The Black Rose (25 page)

“Evidently I was wrong. You
do
know the meaning of self-sacrifice.”

The Apollonians all acted at the same moment. Eight jets of energy descended upon the Emperor in a furious blaze, Adâ, Hakim, Vince, Ruth, Jack, Lucy, Dannie, and Malik steering them towards their target. They hit him from every angle, and for a millisecond, the light cast him entirely in bright monochrome. Then his body collapsed to the floor.

For a moment, none of them moved or spoke. The Emperor remained motionless. Jack stared at the corpse of their great enemy, not with hatred or even satisfaction but with numb disbelief.

The screams shook them back to reality. The Aterosa had not halted in its self-destruction. Its tendrils still thrashed. Darkness boiled and seeped over the floor like molten tar. The broken bodies of the more unlucky fleers from the congregation were in its path.

“Quick, we have to get them out,” Ruth cried, leaping over the side of the ship to haul them up. Jack, Dannie, Lucy, and Vince ran to assist her. Hakim and Adâ made for Sardâr and helped him limp towards
The Golden Turtle.

Amongst the churning emotions and thoughts, Jack felt slightly doubtful why they were helping the congregation members, who had been praying for their deaths only minutes before. But those thoughts evaporated in guilt when he saw the first contorted face. A woman, whose leg was twisted under her, looked in terror at the oncoming Darkness. He hoisted her alchemically and jogged to the ship, depositing her in the arms of Quentin, who lifted her aboard.

After they had rescued a dozen this way, Quentin called to Ruth, “That's enough. We need to go!”

“Okay, everyone aboard! Let's get out of here.”

The elements of the chamber were distorting now, almost like a surrealist painting. The marble floor contorted into waves that lapped at their feet and threatened to pull them towards the rose. The columns supporting the partially remaining ceiling dissolved into granules, shearing across their path in windblown cones. The curtain that had hidden them before the ritual ascended and fell like a raging bull. The dragon statue behind the altar momentarily came to life, writhing and beating its wings, before it ruptured into pieces and hurtled into the heart of the implosion.

The Apollonians climbed the side of the dome in single file and dropped belowdecks. Jack was at the back of the line, and just before he pulled himself up, he turned round for a final look. The Cathedral was utterly devastated, and plenty more bodies were scattered around. Demons were beginning to rise out of the inky blackness and feast on the cadavers. Everything without a shield was pulled towards the writhing rose, except the Emperor's body, which remained unmoved.

Something was changing, subtle amongst the chaos but perceptible nevertheless. Grey smoke was trailing out the corpse, weaving upwards to form a tall, slate-colored figure with the same blazing golden eyes. The figure and Jack looked at each other for a moment. Something glinted. An object from the ground flitted into the figure's outstretched hand—a metallic egg from
The Golden Turtle.
Then it was gone, along with the figure, vanishing into nothingness. The Emperor's lifeless body began to scrape along the marble, before being flung upwards and absorbed into the core of Darkness.

“What are you doing, Jack? Come on!”

Jack shook his head and followed Lucy, closing the hatch behind him.

He got a shock when he reached the bottom of the ladder. The corridors were crammed full of the people of Nexus, either crouched or leaning against the walls. He followed Lucy edging down the hallway. The command deck was full too: for once, Quentin hadn't been exaggerating.

They took off and soared through the now nonexistent roof. Nexus sprawled below them. The carnage created by the collapse of the Aterosa had extended well beyond the Cathedral. Houses, lamps, chapels, towers, and all the other infrastructures of the city were being sucked towards the growing core of Darkness. They rose higher, lurching to avoid debris flying in the opposite direction. Several flailing bodies hurtled by, and a large chunk of rock smashed against the transparent dome.

“So what happened to the Aterosa?” Malik asked.

“We managed to sabotage it as it was still forming,” Sardâr replied, still leaning on Adâ for support. “I have to say, though, I wasn't expecting it to be this—”

They were all thrown sideways as an airborne house snagged the side of the ship.

“We're not out of this yet,” Vince yelled. He had taken up one of the flight monitors; Quentin was in charge of another.

“Were you really going to sacrifice yourself to save everyone?” Jack roared.

Sardâr grimaced and replied at equal volume. “I
was
… but I'm still happy you all stepped in there.”

Jack's laugh was lost as another house smashed into the hull.

“So what happened to you, then?” he called into Ruth's ear having righted himself.

“It's a long story.”

“And who are all these people?”

“That's also a long story. Do you think I could explain when we're not facing imminent death?”

“Fair enough.”

A final slab of stone crashed off the top of the ship, and they were clear of the city. That did nothing to quell Jack's anxiety, however. The Aterosa was ripping apart the planet bit by bit. Before them, the sea had risen into an impossibly high tidal wave, drawn, like everything else, to the center of the Cathedral. The sky swiftly vanished as they hurtled towards the immense wall.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Adâ screamed over the increasingly deafening noise of rushing water.

“The only way out is through,” Vince yelled. “We're about to test the definition of
submarine.
Everyone, hold on!”

Ruth slipped her hand into Jack's and squeezed. He returned the gesture, his knuckles white.

They were close enough to see the froth.

The Golden Turtle
blasted into the tidal wave, and everything went black.

The early summer sunshine warmed the grass of the orchard, and a slight breeze rustled the branches of the trees by the side of the road. A few cars passed, and a dog roamed around the base of some bushes, its owner strolling behind. Two teenage girls in school uniforms sat on the green, their legs outstretched.

“Here they come,” Lucy said, nodding ahead. Two figures were strolling towards them: the tall, prematurely muscular figure of Alex and the shorter, skinnier one of Jack.

“Oh God, that kid's tagged along too,” the other replied exasperatedly. “I thought this was meant to be just the two of you?”

“We didn't say. And don't be mean.”

Her friend gasped dramatically. “Come
on,
Lucy. He just doesn't leave Alex alone. I know they live together, but still…”

“He's really sweet. He's a bit shy, but he's really nice once you get to know him. Are you sure you don't want to stick around?”

Her friend got to her feet and, dusting the grass off her skirt, pulled the strap of her bag over her shoulder. “Definitely don't want to now. If you and Alex get close, then I'm going to be left with the other one.”

“He's not
the other one.
His name's Jack.”

“Whatever.” Her friend rolled her eyes and walked towards the road, her bag bobbing at her side.

Lucy composed herself, brushing her fingers through her fringe and smoothing her shirt. In another couple of moments, the boys had reached her. Alex had changed out of his school uniform into a Topman T-shirt and jeans—his hair looked as if it had been recrafted since the morning as well. Jack had remained in his flannel trousers and blazer, tie still on and top button still done up.

They spent the remainder of the afternoon sitting in the orchard. Lucy did most of the talking, with Alex intermittently laughing. Jack barely spoke at all, occupying his time pulling up the grass bit by bit. When the sun dipped over the trees and shadows slipped over the grass, Lucy excused herself on account of dinner. She hugged Alex, said good-bye to Jack, and headed off towards the road.

Alex and Jack hung around a little longer. Alex lit a cigarette, the end fizzling orange in the darkness, and Jack had a couple of puffs. He hadn't yet got the hang of it. It took all his effort to not break out into an embarrassing splutter.

“She seems nice,” he managed eventually.

Alex nodded noncommittally and stubbed the cigarette out in one of the dirt patches Jack had cleared. The two hauled themselves to their feet.

“Do you think there's anything there?”

“Maybe. By the way, try and talk more when girls are around. They're not monsters.”

Jack shrugged as the two of them sauntered back towards the orphanage.

Less than a year later, Alex had disappeared.

One day later,
The Golden Turtle
broke into the sunlight.

The impact of the tidal wave had tossed the ship sideways, and a considerable amount of the navigational equipment had gone down. They had been lost in a matrix of water, foam blasting all around them. Vince had piloted them onwards blindly. When it had become clear nothing drastic was about to happen, they had relaxed a little.

The ship was indeed full to the breaking point with refugees from Nexus, many of them wounded. Ruth and Quentin had organized for all the medical resources on board to be brought out and administered, but there were still far too few to go around. Jack had been horrified by some of the injuries: limbs were missing, some people couldn't walk, and in some places such damage had been caused that faces were barely recognizable.

He had seen little of the Apollonians once they had dispersed around the ship. For once, Sardâr's wounds hadn't been the most pressing, so he'd been swept up in the tide of people requiring medical attention. The others had set to work distributing food and blankets and working on the injuries they could manage. To his quiet satisfaction, Jack had managed to mend several broken bones with alchemy and even reset someone's dislocated jaw. He had left the more serious problems to Quentin and the other trained medics.

He had worked in silence mostly. He'd never been good at meeting new people and could not begin to think what he might say to these inhabitants of Nexus who seemed to have almost accidently been picked up.

He'd also been conscious that he still hadn't managed to properly see Lucy, but they both had more pressing matters to attend to, and the mere thought of trying to find her amongst the crowd had been daunting.

There were also far too few cabins for the number of passengers. Jack, like the others, had volunteered to sleep in the corridor, huddled in a blanket on the thin carpet. With the ordinary ship routines suspended because of lack of space, there had been no semblance of day or night. He had awoken several times, trying to find a comfortable position, and lapsed back into uneasy sleep before he'd given up and gone to keep Vince company.

He was on the command deck when they finally broke through the water. They had glimpsed a glow in the distance a few hours earlier and steered towards it. It had grown steadily brighter until their view through the glass dome had been filled with churning waves shot through with amber. Only minutes after shapes had swum into vision beyond, with a frothing that vibrated the ship like a gigantic mobile phone, they burst out of the waves and into bright air.