by Tim Lebbon
Then she seemed to slump. She drew in a deep, gasping breath, then looked around them, wide-eyed and terrified.
“Sammi?”
“We have to run,” Sammi said.
“We can’t run. Angela’s badly hurt, Dastion can barely walk, and I’m not sure—”
“Vince!” She came forward and grabbed his shirt, ignoring his broken arm and his groan of pain. He recognised the staggering strength in the young girl, and the undeniable alienness. She was more fairy than human now. She was terrifying. “We have to run.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s coming back.”
* * *
She realises that she cannot have the girl. She’s become too strong too quickly, and she understands that the Fold is not a place for a young fairy. She could try to take her by force, but there would be no love in that, and no future. And eventually the girl would become stronger than her.
If she is destined to spend eternity on her own in the Fold, she will need food.
And she will need to leave her mark so that no one tries to follow.
32
Dastion carried Angela, hobbling on his bad leg, grim faced but determined. His beard was heavy with blood. Bone went ahead with Dastion’s heavy pike held across his chest. Vince kept close to Dastion, and Sammi was sometimes behind him, sometimes lost in the trees, a shadow avoiding the rising sun. Dawn coloured the horizon and it was beautiful, and the colour of spilled blood.
They passed a crash site where a helicopter had come down. It had blasted a hole in the forest, splintering trees and gouging a furrow in the soil. Shards and burning fragments were scattered around. Half of one rotor had slammed into a tree and hung metres above the ground like a giant axe. The whole area smelled of fuel and cooked flesh.
When they heard a group of soldiers approaching, Sammi came close and told them to huddle around. Vince saw the pain and tiredness in her eyes, and the frustration as she tried to cast the same sleek spell she’d used to hide them from Mallian down in the valley. She snorted in frustration. She was glancing at Bone and, as her shoulders slumped in defeat, she outright stared at him.
“Try,” she said.
“What?”
“We don’t have long. They’re coming through the trees, up from the valley, driving Kin before them. They’re scared and they’ll shoot us on sight. Try!”
“I don’t know...” he said, but when he looked at Vince, Vince saw that he did know very well. Bone knew what he was. He probably always had.
Sammi reached out and held his hand, a surprisingly gentle gesture from the girl who had become so distant. “I’ll help if I can,” she said.
Vince felt the distance growing around him, a vagueness, and even though they were huddled so close they could all touch, the others became ambiguous shapes in the dawning day. Soon after, a dozen soldiers hurried past. He could not make them out properly, but they were running instead of walking, and their manner seemed more panicked than organised. He wasn’t even sure they were all carrying weapons.
After they had passed, he heard a long, slow sigh from Bone, and the world closed in around them again. Bone smiled, looking into the middle distance. Sammi squeezed his hand once and then let go. No one said anything as they continued across the hillside, aiming upwards but avoiding the route the soldiers had taken.
In a couple of places they saw soldiers through the trees and in clearings, huddled around bodies on the ground. None seemed eager to approach the Kin they had killed or wounded. Perhaps each of them was reliving childhood dreams and nightmares, and forming new ones to haunt their adult imaginations.
When they were close enough to see, Vince made out something common in all of their expressions—fear. He thought that was a good thing. If they were afraid, perhaps they would not feel so inclined to go after the Kin.
But he knew that was a vain hope. After what had happened here, the Kin were now out in the open. Mallian might have failed, but in a way his dream of Ascent had been seeded and bloomed here. A slower Ascent than he’d wanted, but an exposure nonetheless. Footage of the fight would be analysed, kept secret, inevitably leaked onto the net, and the whole world would see a mothman taking down an Apache attack helicopter, a pixie caving in the skull of a soldier, and other strange creatures killing and running and rejoicing in a newfound freedom.
Just a few minutes after they started uphill away from the greyness of Longford behind and below them, a massive detonation reverberated around the valley. Breathing hard, Vince and the others came to a halt on a rocky outcropping and looked back down into the valley.
Where the old town of Longford lay, a fire bloomed. It was a strange fire, gushing horizontally from a fault in the air, not vertically as if from an explosion. Vince knew that this was not something the military had done, but the act of the fairy.
Grace was furious, and she was illustrating that fury in flames.
“Run,” he said. The conflagration spread quickly, powering across the landscape as if forced from a giant blowtorch. Wind roared before it, stirring up dust into swirling tornadoes, dark twisters that caught dawn’s early light and then burst aflame as dust turned to fire.
“Up the hill,” Bone said. “Up!”
“No more running,” Sammi said. “It’s too late. She’s here, it’s happening, and we can’t outrun whatever she intends to do now. All I can do is protect us if I can.”
Vince did not doubt her ability to protect them all.
The conflagration spread, becoming more furious as it expanded, scorching the air and setting alight everything it touched. Even the silt seemed to erupt into flames, and soon the entire valley floor was a blazing scar upon the land. The fire struck the river and the water exploded into a great, steaming geyser blasting water, rock and soil skyward. Vince hoped Shashahanna had escaped the flames. She’d probably disappeared into the shadows along with some of the other surviving Kin.
Waves of superheated air started to reach them, taking their breath away. Sammi cooled them. Smoke caught in their lungs, and Sammi gave them fresh air. It all seemed effortless, and Vince realised her inability to hide them earlier had been feigned, so that Bone could find his true self. Yet with each act he saw something sad in her eyes, as if she knew that every magical step she took carried her further and further away from who she had once been.
They saw a Humvee downhill to their right, crashing a path up between the trees with several soldiers hanging onto its exterior. The fire swept past it and consumed it with a dull, inaudible explosion.
Many smaller shapes ran, scampered, and fell before the rising flames and were swallowed up. Vince could no longer tell the difference between Kin and human.
“When will it stop?” he asked.
“Maybe she’s burning the whole world,” Angela said. Still nursed in Dastion’s strong arms, she rested her head against his chest and watched.
“Not quite,” Sammi said. “Even she doesn’t have that much power.”
“Look,” Bone said, pointing downhill. “Look!”
“Oh, no,” Vince said, because the shape rushing at them between the trees was unmistakable. Its limbs were thin, its movements jerky but strong, and even with the light and fire filling the valley he could see the glimmering yellow spark of its eyes.
“That’s my father,” Bone said, and he did not hesitate. Without pause, and without once looking back, he left Sammi’s protection and dashed downhill, dodging between trees and heading directly for the Kovo-infected Mohserran.
Vince tensed to go after him, unsure whether he was going to hold him back or help him grapple with the selkie and bring it down. But Angela somehow reached out and grasped his arm, despite her injuries, and her eyes bore into his. Don’t leave me ever again, they said.
He watched Bone sprinting downhill. Now fully exposed to the waves of heat rolling up the hillside, his clothes began to singe and smoke, and he waved his hands at his head as if his hair was already aflame.
“He
’ll expect us to go with him,” Vince said, feeling a terrible shame at leaving the man to tackle the infected Kin on his own.
“No, he won’t,” Sammi said. “He didn’t look back even once. This is what he came here for.”
Bone shimmered in his vision, and for a moment Vince thought it was heat haze. Then he realised that he had truly found himself. As Mohserran saw him and ran at him, Bone became sleek, slipping between trees as he darted past the Kin and sprinted downhill.
For a second Mohserran stood rooted to the spot, glancing left and right as if trying to catch something from the corner of its eye. Then Bone appeared again down the slope and closer to the flames.
That was the last Vince saw of them. Bone the son, running towards flesh-searing fire. Mohserran the father, changed and made monstrous, chasing him as the conflagration grew in strength and violence.
Flames boiled and rolled, rising up the hillside like glaring water refilling the emptied reservoir. Sammi kept them sheltered from the effects, but around them leaves shrivelled on branches, bark was singed, and grass withered and died. Even beyond the scope of the flames, the effects of Grace’s furious return to the world were being felt.
The advancing fire eventually slowed and stopped, and as the sun broke the horizon and cast its rays across a whole new world, the lake of fire began to settle. Its level became constant, a little higher than the reservoir had been before and scorching its shores, burning trees and undergrowth, sending plumes of smoke spiralling skyward in chaotic thermals. A column of smoke hung above the valley, spreading into a huge mushroom cloud that caught the most beautiful sunrise Vince had ever seen.
“It’s staying like that?” Vince asked.
“Who knows,” Sammi said. She smiled. “She’s certainly made her mark.”
Vince held Angela’s hand and she squeezed back.
“I feel like shit,” she said.
“You look it.”
“Nice,” Dastion said.
“We still don’t know what’s happened to them all,” Vince said. “They could still be a danger.”
“I don’t think so,” Sammi said. “They’re in chaos.”
“How can you know?” Angela asked.
“Because I can tell you who escaped and who didn’t,” Sammi said. “If I closed my eyes and really concentrated, I think I could see where they all are now, hiding or running.”
“Or caught by the military?” Vince asked.
“Oh, very few of the humans survived the fire,” Sammi said. Vince was shocked by her dismissive use of the word “human”. She’d used it without even realising what she’d said.
“So which ones?” Vince asked. He was thinking of Mallian, even though he’d witnessed the Nephilim and the fairy flicker out of existence. There one moment, gone the next, slipping through the briefest of portals created by the blink of a fairy’s eye.
“Thorn the pixie is still running,” Sammi said. She was silent and contemplative for a while, and Vince thought perhaps she was remembering the cruel deeds she had seen the pixie perform. “Shashahanna crawled over the ruined dam and swam down the river beyond. She’s gone too far for me to see. Fellian died at the river. Two of Mallian’s Kin held her down and drowned her. She and her partner adopted three children and lived in Ottawa. They only have one mother now, but Fellian always remembered them, even though she found her real life in the Fold.”
“Having a new life doesn’t mean you shed your old one,” Dastion said.
“A harpy is still circling the valley, high up, bloodied but delighted. Its name is Foxon, and it once ate a princess in front of her family, and killed torturers in an ancient war. Others died in the flames. I sense them, but I can’t fix their names or their histories. They’re just shades now. Ghosts. Like most Kin who have ever lived.”
“Bone and his father?” Vince asked.
“Their story is finished,” she said, and as she looked out across the valley her eyes were filled with fire.
* * *
Bone’s skin was stretched and scorched and felt like it would split and burst aflame. His clothing smoked, and he could smell the tart tang of burning hair. He ran past smouldering trees, and piles of fallen leaves and sticks that had ignited, heading downhill towards the lake of fire where once had been his home. He sleeked past Mohserran and kept running, because he knew there was only one way he could lure his father to his end. This was his chance, now. This was the final chapter of his story. He had returned to Longford to find whatever might remain of his father, and though Mohserran ran after him—screeching, growling, promising pain at the end of his ragged claws or infection-laden teeth—Bone knew that in truth nothing remained.
Tears blurred his vision but the heat quickly cleared them away.
He heard rapid footsteps behind him and sleeked again, changing direction and then revealing himself once more, hearing Mohserran skidding after him. And for a while, unexpected and delightful, Bone was a child again, running across the hillsides while Mohserran chased him with a friendly growl and a scary roar. The trees were full and lush, the valley wide and bathed in beautiful sunshine, and somewhere uphill stood a hollow oak that had not yet become shelter for a small, terrified child. Everything was as it should be, and Bone called out a cry of unbridled delight.
That is how every day should be, he thought, and he turned his face up to the sky as the flames came closer.
He was finding it hard to breathe, and he could hear Mohserran closing on him, clawed feet pounding at the ground, disease-laden breath panting in and out, in and out. He could not risk a glance behind because he knew where he was going, and to not reach his destination was unthinkable.
He didn’t want to die beneath his father’s teeth.
He sleeked one last time and leapt down into a narrow ravine, switching left and heading for where the crack in the ground ended. Where once this place would have offered a wide view of the valley, there was now only fire. The air surged and simmered with heat haze, and every breath Bone took scorched his lungs. His vision blurred. His father was close.
At the last moment he skidded to a stop, turned around, and opened his arms wide.
Maybe he’ll know me now, Bone thought, but as Mohserran barrelled into him there was no recognition in that mad, wretched creature’s eyes. Only hunger.
Bone stepped quickly backwards and closed his arms around his father. Teeth snapped close to his face. Claws raked his back. Yellow fire burned in Mohserran’s eyes, reflecting the whole world.
When Bone felt only air beneath his feet, he pulled his father closer and tighter as they fell into the fire.
33
Angela opened her eyes and Vince was there with her, sitting beside the bed, eyes closed and snoring softly. She looked around in a panic. Her breath came faster, and she peered at the closed door, expecting to see the hulking shape of a policeman standing guard.
“Hey, hey,” Vince said. Her troubled fidgeting had stirred him. “Take it easy.”
“Where are we?”
“Hospital.”
“But—”
“You needed attention,” he said. “We both did.” He tipped a bottle of water against her lips and she took a few grateful sips.
“They’ll arrest me. Put me in jail.”
Vince smiled. “If they did, you could blame it on the Angel of Death.”
“Huh?”
“That’s what they’re calling Mallian. Some of the press is, anyway, and the name’s stuck.”
“Angel of Death. He’d like that.” She tried to calm herself, but the fear was still there that after all this, her fate lay in a prison cell for the London murders that Mallian had committed.
“How bad am I?” she asked.
Vince’s eyes flickered to the side, then back to her. “I thought I’d lost you. You stopped breathing three times. They brought you back, but I’m not sure... I think Sammi had something to do with it, too.”
“My... legs?”
“Battered,
broken. It’s your spine that’s the problem.” He paused, frowning. “They don’t know if you’ll walk again.”
Angela closed her eyes and took in a deep breath.
“But Sammi!” Vince said. “She thinks she’ll be able to help, but just not yet. Not until she’s really found herself.”
“Heal me?” She opened her eyes again, sad to see tears in Vince’s.
“I hope so. That’s what she thinks.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s outside somewhere. She comes in sometimes, looks at you, then leaves again.” He looked uncomfortable.
“What?” Angela asked.
“She’s not really Sammi anymore.”
Angela felt a profound sadness, but also a strange sense of release. She’d taken Sammi’s wellbeing onto her own shoulders after rescuing her from the Folded Land, but now it seemed that relationship had switched.
“She’s making sure they look after us without telling the authorities,” Angela said.
“Yeah. She calls it ‘subtle suggestion’, but she says it can’t last long. We’ll have to leave soon. They’ve patched you up, pumped you full of drugs, sewn up your wounds, and we both have these.” He lifted his arm to show his cast, and she felt the same around her left arm, and saw the cast on her left leg. She couldn’t feel it.
“I should have died,” she said.
“But you didn’t.” Vince leaned over to hug her tight. She felt the drip of his tears, and the room blurred as she cried her own.
“How long have we been here?”
“Two days,” Vince said. “You’ve also fractured some ribs, bruised your kidneys, and you’ve got cuts and scrapes and a minor concussion.”
“Did I break any nails?”
Vince snorted laughter. It was good to hear, and good to inspire.
“What about the others?”
He pulled back from her and wiped his eyes. The old Vince—the Vince of London, before she knew he was working for Fat Frederick Meloy and mixing with creatures she could never have imagined—would have been embarrassed at those tears. This new Vince was unashamed.