Running Shoes (The Shades of Northwood) (32 page)

He
finger-walked down the gate and rested on the latch to open the
gate. He seemed to toy with it for an eternity. Katie watched every
twitch of his fingers, fascinated. All it would take was a minute.
Probably less than that, just to slip the catch out of the hook,
push the gate open and plunge that evil glittering blade int her
heart. How long did it take a person to bleed to death from a hole
in the heart. Minutes? Moments?
That’s why he won’t do it. It’s
too quick, too easy. He wants to make you suffer for as long as he
can.
“Come on in,” she offered, stepping to the side. “Sorry, I
dint bake a cake but sweet treats for murderers are where I draw
the line.”

“Murderer? I’m
more of an executioner.” He stepped back and brought his whip down
on the lock. It popped open and the gate started a slow swing as he
walked forward, slow and menacing.

He had given
her an escape to her cage, she bounced off her feet and got about
one step to the door when she realised he wasn’t giving her an
escape. He was going to stand in the door and kill her right here
so she could just see her route to safety a couple of feet away as
she died.
No, this can’t happen here. It’s not meant to be
here.
“JACK!” she yelled, instinct more than anything else.

But he didn’t
come.

Instead, the
man stretched out with his free hand grabbed her by the wrist, spun
her hard into him, and they misted out of the stadium. It felt like
forever being trapped in his arms. They were locked together and
she looked into his face. He was about the same age as Dad, maybe a
little younger, there were lines on his tanned, weather-beaten face
and a square, determined set to his jaw. She closed her eyes for a
second and let her muscles fall limp. There was nothing to look at
although she had the loosest feeling of moving. The worst the
hateful man could do while he was holding he was strangle her and
she would feel that long before it began to present serious
problems. There was no use in being hyper-alert, tensed and ready
to run, if there wasn’t even any solid ground in sight.

The man, the
mist, the moving, it all disappeared. Very suddenly, the world was
hers again and there was a weird feeling as Katie’s own body turned
to solid. It was as though her bones didn’t fit so exactly any
more. Bizarre. But she pushed it to the back of her mind and
concentrated on the matter at hand. Which was not falling to a
horrible, messy death. She had a quick second to question where the
man had gone and why when she was so vulnerable in his grip. It had
felt like… like he was
taken
rather than just abandoned his
victim. At least he was off her back for a few minutes. The
reprieve might not last long. Katie was determined to make the most
of however long she had.

Why do things
never go to plan?

It took a
second or two for the shock of hitting ground to kick in.
Truthfully, hitting ground was a bit of an over-statement. Falling
to the floor was a bit more accurate. The impact jarred Katie’s
muscles but she bounced lightly on the surface like collapsing onto
an unbroken mattress. Everything was tired. No rest for the wicked.
She rolled over and sprang to her feet, looking wildly around her
trying to figure out if anyone was near her and where the hell she
was. It looked familiar. The dark of night was so total out here
that only the moon and stars illuminated the endless empty ground
around here. A few patches of scrubby grass marked the edges of the
land. The thrum of power in this place was so strong that she
decided to call it an arena. In the daylight, this place would be
instantly recognisable, but now it was strange and new, however
anciently powerful it felt. Katie crossed her legs beneath her and
pushed up, using the position to twist right around and get a full
view. No. there was nobody else here. She was on her own out here
and-

The storm is
coming, Lady Katie. The storm is nearly here.

And I’m
standing right in the middle of it,
she thought, with a
certainty she didn’t know she had. The skies opened their lungs and
let out a rumble of thunder somewhere over the next town. She
dropped into a crouch, trying to make herself as small a target as
possible. “Come on,” she screamed at the sky, distantly conscious
of tears coursing down her cheeks. Well, she was entitled to cry
after the week she had had.

“Jack, help
me!”

Unsurprisingly,
he didn’t turn up. What was she expecting? Him to come out of the
mist on a white steed and take her away from this madness? When her
dreams weren’t so damn dangerous the image might feature.

Footsteps
drilled the ground, a poison red whip mark carved the sky, a scream
howled through the night, endless and ear splitting. But no-one was
in this empty arena. For now, it was her and the coming storm. She
was just waiting for the onslaught to arrive.

You’re not
meant to feel us, you know.

Katie whirled,
trying to see where the voice had come from..

You shouldn’t
be able to hear.

And she knew.
Like everything else tonight, she had visions of the knowledge
slipping away from her as soon as it appeared. So she sprang on it.
The voice, dark but peaceful, not friendly but not mean, a thousand
voices but just one tone.

Death is coming
for you. It came to us all.

“You’re all
ghosts. Lost souls or something.”

We were the
unlucky ones. It is not time for you to join us yet.

“I don’t think
I get to decide that one.”

You must find a
way to change that, to set things back as they should be.

“But-“

You must find a
way. you will.

Didn’t expect
much of her, did they? Katie began kicking her legs up behind her,
trying to coax her muscles into co-operating. The second – could be
third – wave of wakefulness crept into her, bringing with it fresh
rolls of agony from parts of her that had shrieked themselves into
silence. It hurt
so much
! Red Bull had a lot to answer for.
“I can’t!” Didn’t they believe her?

Child, you
have no idea what you can do. So few humans truly do.
If this
voice of many could hold any emotion, it would have been sad,
grieving almost.
We will help you all we can. But this is not
our fight.

“It’s not mine
either. I never asked for it.”

Thunder rumbled
a way off but still a way of. The rain hadn’t even – yes, yes it
had started. Through squinty eyes, Katie could see hard lines of
rain driving slices through the air all around the make shift
arena. The collected ghosts here had pooled their energies against
rain and formed some kind off forcefield above her to keep the rain
off. Otherwise, it would be like a giant mud bath in about five
minutes flat. “He’s so much stronger than me.”

Stronger yes.
Older too. He thinks the crime justifies the punishment, the
ever-lasting punishment. He believes in justice. He believes in the
law and in his sense of right and wrong. He is misguided.

Katie grunted
and fell back to the floor, feeling as though an invisible fist had
punched her in the stomach. The breath whooshed out of her lungs
and she felt image after image, sound after sound, being shoved
into her head.
Acid poison pain screaming help mercy blood
stinging no stop crackle lightning noise hate everywhere…
Katie
saw the back of a man, his shoulders hunched and tight, in the sick
yellow glow of a lamp. She looked down and saw her off-white
trainers staining with blood. The man took his long coat off and
slung it over a bale of straw in front of her. She dashed forward
and hid behind it, not doubting for a second that the man would
take her down if he had half the chance. Although x-ray vision was
a superpower she didn’t have, Katie was sure Jack lay beaten and
broken in the main area of the barn, where the madman was focusing,
slumped in front of the same pile of dried grass. And she couldn’t
save him.

The knowledge
tore through her like a sticking plaster being peeled off, fast but
damn painful no matter what your mother said. Something incredibly
cold and numb swept through her. Every ache and pain faded, still
burning her inside and out, but Katie paid no attention. The sounds
she could hear – the soft grunts of a man too tired to yell out,
the incessant lashing of leather on flesh, the dark laughter of a
murderer and his victim refusing to give in. All of that was coming
to her. She bobbed her head up and had to bite back a squeak when
something glinty, silvery and horribly pointy came whirling towards
her. It landed heavily on the crumpled hide coat in front of her.
She held her breath for a few long seconds and tried not to move
until the bad man had thudded away and returned to his torture then
shot her arm out and grabbed the silvery disk. It didn’t feel like
a knife but there were sharp points on it. Good for stabbing, or at
least holding him at a distance so he didn’t get stabbed. Her
fingers rubbed over some uneven ridges in the metal disk. She
brought it to her face and then angled it this way and that until
it caught the light enough to see.

Oh, crap. He
thinks he’s justified to do this.

Or, maybe the
man with hate in his eyes was acting outside the law and he wanted
to silence her before she could tell anyone what she saw.
And
maybe he just wants to kill you because he’s a sadistic
bastard.
Because, lying in her hands was a sheriff’s badge. The
man was enforcing 19
^th
century law. Was capital
punishment acceptable back then? Katie rubbed her fingers over the
badge and suddenly felt it disappear. She even felt herself
disappear. There was blood soaking through the straw she stood on,
seeping under the wooden wall between her and them. it was getting
ground into her sole. It would probably never come out.

Katie opened
her eyes and stared up at the swirling, grey-blue sky. She didn’t
want to move. Or think. In fact, just keeping breathing was making
her lungs ache. Lactic acid was flowing through her now. The desire
to just roll over right here and now and fall asleep for a very
long time was almost irresistible. Almost.

Just as the
internal debate was raging, a shadow – black on black – shimmered
off to her left. Her face hurt when she rolled over to get a better
look.

He is
coming,
the voice said.

She shielded
her eyes with one weak hand and hoped that her frazzled mind was
playing cruel tricks on her. The shadowed figure looked – it looked
like Dina. What the hell was she doing out here?

It’s nearly
here. this isn’t right, Katie.

“Help me,
Dina.” Katie needed to shout to make herself heard over the storm
now but her vocal chords were so raw that a hoarse whisper was all
she could muster. Dina seemed to hear though, it even looked as
though she smiled as she reached out to the girl with one hand and
thrust the other into the darkness behind her.

You must be
ready,
she said, her voice becoming more alien with every step
she crept back, more ethereal, more voices joining hers as
purple-black fingers began to cover Dina. The air was crackling
with dark power. These dead things, this sense of death all around
her, was so powerful. There should be nothing here but here it all
was shooting out of Dina’s out-stretched hand in a shimmering black
stream, jumping with purple sparks, filling her up with the good,
natural energy she had used up long ago, rejuvenating her entire
body and mind and healing all her cuts and bruises… and given her a
little extra go juice besides. There was a well of life inside her
and it was filling fast. She rolled to her feet and started running
on the spot just because she could.

We have done
all we can. It is up to you now.

Couldn’t they
have included a plan with their little gift? Katie was about to ask
when Dina stepped back – into the soup-thick storm, over-taken by
the dark power that pulsed and suddenly the flow of energy from
them broke. She had been taken by all these ghosts, all these dead
things. Did that mean Dina was dead too? There was no time to
mourn. There was a palpable sense of the ancient life leaving all
at once. The invisible cover that had been keeping the storm at bay
peeled back and started soaking the ground; the wind ripped holes
in the air – might have blown her back down if she had felt it. But
the dark power was threading out of her skin, thin as hair but
sparking like tiny electrical currents grounding through her,
casing her in the protection against the forces of nature they had.
A body of calm in the maddening storm. In the next instant, there
was a tearing at her insides – hard, fast, desperate and Jack
misted into being a few metres from her. He lay on the ground, not
moving.

“Jack!” Katie
yelled over the thunder. “Please!” She didn’t know what she was
asking for. She ran over to him, sending silent thanks to whatever
spirits still lingered that they had given her the energy to do
even that much. It would have been just her luck to be still lying
drained on the ground, unable to even be with him as he breathed
his last. If he was still breathing. The blood soaking through his
beige t-shirt was dark red and fresh. That was good, right, his
heart was still pumping blood. God, she wished she had paid more
attention in biology. But rain was drenching him, the wind was
trying to blow the clothes off his book. No energy of his own to
save himself from this spiralling summer squall. It had to be
possible to extend her borrowed cover to him. She was puzzling over
the physics of this, hesitantly trying to get hold of one single
spark, when strong, rough hands circled her neck and hauled her to
her feet. Just when her breathing was becoming shallow and
distressed, the hands shoved her flying through the air, over Jack
and a yard or two further where she landed with a bone-crunching
thud on the ground. Getting up, Katie saw the man standing over
Jack, whip at the ready, silver glinting at his belt. He had put
his long coat back on too. He looked every inch the psycho with an
upside down sense of right and wrong. Why hadn’t she heard him
coming up behind her?
Because you were too busy worrying about
the boy. Lose focus for a second and he’ll use it.
Great. This
was sounding more and more like a fight she couldn’t win. Not for
the first time, Katie wondered why she was even in this fight at
all. It didn’t matter, she was inn it now and wishful thinking was
not
going to change that. Besides, if not her, Jack would
have only fallen for some other poor girl and sentenced her to
this.