Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) (41 page)

His mouth was only half-open to call out to the Creeks when the wall became an avalanche of flaming beams and cladding and tumbled onto the porch.

The Creeks saw. Screaming as one, Helen and Hector bent over Norman as the deluge of fire and splinters consumed them.

“Lord, no,” Agatha muttered. She shared a look with Oliver, and they made an unspoken decision.

He turned to Lucian. “Get out before it comes down.” He hesitated, then added, “Please.” Then he was running after Agatha, leaving Lucian at the foot of the flaming stairs.

Coughing and gagging as smoke scratched at their lungs, Oliver and Agatha danced over the charred wood chips and cross-beams, calling out. They received no answer but that of the evening breeze, shockingly cold in contrast to the oven from whence they had come.

“Helen, Hector. Call out,” he cried.

Nothing.

They kicked at the rubble, clearing swathes with their booted feet. The pile had formed a ventilated network of twigs and splinters; the perfect kindling. Already it was almost too hot to stand over.

He knew they must be dead but kept digging beside Agatha, unable to stop, to do nothing.

At last they uncovered a delicate hand. Oliver braced himself, dug down with the point of his toe until he had the proper leverage, then took away a tangle of splinters, revealing Helen Creek. Just beneath her he could make out Hector’s shirt, torn and bloodied. Both their bodies were crushed, misshapen and contorted.

Oliver felt all the fight drain out of him.

No. No, not the boy. He was so young.

There was no sign of Norman.

Agatha was screaming at the heavens, cursing God and all his temerity. Oliver seized her. “Aggie. The boy. Where’s the boy?”

She blinked, looked down, then scrabbled madly around their excavated hole.

Oliver did the same. Ignoring their burning hands and shins, their eyes streaming and their lungs crackling, they sent splinters and scraps of wood flying, until eventually they crouched beside one another and Agatha shook upon his shoulder, slamming her fist down on his arm.

“He’s not here,” Oliver muttered numbly. “He’s…”

They grew still, defeated. Only then did the tiny moan reach Oliver’s ears, barely audible above the fire.

They wheeled from Helen and Hector’s bodies and peered over the porch’s edge. In the moonlight, Oliver made out Norman’s spread-eagled figure nestled in a halo of shrapnel.

They must have pushed him off the porch, just before it hit them.

A scrap of Norman’s trousers had caught light.

Oliver leaped down and slapped the fire out. Norman twitched. Giddiness swept through him as Agatha landed beside him. “He’s alive.”

Agatha kissed Norman, croaking, “We have to get him away from here.”

Oliver glanced back at Lucian standing in the midst of the inferno.

The boy will let the flames take him before he moves an inch.

Still no sign of Alex or James.

Can we really just run away?

Another look at Norman told him the answer: here was one they could save.

Oliver swept Norman into his arms while Agatha held on to his head. They dashed into the night, crossing the square until the heat of the flames left their skin, where they laid him on the ground.

“Will he be okay?” Agatha said.

Oliver shook his head.

They turned back to the town hall, crackling and whistling as it succumbed to the hungry flames.

“Come on, come on, come on,” Agatha whined, jumping on the spot.

The Moon had grown silent and peaceful. It seemed the town had won its fight. Somewhere out there were people who had just taken freedom for their own.

Rain spattered down, first in tiny droplets, then in a steady downpour. Too late to save the building. The fire’s damage was done. As they watched, it teetered on its foundations, flames spurting through gaps in the cladding.

“I said
shoot her
,” Malverston said.

James thrashed in Malverston’s grasp, but the knife cut once more at the tendon of his neck. He cried out, drawing Alex’s gaze through sheer will. “Alex, don’t listen to him.”

“I haven’t got all day,” Malverston warned.

“He’s not going to let me go. Take Beth and go.”

“I am a man of my word, little cur. A man of my word.”

Beth started forwards. “Don’t hurt him. Don’t! Just… take me back. Take me instead.”

A combined roar came from James, Malverston, and Alex simultaneously.

“No, Beth!”

“Back, bitch.”

“Stay where you are.”

Beth stalled mid-step, her jaw clamped hard together. “You won’t do this.”

Malverston laughed, a rancorous booming. The smoke was thickening fast: in moments it would be too thick to see anything. The fire had breached the attic, climbing through the wall spaces and blossoming through cracks in the boards. James felt the noxious gases working at his mind, marbling rational thought.

If we stay, we’ll be dead by the minute’s end
, he thought.

“Beth,” he gasped. “Go. Go now. Get to the others.” He silently pleaded with her, mouthing over and over:
please
.

Her lip trembled. “I can’t.”

Mustering his strength, James forced himself to smile. “I’ll be okay. I promise. You have to go now.”

Her throat worked, and she backed up a step. His heart leaped. So long as she got out, whatever happened next didn’t matter.

Just let her be safe. Go, Beth. Faster, faster. Go.

She took another step, breaking the triangle, moving towards the stairs.

James was on the verge of sagging in relief when Alex said, “Stop.”

His last moorings of sense came loose. “Alex?”

Malverston interrupted. “What would you do without your Pigeon Keeper? Your line would come to an end… all you worked for, come to nothing.”

“Don’t listen to him, Alex!”

“Shh,” Malverston whispered into James’s ear. “Come, boy. See the way of man.” Uttering each word with savoured ecstasy: “
See… what… we… are
.”

James stared disbelievingly as Alex mouthed unspoken words, his eyes throbbing in their sockets. In his twitching gaze there was only desire and obsession and coldness: the call of the mission.

“Alex…,” he whispered.

Alex’s mouth drew into a pale, flat line, and something faded behind his blue eyes. “I’m sorry, James.”

In that last moment, Beth looked not at the gun Alex trained upon her, but at James. He had time: time to know life wasn’t like in tales. In Beth’s look there was no fear, nor anger or even love; just the empty stare of one totally alone, as a reverberating gunshot filled the air.

Mel’s world vanished. Frozen holding her slingshot trembling at full extension, she watched Beth fall backwards, stretched out on the floorboards, her body striated with a thousand bleeding cuts and the centre of her forehead marked by a clean red hole.

Screaming, screaming everywhere. As ground became sky and everything inside Mel’s chest came crawling up through her throat. Time seemed to stop, and a film reel played behind her eyes: the parody of life. For what could this be but some silly fantasy? How could real life be so cruel?

Then time snapped back, and she realised it wasn’t her screaming. It was James.

A drum beat sounded deep inside: Mel decided to feel everything. Marshalling every mote of strength from the hard callous she had nursed against the harsh Tarbuck life, she took all that pain and formed it into a tight ball in her core.

The mayor.

Her arms stopped trembling. Mel blinked tears from her eyes and found Malverston’s face. He had fixed James with the same leering, wide-eyed stare that Mel had seen countless times, when he had come calling at their house as Beth had walked dutifully out into his clutches—to protect her.

Beth, who now lay in reach of the fire. Beth, who would never wake.

Mel’s vision clouded for an instant before she could blink it clear. Malverston’s pudgy, sweating face took up all of her gaze, seemed to fill the world with all its jeering malevolence. She took a slow, steady breath and released the band. The stone whipped through the gap in the boards, and the mayor’s eye burst like a pus-filled tomato.

Malverston squealed, and suddenly James was free of his embrace. The knife’s pressure on his neck went slack.

A new fire ignited in James, one to dwarf that which raged about them. With a howl he seized the knife from Malverston’s hand, took it up in a wide arc as he stood, and plunged it into the flabby folds of neck fat. Screaming a scream that would never end, he gripped Malverston’s lapel and stabbed again, and again, and again. The remaining eye bulged as the mayor wilted, his lips open and trembling, bubbling with blood as tiny gurgling sounds escaped his throat.

All the while, James bellowed—one that became an open, wretched gape as Malverston twitched his last twitch, fell to the ground with a thump, and lay still. James dropped the knife, turning on legs that seemed to belong to another person, and went to Beth. Crouching, he put his hands out to her, but some invisible force made him flinch.

If he touched her, it was real. And that just couldn’t be.

Everything went quiet as he took in Beth’s blank, ruined face. The world melted away, pushing back into the far distance. Only the two of them existed in eternal night, floating together.

“Beth,” he said. “Beth, it’s okay. He’s gone. You’re safe now.” His voice broke as his fingers finally touched her skin, brushing a stray piece of hair from her forehead. “Beth,” he choked.

“James, come on. We have to go.”

James didn’t recognise the voice. It seemed so far away, so warped beyond human tones. He looked up at a blond-bearded man standing ten feet away, a rifle in his hands. All around him, fire raged. A fire that he couldn’t hear, nor feel. It was an abstraction, that blaze: it could have been happening on the other side of the world. He could only stare at the thing that had once been his brother.

“Get out of here, Alex,” he croaked.

“No. Come. We can’t do anything for her now.”

“I’m staying. I’m not leaving her again.” James took her hand in his and held it to his cheek.

Alex rushed forwards and seized his collar. “This whole place is coming down, we have to go.”

Somewhere even farther away, he heard Lucian bawling: “The stairs are going. Get out, both of you!”

Alex was hauling him away from Beth. They both choked on acrid smoke, barely able to see a foot in front of their faces. The floor seemed made of putty now, bending underfoot. Alex dropped his rifle to grab James with both hands.

Snarling, James threw Alex away towards the stairs. “Go. I never want to see you again.”

“The whole building is burning. You’ll die!”

James said nothing.

“James, I-I did it for you.”

James wanted in that moment nothing more than to tear at him, claw his eyes—reach for the knife and plunge it into his head. He returned to Beth, brushing her face. “Go.”

The roof cracked with a high whine, and the east section caved in behind them.

“Alex! James!” Lucian bellowed.

Alex ran. In his peripheral vision, James saw him dash away down the stairs, leaving him alone with Beth and the mayor. Coughing and wheezing, James cradled her in his arms and brought her forehead to his as the roof above him groaned a final time, and then all around him was roaring inferno.

Lucian almost fainted when Alex came crashing down the stairs. “Take your bloody time, eh? You want to give me a heart attack?” He gripped Alex’s arms and pulled as Alex jumped over the flaming steps—not a moment too soon, for the staircase buckled and wilted into the pyre behind.

Lucian threw Alex clear and looked up into the attic. “Where’s James?”

He glanced at Alex and back to the ragged opening of the attic. “We have to get something for them to slide down. Get the table!” He ran for the burning edge of the dining table, unbuttoning his shirt and tearing it off. Slapping out the flames, he dashed for the end of the table and nodded to the opposite end. “Quick. This place is coming down.”

He glanced to Alex and dropped the table. The look in his eyes said everything. “No,” he muttered. “No.”

He ran to where the stairs had been and bellowed up into the attic. “James, I’m coming. I’m coming!” He dashed forwards but wheeled back immediately as a spurt of flames leaped into the air.

Alex seized him from behind and dragged him away.

“No, no we’re not leaving.”

“He’s gone, Lucian.”

“No!”

“We have to go.”

“James. James, answer me,” Lucian roared. “You answer me right now, you stupid bastard. James!”

He kept calling as Alex hauled him thrashing and kicking from the building and down off the porch. He didn’t stop until the roof’s spine buckled as though sucked inwards, and the entire building toppled in on itself. A fireball burst from the conflagration and rose fifty feet into the air.

Lucian sank to the ground. Even when rain began to extinguish the dying flames, and the others wept and crooned over Norman’s prostrate body, all Lucian could do was stare.

James couldn’t be gone. He couldn’t. It wasn’t in the cards. He was the Chosen One with the funny powers—the one with the destiny.

Wasn’t he?

Lucian realised he wasn’t alone. A figure stood in the square, a black profile against the dying fire. A slingshot hung loose in her grip.

Over what seemed an eternity he went to her. They said nothing, just stood together until the rain had done its work, the hall was a black smoking ruin, and the square had turned to thick mud. All the while the same look remained on her face: that of a much older person, one who had been beaten down all their life, and expects nothing but strife from the world.

Mel turned and walked away towards the Moon.

“Wait. Where are you going?”

She blinked, a slow, lost expression on her face. “Home. Mum needs me.”

“Come with us. We can take care of you.”

She shook her head, her gaze on Alexander. Lucian expected to see fury there, but instead he saw only sadness, something irrevocably broken. “I have to be the big girl now.” She didn’t look back again, vanishing into the night.