Brink (The Ruin Saga Book 2) (47 page)

Standing there amidst the land cloud with his hands clasped demurely before him, as though awaiting an appointment, was Him—the man he’d seen in his vision, dark streaks throbbing like bubbling tar under his eyes. He grinned a predatory grin, holding out his arms in welcome. “Finally!” he cried.

James blinked in shock and yanked on his reins. His mount bucked and he had to grasp the saddle horn grimly until he could wrestle it back to exhausted standstill. The grinning man was gone.

By then Alex was beside him, his eyebrows raised. “What did you see?”

“He was there, right in front of us! Where did he go?”

Alex looked into the mist. “Who?”

“It was Him. The one with the dark marks.”

Alex looked again at the blanket of whiteness all around them and turned back to him quizzically. “You’re sure?”

“He was there!”

Alex didn’t break his gaze for a long time. Eventually he sighed and nodded. “Where next?”

James didn’t bother asking whether he believed him. He nodded ahead, and the two of them rode on into the mist, moving closer to the gnarled ruins. Somewhere, James heard an echoing cackle, one that seemed to emanate from the ground and the very air itself. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end.

Alex let James ride on a while before unravelling the scrap of paper in his pocket. One of the pigeons had appeared with the scroll tied to its leg a few miles back. He wasn’t sure why, but he had plucked up the scroll and hidden it from sight before James had seen. He had a bad feeling about it—he had given express instructions for the others to wait for them, no contact.

Now he read the message in a single quick glance and cursed. “Malverston,” he fumed.

James’s little crush might cost them the entire deal he had built up with Newquay’s Moon. Whatever she had done, it had gone and gotten her in trouble.

Best not to tell James. He was distracted enough already. Better to get this silliness dealt with first, or he’d have to clean up the mess back home by himself. And he needed James back in fighting form.

Failing to quell his disquiet and guilt, he followed on and threw the note into the mud.

Billy woke amidst leaf litter, staring up at a sky wreathed in fog. Dirt cliffs lay on either side of her, leading up to the forest floor above. She was in a long furrow where thick mud and dead leaves had collected until knee deep. Her back ached, and her skin was tight around her eyes. She had been crying in her sleep.

For a moment, her head was empty and she just lay there surrounded by the wilderness, the twig-strewn soil and the pigeons in the trees. The pigeons were everywhere, just as they had been before she had stepped through the archway. This was their home, their real home.

It would have been easy to stay like that forever. Her body was a bag of hurt, she was thirsty and tired, and she didn’t much want to go anywhere. Just to stare at the sky and trace her fingertips through the crinkled leaves would be enough.

But then it all came back, with a rush and a roar that brought a scream to her lips.

“Daddy!”

Then she remembered: the darkness, seeing Daddy so weak and lonely so far away, then cutting at the monster and running through the trees while they chased her. They had chased her a long time and she had laughed all the while—laughing but crying, half blinded by tears as big as raindrops, because Daddy was gone now, gone away forever just like Ma and Grandpa. They had been so far behind that they would never have caught her because her legs were like magic with the itch, moving over the ground and finding the places with the best grip so that it felt like she was flying.

For a while she had kept running and she had been angry; the Panda Man had promised she would know what to do once she got here. But now that she was free and running, she had no idea why she was here. As she had run for the trees, she had seen the whole landscape spread out flat and enormous around her; there was nothing but trees and grass and mountains. Nothing to do, and nobody to help.

And he was nowhere to be seen. He hadn’t come to her when the monster had taken her, hadn’t done anything to save Daddy like he had promised. He had just let him die and there had been nothing she could do to stop it, because he had taken her so far away she could never get home.

Where was he now? Where was he? He was a liar, a big fat liar!

How long had she been hiding here, reaching out with her mind? It felt like forever. The day she had touched the dark-haired man and showed him the darkness could have been yesterday or a week ago.

She couldn’t hear the cries of the monster’s friends anymore nor the shuffling crash of their feet moving through the underbrush. The forest was silent and old and musty, dead save for the pigeons’ cooing. But they were still out there, looking for her.

It was so old, this place. Older than even Stonehenge.

How do you know, silly? You’ve never been here before.

She knew. She knew just like she had known where to go all this time, just like she knew Daddy was gone now—she felt it inside her, a black empty space where he used to be that now rang hollow and throbbed with pain so deep it made her want to retch.

She cried a little while as that pain rose up and swept over her for the first time. It was all real. New Land, the Panda Man, the Archway, the teashop, the pigeons, the Medicine Ladies—all that madness and magic and silliness was what dreams were made of, fuzzy and unreal and make believe. It had been so easy to go this far believing that she would just wake up curled in Daddy’s arms by the fire, and she would be back at the farm before everything had gone wrong. It had been so easy to believe it was all just some silly dream.

But it wasn’t. There was no denying the pain in her belly now, that emptiness where all her family had lived before. It was all black and hollow now, and she was alone.

I’m alone,
she thought.
Alone.

She shivered and gripped the ground as though she would fall off, digging gouges in the mud and crying out, not caring if they found her and took her away. Fresh tears burst onto her cheeks and she choked on her own spittle, curling into a ball.

A lone voice stopped her, croaking and ancient and decrepit: “Stop that whining, young lady.”

She opened her eyes and saw above her a crooked figure contrasted sharply with the morning fog. It was a woman of incredible age, her weathered skin like leather, pockmarked with dark spots and gnarled lengths of wiry hair upon her cheeks and neck. She was wearing odd clothes that were so clean Billy thought she was looking at one of the picture frames from Before, her jeans bright blue and whole, a soft-looking white blouse fluttering upon her shoulders. Billy gasped when she saw the glittering jewels on the many rings she wore on both hands, and the pendant loops hanging from her earlobes.

“Who are you?” she whispered, frozen by fright.

She didn’t need an answer to know the woman wasn’t from this place, nor any place she could get to. She wasn’t even from the place between spaces from when the Panda Man appeared. She was from much farther away than that. Billy shuddered under her watchful eye.

“Name’s Martha,” she croaked. She teetered a little on the lip of the ditch and took a deep breath. “Phew, I hate passing between places these days. It’s a young person’s game.” She looked at Billy’s confused face and nodded. “Confused, I bet?”

“Yes.”

“Fol sends his regards. The lazy bastard can’t be here right now. I never understood the rules—magic is magic right? But everyone’s got to play by rules, and he’s no different. Don’t worry, you’ll see him again. For now, you got me.”

Billy looked at her a moment, then rested her head on the ground. She didn’t care about the Panda Man or his secrets anymore. “Go away,” she muttered.

A beat passed, then the woman spoke in a scolding rattle. “I’ve come a long way to slap your little behind, so you listen good.”

Billy sighed, but turned to her to meet her gaze.

The woman nodded. “Things are just getting started. We may not be from the same level, but I know Radden when I see it, and this place is special no matter what world you’re hopping around in.”

“I don’t …”

“Hush. You can’t go giving up now. Things have been awry too long already. We were supposed to have our candidate all those years ago. But the Chadwick boy turned his back, and things have slipped just that little bit more because of it. You must have noticed things are a little off around here? I got no phone signal, for one. And I saw all those wrecks on the motorway. Something did a real number on this world.” She shook her head. “It might be too late to put everything right already.” Her eyes bulged in their sockets. “But we got another chance with you. All you have to do is stay alive long enough to do your job.” She gestured down at Billy, her crooked finger shaking. “What you got yourself down in the dumps, for? You’re so close.”

“My daddy,” Billy said. She didn’t know who this lady was or what she was talking about, but it didn’t matter. “He’s gone and I’m all alone.”

“Awwh, is she awl alooone?” Martha teased, affecting a soft bubbly lilt. Then her face hardened. “We all got problems, Billy.”

Billy froze, a single tear trickling from her jaw. “How do you know my name?”

“We all know you, Billy. We’ve been waiting a long time for another one with the Gift to come along. And now you’re here, and there’s plenty to do.”

“What?”

Martha made to speak, but then a crash rang out nearby, and a host of grumbling voices filtered through the trees. The monster’s friends.

Martha looked unsettled and took a step back. “Looks like my time here is done already. I can’t be seen, you understand. It’d confuse folks.” She took a strange thin metal brick from her pocket and clicked a button on its side. Billy gasped when its dark face lit up with fantastic colours and figures, but Martha’s face didn’t change a mote. “Just checking the time,” she said, rolling her eyes. “God, it must suck, living in this place. I wouldn’t last a day without the net.”

“What net?”

Martha laughed a harsh old lady’s laugh, and pointed her finger down at Billy once more. It wasn’t shaking this time. “You got stuff to do, and you’re gonna do it. I’ll kick your arse if I have to come back here again.”

“What?” Billy cried. “I don’t know what to do!”

“Sure you do. You just have to stop feeling sorry for yourself. Do what feels natural. It’ll come to you.”

“And then?”

“Then … you fight. You’re going to have to fight to stay alive, I’m betting. The Chadwick boy won’t stop until the very end.” Her eyes fluttered with a glimmer of emotion. “Shame. He was such a bright spark.” Then her eyes hardened. “But the dice just didn’t roll that way. We got you, now. So you keep breathing, you hear?”

Yet more crashes came from the underbrush, closer this time. Martha backed away. “Time’s up, little one. I’ve got a roast in the oven, and my soap starts in ten minutes.” She shrugged. “Not that that means anything to you people.”

Billy shook her head. More silliness.

Just keep going. I’ve come too far to stop now
.

But how was she supposed to do anything now, if all the Panda Man could send was this strange lady?

“I don’t know where to begin,” she said, hugging her knees.

The old lady smiled, revealing a mouth full of rotten brown teeth. “For starters, you get out of the ditch. You’ve got work to be doing, young lady.”

Billy struggled to her feet. By the time she looked again, Martha was gone. It was as though she had never been there at all; a glimmer of a world far, far away. But when Billy clambered out onto the forest floor, footprints inset with the word
Timberlands
were outlined clearly on the ground.

The crashing was closer.

Billy started running once again, and this time she put all thought out of her head. Soon enough, her legs were flying once again, and she realised she was heading for the cliffs ahead. She had no idea why, but she trusted that her feet would carry her to the right place.

What else was there to do?

Evelyn leapt back with a start, holding her hand to her chest despite herself. It had been a long time since anything had given her a genuine fright. To have one now because of this fool!

“Aha, my dear, I didn’t see you there!” Lincoln cried, high above her on the catwalk.

She bent down and picked up the blowtorch he had dropped not two inches from her head. She would have verbally skinned him if he’d been anyone else, but looking at the jovial old fool hanging up there like a white-haired monkey, grinning while the world was about to end around him, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. He looked more alive than he had done in years.

Can’t say my own heart isn’t hammering to a young person’s rhythm,
she thought. Sensing its last few beats. Death has that way about it.

“Progress?” she said.

“Slow. We don’t have enough hands. Even if we did, we don’t have a whole lot to work with. Nobody’s risking going out for supplies after the siege, whether they’re still out there or not.” He was grinning even now.