Wild Boy and the Black Terror (13 page)

W
ild Boy raced after Clarissa, ignoring the sting of the snow against his bare feet. He jumped the patio steps and dodged between sculpted bushes. Freezing wind whipped his eyes, watering his vision. He slipped over, came up swearing.

Ahead, the killer moved across the snow – a dark, hunched figure. He seemed to crouch as he ran, hiding his shape. Wild Boy glimpsed the flap of a coat or cloak. Then the killer was gone, disappearing through the entrance to the hedgerow maze.

“Hurry!” Clarissa yelled.

Wild Boy kept moving, sinking into the snow up to his knees. The green and white maze wall rose over him, twice his height. Icicles hung from a wrought iron arch that framed its entrance, gleaming like the teeth of a monster. That entrance was the only way in or out.

“Wild Boy?” Clarissa’s cry grew fainter as she ran deeper into the labyrinth. “I can’t find him.”

Wild Boy looked back, praying that Dr Carew or Gideon would come to help. Where were they? He knew he should stay here and trap the killer in the maze. But he couldn’t just stand here, not while Clarissa was in there with him.

He ran into the maze.

The high hedge walls blocked the moonlight, but he could just make out footprints in the snow; the killer’s marks trampled by Clarissa. He tried to climb one of the walls to see across the maze, but he couldn’t get a foothold in the thicket and thumped back to the snow.

“Clarissa?” he called.

“Wild Boy? Where is he?”

She sounded closer at first, then further away.

Wild Boy ran along twisting paths, following the broken tracks. Wind rustled the moon-slivered hedges, and shadows shifted along the ground. Something moved behind him. He whirled around, but all he saw was a flurry of snow falling from one of the walls.

He kept going, taking one bewildering turn after another. The gaps between the hedges grew narrower, the maze walls closing in. The only sound was the wind moaning along the path.

A scream.

“Clarissa!” Wild Boy yelled.

She was just yards away but they were separated by a hedge. He ran at it, tearing at branches to force his way through. He heard her cry out again, thought he saw someone run past on the other side. He pushed harder, until he tumbled out onto the path.

In the moonlight he saw three shades of red: rusty hair, bright silk dress and crimson blood spreading across the snow.

“Clarissa!”

His cry rang around the maze as he rushed to her. Her breaths came out in slow, frozen clouds. Her hair was wet and sticky with blood.

“He hit me …” she groaned “… from behind.”

Wild Boy tugged off his coat and slid it under her head. He didn’t bother telling her he’d get help; Clarissa was the toughest person he knew. And now there was only one set of footprints to follow.

He looked at her and saw it in her eyes.
Get him
.

And then he was running again, the wind rushing at the hair on his chest. His eyes scanned the ground, fixed on the killer’s trail. He turned, turned again, and came out in a clearing in the centre of the maze.

A thin mist filled the heart of the labyrinth, but it was lighter here, where the moon shed its rays. Ice glinted on a small pagoda in the middle of the clearing. A crow sat beneath its onion dome, watching Wild Boy, not moving.

The snow was thicker here too. The killer’s tracks were knee-deep sinkholes leading towards the pagoda. But halfway, they stopped.

Wild Boy turned, confused. The maze’s walls were too far for the killer to have jumped. So how could the prints just stop?

He crouched, examining them. They were different from others he’d followed. Those had sloped forwards, shaped by the killer’s movement. But these marks leaned backwards too. That made no sense, unless the killer had stopped and retraced his steps.

At that moment Wild Boy knew two things: that he had walked into a trap and that the killer stood right behind him.

He tried to move but something crashed against the back of his skull and he stumbled to his knees. A crimson cloud drifted over his shoulder. A mist of his own blood, freezing, floating.

A boot kicked Wild Boy forward. It pressed on his head, forcing his face deeper into the snow. He couldn’t breathe.

A hand gripped his hair and yanked him up. Gasping a lungful of air, Wild Boy reached for the edge of the pagoda, hoping to pull himself away. The boot kicked his arm so hard that the force flipped him over. Agony roared up his shoulder and out of his mouth.

Still the crow did not move.

A long shadow fell over Wild Boy. He tried to see who was there, but his vision was blurred by pain and wet hair.

The killer’s voice was muffled, as if he was covering his mouth. “You disappoint me, Wild Boy. I thought you were a brilliant mind.”

Disappointed him? Well at least that was something…

No – don’t give in
. He’d never given in, no matter how bad the beatings got. He wasn’t about to start now. He couldn’t fight, but maybe he could keep the killer talking long enough for Gideon or Dr Carew to get here.

“Who are you?” he groaned.

“You know that.”

“Know who you
think
you are. Some ugly demon.”

“
The
demon. Malphas, the Prince of Hell. Destroyer of Cities. But no, that is not me. I am merely his Servant.”

“Don’t … don’t believe in demons.”

The killer laughed, a sound like an Alsatian barking. “Ask Marcus. Now he has seen the power of Malphas. Imagine the horrors that torment his mind. Surely he has witnessed more evil than a hundred men.
Caused
more evil, in the name of his Gentlemen.” The killer spat the word like it was poison. “For that he deserved to die.”

“He ain’t dead.”

“Not yet, perhaps. But it is only a matter of time until his heart fails and the terror claims his life too.”

With a boot, the killer rolled Wild Boy onto his front. “And you? What will you see when you taste my terror, freak? Tell me, what miseries has someone like you experienced?”

Talk to him
.
Get him close to see his face
.

“Can’t hear you… ”

“Then I suggest you listen harder, for this is the important part. You know what I seek?”

“Black diamonds. Why?”

“You will know soon enough. For now, your only concern is the
next
black diamond. It is in a place to which I am unable to gain access. A dangerous place. With your combined skills, however, you and Miss Everett stand a greater chance of success. You shall acquire it for me.”

“I’ll get it. I’ll shove it up your—”

“I am running out of patience.”

Yeah, and out of time
. Wild Boy heard a shout, someone coming. He had to keep the killer talking. He was about to speak, but then something made him shut up.

“I have a cure that could save Marcus,” the killer said. “Do you believe me?”

Wild Boy did, instantly. It wasn’t just the tone of the killer’s voice – cold and deadly serious. He simply understood what the killer knew he would. This man had been in the dining room after Clarissa left. But the poison, whatever it was, hadn’t affected him.

He had a cure.

“Give it to me and I won’t come after you,” Wild Boy said. “I swear, no one will. I’ll send the Gentlemen in the wrong direction with every clue. I ain’t one of them, and I ain’t no copper neither. You give me a cure for Marcus and you and I got no quarrel.”

Another barked laugh. “Your guardian would be disappointed to hear you say that.”

He was right, but Wild Boy didn’t care. He looked out for his friends, no matter what. He was about to say so, but the killer spoke again.

“If you bring me the next black diamond, I will give you the cure.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“But you will try anyway. It is the only hope, and not just for Marcus. Without him you have nothing. How long would a freak like you last on the streets? How long would Clarissa remain by your side? Finding that diamond is
your
only hope.”

How did this man know so much about him? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he was right. “Where?” Wild Boy asked. “Where is it, the diamond?”

The killer leaned closer, blocking the moonlight. With one hand he pressed Wild Boy harder into the ground. With the other he wrote in the snow. He lifted Wild Boy a few inches to see the word.

Wild Boy burned it into his mind. It meant nothing to him, and yet it meant everything. “I’ll do it,” he gasped. “I’ll get the next black diamond.”

The killer released him, and Wild Boy slumped back to the ground.

“Then we will speak again,” he said.

13