Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) (21 page)

“Always creeped me out, the way they do that.” Lucian spoke from a short distance away, eyeing the birds with guarded disquiet. “They always just… did what you wanted, always found you. Funny that we never guessed you were a freak. Now we’ve got proof: storming north and seeing fairies.”

James shook his head. “That was a fool’s errand, Lucian. If I hadn’t gone to Radden…”

“If you hadn’t gone, they still would have taken her. Oliver’s right: we didn’t know who else they had out there.” Humiliation flashed over Lucian’s countenance, reddening his cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I tried.”

James’s anger fettered and died. “I know.” He took a moment to offer a smile and thought his face might shatter like a pane of glass. He turned to the birds upon his arms. “I need you to send a message. McKinley, you hear? In the Moon, like last time.” He reached into his pocket for a scrap of paper, but Lucian took a step forwards.

“James, I already did it.”

He was holding a tiny scroll out before him. “The others don’t know. They didn’t want to do anything until we knew what had happened.” He cleared his throat. “I sent a bird the morning after they left. She sent this back.”

James reached out over what seemed an age and grasped the scroll. He unravelled the message, steeling himself, then sighed with relief at what he saw:

Tell the little shit to hurry up and come get his princess. There’s a toad that needs squashing. Hurry. - A.M.

“When?” James said.

“Last night, just before sunset.”

James nodded, taking deep breaths. Relief threatened to steel into his bones and flatten him. “She’s still alive.”

“I guess so.”

James started forwards and threw his arms over Lucian. “Thank you.”

“Uh huh. Get off me, you’re smearing bird crap over me.”

James released him and slapped him lightly on the cheek. “You’re an arse.”

“Yeah, yeah. Listen, there’s one other scrap of good news.”

“What?”

“We didn’t let all of Malverston’s goons loose.”

The homestead farmhouse rang hollow as though the slime that had been let through its doors had forever besmirched its walls. James followed Lucian through the kitchen, which had been full of Malverston’s wretched men the last time he had seen it; Renner, that yellow-skinned monster, and his competitors for the throne of Newquay’s Moon.

In his mind’s eye, James saw them even now, grabbing at Beth and pulling her into their laps, laughing and pinching at her, and all the while her immobile face, her jaw set and her eyes far away.

He shuddered with rage as they headed over the flagstones. Lucian stopped at the door to the cellar, and pulled it open. He smiled bitterly. “Stupid bastard drank himself half to the death the night they came. By the time the others realised what was going on and started off back to the Moon, he was dribbling under the kitchen table.” He shucked and swept an arm, indicating for James to go down. “I bet he regrets that now. If he doesn’t, he’s about to.”

James stepped into the doorway, listening to the hollow burble echoing up from the interior, and discerned a tiny noise mixed amongst the dripping of water and shift of soil: a tiny, human mewling. He stepped down into darkness, and in doing so, realised that he had his gun clutched tightly in his hands.

“No,” Lucian said behind him. “All of you stay up here. We’ll handle this.”

“Lucian, don’t be absurd…,” Oliver started.

“I say we’ll handle it,” Lucian growled, and James was more glad for him than he could have thought possible. Oliver and Agatha were at least three decades their seniors—those who knew the Old World. But that was why they didn’t understand, would never understand: what was at stake wasn’t just another small town that had survived the End; it was the whole world Lucian and James had ever known.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and lit a match, touching it to a lantern hanging on a nail. Slowly, he turned towards the source of the mewling and found a man before him, gagged and bound with thick ropes to a palette set atop a pair of barrels. For a moment his eyes seemed murky, but then they settled on James’s face and began to quiver in their sockets.

It was then that James realised just how far he was willing to go. If the man was afraid, then he was damn well going to use it. He nodded to Lucian up at the top of the stairs, and Lucian pulled the door closed behind him. James set the lantern by his side and crouched down to meet the man’s gaze. “That’s right,” he whispered. “It’s me.”

Melanie Tarbuck shifted upon the threshold of Mrs McKinley’s cottage and rattled on the door a second time, casting wild glances over her shoulder. Everywhere, voices rang out; shadows prepared to spring upon Malverston’s men, who prowled the streets in watchful gangs. The door burst open, a black maw that framed a crooked marble-white figure.

“Come, child!” Alice McKinley lurched out and gripped her with astonishing speed. She had seemed on the brink of death since Mel had been alive, yet now she had grown as animated as a stuck pig. McKinley yanked her inside and slammed the door, then set to tottering over the cobbles, pacing back and forth. “Were you seen?”

“No, but they’re close,” Mel hissed, ducking down below the windowsill and waiting for a group of figures outside to pass. The mayor’s men had patrolled the streets since the whipping. The way they held their guns told no lies: they would shoot to kill at the slightest provocation.

Mel skittered over Mrs McKinley’s dusty kitchen as the old woman pushed open the window and thrust her arm out. Mel was about to hiss for her to withdraw it before she was seen, but by then McKinley was back inside and the window was closed. Upon her arm rested a bobbing pigeon, cocking its head and flapping its wings.

McKinley took the tiny scroll from its leg and unravelled the note. “Child, read it to me. My eyes.”

Mel took the message, just as she had a few days before. This one was different, sent by the Pigeon Keeper himself.

Coming NOW. Be ready. - James

McKinley slapped her knee and nodded. “About time the snot got his backside in gear. Dunno what took him so long.”

“He let Beth get taken in the first place,” Mel spat. “If he never came here, none of this would have happened. She’d be at home. We both would.”

McKinley laid a bony hand on her shoulder. “Home is where you should be, little lady. Your sister’s wrapped up in this mess, but you don’t have to be. You’ve been a brave little warrior, but things are going to get bad now. Go on, go be with your mum, there’s a good girl.”

Mel threw her off and glared. “I’ll never go back there. Not with
her
.” She had returned home after Beth’s whipping. While Mel had railed at her, her mother had continued putting the house in order, torn to shreds when Malverston’s men had taken them. Her face hadn’t born a single crease of concern. She had shut down.

“I’m not going back!”

McKinley’s face softened. “Okay, dear. But you’re going to need more than that thing if you’re going to be any good.”

Mel took her slingshot from her belt and held it up to the scant light filtering into the cottage. “You want to bet?”

“Darling, they have guns.”

Don’t talk to me like I’m a baby,
Mel thought.
You’ll see what it can do soon enough.

“Trust me.”

The old woman’s face creased into a wan, accommodating smile, and she sat heavily at the table. A moment of weakness followed, and she seemed to shrink; a brief flicker where her blue lips and rheumy eyes seemed to occupy her whole face. “The others?” she croaked.

Mel stayed by the window. She had scoured the whole town, sneaking past the patrols in shadow to knock on windows and back doors. So many had been afraid, their faces wet and ashamed, and had shut the door on her. “A few. Not many. They’re getting ready now.”

McKinley took in a deep breath and held it as though inflating a punctured old tyre. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s get on with it.”

They moved fast in the dawn haze, bent low, following hedges and squeezing between fences. Around them dozens of others followed similar paths, brief flashes of bodies and winking metal between the fence posts and bushes, hurtling through Newquay’s Moon towards the town hall. Most of the guards had retreated to change patrols; this was their only chance before the sun was fully risen and mayor’s hold on the town was set for the day.

They took no chances. The few guards still heading back were overtaken before they knew what was going on and were set upon quietly, neatly: splinter threads broke off from the main group and circled in. Melanie paused to see the men seized from behind and held with their heads wrenched back, hands crushed over their mouths. Before they could struggle, pairs of shadows could rush forwards with knives ready. While their carotids spewed crimson pools across the dirt road, their twitching bodies were dropped to the ground, the shadows dashed back to cover, and the threads kept moving, converging on the hall.

Mel kept her hand clutched tightly over a ball bearing, ready to load her slingshot and fire.

This was it. The moment she had been waiting for since she could walk. All her life she had watched the mayor take Beth away whenever he wanted, and all the while Mel had had to watch Beth act like she wanted it. She knew it was just an act that kept Mel and her mother from being the mayor’s playthings as well, but that didn’t make it any easier; black gruel in her stomach condensed a little more each time. Today she was going to make things right.

“Stay close, child!” McKinley wheezed, staggering so much that Mel had half a mind on her, ready to catch her if she fell. But Mrs McKinley wouldn’t be left behind. She led the first of the threads from the bushes to race out over the compacted-dirt square towards the town house.

Catch them by surprise,
they had said
. Take no prisoners, don’t give them time to regroup. We cut them all down and be done with it.

But Mel had seen in their eyes that they knew the score. They had numbers and surprise, but that was all. If they hesitated, it would only take one guard to send a hail of gunfire that would send them all to the ground.

“Remember, don’t stop!” McKinley cried. “Ready?”

The shadows emerged in full, several dozen strong, perched like cats with guns and anything sharp they could find in their grasp.

“Let’s take our town back,” McKinley hissed.

They rushed forwards, people who had for so long cowered, now made furious and alive by those years of drudgery. They covered the square in a few moments and raced along the porch to surround the door. Mel was left in their wake, a few steps behind, her little legs too short to cover the ground in time. McKinley tottered a few steps ahead. They both watched as the men and women gathered around the door and piled up around it.

No, I need to be first. I have to be. The mayor is mine!
Mel thought.

So preoccupied was she with the thought that when the doors were thrust open and the gunfire started, she failed to quite absorb the sight before her. In a hail of flashing light and the cacophony of gunfire in an enclosed space, people fell like bags of wheat, lifeless and riddled with holes. The wrong people. Those by the door were torn asunder by a wall of shrapnel sent from within. Mel just had time to scream and throw herself into the dirt before the bodies in between her and the door were cut down. She pulled her hands over her head and kept on screaming, crawling into a ball. Terror erupted in her bowels, the likes of which she had never felt.

I wanna go home, please let me go home! Please—!

Suddenly, totally, the gunfire ceased. Silence rushed in to take its place, so loud that Mel thought it might make her go deaf. Shaking, she crawled for McKinley, who lay in a tangle of limbs.

A garble escaped the shaking old lady: “Don’t… stay.”

Mel stopped, was about to retort when the doorway filled with a dozen men and Malverston himself. They looked upon the carpet of dead without a mote of surprise on their faces. Over her shoulder, Mel heard the town stirring, people pouring from their houses. Some crept forwards, eyes peeking around walls. Others ran without a care for the guns aimed at them, screaming for loved ones who lay torn at Malverston’s feet. In moments they were all around Mel, overtaking her, falling over the dead and hugging their ragged bodies.

“You think we’re stupid?” The mayor roared triumphantly. “Behold the fools who think they can trick George Malverston!”

He laughed in great booming chortles. Behind him, Renner appeared with Beth held between his hands. Fresh cuts riddled her neck and ears, bleeding so freely that her shoulders had been stained red. She writhed in his grasp, and he stilled her with a sharp blow to her ribs.

“Beth!” Mel struggled to her feet, reaching for her slingshot. She was on the verge of loading the ball bearing into the sling when she caught sight of Mrs McKinley rising before her.

McKinley held a hand to her stomach, her dress marked by spreading florets of red. She staggered forwards, and even those weeping grew quiet to watch her approach Malverston and the firing squad trained on her. She seethed like a boiling kettle, a kitchen carving knife in her hand.

“Old woman, I should have turned you into dog food a long time ago,” Malverston said.

“You come and face me like a man for once in your life, you snivelling tub of lard,” McKinley said. “Enough hiding behind your pet apes.”

The guards tightened rank, preparing to fire, but Malverston waved them down. “No, no, allow me,” he said. He addressed the crowd. “See what happens to those who challenge the natural order, folks. See it well.”

“Mrs McKinley, don’t!” Beth cried, struggling in Renner’s grasp. “Please, don’t.”

“Be still, girl. I’ll have you free in a trice.”

“Is that so? You still mean to steal my property from me?” Malverston shook his head gravely. “You see, my fair people? Not a hero, but a common thief who has led you astray. Let justice be done. If it must be by your elected leader’s hand, then so be it.”

McKinley thrust a bony leg onto the bottom step, which shook from side to side. She paused for a moment and looked as though she might fall, clutching her stomach. But then she looked up at Malverston—even from behind, Mel knew what that look must have contained: distilled, cold hatred. McKinley gripped the banister and not looking down at the dead underfoot, launched herself up at the mayor and swung the knife with a banshee screech.