Michael's desecration of John's corpse had shaken Rachel to her core, and she spent a good deal of time wondering if the police officer might just have joined up with the people now running the castle.
She wouldn't believe it.
Couldn't.
As vulnerable as the wheelchair left Michael, and as important as keeping his daughter safe was to him, Rachel didn't think the man who had helped her in St. Davids, and who owed her at least as much as she owed him, could be a turncoat. Not even if the crazy old woman offered safety for himself and for Claire.
Yet if Michael had a plan, Rachel could not see it; could not imagine how a paralysed man with no weapons could do anything against the forces that now held them all prisoner.
Despair began to creep into her thoughts; bleak and unending. Jason was lost to her. John: dead. Michael in no position to do anything.
And herself.
Blindsided by finding Jason alive, she had lost all her caution, had thrown it to the wind like confetti, and had ended up once more in the clutches of a psychopath. She wondered how long it would be before the men that followed the old woman decided they liked the look of the young women that were locked in the cells; questioned whether the old woman would stop them when it came to it. If she even could.
No one will touch me again, not like Victor did. If it comes to that, I'll make them kill me.
Lost in the dark country that her thoughts had become, Rachel barely noticed when the cell door opened and Michael was ushered in, carrying another load of stale bread and water. She didn't see the haunted look on his face, or the blood on his shirt.
But she heard him.
Heard the words whispered furtively, just quiet enough that the man who stood outside the cell watching Michael would miss them.
Listen to Claire.
Just three words, and Rachel could not piece together their meaning, but she read the intent in them. Michael was going to try something.
And she would be ready.
*
"Listen to Claire," Michael hissed.
It was all he could manage. Rhys Holloway had become a shadow that clung to Michael, a shadow that stank of sweat and intimidation.
Michael kept his voice low; hoped it wouldn't carry beyond the cell. He clattered the fresh slop bucket down onto the stone floor, masking the noise of his words as much as possible.
When he lifted his eyes, he saw that the message had been heard as he intended.
Linda stared at him quizzically, and when she gave a faint hint of a nod, he sighed in relief.
Nobody was going to let Michael talk to the prisoners; that much was obvious, but the old woman and her sons were so focused on observing him that they seemed to have forgotten all about Claire.
After all, what danger could a helpless little girl possibly pose to them?
Asking Claire to pass on a message for him was dangerous enough that Michael almost abandoned the idea, but he could see no other way. A vague notion of how he might be able to get everybody out of the castle was forming in his mind. It was a plan so insane that Michael was sure John would have approved, but it would all fall apart without Linda, and to get her to agree to her part in it would mean using Claire.
Michael wheeled himself away from the cell as Rhys locked the door behind him, and waited until he was told he could leave.
With a nod, Michael turned the chair away from Rhys and made his way back toward the tower that had become his home and his prison, and which he thought might yet become his tomb.
Chapter 11
The throne was hard and uncomfortable. Doubtless, Annie thought, pampered arses had once demanded that plush cushions be placed upon it, but the discomfort didn't bother her unduly. Her entire life had been hard and uncomfortable. That was simply the cost of prevailing.
She wouldn't dream of bleating about an uncomfortable chair, especially not a chair that conferred the status that the throne did. Appearances needed to be maintained, and an aching posterior was a small price to pay.
She stared at her son, who stood awkwardly in front of her, practically squirming as he had when he had been just a little boy trying to find the right words to confess that he had wet the bed.
"What is it, Rhys?"
"I don't understand why you don't just kill him, Ma."
Annie rolled her eyes and sighed softly. If she counted up the number of things her eldest son didn't understand, she couldn't help but wonder if she would run out of numbers or patience first.
He did have a point on this occasion, though, and Annie had thought about killing the man in the wheelchair; had given it serious consideration the moment she saw the cogs whirring behind his lying eyes.
"We need people, Rhys. Strength in numbers. It's the only way we'll survive this madness. If we just kill everyone we meet, we won't last long. Not even in this castle."
Rhys nodded sombrely, but Annie could tell he had failed to grasp the concept.
"We've already killed the man who was in charge here," Annie said. "And that leaves us with an uphill battle with these folks. Kill Michael, and we might as well kill them all. He was important to them, and if they will listen to him then maybe they will come around to our way of thinking.”
"Will he?"
Annie stared at her boy thoughtfully. It was a rare and insightful question.
The truth was that she had no idea if Michael could be persuaded to follow her—whether willingly or grudgingly—but the mere fact that he’d had possession of the gun meant the others had placed stock in him. His words must have carried sway within the group. If he led, they would surely follow.
She could break him, there was no doubt in her mind about that. A crippled man in a wheelchair, alone and vulnerable, with a young daughter to be used as leverage against him if necessary. Annie knew she could subdue the man, just as she had subdued the giant who called himself Voorhees. But a broken Michael wouldn't be a great deal of use to her.
Not unless she was prepared to break them all, and Annie already had more than her share of damaged people to look after.
"We've got another, problem, Ma," Rhys said hesitantly.
Annie stared at him, her eyes narrowing.
"It's Voorhees. I think he's sick."
Annie grimaced. She had seen the dark wounds festering on the big man's skin; had smelled the sweet fragrance of his slowly rotting flesh.
She doubted that Voorhees felt anything himself: whatever awareness was left in his fractured mind might be able to feel pain, but she continued to dose him with numerous painkillers to keep him pliant. Eventually she hoped she wouldn't need them, and that obedience would come as naturally to Voorhees as breathing, but that depended on him surviving.
The painkillers would do nothing to stem the infection that crept through his body. He needed proper treatment. A doctor.
How convenient, Annie thought, that Michael has just dropped one of those into my lap.
The man in the wheelchair was chasing a scheme that she could not see or understand; at least not yet. What she was certain of was that if Michael wanted the doctor—Linda?—freed, it was to satisfy some part of his own agenda.
Michael was trying to manipulate her, and that had never ended well for anybody other than Annie herself.
"We'll let this doctor Michael mentioned out soon," Annie said. "And I want your eyes on her the entire time she is out of that cell. When she's done tending to Voorhees, we'll put her right back. If she and Michael so much as look at each other, they'll both be joining our friend Mr Cartwright in the dungeon."
Rhys nodded and smiled happily.
Chapter 12
"We're going to have to get out of here, Kiddo."
Claire frowned, and with good reason. Michael couldn't remember ever calling her Kiddo in his life.
He stifled a sigh. Trying to make the conversation he was about to have with his daughter seem normal suddenly looked like a ridiculous proposition. It probably had been all along.
&nb
sp; For a moment he was jarred by how much he had missed of her growing, and how quickly she had changed. It had only been a couple of years since Elise left, taking their daughter with her. Just a couple of years.
A quarter of her life.
When did she become so sharp?
"Sorry," Michael said with an embarrassed grin. "I guess that was me still thinking you are six years old."
Claire's frown deepened and she folded her arms across her chest.
"What's going on?"
Michael wheeled himself to the door, and listened intently. There was no reason to think Rhys or anybody else was standing out there in the silence, straining to catch his words. Still, he had been caught out once before, and had ended up shooting two people dead. One of them just a kindly old lady who had died with a look of sad confusion plastered across her face that he did not think he would ever be able to forget.
It didn't do any harm to make sure.
Outside the tower, he heard only silence.
After a few seconds he wheeled himself back to Claire. He kept his voice low.
"These people are very dangerous. I have to get us—all of us—out of here as quickly as possible. You understand?"
Claire nodded sombrely.
"I can't do it without your help," Michael said.
For a moment the frown clung to Claire's brow, and then she straightened suddenly, as if standing to attention.
"You can count on me."
Michael smiled. One thing he had known about Claire when she was six hadn't changed at all in the intervening years. In fact it had only become more apparent. She liked a challenge.
She'll do great things when she grows up, he thought.
If.
Michael's expression darkened. He had studiously tried to avoid thinking long-term; to push aside dark fantasies of what life might be like if they survived a year. Five. Twenty.
Yet the future stood right in front of him with an eager, determined expression on its face. Avoiding it was like trying to stay dry by walking between raindrops.
Claire wouldn't live to see another birthday in the castle. That much was certain to him. His resolve stiffened. Despite what Holloway might think, Claire wasn't a helpless little girl. She had survived the destruction of Aberystwyth alone for days, and seemed to take each new horror in her stride.
She will be okay.
"I'm going to distract them," Michael said. "And while I'm doing that, I need you to go and talk to Linda, okay? I need you to tell her exactly what I tell you to. Exactly. Word-for-word. Without getting seen. Will you be able to do that?"
Claire pondered the question for a moment, and nodded firmly.
"I'll have my way with Linda," Claire said.
Michael arched an eyebrow in surprise at the odd phrase. Like something Claire had heard somebody say and repeated it without fully understanding.
"What do you mean?"
Claire flushed, as if suddenly aware that she had said something wrong.
"Where did you hear that saying?" Michael asked, but the dark clouds gathering in his mind told him he already knew.
"The old lady's son," Claire said. "The little one. She said she would let him have his way with me."
Claire bit her lip and her eyes widened, and Michael realised that the expression on his face must have twisted to match the fury coiling around his gut. He took a deep breath and calmed himself.
"She told you to say that to me," he said softly. It wasn't a question, but a realisation.
Claire nodded.
For a brief moment Michael flirted with the idea of telling Claire to forget he'd said anything; of following the deranged old woman meekly. Anything to keep his daughter safe.
Then he thought of Rachel, alone at the mercy of a psychopath and still finding time to tend to Michael's damaged body while he lay unconscious. He was alive because of Rachel. Victor would have killed him without a second thought, and it was her intervention that had allowed him to survive. Without Rachel, Claire too would surely be dead already.
And what of John? He had saved them all more than once, and now John was dead and Michael had helped to crucify his corpse.
I owe these people.
He remembered once before mulling over whether to take the easy choice: when he was sitting on a pathetic scooter outside of St. Davids just as the town's population began to explode into violence. He had taken the hard option then. He could have run, and for a while he thought he should have run, but he hadn't. Instead he had done what was right.
Maybe that, more than anything, was what had kept him alive until now. If he turned his back on Rachel and the others after all they had done for him, he really would be no different to Darren, or even to Annie. He would no longer be able to tell himself that he had gunned down a scared old woman because he had to, but would know he had done it because it was the easy option.
He had to use Claire. Because it was the difficult choice, and because it was the only choice that might ultimately keep her safe.
Have his way with my daughter.
A fire began to burn in Michael's mind, and it consumed the self-doubt that had plagued him for what felt like an eternity. It spread from his thoughts, enveloping him, raging through his torso.
Into his legs.
Michael's face contorted in fury and pain, twisting with the effort as his mind screamed silently at his obstinate legs.
Pain is just a message. Just an email sent to the brain.
Michael received the message; got it loud and clear.
He sent one back.
You have to move.
And with gritted teeth and muscles that burned like they had been dipped in acid; like they were being used for the very first time, Michael pushed himself up from the chair, and stood before his shocked daughter, swaying slightly on legs that felt like they didn’t quite belong to him; euphoria coursing through his veins like a powerful drug.
Claire’s mouth dropped open and she stared at her father in astonishment.
For a moment Michael thought he would fall, and he put a hand against the wall to steady himself. The pain was enormous, but he embraced it like a long-lost friend.
When the agony finally abated a little and his vision began to clear, Michael looked down at his daughter’s beautiful face; at the eyes that had already lost too much of their innocence.
"We're leaving," he said.
Chapter 13
"It's fine, Mr Sullivan, uh, Sir. Nathan can be trusted."
Nathan Colston gritted his teeth and bit down on his desire to voice his disagreement.
No, Sir, I can't be trusted. Best all round if I fuck off somewhere else while you two have this conversation.
Nathan had served as part of Fred Sullivan’s security forces in the Northumberland base, and had held a position of slight authority and relative anonymity that had suited him perfectly. Near-invisibility was, Nathan believed, crucial to his chances of surviving any longer than the average British summer.
He had headed up a small team that reported ultimately to Simon Ripley, the head of security at the base. Ripley had been one-part dedicated soldier and at least four-parts raving lunatic, and Nathan had avoided him as much as it was possible to avoid a man who was technically your boss and who you were actually trapped in a hole with.
Insanity, Nathan figured, probably came with the job title. Head of Security, as it turned out, was just a polite euphemism for enforcer.
Or executioner.
Nathan didn’t envy Ripley his position at all, and had no ambitions toward getting himself promoted, and so it was unfortunate that Jake McIntosh’s massacre at the base had propelled Nathan so far up the ladder.
As the second highest-ranking officer left alive when McIntosh exited the underground base, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake, Nathan's resulting close proximity to the position of Head of Security had been inevitable. It wasn't something Nathan had earned—just a matter of his surviving; impossible to avoid, like def
ective genes or the onset of old age.
Pure, dumb, bad luck.
One more stroke of which could strike at any moment, and Nathan was painfully aware that he was only two promotions away from taking up a permanent position at the Pearly Gates.
Or the other place. After you became Head of Security for Chrysalis Systems, it seemed like the only way left to go was down.
The man who currently held the position that stood between Nathan and an all-too-early death was Richard Skinner. He had probably been a dependable soldier before he became a mercenary, Nathan thought, but he was a piss-poor hired gun.
Skinner still believed in the chain of command and studious deference in the presence of what he called 'my superiors', and he seemed to have a genuine problem when it came to forming his own opinion on anything.
There was a reason all the other men shortened his name to Dick, and it had nothing to do with affection.
And now Dick had shoved Nathan in front of the old bastard that had fucked the whole world up, and told him that this was a man Fred Sullivan could trust. It didn't feel so much like getting thrown under the bus as being tied to the ground in front of its wheels and made to wait.
Nice one.
Dick.
Nathan withered under the old man's gaze, and did his best to make himself look forgettable.
After a moment, Fred shrugged.
"If you say so, Skinner," he growled. "I'll have to take your word for it. That is why I'm here, after all."
Old fucker loves being cryptic, Nathan thought, but he saw through the veneer of bullshit. Fred Sullivan was consulting with Dick Skinner—a blustering cretin that the old man wouldn't have trusted to shine his boots a few short weeks earlier—because he was desperate, plain and simple. Because the mercenaries that Sullivan had bought and paid for were starting to wonder just why the hell they should give a damn about money when all the shops were full of demented eyeless cannibals.
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