City of the Falling Sky (44 page)

Seckry touched his hand to Eiya’s cheek and
then ran his fingers over her small earlobe and through her soft,
smooth hair. As they continued to kiss, Seckry lost all concept of
time. Everything that had gone before and everything that was to
come meant nothing to him here and now. The only thing that existed
to him was the present, and the sweet, intoxicating taste of
Eiya.

Seckry barely remembered the journey back
that night because all he could see and all he could hear and all
he could feel, were Eiya. Every time their eyes met, Seckry had to
tense his legs so that they wouldn’t give way and collapse.

His mum and Leena were in bed by the time
they got back, and the flat was silent aside from the distant
chirruping of a few crickets outside. Seckry went to use the
bathroom, and by the time he came back to the bedroom, Eiya was
sound asleep.

The room was warm, so he opened the window
and leaned on the sill for a while, watching the far away sparks of
the monorail tracks lighting up the city. There were only a few
weeks left of school before the summer holidays, and he was looking
forward to them now more than ever.

In a rough pile next to Seckry’s elbow were
his birthday cards from when they had just arrived in Skyfall. He
shuffled them so they were neat, and thought about how much had
changed since then.

As he did so, a single card slipped out of
his hands and onto the floor, a card he had long forgotten
about.

The card with no name.

Seckry picked it up and opened it once more,
running the tip of his finger ponderingly over the ink that said
‘Happy Birthday.’ He could feel the indentation where the pen had
pressed. He let his fingers drift across it, and then he shut the
card. But immediately after he did so, he opened it again.

He had felt something else. Something
underneath the message.

He pressed his fingers to the page and sure
enough, there were more indentations, just one or two words, very
light and with no ink at all. Seckry peered as close as he could,
and held the card out into the air, trying to angle it so the light
would catch the text.

He tilted it backwards and stopped.

After some time, a teardrop specked the
windowsill below him.

Written in the moonlight were the words,
“
Love, Dad.
”

As Ropart Sanfarrow turned a corner, he took
a note out of his pocket and reread it for the fifth time.

Tilly’s Cafe, Toppletod Way, 2pm,
Tuesday.

That was all that was written. He had no idea
who had posted it.

When he entered the cafe there was only one
person in there aside from the girl behind the counter; a man
dressed head to toe in robes from Arivel. He was sitting without a
drink. Sanfarrow would have said he was staring into space, but,
slightly disturbingly, even his eyes were covered by his robes.

Sanfarrow knew that in Arivelian culture it
was considered important to cover the skin with fabric, but he had
never before seen someone so entirely masked by their clothing. The
only part of the man’s face that wasn’t covered was his mouth.
Sanfarrow wondered how on earth he was supposed to see.

“
May I join you?” Sanfarrow
offered.

The Arivelian nodded, breathing
abnormally.

Sanfarrow sat down, placed the note on the
table and slid it towards the stranger.

“
So . . .” he said. “I’m
here. Are you going to tell me what this is all about? I have to
say, I’ve never been summoned so enigmatically before.”

Now that Sanfarrow was sitting, he could see
that the man in front of him was trembling, and his mouth was
twitching. The small patch of skin around his mouth looked horribly
burnt and blistered.

There was no reply. Instead, the man lifted
something from underneath the table; a canister or some kind of
thermal flask. As he unscrewed the lid, Sanfarrow saw that his
hands were even worse than the skin around his mouth. Not only were
they deformed and cracked and blistered, but they were bubbling;
the skin was actually pulsating like molten lava.

“
What in Gedin’s name . .
. ?
” Sanfarrow whispered to himself.

The man then placed the lid on the table,
reached into the flask, and pulled out a worm. It struggled
violently between his fingers before he opened his mouth wide and
dropped the worm into it. As he chewed, his whole body gave a few
spasms.

“
Oh, dear Gedin, no
.
. .” Sanfarrow said. “You’re the one . . . You’re the one that sent
Seckry to get the rintide worms, aren’t you? Do you have any idea
what you’re doing? Those worms were being used as waste disposal
for an incredibly toxic and unstable experiment. They’re diseased,
they’re
contaminated
. And you’re
eating
them?
”

The man said nothing.

“
Look, what is this all
about?” Sanfarrow said furiously. “Why are you here? Why did you
want to meet me?”

The man then put his unsettlingly hideous
hands in front of him and made the shape of a box with his
fingers.

Sanfarrow didn’t know what this meant.

The man then pointed to Sanfarrow’s pocket
and made the shape of a box once more.

Sanfarrow reached to his pocket and paused.
There was only one thing in there. His last gift from Kevan Kayne.
The un-openable cube.

He tentatively pulled it out. “This . . .
?”

The Arivelian nodded.

“
How did you know that this
was in my pocket?” Sanfarrow said, his skin beginning to prickle
with fear. “This is something private, something that was given to
me by a dear friend.”

The man refused to say a word. Instead, he
flipped Sanfarrow’s note over so that it was blank side up and slid
it into the centre of their table.

Sanfarrow laughed incredulously and without
humour.

“
Don’t tell me you’re going
to write down possible combinations for the lock. I’ve tried almost
every combination there is. I’ve spent two years trying to unlock
it. There’s only one person that could have unlocked it, and that’s
the person who gave it to me. That person was shot
dead.”

What happened next made Sanfarrow grip his
seat in horror. Thin tentacles started growing out of the man’s
knuckles and reaching for the paper. As they touched it, they began
scratching numbers onto its surface in what appeared to be
blood.

“
How on earth . . . ?”
Sanfarrow said, his voice wavering. “What are those worms
doing
to you . . . ?”

Once sixteen numbers had been etched onto the
paper, the tentacles slid sinisterly back into the man’s skin.

“
How in Gedin’s name would
you know this combination?” Sanfarrow said, frozen still and
sweating profusely.

The entire paper now seemed to be growing
mould rapidly, as if infected by the hideous man’s touch.

Sanfarrow swallowed and stared at it.

Could it really be the right combination?

With shaking hands, he began entering the
numbers, and with the final one there was a click. He shook his
head slowly in disbelief. It was open.

He lifted the two segments apart and there
was just one thing inside; a small piece of card. Inscribed on it
were two words.

It’s me.

It was only then that the man sitting in
front of Sanfarrow spoke.

“
Hello Ropart,” said Kevan
Kayne, and lifted another worm into his mouth.

First of all I want to thank you so much for
reading Seckry’s adventures – by downloading this book, you have
contributed to the continuation of the series, and I am ever
grateful to be able to carry on writing about these characters that
I’ve grown so attached to, and in this world that has now become my
world.

Some of you may already know the road I took
to make The Seckry Sequence available, and some of you may not, but
I have been sending it to agents and publishers, with only
rejections in return so far, meaning that it is still
self-published, with only social media to help me spread the
word.

However, I have not lost all hope, and if you
enjoyed this book, there are ways you can help me – by letting
everybody that will listen to you hear about it, and by posting a
review on Amazon, or the site of the company you bought the book
from.

Like I said, social media is currently my
main source of exposure, so please do like the Facebook fan page
and follow me on Twitter if you haven’t already done so, using the
following tags:

#TSS

#TheSeckrySequence

#CityoftheFallingSky

#TheTrinityAwakening

I also asked you fans a while ago to come up
with a name for yourselves, and the one we decided on was
Seckramaniacs! So if you love The Seckry Sequence enough to call
yourself a #Seckramaniac, please use that hashtag too!

First of all I’d like to thank all of my
family for everything; my mamgu and dadcu, my aunties, cousins, my
sisters, dad, my uncle, Dr David T. Evans, for being such an
inspiration, and especially my mum, Debra Carr, who gave me my love
of books and who has done so much for me and my sisters over the
years.

I’d also like to thank all of my friends for
their enthusiasm and interest in this book, especially David
Goddard. My colleagues at Waterstones have also been amazingly
supportive. I’d like to give extra thanks to Victoria Hutchings and
Myfanwy Hipkiss, who are eagerly awaiting the second in the series,
and are a great help in spurring me on to continue writing.

Thank you to all of my English teachers over
the years, who each inspired me differently: Helen Senior, the late
Jo Bryant, Anthony Bennett, Ms Jones, Mr Shirley, and especially
Emma Coombs, who cared about us not just as pupils, but as
individuals, and whose enthusiasm for English was unlike anything
I’d seen before.

There are also teachers and lecturers that
I’d like to thank that didn’t have a direct role in helping me
write, but had an impact in shaping me as a person: Keith Allen, my
head of year at high school, and Allan Kaye, my form teacher, who
both always listened and cared, and fuelled our thirst for
knowledge, Andre Ktori for the wildest parties in my first year of
university, and Jack Beaumont for being such a great mentor in my
second and third.

Thank you to my first teenage reader, Jacob
Foley, and thanks to his mum, Cath, who loves to hear about my
progress whilst she’s cutting my hair, and who was my first paying
customer. Thanks also to the wonderful bloggers who initially read
the ebook version of this story and got the word out there about
Seckry, and thanks to everyone that has reviewed this book on
Amazon.

Most importantly, thank you to Charlotte, my
soulmate and the girl of my dreams.

Joseph Evans grew up in Cardiff, South Wales,
UK, where he spent a lot of his childhood playing video games and
watching anime. His love of books originated from his love of the
fantastic stories and narratives he found in both of these.

He is still a big video games fan (can you
tell?) and his favourite game of all time is Final Fantasy VII.

He has a 1
^st
class degree in
Interactive Media, and alongside writing he is a freelance motion
graphics designer as well as a bookseller in the Cardiff branch of
Waterstones. If you’re ever in the area, pop in and say hello!