by Alan Baxter
They crawled from the ruined cavern, up into the light. Claude took Haydon over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. They emerged into the ruins of the church and picked their way out of the rubble. A cold wind blew into them, carrying a light, fragrant rain. The flank of a green hill stretched up into a grey, cloudy sky. Alex had never seen anything more beautiful.
Silhouette laughed. ‘We’re home!’
Alex nodded, tipped his face up into the rain. Nothing had ever felt so good.
For as far as they could see, broken and shattered parts of Obsidian littered the landscape, houses and roads standing out at odds angles like some giant hand had picked the city up and thrown it at the earth. Among all the broken parts lowen stumbled, eyes wide as they scanned around themselves, the world about them obscene in its colour and size, smell and sensation. Some lowen cried out, trapped or injured among the broken city, and many more lay dead.
Alex shook his head, his eyes falling on death everywhere he looked. ‘So many killed …’ he said. ‘What have I done?’
Silhouette interrupted him. ‘Look at all the people you saved! None of them would have survived if Obsidian had stayed as it was.’
Alex nodded, said nothing. She was right, he knew. But did he really have any right to make that decision for them just to get home? He reminded himself that he would rather be dead than live as a farm animal for a Kin elite. He hoped that knowledge would offer him succour when he remembered the dead, as he was sure to every night when he closed his eyes. How many had he killed?
Engines sounded in the distance and black Land Rovers appeared. Armour operatives poured out and quickly gathered the lowen together. They offered first aid and food and water, blankets and jackets.
Jarrod jogged over to them. ‘Well, fuck, Alex. Look what you did.’
Alex smiled weakly. ‘Did I save many?’
Jarrod slapped him on the shoulder, his meaty palm rocking Alex forward. ‘Hundreds, bro! Thousands maybe. Obsidian is smashed across this valley for kilometres all around. There are a lot of dead, but hundreds and hundreds of very fucking confused and alive lowen are out there. You did good.’
Alex wasn’t so sure. He took a deep breath, put his arm around Silhouette. ‘Left you a bit of a mess to clear up, eh?’
‘It’s cool, bro. We got this. Come on.’
Jarrod led them to a waiting Land Rover. It was warm and comfortable inside. Two operatives took Haydon’s unconscious form from Claude.
‘Keep him somewhere safe,’ Alex said. ‘That fucker started all of this!’ It was not entirely true, but Alex wanted to make sure Armour had Haydon in custody for a while until they understood all that actually had happened.
‘The ridesprite is gone,’ Silhouette said. ‘Must have bolted the moment we got back. Which means Haydon must have fallen unconscious after we left the Void.’
Alex shrugged, pulled a silver survival blanket tight about his shoulders. ‘Fuck it. It’ll have quite a story to tell its bastard Fey friends, I guess.’
Silhouette grimaced. ‘Yeah. That’s not going to go down well. There are likely to be repercussions.’
‘I’m sure there will be,’ Alex said as Claude slid onto the back seat beside Silhouette. ‘But that can wait. At least the anchor stone is genuinely lost in the Void now.’
‘Talking of repercussions,’ Claude said, ‘we need to go to Iceland.’
Alex winced. ‘Yeah. But not right now, eh? I want a big meal, a hot bath and about a week’s sleep first.’
Silhouette cast a sidelong glance at Alex. He shrugged.
Claude laid his head back against the seat, closed his eyes.
Silhouette pulled Alex’s arm around her shoulders and settled her cheek against his chest. ‘A week of sleep sounds good.’
Alex’s eyes were already shut, his breathing deep and even. ‘Mmm hmm.’
Jarrod jumped into the driver’s seat. ‘Let’s get you lot out of here.’ He looked back when he got no response and smiled at the three of them fast asleep.
EPILOGUE
Alex and Silhouette walked through the corridors of the Edinburgh Armour HQ.
‘You going to meet Claude after this?’ Silhouette asked.
Alex nodded, sighed. ‘I promised him we’d talk more. But there’s no way I can really take him to where Hood … died. Maybe take him somewhere else and tell him it’s the place. I already told him there’s no body to find.’
Silhouette put an arm around his shoulders, kissed his cheek. ‘I’ll be there with you. We’ll deal with it.’
‘Thanks. Let’s get this meeting out of the way first.’
They knocked on an office door. Jarrod opened it with a smile, ushered them inside. A grizzled man in his fifties or so sat behind a large desk. ‘James Forest, Scottish Armour Commander,’ Jarrod introduced him.
‘Hello there,’ Forest said. ‘An honour to meet you both. Please sit.’
Alex and Silhouette took seats across from the Commander. Jarrod sat at one end of the desk.
‘Well, let me officially thank you both on behalf of Armour,’ Forest said.
Alex inclined his head. ‘You’re welcome. Sorry to create such a mess.’ He grinned at the absurdity of his own understatement.
‘The clean-up is going to take weeks but it’s under control.’
‘The public aren’t a problem?’ Alex asked.
‘Nah. We had the entire area evacuated already and the news is out that an underground explosion has rendered the entire valley unsafe. The nearest town is just next door, less than a kilometre away, but we’ve huge cordons around the area now, the airspace controlled. The ground is still compromised and could collapse into undiscovered caverns at any moment. That’s what folk are being told, at least. We’ll keep a lid on it.’
‘And all the surviving lowen?’
‘Aye, that’s a bit more difficult. Repatriating them is going to be hard. There are so many and they have no idea of life outside Obsidian. But command centres have been set up and we have them all in camps where we’re slowly re-educating them. It’s the mother of all refugee programs, but we’re developing methods. They’ll be okay. Most of them, anyway.’
‘And the Kin?’
‘We got some of them, but not all by a long way. Not entirely sure what we’ll do with them, but it’s all being slowly processed.’
‘What about the two council members we didn’t fight at the church? Did they come through?’
‘Probably,’ Jarrod said, ‘but we haven’t found them. Looks like they got away.’
Alex grimaced, unhappy about a loose end like that. ‘And what about Rowan’s body?’
‘We looked in the rubble of the church like you told us to,’ Forest said. ‘But there was no body there.’
‘Little fucker,’ Alex growled. ‘I can’t believe he survived and got away. Is that really possible?’
‘He always was a slimy, slippery little bastard,’ Jarrod said. ‘But we’ll do our best to find him.’
‘And Haydon?’ Silhouette asked.
Forest shrugged. ‘Not much hope there, I don’t think. Physically he’ll be fine, but his mind is snapped. We may be able to bring him around a bit, but I don’t have high hopes. He’s being cared for, though.’
Alex nodded, sank his face into his hands. So many dead, so many broken, all by his actions. He saw swarming faces of the dead and mad every time he closed his eyes. What sleep he had had was plagued with nightmares, memories of the desolation of the Void, the sensation of so many lowen tumbling to a death of oblivion. He had had his meal and bath and slept as well as he could, but was still bone tired. He looked up, a crooked smile. ‘So, that’s my contract done then?’
James Forest laughed. ‘Aye, lad, you did a good job. And you’ll be paid well. Thanks for sticking around so we could fully debrief. Good to know we’ve properly recorded all that happened.’
‘Sure, no problem.’
Jarrod cleared his throat. ‘Actually, sticking around is another r
eason we called you here today.’
‘Oh?’
‘We lost a lot of operatives in the fight against the fleeing Kin back there.’
Alex nodded. He could see where this was going. ‘And you want me to do what about that?’
‘Oh, we don’t expect you to do anything about it. It’s not your fault. All part of the job.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘But it means we’re very thin on personnel. We need more operatives.’
Alex stared at Jarrod across the table.
Silhouette put her hand on his shoulder. ‘We do need income,’ she said softly. ‘But it’s your decision.’
Jarrod grinned, threw two badges across the desk. ‘We were kinda hoping to have you both.’
‘Both of us?’ Silhouette picked up the badge, surprised.
‘You’d both be excellent Armour operatives. And besides, Alex, you need a job, right? And Silhouette, you’re my sister. We could get to know each other if we worked together. You guys don’t have to stay here. We could go back to Sydney, they could transfer some Sydney people here. A big reshuffle. We just need numbers.’
Alex turned the badge over in his hands, ran a thumb over the leather case. ‘I don’t know. I’ve always been a free agent. I mean, I wouldn’t mind freelancing for you guys from time to time, but …’ Silhouette looked at him with a smile. ‘What?’ he asked.
‘You’ve always been a free agent, I’ve always been on my own, even when I was part of Joseph’s Den, really.’
‘So?’
‘Don’t you think it’s time we maybe tried to be a part of something?’
Alex sighed, shook his head. He looked from Silhouette to Jarrod and Forest. ‘Give me some time to think about it?’
Forest beamed. ‘Of course!’
‘Okay then.’
Jarrod and James Forest both stood, reached across to shake hands with Alex and Silhouette. ‘Either way,’ Forest said, ‘bloody good work, both of you.’
Alex turned back to Silhouette and kissed her. ‘Let’s go home, eh?’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Huge thanks to my wonderful wife, Halinka, whose love and support make anything possible. And to my son, Arlo, who was only a few months old during the editing and publication of this volume and managed not to be too cranky and let me get it done.
Invaluable to this book are Angela Slatter and Joanne Anderton, great friends and great critiquers both. Their help is beyond measure.
My great thanks also to Alex Adsett, superagent, and to Rochelle Fernandez and all the amazing team at HarperVoyager. You guys rock.
To all my friends in the writing community, thanks for your constant encouragement and support. See you at the bar, guys.
And lastly, thanks to you, dear reader. Thanks for coming on the journey with me this far. I hope you’ve enjoyed it enough to read Abduction too, because I’d love to continue sharing Alex Caine’s story with you. And there’ll be some huge action and old faces in the third book that I hope you won’t want to miss.
All the places other than Obsidian in this book are real, but I’ve taken a few fictional licences with many of them for the purposes of story. Otherwise, any and all mistakes are entirely my own.
Alex Caine Series by Alan Baxter
Click here to buy Book 1: Bound
Click here to buy Book 2: Obsidian
Click here to buy Book 3: Abduction
About the Author
Alan Baxter is a British–Australian author who writes dark fantasy, horror and sci-fi, rides a motorcycle and loves his dog. He also teaches Kung Fu. As well as novels, he is the author of more than fifty published short stories and has written narratives and dialogue for video games. By day (and night more often than not) Alan is director and chief instructor of the Illawarra Kung Fu Academy. He lives among dairy paddocks on the beautiful south coast of NSW, Australia, with his wife, son, dog and cat. Read extracts from his novels, a novella and short stories at his website — www.warriorscribe.com — and find him on Twitter @AlanBaxter and Facebook. Feel free to tell him what you think. About anything.
Books by Alan Baxter
Bound
Obsidian
Abduction
Copyright
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in Australia in 2014
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
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harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Alan Baxter 2014
The right of Alan Baxter to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Baxter, Alan, author.
Obsidian / Alan Baxter.
ISBN: 978 0 7322 9911 8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978 1 4607 0287 1 (epub)
Baxter, Alan. Alex Caine series ; 2.
Magic—Fiction.
Fantasy fiction.
Suspense fiction.
A823.4
Cover design by Matt Stanton, HarperCollins Design Studio
Cover illustration copyright © Johnson Ting 2014