Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) (48 page)

“Why?” Lucian’s face seemed permanently contorted into a half frown, his voice gruffer. It was as though all the bounce had been dug out of him with a penknife, leaving a bitter old man in a teenager’s body.

Grief did strange things to people.

“There’s nowhere to expand. We got word from Southampton and London: they agreed to a coalition. Permanent trade routes. We did it. We’re finally building something. If we’re going to do that, we need beacons that will attract people.”

“This is our home, Alex. We built it with our own hands.”

“It was our home. Before.”

The empty rooms were like rotted teeth staring them in the face—as galling as the empty spaces at the dining table.

“Where do we go?”

Alex breathed cool, crisp air. “My parents took me to Canterbury once. We took a tour of the cathedral. I remember thinking it was impossible for men to have built something so big and beautiful all that time ago.” He muttered into the wind, “It’s perfect.”

“You looking to start a religion?”

Alex smiled wanly. If only that weren’t so very close to the truth.

“The others are worried. You haven’t been inside all day.”

“I just needed to clear my head. There’s a lot to think about.”

“If you had to get away from the kid, you could have just asked one of us to pitch in.”

Alex shook his head. “He’s a good kid.”

Norman had forgotten everything; amnesia from the impact trauma of the ricochet wound to his head. There were no doctors within the homestead’s area. All they had were books that said his memory might return, and might not.

There had only been one thing for it. Patiently, Alex had closed down every part of his mind eager to get back out into the world. If they were going to keep the mission alive, they had to begin with a fresh slate, no matter how long it took. He could have been bitter, could have given up, but there was only one way to look at it. Tabula rasa: a new Chosen One.

It turned out Norman wasn’t a dull boy. Quite the opposite. His reading was exceptional, his wits sharp. He lacked the spark he would need, but one thing made it bearable: he looked to Alex with undying devotion.

He never called him Alex. He always called him Alexander.

Alex liked that.
Alexander
.

He would need that guise if this was going to work. Their order might turn to Norman one day, but until then Alex would be alone. If that was so, he had to become more than just a man. He needed a throne.

“Yes,” he said. “Canterbury.” He turned his gaze on the wilderness, intent not to look back at the homestead.

Lucian gripped his arm. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just thinking.”

“You can’t lie to me, Alex. I’m your brother.”

Alex’s gaze dropped to the ground like a bird sprayed with shot.

Brothers. Three brothers against the world. Brothers who stuck together, no matter what—

“Alex?”

Alex pointed back to the homestead. He wished he hadn’t seen it, for it could never be unseen in his mind’s eye. He knew the moment he turned to look at it anew with Lucian that it would be with him always.

“No,” Lucian muttered. “No…”

It wouldn’t be the fire that Alex remembered, nor the tyrannical mayor, not even emerald eyes. It was the sight of the pigeon coups before them, lined against the garden wall, their doors bent open, empty save for a carpet of downy feathers.

Their master had called them.

James watched Alexander Cain’s face slacken. Eyes that had been so full of wakeful intent faded to a flat, glassy sheen. James didn’t close his eyelids, nor lay him down on the floor, just remained entwined with Alexander’s body, cradling the blond head that moved no more.

Numbness had taken him, so deep that not a single errant thought entered his mind. He went to unfeeling bliss gladly, adrift on a peaceful ocean amidst an inky void. Time passed. Somewhere on the very edge of his perception, titanic forces battled for supremacy.

When he finally emerged from his torpor, James’s eyes moved to the floor before him. His gaze focused on a pair of booted feet, leading to muddy torn trousers. James followed those trousers to a hulking torso, chocolate-coloured skin over enormous arms, and a boulder-shaped head. James at last met the man’s gaze and the two of them shared a look that could have lasted an aeon, for James knew the pain that rested behind the man’s eyes.

A pistol rose from the man’s waist and pointed at James’s chest. James didn’t break his gaze, and for the briefest moment he felt a caress upon his neck: the ghostly touch of a girl who had once grown peaches.

The sound of the shot was lost in the pain: an iron fist punching him in the chest. His body grew weak under him, sliding downwards, and he flopped upon a bed of glass. At once the shattered window became a thousand autumnal leaves, soft against his skin. Beside him lay Alexander: for an instant his eyes were beady and blank, set in a pale lifeless face; then he was young and smiling, pointing up into the sky. Grass surrounded them upon a hillside close to the homestead.

Happiness filled James as he followed Alexander’s finger skywards, learning the clouds Alexander named:
cirrus, stratocumulus,
cumulonimbus…

He smiled as he uttered those names over and over, and the warmth of the sun tickled his skin. It was important he remembered. One day he would need this knowledge, when people looked to him. It was meant to be, after all.

He had a destiny.

A wave of rainwater crested ahead of Norman as he rounded a final corner, and the bottom fell out of his stomach. Panting, soaked from their mad dash through the bowels of the tower’s eighth storey, he and Allie came to a halt before a ragged hole in the tower’s side. A waterfall ran off the jagged edge of the carpet where the exterior wall had been gouged away by mortar fire, ending in a snarl of girders and reinforced concrete. Below, a new battle raged in the courtyard; a chimera of writhing struggle, and a scattered separatist movement. The fighting was coming to an end.

Not fast enough. In moments, the darkness would blank out everything.

Then we all go to that other place
, Norman thought.

Beyond the compound, the storm raged with unfettered vigour, but London had vanished, not behind clouds or smoke, but an impenetrable curtain of blackness.

Before them, Jason made a slow, sauntering approach towards a red-haired figure upon the floor.

Billy wheeled back on her palms, sliding in the rainwater, hair lank over her face, which had paled to the colour of chalk. Her mouth hung wide in a grimace of terror.

“Together,” Norman said. “No matter what.”

Allie said nothing, just started down the hall. Norman followed, heart thudding in his chest.

The fighting below seemed far away. Even the raging storm became deadened as they splashed through the water side by side, and Jason’s shoulders tensed, sensing their presence. He turned to face them.

Billy scrambled back, skittering to the far wall. Her expression was glazed, her face contorted as she fixated on the darkness outside, as though every part of her mind was concentrated on it. Then she vanished from Norman’s attention, for Jason began throwing his knife from hand to hand.

“How’s the chest, Norman?” he called over the storm. “Still breathing through a straw?”

Norman said nothing, just kept walking.

Let him think I’m still a cripple. Like he’d ever believe that I got healed by magic Frost.

Maybe, just maybe it would give them a moment’s advantage. They would need every piece of luck if they were going to stand a chance. In his mind’s eye he saw countless faceless people Jason had cut down as though they were but cattle.

He and Allie fanned out to either side. Norman knew neither of them knew what they were doing, but he kept moving. Allie too walked with steadfast intent, her face pulled into an emotionless grimace.

Norman felt every bump and groove in the sabre’s handle, hypersensitive nerves firing; sensing the balance of the blade, the form of its curve. And something else: the ice in his chest—which had somehow melted the pain of broken ribs and brought him to Billy, and all the weirdness that had come since then—filled him, binding to his deepest tissues. Something reached out from an impossible place and acted through him.

So that’s why I’m here: to protect Billy and slay a monster. There’s a legend to be going on with.

Or, just maybe, a destiny.

“How does it feel to look out there and know it all falls on your head?” Jason said.

They were feet from one another now, storm run-off pouring around their ankles and over the ledge. A bolt of lightning struck a nearby skyscraper and for a moment the darkness became diaphanous, sending London’s skyline into harsh relief, complete with thousands of writhing figures in the courtyard far below. In the blinding flash that whited out everything, the three of them leapt.

Norman put all his weight into swinging the sabre. His wrists yanked back almost immediately as the blade was thrust back over his shoulder by Jason’s parry. He tumbled as Allie moved forwards in the corner of his eye and unleashed a vicious punch. Her blow landed square upon Jason’s jaw and sent him wheeling back with a look of shock. Allie unleashed more blows in rapid succession, making contact with his bandaged face again and again, splitting his wounded cheek like a second mouth.

Norman regained his balance and risked a glance at Billy: her gaze remained hazy, struggling in an unseen battle of her own.

It seemed to take an age to rise to the balls of his feet and thrust himself forwards once more; an eternity in which all he could do was watch Allie face James’s hound, somehow maintaining the offensive. By the time he splashed towards them, her luck ran out.

Allie screamed as Jason’s bandage fell from his face, revealing a horrific yellow-green mass of freshly-torn, infected flesh. Eyes streaming and blood red, he launched himself backwards, drawing her on. Allie tensed, hesitating an instant—

Wait for me!
Norman thought.
Just wait and we’ll take him together!

—then she charged with a banshee wail, running straight for the knife in Jason’s hand.

Norman expected to watch her die; readied himself to watch and keep fighting.

But Jason didn’t impale her as he had done in Norman’s mind’s eye. Instead, he danced to the side—

Even now he’s playing with us
, Norman thought.

—and gripped her by the hair, yanking her in a wide arc onto his other fist, landing a brutal punch to her solar plexus.

A guttural
uurgh!
escaped her as she doubled upon Jason’s arm, and he delivered a sharp crack to the back of her head with the knife handle. She fell slack and almost carelessly, he sent her sliding on her stomach across the floor.

Norman yelled aloud, thinking she might slide into space, but Allie flipped onto her back and dug her heels in, coming to a stop six feet from the edge. Before he could call out to her, Jason was on him, teeth bared in a crazed leer, and the knife was a blur, coming from above and below in a blinding flurry.

Lights fizzed overhead, a roiling blur. The firmament itself shook with the force of Billy’s transit through the
sideways
impossibility, infinitely faster than the last time she had travelled. She wasn’t flying this time but being torn across space with such violence that she felt the fabric of this strange place stretching and tearing with her passage. All around, things screamed, multitudinous and agonised, and somewhere in the frenzy of pain and fear, she too screamed. The Frost had taken her body, converted her to so much ice—any moment she would strike a sliver of matter and shatter into fine dust.

Then with a suddenness that should have knocked her eyes from her head, she jerked to a dead stop. Below lay the dark place, alive with the enslaved, writhing Vanished.

She wasn’t alone. Things hung just out of sight, so big her head gave up on appreciating their size.

Can’t help them, can’t help them
, she thought.

“No. You can’t. No more than you can help yourself, meddler,” sighed a voice.