Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) (36 page)

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Helen wept. “He’s dead, they killed him!”

“No,” Lucian said. “It’s a ricochet. Bounced off the ground and hit his head.”

“Will he be okay?” Hector said, cuddling his son’s face. “Norman, wake up, boy! Come on now, talk to Pop!”

How should I bloody know?

“He’ll be fine. We just have to keep—”

A bloom of orange bathed the whole porch in soft light, streaming through the hall’s window. Norman was illuminated in horrible detail, a pale vampire with half his head coated in what looked like tar. His forehead had split in a jagged hole along his hairline. It was a miracle the ricocheted bullet hadn’t demolished his skull.

“Fire,” Oliver cried. “It’s on fire!”

“What’s going on in there?” Agatha said.

“I don’t know. We have to get in there.”

“We can’t!”

“I’m not leaving either of them,” Lucian cried.

Agatha’s face twitched with fear, then she threw her arms over her head and ducked inside. Oliver followed a moment later.

“Well this is just bloody brilliant, ain’t it?” Lucian yelled at the Creeks. “How about you, you want to go in too?”

“You’re not… you can’t,” Hector said.

“I have two brothers in there.”

This crap…

“Take care of your boy,” he said. Before they could respond, he too dashed into the flaming building, where all was heat, chaos, and groaning wood preparing to buckle.

Melanie jerked awake with a silent scream. She took a stertorous breath and bent double from a vice-like tightness in her leg.

Stars twinkled above. The rooftop was silent, and the only sounds now came from under her—muffled shouts, scuffling feet, and something else—a spreading crackle.

Shaking and taking shallow breaths, Mel uncurled herself by degrees and searched one-handed for her slingshot. She had gotten three men, she knew. At least three, right in the head. They had dropped to the tiles like bags of peaches. It had been so easy that she had actually grinned as she turned in search of the last man. Her hand had been quick with the smooth, aerodynamic pebbles she had fished from the brook down by the fields, socking each one into the leather seat at the end of the string.

Mel Tarbuck, the deadly cat. So long had she shot birds and cats and rabbits, wishing they were the mayor’s men or the mayor himself.

That’s right, you stupid sister robbers!
she thought with spite as she had spun for the last.

She found him just like the others, put the stone in its place, and pulled back the sling. It all felt so right, so justified, that in that instant she had been sure she would be in Beth’s arms by the minute’s end. She had laughed aloud when the stone whistled through the air and hit the man full in the nose, and he dropped just like the others.

Then something very hot and sharp had punched her in the thigh, and the world had gone dark from the pain.

Shot
, she thought with wild panic.
I got shot, I got shot, I’m going to die!

Presently she steeled herself. Big girls didn’t cry. Gingerly, she checked her leg, whimpering when she neared a ragged tear in her jeans. She inched her way around the wound until she was sure the bleeding had almost stopped. It hurt far too much to stand on, but she could still move.

She had to. Beth was still in there.

She crawled towards the roof’s slanted peak. If the other man was still alive, he would find her and finish her easily. But what else could she do?

As she crawled, a strange warmth spread in the tiles under her elbows and thighs, so slow at first that she scarcely noticed, then faster. It clicked in her mind as she neared the peak: the crackling, the heat. The hall was on fire.

She groaned and lay flat on the bulge of the roof’s peak, holding on to her sling with the last of her strength.

Big sisters were such a pain. But she only had one.

James’s voice returned in a cascade of retreating echoes, reaching into the hall’s many chambers and crannies:
Malverston, Malverston, Maalverstooon!

The longest, strained silence followed. Then a voice drifted down the stairs: “Master Chadwick, welcome. You’ve caught my faithful mistress and me at something of an awkward time. Could you call later? She’s ravenous for me, you see.
Ravenous
.”

“Sack of shit,” Alex muttered in the dark.

“Let her go, and it’s over,” James said.

“I imagine it would be. Quite over.”

Was that the tiniest tremble in the mayor’s voice?

Under all that bravado, he’s scared out of his mind. Good
.

“Stop this now, and we’ll let you walk,” Alex called.

James stiffened.
Let him go, be damned!

“You don’t really think me that stupid, do you?” Malverston called. “I’m the mayor of Newquay’s Moon, gentlemen, wisest man in the land.”

James let the words roll over him, squinting into the dark, expecting the goons to make their appearance any moment.

Would they sneak down and hunt him and Alex out? Were they already seeded about the room, lying in wait?

To his shock, a rotund figure appeared at the top of the stairs, illuminated by a faint orange glow. Malverston held a lantern aloft with one hand, and Beth held tight against his chest with the other.

James felt that he could have lifted the world and torn it in two in that moment. Somehow, he kept still.

“Ah, my friends.” Malverston cast the hand holding the lantern from Alex to James with a magnanimous sweep.

“George, it’s over. You know it is,” Alex said.

“Ah, I beg to differ.”

Beth writhed until her mouth was free and cried out. “James, don’t—” The mayor clamped his hand back over her mouth.

“Get your hands off her…” James paused, squinting. There was something odd about Beth’s skin. She seemed almost striped in the strange flickering light. And her eyes… She looked to be on the point of fainting. “What have you done to her?” he breathed.

Malverston continued as though James hadn’t spoken, smacking his lips. “You see, I find myself surrounded by those unworthy to be my subjects. I’m on something of a cleanse.” He smiled, turning his eyes on James. They were wrong, those eyes, broken and wild.

James fought against a leaden anvil of panic, which threatened to tear him down through the floor. “Please let her go.”

Again, Malverston pretended he hadn’t heard. “I should thank you. If you hadn’t come, I’d still be surrounded by those greedy, conniving scoundrels who sought nothing but my chair, after I had done so much to nurture and love them.”

For a beat, James thought he was talking about McKinley and the others who had died earlier. Then he looked around in earnest, and was at once certain that Malverston was alone.

His bodyguards have left him… or he took them down himself. Either way, all he has left is Beth.

A cocktail of excitement and terror filled him. Nowhere to run, and out of men. That meant his grip would be all the tighter on his last bargaining chip.

The mayor’s grin twitched. “Unworthy, all of you. All out to get poor old George, who did so much for you.” Spittle flew as his mouth twitched into a childish grimace and he bawled, “Unworthy!”

James swallowed, clutching the table leg. Neither he nor Alex said anything.

Malverston nodded, pursing his lips. “You think
I’m
unworthy. I see now.” He tutted and looked at Beth as though to share a derisory scoff. Then he rounded on them and held out the lantern. “Let’s see who’s worthier,” he spat with a paroxysm of cackling—of a man totally unhinged—and sent the lantern tumbling down the stairs. Oil cascaded down in a carpet of igniting red and amber flames, splashing crazy shadows across the walls.

James made to jump forwards but flinched back when a round fizzed past his head. Cursing, he could only watch as the rich draperies, curtains, throws and tables burst into flame. Light flooded the hall, and he just had time to glimpse a flash of paunch vanishing up the last step. The fire spread fast, zipping over the ground, following tassels of rugs that made for perfect kindling. Before he could move, a river of flames had shot by, dividing him and Alex between opposite sides of the hall. James alone stood on the same side as the staircase.

They shared a long, tense look. “Go,” Alex said. “Go get him!”

James was momentarily stilled by the cacophony: the screams from the Moon, Mel’s struggle on the roof, the gunfire in the square and the Creeks’ wailing, coupled with that single solitary look from Alex that said so much.

I can’t do this without him.

“Come on, jump!” James cried.

“I can’t.”

“You have to!” He searched his brother behind the mask of Alexander, imploring. “Please.”

Alex’s lips stiffened. Gritting his teeth, he turned one shoulder towards the fire and dashed forwards, hurtling over the tabletop and crashing against the far wall. James was on him in moments, slapping out the flames that had caught on his sleeves, pulling him to his feet.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Come on, let’s go.”

Together, they rushed for the stairs.

When the sun has set, no candle can replace it.

— George R.R. Martin

Latif’s voice drifted through the workshop door, strained and haunted. “Is it done?”

Lincoln waved Evelyn and Marek inside, following close behind. They had brought in halogen lights to make work easier, but the lights seemed only to highlight how dishevelled Latif had become. His eyes were cupped by purple crescent moons, and his skin had grown so sallow he looked sicker than the wounded in the tower. “Is it done?”

“It is,” Lincoln said, stepping over the cables snaking away through the door.

Latif nodded solemnly, hunched over the radio with a comforter gathered about his shoulders. “Good, that’s good.”

Lincoln squinted, noting Latif’s slouch, the distant glint in his eye.

What’s wrong with the boy? So fatigued… No, it’s more than that. He looks ill.

He put it aside as they gathered around the radio. There were bigger things at stake. It had taken all of two days to prepare and install an antenna close to the roof of the tower’s pyramidal cap, diverting manpower from vital preparations for their defence.

“Mr Hadad, tell me we didn’t just waste our last chance to ready ourselves,” Evelyn said, skirting the worktop with a distrustful glare aimed at the radio.

Latif took a long, rousing sigh, blinking heavily. Even his eyelids were pale. “Only one way to find out.”

“We can’t afford maybes. Can we send a signal or not?”

Latif shrugged. “I never promised anything. We might just get static. Nobody’s done this in forty years… so far as I know.”

Evelyn stiffened.

“If you want certainty, go to another universe, where people don’t vanish into thin air like puffs of confetti,” Latif mumbled, fiddling with the tuning dial.

“Watch your mouth,” Marek warned. “You may be hot shit with your new toy, but you’re still addressing the High Councillor.”

Latif didn’t seem to have heard. He flipped the power switch and the Blanket’s screech filled the workshop. Their faces scrunched up against the pain.

Lincoln felt the urge to join him at the controls. They had drawn up the antenna blueprints together. The airwaves had cleared so much that they had been in a frenzy of excitement, mapping a dozen channels, with more emerging all the time. A few channels were occupied by looping messages, though who had set them up eluded them. A few were empty, just white noise—perfect for broadcasting their own message.

With more time we could have rigged up an antenna grid for ultra-low frequency broadcasting, as well. Even with our power supply, it would bounce off the ionosphere—all over the world! We could talk with anyone.

He forced himself to drop it. There was a very good chance there would be no more time for anyone.

“I still don’t get why we bothered,” Marek yelled over the screech, his arms folded tight over his chest. He had donned the same tight-fitting Kevlar bodysuit as the guards on the catwalks and hadn’t taken it off in days. “We could run out of time any moment, and we’re fiddling around with a bucket of wires.”