Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) (34 page)

Lucian broke in. “They’re not monsters. For all they are, we’ve learned that much.”

Billy looked him in the eye. “Some are. They have to go away. Only Light can make it better,” she said, a tiny voice, no more than a sigh.

“I thought it was you with the magic Light,” Richard said.

“Everybody has some. I can’t do it by myself.”

“How? How do we do it? There are thousands of them,” Richard said.

“I-I don’t know.”

Richard put up his arms and turned away, running his hands through his hair. “We can’t do this, Norman. We don’t have time for all this mumbo jumbo. This is real. Real people, real lives. We have to talk strategy.”

“Shut it,” Lucian said.

“I’ve had enough of you telling me what to do! I’m telling all of you now to wake up. We have one world, one chance to fix this before it’s all lost forever. Everything we worked for, all the years we spent teaching, learning, saving those books and machines and…” He gestured down to the smouldering city.

Lucian said nothing, only glowered at him.

It was Robert, standing over Sarah’s covered body nearby, who broke the silence. “We’ve all seen enough to know there’s more going on. I know what I feel, and I know what I’ve seen.”

“I don’t know what’s real anymore,” Richard said.

“This is real,” Robert muttered, looking down at the white sheet covering Sarah.

Richard’s gaze softened. He lowered his head.

“Tell us what we have to do,” Robert said.

Billy looked startled. “I-I really don’t know.”

Norman tried to keep the crestfallen expression from his face. “Nothing? The Jester didn’t give you any clues? Think hard, Billy.”

“I never know. It just sort of… happens. Then I know. But now…” She shrugged.

Norman swallowed.

Allie hugged Billy close to her chest. “We can’t take a little girl into a war zone, Norman.”

Norman looked around at them all, a mix of incredulous and downcast faces. It was too much. Like it or not, the macabre nonsense had no place here. If he was going to get any of them moving, they had to talk sense. “I know. We can’t risk bringing you, Billy.”

“But—”

“We’ll have to go, do what we can. If we turn the tide, we’ll bring you in. Then whatever happens, happens.”

Billy made to protest, but Norman cut his hand through the air to silence her. “I won’t risk you again.” He addressed the others. “I’m not ordering anything. It was never my place—or anybody else’s—to order anything in this world. But if you’re with me, find what you can and say your goodbyes.”

A quiet moment passed between them, and then they were in motion. Lucian took a group off towards the city to find weapons, and Richard went with them for medical supplies, food, water—anything they could give to those who would remain behind. Robert never moved from Sarah’s side.

Norman sat in the grass with Allie and Billy and held his head in his hands. “I can’t do this. What if I…” He trailed off, looked into Allie’s eyes, and stopped himself. All his life he had moaned; that he wasn’t meant for the destiny thrust upon him, that he wasn’t strong enough. Things had changed now. Looking at her now reminded him just how much things had changed.

It was never my destiny to save the world. I was never chosen. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let this happen
.

“You have to take me,” Billy said quietly. “You have to.”

“We will. When it’s over.”

“No. There won’t be time later. It’s—”

“Billy.” Norman shook his head. “I made my decision. Stay with the others, help who you can. Be brave. I promise I’ll come back for you.”

Billy lifted Allie’s arms off her and backed away from them. “You won’t come back.”

“Billy…”

She turned and ran.

Norman made to chase her, but Allie gripped his arm. “Let her go.”

“But she’s—”

“She’s safer angry, Norman,” she said. “At least she’ll stay.”

“What if she’s right? What if we never come back because we didn’t take her?”

“It’s still the right choice.”

“Even if it means the End?”

“Even that,” she said. “Because I’m not taking a little girl to die, even if it means saving everything. That’s not who I want to be.”

Norman drew her close, not holding or caressing, but holding on for dear life. “You’ve changed,” he said.

“So have you. Funny, isn’t it: becoming who you always wanted to be, right at the end?”

They held one another until the two dozen horses had been retrieved from the glade, and Lucian and Richard had returned. By the time they were ready to go, time seemed to have congealed, running through Norman’s fingers like water. They saddled up fast, not leaving time to think. Norman took his place at the head. There would be no hiding behind Robert this time—even if he had wanted to. Robert wasn’t leading anybody now.

So this is it
, Norman thought as he climbed up onto his saddle.
This is the last goodbye.

“Oh, great Chosen One,” Richard said, appearing at his side. “You lost something.” Between his fingers he held something small; half-black, half-white. John DeGray’s king chess piece, charred but unmistakable. “You dropped it down there.”

“You stopped to pick up that thing?”

“It’s all I have left to remind me of who I am,” Richard said. “But it still doesn’t belong to me.” He held it out to Norman. “Look after it, until it’s time.”

“If it’s not time now, it might not ever be.”

Richard shook his head and pressed it into his hands. “Give it back when it’s over.”

Norman forced himself not to say any of the thousand things racing through his head. He placed the charred king in his pocket. “When it’s over.”

Richard made to leave, then hesitated. “I don’t believe in what I can’t measure or quantify, and I never will. This End thing, the Frost, I don’t care. But I believe in you.”

“You have any idea how corny that sounds?”

Richard smiled glibly. “Take it or leave it, Chosen One.”

Norman looked over his shoulder at them mounting up around him. He felt he should say something rousing, proclaim assured victory, give some great inspirational speech.

A beat passed.

“Well, let’s go then,” he said.

They rode down the hillside in pursuit of the army and the thickening storm clouds as the first peels of thunder rolled across the land.

Snick. Snick
.

Blood pattered onto creaking floorboards in the candlelit gloom.

“I’m not an unlikeable man, you know. I’m a good man. A fair man. It’s these people.”

Snick. Snick
.

“They’re evil. Greedy and spoiled. When I think about it, it’s my own fault. Things have been good for so long under my hand that they forget what it means to live in this world. Managerial oversight, you might say.”

Snick.
A pause. Then a longer, measured s
nick
.

Beth flinched as the blade cut deeper. The pain was everywhere now, a burning ache all over her body, threading every square inch of exposed skin. It was only these longer, deeper cuts she felt individually. The world revolved as she sagged against her restraints, forever turning and undulating, as though the walls and floor were but painted upon a canvas flapping in the wind. Cogent thoughts formed fleetingly as she coasted on the edge of consciousness, undulating back and forth along a long dark tunnel. The deep cuts brought glimpses of a dark room and a pair of piggy eyes, and fear dribbled through the unfeeling veil.

In those moments she wanted nothing more than to cry, not beg or scream or spite, just weep. There wasn’t enough of her left for anything else.

Just let me lie down on the cold ground and be, let me fade away, let me rest.

She never let one mote of the overbearing urge show on her face. That was all she had left to hold on to: not letting him win. Through a head full of throbbing cotton wool, she refused to respond to his cutting.

Malverston resumed his steady pacing around her, his expression as academic and detached as a gallery patron observing an oil canvas. Slowly he bent forwards and made the tiniest incision below her right earlobe, leaned back on the ball of his foot, and nodded. “Don’t worry, there’s time to fix this. A few more hours and we’ll be rid of those meddlers, and then we can get back to establishing order. A fairer, newer world, where people know their place and show their betters proper respect.”

Another dainty cut, longer this time, crosswise over her breastbone.
Snick
.

Darkness drew in frighteningly fast, receding just as quickly when Malverston’s hand came whistling up to strike her chin, snapping her head sideways.

“Now, my dear,” he whispered, “you mustn’t drift off like that. It’s rude.” He cupped her cheek, stroking the shredded skin.

Beth tried to spit in his eyes but managed only a pathetic whistle between her lips.

“Such fire,” he muttered and pinched her face between his mitt, scrunching a hundred lacerations and spilling fresh tears over his fingers.

The pain cleared some of the fog. Beth coughed, shook her head with as much vigour as she could muster, and glared at him anew. “If you’re going to kill me, do it. You’re running out of time, George.”

He shook his head solemnly. Without the fog to cloud her vision, she saw just how changed he had become. His eyes had sunken and his lips had turned down and grown pale, his cheeks blotchy and loose, hanging in pendulous jowls. He wilted like a flower in a cold snap, stuck in here with nothing but her and his knife. Somewhere under her pain and misery, Beth felt her own slither of pleasure. “You’re afraid,” she said.

He blinked and straightened with a jerk. “Afraid? Of what? Those peasants? They’re beaten. You saw that old bitch bled like a stuck pig yourself.”

Beth pushed away the memory of McKinley’s throat splitting open. “You’ll never be sure, not ever again. There’s blood in the water.” She took a breath, ignoring the whistle in her throat, and slurred at length, “It could come from anywhere. From out there, from in here; from those
peasants
, or from your own men. How does it feel to know that every heart that beats wants you dead?”

What little colour remained in his face drained away, leaving a puerile, green countenance of childish fear. He raised the knife to her nose, eyes bulging, held it trembling against her for a moment, then let out a scowl and whirled away. Staggering across the room, he collapsed against the trolley of wicked instruments and growled like a caged dog. “They do not. They love me. They love their mayor!”

“They’ll have your head on a spit before sunrise,” she sang softly.

“No!” Malverston cringed. “I could leave. Precautionary, of course, but perhaps I should seek shelter until—” His head jerked, and in an altogether more savage voice he cried, “No! I’ll stay until every last fucking peasant who’d say
boo
to a goose is dead and buried.”

Beth was watching him jerk back and forth when something close to the stairs drew her gaze: a huddle of shadows creeping forth so slowly as to seem utterly still. For a moment an unreasoning part of her thought McKinley had survived. The old woman had come for her!

No. It wasn’t McKinley.

It was Renner, and two of the other men Malverston had sent to James’s homestead. Abreast one another, crouched with eerily still, predatory expressions, they emerged into the light.

Excitement sizzled over her entire body like the electric shocks travelling magicians used to give her when they came through the Moon. Even her hair seemed to crackle.

Malverston kept jerking on the balls of his feet, oblivious. Close by, Renner’s yellow livid eyes seemed to pop an inch from his face as he licked his lips.

The bastard was finally going to get what he deserved. He wouldn’t even see it coming.

Finally Beth could get out of this place. Where was Mel now? Mum? She would beat that stupid little girl for trying to save her when she got out of here—beat her then kiss her and never let her go.

When they let her go…

She shuddered as her excitement came to a stuttering halt.

Once they’re done with Malverston… You really think they’re going to let you go? Untie you and shoo you out the door: see ya later?

Not with the way Renner had looked at her. She didn’t doubt that his own fun with her would begin—she was willing to bet it would be all the worse than Malverston’s.

Renner and his companions were feet away now, hungry and quickening.

I can’t save him. I won’t save him!

But she had to. If she wanted to live.

Closer. A single creaking floorboard. Malverston stirred but didn’t turn. Renner’s knife rose to his shoulder.

Clenching her eyes shut, Beth screamed, “Look out!”

Malverston leaped back just as Renner’s knife came sailing down, slicing through his sleeve and opening his forearm. Howling, he wheeled away as one of the others jabbed down.

Malverston sidestepped with the deftness of a man half his size and caught the man around the midriff, crushing his arms against his sides. Before a beat could pass, Malverston smashed his forehead into the man’s nose with a sickly crunch. A moment later he dropped the man to the ground like a sack of rocks and punched Renner’s elbow hard enough to send his knife spinning to the ground.