Brink (The Ruin Saga Book 2) (6 page)

“Think there’s a clue somewhere in there?”

“Don’t get smart. You get another day of living, but I can still make that day ugly.” Charlie pushed the door closed as someone shuffled past outside. He suddenly looked alert, perhaps even afraid.

Lucian frowned, but waited until the shuffling dissipated before he said, “I’m not supposed to be here, am I?”

Charlie didn’t answer, his ear pressed to the door.

“Do the others know who I am?”

Charlie was very still, facing the door. Lucian thought he caught a single muscle spasm in his neck.

I’m onto something
, he thought.
But don’t push it, not yet
.

He let it pass and waited in silence. Eventually, Charlie seemed satisfied and turned back to face him, the half-healed slashes in his cheek thrown into sharp relief by the scant light shining in through the crack in the doorway. “We’ve been real busy, burning up all those little quaint villages and towns. A fair few sign right up with us to keep breathing, but you wouldn’t believe how many swear fealty to your ilk, to
New Canterbury
and your blessed little council in London.” He leaned in close, so close that Lucian could smell the dry, musky excitement on his breath. “It’s like you’re gods or something. They think you’ll swoop in and save them.” He smiled. “But we have faith in them. They just take a little convincing.”

“And this humble abode is where you do your convincing? With a hammer and chisel, no doubt?”

“Pliers, too, if the occasion calls for it.”

Lucian shook his head. He thought of Alexander and Norman, and all the others counting on him back home. He had to get back to them somehow. And if he couldn’t get back, he’d have to find a way to put an end to it all fast. He would have liked to say he would never hurt any of them, would never turn, but he knew better than that.

He had seen some bad things. People could do horrific things to one another in the name of beliefs, ideals, even love. Especially love. And men were fickle creatures. Even the strongest broke eventually. In his experience, you could make anyone do pretty much anything, if you took enough away from them, and made them hurt enough.

Charlie was the perfect example of that.

What have I done to him?

Charlie was watching him carefully, hovering only a few inches away, waiting for Lucian to make a move. But Lucian kept still and kept his gaze level. He wouldn’t give him his trigger. After almost a full minute Charlie licked his chapped lips and muttered, “Like I said, we’re moving you.”

“Where?”

“Far away. We’re done with this place. Nowhere left but your little bastions.”

Lucian swallowed. “So why not finish it? Just get things over with?”

“Because He has plans for your friends. And He hasn’t led us astray yet.”

Lucian’s breath wheezed out of him. “He?” he whispered.

“That’s right, He.”

So it really was true. He really was behind all this, leading the scourge. Alexander had shown him all the signs, but he had never quite believed James was really still out there. It had been easier to half-believe it and keep it at the back of his mind. Because if his brother really had returned, it meant all this was their fault. They had bred a monster.

Just like Lucian had done yet again with the young man before him.

Charlie smiled. “You don’t need to worry about Him. You won’t live long enough.”

Lucian scowled. The wire cutting into his wrists was starting to work its way deeper into his flesh. The pain was pulsing, raw. With the damp and the dirt, he was liable to get some nasty infection soon enough. He had to get out of dodge, or else he’d be suffering long before Charlie got to him. He’d rather eat a bullet now than live through that. Dying from septicaemia was a messy affair. “I’m all for walking and talking a while longer, but why bother moving me if you’re just going to kill me? Why don’t you end this, Charlie? You’re only here to get revenge for your father. What’s to stop you pulling the trigger right now and walking away from all this?”

Charlie didn’t answer, but Lucian heard the crack deep in his throat.

“You can’t do it, can you?”

“I can do it!” Charlie snarled.

“Then go ahead.”

A moment of silence stretched out between them, then snapped; and in the next, Charlie was holding his knife in his hand. The blade twinkled in the hallway light, reflecting Charlie’s wounded, terrified face.

Lucian forced himself to keep his gaze level despite the snakes slithering in his gut and the ball of fear swelling behind his eyes. Not long ago their roles had been reversed; Lucian had held a gun right to Charlie’s head while he kneeled on the cobbles of New Canterbury, right before he had set him free. It hadn’t been loaded, but Charlie didn’t know that. He had threatened, bullied, and beaten the kid. It hadn’t been enough that he had killed his father. He had treated him as though he had been the one who had been wronged, rather than the other way around. And why? Because he had been scared and ashamed.

He could have made amends, maybe, if he had tried hard enough. Maybe he could have at least stopped him signing up with the wolves at their door. He had failed him, just like he had failed his friends and his family. He had sworn to protect them. Yet here he was. And after everything he deserved no better.

He closed his eyes and waited for the end.

I’m sorry
.
Jesus, I’m sorry
.

Ringing silence stretched out for so long that the snakes in his gut quieted, and the sound of his own breathing returned to his attention. He peeked one eye open and saw Charlie standing with his arms by his sides. His knife was back in its sheath. In his hands was a black linen hood. “Like I said, we’re moving you,” he said.

“You can’t do it.”

A muscle leapt in Charlie’s jaw. “Enjoy the trip.”

Then the hood was over his head and he was back in darkness.

Norman retched, clutching the toilet bowl between his hands. Precious, irreplaceable morsels he’d eaten for breakfast slicked the U-bend. He wiped his mouth, head swimming, his fractured ribs throbbing, and then he stumbled from the stall to lean against the door. Two weeks since he had been attacked, and still the pain was no better.

But it wasn’t the pain that was making him sick, not really. It was something else. Something was at odds with the world, and the weight of two cities rested on his shoulders. They had all stared at him in the lobby. Hundreds upon hundreds of expectant, dull, cow eyes trained upon him, as though all they had to do was fall in behind him and he would saddle up a warhorse and vanquish the enemy.

He took a deep breath and headed out into the lobby of Canary Wharf Tower, cane clacking on the faded marble floors. Yesterday, the tower and its fenced-off compound had been near empty; the shining pinnacle of England’s last coalition of societies, relics of the Old World. Today, it was a refugee camp. Torn knapsacks, crushed luggage, bloodied bandages, and filthy exhausted refugees littered the floor. As many wept as those who had gone deathly still, dull-eyed and lobotomised by trauma.

Canary Wharf’s fortified compound was fast becoming the last remaining safe haven. The summit between the land’s dwindling societies had been called weeks ago, but the ambassadorial parties had been attacked en route. Now that Oppenheimer had arrived from Bristol, they were at least all accounted for, but they had taken heavy losses. Unnervingly, the council members themselves didn’t have a scratch on them. It was their families, friends, aides, and subordinates who had been slaughtered.

It was almost as though the enemy knew about the summit and was keen to let it go ahead. The thought that they wanted to let them scurry around, squabbling in politics made the hairs on Norman’s neck stand on end.

The tower’s concrete walls and regiment of armed guards had kept back the tide thus far, but how long would that last? Who knew how many the enemy were? This place was no fortress, and its guards were few. They were calling it a siege, but if that became the reality, Norman didn’t like their chances.

And what of home? New Canterbury had guns and men, but no high walls. And they had no fewer defenceless folk than here. Now that he had heard just how many towns had been hit, it was a wonder that New Canterbury remained almost unscathed. They’d had break-ins and raids—Norman’s broken ribs could attest to that, not to mention Ray Hubble’s corpse—but no more. One death, one injury; it was nothing compared to the hundreds of bodies that lay in the enemy’s wake.

Again, it was almost as though they were being spared. New Canterbury had been revered as the home of the great Alexander Cain for so long that its name was synonymous with their cause. Now it looked as though its name was the only thing saving it. But that was all the more chilling, because if it were true then it could only mean one thing: they were being saved
for last
.

All that was left to them was the summit. There was still power among them. The enemy might be playing cat and mouse, but that couldn’t be justified. They were rabble, after all; a mass of farmers and traders brought together by a tenuous common goal. And they didn’t have Alexander.

Norman walked across the lobby and tried to keep his head held high. The looks aimed at him were the same, demanding and fawning, but he ignored them. Let them have their hopes. That was the least he could try to do for them. He would do anything to avoid the future Alexander had in mind for him, but that didn’t matter now;
they
all believed in him, even if his great destiny was all smoke, and that was all that mattered.

Not far from the stairwell, he spotted Allie. She was crouched down over a frail young girl in what had once been a pretty summer dress. It was Oppenheimer’s daughter. She was awake now, but lay very still as Allie whispered a constant stream of sweet babble. The little girl had just lost her siblings and her mother, but still the faintest of smiles was on her lips. Allie had a gift with words.

Norman tried to ignore the flutter in his chest, but it now came whenever he looked her way, and he could no longer ignore it. Allison Rutherford had been a spurious gossip not long ago, a newcomer in New Canterbury who could be relied on to incite rumour wherever she went.

War had changed her. Her eyes had hardened, her hearsay had shifted to fierce mummery, and even her soft rounded face seemed to have become older, more angular. In a few short months, she had blossomed into a true woman. And during that transition, Norman’s eyes had begun to linger.

It had been she who had stayed by his bedside after he had been attacked.

She caught his eye, and before he knew it, he was walking toward her and the little girl.

“Someone wants to meet you,” Allie said.

He knelt with difficulty beside them both, facing away from the prying eyes of the crowd, and tried to smile for the little girl. She returned the favour, though timidly, and her eyes flicked to Allie for comfort.

“It’s okay.” Allie gripped her forearm. “He’s not a grump, really. Most of the time.”

“Unless I skip breakfast. Then I grow gruffalo horns.”

The girl’s face remained pale and taut, but her brow relaxed a tad. Allie gave him an encouraging look, and together they leaned over her and did their best to entertain her while the worst of the wounded were stabilised in the lobby and hauled upstairs, where their old infirmary had overspilled across two whole storeys. Complimenting her on her dress, asking her about home and her favourite books; it all brought back memories of the martial arts class Norman led back home.

He had always considered teaching one of the more taxing chores on New Canterbury’s duty rota, but he missed the kids. He had never appreciated how easy their lives had been until now—just what Alexander’s vision had meant for their quality of life. How many years had he moped and brooded over the destiny foisted upon him, meanwhile enjoying all the comforts of electricity and baked bread and fried eggs, curated libraries, and a comfy bed? And all that time, thousands had eked out desperate livings on the edge of rotting towns, fighting off thieves and succumbing to simple illnesses, slowly forgetting who they were and all they knew.

And then the famine had come. With their mission to thrust them into swift action, Alexander had insisted that the council impose a policy of aggressive scavenging, to stock up on food to buffer the impact of starvation. They couldn’t afford to starve, not if they were to continue protecting the legacy of the Old World. They had scoured all the land and taken all they could find, leaving little, if anything, for anyone else. At first they had been unaware of just what effect they were having, but by the end of the famine’s height, it had been obvious that they had robbed thousands of their already slim chances of survival.

In truth it was no surprise this army had banded together. They had brought this on themselves.

“I want my mummy,” the little girl was saying.

Allie hushed her and brushed a stray lock of hair away from her cheek. “Rest, now, darling.”

“I want her!”

Allie’s lips tightened and grew pale. She glanced to him for help.