Bloodrush (The Scarlet Star Trilogy Book 1) (52 page)

The vial was at his lips before the cork touched the dusty floor. He sucked the warm blood back, caring not a smidgeon for the taste. Fists had already begun to swing. Chairs and stools screeched in unison as the saloon surged forwards as one. Merion just prayed he had reached for eel. Nate was already around the corner of the bar and heading straight for him. There was violence in his rat-eyes. His cigar glowed furiously in the corner of his mouth. Merion backed away, shoving the stool between them. Nate batted it away and kept on coming. The boy drank in a deep breath as he tensed. He felt the blood begin to surge, making his extremities tingle and his face grow warm.

Nate’s hands seized him by the collar and slammed him back against the wall. His head struck the wood hard and he blinked away stars. Nate was leaning close, the glowing cigar creeping closer and closer to Merion’s cheek. He could feel the heat of it already. He struggled, even though he felt the power rising in him.
Come on come on come on!
screamed his brain. Alcohol slowed it; he should have remembered.
Come on!

‘You know what we do with traitors, before we hang ‘em? Hmm?’ Nate snarled in his face, spit flying. ‘We brand ‘em!’

Merion felt the power swirling and bulging inside his head. This shade was strong, but it was not eel. He could feel his skin prickling with heat. It was nothing short of intoxicating, rushing as he’d not yet known. With it came a defiant smile. He surprised himself as the strong words stampeded out of his mouth. It is a marvellous thing, the upper hand.

‘My father always told me smoking was bad for you,’ he grunted, as the rushing reached its apex.

The cigar in Nate’s mouth sputtered with fire. In seconds it was ablaze, and devilishly hungry. The fire surged into his mouth and crawled over his face, its crackling joined by Nate’s howls and screams. He fell to the floor and clawed at his face like a man possessed.

Merion felt his consciousness tugging at the corners of the flames. He reached out and pinched them, dragging them from Nate and onto the boots of Kass, still writhing on the floor as Big Brint and Lurker danced over him. The flames did as they were bid, tumbling across the floor to lick at Kass’ boots, much to Nate’s relief. Kass set to screaming almost immediately. The fire was hungry indeed. Merion dealt Nate a hearty kick in the ribs, as hard as he could manage. The man doubled up in pain.
Always kick a man when he’s down
, as Rhin had always opined.
That way they don’t have a chance to get up.

As Kass crawled a hasty retreat to the other end of the bar, still flailing at his burning clothes, Lurker took a hefty blow from the barrel that was Big Brint. He reeled into the wall beneath the stairs. Brint leered, and turned his sights on Merion. Any other boy of thirteen might have quailed in the man’s presence. Or worse, vacated their bladders. But Merion was not your ordinary thirteen year old boy, or so he was quickly discovering. This boy was a leech. He met Big Brint’s leer head on with a wide smile of his own.

What the barrel-chested, blood-spattered rail worker failed to notice was the speck of blood on Merion’s lower lip, and the hand sliding an empty vial into his right pocket. Big Brint lunged with an angry yell.

The bloody fists raised up, ready to come hammering down with full force, right onto Merion’s unfortunate head. But the fists never met their mark. They met nothing but thin air and embarrassment as Merion darted out of reach. He had done it so swiftly, he had almost become a blur. The crowd gasped collectively. It was almost comical. Big Brint swung again, and again, but Merion was always faster. He even got a few of his own punches in: one to the ribs, and two to the face. Brint’s whirling arms couldn’t keep up with his eyes. He took a knee and swung his arms in vicious circles, hoping to get lucky. It was embarrassing to watch. In the end, Lurker put him to bed with the thick end of a bar stool.

Now it was just them and the angry yet rather confused crowd. The sheriffsmen took a few cautious step forwards. Merion and Lurker took twice as many back.

‘There’s another way out,’ Lurker whispered, eyes flicking to a curtained door behind the bar. Merion nodded, and eyed the blood streaming from Lurker’s lopsided nose, and a deep cut in his lip. The prospector suddenly looked very tired.

‘Want me to carry you?’ Merion asked.

‘I’m fine,’ Lurker sniffed, and then winced. ‘On the count of three…’

There is always one in every crowd—the inciter, the instigator, that shit-stirrer that has the uncanny ability to turn a crowd into a riotous mob with nothing but a lungful of panicked twaddle. This crowd did not disappoint. It was the man who Merion had heard crying. He smashed a bottle against a table and waved it in the air.

‘Get ‘em! Traitors!’

The crowd surged forwards with an angry roar. Merion was up and over the bar in the space of a blink, dragging the still-smouldering fire like a wall behind him, keeping the crowd as bay as best he could. Lurker went a little slower, but he was still through the curtain before the fists and broken bottles came crashing down.

*

‘Note this building here, milady, with the scorched side. We can have that fixed within an afternoon,’ mewed the dwarf of a foreman. He was terribly short, without doubt the runt of whatever litter he had been born into. He was sweating rather profusely, constantly having to dab his face with a cloth that did nothing except get dirtier with every dab. ‘Shall we add it to the list?’ he asked, turning around to face her with a weak smile.

Calidae paused her fan-waving to ponder the half-burnt saloon for a moment. Its grimy windows made it looked surly and quiet. She could not tell if there was actually anybody in there. However, before she could say ‘Add it to the list’, her answer came in the form of an explosion of glass and a man being violently defenestrated from the saloon. He crumpled to a heap against the charred railings, out cold.

A muscular dark-skinned man all clad in leather came next, flying head first out of the shattered window, though this time he had something to break his fall. A boy came next, with a river of blood sprayed down his shirt. Others were trying to scramble out of the window after them, yelling something about traitorous scum.

‘Tonmerion Hark,’ she whispered to herself, with a shake of her head. ‘Whatever have you gotten yourself into?’

Merion and his friend had already slid over the railing and into the dirt of the hot street. Her two lordsguards were already moving in, swords drawn and glinting. Merion was oblivious, trying his hardest to help the man to walk. Calidae fanned herself for a moment while she shaded her eyes with her hand, thinking. Merion’s movements were strangely fast, as if he were having some sort of fit. Something about that gave her eyebrow a barely noticeable lift.

‘Wait!’ she ordered her guards, who were already striding forward. ‘I would speak to him,’ she said.

‘Calidae?’ Merion spluttered, his mouth a mask of blood. Somebody had whacked him in the face, it seemed. Not only was his nose streaming with blood, but it looked as though he’d bitten his lip in the process as well. He looked atrocious.

It was then that the angry mob broke out of the swinging doors and came spilling onto the street. The sight of the two lordsguards in their livery and armour halted them somewhat, especially when Calidae ordered the man and boy to be arrested.

‘Get back inside,’ barked one of the sheriffsmen, who mere seconds before had been baying for blood as loudly as the rest of them. He straightened his jacket and strode forwards to bow to Calidae. She curtseyed in return.

‘I do not think my father would wish to see a riot in the streets, sir.’

‘No ma’am, I mean, your ladyship. But these two are traitors, spies even. For the Shohari.’

‘Nonsense,’ chided Calidae. ‘Surely it was just a brawl?’ she asked, turning to look down at Merion. He was slowly shaking his head, eyes silently pleading. He looked very mature all of a sudden. Perhaps it was the blood, the dust on his face, or the tousled hair, or maybe it was the glint in his eye, a steady look she had not seen before.

‘The boy there ain’t normal, your ladyship. He’s got the magick in him.’

‘And how much have you had to drink, sir?’

The other sheriffsman stepped forward. He had been hovering between them and the disintegrating mob. ‘It’s true, milady,’ he told her.

Calidae looked Merion up and down, testing him. The glint in the boy’s eyes refused to fade. Her eyebrow climbed even higher.

‘You can have the man. I will have the boy taken to my father,’ she said.

The sheriffsmen exchanged a look, then a shrug, and nodded. ‘Of course, milady,’ said the second, bobbing up and down like a chicken with indigestion.

Merion struggled. ‘No, he’s done nothing wrong, don’t take him!’ he exclaimed, as Lurker was seized by the sherrfismen. ‘I’ll get you out!’

‘Guards, bring him with us,’ Calidae told her protectors. As Merion was hauled up, and Lurker seized by the sheriffsmen, she began to walk away down the street, leaving her dwarfish foreman to wipe his sweaty face and marvel at the howling coming from the arrested man.

A LETTER FROM LONDON

‘That boy’s a stubborn one, that’s for sure. And yet he has the gall to call me stubborn in return. All because I wouldn’t tell him more about Sift and the Hoard, and why any faeries would still be chasing me. Bloody hell. At least there’s been no signs of more.’

5th June, 1867

‘M
y father has told me that I am not to speak to you,’ she curtly informed him as she walked. Her guards manhandled Merion along next to her.

Merion panted. The rush had faded quickly, along with his adrenaline, and all they left behind was a numbing ache from tip to toe. The lordsguards’ grip was like iron.

‘Calidae,’ he said, ‘I can explain …’

‘And now I hear talk that you’re a traitor to this town, Merion Hark,’ she said, turning to pierce him with a frosty yet strangely curious gaze. ‘A shaman of some sort.’

‘Look,’ Merion said, trying desperately to hold onto the confidence and defiance he had felt in the saloon. ‘There is something I need to explain to you. It will make everything right, I promise you, but you have to listen. And I need to tell you and you alone,’ he told her, forcing himself to meet her eyes. He shrugged in the guards’ grip.

‘My lady …’ the one on his left began to say.

Calidae had already made up her mind. ‘I will hear him out,’ she said, holding up a finger. ‘You are to stay here.’

The guards looked nervous, but they did as they were instructed. Merion led Calidae down the street and out of earshot. They stood alone between the cart-ruts and drying blood, a little island of secrets amid the bustle and dread of the battle-scarred street.

‘This may sound very strange,’ Merion began, catching his breath, ‘or it might sound very familiar. I’m hoping it’s the latter, and if it is then I want you to know that I understand and that I do not judge you, nor your family. And I can keep a secret too. Nobody will ever know.’

Calidae crossed her arms. ‘Do you have something to tell me? Or are you just wasting my time? Because I’m hardly in the mood for riddles.’

Merion just let the words fall out of his mouth. He had not planned to tell her so much, but he could hardly bring himself to stop. ‘Calidae, I know there was blood in the wine and brandy that you poured for me. I know what it does and why you drink it. I know because I do the same thing, only with other types of blood. I’m a rusher, Calidae, just like my father, and I don’t care what my aunt says about lampreys, or whatever they call you, because I know that we can be … friends.’ he almost tripped at the end, catching himself before he said something more heartfelt.

Merion was left waiting for an answer for quite a while. He had played his hand, or opened a vein, he was not sure. He stared at her, watching for any flicker or glimmer of something good in her eye, so he could stop his heart thrumming and know that he had fixed it.
All he wanted to do was fix it.

‘Show me,’ she said. It was barely an answer, but it was better than nothing.

Merion reached under his shirt and pulled out a third and final vial. He uncorked it and slipped a quarter of it into his mouth. He swallowed hard, making sure to show her that he could do it. If he was hoping to glimpse a reflection of his own pride in her expression, he was sorely disappointed. Calidae’s face stayed frosty, and her arms stayed crossed.

‘It takes a moment or two,’ he whispered, straining.

‘I’ve got all day,’ she replied.

‘Good.’

Merion looked down at his hands and bent his fingers into claws. As he felt the tingling grow in his stomach he put his fingertips together to make a cradle. He took a breath as the magick made his head spin. He forced it down into his arms, deep into his bones. Blue light began to flicker around his grubby, blood-stained nails. Sparks flickered. Lightning began to flow. It lasted barely half a minute, but it was enough to show that he was not lying. Merion let his hot hands hang loose and watched Calidae’s face, seeking his verdict.