Charlie’s lip curled. “What makes you think I’m doing anything for you?”
Jason squared his shoulders but James held up a hand to quell him. “Don’t forget why we picked you and your father up in the first place. They starved you out, stole your home, and they’d do it again if it meant holding onto what we’ve all already lost.”
“So what? It won’t bring my father back.”
“No, it won’t. But it will stop them making more orphans while they chase the Old World’s shadow.”
Lucian felt Charlie’s eyes burning him again, but couldn’t look at him anymore. A few seconds later, he heard Charlie tramp outside with a curse.
A moment later, a great many more footfalls became audible. Lucian tried to peer through the crack in the entrance, but it was quickly thrown aside again, and a group of people were shunted inside. His guts, turned to slurry, slithered up under his tongue when Norman, Robert, Richard, DeGray and a whole troop of others from back home were marched in with their hands bound. They each in turn registered shock at the sight of him, but Lucian gained control of himself with colossal effort and hardened his brow, shaking his head minutely. They got the message; their faces had grown blank by the time they had been wrestled into kneeling positions beside Lucian.
If this was how bad things were, they needed to be solid, make it look like they’d planned this.
In moments the tent was busy with over a dozen captives. A good number, if they could get the upper hand.
“I hope this isn’t my bloody rescue mission,” he muttered.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Robert said, kneeling beside him.
“We thought you were dead,” Richard whispered on his other side.
“Shut up,” Lucian said.
“Screw you. I came here for Scots, not your sorry arse.”
Lucian blinked at Richard’s stony expression and leaned across to look at DeGray. “What happened to your star pupil?”
John DeGray, rotund and sweaty as always, shrugged. “Turns out one of us has a spine.”
Lucian smiled when he saw Norman beyond Robert, but Norman was staring up at Jason with a snarl.
Jason sauntered up to him, this time not even looking to James for permission. “How’s the chest?”
Norman spat up into his face. Lucian could have laughed if he hadn’t felt so hollowed out. The kid had been saving up a good hock that basted Jason’s face and bandaged cheek with a stringy lather of spittle and snot.
“Nice,” Lucian said.
“Glad you’re alive,” Norman said without taking his eyes off Jason. Then he addressed the bespittled wolf standing over him. “Feeling better all the time.”
Jason wiped away the spittle with a disturbing lack of disgust. “You sure you want to waste your time?” he said to James. “I could finish this now.” He waggled his knife.
“Yes. Leave them.”
Jason shrugged. “Little cat-and-mouse never hurt anyone, I guess.”
“Go help Charlie. He’ll need it.”
Jason snorted. He was grinning right up until it became obvious to everyone that James was being serious. Then the smile slowly faded from Jason’s mouth, and he grunted. “Fine,” he said, licking his lower lip. Lucian sensed his bottled rage even from six feet away. “Fine.”
He stalked past them all and exploded from the tent, waving for the last guards to leave with him. James waited until it was just him and the people of the mission. Casually, he placed the pigeon on his shoulder and crouched to pick up the pistol Lucian had dropped, glancing at Robert and nodding as though words of significance had passed between them.
“I was just starting to like him,” Lucian said. “Where’d you get your dog, James?”
“The same place I found all these people: where you left them.”
“Don’t tell me you found that one curled up in a hole begging and pleading like some charity case. I know born killers as well as you. He’s been looking to hurt anything that breathes since the cradle. I suppose that’s why you can keep him on a leash: all this is the perfect excuse for people like him. Carte blanche for genocide. Congratulations.”
“He has his uses.”
“I bet.”
Robert, at James’s head-height even though he crouched on his knees instead of being sat on a stool, seemed to expand, somehow taking up more space as he said, “So it’s you. You’re the one.”
“It’s a pleasure.”
“What have you done with the rest of our people?”
“We have fires that need stoking, and blades that need sharpening.”
Norman leaned forward to catch Lucian’s eye. “You two know each other?”
Lucian’s gut twisted. “Used to.”
James caught his eye, but said nothing.
“You bastard,” Richard said. His acne-scarred face was quivering, his thin frame looking even more brittle than Lucian remembered—he had always given him a hard time, but it was only now that he realised just how young Richard was.
Shit, he’s just a kid.
Richard glowered despite his cracking voice. “Everything we sacrificed, all the progress we’ve made—”
“Richard, shut up!” John hissed, eyeing the gun with sweat rolling into his eyes. “Just shut your mouth. You’ll get us killed.”
“No!” Richard cried. “No. I don’t care.” He rounded on James. “You’ve undone everything, set us back decades. You’ll send everyone back to the stone age.”
“Yes. I will.”
“How could you? How could you cause so much pain?”
“I could ask you the same question. How many times did you stop to think about the mouths that went unfed so that you could keep rooting through libraries, fat and plump?”
“We’re fighting to make everyone’s lives better.”
“In the long run. Eventually. When the world turns for the better. That’s the mantra, isn’t it? But in the meantime, it’s fine to trample over anyone in your way?”
“At least we’re doing something.”
“So am I. I’m putting an end to the plague Cain started. What I helped him start.”
Richard said nothing.
Robert made as though to stand, dropping back only when James waggled the pistol once more. “Fine, you’re a saint. Tell someone who gives a toss. Stop playing and end it.”
James ignored him, strolling along past each of them in turn, inspecting them, until he came to stand in front of Norman. He paused and the two of them shared a look; though Norman looked confused, Lucian was impressed by the temerity of his gaze.
“I have to hand it to you, Norman. I didn’t think you could live up to all those stories Alex wrapped you up in. But here you are. You surprised me.”
“Turns out I’m full of surprises,” Norman said. “Why don’t you come a bit closer and I’ll show you.” Lucian almost jerked at how different he sounded, how powerful. He sounded like a different man altogether.
He even talks different, like a leader, like …
James is right. Just like how Alex always painted him in the stories. Give him a few days and he’ll be ten feet tall and throwing lightning bolts.
Lucian took a moment to peek at the knots binding the others.
Damn, tight.
They’d never get out of them on their own. But still his spirits were buoyed. The idiots had got themselves caught, but it hadn’t broken them. They were all raring to take some scalps.
“What are you doing, really? What’s this all about?” Lucian said.
James laughed, a harsh rasping noise. Lucian wondered what was under that balaclava. “This is about justice. And don’t bother with playing innocent. We both know nobody’s innocent here.”
“We hurt you. You’re angry; I get it. God knows, if it had been me … I’d have burned every damn thing Alex ever touched to the ground a long time ago. But I know you. You always saw what he saw. You knew the Old World held the answer. You believed in the mission—you knew it was the way
forward!”
“Take a look outside this tent. You’ll see every able body in the land setting to tear apart all that’s left of what Alexander Cain has done.”
“No, what I’ll see is madmen and criminals looking for blood, holding hostage whoever else you’ve left alive.”
“The suffering is temporary, a pinprick compared to what’s to come if the mission goes on. Because that’s what it’ll take to save the Old World—that’s what it’s always taken. A few have to be raised above the masses and treated like Gods, and all the while those under them get pounded into the mud.”
“That’s not true.”
“Tell me something, Lucian. Did Alex ever do something that wasn’t in aid of his great destiny? Did he ever do something that didn’t make you think he was willing to throw somebody—anybody—away to get the job done?” He turned to Norman. “Tell me … Did he ever ask you even once whether you wanted to have the life he made for you?”
Norman didn’t answer.
“That’s what I thought.”
“How do you know all this?” Norman grunted. “Just who the hell are you?”
“I was the Chosen One,” he said simply. “Before you, before any of your friends here, it was me with the great destiny, standing by his side.”
Lucian sighed, watching the wave of pain glaze Norman’s eyes. “You don’t remember, Norman. You got hurt. You forgot. But it’s true.”
Norman mouthed openly for a time, but eventually he shook his head. “I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Just tell us what you want. If you’re going to kill us, then do it.”
“I want to give you the choice I never had. I want to offer you the chance to stand on the right side of the line.”
Robert barked. “Sign up with you?”
“You can’t be serious,” Norman said.
Lucian squared his shoulders. “James, don’t do this. Just stop. You can still stop.”
James whirled to face him and for the first time Lucian truly saw his little brother behind those emerald eyes. “I can never stop, Lucian. Not ever,” he whispered.
“And we’ll never stand with you.”
James nodded slowly. “Then you’ll watch. You’ll watch while I put right all the wrongs.”
“I don’t believe it. You and I grew up with the people back home. You were angry enough to do some bad things, but I don’t think you could ever hurt your own family. I know you, James.”
Their eyes met for a long, burning moment, then the pistol was rising into the air, and for the first time in memory, Lucian McKay felt a chill roll along his spine.
James raised his free hand and loosened the balaclava around his face. He let it fall, and for a moment the tent was alive with a dozen gasps of terror.
It was a face cleaved of flesh. Half a face. A monstrosity.
Where cheeks should have been, there were fleshy holes, windows to a mass of lolling, uncontained tongue, teeth, and exposed jawbone. The eye sockets were sunken underneath, the structure of the skull simply gone. The remaining skin below the eye line, trailing down his neck and into his collar, was a single mass of shining scar tissue.
The jaw parted, and the reaper-like face contorted as James said, “You know me?”
Lucian had time for a single thought to run through his mind. God … God. What did we do to you?
Then he was looking into those mad green eyes once more, and he saw James’s finger depress the pistol’s trigger.
The pistol let forth thunder and blinding light. A wet crunch followed close behind his head, and he yelled in protest. “James, don’t!”
But the gun fired again, and again, and again, moving to each of the crouched figures behind him, all long the back row. Each round sent Lucian’s head spinning faster, his vision blurred. Somewhere amidst the gunfire were myriad pleas and screams. He couldn’t tell how many were of those being slaughtered, and how many were his own.
James finished his arc along the back row, then with deliberation trained the pistol at the farther end of the first row—at DeGray.
“NO!” Richard roared, throwing himself in front of John. Master and apprentice cowered against one another.
In James’s momentary pause, Lucian bellowed, “STOP, STOP, WHAT DO YOU WANT? I’LL DO ANYTHING! JUST STOP!”
James looked at him and nodded. “You’re right. He shouldn’t have to pay for his elders’ mistakes.”
Then before any of them could utter another sound, he raised the pistol an inch and fired.
John DeGray’s eyes bulged. He let out a simple, “Oh,” and crumpled into the spreading pool of the others’ blood.
“No,” Richard moaned. “No!” He crawled over to him and crouched over the rounded form of his master. “No, no, you’re fine, you’re fine.”
But Lucian could already see the professor’s empty stare, the glazed eyes, the same look he’d seen countless times in his life and haunted his dreams.
“Finish it,” Lucian said to James.
James shook his head. The hollowed horror of his exposed cheekbones tightened. “The rest of you are staying here. I want you to watch us march away and know they’re all dying, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Once you feel something like that, you see things more clearly. You see the truth.” He was backing away, and his ruined face twisted with a shadow of old pain. “You’ll see.”
Then he disappeared from sight, and they were left with the bodies and the blood and the lingering vortices of black smoke.
*
James signalled for his guard to follow and walked amongst them along the cliff edge when Jason appeared from the forest. Afar, he could hear a great clatter of stumbling feet and clanging metal.
“The boy’s doing his job,” Jason said.
“Good.”
Jason looked to the tent. “You left some of them alive?”
James didn’t answer.
“All this time you’ve been hollering about the great evil of their ways, and how we got to stop it. We burned half the sods from coast to coast to beat them down. We got their ringleaders right here in front of us. We could end this now.”
He didn’t seem perturbed, more intrigued, as though seeing James in a new light. “Or maybe you just said what had to be said for a shot at getting back at your shit-crazy big brother.”
“Are they ready?”
Jason picked at the dirt under his fingernails with his foot-long knife. “Every one of them. Just say the word. You’re sure you don’t want to finish them?”
“Leave them.”
“Fine.” Jason swaggered forth and descended the cliffside path, heading for the campfires. “More fun for me.” His voice dripped with sick delight.
James nursed the pigeon upon his shoulder, and watched as the dark hordes slowly crested the distant hills. It was time to end this.
ELEVENTH INTERLUDE
James burst out into the lacklustre daylight that lay lank and drooping on the rocks and trees, and picked out Alex’s shadow not far from where he’d left him. He didn’t stop running. His fingers curled into fists so tight that his nails cut into his palms.
Alex registered momentary surprise at the sight of him rushing forward, but then James collided with him and they both went crashing into the damp moss and heather, James bellowing all the while. He landed on top of Alex and his arms were pumping before he knew it, beating his face again and again. Stars of pain exploded along the skin of his knuckles as he made contact with nose, brow, chin and cheek, striking again and again.
He was yelling without end, hitting as though he would never stop.
And Alex just lay there and took the beating. While his skin split and his face crumpled into bloodied pulp, he didn’t raise a hand to defend himself.
“How could you?” James was yelling, wailing. His vision blurred with tears. “What have they done to her? Tell me!”
“James,” Alex said, then spluttered as James landed another blow, tearing his bottom lip. “James!”
&
nbsp; James raised his arm yet again, but this time he cried out and his fist just hovered there beside him. He choked a few times as the world span in front of him, then he said, “Tell me, now.”
Alex groaned in pain and coughed. “Malverston. The Tarbuck sister, she tried to kill him. The town rose up. He came for Beth, took her. He’s going to … make an example.”
“How long have you known?”
“James …”
“How long?”
Alex swallowed. “Since Northampton.”
James’s jaw fell ajar. By now they could have her all the way back to Newquay’s Moon. “No,” he said. “You can’t do this to me.”
“What did you find down there?” Alex said. “What happened?”
Fol and the tunnels seemed so far away now that James could barely understand the question. “Why would you do this? You didn’t even want to come here.”
“You needed to come here. We’re so close to signing the treaty. We’re so close. I needed you to have a clear head.”
“You were going to let her die.”
“The mission demands sacrifices.” Alex swallowed. “I make no apologies. I did what I’ve always done, what I had to.”
“I can’t put people I love into danger for some idea,” James said, fighting nausea.
“We have to. We have no choice.” He wheezed, spluttering blood. “It’s our destiny.”
James felt his lip curl, and backed up, rolling off him. “Not mine.”
“James!”
“Nothing’s worth her life.”
Through the pain, Alexander fixed him with a new look; James finally realised as he stumbled to his feet that it was confusion. He didn’t understand.
Alex would never understand. That was the way he had always been. It was only now that he was seeing it with clear eyes.
But he wouldn’t be that.
He ran towards their horses, and the cloud of pigeons at the distant treeline exploded into the sky.
To hell with destiny. Both of them. I’m done with madness.
Brink (The Ruin Saga Book 2) Page 40