Ruins (29 page)

They want us dead.

“The Prophets,” Laurent continued, “have rewarded your unwavering faith with a gift. Two gifts, in fact. This old fossil and this young cub are emissaries of the Trinity. They seek to destroy you, but tonight it is they who shall we destroyed.”

“Split open their veins and let us bathe in their blood!” one of the Harvesters snarled.

“The child! Give us the child!”

A female Harvester shoved the man at her side, the whites of her eyes ablaze with bloodlust. “The child is mine!” she growled, unsheathing a dagger with a serrated edge.

Laurent’s laughter curdled the air.

“Esmerelda,” he said. “You wish to claim the cub? Then come for him.”

Nicholas looked from Laurent to the woman with the dagger. She was skinny but solid, muscle rippling under bleached, freckled skin. Her head was shaved, her skull etched with tattoos. She clambered up onto the stage with the agility of a leopard, leering at him, her eyes shining with a mad hunger. He’d seen that look before in Snelling.

He couldn’t breathe.

“Lad,” Sam said.

“Silence him,” Laurent uttered. Sam grunted and didn’t speak again. Nicholas couldn’t tear his gaze away from the Harvester called Esmerelda. She flipped the dagger in her hand as if it were nothing more than a small coin.

“Let us measure the size of the fight in this dog,” Laurent drawled, his face filling with the same crazed expression as Esmerelda’s.

Esmerelda barked and Nicholas jumped. She snickered and slashed at him with the dagger. Nicholas flinched before realising that she hadn’t come close enough to cut him. She sniggered again. She was toying with him.

They circled about on the stage. Nicholas peered at Sam over Esmerelda’s bony shoulder. The curly-haired Harvester holding him captive clamped her hand over his mouth and Sam’s eyes bulged.

“Yap yap!” Esmerelda shrieked, slashing the air with the dagger.

“Stick him!” one of the Harvesters yelled.

“Slice him! Cut him!”

Where was the Drujblade? Nicholas tried to come up with a plan, tried to remember what Sam had taught him in Aileen’s garden.
Hands up
. It was impossible with all those eyes on him. Angry voices baying for his blood. And he only had one hand to work with this time.

Anger
. He had to get angry. It was the only way he could fight the fear. He thought back to Snelling; how Snelling had tricked his way into Hallow House. How the anger had pumped through him hotly, instinct taking over.

Forget the arm. Fight.

Esmerelda struck out with the dagger again and, without thinking, Nicholas snatched at her. He clasped the hand clenched around the knife’s handle.

She tugged. Attempted to pull the blade free, but he held tight. Her forehead crinkled with annoyance and she seized his shoulder, smashing her forehead against his.

Crack.

A cheer went up. A shiver of cackles.

Bright lights exploded in front of him and Nicholas staggered back, grabbing his head where a sharp pain pulsed.

That was stupid.

The lights popped and faded and Esmerelda remained, fired up, urged on by the crowd. Laurent lingered behind her, his fingers steepled together, drinking in every detail of the scene. Nicholas had the feeling he was being tested. Just as the aledites were a test. Did Laurent really want him dead? Would he step in if Esmerelda found a home for the dagger? Was that the real test?

Silver flashed before his eyes and Nicholas only just dodged out of the way in time to evade the dagger. A fist came at him. Esmerelda was advancing her attack.

Nicholas ducked away again. A fist struck his jaw and he didn’t feel pain, only rage. An eruption of fury.

Yes.

He retaliated, imagining the cushions he’d jabbed during Sam’s training. He hurled a punch that cuffed Esmerelda’s right cheek. He thrust again and winced as his knuckles struck bone. Esmerelda staggered slightly. Exhilaration set his heart racing, but Nicholas didn’t have time to celebrate.

Seething, Esmerelda flew at him, thrashing the blade at him.

Slash. Punch. Slash. Punch.

Nicholas dodged every deadly jab, but only just.

Enraged, Esmerelda lashed once more and Nicholas cried out as the dagger bit his shoulder.

Just a cut
, he told himself.
It’s not deep
.

He grabbed Esmerelda’s hand once more. Holding it tightly, he hooked his foot behind her nearest leg, found the back of her knee and yanked.

Esmerelda shrieked angrily as her leg gave beneath her and she collapsed to one knee.

The dagger was his.

Nicholas wrenched it free. As he went to kick the Harvester in the face, Esmerelda seized his foot and dragged it out from beneath him.

His back hit the floor and the breath huffed from his lungs. Gasping, Nicholas found himself staring up into Esmerelda’s crazed face as she threw herself on him. A haze of panic smothered him.

And then Esmerelda’s eyes were wide with shock.

Hot wetness slid down his arm and Nicholas peered down to where the dagger was buried between Esmerelda’s ribs. He hadn’t meant to. Blind instinct had driven his hand up and now the blade was in her.

Get it out. Get it out.

He twisted and pulled and the blade came unstuck. Esmerelda made a strange sound. Blood spurted his T-shirt and the Harvester toppled to the floor beside him. She retched and floundered and finally lay still.

Nicholas was paralysed with shock.

I killed her.

A cacophony of hisses and boos erupted from the Harvesters and the crowd thrashed into motion. Bodies clambered onto the stage.

I killed her.

He was only vaguely aware of the Harvesters closing in. Bile burned his throat. He’d killed somebody. She lay next to him, dark liquid pooling around her, sliding towards him.

Then Nicholas noticed the unnatural quiet. The Harvesters had stopped in their tracks, mere feet away from where he lay, propped up on his elbows. Their eyes weren’t on him anymore.

Nicholas followed the Harvesters’ united gaze.

The girl.

She was on the stage with Laurent. He didn’t know where she had come from, how much of the fight she had seen, but she was looking at him. Cold and detached, but intrigued. Wary. Gold buttons winked on her velvet green jacket. Her hair was pulled tight in a bun at the back. She looked smart. Different.

“You,” Nicholas wheezed, fighting the rising bile.

“You know Rae?” Laurent asked innocently.

Rae. She has a name.

“You’re her,” Nicholas said. The adrenaline made his lips fat and clumsy. His tongue tripped over the words. “Rae. I’ve seen you. You have to come with me.”

Laurent crowed loudly and rested a hand on Rae’s shoulder.

“And where do you think you’re going, Harvester slayer?” he implored patronisingly.

“Cut him! Kill him!” The Harvesters roared again and fists beat at the stone ceiling.

“He’s using you,” Nicholas told Rae urgently. “He doesn’t care about you. All he cares about is death and pain. He wants to destroy everything.”

She didn’t blink, held his gaze.

“You’re wrong,” she said simply.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Smoke

N
ICHOLAS WANTED TO LAUGH, BUT HE
knew it would come out as a hysteria-pinched shriek. He was losing his mind. Or she’d lost hers.

Laurent. It’s Laurent,
he thought
. He’s done something to her.

“Whatever he’s said to you, he’s a liar,” Nicholas entreated desperately. He was still on the floor, staring up at her. He didn’t trust himself to get up. If he moved too quickly, he’d throw up. His limbs were jelly. A wobbly mess.

Shock
, he thought.
Must be
. The combined shock of killing Esmerelda and the throbbing discomfort of his arm.

For a moment, he’d forgotten about the body lying next to him. As he contemplated getting to his feet, though, he remembered Esmerelda and fresh nausea coursed through him. Cold sweat broke out over his top lip.

Rae’s eyes became slits. What had Laurent told her?

“Dear boy,” Laurent snarled. “If you continue to insult me, I may be forced to do something I’ll later regret.”

“Regret, ha!”

It was Sam who spoke this time. He was still behind Nicholas, though Nicholas couldn’t see him from where he lay.

“Regret only comes with humility, humanity,” Sam’s voice said. “You’re about as human as a reptile.”

Laurent’s features hardened. His cheekbones were razors, his eyes mercurial.

“Lies,” he mused, his gaze returning to Nicholas. “Interesting that you speak of lies. I would suggest that you direct such accusations at your companion here, Nicholas. You might be surprised at what comes
slithering
out.”

Nicholas didn’t understand. Laurent was accusing Sam of lying to him? He twisted about on the floor and peered at Sam. The old man was still in the grip of the curly-haired Harvester, but he stared at Laurent with an unsettling mixture of hatred and fear.

“Sam?” he asked uneasily.

“Don’t listen to him,” Sam said curtly, though his eyes didn’t leave Laurent.

“Your parents,” Laurent said coolly. “Why don’t you ask Sam about your parents, Nicholas?”

“My... what about them?”

The nausea evaporated and an icy chill flooded his veins. Sam looked so different. His face was a mask. Taut and tired.

“Or how about his wife? Why don’t you ask Sam how his wife really died?”

A bellowing cry rang through the chamber as Sam struggled in the Harvester’s grip. He wrenched his hands free and threw his elbow into the curly-haired woman’s face. Blood sprayed from her nose and she collapsed backwards. Sam charged toward Laurent, but the other Harvesters descended, quickly subduing him.

Sam twisted in their hands but they held firm and the elderly man sagged, panting and exhausted.

“She was a midwife,” Laurent said softly, undeterred. He seemed to be feeding on Sam’s misery. “In fact, she was the only midwife in the village of Orville, which is why she was assigned to your parents, Nicholas. She was good at her job. Everybody liked Judith Wilkins. ‘Jolly Judith’ they called her, and not just because she was generous in her dimensions. She helped every mother in Orville safely deliver their precious, pink little parasites. Until, that is, your mother gave birth to you.”

Nicholas was transfixed by Sam. His arms were held aloft either side of him by two Harvesters and his head sagged to his chest. He resembled a broken scarecrow.

“Your birth was magnificent,” Laurent cooed. “A poem to destruction. The entire village was obliterated. Judith, of course, bore the brunt of the explosion. She and your loving parents were killed. Even as you wriggled out of your mother, your first shrieking breath incinerated the three of them – and the rest of Orville.”

Nicholas couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe.

Laurent lies
, he told himself.
Laurent lies
.

As he looked at Sam, though, Nicholas knew this was no lie. Tears streamed down the pensioner’s face. The fight had left him.

My parents weren’t my parents.

Fresh nausea burned through him and, with it, Nicholas felt a familiar rage igniting deep in his chest. The same rage that had burned uncontrollably when his parents died. Anger at the world, at himself, at them. His parents.

Not my parents.

The floor tipped beneath him and he felt dizzy, as if an invisible rug had been pulled. Nicholas rolled onto his side and Esmerelda’s dead eyes locked with his. He wanted to be sick. He retched and felt angry tears spiking.

This is what Laurent wants.

The thought brought him to his senses in an instant. Laurent was toying with them. Even if he was telling the truth, he was doing it to hurt him. To weaken him.

“Rae,” Nicholas said, looking imploringly up at her. “You should leave. Get out of here.”

“And you know what’s best for me?” she snapped. She was so cold. Even colder than Laurent. There was no compassion in her face. She observed him as she might a wiggling worm. He imagined her crushing him under her boot.

“He’s dangerous,” Nicholas said.

“So am I.”

“Nicholas,” Laurent said softly, as if addressing a nephew he was fond of. “I fear your words fall on deaf ears. And you’ve outstayed your welcome. Perhaps you should take Sam and leave.”