Into The Fire: Age Of Madness - A Kurtherian Gambit Series (The Caitlin Chronicles Book 2)

by Daniel Willcocks

  The sunlight was bright. It was certainly a beautiful day, especially with the view that greeted them as they headed along the parapets. Back in New Leaf, the most Alice ever got to see was trees, trees, and…

  Oh, wait.

  Guess what?

  More trees.

  But here, as she looked down at the patchwork of streets to her left and the canopy of forest over the walls to her right, she felt like a queen of the world.

  “They’re really out there somewhere?” Alice asked, shading her eyes and doing her best to see the furthest reaches of the forest. She thought of Caitlin, Mary-Anne, and Kain and wondered where they were right now. Somewhere out there kicking ass and taking names. She had been a little vexed to discover they had gone without her, but after Dylan had spoken to her and the other Revolutionaries, she kind of understood why.

  “Yup, though I hope they’ve found somewhere to hide from the sun, for Ma’s sake,” Ash said, squinting and shading his own eyes.

  A flock of crows exploded from somewhere in the nearby trees. Dotted across the sky, they flew in a large circle before heading over the town and off in the opposite direction. Somewhere in the distance, he thought he could see the faint trails of smoke.

  “What was that?” Alice asked, stepping closer to the edge of the wall to look below. Two guards on either side did the same, nocking an arrow into their bows as they took aim. One of them glanced sideways at Ash—a gaunt man with greasy hair—an expression of contempt on his face.

  “Probably nothing,” Ash said, conscious that he was on precious time and wanted to get moving around the town. It was important to keep his face fresh and in people’s minds, Dylan had told him. After all the changes in leadership, if the chiefs of the town didn’t show their faces enough, chances were that somewhere down the line, there would be a mutiny.

  And that would not end well—for them.

  They needed strong leaders, ready to keep the peace. No more governors hiding inside their quarters. It was all about building trust now.

  “It’s probably just a deer or a fox.”

  But Alice wasn’t convinced. She waited, staring down below.

  “Come on.”

  “There.” Alice pointed.

  They heard frantic footsteps before a man appeared from the shadows of the trees. His hair was dark with patchy bald spots all over. His breath came in loud gasps. He paused as he neared the walls, surprise written on his face as though he had no idea that he would find a town through the trees.

  “Who goes there?” one of the guards shouted.

  He looked up at them with a mixture of fear and elation written all over his face. Alice saw that his clothes were scratched—badly. Blood ran down his left arm, and even from up high, they could see the telltale red sores popping up across his skin.

  Alice had seen those sores before, and that frenzied look. They were symptoms of a man who had limited time before the Madness took him.

  “Please!” the man shouted, clutching his hands together as if in prayer. “My name is Toby Dobell. I’m lost, hungry, and in desperate need of aid. My wife and the others, they’re not far behind, but I needed to run ahead to find…something, to find you…and warn you.”

  The guards tensed their bows.

  “Warn us of what?” Ash called down.

  Toby looked at Ash. “First, please promise that you’ll be kind to them. They’re all good people, I swear. I must ask that you promise to take care of them in your town in my absence. We escaped from the Madness. Well…they did. I saved them from a group of five using just my bare hands. But I fear my time is limited.” He fell to his knees. “Please, can you promise me this?”

  “And how do we know that they’re not also infected?” Alice asked. “How can we guarantee the safety of our people with only your word?”

  Toby stood with great effort and spread his arms. “Because I’m asking you to shoot me. Promise me my family will be cared for, and I offer you my life in return.”

  The guards looked at each other, perplexed.

  “And your warning?” Ash asked. “It doesn’t do well to hold back secrets when we could end your misery with a simple loose of the bow.”

  Ash nodded to the guard on his right. The guard pulled his bow taut and closed one eye as he took aim. Alice could hear the bow creaking.

  “What are you doing?” Alice asked, suddenly afraid for Toby.

  “He is infected. He’ll die either way,” Ash replied, not taking his eyes off the man. “At least this way, we can stop him spreading the Madness. Your warning, Dobell?”

  “How can we trust what he’s saying?” Alice asked.

  Toby reached into his pocket and pulled out a leather flask. It might have been brown at one point, but as he held it towards them, it dripped blood onto the floor. He uncorked the top and held it in the air.

  “I don’t have long left. Please. Your promise, that’s all I ask,” Toby said.

  “What’s in the bottle?” Ash shouted down, a lump rising in his throat.

  Toby smirked, though it came across as a weak effort. “The blood of my enemies.” He cocked his arm back and set it ready to throw. “If I throw this, anyone who ingests or finds the tiniest bit of blood in their system will join me in the quick descent into Madness. Please”—he seemed desperate now, his hands shaking, and eyes streaming—“your promise is all I ask.”

  Ash looked at the guards on either side. When he looked back down at Toby, he nodded as if he’d read the honesty in his eyes.

  “I promise,” he said.

  Toby let out a hollow chuckle and fell once more to his knees. When he looked back up, it was with a mixture of peace and loss. His words were cracked and dry. “Beware of the Firestarters…they’re…they’re coming…”

  “The Firestarters?” Ash asked. But before he could question him further, an arrow whistled through the air and struck Toby in the throat. He pawed weakly, gasping for breath as more blood leaked down his front.

  Alice twisted in rage. “What the—”

  The greasy-haired guard looked at his hands. “Oops! It must have slipped.”

  Alice flew at him, but Ash caught her. He held her back as she flailed, attempting to calm her down, and twisted her around to stare into her eyes as he spoke. “It doesn’t matter. He was as good as dead anyway. He was beyond saving.”

  Alice took a few deep breaths, feeling her heart rate slow. She rested her head on Ash’s chest and let a single tear fall.

  Ash addressed the guards. “Watch out for the others. See that they make it here in one piece. We wouldn’t want all of this to be for nothing.”

  They left the parapet and made their way into the throngs in the streets of the town. Alice replayed the incident in her head, seeing the moment when Toby’s throat had become a pin cushion over and over until her thoughts drifted in a different direction.

  She wondered where Toby had come from and where he had expected to go. The surprise in the man’s face at finding the walls of Silver Creek was unmistakable and, to the best of her knowledge, Silver Creek was as unknown to the world as New Leaf had been to them.

  What the hell have they really been running from? What forces a group of five to stroll through Mad-infested woods with no real protection?

  “Firestarters,” she said. “That’s what Toby said. ‘They’re coming.’”

  Ash stopped short and fixed her with a hard look. The fixed expression in his eyes made it clear that, like her, he thought back to the thin ribbon of smoke in the distance.

  Psycho Joe’s Garbage Lot, Silver Creek Forest, Toronto

  Caitlin awoke with a start.

  It was dark inside Joe’s living space—it felt too pretentious to call it a house—and the torches and candles had all burned down to their wick. Mary-Anne was still dozing beside her. Over the far side, leaning a little lopsidedly against the wall, Kain was fast asleep, his chin tucked into his chest.

  Caitlin felt annoyance bubble inside her. She had give
n Kain one job to do, and he had failed her. Her instructions were simple—stay awake and watch their backs, make sure no funny business happened, and wake Mary-Anne so that she could have a shift on watch. That’s all she needed from him—one thing—and he had fallen asleep.

  She reached out to wake Mary-Anne, then paused.

  It suddenly occurred to her that she had never had to wake a vampire before, putting aside the time Caitlin had gatecrashed Mary-Anne’s manor with a horde of Mad behind her. Was it like waking a human? Just nudge them until their eyes opened?

  Only one way to find out.

  “Ma?” Caitlin whispered. “Ma, wake up.”

  The instant Caitlin touched her arm, her eyes snapped open. She turned with vampire speed and was on her feet. Jaxon rumbled deep in his chest, a threat to bark, then stopped once he saw they were all okay.

  Mary-Anne looked around, her eyes a dull red in the dark. It took a second or two before she saw her friend on the floor and remembered where she was.

  Caitlin put a finger over her lips. She pointed to Kain and rolled her eyes theatrically.

  Mary-Anne grinned, already knowing what Caitlin had in mind.

  They snuck across the room until they were both inches from his face. Mary-Anne took center stage, and Caitlin provided backup.

  “One,” Caitlin mouthed.

  “Two.”

  “Wake up maggot!”

  “Get your ass up, soldier!”

  Kain’s eyes snapped open and met Mary-Anne’s blazing red ones. His mouth fell open and he tried to push himself further back against the wall, scrambling madly as if he thought that with enough pressure, he could sink through the metal and disappear. Jaxon barked happily and leaped up at Kain, his paws padding on his chest and tongue reaching for his neck.

  Mary-Anne and Caitlin fell about laughing.

  “You should’ve seen your face,” Mary-Anne said, doing a cheap impression of Kain scrambling in fear. “Now you know how it feels.”

  Caitlin doubled over, unable to remember the last time she had laughed so hard. The noise echoed around the room, sounding like several more people had joined in.

  Kain’s brow furrowed and he stood up, brushing himself down. “Very funny. But you should know you’ve picked a powerful enemy, friends.”

  But neither woman paid him any heed, too lost in their laughter to respond.

  It took a few minutes for them to recover, and when they eventually did, they wiped their eyes and gathered their clothes.

  “Is it already time to leave?” Mary-Anne asked, stretching and rubbing her eyes.

  “I’m not sure. Hold on.” Caitlin stepped through the doorway and returned a minute later. “Sun is just setting. The colors really are beautiful.”

  “Way to rub it in,” Mary-Anne teased.

  “We should say goodbye to Joe before we go,” Caitlin suggested, strapping her sword around her waist and bending to look through the tiny entrance to their room.

  “Y’know, I’m surprised he didn’t poke his head into the room and tell us to keep it down,” Mary-Anne said, looking at Kain and Caitlin. “Wouldn’t want to wake his ‘Violet.’”

  “Yeah, who the hell is that?” Kain asked. “Hope it’s not some flower he keeps in a jar, waiting until the last petal falls.”

  “You mean like Beauty and the Beast?” Mary-Anne asked.

  “Beauty and the what?” Kain replied.

  “Never mind,” Mary-Anne said.

  “Still, that is strange,” Caitlin muttered, holding onto the notion that Joe surely would have admonished them for the rowdy way they’d woken Kain.

  The truth was that Joe was nowhere to be found. They crawled through the doorway and out the front. Caitlin didn’t realize how claustrophobic it felt inside the house until they found themselves back in the fresh air. It was dark now, the stars shining above. A crescent moon climbed into the sky, shining a ghostly glow over the trash piles which made them look more and more like the skeletal remains of relics from the old world.

  “It feels wrong to leave without saying goodbye,” Caitlin said.

  Kain raised his eyebrows.

  “What?” Caitlin said. “Manners count for something. If we can’t be nice to those who help us, what the hell are we fighting for?”

  “Fun?” Kain grinned.

  They crawled back inside and searched the rooms. There were several, each with purposes they simply couldn’t identify. Every room looked like the one they had slept in, only with a different array of sordid junk. A dozen or so rooms linked together made Caitlin think of an insect hive.

  Eventually, they crawled into a room almost triple the size of any they had seen. An awful stink hit their noses.

  “Jee-sus Christ,” Kain said, his nose wrinkling.

  Piled up against the far wall were the skins and carcasses of various fruits and forest creatures. A thick black pot stood above a stack of charred logs in the center of the room. Steady embers cracked and popped. Gunk and crusted food had dried around its rim. Maybe at one point, the food had smelled nice, but now it was stale, with a slight smell of burning lingering in the air. Above them was a small hole in the roof so smoke and steam could escape as Joe cooked.

  “Well, I’m not hungry anymore,” Kain said, ready to turn and leave.

  “That makes a first,” Mary-Anne said.

  Jaxon bent low and began to growl.

  “What is it, boy?” Caitlin asked.

  “If it smells bad for you, imagine what it’s like for us. Dogs’ and Weres’ noses are much more powerful than yours.”

  “And mine,” Mary-Anne said, moving closer to investigate the pile of rotting food. “Joe’s quite the huntsman, isn’t he? Look. Rabbits, foxes…is that a deer?”

  “I suppose you have to get good at hunting when you’re by yourself in the forest.” Caitlin pondered the incongruity of Joe and his odd home. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her map. Frowning, she traced along the route she believed they were heading and saw no reference to where they were. No sketch or illustrations of an enormous pile of trash. “I wonder why Trisk doesn’t help out more? Maybe send food packages or something?”

  “Maybe because the governor is a prick?” Kain suggested.

  Joe appeared in the entranceway behind them. “Ise haven’t seens the guv’nor in nigh on ten years, for sure.” He looked tired, holding his shotgun by his side with three mice hanging by their tails in his fist. “That mans don’ts want no ones to know about his junkyard, no siree.”

  “What? Why?” Kain asked, clearly unable to help himself. Then he scowled as he answered his own question. “Because he wants those under his rule to believe that he has the world under control. He wants to remove the mess of the towns and villages to keep things tidy and make it look like he’s actually contributing. Taking care of something.” Kain looked at Joe. “Am I close?”

  “How do you know this?” Caitlin asked.

  Mary-Anne looked down her nose. “You think this is the first evil dictator we’ve come across?”

  Jaxon continued growling. Caitlin bent and stroked down his scruff, trying to tickle beneath his neck. “Easy, boy. It’s okay, we’re safe here.”

  Joe eyed Jaxon uneasily as he walked to the pot in the center of the room and threw the mice in. One of them struggled and squealed, but the other two were as dead as a doornail.

  “The luna womans is right. Ol’ Joe ’ere came abouts this way when there was nothin’s more than a few mounds of trash. Now, they piled up so highs I can’ts hardly ’member what the forest look like.” He fanned the embers beneath the pot and a fire began to spring to life. “Yous hungry? Wants some chow before you goes on your journeys?”

  They shrugged, Kain pulling a face. “Does it taste better than it smells?”

  They took a seat around the pot, reveling in its warmth.

  Joe was fascinating to watch as he pulled herbs and mushrooms out of his pocket, tearing and crumbling, working the pot like a witch around a caul
dron. Despite the disgusting pile of crap in the corner, they had to admit that what he was cooking actually smelled half-decent.

  “Joe?” Caitlin said when she was handed a bowl with questionable chunks stuck to the side. The warmth of the food in her hands lit her senses. How had she not realized she was this hungry?

  “Hmmm?”

  “I don’t mean to bring this up again, but I can’t help wondering. Who’s Violet?” Caitlin felt guilty the instant Joe froze.

  “Oh, that’s my ol’ lady, yes she is,” he said, his eyes glancing at a crudely cut door at the far side of the room. The same place Jaxon seemed unable to take his attention off. “She sleeps a lot these days, but I does what I can to keeps her happy, I sure do. Y’know, this year will be thirty years we’s been together, and I can’t imagines what I’d does if she weren’t around, no sirree.”

  Caitlin smiled, looking at Mary-Anne and Kain and already feeling the same way. Even in a world where dictators ruled and the Mad roamed, there was still a little bit of humanity in everyone.

  “I’d love to meet her before we leave,” Caitlin said, tutting at Jaxon and bringing a mouthful of stew to her lips. The flavor was divine, the meat melting on her tongue. She relished the taste for a moment before returning her attention to their host. “You think we could?”

  Joe looked at Caitlin for a long while, his eyes unblinking. He turned again to the door. “I’d have ta asks her, yes I would. No sense disturbin’ her now for no small reasons. She likes her sleep now, yes she do.”

  “Ah, come on, it’ll be fun,” Kain said as he stood and marched to the door.

  “Kain,” Caitlin called, feeling ever more sorry for Joe as he rushed to his feet and chased after the Were, nearly spilling the pot along the way. Jaxon leaped out of Caitlin’s grasp and followed, bounding speedily to catch up with Kain. He danced and barked around his legs, his eyes trained on the doorway.

  “See, Jaxon gets it. Why wouldn’t anyone want to meet new people? They’ve been cooped up here for thirty years, so let’s say hi. Make this shindig a party.”

  Caitlin looked at Mary-Anne for help. She shrugged and returned to her stew. “He’s a big kid, Cat. Just try to stop him.”