Sentinel (30 page)

“Done,” Sam said, removing his glasses. “Now we wait.”

Liberty raised herself out of the chair. “I’ll ask Mum to keep hold of Fran again tonight, she’s already there now,” she said. “Come fetch me tonight. We’ll go to the church.”

“Are you sure? It could be quite dangerous.”

“It’ll definitely be dangerous,” Liberty said sternly, “and I have no intention of letting you go there alone.”

“Who said anything–” Sam began, but Liberty’s no-nonsense glare caused his protestations to swiftly die.

“Tonight,” Liberty said.

“Yes, tonight,” Sam echoed softly.

They climbed back down the ladder and began to descend the staircase. They were almost at the foot of the stairs when Sam noticed Liberty grip the banister rail until her knuckles turned white.

“Liberty?” he began, but then he felt it, too.

A chill prickled the air and pressed right into his heart.

Warily, they peered through the railings into the dim living room, where a silhouette stared back, and a pair of cat-like eyes flashed.

“Won’t you join us?” purred a voice that Sam recognised. The woman. The snake-like curls of her hair.

Sam felt a stab in his gut at the sight of her, as if she’d buried something sharp in him. But she was still by the mantelpiece, resting a slender arm against it.

Sam and Liberty remained on the stairs, transfixed by the outline of the woman. As Sam’s eyes adjusted to the murk of the afternoon light, he saw that her white teeth were gleaming in a sultry grin.

“Here I was looking forward to a catch up,” the woman burred in mock disappointment. “It appears you’re not as pleased to see me as I am you. You break my heart.”

“You have no heart, wench,” Sam said evenly, having found his voice.

“You’ve been close enough to say that with certainty,” Malika returned silkily. She trailed a finger across the exposed skin of her shoulder, then down to where her heart should be.

“
Enough
,” guttered another voice.

Sam shuddered at the sound. It vibrated through his bones.

“
Join us
.”

Though every muscle in his body screamed against it, Sam found himself following Liberty down the stairs to the living room doorway. The room was awash in gloomy half-light as the dismal afternoon gave way to an equally morose evening. As the few dying rays of the sun pushed through the netting at the window, they framed a child, who stood with his back to them.

A boy.

His hands were clasped confidently behind him.

“
So this is the pair who’ve been causing me so many problems
,” rattled that tremulous voice. The boy turned and looked Sam in the eye. It was the boy from the street, the one Sam had caught sight of earlier.

What was wrong with him?

The boy’s pupils were milky white and his skin looked parched, like it was drying from the inside out, and flaked away in pieces.

“What are you doing in my house?” Sam breathed.

The boy’s cracked lips twitched into a grimace. “
You have something we want,
” he stated simply.

“There’s nothing here of value,” Sam assured him, his voice level, though his insides were shuddering. “Take whatever you want.”

Those eyes. Those swirling, bone-white eyes. They were like blocks of ice, and the coldness they emanated drew him in, made him weary and heavy, forced him to feel every one of his seventy-one years.

“Going to stop us, Sammy?” came a third voice.

Sam shook himself out of the daze.

There was Richard, reclined lazily in his armchair. He was wearing Sam’s fedora, which cast his gaunt, bearded face in shadow. He was twisting a bloody knife in one hand.

“I always fancied this for myself,” the man sneered, running his fingers along the brim of the hat.

“Richard,” Sam said.

“Richard’s dead,” the other man spat, his spindly frame tensing in the chair.

“I hope that’s true,” Sam replied. He eyed the knife. “The Richard I knew would never kill harmless children.”

Richard let out a roaring laugh and stabbed the blade into the arm of the chair. “I wish I’d had the pleasure,” he said, practically drooling at the prospect. “Sadly, they were not mine for the taking.”

“
Enough
,” the boy by the window rasped. Though he barely moved a muscle, his presence filled the entire room. He shot Malika a look. “
Take her.
”

Malika’s dress whispered snake-like rustles as she approached Liberty. Even as she reached for the woman’s arm, though, Liberty struck out with her fist and caught Malika in the jaw. The red-haired woman’s eyes burned bright with admiration.

“Feisty,” she said, touching her jaw. “Can’t wait to see what breaks you.”

She flew at Liberty in a flash of glittering crimson, scratching and punching, a blur of frenzied movement.

“Liberty,” Sam began, but before he could go to her aid, Richard sprung at him and forced the old man up against a wall.

“Come old boy, hold me,” Richard hissed, pressing a bony arm into Sam’s throat.

The two women crashed into the living room wall, dislodging a painting. Liberty spun to face her attacker, fist raised, which was when she made her fatal mistake.

She looked into Malika’s eyes.

Liberty’s cry of agony made Sam blanch. What was happening? Malika wasn’t touching her, but Liberty’s face had crumpled in pain. Her eyes were wide, unblinking. She was caught in Malika’s malevolent glare.

“Yesssss,” the red-haired creature hissed.

“Liberty!” Sam yelled, squirming in Richard’s grasp.

“Not yet,” Richard jeered through clenched teeth, his putrid breath blasting in Sam’s face. “You and me, we’re staying right here. Won’t that be nice?”

“I-I-” Liberty was trying to speak, but she couldn’t form the words. She swayed unsteadily.

“You’re mine,” Malika said softly, persuasively.

Liberty’s face became blank. The pained creases evened out and she stood still, her eyes never leaving Malika.

“
Come
,” the boy commanded, leaving the living room. Sam heard him open the front door and trudge out into the snow. He watched as Malika moved after him, Liberty mindlessly following her.

“Liberty!” he cried again, struggling against Richard. But he was helpless in the other man’s grip. Liberty couldn’t even turn to look at him as she went out into the hallway.

“Shame I didn’t get to play with the old man,” Malika purred from the door, glancing at Sam over her bare shoulder.

“Make it slow,” she told Richard.

Then the front door slammed and Sam was alone in the living room with Richard.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Hunting

N
ICHOLAS SQUEEZED ONE EYE SHUT AND
focused on the tree. Then he pulled the trigger. The rifle bucked alarmingly in his hands and the sound of the shot exploded deafeningly in his right ear.

Beside him, Melvin Reynolds let loose a jubilant hoot and slapped Nicholas roughly on the shoulder. “Nice shot!” he hollered. “You swear you’ve never used one of these before?”

His ear still ringing, Nicholas shook his head. His cheeks were flushed and his heart was hammering like he’d just cleared the finish line at a marathon – it was as if the gunshot had jumbled his insides up and they were hopping around trying to return to their rightful positions. He hadn’t expected firing a gun to make him feel like that. Powerful and in control. It felt dangerous somehow, as if he shouldn’t feel that way.

The boy stared at a tree not twenty feet away. There, in a sheet of paper nailed to the trunk, was a ragged bullet hole.

“If we come across Garm, I’ll let you do the shooting,” Reynolds declared, though Nicholas suspected he was joking. He handed back the weapon.

The woods were peaceful at this time of day. It was gone lunchtime, but there was barely any sun and the trees were gathering together against the frosty weather. Bundled up in his coat, Nicholas could barely feel the cold. Maybe it was the exhilaration of the hunt that was keeping him warm. The boy watched Reynolds as he discharged the used cartridge from the rifle and replaced it with a new one. He was an unusual man – large in every sense of the word. He wasn’t as tall as Nicholas, but he was easily twice as wide. There was a strange mix of the delicate and the savage in him. Just when Nicholas thought he’d figured him out, Reynolds said or did something that surprised him. This morning was a perfect example. Before they’d taken to the woods in search of Garm, Nicholas had found Reynolds hunched over the shop counter at Rumours, his eyes magnified to almost ten times their normal size by a pair of bizarre metal goggles.

“Just taking a look through my collection,” the shopkeeper had said, holding up what looked like a postage stamp. Sat on the worktop in front of him was a scuffed cardboard box packed with hundreds of similar little squares.

“You collect stamps?” Nicholas asked.

“Give me some credit,” Reynolds returned drily. “Here, look.” He slipped the lenses off and handed them to Nicholas. Putting on the over-sized glasses, the boy picked up one of the stamp-like squares. Except through the magnifying lenses, he could see now that it was a painting of a beach. The detail was remarkable – everything from a striped red and white deckchair to tiny, speck-like seagulls had been carefully inscribed in the miniature canvas.

“It’s a painting,” the boy marvelled.

Reynolds smiled. “Art has many forms,” he said. “This one is my favourite. It makes us appreciate that not everything is what it seems, and that even the smallest of things can surrender the most surprising of wonders.”

Now, lost in the dense forests that enclosed Orville like a prickly, protective wreath, Nicholas realised that it was Reynolds’s inscrutability that he liked. From discussing art to hunting the beast Garm and using a tree as target practice, Nicholas never knew what he was going to do next. He found himself wondering if all Sentinels were this unpredictable. Could they all turn their hand to whatever their work required? Could his father have taken up a rifle and shot a hole in that target? Again, that sucking feeling of regret created a vacuum in his chest, and Nicholas attempted to swallow it down, force himself to remain in the present. It was so easy to get lost in the memories, and he’d always been inclined to daydreaming. He watched Reynolds working at the rifle and pushed thoughts of his parents away.

Isabel observed the pair from a log. She wasn’t happy with the child’s decision to leave the house again, and she made her feelings abundantly clear. Begrudgingly, she’d insisted that if Nicholas really had to take to the woods with the shopkeeper, he must keep the dagger with him at all times. Accepting this as a reasonable price for his freedom, the boy had strapped it to his belt, and now the cold metal sheath of the Drujblade dug reassuringly into his thigh.

The cat looked up as birds that had been startled by the gunfire returned to their roosts, wittering at one another in irritation. Without knowing why, she began pondering what blackbird tasted like, and, horrified, quickly banished the unwelcome thought.

“Where do you suppose he is?” Nicholas asked. “Garm.”

Reynolds gave the firearm a check over. Nicholas noticed that he’d discarded the red and gold cartridge case on the ground and the boy retrieved it, turning it over in his hands. It was still warm.

“Damned if I know,” Reynolds said. “Been sweeping the forest every morning for a month without any luck.”

“Do you think he goes underground?” Nicholas asked, casting about the forest. The leaves rustled against one another above his head. “Maybe he burrows like a rabbit.”

“If he does, he hides the holes well,” Reynolds commented. He raised the rifle and aimed it at the paper nailed to the tree. “Gives us time for a little target practice,” he added. “Besides, the sound of gunfire should tempt him out.”

“It wouldn’t scare him off?” Nicholas asked, watching the other man. He was overweight yet surprisingly nimble. He used his ample belly as a rest for the rifle.

“Nah. He’s been shot before, knows it doesn’t do much.” Reynolds shrugged his shoulder, jiggling a large blade that was slung over his back on a strap, like a quiver of arrows. “That’s what the knife’s for.”

He fired at the target, making a second tattered hole in the paper. The crack of the gunshot echoed through the trees, and the birds scattered into the air once more, shrieking their annoyance. Isabel eyed them distrustfully.

Reynolds sat down on a log with a sigh and pulled a yellow rag from his pocket. Carefully, he began to clean the rifle.

Nicholas perched on a tree stump opposite him, and knew this was his moment. “You’re a Sentinel, aren’t you?” he asked the man.

Reynolds didn’t seem surprised by the question. He carried on cleaning, his chubby fingers working efficiently over the weapon.