He reached the bottom of the stairs and lit a match, touching it to a lantern hanging on a nail. Slowly, he turned towards the source of the mewling and found a man before him, gagged and bound with thick ropes to a palette set atop a pair of barrels. For a moment his eyes seemed murky, but then they settled on James’s face and began to quiver in their sockets.
It was then that James realised just how far he was willing to go. If the man was afraid, then he was damn well going to use it. He nodded to Lucian up at the top of the stairs, and Lucian pulled the door closed behind him. James set the lantern by his side and crouched down to meet the man’s gaze. “That’s right,” he whispered. “It’s me.”
2
Melanie Tarbuck shifted upon the threshold of Mrs McKinley’s cottage and rattled on the door a second time, casting wild glances over her shoulder. Everywhere, voices rang out; shadows prepared to spring upon Malverston’s men, who prowled the streets in watchful gangs. The door burst open, a black maw that framed a crooked marble-white figure.
“Come, child!” Alice McKinley lurched out and gripped her with astonishing speed. She had seemed on the brink of death since Mel had been alive, yet now she had grown as animated as a stuck pig. McKinley yanked her inside and slammed the door, then set to tottering over the cobbles, pacing back and forth. “Were you seen?”
“No, but they’re close,” Mel hissed, ducking down below the windowsill and waiting for a group of figures outside to pass. The mayor’s men had patrolled the streets since the whipping. The way they held their guns told no lies: they would shoot to kill at the slightest provocation.
Mel skittered over Mrs McKinley’s dusty kitchen as the old woman pushed open the window and thrust her arm out. Mel was about to hiss for her to withdraw it before she was seen, but by then McKinley was back inside and the window was closed. Upon her arm rested a bobbing pigeon, cocking its head and flapping its wings.
McKinley took the tiny scroll from its leg and unravelled the note. “Child, read it to me. My eyes.”
Mel took the message, just as she had a few days before. This one was different, sent by the Pigeon Keeper himself.
Coming NOW. Be ready. - James
McKinley slapped her knee and nodded. “About time the snot got his backside in gear. Dunno what took him so long.”
“He let Beth get taken in the first place,” Mel spat. “If he never came here, none of this would have happened. She’d be at home. We both would.”
McKinley laid a bony hand on her shoulder. “Home is where you should be, little lady. Your sister’s wrapped up in this mess, but you don’t have to be. You’ve been a brave little warrior, but things are going to get bad now. Go on, go be with your mum, there’s a good girl.”
Mel threw her off and glared. “I’ll never go back there. Not with her.” She had returned home after Beth’s whipping. While Mel had railed at her, her mother had continued putting the house in order, torn to shreds when Malverston’s men had taken them. Her face hadn’t born a single crease of concern. She had shut down.
“I’m not going back!”
McKinley’s face softened. “Okay, dear. But you’re going to need more than that thing if you’re going to be any good.”
Mel took her slingshot from her belt and held it up to the scant light filtering into the cottage. “You want to bet?”
“Darling, they have guns.”
Don’t talk to me like I’m a baby, Mel thought. You’ll see what it can do soon enough.
“Trust me.”
The old woman’s face creased into a wan, accommodating smile, and she sat heavily at the table. A moment of weakness followed, and she seemed to shrink; a brief flicker where her blue lips and rheumy eyes seemed to occupy her whole face. “The others?” she croaked.
Mel stayed by the window. She had scoured the whole town, sneaking past the patrols in shadow to knock on windows and back doors. So many had been afraid, their faces wet and ashamed, and had shut the door on her. “A few. Not many. They’re getting ready now.”
McKinley took in a deep breath and held it as though inflating a punctured old tyre. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s get on with it.”
*
They moved fast in the dawn haze, bent low, following hedges and squeezing between fences. Around them dozens of others followed similar paths, brief flashes of bodies and winking metal between the fence posts and bushes, hurtling through Newquay’s Moon towards the town hall. Most of the guards had retreated to change patrols; this was their only chance before the sun was fully risen and mayor’s hold on the town was set for the day.
They took no chances. The few guards still heading back were overtaken before they knew what was going on and were set upon quietly, neatly: splinter threads broke off from the main group and circled in. Melanie paused to see the men seized from behind and held with their heads wrenched back, hands crushed over their mouths. Before they could struggle, pairs of shadows could rush forwards with knives ready. While their carotids spewed crimson pools across the dirt road, their twitching bodies were dropped to the ground, the shadows dashed back to cover, and the threads kept moving, converging on the hall.
Mel kept her hand clutched tightly over a ball bearing, ready to load her slingshot and fire.
This was it. The moment she had been waiting for since she could walk. All her life she had watched the mayor take Beth away whenever he wanted, and all the while Mel had had to watch Beth act like she wanted it. She knew it was just an act that kept Mel and her mother from being the mayor’s playthings as well, but that didn’t make it any easier; black gruel in her stomach condensed a little more each time. Today she was going to make things right.
“Stay close, child!” McKinley wheezed, staggering so much that Mel had half a mind on her, ready to catch her if she fell. But Mrs McKinley wouldn’t be left behind. She led the first of the threads from the bushes to race out over the compacted-dirt square towards the town house.
Catch them by surprise, they had said. Take no prisoners, don’t give them time to regroup. We cut them all down and be done with it.
But Mel had seen in their eyes that they knew the score. They had numbers and surprise, but that was all. If they hesitated, it would only take one guard to send a hail of gunfire that would send them all to the ground.
“Remember, don’t stop!” McKinley cried. “Ready?”
The shadows emerged in full, several dozen strong, perched like cats with guns and anything sharp they could find in their grasp.
“Let’s take our town back,” McKinley hissed.
They rushed forwards, people who had for so long cowered, now made furious and alive by those years of drudgery. They covered the square in a few moments and raced along the porch to surround the door. Mel was left in their wake, a few steps behind, her little legs too short to cover the ground in time. McKinley tottered a few steps ahead. They both watched as the men and women gathered around the door and piled up around it.
No, I need to be first. I have to be. The mayor is mine! Mel thought.
So preoccupied was she with the thought that when the doors were thrust open and the gunfire started, she failed to quite absorb the sight before her. In a hail of flashing light and the cacophony of gunfire in an enclosed space, people fell like bags of wheat, lifeless and riddled with holes. The wrong people. Those by the door were torn asunder by a wall of shrapnel sent from within. Mel just had time to scream and throw herself into the dirt before the bodies in between her and the door were cut down. She pulled her hands over her head and kept on screaming, crawling into a ball. Terror erupted in her bowels, the likes of which she had never felt.
I wanna go home, please let me go home! Please—!
Suddenly, totally, the gunfire ceased. Silence rushed in to take its place, so loud that Mel thought it might make her go deaf. Shaking, she crawled for McKinley, who lay in a tangle of limbs.
A garble escaped the shaking old lady: “Don’t… stay.”
Mel stopped,
was about to retort when the doorway filled with a dozen men and Malverston himself. They looked upon the carpet of dead without a mote of surprise on their faces. Over her shoulder, Mel heard the town stirring, people pouring from their houses. Some crept forwards, eyes peeking around walls. Others ran without a care for the guns aimed at them, screaming for loved ones who lay torn at Malverston’s feet. In moments they were all around Mel, overtaking her, falling over the dead and hugging their ragged bodies.
“You think we’re stupid?” The mayor roared triumphantly. “Behold the fools who think they can trick George Malverston!”
He laughed in great booming chortles. Behind him, Renner appeared with Beth held between his hands. Fresh cuts riddled her neck and ears, bleeding so freely that her shoulders had been stained red. She writhed in his grasp, and he stilled her with a sharp blow to her ribs.
“Beth!” Mel struggled to her feet, reaching for her slingshot. She was on the verge of loading the ball bearing into the sling when she caught sight of Mrs McKinley rising before her.
McKinley held a hand to her stomach, her dress marked by spreading florets of red. She staggered forwards, and even those weeping grew quiet to watch her approach Malverston and the firing squad trained on her. She seethed like a boiling kettle, a kitchen carving knife in her hand.
“Old woman, I should have turned you into dog food a long time ago,” Malverston said.
“You come and face me like a man for once in your life, you snivelling tub of lard,” McKinley said. “Enough hiding behind your pet apes.”
The guards tightened rank, preparing to fire, but Malverston waved them down. “No, no, allow me,” he said. He addressed the crowd. “See what happens to those who challenge the natural order, folks. See it well.”
“Mrs McKinley, don’t!” Beth cried, struggling in Renner’s grasp. “Please, don’t.”
“Be still, girl. I’ll have you free in a trice.”
“Is that so? You still mean to steal my property from me?” Malverston shook his head gravely. “You see, my fair people? Not a hero, but a common thief who has led you astray. Let justice be done. If it must be by your elected leader’s hand, then so be it.”
McKinley thrust a bony leg onto the bottom step, which shook from side to side. She paused for a moment and looked as though she might fall, clutching her stomach. But then she looked up at Malverston—even from behind, Mel knew what that look must have contained: distilled, cold hatred. McKinley gripped the banister and not looking down at the dead underfoot, launched herself up at the mayor and swung the knife with a banshee screech.
Malverston caught her hand almost lazily, her fist disappearing into his beefy paw. He smiled and took hold of her shoulder, turning her in mid-air, pulling her close to his chest and yanking the knife from her hand. She wriggled in his grip, but he held her fast around the throat. Already she had begun to grow blue.
“Don’t do this!” Beth cried.
Mel started forwards through the crowd, scrabbling with all she was worth, plunging through the immobile stupefied bodies of the others. She was going to kill him, kill him if it was the last thing she did in this world!
She was frozen in place ten feet from the front of the crowd by a pair of stares: Mrs McKinley’s and Beth’s. Both wide-eyed, warning, as loud and terrible as if they had reached across the space in between and shoved her back. Gritting her teeth, tears filling her eyes, Mel let her slingshot fall to her side.
Malverston had been watching. He picked her out of the crowd and winked. “I sentence this woman to death for crimes against the town. We live in dangerous times. Alas, justice must be done.”
He drew the knife sharply through the air, and Mrs McKinley’s throat gaped wide. Her eyes rolled up into her head as Malverston dropped her like a bag of trash. She fell atop her kin and rolled down the steps in a series of bony crunches. Then silence.
Malverston’s eyes grew hard, his face a tiny island in an ocean of flab. “Go home. All of you.”
For a moment Mel was on the verge of calling out to them all: all it would take was one last push. Malverston’s men wouldn’t have enough bullets for all of them. But another stare lanced her way, this time only from Beth, taking up all of Mel’s field of view. She gave the minutest shake of her head and mouthed, Please.
Mel shook all over as those around her shuffled away, heading back towards the town like zombies. The tears came fast and angry, and soon she stood alone in the square, before the bodies and the mayor’s entourage. Malverston looked right at her and laughed; laughed down at her as though she was nothing.
The mayor looked around at his men as though expecting them to join in. They didn’t, just stared. Mel saw the look they were giving him despite Beth’s struggling as she was hauled back inside, and McKinley’s body jerking at their feet. Through the tears swimming in her eyes, Mel saw: the guards weren’t defending him anymore, only themselves.
No matter what, the mayor would die, die soon, and die badly. She wasn’t going to let those men get him first, though. He was hers. Burning his supercilious grin into her memory, she turned on her heel and strode back to McKinley’s cottage with her nerves crackling and fire in her veins.
3
“I know how this works,” James said, standing over the quivering, gagged figure upon the palette. “And I know you do, as well.” He crouched slowly, careful not to break his level gaze.
A week ago, he wouldn’t have thought he could pull this off: the cold-blooded killer act. But right now, there wasn’t a shred of doubt left in him: he would make this man believe he’d be cut into tiny pieces.
Are you sure that isn’t exactly what you are going to do to him, anyway? muttered a voice deep inside.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered—
Liar, answered that secret voice, for he had strode across the room to pick up a pair of shears. Returning to the man’s side, he bent anew, bringing the instrument into plain sight.
—“But I will, if I have to.”
“I’d start talking really quick,” Lucian said from the bottom of the stairs. “He might come off all peaceful and highbrow at first, but you don’t know what he’s done to people down here. It gets…” His face contorted into a ghastly mask so wholly unlike him that, at any other time, James would have laughed. “It gets pretty ugly,” he finished with a whisper.
The man looked James up and down disbelievingly, yet his entire body shook upon the palette as James leaned closer.
“I’ll start with your fingers,” James said after some mock contemplation. “I don’t think you value your face all that much, but a man without hands isn’t much good to anyone.”
The man thrashed, but he was stuck fast. James seized his hands, which were bound at the wrists, and drew them up so that the man could see them.
Where am I going with this?
He had no idea. He just knew he couldn’t stop, or the illusion would be broken.
“I’m going to ask a few questions, and you’re going to answer them. You tell me what I want to know, and you go free. It’s that simple. Sound fair?”
Jesus, I sound like…
Like one of the Bad Guys.
All they had of the Old World was their art, the combined media of generations; a fantastical imprint of their lives, where good and bad were clearly separated. Light and dark. James’s instincts rang like a gong to that sharp divide, but now he saw it was but a fantasy. In the cartoon world of heroes and villains, there was no doubt or anguish—none of the awful instability and morphing face that was morality in the real world.
He was on shaky ground.
The man grunted until James poked his fingers into his mouth and plucked the gag away. He made to speak, but James seized his face around his lips and squeezed hard.
“You’re used to being the one in control. I bet you’re feeling that you can’t give in without putting up some kind of fight, throwing some insults at me, wasting my time. Let me tell you this: stalling is n
ot part of the deal. I’ll ask questions, and you’ll answer them. Anything else, and pieces of you start going missing. We clear?”
His staring eyes bored into James, but when James released him slowly, he said nothing.
“Why did they take her?” James said.
The man was silent a moment longer, then threw his gaze over to the far wall. “The mayor’s tired of the insolent bitch. I don’t know why he kept her around so long. I’d have kicked her into the dirt a long time ago.” His eyes filled with malice as he turned back to James. “It’s you that turned the tables. The mayor could take her crap when only he had to stomach it, but she showed him up in front of you—and us. Now he knows he won’t be top dog for long.” His yellow, crooked teeth glinted in the lamplight. “Congratulations, boy, you’ve killed your sweetheart.”
James gripped the shears so tight he thought his hands might break, but he kept his temper, just.
“He’s waiting for us, isn’t he?”
“We got him thinking you was going to cross him the first chance you got. As soon as he sent the girl, we knew all we had to do to set him off was make him think you wanted to steal her away from him.”
“Malverston knew about us?”
“Him? The mayor’s blinder than a mole. He don’t see nothing but his own wants. But we saw what you really are.” The man cackled. “What, you think you were so smart that you could hide it from us? Like it wasn’t written all over your faces? We saw, boy. To get rid of him, all we had to do was let you two play your games and whisper what we saw into his ear. Once he got mad enough, the town would tear him down for us.”
“Letting all this slip easy, aren’t you?” Lucian said. “Why should we believe that?”
“Because there’s nothing you can do about it,” the man said. “Go ahead, go be heroes. He’ll cut off her head while you walk into the ambush. Then the town will take him all the sooner. Or you can stay here and let her be her crazy bitch self until he kills her anyway.” He shrugged. “Same result. We win.”
Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) Page 16