath, then hurtled around the corner, shoving the butt of the rifle into the face of the younger, one-eyed Harvester.

  The guard didn’t even have a chance to cry out, falling unconscious to the ground, an ugly welt rising on his forehead. Not wasting a moment, Sam dashed into the mausoleum and hid behind the rusted metal door. How long did he have before the other guard returned and found his comrade cataleptic? Not long. He’d just take a quick look then get out of there.

  Except there was nothing in the mausoleum. Flames guttered in iron holders bolted to the crumbling walls, but other than a great sarcophagus in the centre of the cramped space, there was nothing here.

  Sam edged over to the tomb, which lay open, and his eyebrows raised in surprise. Within the stone coffin, a flight of stairs led down into darkness.

  Sam eyed the door of the mausoleum and knew he had no choice.

  No turning back now, Judith.

  Treading as lightly as he could, he descended into the gloom. Below, more lights flickered, leading the way to the foot of the stairs. Sam dreaded to think what was waiting for him down there. His hands clamped around the rifle in preparation, ready to fire if necessary. He hoped he wouldn’t have to resort to that just yet – the sound of a gunshot would no doubt attract more trouble than he was looking for.

  How much more trouble could I possibly get into, though?

  The steps came to an end and Sam was relieved to find that this entrance was not guarded. Out of the corner of his eye, though, he sensed movement, and pushed his back up against a nearby pillar. Stalking in between the stone columns were mean-looking figures carrying blades of varying sizes. More Harvesters. There were easily a dozen of them, some muscular, some rake-thin and lithe, all slithering through the shadows
like animals of prey.

  They’re uglier than I remember.

  There came a faint murmuring sound from up ahead. Squeezing the rifle tighter still, Sam kept an eye on the moving silhouettes as they patrolled the underground tomb and hopped to the next pillar. He repeated this action until finally he was as near to the murmurs as he dared stray. Tentatively, he edged around the pillar.

  Malika was kneeling, prostrated, in front of a massive stone effigy – a snarling sculpture of a fearsome, devil-like entity. In the guttering firelight, the coarse features seemed to move. The woman’s back was to Sam, and she was whispering reverently, her head bowed in quiet prayer.

  Beside the sculpture stood the demon child. It wore the same blank, emotionless expression that sent chills down Sam’s spine. Flanking him were two further Harvesters, their gazes averted respectfully from whatever Malika was doing.

  And there, just in front of the effigy was Liberty. Her hands were chained to a little circular table that was barely a foot off the ground. She was slumped on the dusty floor in front of it. A gag had been stuffed into her mouth. Sam started when he realised that Liberty was staring right at him. She looked terrified.

  Malika’s dress whirled about her in a fan as she moved away from the image of her god, and Sam saw that in her hands she was clasping a rough, ancient-looking bowl. Barely even registering Liberty’s presence, the flame-haired woman hummed to herself as she set the artefact down on the circular table.

  “It is time,” she said with a slow smile. She seated herself opposite Liberty, and yanked the woman’s restraints so that her hands were on the table. “Play nice,” Malika cautioned, seizing a hold of the Sensitive’s hands, holding them firmly either side of the bowl. She tossed her head back, her red curls shimmering in the firelight, and began to chant in a strange tongue that Sam didn’t recognise.

  He raised the rifle, preparing to fire at the witch.

  “What do we have here, then?”

  Sam tensed at the voice.

  Behind him, two shadows broke into the light and Sam reacted too slowly as the one-eyed Harvester snatched the rifle from him and tossed it out of reach.

  “Did nobody ever teach you that spying on people is rude?” the Harvester sneered. He seized Sam by his collar and threw him against a pillar. The old man struck the column and landed on the floor with a thud. He looked up just in time to see the other Harvester, the one with the scar, emerge from behind another column. Together, the two of them grinned like hyenas, their lips curling back threateningly in silent snarls.

  One-Eye cracked his knuckles in front of him, and now that he was closer, Sam’s insides gave a jolt. He knew him. He wasn’t a Harvester at all. He was a Sentinel. Except the last time Sam had seen him, he’d had the use of both of his eyes. His name was Vincent Carmac; he was a local boy whose father worked in the bakery on Nuffield Road.

  “Vincent,” Sam gasped in horror, getting to his feet.

  “Sammy Wilkins,” snarled the man with the scar. “You should’ve said you wanted to come along. You would’ve been more than welcome.”

  Horrified, Sam realised that he knew him, too. Jack Davies from Great Shelford, one of the villages on the outskirts of Cambridge. They’d been turned, just like Richard – and their faces now bore the scars of the fights that had robbed them of their sanity.

  Sam shook his head in disbelief. This couldn’t be. Would the nightmare never end?

  “Jack,” Sam uttered, crestfallen. “What have they done to you?”

  “I’m free, Sammy,” Jack replied arrogantly. “I’ve never felt better.”

  Sam heard Liberty groaning by the effigy and cast a wary look over his shoulder. The woman’s face was gaunt and her eyes were rolling in her head. Whatever Malika was using her for, Liberty was fighting it with everything she had.

  The bowl at the centre of the table was trembling, and within it, black liquid was swirling like a vortex. A sluicing breeze had stirred between the pillars, and it whistled through the underground tomb, shrieking like dead voices.

  “Thought you’d get the better of us, eh Sammy?” Jack rasped.

  Next to him, Vincent dabbed at the welt on his forehead. “The old man’s getting nosy,” he spat. “Shoving that beak where it don’t belong. Think we should put it out of joint for him, stop it straying again.”

  Jack nodded, grinning. “What do you think, Sammy boy?” he goaded. “We were promised blood today, but we’ve yet to see a drop. You could say we’re very, very thirsty.”

  The ground began to shudder and rock beneath them, but the ex-Sentinels didn’t appear to notice. The firelight flickered madly in their eyes. Sam wondered if they were as lost as Richard had been.

  “What did this to you?” he demanded.

  “Look at that face, Vince,” Jack laughed. “Did you ever see anything stupider? He looks like he’s seen a ghost.”

  “Woooooooo!” Vincent murmured in a ghost–like voice. “Afraid we’re gonna steal your pension, Sammy?”

  The earth trembled under their feet, and Malika’s cries resounded through the tomb. As the wind turned into a ferocious howl, Sam found he had to shout to be heard.

  “You can stop this!” he cried. “Remember who you are! You have to remember!”

  Vincent cupped a hand to his ear and pretended he couldn’t hear him. “What’s that old fella?” he called. “Think I need my ear trumpet, not catching a word!”

  Sam pressed his back against the pillar and, despairing, knew there was no reasoning with them. He’d been unable to save Richard, and he wouldn’t be able to save Jack and Vincent, either. Whatever had seized control of their bodies had long since killed them.

  With a sinking feeling in his stomach, the old man realised there was only way out of this – either they were going to kill him, or he was going to have to kill them. What could he do, though? They were both much younger and fitter than he was. Where had the rifle gone? Sam cast about, seeing the butt of the weapon poking out from behind a column a few feet away. Too far to run for it. He was going to have to fight. He reached into his pocket – luckily, he’d not come unprepared.

  “No more talk?” Jack yelled, feigning hurt.

  “Yeah, you’ve gone awful quiet,” Vince agreed. “Not like you at all – life and soul of the party, that Sammy Wilkins. Just like his poor dead wife. She threw quite a party in her day – all the trimmings. Shame, I miss her cooking – can’t say the same about her face.”

  Jack broke down into a fit of giggles and slapped Vince on the back. “Bit harsh, there, Vince,” he laughed, then fixed Sam with a sympathetic stare. “We’re not all that bad, you know, Sammy. We’ll give you a chance. Get down on your knees and beg for your life. We’ll listen.”

  Sam stared him down. “It’s you who’ll be begging,” he said coolly. Under his breath he added: “Trinity forgive me.” Then he pulled his hand from his pocket and hurled his secret weapon at the slathering thing that had once been Jack.

  It was a small cotton pouch – Sam’s very own creation, something he had used only twice before in his entire life, and only then during the most desperate of situations. The pouch exploded in Jack’s face, and he was engulfed in a cloud of white powder. It blasted into his mouth and eyes. Immediately, horrific blisters erupted across the man’s skin and, agonised, Jack gagged and retched, clawing at his throat as he fell to his knees.

  Vincent shoved him out of the way and charged at Sam. The old man was already running for the rifle, and he cried out as Vincent tackled him to the ground, mere inches from the firearm.

  Sam kicked out with his feet as he groped for the gun, his bruised ribs screaming at the strain. Finally it was in his hands and he whipped it around, jabbing it into Vincent’s cheek. He pulled the trigger.

  Normally, the shot would have resounded loudly through this hollow space. Instead, the sound was swallowed by a terrible tremor that clapped through the subterranean grotto like thunder.

  Sam staggered across the bucking
ground.

  “I’m sorry,” he uttered to the fallen men. Jack’s body gave a few final jerks as the white powder consumed him, burning and gnawing at him, and then he was still. It was a gruesome way to die, which was why Sam used the packets so sparingly. He only ever turned to them in desperation.

  Clinging to the pillars for support, he staggered away from the dead Sentinels and fell against the stone column that he’d hidden behind before.

  In front of the effigy, Malika was screeching alien words and Liberty looked as if she was about to vomit. The demon child watched from its place by the sculpture, unblinking as the wind tugged at its scuffed suit.

  Realising that it was now or never, Sam raised the rifle and took aim at Malika’s head.

  Before he could pull the trigger, a heavy hand grabbed his shoulder and Sam found himself staring into the face of a third guard. Reacting quickly, the old man bucked the butt of the rifle upwards and smashed it into the guard’s nose. Blood spurted onto his coat and Sam raised the rifle again, bringing it down with a crack on the man’s skull. The guard collapsed solidly to the ground.

  Sam turned to aim again, but there came a blast of flaming light and Malika’s voice fell silent.

  The earth stopped trembling. All was still.

  Sam’s mouth fell open in horror. There, a fiery shaft of light spiralled up from the bowl, twisting into the ether. It eddied delicately, ripples of heat shimmering seductively in the air.

  Malika released Liberty’s hands and the Sensitive slumped backwards, her eyes closed. Malika got to her feet, her cat–like eyes staring into the blinding light without blinking. A tiny hand touched hers and Malika looked down to see that Diltraa was holding on to her.

  Finally, the demon child smiled, and its skin split and ruptured.

  Aghast, Sam watched as the woman and the boy stepped up onto the low table and disappeared into the shimmering radiance. Then they were gone.

  The portal flashed and died.

  Not wasting a moment, Sam charged at the two Harvesters still flanking the demonic sculpture. He hurled his final two pouches in their faces. Like Jack, they collapsed squirming to their knees, their features bubbling and blistering hideously. Their hands clawed at the air as the foul substance consumed them. Then they hit the floor and were still.