by Louise Cole
“Get up. Now.” Jace slid his arms under Amber and hoisted her to her feet. “If they panic, they’ll crush you.”
The reason for the mass migration was soon clear. A horde of Cadaveri piled through the far doors and surged toward us. Jace and Amber searched for exits, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the Cadaveri long enough to see a way out. There were so many. Dozens of them piled into the gym, pushing the students back to the outer wall by sheer force of numbers.
“Up there,” said Jace, looking at the high windows.
“It’s too far,” I said. “That must be ten feet up.”
“I’ll boost you. Move.”
The Cadaveri at the front of the horde was huge. Scars and lines crisscrossed his face. It made me think of the Chinese torture of death by a thousand cuts. He grabbed a stray student by the neck, almost lifting the boy from the floor.
“Callie McKenna. Which one is she?”
The kid raised a trembling hand toward me. The students were almost on top of us now, some of them pressing their backs into the climbing wall as though they wanted to blend with the cement.
“Move,” said Jace. He shoved me to the window and clasped his hands. “You’re going to have to spring for the catch, and then pull yourself through,” he said.
I slung Amber’s bag across my chest and leaped for the metal catch, Jace tossing me up like I weighed nothing at all. I crawled over the top of the metal frame and hung there, fighting for balance against the two bags. Shit, I was at least ten feet up, but it felt like twenty. I’d have to let go for Amber to follow—where was Amber?
Then I heard the fire alarm ring out and her voice croak, “Panic. Panic. Fire. That way.” It worked. Half the students, already crazed, raced forward straight into the path of the Cadaveri.
“Amber!” Jace called. “Jump!”
She can’t jump from there, I thought, and it wasn’t until she came smashing into the window that I realized: Oh, he means me. I launched myself through the window an instant before Amber threw herself over the top. We landed hard but unhurt on the grass. She pulled me up. From the corner of my eye, I noticed the fire doors chained and padlocked from the outside. The bastards had blocked both doors.
“Jace?” I asked her.
“He was scaling the climbing wall up to the windows.” Almost as Amber finished speaking, Jace landed in a feline crouch on the grass beside us.
“You don’t get points for that,” said Amber, her voice raspy. “It’s showing off.”
“We should open the fire doors,” I said.
“No time.” Jace grabbed my arm.
“There are people trapped in there.” I wrestled against his grip, slapping at him with my free hand. I caught his face, and his cheek glowed with my handprint, but he didn’t let go.
“You’ve got the book. The Cadaveri will follow you. That’s the surest way to make the school safe. Now move. The car’s that way.”
We sprinted to the car as fast as we could and Amber and I tumbled into the back seat. As we sped out onto the road, Jace pulled the tracker from his pocket. “Why is this telling me you’re still in the locker room?”
Without waiting for a reply, he slammed it down on the seat and scowled out the window like he was scanning for a pedestrian to run down. He hit a number on his phone.
“Miles. Incident at the school. I don’t know what you can do with this one.” He paused. “We’ll be at the hospital briefly. I have Callie.”
I took the book from Amber’s bag and slid it into my pocket. She watched me but didn’t say anything.
I put my fingers to Amber’s neck, gently touched the maroon stripes which were purpling even as I watched.
“It’s all right,” said Amber, her voice quiet and raw. “I’m all right.”
“Yeah,” I whispered. “I think . . . I think Gavin’s dead.”
The vehicle filled with a prickly silence until it pressed against our skin like thorns.
Chapter 15
Aadil Hanaan pressed a button on his cell phone, confident that the scrambled frequency would prevent his call from being monitored. He had waited as long as he could without arousing suspicion. Hopefully Henry was well on the way to Yorkshire to find the girl.
The call was answered swiftly.
“I have traced Ella Thompson’s car to North Yorkshire.”
“You have done well, Aadil. Someone more local will be dispatched to deal with this problem.”
Aadil hesitated. “Sir, the girl. Callie McKenna. She is an innocent.”
The sigh he heard was heartfelt. Aadil knew his superior was a good man, a good Muslim. It would pain him, too.
“It was agreed last time, Aadil. We hand this off to the Council of Churches and they will deal with it. This reading cannot be allowed.”
“I know. I agree. But the girl? It is not her fault.”
“No,” said his boss, gently. “Yet she is their instrument. If we find a bomb we destroy it, do we not?”
“Thank you, sir.”
Aadil clicked off the phone and settled back in his train seat. He asked Allah to help Henry work swiftly and well.
***
Ella opened the front door of the safe house as soon as she’d heard Jace’s car. Callie was with him. She had hoped she’d be able to take the girl’s cooperation for granted by now. They had precious little time left.
As they walked up the path, Ella could already feel the waves coming off the girl: resentment, defensiveness, anger, hurt. Blame. It was all muted somehow, but it was there. Sensing this girl was like peering through gaps in a high fence. She stepped out. “Callie? Are you OK?”
“I’m fine.” She tried to walk past, but Ella stopped her.
“Honey, if you’re upset we need to talk about it.”
“Really don’t.”
Callie pushed past her, her shoulder knocking Ella aside. Ella raised her eyebrows at Jace but he just shrugged. God, men were useless sometimes.
“We got attacked,” he said.
Ella hurried after Callie into the front room and looked at her closely.
“Back off,” the girl said and moved away.
“OK.” Ella thought for a moment. “Jace, can I have a word?”
He followed her into the kitchen, and she shut the door. “Get through to her.”
“What exactly is it you think I should do?”
“I can’t work with her like this. We’re running out of time.” Ella paced behind a chair and leaned on it. “You talk to her. Relax her. Break through this god-awful wall she has around herself.”
“She’s just been through a major trauma. What do you expect?” He slung his jacket at a chair. It slipped to the floor, but he didn’t bother to pick it up. “One of her friends is dead, and we’ve left the other at the hospital. I’m a bodyguard, Ella, not a therapist.”
“Yes. You are also an attractive young man with impressive biceps. Callie is closed down. She can’t read like this. She needs something to make her . . . open up. Listen to her heart. Give her something worth opening up for, Jace.”
Jace stared at the floor. “No.”
“Oh, come off it. I’ve seen how you look at her. Plus, she likes you more than you realize.” Ella’s lips twitched as Jace’s eyes flicked up unconsciously at the last part. “The girl’s terrified and grief-stricken. Give her something to hope for.” She ran her fingers lightly down Jace’s cheek. “Is it so bad to make her happy?”
He flinched away. “It’s manipulation.”
“I disagree. I think it’s help that girl sorely needs. And we sorely need her. Do you want this to succeed, or would you rather the rivers ran with blood? You know firsthand what war is like, Jace. Do you really want to sit and watch the missiles fall, taking comfort in the fact you didn’t mislead anyone?”
“I’ll take her someplace. I’ll do my best. But sometimes, Ella, I watch people like you and wonder why I ever thought we were the good guys.”
“You don’t mean that.”<
br />
Jace snatched up his car keys. “Are you sure?” he asked.
***
When Jace came back in, I said, “This was a mistake. Can you get me out of here?”
He shook his car keys. “Where do you want to go?”
“Anywhere. Just drive. Somewhere no one can find me.”
The little Ford Escort barrelled along the country lanes, lurching at every pothole like an overeager dog at the end of its leash. I slid my fist to the small of my back, feeling the knuckles dig into the bruised tissue, concentrating on the pain to block out the mental images. Mannequin arms dancing on blood-stained concrete. The brown smear of Ms. Downey’s head on a window. Amber’s face mottled with blue and gray.
“Can you talk to me?” I asked after a little while. “Just . . . talk?”
“Sure.” Jace glanced across. “What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know, I just . . . tell me about you. How do you do this? The Order? Anything.”
So he did, bless him. I tried to close my eyes, but the freak show bubbled under my lids, so I watched the pot-bellied lambs head-butt their mothers in the passing fields and the occasional pheasant dart stiff-legged across the road in front of us while his voice flowed over me like water.
He’d bought the car from a random guy, because there was less paperwork than with a dealership. Jace would be long gone before anyone traced it. The pickup truck had gone to the clean-up crew, who needed it more. They would dispose of it for cash as soon as they were done. None of them knew Jace or Miles or Richie. They were just thugs—“local service contractors”—who would do pretty much anything for money, no questions asked. The more he talked, the more certain words started to seem crucial, almost unconsciously central, to what he was saying. Covert. Silence. Under-the-radar. Off-grid, disposable, untraceable. Even the way they killed was designed to be low profile—knives make less noise than guns.
“So that’s why there are a handful of you and not an army?” I asked. “So no one notices that any of this is happening?”
“That’s the idea,” he replied. “We come in, protect you until you read, and we’re gone.” He blew on his fingers.
I thought of the chaos at the school, Jace’s fight in the gym, the countless students who would be giving statements to police right about now.
“So how that’s working out for you?” I asked.
Chapter 16
Miles sauntered up to the officer leaning against his squad car. He flashed a smile and his NYPD badge with the little gold crest. It was his favorite fake ID. He’d tried to explain it to Jace. “It’s so much better than being a cop. It’s like being an actor playing a cop. Way cooler.” Jace had just laughed at him. The man had no imagination.
“Sergeant Hoskin.” The officer extended a hand. “Can I help you?”
“Oh no.” Miles made an apologetic gesture. “I’m just here on vacation, and I heard what happened.” He dipped his head toward the school doors. “I didn’t think you guys got school shootings.”
“It wasn’t a shooting.” The older cop looked shaken. “Damned if I know what happened here. We’ve got two kids dead, secretary critical, headmaster’s had some kind of breakdown. No clue how the hell it started.”
“So who killed the kids?”
“Far as we can tell? Other kids. They’re all talking about some kind of attack, about an insurgent gang of some kind, but all the damage is either self-inflicted, panic-driven, or student on student. Makes no kind of sense to me.”
“No sign of these intruders I take it?”
“None. If they were ever here, they’re gone. All the statements are confused.”
“It couldn’t be something in the drinking water . . . ? Nah, forget it, dumb idea.” Miles leaned against the squad car next to the man. Jace was right, there was nothing he could do here.
“Well, if it is, it’s affecting the whole town. I’ve lived here all my life. It’s a small place, good for families. In the last week, we’ve had more theft and violent crime than in the past year put together. Muggings. Suicide. Last night, we had two officers turn up without their uniforms or car. Said some men frightened them. ‘They made the darkness tremble,’ one of ’em said.”
“Poetic.”
“Aye, well, he’s Scottish.” The police officer listened briefly to the crackle of his radio then shoved it back in his belt. “Army’s going to start helping us patrol. To keep the peace.” He shook his head. “I know it’s wartime, but if we let it all fall apart at home, it makes you wonder what we’re fighting for, doesn’t it?”
***
“This a big enough patch of nothing for you, then?” Jace asked, parking the car at the side of the rough gravel track.
The valley of Arkengarthdale spread beneath us like a neolithic paradise. The moorland rolled away on every side, the harsh grass seeming to grow from the very bones of the earth. A limestone cliff reared opposite us, gray and gouged. Every few acres, a drystone wall wound its way through the green like an ancient riverbed long parched.
There wasn’t a living thing in sight bar the kestrel that hovered, high up on a thermal, scouring the empty land for prey.
It was magnificent.
“I guess it is kind of pretty.” Jace stepped beside me.
I threw the book into the car. Amber was right—I could feel it pulling, a sick need deep inside my belly. I ignored it and slammed the door.
“Pretty? It’s God’s own country,” I said.
“Do people call it that?”
“God calls it that,” I replied. My feet moved on their own, leaping, sprinting, barrelling recklessly down the slope, half aware of the rock fissures hidden under the burned copper heather and the purple blush of the grass. My mind shut down, for a small eternity, and my body did what it had been desperate to do for days—run as though no one could ever catch me. Here in this empty place, where change took aeons and the rock beneath my feet hadn’t trembled since the ice age, was freedom of a kind. A place where our lives were tiny and insignificant and fleeting. A place where all the horror was just a momentary squall, a passing storm cloud.
I wished I was Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights, racing across the moor, “half-savage and hardy, and free.”
I collapsed eventually under a solitary oak, the stitch in my side tugging like a huge hand trying to pull out a rib. Jace sauntered up moments later, his breathing as light as if he’d jogged downstairs to answer the phone.
“You all right?” he asked.
I took a deep breath and shut my eyes. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
I felt him flop onto the earth next to me, wisely holding his tongue. I didn’t want to think about anything. Didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to go back. I knew if I started talking I probably wouldn’t be able to stop myself crying. I didn’t want any of that. I wanted to lie here in the sun and pretend that nothing existed except sheep and heather and rock.
“What do you want from me, Jace?” I said eventually. I spoke fast, hoping my voice wouldn’t have time to shake. “I’m a lightning rod for pain and disaster. Gavin died today, and my best friend almost got strangled just because I insisted on going to school.”
Jace said nothing.
“You dragged me into this situation I barely understand, and I don’t know which way is out. Even if I can get rid of the Cadaveri and your damn book, I don’t know if there is an out for me or my friends.” It occurred to me that this limestone landscape was the perfect place to be, metaphorically, between a rock and a hard place. It didn’t make me smile.
“Is that all?” he asked at last.
I refused to look. “Is that sarcasm? Because you suck at it.”
“You’re angry with me.” He sounded dismayed rather than surprised.
“No, I’m . . .” The words trickled away as I thought about it. I was angry. With Jace for getting me involved. With Jason and Marcus for their stupidity and brutality. With Gavin for making himself a target. With Amber for mak
ing me give her the stupid book that almost got her killed. And, I added quietly, so quietly I hoped I wouldn’t notice, I was furious with myself for drawing the Cadaveri fire onto my friends. The little sliver of pain flared bright as a struck match, and my self-loathing flared with it.
“Yes,” I finished lamely. “I’m angry. And sad. With pretty much everyone it turns out.” My attempt at a smile twisted on my face, and a tear leaked out of my squeezed eyes and made a slow, cold trail down my cheek.
“Callie, this isn’t your fault. You didn’t ask to be involved in any of this.”
I forced my eyes open, still squinting against the bright shards of sunlight. “No. But I didn’t listen to you, either. I’d already endangered Amber, and then I did it again. The first time was a mistake, but, as my dad would say, ‘If you do it twice, it’s not a mistake. It’s a choice.’”
“You think you’re the only one who makes mistakes?” He stabbed the ground with a small stick, leaving a cluster of tiny potholes between the grass stalks. “I seem to do little else these days.”
“Got anyone killed lately?” My voice dripped acid.
“Yes. The same people as you. Except it’s my job to keep you safe, and I’ve fouled it up from the start. When you were in that club, how do you think they knew who you were? Because I was watching you too closely. I should never have let you go to the school today. It was my call.” He threw the stick into the grass. “Any deaths are on me, Callie. Not you.”
I sighed. “Well, I guess we’ll have to split the guilt then.” I gave a sobbing laugh. “You know that saying about a problem shared? It’s bollocks, isn’t it?”
He sighed. “Pretty much. Yeah.”
“Ella implied she knew why you were making mistakes. Did she?”
Jace gave a wry smile. “I suspect so.” He saw my questioning look. “To be good at this you have to be detached. Objective. I am not dispassionate about this particular situation.” He tossed a pebble into the distance. “Or about you.”
For a moment my pulse quickened. Was he saying he cared about me? And then I remembered Gavin and Mrs Downey and it sickened me that I could be so trivial.