Brink (The Ruin Saga Book 2) (54 page)

Lucian sighed, watching the wave of pain glaze Norman’s eyes. “You don’t remember, Norman. You got hurt. You forgot. But it’s true.”

Norman mouthed openly for a time, but eventually he shook his head. “I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Just tell us what you want. If you’re going to kill us, then do it.”

“I want to give you the choice I never had. I want to offer you the chance to stand on the right side of the line.”

Robert barked. “Sign up with you?”

“You can’t be serious,” Norman said.

Lucian squared his shoulders. “James, don’t do this. Just stop. You can still stop.”

James whirled to face him and for the first time Lucian truly saw his little brother behind those emerald eyes. “I can never stop, Lucian. Not ever,” he whispered.

“And we’ll never stand with you.”

James nodded slowly. “Then you’ll watch. You’ll watch while I put right all the wrongs.”

“I don’t believe it. You and I grew up with the people back home. You were angry enough to do some bad things, but I don’t think you could ever hurt your own family. I know you, James.”

Their eyes met for a long, burning moment, then the pistol was rising into the air, and for the first time in memory, Lucian McKay felt a chill roll along his spine.

James raised his free hand and loosened the balaclava around his face. He let it fall, and for a moment the tent was alive with a dozen gasps of terror.

It was a face cleaved of flesh. Half a face. A monstrosity.

Where cheeks should have been, there were fleshy holes, windows to a mass of lolling, uncontained tongue, teeth, and exposed jawbone. The eye sockets were sunken underneath, the structure of the skull simply gone. The remaining skin below the eye line, trailing down his neck and into his collar, was a single mass of shining scar tissue.

The jaw parted, and the reaper-like face contorted as James said, “You know me?”

Lucian had time for a single thought to run through his mind.
God … God. What did we do to you?

Then he was looking into those mad green eyes once more, and he saw James’s finger depress the pistol’s trigger.

The pistol let forth thunder and blinding light. A wet crunch followed close behind his head, and he yelled in protest. “James, don’t!”

But the gun fired again, and again, and again, moving to each of the crouched figures behind him, all long the back row. Each round sent Lucian’s head spinning faster, his vision blurred. Somewhere amidst the gunfire were myriad pleas and screams. He couldn’t tell how many were of those being slaughtered, and how many were his own.

James finished his arc along the back row, then with deliberation trained the pistol at the farther end of the first row—at DeGray.

“NO!” Richard roared, throwing himself in front of John. Master and apprentice cowered against one another.

In James’s momentary pause, Lucian bellowed, “STOP, STOP, WHAT DO YOU WANT? I’LL DO ANYTHING! JUST STOP!”

James looked at him and nodded. “You’re right. He shouldn’t have to pay for his elders’ mistakes.”

Then before any of them could utter another sound, he raised the pistol an inch and fired.

John DeGray’s eyes bulged. He let out a simple, “Oh,” and crumpled into the spreading pool of the others’ blood.

“No,” Richard moaned. “No!” He crawled over to him and crouched over the rounded form of his master. “No, no, you’re fine, you’re fine.”

But Lucian could already see the professor’s empty stare, the glazed eyes, the same look he’d seen countless times in his life and haunted his dreams.

“Finish it,” Lucian said to James.

James shook his head. The hollowed horror of his exposed cheekbones tightened. “The rest of you are staying here. I want you to watch us march away and know they’re all dying, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Once you feel something like that, you see things more clearly. You see the truth.” He was backing away, and his ruined face twisted with a shadow of old pain. “You’ll see.”

Then he disappeared from sight, and they were left with the bodies and the blood and the lingering vortices of black smoke.

James signalled for his guard to follow and walked amongst them along the cliff edge when Jason appeared from the forest. Afar, he could hear a great clatter of stumbling feet and clanging metal.

“The boy’s doing his job,” Jason said.

“Good.”

Jason looked to the tent. “You left some of them alive?”

James didn’t answer.

“All this time you’ve been hollering about the great evil of their ways, and how we got to stop it. We burned half the sods from coast to coast to beat them down. We got their ringleaders right here in front of us. We could end this now.”

He didn’t seem perturbed, more intrigued, as though seeing James in a new light. “Or maybe you just said what had to be said for a shot at getting back at your shit-crazy big brother.”

“Are they ready?”

Jason picked at the dirt under his fingernails with his foot-long knife. “Every one of them. Just say the word. You’re sure you don’t want to finish them?”

“Leave them.”

“Fine.” Jason swaggered forth and descended the cliffside path, heading for the campfires. “More fun for me.” His voice dripped with sick delight.

James nursed the pigeon upon his shoulder, and watched as the dark hordes slowly crested the distant hills. It was time to end this.

James burst out into the lacklustre daylight that lay lank and drooping on the rocks and trees, and picked out Alex’s shadow not far from where he’d left him. He didn’t stop running. His fingers curled into fists so tight that his nails cut into his palms.

Alex registered momentary surprise at the sight of him rushing forward, but then James collided with him and they both went crashing into the damp moss and heather, James bellowing all the while. He landed on top of Alex and his arms were pumping before he knew it, beating his face again and again. Stars of pain exploded along the skin of his knuckles as he made contact with nose, brow, chin and cheek, striking again and again.

He was yelling without end, hitting as though he would never stop.

And Alex just lay there and took the beating. While his skin split and his face crumpled into bloodied pulp, he didn’t raise a hand to defend himself.

“How could you?” James was yelling, wailing. His vision blurred with tears. “What have they done to her? Tell me!”

“James,” Alex said, then spluttered as James landed another blow, tearing his bottom lip. “James!”

James raised his arm yet again, but this time he cried out and his fist just hovered there beside him. He choked a few times as the world span in front of him, then he said, “Tell me, now.”

Alex groaned in pain and coughed. “Malverston. The Tarbuck sister, she tried to kill him. The town rose up. He came for Beth, took her. He’s going to … make an example.”

“How long have you known?”

“James …”

“
How long?
”

Alex swallowed. “Since Northampton.”

James’s jaw fell ajar. By now they could have her all the way back to Newquay’s Moon. “No,” he said. “You can’t do this to me.”

“What did you find down there?” Alex said. “What happened?”

Fol and the tunnels seemed so far away now that James could barely understand the question. “Why would you do this? You didn’t even want to come here.”

“You needed to come here. We’re so close to signing the treaty. We’re so close. I needed you to have a clear head.”

“You were going to let her die.”

“The mission demands sacrifices.” Alex swallowed. “I make no apologies. I did what I’ve always done, what I had to.”

“I can’t put people I love into danger for some idea,” James said, fighting nausea.

“We have to. We have no choice.” He wheezed, spluttering blood. “It’s our destiny.”

James felt his lip curl, and backed up, rolling off him. “Not mine.”

“James!”

“Nothing’s worth her life.”

Through the pain, Alexander fixed him with a new look; James finally realised as he stumbled to his feet that it was confusion. He didn’t understand.

Alex would never understand. That was the way he had always been. It was only now that he was seeing it with clear eyes.

But he wouldn’t be that.

He ran towards their horses, and the cloud of pigeons at the distant treeline exploded into the sky.

To hell with destiny. Both of them. I’m done with madness.

Alexander approached the log atop the hill slowly, with ceremonial timidity. It seemed like a hundred years ago that he had come up here to talk with Lucian, but it could only have been—what, weeks? Maybe a month or two.

No time at all. Yet everything had changed.

He sat on the log and grimaced at the pain in his hips from his long, solitary trek.

Where had the time gone? He was an old man.

He’d failed them all. From the very beginning, he had failed them. It was woven into the fabric of this place and their whole order—the obsession, the sickness that had been born in his heart on End Day.

A fluttering beside him made him turn. A lone pigeon was walking the length of the log toward him. Its leg was tied with a tiny scroll that made his heart flutter. He untied it, numb with resignation, and unrolled the scrap of paper. It was yellow and mottled, torn from the pages of a book.

He read it aloud to himself and realised he knew exactly what book it had come from: his father’s copy of
Alice in Wonderland.
Once upon a time, he had given that book to a little boy with emerald eyes. ‘
My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that.
’

So that was it. They were coming.

He knew it was so, just like he knew this was the last of the gifts the pigeons would bring him.

As he sat and looked over the city that was preparing its last stand, another line from that same old green book popped into his mind. ‘
Off with their heads!
’

He sighed, long and hard. Nothing to do now but wait, and pray.

Somewhere out there, they were on the move.

The light was dying fast. In the last few minutes the afternoon had given way to evening, and heavy dark clouds had rolled in off the mountains. They lingered on the bloody tent floor for a few minutes, dazed and listless, but already the starless black of night was upon them.

“No …” Richard was sobbing, rocking to and fro upon the hulk of John DeGray’s lifeless body. “Come back, please. I’m not ready.”

Norman fought his way back to sense. His head pounded with the echo of gunshots, and flashes of his old dream were rising up into the forefront of his mind’s eye, fluid and unstoppable, just like the bile rising in his throat.

The storm, the city, the dripping faces. He had been hurt. He had forgotten.

His dream must have been from the night terrible things had happened, whatever they were. Still his memory was foggy. Though he sensed a break in the amnesia ahead, it was still only distant blinding specks of garbage. And there would be time for that later.

For now, they had to get back home.

Slowly the ringing cleared and he became aware of Robert and Lucian grunting in an awkward kneeling dance beside one another, back to back, tackling the bindings on their hands. Lucian had grabbed hold of a knife from one of the dead and was sawing back and forth dangerously close to Robert’s wrists.

The tent looked like an abattoir, its flapping sides slicked with gore, its floor carpeted with staring mangled corpses, all centred around the black ashes of a toppled fire. The smell was somewhere between burning charcoal and a butcher’s board.

Richard still wept, shuddering upon John’s body, which looked like a beached whale upon the ground.

He was gone. They were all gone, broken beside one another. Just another bunch left dead on the road Alexander Cain had sent them all along. They had called DeGray the professor. Looking at him he realised that they would never get back the knowledge he had had. Another part of the Old World had just winked out forever.