Sentinel (38 page)

“Can it be?”
it hooted jubilantly.
“Can I have breached the very stronghold that so many others have failed to enter?”

The head swivelled to stare at Isabel and the ugly, jutting features appeared to see her in a new light.

“I’d know that stench anywhere,”
Diltraa spat
. “Sentinel scum. Filthy parasite. What luck this is! When I’m finished with the child, I’ll gladly tear you into a thousand pieces and feed you to the hounds of Hell. This house is the Sentinel keep! It shall be my new fortress and seed evil through the world of Man.”

The fog of fear was smothering Jessica, but then something so unexpected happened that she was jerked back into the present.

Isabel hooted loudly.

“Demon of the Eld Regions, did you say?”

The old woman let out another roar of laughter.

“I heard your kind were all scum-eating, slow-festering maggots! All talk and no spine!”

Diltraa’s eyes blazed at Isabel.

“What say you?”
Diltraa snarled. Its teeth gnashed in irritation.

Jessica’s insides felt like they were turning in on themselves. What was Isabel doing? She glared at her guardian, dumbfounded, and saw that a pale confidence had stretched across her mentor’s wrinkled features.

“You are nothing to this world,” Isabel stated matter-of-factly, shrugging her shoulders. “How do you account for your kind’s effortless expulsion from this plane all those centuries ago? Make threats all you want – a hearty laugh would do me a world of good!”

A trembling snarl vibrated from the demon’s throat. Slowly it appeared to be escalating in size. Its eyes raged white fire.

“Your lunacy reveals itself, witch,”
the beast rasped.
“We were not expelled. There are ways in and out of this world that you could never fathom. How easily I intercepted your gateway, forced my way back into this wretched plane. Others shall do the same, and it will rain blood for a century!”

Jessica was cast aside. She collapsed against the wall.

Diltraa’s lanky frame loomed over Isabel and Jessica watched the old woman become lost in the white pools of the demon’s eyes. The nothingness that filled them seemed to draw her in, mesmerising and murderous. The old woman let out a sudden cry of pain and clutched at her chest, as if an iron fist had clamped around her heart. She let out another strangled cry, collapsing back into the chair.

“Isabel!” Jessica shouted. “No!”

Isabel forced her eyes open and drew a laboured breath.

“Go!” she gasped. Horrendous, cramping pain seemed to have seized her body and she convulsed alarmingly.

“No!” Jessica cried, tears coming. “I won’t leave you!”

In desperation she searched the room for something –
anything!
– that would help them. Then she saw it. The iron candle holder that had toppled over in a corner of the room. With the demon concentrating on Isabel, Jessica darted over and seized the metal stand. She plucked the candles from their holders, revealing short, vicious-looking spikes.

Diltraa’s pitiless gaze fell down on Isabel and a forked tongue flickered from the fiend’s mouth again, greedily consuming her terror.

“Your fear is glorious,”
the demon gurgled.

Anger and loathing like nothing Jessica had ever felt before coursed through her. She gripped the candle holder tight and charged at the demon, plunging the metal stand into its back.

The creature emitted a strangled screech and the teeth of the holder speared clean through it, buckling its back before bursting out the other side.

Diltraa gasped and gagged, floundering across the floor. It writhed like a stranded fish.

Jessica hurried to Isabel’s side, dodging the demon’s flailing limbs.

“Isabel, are you okay?” she panted.

Isabel took Jessica’s hand and nodded, attempting to catch her breath.

“I knew you had it in you,” she coughed.

Together they watched the demon crush itself into the corner, curling its limbs up like a dying spider. Black blood spilled across the floorboards and Diltraa thrashed its elongated limbs, squirming in agony.

“Not so easily…”
it crowed,
“…shall I leave this world.”
The creature fixed its scorching gaze on Jessica and rasped:
“You!”

As Jessica stared into those bottomless pits, she felt her own will shrivel into nothingness, only to be replaced with a spearing determination.

“NOW!”
Diltraa shrieked. It let loose a guttural hoot.

The girl moved like a puppet, reaching out for Isabel’s throat.

“Jessica,” Isabel cried, “what are you doing?”

Jessica’s hands wrapped about Isabel’s neck.

“Stop,” Isabel choked. “Jessica, no!”

But Jessica had no control over her actions. She squeezed tighter, clamping the crone’s shrivelled neck between her hands.

Isabel gripped Jessica’s arms in vain, tried to prise her hands free, but it was futile. She scratched at the girl’s skin, but Jessica didn’t even flinch. With cold detachment, she wrung the old woman’s neck and Diltraa gargled with glee until, finally, the demon perished in a pool of its own putrid blood.

Only then did Jessica return to her senses.

Too late, she realised what she had done.

*

“Diltraa...” Jessica spluttered. “I–I killed you.”

Beside her, Nicholas looked confused, still clutching the Drujblade in readiness.

The demon called Diltraa cackled.

“Where do you suppose a demon goes when it dies?”
the creature rasped scornfully.
“That is why Man will never prevail. Knock us down, destroy us, and we’ll keep clawing our way back out of Hell. Surrender now, Sentinel pig.”

“NO!” Nicholas shouted. He grabbed Jessica by the arm, this time protectively, and wielded the Drujblade in front of him. “Stay back!” he cried.

The demon stared down at him reproachfully.

“Boy,”
it rasped.
“Your bravery is admirable, but you’re on the wrong side of this battle.”

Nicholas began to back away from the monster, pulling Jessica with him. Diltraa threw out a sinewy limb to stop them, razor-like claws slicing for their necks. Instinctively, Nicholas jabbed out with the blade and golden sparks erupted where the bone dagger sliced into the demon’s flesh.

Diltraa howled, enraged, and arched away from the weapon. Nicholas seized his moment and turned, dragging Jessica away through the garden. They disappeared into the undergrowth.

“Malika!”
Diltraa’s gurgling voice rang out behind him.
“Find them!”

“Come on,” Nicholas urged, charging through the garden with Jessica, batting massive leaves out of the way as he pulled the woman after him. He pushed deeper and deeper into the garden, further than he’d been before, losing himself in the greenery. Only when he couldn’t run anymore did he stop. They hid within the sheltering bows of a willow tree, which rested at the lip of a large pond.

“Jessica, what are we going to do?” Nicholas panted.

The woman turned away from him.

“Jessica!” Nicholas persisted. “You know what that thing is, don’t you? What are we going to do? How can we stop it?”

“I can’t,” Jessica whispered. “I can’t stop it. It’s too powerful.”

Nicholas pulled her round to face him. “That’s rubbish!” he said in a low hiss.

“You’ve faced things like that before, I know you have. We have to fight it. We can’t just give in.”

But that’s exactly what it looked like Jessica wanted to do.

“I’m so tired,” she said, her hair falling across her face. She broke free of the boy’s grip and trudged over to where the willow’s slender branches hung like a curtain to the garden floor. She brushed her hands over the leaves.

There came the distant sound of trees being torn from the ground and a bleak howl tore through the garden.

Malika’s euphoric chuckles echoed somewhere.

“Nicholas!” she called mockingly. “I’ve got a message from mummy! Don’t you want to know what it is?”

She sounded close.

Nicholas ignored her and stared down at the dagger in his hand. The Drujblade. Isabel had said it was a formidable weapon; it had slain “many fell beasts”, in her words. Diltraa certainly hadn’t liked it very much. The boy looked over at Jessica and knew it was up to him.

He had to kill the monster himself.

“Stay here,” he murmured to her.

The woman didn’t seem to hear him.

“Oh Norlath,” she hummed quietly, still playing with the tree’s leaves.

Nicholas parted the vine-like branches of the willow tree and looked out into the garden. All was peaceful. The wide pond reflected an upside-down version of the world, blossoms spinning and twirling across its mirror-like surface.

The boy stepped out from the tree’s protective umbrella and picked his way between the tree trunks.

In the evening gloom, it was difficult to see the ground, so he treaded carefully, mindful of the twigs underfoot, which might reveal his whereabouts to the monster.

Had the situation been less treacherous, he’d be deliberating over what Jessica had said about the village and his birth. He was so focussed, though, that such troubling revelations didn’t bother him. The boy skulked onward, ready for anything.

At last he was back in the clearing near the door, where the flowers pooled across the ground in multicoloured congregations. There was no sign of the beast.

“Boy,” purred a voice.

Nicholas spun around and found himself face to face with Malika.

“Are you certain this is the path for you?” she entreated softly. “There are such wonders in the world, such sensations I long to share with you.”

The boy stared into the dazzling depths of her eyes, saw magic spark and shimmer there. Now, though, he was immune to her seductive charms. She had exploited his private pain. His anger was still fresh.

Nicholas felt the hatred gather in his chest, smouldering heavily there. Somehow, he found himself reaching out from the place where the rage throbbed, stretching malevolently for the red-haired woman with his mind.

Before she had a chance to take a step toward him, Malika froze and seemed to realise that something was wrong. An invisible, spiking shard pierced the front of her skull and suddenly something was groping around inside.

Nicholas didn’t know what he was doing, but it felt as natural as breathing. He strained against the defences of the woman’s mind, easily swept them aside and unlocked the mysteries twitching there. He saw men and women falling at Malika’s feet, felt her pride and arrogance as she cut them down, slashed their throats and left them naked in the rain. Her laughter echoed in his head, but separate from him, something he could control.

The boy pushed deeper, and there she was, in a car with a man. A waiter. He was drunk, driving erratically, buoyed by her presence, whooping as she nibbled on his ear and whispered tenderly to him. Then the car ran off the road and into the countryside. Suddenly it was on a rail track, bouncing fitfully over the tracks before screeching to a halt. Malika dug her claws into the waiter’s throat and tossed him over the bridge into the water below. Then she watched from the shadows as a train ploughed into the car, and hundreds of souls plunged to their deaths, wailing as they fell.

“You killed them,” Nicholas gasped. “You put the car there.”

Malika was on her knees now, bent awkwardly on the ground, her hands buried in her snake-like hair.

Nicholas couldn’t stop. Fury drove him and the boy dug ferociously into Malika’s mind. It was wartime. Great fires raged as planes whirred overhead. Then they were in a market square. A man was being hanged, but before he dropped through the trapdoor, he looked at Malika with accusatory eyes. Now, inexplicably, they were back in the pentagon room, the very room that Nicholas had been in this evening. Except this wasn’t a memory from today. It was older. Malika was shivering naked in the corner of the room, scared and confused…

Surprised by this last image, Nicholas jerked away, releasing his hold on the woman.

“What…? What did you…?” Malika garbled. She let out a tortured cry, scrambled to her feet and fled the garden.

Nicholas couldn’t believe what he’d seen. That woman. Malika. She had been responsible for his parents’ deaths. She had orchestrated the train wreck and watched gleefully as every person onboard perished. For weeks now, the authorities had been clueless – and now he knew the truth.