The demon moved as the door imploded, meaning my punch landed on its shoulders, losing much of its impact. Nevertheless, the creature staggered and fell to its knees, crying out in pain.
I roared in triumph and kicked, lifting the demon off the ground and into the corridor wall, leaving a dent in the concrete when it fell. It rolled onto its side, its breath coming in gasps. I knew I'd hurt it.
I stepped forwards, intending to stamp my boots on the foul thing, over and over, until no one would even recognise it as ever having been alive.
The demon made noises, almost as if it were appealing to me, although there were no words, just grunts and snarls. Then I saw that its yellow eyes were focussed on something behind me.
I looked over my shoulder just as the steel door knocked into me, carrying me over the demon and pinning me against the wall, wrapping itself around my arms. I howled and squirmed, shifting my body, trying to get into a position where I could free myself.
As I struggled, I heard the demon move away. I redoubled my efforts and managed to raise my head. The demon was at the far end of the corridor. One more corner and it would be at the stairs.
I carried on thrashing and twisting, refusing to accept I had lost.
Close to my ear, I heard the sound of metal being forced out of shape, bent and torn. I felt the pressure ease in my shoulders. I looked back down the corridor. The demon was looking at me, its hand raised.
It was doing this. It was releasing me.
Once again, a tiny internal voice tried to make itself heard. Why would it free you?
The steel door dropped to the floor. I was free.
The demon was gone, leaving a trail of blood. I threw myself after it, a vision of its foul eyes closing in death driving me forward.
As I came round the second corner, I saw the thing enter the stairwell, dragging one leg behind it. The creature was moving slowly. I knew I could catch it.
I ran hard, bursting through the doorway with the bloodlust pounding in my ears, ready to deal the final blows.
The stairwell was empty. Confused, I looked up and saw the terrible, bloody body rising up, a pair of leathery wings barely missing the stairs as it powered through the air.
I took the stairs two at a time in pursuit.
I emerged in the lobby in time to see the beast drag itself through the one shutter that had risen when the countdown had begun, allowing any Station staff at ground level to escape.
I gave chase and found myself in the fresh air as the last few seconds of the countdown sounded through the speakers in the building behind me.
At that moment, a cold certainty struck me, breaking through the blood-thirsty delusional mess filling my mind. A thirty-floor office block was about to fall, and I was standing directly below it.
I felt, rather than heard, the first explosion. The detonation made the ground shudder, and I stumbled and fell. The ground shook violently as the chain of explosions did their work.
I got back to my feet, weaving like a drunkard, and ran, the instinct for survival proving stronger than the fact that I couldn't outrun a falling building.
I had only covered five yards when a stronger, deeper, rumbling explosion lifted me like a child's toy and smacked me back to the ground. My left arm took the brunt of my fall, and I heard my wrist snap.
Grimacing with pain, I propped myself up on my elbow and looked up at the office block above as it toppled. Still functioning instinctively, I scrambled backwards as I watched bricks fold inwards, windows explode, and clouds of dust pour from the base of the building.
There was a movement in the sky nearby, and I turned my head to see the demon sink to the ground, then crawl away. I realised there was a possibility it might escape. I changed course. If I could get my hand around its ankle, we could both die here together.
As I neared my goal, the demon turned its head and saw me. Its yellow eyes seemed different somehow, almost golden, and its wings had vanished. Its face was changing, sometimes looking almost human. It looked exhausted. It raised its hand, and I flinched in anticipation of its final attack.
Then it spoke, and this time I understood it.
"Come back, Daniel."
And I saw Cressida Lofthouse's bloodied face, Abos's golden eyes locked on mine, and I knew who I had been fighting.
Before I could react, she grunted with effort, and I was lifted into the air, thrown away from the falling building.
I twisted as I flew, finally hitting the wall of a building across the street from Station. I dropped, my head hitting the floor.
Fighting to stay conscious, I looked back as the office block collapsed with a roar that must have shaken every building within a square mile.
The sound of that roar reached me a fraction of a second after I saw the massive cloud of grey and yellow dust billow out from the spot where the entrance to Station had once stood.
Then I saw her. She had crawled a little further away. For a moment, I thought she would make it, but the cloud of dust also carried debris. I saw a chunk of masonry the size of a car land on Abos with a sickening thud, crushing her body.
The last shred of awareness I was clinging on to slid away, and I welcomed the blackness that followed.
I never found out the name of the woman who helped me. She must have worked in one of the buildings nearby, maybe even the one Abos had thrown me into. The explosion brought everyone outside.
The first I knew of her presence was her voice, gentle but insistent.
"Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? You've been in an accident, but help is coming. Can you hear me?"
I don't know where she found them, but she pulled heavy, soft blankets over me, and kept talking until I opened my eyes.
"Can you hear me? Can you - that's right, it's okay now. No, don't try to move, just lie still. Here, have some water. Can you raise your head a little? That's right, here we are."
I sipped at the bottle she held to my lips, then gulped as the cool liquid spilled into my mouth and down my throat.
My vision was clearing. I looked towards Station. Or, rather, towards the huge mound of rubble beneath which Station was now buried. And I located the place where Abos had been hit. The chunk of masonry hadn't moved. Nothing was moving anymore.
I leaned to one side and threw up. My benefactor rubbed my back.
"The ambulance will be here soon."
She held the bottle to my lips again, and I drank until I had drained it.
"Do you want some more?"
I nodded my thanks, and she walked back into the building behind me.
I could hear the sound of sirens now, getting louder. There must have been hundreds of people on the streets, looking at the devastation, exchanging meaningless but comforting remarks in whispers, as if anything louder might be disrespectful. They were glad to be alive. At that moment, I didn't share their happiness.
Using the wall behind me for support, and being careful not to move my broken wrist, I pushed myself to my feet and, before the woman returned, I limped away into the darkness.
44
It took two hours to get back to the hotel. There were two reasons for this. First, I was a six-foot-four man built like an industrial fridge-freezer, covered in dust and blood, cradling a broken wrist. To avoid attention meant using back streets and alleyways and growling at anyone who got too close. Second, I didn't want to go back, didn't want to tell George what had happened. I had killed our parent. How do you tell someone that?
There was one piece of good news. Station was no more. And the hybrids were gone. My children.
I stopped for a few minutes in a dark, wet yard behind a restaurant. Crouched next to a trade bin, I wept for the lives of the children whose lives had been so horribly manipulated. Treated like battery chickens, pumped full of growth hormones and only ever allowed to feel the sun on their faces when they were being sent to kill someone. Like dogs bred to fight, then shot in the head once they had outgrown their usefulness. And Station had used me to
launch their programme.
I vomited until there was nothing left in my stomach. Then, drained, dizzy and in shock, I walked along the last few streets to the back of the hotel.
I wanted to sit down in the dark and close my eyes, but I fought the urge. I forced myself to shuffle over to the fire escape. I gritted my teeth and pulled on the metal rungs with my good hand. My left wrist was throbbing, already healing. I welcomed the pain. I crawled up the eleven floors to our room as freezing rain began to fall.
George had left the window open an inch for me. I slid it up and half-climbed, half-fell into the room.
There were candles burning, and the fire had been lit. Music was playing. New Orleans piano music. George had been trying to educate me a little, broaden my tastes, but I was still an eighties electronica fan at heart. Maybe I could win her over with some Yello, or Vangelis. If she still wanted to spend any time with me after what I had to tell her.
"George?"
I slumped into one of the wing-backed armchairs beside the fire. I rolled back my left sleeve and looked at my wrist. There was some colourful bruising. There were limits to what my rapid-healing body could fix. My foot was evidence of that. But a broken wrist shouldn't present much of a challenge, and my superficial injuries would look much better in the morning.
"George?"
I poured myself a glass of whatever was in the decanter on the table beside me. Sherry? Madeira? Port? I didn't know enough to tell the difference. It warmed me up, that was what mattered. I peeled a banana and ate it in three mouthfuls.
"George?"
For the first time, I felt a twist of concern in my gut.
I stood up. The dizziness was still there, but not as bad. I peeled and ate two more bananas, and my head settled down into a slow, thumping ache.
I looked around the room. The surface of the table was covered in dishes. I lifted the metal dome over one of them, and the delicious aroma of a rich fish stew drifted up. My stomach groaned in anticipation. My body's survival instinct is unflappable. Mentally, emotionally, I was so traumatised, that I felt as if I would never want to eat again. But my body told me otherwise. Shock, grief, and regret were all allowable, just as long as I shoved an enormous quantity of food into my mouth as soon as possible.
I fought the urge to bury my face in the stew. George's bedroom door was shut. Mine was ajar, and there was an envelope stuck on it.
I walked over and picked it up, before returning to the fireside and tipping the contents onto the table in a kind of trance. There were two more envelopes inside, one with a single word on it: instructions!
I picked up the unmarked envelope first. After reading the letter inside twice, I opened the instructions! envelope and read that.
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so I did both.
45
Two months later
I arrived in Cornwall seven weeks ago, the bus dropping me a few miles outside Newquay. A small cottage, just off the main road. I plan on staying until autumn, the longest I've been in one place for years. Well, more accurately, the longest I've stayed voluntarily in one place for years.
I used one of the credit cards George had set up for me. The cottage is a holiday let, but it's far enough out of town to make it a poor choice for surfers or families hoping to hit the beaches every day. The owners reduced the weekly amount when I said I'd take it for six months. I shop online and have my groceries delivered. It's amazing to think I can live like this, rent a house, get my food, without meeting another human being.
I'm not a recluse. Trying to avoid drawing any attention to myself might produce the opposite result. It's unlikely a few locals muttering about the new hermit in the cottage will alert the media, but you never know who might be listening. It's better to avoid the risk. So, once a week, I head down to the Dog and Duck and sink a few pints. I take the newspaper with me. I've mastered the art of the Multi-Purpose Grunt, a sound which can be used to give the appearance of answering questions without doing anything of the kind. I occasionally accompany the Multi-Purpose Grunt with a Meaningless Hand Gesture. That tends to deter those who attempt to pursue the conversation past the first M-P G.
"So, enjoying the quiet life, are ya?"
M-P G.
"Not here for the surfing, then?"
M-P G plus MHG.
Financially, my stay here will cost far less than you might imagine. By the time I leave in October, I will have spent around fourteen thousand pounds total on rent, food, and so on. Well, I say "spent," but really it will cost me nothing. My monthly credit card bill is a few hundred quid shy of three grand, and I only pay the minimum payment when the bill comes in. On month one, that's only about fifty notes, but it soon shoots up. By the time the sixth months rolls around, I'll be looking at a minimum monthly payment of nearly three hundred pounds.
I mentioned how brilliant George was, right? Well, this was her scam. Designed to keep me afloat until the terms of her will take effect, and I inherit what her solicitor informs me is a 'considerable amount.' As the solicitor in question charges three hundred pounds an hour, I can only imagine what he means by the word 'considerable.'
My first transaction was a cash withdrawal of a grand. That's enough to cover every month's minimum payment for six months. Once a month, I pop into the local bank, fill in a giro slip and pay my credit card bill with the cash I took from the same credit card in month one. George called it robbing Peter to pay Peter. By the time the credit card company comes looking for Hugh Charse (George's sense of humour, don't blame me) I'll be long gone.
I have another three credit cards set up to abuse in a similar fashion.
The first day I was here, I took all the fresh fruit and veg from my food delivery upstairs, placing it all in the bath, along with various chemicals George had believed would be helpful.
That same afternoon, I ticked off the last item on George's list of instructions. I called the phone number and gave this address. Two hours later, a motorbike courier arrived with a temperature-controlled medical package. I took it upstairs and, after pouring the contents of the tea urn I'd brought from London into the tub, I opened the package and added that, too.
Then I waited.
Two mornings later, I checked on the bath and its soup-like contents. Something had changed. I looked closer, then went downstairs, opened a beer, and sobbed like a baby for about an hour.
It was working.
When I woke up this morning, I couldn't remember where I was for a moment. I'd been dreaming about Abos, about the moment Station was buried. By the time I had clicked on the light and remembered I was in Cornwall, I was too wired to go back to sleep.
I got up. It was just beginning to get light. I jogged across the fields to the sea.
I've found a beach with a treacherous path from the cliffs down to the sand that only an idiot would risk taking. Assuming the idiot could read, the big signs with red letters warning of rockfalls were enough to put off all but the most suicidally reckless. Or someone who could survive a rockfall.
I stood and watched the waves.
Every so often, once, sometimes twice, a week, I wake up ragged, raw, the pain clear and urgent, the bad memories demanding I give them their due. I have to get outside, feel the air on my face, remind myself that the world is still turning, oblivious to the fact that the god of shame, guilt, and impotent rage (he's a multi-tasking kind of god) is currently taking a dump on my head.
The memory of the night I killed the halfheroes is still there to remind me of who, and what, I might have become. The fight with Abos, that's there, too. The knowledge that I had been the biological father of possibly hundreds of tortured souls bred to be monsters. I doubt the memories will ever completely fade. That's okay.
The waves crash over the wet, black rocks twenty yards from where I'm standing. They carry all the power, patience, and inevitability of natural history. Over time, the force and weight of the water will wear the rocks away, change the shape of the coastline,
and reclaim the land.
I find solace watching the sea wash tirelessly against the rocks.
It may take years, but I'll keep bringing every last, bloody splinter of memory into the light.
I remember that last night in the hotel.
I read George's letter through twice before I moved. The sound of gospel-tinged piano blues seemed oddly appropriate, and I knew she had chosen it deliberately. People play carefully curated music while they're giving birth.
Why not do the same when you are dying?
Finally, I put the letter back on the table and walked into George's bedroom.
I knew she had gone. Her absence was as powerfully apparent as her presence had been.
The wheelchair was next to the bed. George was lying on top of the covers. She must have taken a shower in the wet room, as her hair was still slightly damp to the touch. Her eyes were closed, and she looked like she had fallen asleep while listening to the music.
When I stroked her cheek, her skin was icy.
I sat on the bed and took her hand. According to her letter, she had known for nearly a year that she would die in this hotel room, on this evening, alone. She had seen the events leading to her death, and—because of the other futures inextricably entwined with her own—she had pursued the path leading to this night.
She did not directly say so, but I imagined other scenarios where she lived longer but I died, or Station had survived our attack.
She had chosen instead to embrace the series of events that led to this moment: Station's destruction, the loss of Abos, and her death.
At first, I thought she had sacrificed too much, that she had chosen badly.
Then I read her instructions, and I began to understand.
As I stood on the beach, the salt slap of the wind-driven waves cold enough to hurt, I thought about a nature documentary I'd seen a few nights previously.
On another beach, thousands of miles from this one, the documentary showed baby iguanas hatching and having to avoid the attention of predators. As they ran across the beach, heading for the safety of the rocks, thousands of snakes tracked their movements, closing in to kill and eat them. The documentary focussed on one iguana who, somehow, against all the odds, escaped. As the camera lingered on it scrambling up the rocks to safety, I had a sudden revelation.
Children Of The Deterrent (Halfhero Book 1) Page 26