Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) (28 page)

“Get in, take who we can, and get out,” Lucian said.

“Sounds like a plan,” Norman said.

“What about Alexander? The council?” Richard said.

Nobody answered him.

“Well?”

“Save who we can,” Lucian said.

Norman saw the pain on his face, knew it was the same he felt himself. “We don’t have time to search for anyone. We grab who we can. That’s all.”

“What about the vaults? My master’s research materials? Years of work—decades. Irreplaceable stuff. We can’t just let it—”

They all stared at him, and Richard’s brow crumpled. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Like I said, we don’t search. We just grab.”

“You do whatever you have to do. I have to find Sarah,” Robert said.

“We’ll find her. We’ll find all of them.”

Robert said nothing, just turned and started off along the street, keeping low, a hulking unstoppable machine animated by pure instinct.

Norman shared a grim look with Lucian and pushed Richard out before him. “Come on, let’s make sure he doesn’t get himself killed.”

“And us,” Lucian muttered, and they gave chase.

Sarah flinched when the explosions started. All around her, her captors laughed and jeered. Those few with whom she was tied back to back wailed in horror. Before them, New Canterbury became a stack of smoking tinder. The gunfire had all but ceased, and by now the streets were dark with the invading army, systematically sweeping the streets, plunging into buildings and yanking any they found within out to be slaughtered. Slowly they converged on the cathedral—they could have taken it minutes ago; they were saving it for last.

Sarah worked at her bindings, yanking and sawing away with her fingernails. By now her wrists were raw and her nails bled, but she kept going, her teeth gritted together. Once she was free, she would kill as many as she could before they got her. That was all that occupied her mind now: getting as many as she could. The alternative was to die in whichever way they had planned, and by the looks of what was going on in front of her, it wasn’t going to be anything pretty.

She had no idea how long she had been unconscious, but she had woken in time to watch the fires start, and for the first tendrils of smoke to drift up into the clouds. She and a handful of other women had been hauled back behind the enemy lines, just past the main roadblock. Nearby bodies were scattered on the ground, full of holes. A few she recognised. Many more she knew she would have also been able to name had they not been so mutilated.

Explosions continued to pepper the city with firepower the likes of which she had never thought possible. So this was the power of the Old World, brought to bear. Ironic that it should be used to seal their fate.

Fibres gave way one by one. The fingernail of her index finger throbbed and burned. A few more stokes and the nail would tear free.

“How long?” A young man appeared before her, a soft-faced youth with a leg that dragged behind him.

The men who stood around Sarah jeered, pointing to the city.

“It’s done, already.”

“Look at the bastards. They got nothing.”

“This ain’t a fight at all!”

The young man cut across them. “Stop the shelling.”

They turned to him.

“Eh?”

“What the bloody ’ell for?”

“We’ve got them on the ropes.”

“It’s unnecessary. As you say, the battle is won.”

Sarah blinked, staring at him. There was something familiar about that face.

“We ain’t gonna stop nothing until we get an order from—”

“
I’m
giving you an order. Stop it right now.”

Those around her stiffened, and for a moment the young man glared at them. Something clicked in her mind at the sight of that brooding, confused expression, and she gasped aloud.

That kid who Lucian hauled off the streets. What was his name? Charlie?

He looked right at her then. She saw the recognition in his eyes, just as well as she saw the micro-expression give way to a mask of hatred. “What are you doing with these?”

A sickly grin from one of the men. “Orders.”

“Well?”

Everybody stilled as a high voice rose up from behind her. The kid stiffened as a lithe figure stepped into view. Sarah shivered: the voice was the same she had heard just before she had passed out. The man was wolfish in appearance, holding the same long curved knife, which now dripped with blood, tendrils red and white clinging to its edge. “Keep shelling,” he said. “Hurry up with the hay.”

Charlie glanced back down at Sarah, and leaned close to the wolf man. “What are you doing?”

The wolf man followed Charlie’s gaze and grinned down at her, waggling his eyebrows. “A little fun.”

A geyser of fear erupted in Sarah’s belly. The ropes that bound her suddenly seemed impossibly thick. She would never get free in time. More people arrived with baskets of hay, then long lengths of wood. Before her they started erecting long poles, to which they hammered crossbeams.

“Oh God,” spat the woman tied to Sarah’s back. “Oh God, no.”

Sarah said nothing, just stared the wolf man in the eyes. She wasn’t going to weep.

The wolf man’s brow twitched, a touch of curiosity threading his malicious glare. He got down on his haunches, waving the bloody knife back and forth. “You scared, missy? I know you are. You can’t hide it from me.”

Sarah barely heard him. She fixed her gaze over his shoulder, and her heart lurched. It took a moment to realise what she was seeing: Heather’s figure, wedged into a recess in the far side of the roadblock’s remains, watching the procession with wide eyes, trembling.

“You can’t hide anything from me. I see you,” the wolf man was saying. He ran his tongue over his teeth and bit his lip. An old bandage wrapped around his face had suppurated and grown green/brown to the extent that infected flesh showed beneath. He didn’t flinch a bit as he smiled and stretched the glistening skin—the perfect cap to his uncouth exterior. “Don’t worry, not long now,” he whispered as he stood.

As soon as his back was turned, Sarah mouthed
Run
.

Heather didn’t move, hugging her knees.

Run
.

Heather moved an inch, then flinched back.

Sarah leaned forwards, glaring with all the force she could bring to bear.
Run, now!

Slowly, inch by inch, Heather began crawling out from her hiding place.

Yes!

Charlie frowned in the corner of Sarah’s eye, clocking her gaze. He was on the verge of turning when she yelled out, “Scared, of you?”

The wolf man, who had been ordering the wooden structures to be built faster, turned back to her quizzically, like a cat surprised to see a mouse bite at its paw.

“I know your kind: needing to see pain to feel like anything but a piece of dirt. Sick, pathetic men.”

He sauntered around her, appraising her with a critical eye. His tongue darted to and fro in the corners of his mouth, like a snake tasting the air. “She speaks,” he said, grinning. The bandage stretched to hideous proportions, such that she could see torn pus-ridden flesh underneath.

In the haze of Sarah’s peripheral vision, Heather inched out into the street and slid along in the dirt.

Just keep him distracted a little while longer
, Sarah thought desperately.

“You don’t belong here,” she said. “Most of these people are just angry for what we did. I get that. Maybe I can even forgive it. The others you would have killed if they didn’t join you. It was them or us. I can forgive that too. But people like you… You’re just monsters.”

The knife appeared again in a blur, resting upon her throbbing jugular. “There it is,” he sighed. “
Monster
. I lost count of how many people I’ve had where you are right now, and in the end, they all pick that same word. You can only hear that enough times before you start to believe it; then you start to own it.”

“Save it. Finish your work, coward,” she spat. A horrified part of her cried out to take the words back. At least she would die fast, and Heather could get away.

“Jason,” Charlie said. “You sure you want to do that?”

A flicker of anger behind the monster’s eyes. “I do what I want, boy. When I want. I’d think you would know that by now.”

Charlie paled but took a hesitant step forwards. “She’s important to them.”

Sarah and Jason turned to him.

Charlie hesitated. “I was here. When they had me, I saw her talking with Cain and the others. She’s one of the top dogs.”

Try librarian, kid.

If only they knew she led the militia. Her head would already be on a spit.

The wolf man, Jason, turned back to her with renewed intrigue in his eyes. He dropped the knife from her throat. “Is that so? Why didn’t you tell us, darlin’? We had no idea we had such exalted company. We’ll have to pull out all the stops for you.”

The others laughed, belly laughs of wicked amusement. Suddenly work on the wooden erects redoubled.

Charlie’s jaw tightened, his face a mask of fury and—maybe—regret.

The kid wants out.

Maybe she could use him. If she could get close, maybe she could slip away. If not, maybe at least she could get his gun and take a few with her.

“There are kids in there,” she said, leaning towards Charlie. “Old folks, farmers. Nobody in there ever did anything to hurt you.”

She felt hatred beamed at her from all directions.

“You people are the reason we’re here,” Charlie spat.

“Not
these
people. They didn’t make the decisions. Most never leave this place.”

Her words landed visibly. Charlie’s face flickered once more.

“They’re just as hungry, lost, just as scared. You don’t have to do this.”

Charlie’s face darkened as he glanced at Jason’s turned back. He leaned over, and she felt the others’ attention on them. The boy felt it too; his eyes searched the corners of his sockets, and he spoke as a mere breath. “We all chose. It’s too late.”

“It’s never too late,” she hissed.

He glowered down at her, hovering a moment longer before drawing back. In his wake he left a whisper on the breeze: “Sorry.”

Sarah gritted her teeth and rounded on Jason. She only had to keep going a few seconds longer, and Heather would be safe—by now she was under the awning of an outbuilding, moving towards an alley.

“Coward. You don’t have the guts to do your own dirty work? Why hold a knife to somebody’s throat if you’re not prepared to use it?”

“Oh, don’t worry. I have special plans for you.”

He kept his back to her, yet his shoulders had tightened. But at what?

Coward?

She grinned. “Like every
coward
ever said. How does it feel to know that we all see you for the yellow dog you are?”

He whirled on his heels. His eyes livid and bloodshot, he snarled down at her: “I could gut the lot of you right now, flay your friends in front of you, piece by piece.”

“Please, don’t,” wept the woman behind Sarah. “Stop it. I-I don’t wanna die.”

Sarah ignored her.

“Hope… she has hope,” Jason hissed, his tongue searching the air once more. “That’s the talk of somebody looking to get saved.”

“My friends are out there. They’ll tear your spine out when they get here.”

“Is that so?” Jason spread his arms. “All I see is little piggies getting their homes blown down.”

Sarah glared at him, if only to keep her eyes off Heather, who had stopped crawling and lay still, pressed against the wall, only a few yards away.

Keep moving. Move!

“They’ll be here,” she said.

Jason grinned and shook his head. “Darlin’, do you have any idea how many times I’ve heard that, right before the blood started flowing?”

“Forget what I said before. When they come, I’m saving you for myself. I want to see the light go out of your eyes.”

Jason sneered and inched closer. “A fighter. I like it. Tell you what, I’ve changed my mind. You get your wish: I’m going to take you for myself, after all.” The knife once more snaked from his belt, and Sarah found herself inching her neck higher, waiting for the blade to start slicing.

Then screaming filled the air. For a strange moment Sarah thought it came from her own mouth. Then she saw Heather streaming from the shadows, wailing at the top of her voice with a fist-sized rock held over her head, heading straight for Jason.

The monster caught her in an almost graceful pivoting motion, taking her arm and spinning around with her held in his grasp, such that by the time their revolution was complete she writhed in his grasp, the rock dropping to the floor. “Vermin,” Jason hissed. “Hiding behind every wall and under every stone, just waiting to be put out of your misery.” He raised his knife, and before Sarah could scream, thrust it into Heather’s back.

Heather’s tear-strained, terrified face froze in a grimace. She and Sarah shared a look then, and Sarah felt a piece of herself vanish as Heather’s gaze grew stony and distant and was gone. She went limp as Jason raised his arms in a grand
ta-da!
gesture, letting her body drop to the cobbles with a crunch.

Sarah bit down hard on both sides of her cheeks. She’d be damned if she was going to let him get any satisfaction. Inside, she felt as though the blade had torn through her own heart.