Din Eidyn Corpus (Book 2): dEaDINBURGH (Alliances) (6 page)

“So yeah, for most, there were simply too many things and people to regret not having. Too much damage and hurt done to their perception of what made them a whole person. What made them… valid.”

Suzy, in a chair for decades, leaned heavily on the word
valid
.

“For a large portion of the early survivors, though, something else was driving them to end their own lives: the things they'd done to survive to that point, the acts they'd witnesses and participated in. The people they'd become. These things weighed heavily on them because they couldn't let go of the notions of morality and sin and decency engrained in them during their former lives. These people simply couldn't exist as what they were. They could not come to terms with who they had to be in order to survive this city.”

Suzy lowered her eyes.

“The ones that could… that did remain,” there was no pride in this for her, just cold fact, “some of them have not a trace left behind of the person they were. No real attachment to the things or the people they once held so dear. They’ve taken those experiences, those memories and values that they once believed defined them and locked them tightly somewhere in a dungeon inside themselves.”

Joey nodded in recognition. Suzy stayed quiet for a few moments.

“For most,” she said, finally, “that's a good thing and the only reason they still exist.
 
For others, it has warped them into clinically cold killers.”

“Bracha.” The name dripped from Joey’s lips venomously.

Suzy nodded. “Yes. And people like him.”

“Do you know him?” Joey asked darkly.

“No. But I’ve met enough people like him over the years, Joseph.”

“No, you haven’t,” Joey replied, growing angry again.

Suzy didn’t press the point. Changing her approach she spoke softly to him.

“He’s a monster.”

“Yes.”

“In a city filled with them.”

Joey’s voice grew colder. “Yes.”

“Don’t be one of them, Joseph,” she said, face passive, voice steady, matter of fact. 

Joey sat up in his armchair, fighting hard to keep his temper under control.

“You know me better than that, Suzy.”

“I do,” she said, softly. “I know you well enough to be able to see that you’re poisoning yourself with anger and plans for violent deeds. You have to let this go, Joseph. All of it.”

“And let him get away with killing Jock?” Joey’s voice grew in intensity and volume. “Let them,” he threw a hand at the window, indicating the outside world, “let them use our struggle to survive as a source of entertainment?”

Suzy shrugged.

“If you have to. Depends on how things play out. But what I do know is that the pain you’re feeling right now is not like the casual everyday pain you’ve lived with up until now. It’ll burn hotter and more viciously. It’ll destroy every decent thought in your head and each scrap of love in your heart. You might encounter Bracha again, you might not.

 
“You have to shift your purpose away from wanting to kill this man. You have to accept what you’ve learned about the outside world and use it to your advantage. If you continue to drive yourself, define your every moment, by what
should
be, what you
need
, what you
don’t have
… well, you’ll lose that mental resilience that keeps you so vital and alive and able to survive this place. Able to be a part of it and not limited by its fences.”

Joey sighed. Tears began to flow like burning mercury down his cheeks once more. Wheeling herself to him, Suzy took his face in her hands, still warm from the fire.

“You can take pain, Joseph. You’re not like the people of the old world. To them, pain was not having something they thought they needed. Physical pain was a terrifying concept. You’ve lived with it your whole life, but that’s not what makes you a fighter, a survivor. Your mental strength is immense; it’s had to be, because of how you were raised. You were the only one, the only person, in a whole cult, hundreds of defeated people, Joseph. You were the only one who looked at the surface, who wanted more.”

Suzy placed a hand on his chest.

“You never knew love as a child, but you had space for loving others in your heart. You allow people to love you in a way that simply should not be possible for a boy… a man like you. With your past. Your life here is a fucking miracle, Joseph.”

Suzy crossed herself, an old habit in response to swearing, and began crying too.

“That’s what keeps you strong, not your anger. Anyone can be angry; anyone can use the strength of rage and badness and vengeance. Not everyone is courageous enough to use the strength that practically explodes from you, Joseph MacLeod. Your dignity, your love and your bottomless capacity to want more for your life. That’s your strength. Don’t let anger’s flames burn it from you. Make a better life, here.”

Suzy smiled as tears soaked both of their faces.

“Live strong, Joseph. Make that fighter you had for a mother proud.”

Chapter 6

James Kelly

Kneading the nape of his neck with his right hand, James slowed his pace slightly and retrieved some dried meat, probably rabbit, from his satchel.

Tearing strips from it, he chewed on the meat and on his conversation with Alys as he picked his way through the cars lined along South Bridge and the unusually quiet streets leading south. Leading home.

James’s heart swelled as he pictured the young woman. Lean, functionally muscled, confident, in control. She was the image of both of her parents. The perfect blend of both sets of inherited genes, she seemed to have taken all their virtues and none of their weaknesses. He wasn’t her father, and he certainly had no right to but James Kelly was brimming with pride for Alys Shephard.

Twirling his Bo staff as he walked, he thought of the words that had passed between them.

How can I trust you?

When the time comes, I’ll fight to keep you and yours from him.

Where is my father?

Why did he… why did the men leave?

So many questions, so much history shared and missed between them. Despite his refusal to give her the answers she needed so badly, they had parted as friends, or at least James hoped they had. One thing he was certain of: he had accomplished his mission. He’d warned Alys as best he could for the storm that was headed her way in just a few short months. It wasn’t much, but it was the best he could manage… For now.

Tell them, tell everyone.

April. Somna is coming…

Chapter 7

Alys

Crunching into the skin of a Braeburn apple, one of the last of the season, preserved in the cold underground storage chamber at the north of The Gardens, Alys chewed slowly as her mind worked on solving her most pressing problems. She ignored the ubiquitous groan of the hungry dead reaching through the iron fence behind her.

 
Arriving home that morning, her mind racing following the unexpected encounter with her uncle, Alys had been surprised and relieved to find life’s pace in The Gardens unaffected by the legion of Ringed who had been headed towards the city-centre. The undead seemed to have marched straight on past the low-level farmland, continuing onto the north where, according to her friends, the massive crashing noise of metal had originated from.

Sitting on a tarp on the ground at the highest pint of the enclosed area, her back several feet away from the fence cutting her community off from Princes Street and The Ringed who remained there, Alys closed her eyes tightly and began sorting through her thoughts as she ate. She’d spoken to her mother, Jennifer, for around an hour after she’d got back. Aunt Fiona had been present, as had Steph, listening closely as Alys described the events of the last few days. Occasionally Jennifer would interrupt to clarify a detail here or there, but for the most part she allowed her daughter to speak. To relay the incredible events that she and Joey had witnessed and been part of. Alys stopped short of sharing their discovery of the UKBC or dEaDINBURGH. She also chose to completely omit Fraser’s part in the proceedings and put the discovery of the tunnel exit down to luck. Knowledge of the Carrionite’s effects she attributed to Joey. Jennifer looked impressed at that part of the story.

Aunt Fiona and Steph had sat quietly listening, Fiona’s face the very image of shock and horror. Steph’s expression remained neutral, her reaction unreadable. When Alys had finished, her younger cousin, much changed from the person she’d been just a few short months previously, had asked with a face of stone for a description of Bracha’s injuries. More than once her hand strayed to touch the patch she wore to cover her empty eye socket.

When it became clear that Alys had relayed all she would, Jennifer asked her sister and niece to give them some time alone. She looked away, fixing her eyes out of the door of her large tent, and whispered quietly.

“I’m really proud of you Alys. Well done.”

Jennifer didn’t once make eye contact with her daughter as she spoke the first words of praise she’d ever bestowed on her daughter.

Alys grunted and left. She was safely below the folds of her sleeping bag before her stony expression had broken into a joyful smile and the tears had flowed.

Moving her mind from these events, Alys considered Uncle James’s words. She, of course, hadn’t said anything about her meeting with Fiona’s former husband to any of her family. Too many questions lay in revealing his presence and the intelligence he’d brought her. Aside from that, they’d considered James to be dead. Expelled with the rest of the men, James never learned he had a daughter as Aunt Fiona had been only weeks pregnant at the time. Alys didn’t know how to break the news to Fiona or to her cousin. James’s appearance and his alliance with Somna’s Exalted also raised the question of whether her own father was alive and with the group of killers. She hadn’t dared to ask James, but now the need to know was acid in her heart.

Joey was at Suzy Wheels’ place in Craigleith, hopefully discovering what the flash drive his mother had died to give to Jock contained. Alys was expected there the next day and then the two of them would come back to The Gardens. She figured that his presence whilst she told her mother about James and of Somna’s imminent invasion – as well as detailing her plan to prepare for his tribe of killers – would be easier for her mother to accept if she had Joey to focus her anger on. He had a knack for annoying Alys’s mother, but she could tell that Jennifer respected her best friend, even if she wouldn’t admit it.

The seed of a plan began to germinate in Alys’s mind prompting a sardonic grin to tug at the corners of her lips.

Tomorrow,
she thought.
Joey and I will speak to her tomorrow.

Alys rose, performing a series of habitual stretches designed to keep her muscles and limbs loose and ready. As she rolled her head around on her neck, enjoying the pop of vertebrae, she noticed Aunt Fiona rushing into Jennifer’s tent, a panicked expression on her face.

Alys descended the steep slope and ran across the green pasture into her mother’s tent. Fiona was in her sister’s arms, a pained expression on Jennifer’s face as she patted the woman awkwardly on her back.

“We’ll find her, Fiona, I promise. She can’t have travelled far.”

Alys’s heart lurched in her chest.

Steph!