A diamond pin, the exact size and shape of the insignia of the Kings Guards.
The sign of a traitor.
This then was how her world ended.
“Carol.”
It’s just like I told that girl who came before you. He has to be stopped! We can hold him here!
“Carol?”
“It’s okay, honey, I’ve got you.”
Six opened her eyes among the rattling chains and the stench of the sewers, and there she was struggling to release her.
“Carol, it’s you!”
Carol Lee, the Captain of the Kings Guards, her former sergeant, picking at the locks on her feet with a hair clip.
“I’m here now,” she muttered. “You’re safe.”
Click!
Lord Truth’s former lover, the insignia on her left lapel ripped, one of the diamonds missing.
“It was really you?” Six blinked, her right wrist already loose and throbbing, her left still dangling from a manacle. “You betrayed him.”
“What?” Carol looked up just as a second click signalled that both her feet were free.
“Yessssssss!”
And with a great howl that echoed through the tunnels, the werewolf stepped into the thin light, his body bent over hind legs as his tail thrashed, his new claw crashing down on the would be rescuer, thumping her to the ground.
“Ackkk!” she choked.
Instinctively, Six turned towards him, pivoting on her left foot and pulling on the chains to deliver a sweeping kick to his snarling face.
Thwack!
The werewolf stumbled backwards, clutching at his eye as he turned to her. “So, finally you remember yourself, you are a warrior, yesssss?” he grinned. “Finally you will spill your gutsssssss.”
And then he swiped, the knight falling into the web of chains as his claws ripped through her stomach.
“Arghhhh!” Six felt her warm blood gushing onto her knees as she collapsed on the floor beside Carol.
“Now where are the glassesssss?” the beast raged, preparing to stamp on her face...
Just as Carol swept up her spear, plunging it into his thigh.
The werewolf yelped in pain as the captain hurled herself towards him, the spear again in her hand. But the beast punched her, launching her high into the air with a mighty uppercut, smashing her into a barrage of lead pipes.
“You think you can kill me, traitor?” he yelled. “You don’t have the right.”
And he beat her, his claws raining down on her in a frenzy, the fallen spear splintering under his foot.
“No!” Six screamed, lurching towards him, but her shackled wrist wrenched her back.
And then she saw the arrowhead on the floor. Six grasped it and thread it into the lock as the werewolf picked up the crumpled body of the captain, hauling her above his head, plunging her down onto his knee, her back breaking with a sickening SNAP!
“NO!”
His red eyes blazed and he tossed the woman’s limp body aside, his own chest heaving.
Click!
“Now, it’s your turn, yessssss?” He returned to Six, the back of his fist smashing through her face, tearing the broken spear from her grip.
“No more gamessss,” he pulled her towards him, his claws shredding her dress as he clutched her arms. “Tell me, where are the glassesssss?”
Six could smell his putrid breath, his snout wrinkling as his huge jaws parted, his tongue slathering, his gums drawn back over foul yellow teeth.
“Never,” she said, more out of obstinance now than hope, her legs clashing against his matted fur, her body trembling in his grasp.
And she looked up.
At a shadow dropping from the drain opening metres above her. A silhouette caressed in twinkling stars, a silver cutlass in one hand, a white shield in another.
It was Tucker.
Chapter Thirty-Five
TUCKER had already fallen thirty feet before he realised he was heading straight for the pipes. He pulled the shield in close and scrunched his knees together, bouncing off the iron chutes with a massive CLANG! before collapsing on top of the werewolf, sending them both sprawling, the beast releasing Six as the broken ducts showered them in a wave of rusty water.
Tucker rolled to his feet, his trainers slipping on the slick surface of the sewers, his eyes slowly growing accustomed to the lack of light.
“Six, you okay?” he shouted.
“Y-yeah,” the girl stuttered from somewhere near the floor. “Nice move.”
“Thanks,” Tucker called unsteadily, his focus trained on the two spots of red rising from the ground, inching higher and higher until they stood head and shoulders above him.
Tucker twirled the silver cutlass in his right hand. “Remember me?” he asked the enormous black shape as the demonic eyes bore down on him.
“Yesssssss,” came the reply, before a fist like a sledgehammer crashed towards his temple.
Tucker blocked most of the punch with the shield but not enough to stop himself toppling backwards. He regained his feet and returned with the sword, thrusting it towards his opponent but only finding air as the werewolf retreated, straight into the path of Six.
Thwack! Crack! Slap!
Six hit him with a combination of kicks and punches, forcing him into the web of chains before the wolf smacked her across the face with a volley so fierce it sent her flying.
CRACK!
“Six!” Tucker yelled, as the werewolf flung a length of the chain towards him.
“What the cheese?”
The steel links wrapped themselves about his wrist and the sword’s hilt before jerking the blade from his grasp.
“Shi...” Tucker began but the beast had already pounced, his great arms grabbing at the shield and tearing it aside as Tucker stepped back, defenceless now, the monster still advancing.
Tucker began bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, before jumping into a rising back kick.
His opponent anticipated the attack but wasn’t fast enough to avoid it. The blow glanced off the rubber tape he had used to bandage his chest following Tucker’s assault the night before.
The wound was still raw.
The werewolf yelped in surprise but Tucker kept moving, his brown eyes locked onto those of the monster, his feet constantly shifting from side to side.
The beast lunged but Tucker ducked to his left, evading the claw and ramming a punch back into the wound, feeling the tape crumple beneath his fist.
“Arggghhh!” the wolf roared, stumbling backwards but not before Tucker launched a devastating roundhouse just as Jim Kelly had taught him, spinning in the air to release the kick, his sneaker breaking through the beast’s open jaw with a SNAP!
Tucker then rained down blows on his foe, climbing over the monster’s crippled hulk, his arms swinging wildly, his gloved hands splintering teeth, breaking ribs...
Yes, I’ve got him, he thought, I’ve freaking got him!
Just as a wet, matted knee came cracking into his pelvis and two fetid claws ripped at his throat, sending links of chain mail flying, the beast grappling for his neck before hurling him aside, his head crashing face first into the sewer wall.
............
Neon watched as three white arrows danced and span through the Other Worlds, like leaves whipped up by a passing train, sprinkling colour in their wake.
A whole swathe of the island had been filled in, no longer black and white but resplendent in shades of purple, peach and pomegranate. Her father conducted the sprites’ movements as they dipped in and out of the jungle, while Neon basked in the warmth of her mother’s arms.
“Have you come to save me, mother?” she asked, looking up into Serena Way’s heavy brown eyes, her hair floating on a breeze of hazel blossoms and wisps of magnolia.
“Of course we have, sweetheart,” her mother smiled with delight.
All around them the children played on the beach, the curly haired Tim jumping out of a rock pool when an orange cla
m nipped at his bare feet. “Ouch!” he shouted.
“Be careful, children,” Jon Way warned before turning his attention to the Pirate Prince, whose hands and legs were cuffed by vines as he stood, tied to a tree at the base of the clearing.
“I should kill you,” the magician whispered, his voice low so the Seekers couldn’t hear him.
The prince smiled, his face drawn in a pale grey like the fog that clouded his green eyes. His clothes were ripped and his skin covered in pink scratches. “If you could, you would have already, but I’m afraid it will take more than a few glorified crayons and some psychotic bird to kill me.”
He nodded at Buckley, perched on a prickly pair as if on guard duty, nibbling at a string of spaghetti.
“Maybe,” Jon agreed before pointing to Oric who crawled beneath them, his eyes closed as he drew strange shapes in the sand. “But he could do it.”
The prince shuffled uneasily under the thick coils of yellow rope that bound his midriff to the bark at his back. “Perhaps.”
Jon Way watched as the children splashed through the azure sea, leaping over the causeway at its edge. He gazed at Neon as Serena stroked her hair by the ruined sandcastle, a hummingbird circling high overhead in a flash of emerald and crimson.
None of the Seekers had ever seen a beach before, let alone an ocean in parts blue, and then black.
Amber, with the pretty red bow in her spiralling locks, fell over and grazed her knees on some pebbles, giggling as she evaded Makoto’s outstretched hand in a game of tag.
“My daughter tells me you’re an emissary,” Jon turned back to the prince. “An emissary for the Devil.”
The Pirate Prince attempted a shrug amid his bindings. “My master goes by many names,” he said. “As do I.”
“And what is it you and your master want with us?” Jon Way asked, his face rigid.
“You’ll find out,” the prince’s eyes seemed to clear, magenta flushing his cheeks as he smirked, “sooner or later.”
The magician felt his temper flaring but checked it as three of the children ran past, chasing his arrows as they continued on their quest, each of the Seekers brushing against nettles, tripping in golden sand, snagging their clothes on roots and cacti.
“Careful children!” Serena berated them, hastening up the beach towards him, Neon’s exhausted body in her arms. “Jon, we have to go. We’re running out of time.”
“Yes, you should go,” the prince repeated, nodding towards the television set where the face of the werewolf, wild with fury, could still be seen. “While you still can.”
............
“Tucker?”
Six staggered to reach the knight’s apprentice only to feel another punch rattling around her skull.
“It ssssseems another of your friends will die, yesssss, because you will not tell me what you know?”
The werewolf’s voice was hoarse, his breath coming in spurts as he crouched over Tucker’s fallen body, but Six could barely stand. Her vision was blurring and her eyes swelling into giant blisters.
She could no longer fight.
“Okay, okay, I’ll tell you what you want,” she moaned as the monster dropped to all fours and approached her, his snout twitching. “Just leave him alone.”
Six felt the beast’s rank nails once again clasp her upper arms, the air crushed from her lungs as his grip tightened. “Where are the glassesssss?” he panted. “Yesssss, tell me where they are and the boy shall live.”
The glasses, she wondered vaguely, why are they so special?
And she remembered hiding them, the glasses that Lord Truth had given her. She remembered hiding them not more than two days ago.
“They’re in the offices of Al’s Bar,” she said, defeated. “Buried in one of the drawers.”
And the wolf grinned, his own eyes squinting, bleeding from the blows the two teenagers had levelled at him, his lower jaw hanging loosely as he nodded his head. “Good, very good, yessssss?” he drooled as he held her higher. “It’s over now child.”
Six glanced down at Carol Lee’s body, not moving, not breathing, and then over at Tucker’s, slumped groggily at the foot of the breached pipes.
She could feel the tears welling up inside of her as her chest began to explode. “I don’t understand,” she railed, her feet thudding harmlessly against the beast’s fur. “All this pain, all this death. Why?”
“He must be avenged, yessssss?” And the monster opened his mouth wider, saliva spilling from his tongue and dripping on her face as it closed over her.
Yes, she thought, because we betrayed and abandoned him, and I left him to die. I didn’t save him. I just ran away.
And her legs stopped kicking against his rancid pelt.
It’s my fault.
And for the last time she smelt the stench of his putrid breath.
And she stopped struggling, her body limp, and she twisted the silver cutlass within her grasp and plunged it into his heart.
“Bite me,” she said.
............
Jon Way turned to the television set just as Philip, his Zorro mask high on his forehead, ran through the picnic area, chased by Devak, both boys squishing sandwiches and cakes underfoot.
The screen was blank, just static.
“He’s dead,” Oric said from the sand below them.
“Yes,” the prince agreed. “You’ll regret that.”
Oric spoke painfully as he looked up. “You have failed, spirit. Your host is dead and yet one conspirator still lives.”
And, for a moment, the prince shrank, his skin creasing, his body aging. “What? No, they can’t, who?”
“One was hidden,” the boy frowned, “from nearly all of us.”
“And yet you knew?”
Oric shook his head miserably. “Not until it was far too late to make a difference.”
“But how?” his frustration mounting, Jack Bellingham struggled against his bonds.
Jon smiled. “Maybe now you’ll take us more seriously?” he tried.
But the prince snorted. “You fool, you’ve no idea what’s at stake here, do you? You’re no adversary, magician. This child shows more guile than you.”
Jon Way grit his teeth. “I do not wish to be an adversary but use my skills for peace, spirit, not war.”
“Yet war is upon you, whether you like it or not,” the prince took a moment to hold his gaze. “Which means there’s no reason for me to stay here any longer.”
He looked pointedly at Neon, his green eyes sparkling. “Once you’ve left, you can never come back here, you know that, don’t you?” he said tartly.
“Maybe,” Neon replied drowsily.
Buckley screeched as the gleam in the prince’s eyes seemed to pervade his entire being, caressing his shoulders, coursing along his arms and trailing to his feet, until everything about him glittered.
And then he disappeared, the coil of rope falling on the sand below them in a glistening heap.
Serena gripped her husband’s shoulder. “Jon, we must leave this place, Neon doesn’t have much time!”
Jon looked at his daughter, barely conscious. “I agree,” he nodded. “Oric?”
The boy had finished drawing in the sand and sat back to reveal a small map of the island, his wide brow pulsing, a puddle of dribble forming by the teddy bear at his feet.
“This island speaks to me. It has shown me its gateway,” he mumbled, his voice barely audible, “but your wife is right, we must hurry!”
“Where?” Serena screeched, Neon’s head lolling in her arms.
“Where the tide of the Other Worlds is held back,” Oric shuddered. “A portal of the island’s own making. A lagoon. Here,” and he pointed to the picture of a waterfall.
“Let’s go,” Jon plucked Oric from the floor, the boy’s eyes flickering and the teddy bear held tightly within his grasp.
“Children!” Serena called and quickly they all began running along the beach and into the jungle, the animals scattering
in their wake.
“With our anchor in place...” Oric gasped, his breath shortened to agonising bursts, “we should be guided home but... but something is wrong...” he choked. “My body... I shouldn’t have trusted...”
The three arrows dipped and span around them as they sped between the trees, all eyes of the forest upon them before they cut back onto the beach, and into the path of the waterfall - the barrier between the island’s raging heart and the ocean of the Other Worlds.
“Jon?” Serena asked as Buckley flew on ahead, high into the black sky before diving down into the great pool, its colour already retreating, its waves becoming white.
“I hope this works,” Jon shouted over the roar of the falls, gripping his wife’s hand as the children gathered in a line, holding onto one another.
“Jump!”
And, for a moment, all Neon could see was white.
Cold, pure and silent. It held her mind suspended like a vacuum, as if her body had never existed.
A blank moment in history.
An empty page.
And then the thoughts came rushing around her, words clamouring like an angry whirlwind, a blast of trumpets, black and terrifying, causing cracks to tear at her soul.
“WHERE AM I?” it screamed.
“THE KING!”
“DON’T TRUST THE KING!”
“HE IS THE KILLER!”
And then she fell.
............
Neon woke up gasping for air in her hospital bed.
She sat, her limbs sore and her head throbbing, her throat parched. She was covered from head to toe in a thin white slime.
“Neon?” And there were her mother’s arms gathering her in once more, her brown skin soaked in the same milk. “You’re really here, you’re really back.”
Buckley screeched, this time perched on the wooden chair, flinging strings of the substance around the room. Brian the teddy bear sat sopping on the floor beneath her, plastered with the stuff.
“Is everyone all right?” Jon Way scooped his eyes clear of the liquid and pulled himself up from the circle of sleeping figures. “How long have we been out?”
Philip pulled off his mask and sucked the jelly away from his thumb, his friends still dozing around him. “I’m thirsty,” he complained.
The Last Days Page 29