Blackfin Sky (26 page)

She felt nothing else, saw nothing else, only heard the bells. And then his voice.

‘Ladies and gentlemen! Prepare yourselves to be shocked and amazed as our next performer faces the feral Amazonian wolves!’

The band Sky had heard on her first unexpected visit to the Big Top started up a heart-thumping introduction, but above it Sky could still hear the gasps of the audience as they took in the spectacle Severin was laying before them.

‘That’s right, ladies and gentlemen! Our next performer is none other than the Wolfboy, whose talents and tricks will bedazzle and bewilder every last one of you – at only three years of age!’

Now Sky understood the gasps. Fuelled by the growing weight of horror in the pit of her stomach, she forced her eyes to open and found that she was once again lying beneath the grandstand. Through the sloping slats above her she could see the twitching footwear of the crowd, and as she craned towards the lowest section of the stands she saw the Wolfboy standing in the middle of the circus ring.

His pale skin looked pinched as he stared, wide-eyed, at the crowd gawping at him from every direction. He was barely old enough to be walking, yet the tot had been dressed in a garish ensemble of fur and tassels, with a hat fashioned to look like a wolf’s head teetering atop his own.

In the shadow of the wolf’s eerie grin, the boy’s eyes searched the crowd.

‘Watch as Wolfboy entrances and beguiles the savage wolves!’

A faint cry escaped Sky’s lips as three enormous grey wolves – the same wolves she had seen battering against the inside of their cage on her earlier visit, she guessed – slunk into the arena. They hunched low, keeping to the edges of the ring where the crowds were out of their sight. Only the boy, alone in the middle of the ring, was directly visible to them now, and they seemed curious about him. One by one they edged nearer, and Sky held her breath. The band played on somewhere beyond the stands, but all else was deathly silent. Until one of the wolves began to growl.

The tiny child had stayed absolutely still at the centre of the ring, as though he had been drilled for the situation.

Which he has, of course,
Sky told herself, trying to find some way of feeling better because of that. But the terror in the little boy’s eyes was unmistakable, and Sky tried to push herself to her feet. She needed to help him, get him out of there somehow. But almost drowning had robbed her muscles of their strength, the cold still bone deep inside her. Only her fingers burned where feeling had begun to return to them, hot prickles in her flesh.

Her arm slid out from under her when she tried to hoist herself into a sitting position, and she hit the dirt like a wet sack, choking on a cloud of sawdust.

‘See the hunters as they stalk their prey, their world contained within the transparent walls of the ring! Now watch as the hunters’ world is turned on its head!’

Sky could only see through a tiny gap under the stands, but a second later, the wolves inside the arena had all rolled over and were yelping and kicking their legs up into the air as though they expected to be dragged up into it at any moment.

‘But when their prize is so near at hand, nothing can hold them at bay for long!’

At Severin’s announcement, the wolves righted themselves and turned as a unit to face the tiny figure in the centre of the circle.

‘No no no no…’

Her throat burning, Sky could only chant the word over and over again in a whisper, her limbs too dull and heavy to allow her to move.

Why is Severin doing this?

Her sense of betrayal was sudden and sharp. Could this man really be her father?

The wolves growled as they stalked nearer to the boy. But then Sky noticed something peculiar – for all that the boy looked frightened, he also appeared to be concentrating deeply, his pale brow creased with the effort.

The wolves lunged as one, and Sky’s heart all but exploded. But instead of tearing into the boy, they all simply … froze.

What the hell is going on?

Severin stepped into the arena now, parading around the edge as the crowd cheered the odd spectacle at its centre. The boy stood statue-still, arms by his sides and staring straight ahead, all three wolves posed mid-lunge with their teeth bared and ready for tearing.

‘Put your hands together, ladies and gentlemen, for the incredible Wolfboy!’

The crowd cheered loudly, but Sky still heard one voice yelling above the others.

‘They’re not even real! I bet you, they’re not real! Look!’

Sky couldn’t see the man, but she saw the half-eaten toffee apple he threw, sending it sailing straight at one of the wolves. The tiny boy looked up as it landed near him, and the spell was broken.

Sky saw it in his eyes – fear became absolute horror in that split second, and the wolves lunged forward like their attack had never been uninterrupted. A hundred voices in the crowd screamed, and then the child was gone, appearing an instant later clutched to Severin’s chest under the stands next to Sky.

Inside the ring, a net fell onto the wolves, trapping them.

There’s no way he could have reached the boy so quickly, especially not without being mauled by the wolves.

Yet the ringmaster stood over her, breathing hard, and looking slightly more rumpled than she had seen him on previous occasions. The child whimpered as Severin held him close.

‘I sensed you were nearby,’ Severin said, kneeling in the sawdust. ‘I’ve been carrying a letter for you, hoping you’d come back. Gage saw you the last time you were here, sweetness. He doesn’t know who you are, but he’s looking for you. You need to get out of here, as far away as you can.’

Sky glared up at him, not believing he could be concerned with something like that after he’d just let the boy – Jared – almost get killed.

But you know Jared doesn’t die. You’ve seen him when he’s much older.

‘There’s no point in giving me those eyes,
chère
. Little Jimmy here ain’t mine to control. Here, take this.’

With one hand he took a rather rumpled envelope from the pocket of his red coat and gave it to her. She could barely feel the crackle of the paper with her frozen fingers.

‘You do look a mite ill,
chère
. Perhaps you should be heading back to wherever you call home, yes?’

Sky coughed, and the effort physically hurt. ‘Not where,
when.
’

The crowd continued to holler and wail in confusion at what they had seen, at what they
couldn’t
have seen.

Above her head, wood splintered with an ugly cracking noise. A groan of metal followed seconds later, and the crowd above her head began to panic anew.

But then silence descended, sudden and unnatural. Severin leaned down towards Sky so he could see through the same gap where she now saw Gage standing at the centre of the ring.

The wolves were gone, and Gage stood with one finger raised, a teacher silencing a classroom of wayward children. His face was painted white like a spectre, black circling his eyes and lips underneath the brim of his bowler hat. The consummate mime, his audience captivated.

It was horrific to watch, to
feel
his power creeping out of him like vipers hatching from a nest, wrapping around the people he held enthralled.

Sky couldn’t see the crowd from where she lay, but she sensed the tension in them. Whatever had made the wolves freeze mid-lunge a few moments earlier now held them still, paralysed in the middle of their panic as though they were being electrocuted.

‘Dammit!’ Severin hissed. ‘He knows he can’t control them all without the skull.’

The amber skull.

As though to confirm Sky’s suspicion, Severin held it out for a second, the light slanting between the stands catching it, making the sinister depths of its empty eye sockets glow orange. It was the same skull she had seen in her mother’s memory, and in Madame Curio’s crystal ball when she had travelled back with Jared.

Severin shoved it into the pocket of his red ringmaster’s coat.

‘You stole it?’

Severin nodded, but his gaze was still locked on Gage. ‘I have to give them a chance to get away,’ he said cryptically. ‘Gage won’t be able to hold them under his spell for long without doing permanent damage to their minds. He might not be able to hold such a large crowd for long, anyway.’

The stands above them groaned, and the sound of something snapping further along the row bore down on them. Sky fought to move on her jellied limbs, but she was still half-paralysed with cold. Severin’s eyes locked on hers, and she could see he’d understood.

‘I’ll be seeing you soon,
chère
. Get you gone, now. I’d better get this one out of here.’

With that, Severin disappeared just as a board gave out above where he had been standing with the boy in his arms. Sky closed her eyes, waiting for the stands over her head to collapse. Snapping, groaning, so near.

Flashing light, sparks in her brain.

A strange sound, but one that was comforting all the same.

Someone singing. That’s what it is.

Sean.

She coughed, the effort somehow greater than running a marathon, and the off-key singing stopped abruptly.

‘Sky, what are you doing in the boys’ changing room?’

She rolled her head to one side as her eyes opened. Hard, cold tiles had replaced the grass and sawdust beneath her. She blinked slowly, that woozy darkness still swooping over her.

‘God, Sky, you look just like you did that night…’

She had the sense of his hand touching her face, and then she became weightless as the world went dark.

This time there were no sparks.

22

The motion of the car woke her. Sean was trying his best to keep it steady on the icy road – she could tell that from the determined look on his face – but he also seemed in a mighty hurry to get wherever he was going.

‘Sorry, I guess I fell asleep.’ Her throat felt raw. She hoped she hadn’t been snoring. ‘Where are we going?’

Sean’s eyes darted to meet hers before returning to the road, but in that moment his pinched look of panic eased slightly.

‘Thank God you’re awake. I think you’re suffering from hypothermia, so we’re on our way to the hospital.’

‘But I’m not that cold … Oh.’

Sky looked down and discovered that she was bundled up in what appeared to be Sean’s soccer jersey, his jeans, cardigan, duffle coat, hat, scarf and gloves. Sean, on the other hand, was looking a little hypothermic himself. He was driving in only a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, and had even laced his trainers onto her feet.

In the darkness outside Sean’s jeep, Sky could see the craggy rise of the Lychgate Mountains crowding up to meet them in the narrow beams of the headlights. The rocks sparkled, the first ice of the season clinging to the already-treacherous mountain road.

‘Are you sure we should be going to the hospital? I mean, how are we going to explain this—’

‘I’m taking you to the hospital. I lost you once because I didn’t act fast enough. I won’t do that again.’

‘Thanks.’ Sky lifted one gloved hand to the soggy tangle of hair that had dripped down onto his t-shirt. ‘I think you’re the one who’ll need treatment for hypothermia, though.’

He gave her a small smile. ‘I’m not going to lie – I’m bloody cold.’ When she moved to take off his borrowed coat he almost skidded off the road. ‘Will you leave the coat on, for Christ’s sake?’

Sky laughed, even though it hurt her throat. Still, she did as he’d asked.

‘What are we going to tell them at the hospital?’

He glanced at her. ‘I don’t know. How
did
you end up soaking wet in the boys’ changing room?’