Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) (30 page)

Without the others though, she was alone. Anybody who had been strong had been cut up in the square. The mayor’s men hadn’t bothered to clear up the bodies. A few families had taken their own to the little graveyard beyond the peach fields, but others who had no families or had left behind only children, remained where they fell.

When she realised it was up to her to carry on, she felt like the weight of the sky had fallen on her shoulders. She wandered the streets, not caring if they took her again, staring without seeing, hoping that somebody—anybody—would come to her side. Nobody did.

One thing she had been sure of was that there was no point going home to Mum: Grace Tarbuck, the wet blanket of Newquay’s Moon, doing the town’s laundry, folding and scrubbing, day after day, her gaze fixed upon nothing and nobody. Mel couldn’t bear going home to see her now. Nothing had changed since the slaughter: she’d find her mother sweeping the floors, content as you like, even if the door was still off its hinges and the stink of the Mayor’s guards still hung in the air. If Mel had to see that, she’d probably kill her.

Instead she started knocking on doors. Pounding, until somebody came out to face her. That was what it took: to have a little girl standing there staring them in the eye. She held her slingshot in her hand the whole time with the stone she had picked out for the Mayor held tight. After canvassing the remaining adults in the town, she had something resembling an underground resistance.

It wasn’t much, a dozen at most. It had taken her a while to realise just how many more they needed. But there were no more. Stewing, her jaw aching from clenching, she shot peaches down from the trees in the orchards, to keep hateful tears at bay.

The boy. That stupid boy who Beth had gone soppy over. He was coming now. The last time she saw him, she really had been ready to put a rock through his head. No stupid
boy
was going to take her big sister away from her.

But if it came between no sister and a sister cross-eyed and loved up…

She had taken to the hills a little before dark the first night, taking nothing more than the rug, water, and a loaf of bread. And her slingshot, of course. She hadn’t moved since.

When the horizon finally flickered with movement, she didn’t see it. So deeply was it burned into her mind’s eye that she was blind to the real world. Eventually, blinking in disbelief, gasping and shivering, she ran on shuddering legs towards the line of people approaching on horseback.

James hit the ground running. Melanie Tarbuck leaped into his arms and wept immediately, shivering and damp and
small
… So small!

“It’s okay, we’re here now.”

“Why did you let them take her away?” she wailed, pounding his chest.

“I’m sorry. It’s—”

Complicated
, he almost said.
No, it’s not. It’s not complicated at all. I let this happen.

“—It’s my fault. But I’m here to fix it.” He glared at Alex as he spoke, who stared off at Newquay’s Moon, which slowly grew to twinkling iridescence as fires were lit, and the sun set.

Mel shook her head, spraying hair against his face. “You can’t, it’s too late.”

“It’s never too late.” Momentary panic shot through him and he held her at arm’s length. “He hasn’t…”

“No. She’s alive.”

James almost sagged with relief. “What then?”

“Th-th…”—tears ran freely down her cheeks—“they’re all dead. The others. We tried to get her back, and the mayor, he…” She wept as only a child who has seen too much can weep: with eyes fully open, face uncreased, eyes shedding twin salty rivers. “He killed them. Mrs McKinley, he…”

James clenched his eyes shut against the mental image. “Beth?”

Mel’s face crumpled. She collapsed against him anew. “He cut her.”

James hugged her to him, staring blankly off into the middle distance. He sensed the others milling about, talking, planning. He didn’t hear a word, consumed by a sinking in the pit of his belly that turned to bile, then fire, slowly climbing up into his chest and throat, threading his limbs and pressing behind his eyes. By the time Mel pulled away from him, he shook from head to toe.

“What are you going to do?” she said.

“I’m going to kill him,” James said.

Her searching eyes seemed to find what they were looking for. She stepped back from his embrace, her tears staunched, and addressed them all: “They’re ready: the last ones who’ll fight. They’re waiting for me—for us.”

“Where?” Lucian said.

“Come with me.”

Lucian gripped her sleeve. “Kid, once this starts, there won’t be time to get you clear. Just tell us where and stay back.”

James gathered himself. “Leave her be.”

Lucian turned an incredulous eye on him. “James, she’s just a kid.”

“She’s a Tarbuck. She’d come anyway.”

Mel wiped the tears from her face roughly and squared off against the others. They visibly wilted under the coldness of her stare.

“Okay, fine.” Lucian cleared his throat.

“They’ll fight?” James asked.

“All of them. It’s our last chance, isn’t it?” Mel said.

“Yes. Last chance.”

She nodded, looking back over her shoulder at the Moon, now twinkling dully as the sky faded from purple down to midnight blue.

“No!” Helen said. “We’re coming with you.”

A short distance away, Oliver and Agatha were in close conversation with the Creeks, their gesticulations placating. “Just stay here. This is far enough to be safe. You’ll be able to see,” Oliver implored.

“Watch what?” Hector said, his arms tight around Helen, who in turn clutched at Norman as he strained to jump forwards.

“Whether it’s safe, or if…”

Both Creeks snorted in derision.

“If it’s all said and done, and we can sneak down like a pair of sheep, you mean,” Hector said.

“Or watch you die, up here, where it’s
safe
.”

“We’re coming!” Norman yelled, a little too loud.

Agatha sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Oh, bloody ’ell.”

“Let them come.” Alex bore all their shocked stares with steadfast calm. “There’s no time. If we’re going to take the Moon, we’ll need everybody.”

Oliver and Agatha mouthed wordlessly, looking to James for help.

James hesitated. “Can you do this? If things go wrong, then Norman…”

Hector gripped Norman’s shirt tight, raising his chin skywards. “If you all die, I’ll never forgive myself, and I won’t have my son watch me stand by. If that means we all go together, then so be it.”

“We’re coming!” Norman’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “Please.”

James searched them in turn. “Okay.”

Lucian tensed beside him, but James laid a calming hand on his arm. “We all go together,” he said. “Mel, lead on. Let’s end this.”

Mel fled, moving with the nimble skitter of a young deer, bounding over the clover towards the Moon. They followed more laboriously, burdened by ammunition. Soon the town’s lights splashed over their faces, and they got down on their stomachs.

“Just remember one thing,” James whispered to Alex, drawing alongside him. “This isn’t about the Moon. This is about her.”

Alex’s face said everything that needed to be said. In the half-light drifting through windows and under doorways, it sent a shiver up James’s spine.

He still thinks I’m his Chosen One. Even now, he thinks I’ll come back. Without me, he has no mission; and what wouldn’t Alexander Cain do for his mission?

Squashing a tremble of unease, James crept forwards, and they made their way into the town as darkness fell in earnest.

Allie dove into an alley barely wide enough for her to squeeze into and yanked the little girl in behind her, gasping for breath. The girl clung to her side in the musty darkness, mute and wide-eyed. She peered out at the street, both ends of which had been blasted to pieces. Allie took a moment to steel herself and stifle the scream of unreasoning panic frothing at the back of her throat and gripped the girl’s shoulder.

“Hey, it’s okay, sweetie. We’re okay. We’re fine.”

She gabbled for a few moments before she managed to stop herself and crouch down. She searched for something to say, anything that might displace the terror between them. “Tell me your name,” she breathed, trying to hold the gaze of those wide, staring eyes, framed by flame-red hair.

“Billy.” She spoke with an unfamiliar lilt—Allie had never heard an accent like that.

She’s from far away. God, what are you doing here, sweetie?

“Billy, I’m Allie. I know this is scary, I know it is. I promise, I’ll get you out and we’ll both be all right.”

Through her own panic, she saw that the girl looked shockingly unafraid. She clung to Allie, but there were no tears in her eyes, nor did she shake as Allie shook.

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay,” Allie said, taking a steadying breath. Somehow the girl gave her strength.

That’s the wrong way around…

Billy said, “Where’s Norm?”

“I don’t know. Are you sure they’re here?”

“They told me to stay in the hills but I…” She seemed to drift off a little, her eyes trailing the bottom of her sockets.

Allie gripped her tight as another explosion rocked the walls, which actually seemed to flex with the sheer force of the blast. Somewhere beyond in the street, grit and pebbles showered brickwork and shattered windows. A wave of heat rushed into the alley, and Allie knew they couldn’t stay. “We have to get out. Get out, get out,” she said, looking both ways along the alley as though hoping to see a glowing exit before her.

She took Billy by the hand again and, keeping low, took her back out into the street. The shelling had lessened, and the chorus of screaming had faded to occasional shrieks. Forty years of accumulated decay and dry wood in the uninhabited parts of the city provided the perfect tinder bed to set the entire skyline ablaze.

Inching towards the end of the street, skirting chunks of blasted cobblestone and pressing her back to garden walls, she peered into the junction. A parted roadblock lay ahead; cars she recognised all too well. High Street. “No,” she grated. She punched the wall, ignoring the pain. “No!”

How could she have got so turned around? She had led them right back to where she had started.

By the roadblock, people moved back and forth, cast into silhouette by the undulating fiery rooftops behind them. A group of hunched figures cowered at their feet. To one side, yet more silhouettes, those of three wooden crosses, twelve feet high and surrounded by hay.

“Oh, dear God,” she whispered.

“What?” Billy said, wriggling by her side.

Allie held her back. “Nothing, honey. Nothing… Come on, we have to go. Let’s get out of here.”

She was on the verge of struggling to her feet and heading back the way they’d come when a single prone figure, not far away, resolved into focus. “Oh…” Her throat closed, and all the fight went out of her legs. Slowly she crumpled to the ground. “Oh…”

Heather lay in a pile on the ground, staring blankly upwards, her clothes blackened by blood.

Allie wept, shuddering all over, unable to break her gaze away from the sight. It wasn’t until Billy gripped her sleeve and tugged that she broke out of it. She was about to push herself away when she was stalled a second time.

Sarah sat among the prisoners, her hands bound behind her back. Her face was set, scoured clean by a smouldering stare that could have etched glass. As Allie watched, Sarah was hauled up by an aquiline, predatory figure and hauled towards the nearest of the crosses.

Allie and Billy were close. Sarah would have to pass them to get to the cross. Allie felt her pulse then, a visceral electric thump in the meat of her chest; not racing, but strong; suddenly she felt all the fear melt away, cast aside and flattened by a rolling swell of rage. “Stay here,” she said and peeled Billy’s hand off her own. Billy said something, but she didn’t hear. She had eyes only for the waddling duo in front of her, silhouettes morphing into struggling flesh and blood.

Sarah’s captor became a man with a peaky, sick face, devoid of colour or trace of humanity. Where his eyes should have been there seemed to be only dark holes in his skull. Upon his cheek hung a bloody bandage that was almost certainly gangrenous.

Suddenly Billy struggled behind her with such force that even Allie’s seething focus carved in two. “It’s him!” Billy hissed. “It’s the monster.”

“Who?”

“The monster.” Billy’s lips pulled back from her teeth. “He took Grandpa away.” A disturbing smile crept onto her face. “I cut him good.”

Allie looked back at the man. The bandage didn’t quite cover the great slash upon his cheek, which had probably sliced right through to the innards of his mouth. “You did that?”

Billy reached into her belt and brought out a small paring knife; small, but wickedly sharp. “Uh huh.”

Allie gripped her hand afresh. “Billy, that’s my friend. I have to get her. If I…” She swallowed heavily. “Run. You keep running until you get out.”

“No!” Billy hissed, gripping her so hard that Allie flinched. “No, look.”

They looked back into the depths of the old city. The clouds had vanished behind a veil of black smoke, sending the flaming skyline into brilliant contrast. The flames reached the Stour and arched over the still waters, great licking towers of conflagration leaning out into space, waving fiery digits at the opposite bank. All of Canterbury would be ablaze in a matter of minutes.