by Richard Amos
The man came over. “What’s going on?”
That man … How could I have let this bit slip from my mind? There was something about him, something hidden. Was my power trying to speak to me?
Crystal’s face was scarlet with rage.
Greg stood up. “Let’s go.”
“No!” Crystal shrieked. “What’re your reasons for not wanting to get serious, Greg? Come on! I’m dying to know.” She spat as she spoke, spittle hitting my cheek.
“This needs to calm down,” Dean said. “Now.”
Silver began to flood his black irises. He was getting ready to strike with some mind-bending mojo.
“I wanna be with you,” Greg said. “So bad. But I … I can’t give you what you want. I’m not ready. Got too much going on right now. I’m sorry.”
“Pathetic,” she said. “Really pathetic. So you used me for fun?”
“No,” he said. “I wanted—”
“You’re a knob, mate,” the man jumped in. “But I’m glad, because now I get to show her what a real man is.”
That man …
“You wanna go outside?” Greg boomed.
“Be my fucking pleasure,” the man said.
“Calm this shit down now,” Dean said.
That man … Was that my power coming through I could hear? My God … was he a beast?
“Let your faggot friends watch me kick the shit out of you.”
Crystal said something I didn’t hear. I charged forward, delivering an almighty head-butt. The man’s nose burst open and pain shot through my forehead.
THAT MAN! the creepy female voice roared.
My hands erupted with white sparks.
Crystal screamed.
Oh, my God! He was a beast! Of course he fucking was! Dammit! I was a dick sometimes!
Chairs scraped and crashed on the tiled flooring, commotion kicking off as customers panicked, screaming in my ears.
I didn’t take my eyes off the man.
Crystal ran from the kebab shop wailing. Dean darted to the counter as cries of warning that the police were being called came from staff. He’d have to deal with Crystal later.
Greg cracked the man in the face with a punch, sending him crashing into the tables. I moved on impulse, hunger flaring, the need to kill this creature as potent as cobra venom.
“Get the fuck away from me!”
He swept his leg, tripping me. I landed hard but crawled for him. His boot struck my cheek, whipping my head back. My forehead cracked off a table leg.
Greg was on him, dragging him up by the collar. “Bastard!” Greg roared. “What were you planning on doing to her?”
He spat in Greg’s face, swinging his own punch into the side of Greg’s head, getting himself free.
It was Nay’s turn, a high-kick knocking his teeth out, followed by another which sent him flying into the wall, head cracking open. He slid down, blood leaving a red trail down the yellow paint.
“Bitch,” he said weakly.
Broken but not dead yet. I was vertical once more and got to work on him quickly, going to the place of fog and breaking his essence.
My body flushed with warmth once the kill was made. He was a tastier morsel than any of the others I’d killed.
Morsel?
Man, did my head throb, the pain so friggin’ real. And it swam. I was seeing stars. Thirty seconds was all I needed.
There were fifteen left to go, maybe …
I staggered back, leaning on a table.
“Take it easy, babe,” Nay said.
Twelve …
Eleven …
Counting made it bearable.
Ten—
The green light consumed my body before I could finish, my counting obviously off. I was energized and feeling much better mere seconds later.
“Can’t send any of that my way, can ya?” Greg said, his right cheek bleeding.
“Let’s get back to the mansion,” Nay said. “We’ll sort you out.”
We both let him throw an arm around us for support.
“Dean?” Nay called.
“I’ve got this,” he said. “I’ll have to meet you back there.”
No person in the kebab shop was making a sound.
Together, we got Greg across the road and into the backseat of the car. Nay took the wheel and pulled away.
“Bloody hell,” I said. “I was not expecting that.”
Nay picked up speed. “Dean will have to hit her with a huge dose now.”
Greg groaned. “At least we saved her from him.”
“Bastard,” I said.
“Dead and out of the way now,” Nay said.
The car cleared Rainbow Mile, heading up the incline that would eventually lead to the mansion.
“What if he was connected to the other stuff?” I wondered.
“Too late now,” Greg replied.
“He knows who we are, so he could’ve been a spy.”
“No, babe,” Nay said. “I don’t think so. He didn’t want to spy, wanted to cause chaos, then kill Crystal. Though I guess we’ll never know.”
“You’re probably right,” I said. “Just got me thinking that—”
Something struck the side of the car. The world went upside down, glass exploding inward. My head slammed into the door and the last thing I heard before I fell into darkness was the shriek of scraping metal.
Chapter 33
I came round, returning to the upside down world I’d left, green light everywhere as my body healed from whatever it’d endured. The process had made the darkness click away.
What the fuck?
I’d only been out for thirty seconds. There was extreme pressure across my chest, ribs begging for relief. The acrid smell of oil hit the back of my throat. Healing didn’t mean help with breaking free from a constricting seatbelt. I hung there, upside down, short of breath, blood rushing to my head.
Shit.
“Nay?” I looked over to the right. She wasn’t there.
I twisted my neck to glance behind me. No sign of Greg either.
Fuck! Panic set in, the struggle for breath intense. I had to get out. What if they were out on the road, bodies destroyed from the crash? What if my friends were dead? Would I feel something to tell me they were? I couldn’t feel any SOS!
Needalineneedaline!
There, a kernel of distress. It was Nay!
“Nay! Nay!”
Another one, from far away, so faint. “Greg!”
I reached for the seatbelt clip, struggling to calm my shaking fingers. When I got it, I was free, landing on my back, banging my head off the roof beneath me. Twisting myself round, I crawled across broken glass, squeezing my body through the destroyed passenger window.
Glass nicked my knees and bit my hands. I didn’t care. I had to get out.
A wave of healing magic went through me as I got free of the vehicle, scrambling to my feet.
Jesus! The car had been fucked up bad, upside down, my side badly dented and every window blown out.
Nay and Greg didn’t have the ability to heal like me, so what if … No! I’d felt their distress! They were alive, but they’d be messed up so bad from the looks of this accident. If only I could pass on my power to help them!
I ran round the car to find Nay on the ground, face-down.
“Nay! Oh, fuck! Nay! Please … it’ll be okay. I’m here.”
I noticed another vehicle further down the road, a figure dragging a body … that body being Greg.
“Greg!”
The figure looked up. It was familiar, the same silhouette as the lung-stealer. Oh, my God!
“Dean! Dean!”
He must be feeling this. “Dean! Please!” I couldn’t leave Nay.
The figure dumped Greg into the back of the dark car—I couldn’t see much beyond the glare of its red lights—and slammed the back door. Smoke was coming from the vehicle’s bonnet.
“Greg!”
Nay groaned. I put my hands on her, not knowi
ng what else to do. “Nay … Oh, my God. Dean!”
The car sped off in the direction of Rainbow Mile, just as another roared past and screeched to a halt. Dean jumped out, the driver window gone.
“How—”
“Stole it,” he said, crouching down to Nay. “What happened?”
“Something hit … hit us. Dean … Nay’s in a bad way. That car … the lung-stealer’s taken Greg.”
He spun to where he’d just come from. “Shit!”
“That’s what hit us,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”
“We need to get Nay back to the mansion right now. Help me lift her.”
Though I still trembled, I managed to help carry Nay carefully into the stolen car.
My sparks came to life as a meow came from behind me. The cat transformed into the man.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
“We haven’t got time for you right now,” Dean growled. “Come on, Jake.”
“Take me with you. Please. I can help you find your friend.”
“I—”
“Get in the car, Jake. Now.”
I obeyed, jumping in the front seat. The man shifted into cat and leapt through the window as Dean punched the pedal. It landed on his lap.
“What the fuck?”
The sparks went crazy at the beast presence.
“Get the fuck off me!”
“No!” I yelped. “Leave him. Please. Just drive.”
“Stay still!” Dean roared.
The cat did as he was told, freezing on Dean as we tore through the night.
I’d called ahead for Mr. Douglas to open the gates.
Dean opened the wards as he sped up the driveway, the red barrier splitting a little to make way for a new visitor. I watched them ripple closed again.
Mr. Douglas was waiting on the front steps. He saw my hands and paled.
“What is this?”
“The cat,” Dean said, “remember?”
“You brought a beast onto these grounds?”
I climbed out of the car. “He wants to help.”
Mr. Douglas pulled a gun from within his butler jacket. “He will remain right here.”
The cat shifted. “I mean no harm,” he said. “My name is Luke.”
“I do not care for your name,” Mr. Douglas said.
“Enough of this shit!” I cried. “We need to help Nay!”
“This is reckless and will not stand.” The cannons activated, red lasers pointed at Luke. It was my first time seeing them in action.
“If you move from that spot,” Mr. Douglas continued, “you’ll be nothing but traces across the ground for Jake to destroy.”
“Stay there,” I said to Luke. “Until I come back. Don’t move a muscle. Don’t even sneeze.”
Luke was already a statue, as quiet as a sitting rock.
“This is not acceptable,” Mr. Douglas said as Dean and I carried Nay into the house.
“No,” I said. “It bloody isn’t.”
“Fools!” Karla shouted as we brought Nay into the medical area. “How could you bring him here?”
Nay was laid out on the same bed Dean had been on not so long ago, and Karla got to work.
That didn’t stop her ranting.
“A beast must never cross the wards into this place. You both know that! What if he were to get to the chamber and bring everything down? After all, that is what they want. How could you be so reckless?”
She was pissing me off. I didn’t mention the fact that Floyd lived here! “Shit was going down, we had to move. You know we need Luke. Now we need him more than ever to find Greg.” The SOS signal he was giving off was too faint to track.
“Fools.”
“Yeah, we bloody heard you.”
“Jake,” Dean said quietly.
I bit my tongue to hold back the hurricane. Fools? Maybe, but what the hell were we supposed to do?
“She will be fine,” Karla said, pouring a white substance over Nay’s wounds. This was the first time I’d been able to look at her up close. She was cut up real bad, face sliced open in places by glass.
Shit.
I went over and squeezed her hand as a violet cream was pasted over the wounds on top of the white. Karla worked from a medical trolley beside her, knowing exactly where things were and where to spread that cream despite her blindness. It was incredible, making me think just how powerful Karla was behind her fragile exterior.
“You’re gonna be okay, Nay,” I whispered. “I’ll get the fucker that did this.”
“How are you feeling, Jake?” Karla asked, completely calm now.
“I need to go help Greg,” I said. “I can feel him.”
“So can I,” she said. “Go, both of you. Let this Luke aid you. Kill the lung, figure this out. Naomi will be fine here. Greg may not have much time. Take this.” She turned and picked up something from the medical trolley. It was small bag with a strap. There were three vials of white liquid inside. “Pour one into his mouth as soon as you can—it will help him in the interim if his injuries are not too severe. Give him two if you must.”
Please don’t be too severe …
Without a word, I put the strap over my head and hurried through the mansion with Dean right behind me.
Outside, the cannons were still pointing at the frozen Luke, Mr. Douglas’s own gun trained on him too.
Rain had started to fall.
“We’re going after Greg,” I said. “Please call off the cannons.”
He hesitated for a moment, did as I asked, but didn’t lower his weapon.
I went over to Luke. “You can move now.”
He eyed my sparks warily, taking a step back.
“I won’t hurt you,” I said. “Unless you fuck with me. Then I will—I’ll do whatever it takes to make you suffer before I end you.” I saw him swallow hard. “Seems we understand one another. Now, where did the lung-stealer take my friend?”
He drew a deep breath. “The old sugar factory,” he said, “in the industrial quarter.”
Where the gates to the beast realm were.
“Then let’s go. How long’s the drive?”
“Forty-five minutes,” Dean said. “I can do it in less.”
“Come on, then.”
Leaving the stolen car, we jumped into Nay’s red one and sped off into the night.
Chapter 34
Dean did the drive in an incredible fifteen minutes.
The industrial quarter was to the far west of the city, a sprawling area of cooling towers, buildings of different sizes, vast warehouses and lots and lots of fences. It was so dark, a place of shadows left empty as a different kind of shadow had moved in. Pulses of knowing went through me as the car rolled up to the main gates—wide open for all to wander to their death, or for newbie beasts to stroll into Coldharbour through. My power knew this was a potent place of beast activity, the gateway to their dimension somewhere in there amongst the maze of buildings.
Danger …
Like I needed the creepy voice to tell me that!
The rain was coming down hard, the wind having picked up too. That man who’d been with Crystal had tricked my power good. He’d had me confused, doubting whether or not he was a beast.
Greg was all that mattered right now. I could still feel him, alive yet needing help so bad.
Dean drove into the complex. “Which way, Luke?”
“Left.”
We passed a printing factory, a car parts one too, following a long road that had many others going off it to other areas, including a recycling plant. But Luke said to go straight on, and eventually, we arrived at the old sugar factory.
It was so, so old, all brick, a towering behemoth with a chimney and boarded up windows.
Time to find the way in.
Dean killed the engine. “You ready?” he asked me.
I nodded.
Luke got out of the car and took point immediately. He led the way along the side of the building. On the ground was a trail of am
ber light, a ribbon rippling on a non-existent wind.
What the hell?
Luke went where the light did—ducking through a hole in the fence that cut off the back and the front of the building, and turning left down an alleyway filled with rubbish, to a metal door.
“In here,” Luke said. “This is where she brings them all.”
The missing people … her victims.
Luke pulled open the door. It squealed on rusted hinges.
I winced. So much for any element of surprise—not that I was actually expecting anything of the sort.
Beyond the door, the same amber trail continued.
That flower really needed to give me more info!
Follow the fear …
What?
“Come on,” I said, stepping inside.
“Wait,” Dean said. “Let me—”
“Do you see what’s on the ground?” I asked.
He looked. “No.”
“You know the way, Luke?”
“Not once inside,” he said.
I told Dean about the amber light. Was it some sort of trail of fear? That was the theory formulating in my head anyway. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be right behind you.”
My sparks lit the way a little, revealing dirty brick walls and pipes. The amber ribbon snaked along the dusty floor, taking us through a corridor to a staircase leading down. There was a door to my right, padlocked shut.
It stank of damp and dust, my nose tingled.
“We go down,” I said, eyes on the curling ribbon of light.
The sugar factory was silent, apart from the sound of our footsteps. It was a void, a vacuum away from reality I was now trapped in. And the pulses in my muscles continued to remind me of where I was—that the beast realm gates were somewhere nearby.
My focus, however, was fully on the task at hand. I had to save Greg. Then I wanted some damned answers from Luke.
At the bottom of the steps was a set of double doors, the glass windows broken. I could hear dripping water, the damp smell getting worse.
Greg’s distress was growing stronger.
I pushed open the doors, walking into a space filled with rusted lockers and upturned tables. Thick layers of dust choked almost everything.
Probably the staff area, but I didn’t give a shit. I quickened my pace, going through another set of double doors which opened onto a large stairway. The amber light curled up those steps, the glow a little stronger.