Ruins (33 page)

“Morning,” Liberty said. “Nicholas, Sam, Merl.”

Nicholas stood by the window with Merlyn as Sam sat beside Liberty. Dawn lingered in the doorway, as if she didn’t want anybody to see her.

“What a lot of sour faces,” Aileen marvelled. “Not surprising, I suppose. Who’d have thought Bury would play such an important role in the apocalypse? Wouldn’t have put my money on it.”

“We’re not quite in apocalypse territory yet,” Sam said gently.

“Not far off, though,” Liberty commented.

Nicholas scratched his shoulder where the sling dug into his flesh.

“What are we going to do?” he asked.

“We have to stop Laurent from opening the oblituss,” Liberty said. “Whatever it contains.”

“Dawn says it’s a jail,” Nicholas said. “The priests… They put something down in the tunnels. Hid it away.”

Dawn shrank further away from the doorframe, as if the group’s surprised stares caused her physical pain.

“To that end…” Liberty set her tea cup down and picked up a bundle of sacking that had been resting at her feet. Carefully, she unwrapped it and held something up for everybody to see.

The breath caught in Nicholas’s throat.

It was a gauntlet just like the one Snelling had used.

“Where did you get that?” he asked.

“Nale stole it from a Harvester,” Liberty explained. Nicholas regarded Nale with renewed respect. He massaged his chest, remembering the blast of energy the gauntlet had unleashed. It had nearly rendered him unconscious.

“The gauntlet itself is a complex hybrid of science and magic, fit for one purpose,” Liberty said. “Turning Sentinels.”

“Turning them?” Aileen asked.

“Corrupting them,” Sam explained. “Transforming them into servants of the Dark Prophets.”

“It opens a portal within the host,” Liberty said, “lets a demon inside. The host is killed in the process, but the demon takes possession of the corpse.”

“I fail to see how possessing such a thing can possibly help us,” Isabel said from the windowsill.

“I sort of lied when I said it has one purpose. It’s also a weapon,” Liberty explained. “It releases powerful electrical charges. Enough to subdue someone.”

“So what’s the plan?” Nicholas asked. “We use it to fight Laurent?”

“In a nutshell,” Liberty said. “Nale has agreed to guard the oblituss until we’ve stopped Laurent and his followers.”

“That could take weeks, months,” Sam scoffed.

Nale remained silent. Nicholas wondered why anybody would agree to such a thankless task. Nale merely sat in silence. Zeus licked his hand, as if understanding the seriousness of the situation.

“We move now,” Liberty said firmly, wrapping the gauntlet up once more. “All of us. Nicholas, if Rae’s down there, you’re the only one who can get through to her.”

“She didn’t seem that bothered last night.”

“You’ll find a way. You have to keep trying.”

Isabel hopped onto the coffee table and surveyed them all. “I was down in the bowels of Laurent’s domain,” she said. “I saw what he’s capable of. I hope you’re prepared for what is to come.”

“What did you see?” Sam asked.

“He feeds off the living,” Isabel revealed dourly. “He leeched pure energy from a man, leaving behind nothing but ash.”

Nicholas thought he saw Dawn recoil in the doorway. The same thing had happened to her dad.

“That’s not all,” Isabel continued. “He has been collecting perverted totems. I saw two, the Èyùn vase and the Slaughter Stone. Their dark energies were dreadful. If he has further totems and they’re united in one place, they could amass a devastating charge of power.”

A nervous silence filled the living room.

“We need everybody,” Liberty said finally. “Aileen, contact as many Sentinels as you can.”

“There’s, uh, one more thing,” Merlyn said. “Sam asked me to look for information on Laurent. I have a contact in Ipswich. He’s a nut, but he says he knew Laurent.”

“Is he trustworthy?” Sam asked.

“He’s solid.”

“Is it likely he’ll know anything useful?” Liberty asked.

Merlyn shrugged. “Just the messenger,” he said. “But... Solomon’s a rare one. It might be worth a punt.”

“I should go, then,” Sam said.

“Not alone,” Liberty replied. Nicholas thought he sensed scorn in her tone. “I’ll go with. Everybody else is tunnel-bound.”

Nicholas grimaced. They were going back into the tunnels? It seemed like a suicide mission, especially considering how many Harvesters had been there the previous night. There didn’t appear to be any alternative, though. And on top of it all, he had to convince Rae to join them.

Now it was his turn to unpick things. He’d have to unpick the lies that Laurent had stitched around her.

Aileen bustled from the room. “And I thought running a safehouse would make for a quiet retirement,” she sighed.

“Nicholas.” Sam was by his side. The elderly man nodded his head at the living room door and disappeared through it. Butterflies in his belly, Nicholas begrudgingly went after him, joining Sam in the garden. The air was thick with heat and Nicholas struggled to think clearly. The unnatural warmth fogged his brain and he wasn’t looking forward to whatever Sam had to say.

“Take a seat, lad,” Sam said, contemplating the ground.

Nicholas complied gladly. His knees were practically knocking together. Sam remained standing, his features cast in shadow by his fedora.

“I wish I could tell you that what Laurent said about your parents was a lie,” the old man said finally. “But I can’t.”

Nicholas had known that anyway, but hearing Sam say it opened a sucking pit in his chest. His palms became clammy.

“I had hoped to spare you that painful truth, but I see now that I was naïve. I should have known it would be used against you, if not by Laurent, then by somebody else.”

Nicholas’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Questions cemented his throat closed. He knew that if he tried to voice them, they’d spew out in an idiotic torrent.

“Anita and Max loved you, but you don’t need to be told that.” Sam’s voice creaked, his expression wooden. “They were your parents. They were your family. You know that. Their love for you was never in doubt, especially as they chose to take you in. They wanted you in their lives. They accepted that responsibility gladly.”

“Who–” Nicholas tested his voice. “Who were they?”

“Anita was your sister.”

Nicholas’s skin prickled. He hadn’t expected that. At the very least, he’d expected to be told that the people he thought were his parents were actually his aunt and uncle. That would make sense. But this...

“My... sister?”

“She was nineteen and already engaged when your parents died. Relatively young for a mother, but not unheard of. Your parents died the day you were born. Whatever it was that came into the world with you, it claimed them, like the other residents of Orville. Your mother’s name was Alice. Your father was Daniel.”

Nicholas had never heard those names before.

“They were so excited...” Sam broke off, his voice wavering. “Anita was staying with Max out of town when you were born. When Alice died, Jessica wanted to take you in. Raise you herself. Esus wouldn’t allow it. He knew that it was too dangerous. Too obvious. So you were hidden with Anita and Max. They became your parents.”

“But why pretend that she wasn’t my sister?”

Sam shrugged. “The more you resembled a traditional family, the better. If the Dark Prophets were aware of your birth, it stood to reason that they’d dispatch their agents to look for you. The more you blended in with the rest of society, the more easily you could hide.”

“And they never told me.” He didn’t know how he’d have reacted if they had told him. Would he have been angry? Upset? Now, he just felt numb, like his body wasn’t his. Just as his parents weren’t his.

Had Anita ever tried to tell him? He wracked his brains, but he couldn’t think of a single occasion. There hadn’t been any hints, any broken sentences, any cross words that threatened to spill the truth.

That was why they’d looked so alike. They were siblings.

“They kept everything from me.” He fought the threat of tears. “Everything.”

“Never maliciously,” Sam said. “They only ever wanted the best for you.”

Nicholas rubbed his eyes, willing the tears away. “You kept an eye on them. That’s why you were always around.”

“They were young and they had nobody. I was there for them if they needed me.” Sam rubbed his forehead, whether in frustration or weariness, Nicholas couldn’t tell. “Lad, whatever you’re feeling, it’s normal. Who can say if what they did was wrong? They kept things from you, and I was complicit in that, but they cared for you. They loved you.”

Nicholas had the feeling Sam was talking as much about his own feelings as Anita and Max’s.

Anita
. It felt wrong referring to her as anything other than ‘mum’. His thoughts were muddled and he didn’t think he’d ever get over the raw feeling of betrayal. How could he trust anything anybody said? It seemed everybody had their secrets; destructive secrets that could tear a person’s world apart in a heartbeat.

And under the mist of confusion, far more disturbing thoughts huddled.
You’re a murderer
, they whispered.
You’re no good
.

He tried to block them out, but they wouldn’t be ignored. He remembered what Malika said to him when she cornered him on the bus.

“You’re dangerous. A threat to the world.”

She was right.

“There’s something you should know about the girl,” Sam said.

Nicholas looked up sharply, plucked from his thoughts. “Rae? What about her?”

“She was born that same night in Orville.”

Suspicion bit into him. “What else aren’t you telling me?”

Sam sighed. “That’s all I know. And I only know that because of Judith. Laurent was right; she was a midwife. She was run off her feet with two pregnant ladies in the village. Then you both arrived on the same night and changed everything.”

Nicholas couldn’t believe Sam had kept so much from him. Anger scorched his veins and he felt like shouting, aiming every rage-filled resentment at Sam. But he couldn’t. His parents, Anita and Max, hadn’t kept things from him out of malice, and neither had Sam. From the start, everybody had simply tried to protect him.

Or protect the world from me.

Rae had destroyed the shop in town. Nicholas had decimated an entire community. Could they really be agents of good? The Trinity had chosen them, or at least that’s what everybody thought. What if they were wrong?

“There’s something else,” Sam began, but he stopped when a gangly figure materialised at the back door.

“Liberty’s asking for you,” Merlyn said. “She wants to hit the road.”

“Thank you,” Sam said distractedly. He hesitated, meeting Nicholas’s gaze at last. His eyes were an overcast blue. “We’ll talk later. I’m sure you have many questions. I’ll answer them if I can.” He turned stiffly and left.

“You could cut the atmosphere out here with a chainsaw,” Merlyn commented, joining Nicholas in the garden. He was wearing another of his heavy metal T-shirts, this one for a band called ‘STIGMATA’. The picture was of a skull-faced angel. He was such a contradiction, Nicholas thought. Merlyn’s goth style clashed with his tanned skin and golden hair.

“Chainsaw? Don’t you mean knife?” Nicholas said.

“Normally, but the atmosphere out here is pretty damn thick.”

Nicholas almost laughed, but it stuck fast in his throat like a pill.

“That bad, huh?” Merlyn mused, one corner of his mouth drooping. “Whenever I get yelled at or somebody pisses me off, I go out and kill something.”

“You know that makes you sound like a serial killer?” Nicholas said. Already the mood in the garden seemed lighter, as if Merlyn had punctured it with a pin.

“Serial killer of
monsters
!” Merlyn declared, thumping his chest. He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “What was with Bogart?”

“Bogart?”

“Sam,” Merlyn said. “Somebody die?”

Yeah, his wife
, Nicholas thought.
My parents. Because of me
.

And my sister raised me and we’re all part of a supernatural soap opera that will probably end with Sam revealing he has an evil twin working as an undertaker in Transylvania.

Nicholas shrugged. “A while ago, but I’m only just finding out about it.”

“Harsh. Want to fight? I’ll keep one arm behind my back to even the odds.”

“Fight?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m no good at it.”

“I’ll train you up,” Merlyn insisted. “I trained with my dad. He’s not the best, but he has some moves. Others I learned online. There’s this guy called Hung Lu. Sounds like a joke, but he’s like Bruce Lee’s cooler brother.”