Reaction (Wildfire Chronicles Volume 6) Read online

  Maybe he left it somewhere else.

  Yet when Claire ascended the steep steps she found the battlements deserted. The wall encircled the entire castle, and it was possible to walk all the way around it, passing through arches carved into each of the eight towers. She began to walk the perimeter, hoping to spot her father somewhere below.

  Glancing down, Claire thought she understood why there was nobody to be seen: no one wanted to look at the grisly horror in the centre of the castle’s wide courtyard. A splash of terrible colour against the castle’s dull grey interior; a dark, queasy red stain that made her feel like she might be sick.

  Claire had an idea that things were happening that were beyond her understanding, much like the vague memories she had of her parents splitting up. Conversations just beyond her earshot; pointed looks loaded with meaning that she was not supposed to see. She was a natural at puzzles, but the weirdness between her parents didn’t seem like a puzzle to Claire: it did not appear to be something that could be put back together.

  She had given up trying to figure that problem out, and she figured the best course of action was to give up trying to work out what was happening at the castle, too. The new people were terrifying; understanding why didn’t seem to matter.

  All that mattered to Claire Evans was that she was hungry, and cold, and scared. And that she missed her mother. Every time she thought about her, Claire’s heart ached in a way it never had before in her brief life. Eight—very nearly nine, her birthday was just a couple of months away—years of childhood innocence and happiness had been obliterated the moment her mother came for her, the ripped flesh of one of their neighbour’s cheeks hanging from her bloody teeth, her pretty face mutilated and twisted into a mask of rage and dark hunger.

  The fear Claire had felt then had abated a little, but in some way she struggled to grasp, the constant sense of panic that had typified her time spent alone on the blood-soaked streets of Aberystwyth had been better than drifting aimlessly around the castle.

  At first the castle had been source of endless delight. It was like living in a history book: every surface, every object older than Claire could imagine. Every item seemed to have a story to tell. She loved the ancient weapons and faded art and ornate furniture, and imagined herself to be like a princess in a fairytale, waiting in the castle for Prince Charming to rescue her and whisk her away on a white stallion. Now the castle was a place of pain: a place that gave her a whole lot of time to think, and inevitably that meant thinking about her mother.

  Claire didn’t have a word for the way the loss of her mother felt, but she had become used to the sensation of terror, and she didn't think it was that which she felt in the castle. She had experienced genuine terror in Aberystwyth, on more than one occasion. She doubted that she would forget the way it had felt if she lived to be a hundred years old.

  This was more like dread.

  Claire had never understood the difference before. She thought she did now.

  Terror had shoved her in the back and screamed in her ear, but it passed quickly. Dread seemed to harden in the pit of her stomach until she felt sick all the time, and it didn’t appear to be going anywhere.

  Claire wasn’t sure which she preferred. Hard to choose when either emotion was tied so closely to watching people die horribly right in front of her.

  She turned left on the battlements and began to walk along the wall, keeping an eye out for her father below, but trying not to look too closely. Trying not to see what was in the middle.

  In Aberystwyth Claire had kept a count of the people she saw killed, totting up the numbers like jellybeans. It made the inexplicable chaos that unfolded around her seem almost like a game played on her mother’s tablet, as if she could somehow distance herself from the reality of it by avoiding thinking about it head-on. She definitely didn’t want to think about it head-on.

  She finally stopped counting at number one-hundred-and-seven.

  John would have been one-hundred-and-eight.

  She saw the knife being dragged across his throat every time she closed her eyes; saw the obscene chasm in his neck as he began to fall backwards and the jet of dark blood that spurted across the stone floor. Now it seemed like head-on was the only way she could think.

  When Claire reached the sharp left turn that would take the sea out of her sight and replace it with the town, she couldn’t help but glance down to the centre of the courtyard, as though her eyes moved of their own accord.

  The body of John Francis.

  Naked.

  Nailed, upright, to a huge cross made of wood. At this distance, in the grey morning light, the dark blood that dried on his chest made it look like he was wearing an apron. You could almost believe he is alive, Claire thought. Apart from his neck.

  Nausea tumbled in her stomach. John’s neck had been cut so deeply that bone was visible. His head hung at an impossible angle, as though it might topple off his body at any moment.

  Claire looked away and took a deep breath.

  Dread, Claire decided, was definitely far worse than terror. With dread, you knew what was coming and just had to wait for it to happen. You couldn’t miss it: dread was nailed up like a sculpture for everyone to see. To constantly remind them. Dread lingered in the shadows of every thought, infecting them and corrupting them until everything became frightening.

  "Hello, girl."

  Claire jumped, and nearly let out a scream. She had been so engaged in her own thoughts that she hadn’t seen Bryn Holloway ascending to the battlements. She had a sudden, overwhelming feeling that he had been up there all along, walking along silently behind her like a ghost. Closing in.

  Of all the new people she had seen in the castle, Bryn scared Claire the most. He was slight, and quiet, and he hadn’t killed anybody. But there was something in his eyes, a sort of hunger that got under her skin and made her small hands shake a little.

  "My mother would like to see you," Bryn said, with a smirk that Claire didn’t understand.

  When Bryn put his hand on the small of her back and began to guide her toward the stairs that led down to the courtyard, and let his fingers linger there, Claire felt the oddly tender caress and had a sudden intuition that the memory of the man’s smirking grin would linger as long as the image of the terrifying hole that had been torn in John’s neck.

  Chapter 6

  "I won't do it. I can't."

  Rhys had carried Michael down the narrow steps into the gloomy dungeon. It was an oddly intimate and profoundly unsettling experience, yet when the steps reached an end it was clear the uncomfortable descent was just an aperitif. The main course trembled and whimpered in front of Michael, tied and gagged and terrified in the damp and the dark.

  Ed Cartwright wasn’t just shaking with fear. He was practically vibrating.

  Even in the barely-lit dungeon, an almost tangible darkness sat between Michael and Ed. A shared understanding that Ed was meat just waiting to be carved, and Michael was the one holding the knife.

  The weapon felt heavy and terrible in Michael’s hand; warm and clammy where Annie Holloway had gripped the handle before passing it to him with an expression of unsettling eagerness on her face.

  She stared at him expectantly, and her eyes danced with amusement, as if she had just recalled a hilarious joke long-forgotten.

  "I thought you might say that," she said serenely. "Lucky for you I'm not like those quiz show hosts. I don't have to accept your first answer. In fact, down here, I don't think I'll be accepting anyone's first answer, if you know what I mean?"

  Michael felt his stomach attempt a somersault, and it botched the landing. Bile rose at the back of his throat.

  He stared at Ed's wide, pleading eyes.

  I can't do this.

  "Why?" he asked in a thick voice.

  Annie’s face split in a devilish grin.

  "There are two answers to that. If you mean why him, well, let's just say Mr Cartwright here and I have a little history. He hasn't
been a very good boy, have you, Mr Cartwright?"

  Ed whimpered through the gag. Muffled. It might have been a word; might have been please, but Michael suspected that begging would amount to nothing in the dungeon. Down there, away from any set of eyes that might judge her, Annie’s power and insanity seemed to ramp up to dizzying levels.

  "If you mean why in a more general sense," Annie continued, "I think you already know the answer. I expect loyalty. Obedience. Not an easy thing to guarantee from people who have just been part of a...hostile takeover."

  She grinned, as if the analogy were the funniest thing she'd ever imagined.

  "I've wracked my brain trying to think up a way to get all of you on side, and I find myself having serious doubts that it’s even possible. But I would like to try, and believe me, it’s better for you and your friends if I try. The alternative would be much quicker and easier, but a little disappointing, too. This seems like the best solution to me."

  Ed whimpered again.

  "To me," Annie repeated. "I understand others will have their own view, but as I told you, it's me in charge here. Only me."

  Michael shook his head, trying to clear it of the lunacy that threatened to enter by osmosis.

  "Don't worry, Michael. You're the first, but everybody will have their chance to cut something off Mr Cartwright in due course. Your friend the doctor will be up next. Call it a rite of passage."

  "And if I refuse?"

  Annie's eyes glittered in the half-light emanating from a single flickering torch attached to the wall. In the dancing illumination she looked less like a person to Michael and more like a demon.

  "Then you will take your place alongside our friend here, and everyone else will be required to cut something off each of you. If I end up with every single one of you down here refusing to follow my instructions..."

  Annie shrugged, apparently deciding that statement didn't require completion.

  "The children can go last," Annie said brightly, as if the notion had just occurred to her.

  She is utterly insane, Michael thought.

  He had noticed the old woman's hands trembling involuntarily, and the way she tried to disguise the movement, and had filed it away in a mental notebook, wondering when the information might become useful. Maybe never.

  Annie was old, and could well be suffering from Parkinson's disease; maybe Alzheimer's or some sort of dementia. None of it mattered. None of it was useful. Just terrifying. Annie wasn’t going to give him time to strategise and figure anything out. Instead she was going to plunge him straight into the deep end and let him decide whether he would drown or not.

  He thought back to Darren Oliver. The man had run the castle in a brutal manner, but Michael didn't ever get the impression he had been full-bore crazy. Oliver had followed a twisted sort of logic, and in some ways Michael was convinced the man believed he was doing the Right Thing.

  Annie was crazy though; demented as a return ticket to Hell, and maybe it was nothing to do with age or disease. Quite possibly, Michael thought, she had been born wrong and raised worse. Certainly the genes she had passed on to her sons had...issues.

  He saw no way out.

  Saw Claire in the dungeon, a knife clutched in her small fingers, being ordered to slice away her father's flesh. It couldn't be allowed.

  "I'm sorry, Ed," Michael said abruptly, and Ed thrashed wildly against his bonds.

  "Take the gag off him, Rhys," Annie said smugly. "I think it would benefit everybody to hear Mr Cartwright screaming.”

  Michael choked back the vomit that desperately wanted to evacuate his stomach and reached out, taking hold of one of Ed's fingers.

  "Predictable," Annie said, with a little disappointment in her voice. "The fingers. I suppose they seem like the part that Mr Cartwright will miss the least, but don't worry, Michael, sooner or later someone will have to cut off something a little more…vital."

  Annie made for the stairs, and paused.

  "In fact, let's make it sooner," she said. "You can go for the fingers if you wish, but I expect to see at least five of them gone when I come back. I don’t like the thought that ten of you will take a finger each. That’s no fun at all."

  She nodded at her son.

  "Stay until he is done, Rhys," she said. "And then let Michael stay awhile down here. Give it all time to sink in."

  She chuckled as she ascended the steps, leaving Michael alone with Rhys and Ed.

  Rhys glowered at him.

  For a moment crazy thoughts ran through Michael's mind, dark visions of driving the knife into Rhys' belly and cutting Ed free, but they were no more than fantasies. If he was going to get Claire and the others—Ed included—out of the castle, it wasn't going to be like that.

  Darren Oliver's words came back to him.

  I've had to do terrible things, because someone has to do terrible things, or we'll all end up dead.

  Michael dropped his eyes to the knife.

  And the fingers.

  Gritting his teeth and trying his best to block out Ed’s nerve-shredding screams, Michael began to cut.

  *

  Annie listened to the muffled explosion of screams as she made her way back to the main tower’s front entrance with a savage smile and glazed eyes.

  When she stepped into the throne room, she found Bryn waiting for her; his hand on the shoulder of Michael's young daughter. Gareth Hughes stood as far away from Bryn as was possible without the distance becoming an obvious snub; his face contorted by concern.

  Annie ignored Gareth. His advice had been invaluable over the years, but increasingly she was beginning to believe that he didn’t have the stomach for the way things were now. Never would Annie have expected a situation to arise in which her slow-witted sons were more useful to her than a man of Gareth’s intellect, yet that time had now come. What Annie required now was not counsel but obedience, and her sons had a lifetime of practice as far as that was concerned.

  She focused her gaze on Michael’s daughter.

  The crippled man was clever, but Annie had been around long enough to spot a liar at a hundred paces. No one simply let a cripple have a gun because they didn’t think he would be a threat. If you wanted to feel safe, you kept the gun for yourself. Simple logic. Giving such a weapon to anybody—regardless of the status of their legs—made them a threat.

  Annie felt the weight of the revolver she had taken from John in the pocket of her skirt. She couldn't imagine giving it to anybody voluntarily. Nobody would do such a thing.

  That meant the man in the wheelchair was a little more important to the group than he was letting on. Annie supposed she should have felt irked that she hadn’t killed the man outright; that he had fooled her, for a while at least, into believing that he was harmless, but in a way she was glad. If the others looked up to the paralysed man then it followed naturally that breaking him completely would break their spirits too.

  Annie felt pleased with the way things were working out. Efficiency was always to be applauded, yet she reminded herself sternly that Michael wasn’t broken yet.

  Having Michael torture Cartwright was a step in the right direction, but the wheelchair-bound man was slippery; he seemed to adjust to each new demand easily. Too easily. What Annie needed was a threat that she could hang over Michael’s head. Something that would disrupt his helpful butter-wouldn’t-melt demeanour and reveal his true colours.

  The next step was obvious. Nothing could sway a person more than the wellbeing of their child. Annie knew that only too well, despite the fact that her own children had been crushing disappointments.

  Blood, after all, was blood.

  *

  Claire watched the old woman nervously as she stalked into the throne room. Somewhere in the distance she could hear a man screaming. It didn’t sound like Dad, but Claire couldn’t be sure, and she felt her bladder loosen a little in apprehension.

  She clamped her lips together as the old woman approached, reminding herself sternly that she
hadn’t wet herself when her eyeless mother had tried to eat her in Aberystwyth, and so there would be no way she would start now.

  Annie stepped forward, crouching down to Claire's eye-level as much as her old knees would allow.

  “I always wanted a girl," Annie said, beaming. "And a grandchild, though there never seemed to be much chance of that."

  She spat the last word out venomously, and for a moment her eyes became a little unfocused, as if she was staring straight through Claire and into the wall behind her.

  Bryn coughed uncomfortably.

  “At least, not until now,” Annie continued. “Now I think my boys will have their pick of the women. God knows, when it was the women doing the choosing, there was little chance of them ever having children. Isn’t that right, Bryn?”

  Bryn did not respond.

  Annie turned her attention back to Claire.

  “You wouldn’t know about all of that though, of course. Too young.”

  Claire saw a sort of unhinged craziness in the old woman’s eyes, and decided that since it hadn’t been a question and she had no idea how to respond, it would be best to keep quiet. After a moment Annie blinked and seemed to return to the present, and the warm smile reappeared on her lips.

  It didn’t reach her eyes.

  "Did you know your grandparents?"

  Claire frowned. Her father's parents had died before she was born, but her mother’s parents had lived not far from Aberystwyth. She hadn’t even thought about them. And now they were gone, and she would never see them again. Her eyes shimmered.

  Annie’s face dropped.

  "You did. Poor child. It’s a terrible world out there."

  Annie grabbed Claire and pulled her into an awkward hug. Claire stiffened.

  "I need to talk to you about your father," Annie whispered, stroking Claire’s hair.

  Claire’s eyes widened, and finally she was scared enough to speak in a thin, trembling voice.