by Louise Cole
“We can’t do this, sir,” Jace said.
“Jace, Jace.” Pierce’s voice was soothing, warm. “Stay strong. Our time is running out, and the girl is still our best shot.”
“Sir—”
“I know exactly what you are going to say, Jace. I’ve spoken to Ella.”
Jace dropped his head against the gnarly bark of a tree. Of course he had. She wasn’t one to waste time. He did a quick survey of the street then headed to the back fence, saying nothing.
“We need to make this work,” continued Pierce. “Peace is more important than anything. Or anyone.”
The senator hung up.
“Shit.” Jace punched a tree, cracking his knuckles. He braced against it and breathed deeply. He felt like he was trying to stop a train with his bare hands. He just had to persuade her to give up the book and get her father to take her away. Anywhere.
He rounded the corner of the house and saw the Cadaveri leaning insolently against a street light on the far side of the road. Jace scanned the periphery, but he couldn’t see any others. He sped down the drive.
The car exploded, the blast throwing him against the wall of the garage. His body crumpled to the ground, a thin smear of blood marking his passage down the brickwork.
***
Professor McKenna answered the door wearing huge yellow rubber gloves. In any other circumstances, it would have made Henry smile. He took a tentative step forward.
“Forgive the late intrusion, Professor McKenna. My name is Henry Campbell. I knew your wife.”
***
“Oh my God. The car’s on fire.” Amber pressed her nose to the glass. “I can’t see Jace.”
I pulled her back. “Get away from the window. I have to go. I have to find him.”
“You can’t go out there.” Amber tore down the stairs after me. “Callie, listen to me.”
“Do you want them in here instead?” Fear and desperation coursed through me. We could hear her father shouting from the front room, and her mother yelling back. At least she wasn’t crying for once.
Joe appeared in the hallway, and, before we could stop him, had run out into the evening gloom.
“Joe!” Amber yelled, but her voice was so hoarse that he didn’t hear her. I ran after him. Jace lay crumpled at the foot of the garage, barely conscious.
“Get him inside,” said Joe, grasping him under the arms.
I fought him off. “No. We have to leave. Jace. Wake up. Can you hear me? We have to leave.” Visions of the school and Gavin’s mangled body filled my head. I couldn’t let that happen. Not here. I had to run.
Joe was shouting at me, but I couldn’t hear him, could only feel the Cadaveri everywhere surrounding me, coming for me. Jace couldn’t get up. Well, they could have me. But not here. I wasn’t taking my friends with me. Not again. I took one last look at Jace. For the first time since I’d met him, he looked vulnerable. His eyes were confused, his limbs all wonky. I kissed him gently on the mouth, and then I turned and ran.
The wood of the fence bit into my thigh as I scrambled over it, and I jarred my ankles as I landed, but it didn’t slow me down. My rucksack bounced against the small of my back, so I tugged the straps tighter as I sprinted, ducking under climbing frames and careering across lawns. The twilight thickened across the gardens. Security lights flicked on as I raced down the sides of houses, bathing me in a halogen glow. Only two more streets and I would be in open countryside, in fields and trees. Harder going but harder to track in the dark, too.
I tore down a driveway, leaping the dwarf privet, and sprinted into the road. Wheels squealed against the tarmac, and the horn blasted out into the night, but I didn’t break stride, just thundered up the drive of the house opposite and round the side until I ran smack into a six-foot wrought-iron gate. Damn. I felt my lip gingerly, the speck of blood belying the vicious throbbing in my mouth. My tongue wobbled a front tooth. I scrabbled at the curly metal spokes with my boot, but it was too narrow to wedge my foot in.
I shrank back and tried to hide in the undergrowth at the side of the house. Panic flared in my chest. Next door, stupid. Go next door.
I jogged down the drive and hopped over the chain-link to the neighboring garden.
“Callie,” a voice hissed. Jace looked awful. Blood smeared his pale cheeks, and his eyes scrunched against pain. “Let’s go. Joe’s waiting in his car.”
I hesitated. “Go where, Jace? I want them away from the people I love.”
“The cottage. We’ll lose them en route, and they can’t hear you once you’re there.”
“Straight into Ella’s warm and loving clutches, so she can abduct me? No thank you.”
He gave a heavy shrug. “Then we need to get lost.”
“I was working on it,” I said. “I won’t put Joe in danger. Send him away.”
I ran across the next garden while he turned to wave Joe away. I was pushing through scratchy hawthorn when Jace caught up to me.
“We need to bury the book. Mess with their tracking. Fields?” Jace said.
“One more road.”
We ran low and fast across the remaining gardens, Jace snatching a trowel from a path as he passed. I couldn’t see any Cadaveri, but the crawling terror was colonizing my flesh like a swarm of insects. The final garden was bounded by a six-foot fence of clean vertical planks. I jumped for the top but couldn’t get a foothold.
“Here.” I let Jace leg me up but paused at the top.
“You up to this?” I asked. His color wasn’t great.
He grunted as he locked his arms at head height, pulled his body up like a gymnast, and flipped over the gate head first, his legs unfolding to meet the concrete with barely a sound.
“Would appear so,” he said.
We ran along the edges of the first field, keeping under cover, until Jace stopped, digging his heel into the dirt beneath a beech tree.
“This will do.” He dug a shallow crater with the trowel. “Got anything to wrap it in?”
I emptied my rucksack and pulled out the flimsy carrier bag I kept my lunch in. “Only this.”
He took it and tucked the book inside, folding the spare plastic around it. He stopped. “One, two, third beech in, about fifty yards along. Got it?”
“Yeah.”
He whacked the tree twice with the side of the trowel, slicing two thick stripes in the bark, and then dropped the book in the hole, kicking the dirt over with his foot and stamping it down. I grabbed a handful of old leaves and twigs and tossed them on top.
“What now?” I whispered.
He held out his hand. “Now we run,” he said.
Chapter 18
Henry Campbell followed Callie’s father, Professor McKenna, into the kitchen and watched him bustle with the teapot. There was no time for this.
“I appreciate that I have come here with no warning, but this is urgent.” He reached out and stopped the man, taking the kettle out of his hands and placing it back on the counter. He realized with a shock the professor’s hands were shaking.
“There’s no need to be scared, I simply want—”
“Did you kill her?” It came out as a low growl. “Did you play any part in Sarah’s death?”
“No, I—” The Cardinal stopped. “If I was responsible, it was unwitting. Please, I need to know where your daughter is.”
The professor threw him back with such force that the cabinets behind him rattled, and some plates fell to the floor in a cloud of ceramic dust.
“You’ll leave my daughter out of this. You don’t go near her, do you hear?” thundered McKenna, his eyes like flint.
“You don’t understand, she’s in grave danger.” Henry felt a vein throb in his temple, and sweat started to film his skin. Horrible realization washed over him. He was too late—he had failed again. It was all too late. “Oh dear God. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”
The Professor grabbed a kitchen knife from the side. “I’ll kill anyone who touches her. I�
�ll kill you all!” he roared as both doors burst in.
Cadaveri swarmed like locusts. Henry saw the professor wield the knife once, twice, like a man who had never fought before but was nonetheless possessed, before a blow to the back of his head brought splintering pain and darkness.
***
The sound of Jace’s feet thudding into the soft turf was the first thing that told me he was failing. I’d seen Jace move often enough to know that when he wanted to be, he was silent. Now his feet were tripping and slapping into the ground. I stepped in front of him and put my hands against his chest.
“Stop. Please.”
He fell back against a tree, letting it take his weight. “You tired?” he asked.
I choked back the truth. “Yes. I can’t keep up with you.” He didn’t need flattery, but it would be easier to get him to slow up for my sake than for his. Besides, my leg muscles were quivering. “I can’t feel anything. Are they still following?”
Jace shrugged and swayed a little. I squinted at his eyes.
What were the signs of concussion? Loss of consciousness, vomiting, confusion, unequal dilation . . . We’d learned them in PE, but I couldn’t remember the rest. Were sufferers meant to sleep? Or was that bad?
“I need to rest,” Jace said.
I cast around for a handy hollow tree, a nook filled with dried leaves that would keep us warm, but who I was kidding? We’d freeze to death out here. Jace obviously wasn’t thinking straight, or he’d have come to that conclusion before now.
The moon was a pale silver crescent, like an old scar against the midnight sky. The temperature was dropping fast.
I led Jace to the foot of an oak tree. “Sit here.”
“Whatchoo doin’?” His eyes were unfocused.
“Finding somewhere for us to sleep. Just wait for me.”
His face contorted like he wanted to argue, but then he shook his head and leaned back, his scrunched eyes relaxing.
I stepped quietly through the trees about a hundred yards to the fence line. Barbed wire and thin electric cord twisted around the wooden posts. Farms had sheds, but we couldn’t sleep near a herd of cows. We’d be trampled before morning. No, what I needed—and there it was. I eased past the fence, getting a mild shock from the cord, no worse than a hard flick on the leg, and my jacket snagged on a rusty barb, but it was doable.
I reached the stable to find a gray mare looking out at me. In the light of the moon I could see that she had no head collar, but she was rugged. I briefly considered stealing the rug but decided it would be mean.
Ten minutes later, I had Jace bedded down in clean straw and the mare outside whisking her tail impatiently and twitching her skin against the night air. I closed the loose box door and curled next to Jace. The air was bitingly cold. My jacket was protecting the back of Jace’s head from the dirt of the stable, but we needed its warmth. In the end, I shifted his head onto my chest and cradled him, my jacket spread over us both.
I must have dozed. Random images flowed through my head: wars and famines, flowers, Arkengarthdale in sunlight, Alec rubbing small circles on my wrist, his voice too low to hear, Dad cutting his herbs, my mother stroking my hair, her smile as soft as moonshine. Jace, eyes like jade, his dark hair falling over his face like a shadow. Children filing into a schoolyard and boy soldiers, their faces streaked with mud. The Cadaveri, empty eyes staring at me in silent hatred. I shuddered, unmoving, pinned to the ground, my heartbeat too loud. A thud, muffled and distant, jolted me awake, the image of Jace pulling a body off me with one hand burned into my mind.
Hoofbeats. The staccato thunder of galloping hooves, the mare’s whinny of fear. Somewhere close by, cattle bellowed into the night, shifting and stamping on concrete floors. My back ached from being half-propped against the partition, and the top of my shirt was damp with Jace’s breath. I didn’t dare move. Cold sweat trickled down my back, and I felt an urgent, inconvenient need to pee. They were out there, spooking the animals, the smell of their fear making the hairs on my arms stand up and my insides knot up like cables left in a box. I glanced at Jace. His color was a little better, and his breathing was regular. That seemed good.
A footstep crunched on the path outside. I bit down on a cry. Nothing would save us if they found us now. Jace was hurt, and I didn’t even have the book. Had ditching it even helped us?
Jace shifted in my arms and then sat up. He put his finger to his lips and turned toward me, very slowly, very deliberately. He put his mouth right next to my ear and barely breathed the words, “Think of one good thing.”
One good thing. Did he mean be single-minded? Jace took my chin and looked urgently at me. Understand? I nodded. He held my gaze as I concentrated on the color of his eyes. Yet even as I drank in this vision of him, watching me in the gloom of the stable, I found myself thinking of how his lips had felt when he kissed me, the strength beneath the softness, the vivid promise of passion in his touch. For fifteen long minutes, we must have gazed at each other, shutting out the heavy tread outside and the panicked snorts of the animals. I filled my mind with the green of Jace’s eyes, a mosaic of moss and leaf and wave, followed the long curve of his lashes, watched his pupils dilate in the gloom until their blackness became a well I could drown in.
After an eternity, he motioned for me to stay still and stepped cat-like toward the door. I could already feel they had gone; I could breathe easy, and my mind was my own.
I was glad Jace seemed more himself, paranoia and all. When he sat back down, he wrapped my jacket around my shoulders, and I slept until dawn.
***
Henry opened his eyes tentatively. He felt bruised all over, but his heart was still beating. Sorrow and shame dripped from his every pore, all the past mistakes draining his hope. Only habit made him utter the words he had learned long ago: “Forgive me Lord, for I have sinned . . .” and it was enough.
Enough for him to realize it was not his weight but theirs he was feeling, their self-loathing. He must have dozens of Cadaveri around him. Shield. Build a shield. His hands were tied, but he could reach his rosary. As he prayed, he looked around for the professor. He lay on the floor, looking old and frail, rocking slightly, muttering to himself. Henry shuffled over to him through the dark.
“Stay strong, my son. Remember who you are. You must shield your mind.”
The professor stopped muttering and raised his bound hands to the old cardinal’s face.
Henry looked at what the man clutched and nodded. Then he continued to pray.
Chapter 19
When I woke, the horse was blowing warm gouts of air at me over the stable door, evidently waiting for her breakfast.
I scrambled up and out of the loose box, glancing around for Jace. My limbs felt loose and rested and my mind clear. It was the first time in a long while I hadn’t felt exhausted by the endless mental downloads. Perhaps because it was the first night I’d spent apart from the book.
“Hey.” He appeared on the path. “We should hit the road.”
“Sure. Where did you go?”
“Bathroom break.”
I blushed. “Of course. Actually, good idea.”
He smiled. “I’ll wait.”
I scurried across the field toward the trees and didn’t stop until I was sure I was buried in green wood. My fingers trembled as I unbuttoned my jacket, only to realize it was the wrong piece of clothing. I stopped, took a breath. Emotions were fighting for attention like baby birds after a worm. Last night had been easy. We were in danger, Jace was hurt, I was going to send them away, and all my anger and hurt and confusion seemed irrelevant.
Now Jace was OK, and I had to say goodbye, and I’d spent the most intense episode of my life looking into the guy’s eyes, and . . . he had looked into mine. It felt like the most intimate thing I’d ever experienced.
I had to say goodbye. Forever. To him. To the book.
For the first time in many years, I just wanted to be at home, with my dad, and feel the comfort of the famil
iar all around me. I felt a sudden pang of sadness for my parents, that they had been denied each other. My father must have been so lonely, for so long. I remembered the awful thing I had blurted out to Jace. It had hurt so much at the time to hear my dad say no man would ever want a woman like me. Now I finally understood.
As I zipped up my jeans, I knew my decision was made. A line of light lit the horizon, a pure band of gold shining out beyond the dark fields like a promise. I watched the dawn and felt like I had understood my father for the very first time.
I glanced anxiously at Jace as I trudged back to the stable, and we walked off the farm together toward Lifley and the buried book.
“You OK?” he asked.
“Sure.” In fact, I suddenly felt queasy with nerves. “What was that back at the barn? The thinking one thing idea?”
“It’s called shielding. You focus on one good, pure thing, something that is important to you, and shut out everything else. It’s what we do when we fight. It stops the Cadaveri from affecting you.”
Made sense. “Does it stop them sensing me, too?”
Jace shrugged. “I don’t know. I think it’s harder for them if you don’t have the book, and I was gambling the only other way they could find you was to feel the poetry in your mind. If you weren’t thinking about it, maybe they couldn’t home in.”
I gave a shuddering laugh. “You were guessing?”
He gave a rueful smile. “If they could track you well, they’d have caught up with us long before they did. Once we buried the book, I think they were searching randomly. Anyway, it worked, didn’t it?”
I thumped his arm, playfully. It was like hitting a sandbag. “It worked. Thank you.” I tried to push the image of his extraordinary eyes from my mind. I wasn’t sure I’d ever quite manage that one.
“So what do you think of?” I asked. “What’s your shield?”
He gave a sideways grin. “Mind your own business.”
“Fair enough.” My face warmed slightly. It was my own fault for fishing, but I couldn’t help wondering—praying—that just maybe, while I had been so utterly fixated on him, he had been thinking of me? The idea that his thoughts had been bound to something—or worse, someone—else suddenly made one of the most special moments of my life feel unbearably lonely.