Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) (44 page)

James’s eyes fixed so sharply on him that Charlie could barely move, X-rayed down to the last molecule.

What if he sees what I am underneath? He’s different, he knows things; maybe he sees.

Who was he kidding? Charlie had known that all along. He had sided with the devil to get a chance to right the Alliance’s wrongs. Yet, when the time had come, and McKay had been in his clutches, James had let him go.

He used me just like he used everyone else. Lies all the way down.

He should have been dead. He had seen the way they all looked at him, as though they were just waiting to leave him by the roadside, no matter how hard he tried to hide it.

He had been kept alive for something.

Looking at James now, he realised that that purpose had come to the fore. A beat passed in which he sensed Cain glance between them, and the guards shifted on the balls of their feet.

“Why am I here?” he said.

James took a step forwards, such that Charlie could see the edges of the twisted scar tissue peeking around the side of his balaclava. “I’ve killed hundreds like you.”

“I know,” Charlie said, intent to keep his gaze level no matter how far his guts twisted.

“You’re here to show him”—he pointed to Cain—“why we do what we do. I could burn that tower to ash, hunt down every last person who knows his name, and do you know what would happen?”

Charlie said nothing. The guards’ guns seemed to glare at him from the corner of his eye.

“Nothing,” James said. “Nothing would happen. He’d just start all over again. And again, and again, no matter what it took and no matter how many people ended up dead. Because that’s what he is. No amount of killing is ever going to change that.”

“So why are we doing this?”

“Because it’s what must be done to put things right for good. There will be no starting over.” He nodded to the black clouds outside. “The world was supposed to end, truly. A final peace. We’re correcting that. Once this storm clears, all will be as it should.”

“You can’t really believe that,” Cain muttered.

James ignored him. “Before that happens, I need him to see in front of his eyes the moment somebody chooses to do terrible things, because to do nothing would be so much worse.”

Charlie fingered his belt, resisting the urge to reach for his knife. The guards would gun him down before he could reach it, but in that moment he sensed an aura of madness—of something
cold
and
wrong
—and found himself wanting nothing more than to stab James and run.

I’ve helped end the world.

He stammered, “Why me?”

“You can decide to do what must be done—what you know is right. So many have died for their obsession. If we burn them now, they’ll spawn again like cockroaches, an eternal cycle trapping us all in misery and ruin.”

I thought the storm following us was just me going crazy. But it’s not that. It’s him. He’s the harbinger.

Fingers of strange cold reached around Charlie’s ankles, probing him, penetrating him. In time, he knew they would consume him.

“I can’t.”

“You can. We have in us the chance to be more than what we are. But we have to choose to make it so. So choose, Charlie.”

Charlie thought he would remain frozen forever. But then he laughed, a tiny bitter huff. “You’re a liar. This was never about choice, or justice. You used us all. It was always about you. You’re just another murderer.”

James gripped his collar. Charlie closed his eyes and prepared for the end.

Just a moment of pain and it’ll all be over.

No end came. He peeked through one eye and found James staring as though he were some curious specimen. “I thought you would be different. Of all people, you would understand.”

Charlie thought of his father, the sweet man who had once put chestnuts in his cheeks and capered about by the campfire, when they had been robbed of their inventory and lay destitute on the roadside. They had had nothing but each other, and starvation had been close. In times like that, Dad had always done the thing nobody else did: he smiled and stared death in the face with the biggest goofy grin he could muster.

That was what mattered, when they had all passed on and they were but dust in the air: what they chose to do when things looked their worst.

What would Dad think if he was here, now? What would he do?

His father’s voice spoke from the ether:
I’m through telling you what to do, boy. I’m dead. Go with your gut.

Charlie looked to Cain and back to James. “I know what it’s like,” he said. “Like the world’s going to tear open if you don’t do everything you can to get back at them. But I won’t be this.”

“I’m giving you a choice, Charlie. All things will end here today, one way or another. The only thing that matters is who’s right and who’s wrong. You have the chance to light up the darkness.”

Charlie forced himself to smile. “I am. Go to hell.”

James’s eyes twitched, darting between him and Cain. A flash of uncertainty, maybe fear. Then it was gone and the deadened gaze fell back into place. “Fine.” He launched Charlie across the room. “Go and die.” With a harsh wave of his arm, he bade his escort follow. “Both of you as well. We’re done here.”

Charlie swallowed, backing away. The escort filed out warily, pattering away down into the street. Charlie neared the doorway, his gaze drawn to Cain. Cain, the source of his pain. The look on his face said everything there was to be said.

There’s still time to stop it.

Charlie reached the threshold and took one last look at them both, two leaders of men lurking in the shadows. Then he was ambling down the stairs, dragging his lame leg after him.

Billy tripped on the last flight of stairs. She managed to keep her feet as she reached the next floor in a lurching half run, then a sack of grain caught her foot and she went sprawling. Dusty tiles slammed her cheek and she skidded painfully. All the while her heart pounded
thum thum thum!
in her chest.

The monster would get her. She felt him just behind her like a needle pressing into her head.

She span onto her back, expecting to see him standing over her with his bloody knife. But he was still on the stairs, sprinting up as though on a cushion of air. He moved so fast!

Billy scrambled to her feet and ran down a long corridor. The building touched the clouds—so big that she would never find her way out again if she got lost. What if the monster chased her where nobody could follow, and it was just the two of them lost in the metal maze forever?

There wasn’t time to think. No time for anything. Just running, breathing, and pumping her legs even though they wanted to fall into useless lumps under her.

Half her mind struggled with the darkness raining down from the sky. It was going to gobble them all up if she didn’t fight it. The cold was already more than she could bear, eating away at her. The Light inside shone bright, thrumming through her and out and away, but she felt like she was holding up a tent which had no poles; as soon as she stopped fighting, that darkness would come crashing in and it would all be over. It was so hard to keep the Light shining. And if the monster caught her…

They had to stop the darkness for good. There was only one way: everyone had to stop being afraid.

How?
she thought.
How can you make people not afraid when there’s so much to be afraid of?

Behind her the monster reached the top of the stairs. His shoes squeaked over the floor after her. The same monster who had taken Grandpa away, who had tried to kill Allie, who had burned Norm’s home to the ground.

Daddy had said that there were no such thing as monsters, that they were just imaginations from fairy tales.

You lied, Daddy. You lied about the monsters.

Ahead, light. She passed through a pair of doors and the corridor expanded into a much larger space. A throng of grim-faced men and women held sharpened table and chair legs like spears, crouched tight beside one another to form a wall of sharp points.

Billy skidded to a stop, trapped between them and the monster at her back.

No, no, no, he’ll get me!

The monster was right behind—just seconds.

“Please!” she screamed.

The wall of spears dropped, revealing not soldiers but loose-skinned old folks and people whose arms and legs were bound by days-old bandages.

“Get the girl back!” somebody yelled.

A gap appeared in the wall of spears and Billy’s head filled with squeaking footsteps rushing up behind her like thunder. Drawing her shoulders together, expecting a knife to dig into her back, she pushed between the spears, pushing through sweating unwashed bodies, the smell of fear and sickness filling her nose.

She found more people behind, and more going all the way back. As she went, each layer looked weaker, holding yet more pathetic sticks, slouching ever closer to the ground.

Grown-ups get scared, Billy
, Daddy had said once when the merchants came by the farm and their faces had been creased up and scary.
They look mean and talk mean, but they all get scared. They’re still little boys and girls inside.

Billy hadn’t been able to believe that until now. These people looked just like she felt. Then the squeaking came through the doors and they too saw the monster, and the yelling started.

Billy screamed when an old man grabbed her roughly by the shoulder and lifted her from the crowd. He had big tufts of hair along the side of his face, and a long hat on top of his bald head. “Child, what are you doing here?” he shouted.

Billy screamed. “Let me go, the monster’s after me, let me go!”

“What are you—?”

“Lincoln!” cried a skinny young man, pointing over her shoulder.

Billy twisted in his grasp to see the spear-holders go shrieking to the ground as the monster slashed down at them. That moment slowed to a crawl as the monster turned, his face dripping with slicks of red broken in half by a grin so wide his lips seemed to touch his ears.

The old man dropped her. “Run, child.”

Billy ran past the last of the sick people and on into older, dustier parts of the building. Fresh screams spurred her on. The rush of more feet coming up from below chased her as she plunged into the dusty building, a great silent maze. All the while her insides turned to icicles, until she was sure that she would shatter if she stopped for even one second. By the time she found more stairs and dashed up and up, her breath puffed in front of her face, and she felt the Light inside her sputter and fade.

There was no itch now, no knowing. There was just her running feet and the monster’s prowling footsteps, coming closer.

Lucian ripped a last cartridge from his rifle and cursed. He had managed to keep on horseback for almost a minute before being brought down by mob force, spilled like the others into the teeming masses. It had been a matter of fighting his way to one of the rapidly-fading Alliance strongholds, letting instinct guide him.

Emerging from the rabble was like sinking under the ocean surface during a tempest. Not far away, Robert’s hulking form swerved in vicious swings of his arms, beating people with blades, splintered wood, his bare fists—anything. With each strike he bellowed with a ferocity Lucian wouldn’t have known had been in him—before Sarah.

The last survivors headed for the tower. There was seldom any resistance left; the fight now took place inside the buckled spire—a silver thread being trashed from below, blasted from the side and consumed by darkness from above.

He was on the verge of running for the lobby when a skinny figure stepped through the crumbled wall. Charlie dragged his leg behind him, and Lucian saw in his mind’s eye a flash of New Canterbury. Not too long ago, Lucian had sent him limping away into the hills at gunpoint with nothing but his clothes and grief—grief for the father Lucian had cut down.

Something inside Lucian snapped.

He had been so angry, so afraid. All he had wanted was to keep his family together. Norman, Alex, Agatha… he couldn’t lose it all again. It had blinded him to his own cruelty.

Lucian realised he was walking towards Charlie, no longer fighting, not even dodging. He was just walking, and for a time the whole terrible mess seemed to fade away. Charlie had spotted him and froze as Lucian stepped over the bodies of his friends and those he had himself slain until the two of them stood but a few feet from one another.

He’s broken now, just like the rest of us.

Lucian dropped his rifle. “Hello, Charlie.”

Charlie’s mouth tightened. “I only helped them because they promised me I could kill you,” he said. “I want you to know that. All this, everything I did.”

Lucian could have sank three feet into the mud. All those people… because of him.

“I’m sorry for what I did,” Lucian said.

“That doesn’t change anything.”

“I know.” He nodded, raised his arms out to the side. “I know.”

Charlie raised a pistol to Lucian’s chest, hand shaking, eyes budding with angry tears. “I have to.”

Lucian nodded. “It’s okay.”

Charlie’s eyes twitched, tears welling up in great clots and spilling over down his cheeks.

“Do it.”

Lucian took a breath and looked off towards the tower.

“Do it!”

Lucian blinked, for in the next moment Charlie dropped the pistol and reached for him. Lucian struggled and they rolled over the ground, yelling into one another’s faces as they came to rest under the stable awning. Lucian pounded Charlie’s side and dragged himself up on top of him, reaching up to pound his face.

“Wait!”

Lucian paused.

Charlie spluttered between his teeth: “I need your help.” He arched his head towards the swirling black clouds that had now engulfed the tip of the tower. “We have to stop it.”

Breathless, Lucian tightened his grip and pulled Charlie up to face him. “What?”

“The cold, the dark, we have to stop it.”

Lucian looked once more and realised just how monstrous those clouds were, how ominous, as though the gods themselves were reaching down to wipe them all away like ants.