Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) (35 page)

He snarled as the third man slashed low along his thigh. But the man had left himself open from above, and Malverston’s elbow came whistling down to hit him between the shoulder blades, sending him to the floorboards with a muted
oof!

The rest was a blur of scrabbling from all parties: three men racing to their feet, and one hulk of a mayor reaching into his belt.

Renner and his companions only made it to their knees by the time Malverston retrieved his gun. Three short bursts of light accompanied by as many reverberating cracks that sent Beth’s head spinning anew.

By the time the attic settled, Malverston stood on the nearest man’s coat, one foot resting on a gaping chest wound. “Where are the others?”

“Please,” the man gasped.

The mayor’s weight pressed down on his chest, and blood spurted from ragged holes in his flesh as he squealed. “Away!”

Malverston lessened the pressure. “Beg pardon?”

“They ran.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Cain… Cain’s lot. They’re here.”

Malverston nodded pensively. “I see. Thank you for bringing me this information, Johnson.” Without a moment’s pause, he stamped down upon the man’s chest.

A muffled crunch filled the room. Then a long, slow sigh escaped Johnson, and his eyes faded to lifeless buttons.

Malverston turned to Renner’s other fellow, found him already still and sightless, and shrugged. He then approached Renner himself, who was attempting, without success, to crawl back towards the stairs.

“The fool uses a knife to stage his coup? How romantic.” Malverston looked down upon Renner, shaking his head. “Don’t get me wrong, friend. I have a proclivity for knife-play myself.” He winked in Beth’s direction. “But a man needs to know how to use a gun when the time calls for it. Like now.”

He trained the gun point blank at Renner’s chest and pulled the trigger. And again, and again.

Renner jerked with each round, his jacket showering into confetti and his face twisting into a grotesque grimace that remained forever fixed on his yellow cheeks.

Silence reigned as Malverston assessed each man in turn, nudging them with the tip of his boot. His lip curled as he turned them over, taking their knives and throwing them onto the trolley. “Surrounded by fools,” he muttered. “Whole world’s gone crazy… Crazy.”

He paused as a scream rang out into the distance, not a woman’s or a child’s, but a man’s. His eyes grew wide, searching the rafters as though expecting attackers to pounce.

“They’re here,” Beth said. Her heart was in sudden fervour, stirring limbs and digits gnarled by numbness and blood loss. The pain suddenly increased tenfold as the last of the fog receded and she strained against her bindings—

God, every part of me is going to split open if I move an inch!

—but she didn’t let it show, powering through the tears. She laughed as loud as she could, laughed right into his face. “They’re here for you, and there’s nothing you can do to stop them! Because you just put down the only dogs you had left.”

Malverston’s eyes swivelled down to the bodies at his feet, then back to her. He seemed to be two people in that moment: a blubbering confused baby, horrified to find itself alone in a strange and hostile place; and a fat, mean little man who has just realised his end is upon him.

“No. No, I’m only safer. Safer! A few less vermin to exterminate.”

“But who will protect you now? The other guards? They’re hired hands, or their families are held to ransom just like the rest of us.” She played at a momentary musing. “Oh! That means you’re… alone. You’re alone. You’ve got nothing.”

He rounded on her. “On the contrary, my dear,” he hissed, tearing the back from the chair with his bare hands and lifting her into the air, “I still have you. You’ll be my guardian angel. My darling.”

Beth struggled, but each time she wriggled he pressed a hand against the deeper cuts in her side, and she howled. By the minute’s end she stood before him at the back of the attic, facing the stairs, waiting.

Somewhere out in the Moon, gunfire warbled, for what Beth knew was the last time. They were coming.

Hurry, James.

The Moon had grown quiet. Families had retreated to their hearths or beds for the night, mourning those they had lost. Crickets sang where usually there was chatter and laughter of smiths and cobblers in the tavern.

Among the side streets, silver shadows flickered. James watched a dozen men and women hurtle down alleys and through azalea bushes, converging on the guards out on patrol. Waiting was torture—he was so close to Beth, to tearing the mayor’s heart out through his nose.

He stayed put beside Mel and Lucian with great effort, watching as the first guard was yanked back by shadows, his yelp of surprise cut short. He didn’t rise again. A few moments passed before the next man was taken down, more roughly this time. The third was rougher still, resulting in a scuffle that resulted in a baker taking a bullet to the belly. The noise alerted the remaining guards more each time, until by the fourth, the game was up.

“That’s it, it’s time to move,” James whispered. “You ready?”

Lucian’s eyes twinkled in the twilight. “Let’s get your girl.”

Mel’s tiny hand squeezed his arm fretfully. “What if she—?”

“We’ll get her, I promise.”

“You can’t promise.” Her eyes were enormous and sorrowful in the gloom.

“I won’t let it happen. Stay close.”

They left their hiding place behind the forge and ran for the square, bent double. Around them the sound of struggle was building. With their element of surprise gone, the attack’s success rate diminished fast. Seconds before things could have passed for peaceful. Now everywhere people died in the dark, screaming and tearing at one another. The three of them were out in the open; if anybody so much as shined a light on them, there would be nothing to do.

Keep your eyes on the carrot
, James thought, willing the armed men on the town-hall roof to remain distracted long enough. A few seconds, that was all he needed.

From the other side of the square, a second party approached, led by Alex, with the Creeks bringing up the rear. If one group was gunned down, at least some of them would make it.

“We’re going to get there ahead,” Lucian uttered. “We ought to wait up.”

“No!” James hissed as they skirted a rickety fence. “If they see us…”

“But inside—”

“I know.”

They skittered across the square and James fought the urge to close his eyes, feeling utterly naked. It was so dark now that he couldn’t even make out the outlines of the guards on the roof. They would have no idea whether they had been spotted until the bullets started flying.

Elsewhere in the Moon, the screaming had intensified tenfold. It seemed everybody in the town had emerged to join the fight.

“They’re hurting,” Mel moaned. “We have to help them.”

“Shh!”

James leaped up onto the porch and landed upon his haunches, rolling with his momentum to dispel the thump of his boots. Reaching down, he pulled Mel up behind him. Lucian landed beside them with the stealth of a ghost. They were under the porch now, safe. Pressing themselves against the wall, they turned to watch the others as they approached.

Alex stepped foot onto the square, paused, and waved for the others to follow. Then horribly, sickeningly, the crack of a snapping twig rang out. It seemed louder than any gunshot in the strained silence. James just had time to close his eyes and utter a curse.

The gunfire began explosively. Ribbons of white-hot metal sprayed into the night from overhead, sending Alex and the others diving to the ground for cover.

“Alex!” Lucian barked, starting forwards.

James threw himself over him, smothering him against the ground. The two of them scuffled in the dark, but James held fast; Lucian wouldn’t hesitate to throw himself out there, and there was no sense in losing more people. The three of them were safe, and they needed everyone they could get.

“Get off me!” Lucian snarled.

“Shh! Stay down.”

The others had scattered into the murk, and James couldn’t make out a single figure.

That’s good. If I can’t see, that means the shooters can’t either.

Yet the guards had a solution: spraying spare bursts of fire methodically into each quadrant of the square.

Battleships. They’re playing Battleships with my friends’ lives
.

“We have to stop them. There’s no cover out there,” Lucian said.

“We can’t. They have to go back.”

“You really think they’re going to go back?”

A whimper emerged from the dark, the mewling of a terrified animal. After a moment, James realised it was Norman.

Before the next burst of gunfire, a howl joined the mewling. “Norman… Norman, no!”

“Helen,” James muttered, closing his eyes against dread. “Shut up, Helen. Shut up. They’ll find you!”

“James, we have to do something,” Lucian said as he strained under him.

“We…”

“James!”

A sprightly presence appeared beside him in the dark, and Mel’s voice floated into his ear: “Get my sister.” Then she was gone, a light patter of feet along the porch. In a glimmer of starlight, he caught a glimpse of tiny limbs scrabbling up the balustrade, feet kicking in mid-air.

“Mel, no!” James seethed, but his voice fell on dead air, for she had gone up onto the roof.

The bursts of fire came twice more, lighting up innocent patches of soil before the young Tarbuck got to work. A nearly-silent fizz of air was followed by a sickening crack that could only have been breaking bone, for the next moment an unfettered scream tore the night open. One of the sources of gunfire vanished.

“That kid has balls,” Lucian said.

A storm of feet thundered over the tiles on the roof, accompanied by fresh gunfire sprayed into the square.

Now, it has to be now.

“Lucian, we have to get inside while they’re distracted.”

“I’m not leaving them.”

“We can’t help them. We have to get inside now.”

Lucian broke from James’s grasp and wriggled off the porch. “I’m not leaving them.” He stood such that their heads were the same height once again. “I’m sorry, James.”

“Lucian—”

Lucian vanished back into the square, windmilling his arms as he zigzagged along, illuminated sporadically by the remaining streams of bullets.

Alone, James felt a sinking in his gut. It could all go wrong right here, right now. If Mel took a hit, if the firing squad found their targets in the square, if the guards out in the Moon got the upper hand—if any one thing tipped the wrong way, it would all be over.

James scrabbled to his feet and approached the door. He brought his pistol to shoulder height, reached for the handle, and hesitated. If there was anybody on the other side of the door, the cover of darkness wouldn’t save him. But it was the only way in. He moved now, or they really had lost.

Cursing, he inched closer to the handle and gripped the brass. He took a long breath, knowing it might be his last.

He almost jerked out of his own skin when a hand landed on his shoulder. Whirling, he brought his pistol around, but another hand seized the barrel, and in a moment of blind panic he prepared to die.

“James. It’s me!”

The slightest outline in the dark, slightly taller than himself, unmistakable as that calm, quiet voice.

James slackened. “Alex?”

“Come on, let’s go.” Alex released James’s gun and pattered over to the other side of the door. He hissed off a three count, reaching for the handle while James covered him.

It would be you to make it here while the others are still out there. Did you leave them, Alex?

The door burst open, a gaping gullet leading into blackness. They dove inside, skidding on their shins over the dusty floorboards. A pungent waft of countless feasts and drunken celebrations sloughed off the floorboards, a sharp contrast with the crisp night air, so heady that it brought Malverston’s grinning face rushing into his mind’s eye. Hatred filled him as he came to a stop against one of the long tables, ducked down behind one of the legs, and roared into the night: “Malverston!”

“Norman! Norman!” Helen lay flat over her son’s prone body, unresponsive to Hector’s incessant tugging at her arm.

Lucian fought the urge to rail at them, surrounded by streams of bullets thudding into the dirt just feet away, and crouched down before them. “What happened?”

“They shot him, they shot him! His head, there’s blood everywhere. He…” Helen broke off into senseless wailing.

“I can’t move her. She won’t come,” Hector croaked.

Lucian made to put the boy on his back. If he had to, he’d drag the kid’s body clear himself. As he groped in the shadows and laid hands on the young boy’s neck, a tiny groan floated up from him. He was still alive.

“Come on, Lucian!” Oliver’s voice rang out from the porch.

“Get your bloody arse over ’ere, right now!” Aggie screamed.

“Norman!” Helen said. “Speak to me, honey!”

Norman groaned a second time.

Lucian thrust both Helen and Hector aside and pulled the boy onto his back. A voice in his head told him it was dangerous to move him, that doing so could kill him as surely as a bullet. But if they stayed out here, they would definitely die. If they moved, they had a chance. Laden with the boy’s weight, he dashed for cover, Hector carried Helen in his wake.

If I die because of this, I’m going to kick God’s arse
, he thought.

The stretch of ground between them and the porch seemed like miles, but could have been thirty feet at most. By the time they passed under it, the scuffle on the roof had died down. A terrible silence rang out, and Lucian grimaced.

Stupid! How could they have let the Tarbuck girl go up there alone?

He laid Norman’s body on the porch. Groping around the boy’s head, his fingers met a wet slick above the collarbone that didn’t stop until the hairline. Lucian lightly probed the edge of a wide gash upon Norman’s forehead. A sick twist hit his gut. If Norman had been brained, maybe the moaning had just been reflex, for now he was utterly still and silent.