The Secret City

by C. J. Daugherty

  The thought of going back made Sacha shudder.

  He’d felt his own death in that room.

  ‘How are we going to do that?’ Taylor asked plaintively. ‘The power in that church was overwhelming. We were helpless.’

  Nobody replied.

  Looking around at their despairing faces, Sacha realised with sickening clarity that no one had any answers. It was all much worse than they’d imagined.

  ‘She’s got a point,’ Louisa said finally. ‘How can we take Taylor and Sacha back there tonight if we can’t even see what we’re fighting? Mortimer could be right beside us and we wouldn’t know. We’re blind in there.’

  ‘We don’t have any choice.’ Yanking off his glasses, Deide flung them onto the table. ‘Don’t you understand? We don’t get to walk away from this. We must find that room before Sacha’s birthday. We must kill Mortimer. So we go back into town and fight. Or else we die tomorrow.’

  His words seemed to echo in the old mansion house, reverberating around them.

  Die tomorrow… die tomorrow…

  Sacha dropped his head. It all felt hopeless. The others had fallen silent, too.

  It was Taylor who kept the conversation going.

  ‘Fine then, Mr Deide,’ she said calmly. ‘We have to go back there tonight and kill Mortimer. How are we going to do that?’

  The teacher pulled out a map and spread it on the table. Without glasses, he looked younger. His jaw was set.

  ‘I’ve got a plan.’

  * * *

  When the meeting ended, Sacha headed up to his room.

  They’d discussed the plan for an hour. Everyone knew what they had to do.

  Sacha didn’t think one person in that room truly thought it would work.

  He had said nothing to the others but, in his own heart, he believed the fight was over. The demon’s voice in his ear had made that very clear.

  Ever since he’d first met Taylor, he’d been able to convince himself that he had a chance. That he could fight this thing. That he could live. Now he knew that was a fantasy.

  Alone in his huge bedroom, he climbed onto the tall, four-poster bed. He’d left the tattered curtains closed that morning, and the room was cool and dim.

  He closed his eyes. He didn’t want to be awake anymore. He didn’t want to think.

  Still, as it had for days now, sleep eluded him. His mind whirled through an awful series of possibilities and horrible images.

  After a while, he sat up just to shut it off.

  Grabbing his phone off the bedside table, he checked the time. It was just after three o’clock. They wouldn’t go back into Carcassonne until late. So many hours to get through before it all went wrong.

  Almost out of habit, he scrolled through his messages. As always, he had several from his mother. She told him his Aunt Annie was out of the hospital, and slowly recovering from her injuries at home, with her dog, Pikachu.

  The dog isn’t the same. He barks at everything. He sleeps outside your old room. It’s like he’s waiting for you to come back. We all are.

  A single tear rolled down Sacha’s cheek and he swiped it away with the back of his hand.

  He’d avoided calling his mother ever since they left Oxford, waiting until he had good news to tell her.

  There wasn’t any point in waiting anymore. There wasn’t going to be any good news.

  He pressed the call button.

  He didn’t know what he was going to tell her, but it didn’t matter. He just wanted to talk to someone who loved him.

  It wasn’t his mother who answered though.

  ‘Hello?’

  Sacha’s heart jumped. ‘Laura?’

  His sister gave a small scream. ‘Sacha. Is it really you?’

  ‘It’s really me.’ He forced a laugh. ‘How’s my favourite baby sister?’

  ‘I’m your only baby sister,’ she chided, and he could imagine her rolling her eyes. He heard her hold the phone from her ear to call out, ‘Maman. It’s Sacha!’

  He fell back on the bed, eyes closed. Behind his eyelids, he envisioned their apartment, flooded with the light on a summer day. Laura must be sitting in the living room on the old sofa, which was beginning to sag in the middle. Probably with the fluffy throw over her skinny legs, watching music videos.

  In the distance he heard his mother exclaim. Maybe she was working nights at the hospital again. If that was the case, she would have just woken up.

  ‘Sacha?’ His mother’s familiar voice sounded breathless and so redolent of home and safety he thought his heart would fracture. ‘Mon chéri, I can’t believe it. How are you? Where are you? We miss you so much.’

  He took a shaky breath, ordering his voice to sound normal.

  ‘I’m fine, Maman,’ he promised her. ‘I’m somewhere in France. I can’t tell you where. But I’m well.’

  ‘I’m afraid for you,’ she said. ‘Please come home. There’s so little time and we want… I want…’

  Sacha swallowed the lump in his throat.

  ‘Maman, listen to me carefully, because there is a chance this is the last time I’ll ever speak to you.’

  At that, she fell silent.

  ‘Everything is very complicated,’ he continued. ‘But I can’t come home. Danger travels with me. You know that.’

  She made a small noise of disagreement but she didn’t argue.

  ‘I’m with some people. Good people. They think they might be able to stop this thing from happening. I don’t know…’ He took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know if they’re right. It seems… impossible. But we have to try. Papa knew them, and he trusted them. And now. Well. I have to trust them, too.’

  ‘Is it that English girl?’ she asked, suspicion in her tone. ‘That Taylor Montclair?’

  ‘She’s here,’ he admitted. ‘But we’re not alone. Others are with us trying to help. They’re all doing everything they can.’

  ‘Well.’

  How could one short word be so expressive?

  ‘Put Laura on the phone, too,’ he said. ‘I want to tell you both something.’

  ‘He wants to talk to both of us,’ he heard his mother say. ‘How do you turn on that speaker thing?’

  He heard Laura’s sigh of frustration. ‘I’ve shown you a thousand times, Maman. Push this button here.’

  ‘Uh…’ His mother’s voice, sounding further away. ‘Can you hear us?’

  He smiled. ‘I can hear you.’

  ‘Hi Sacha!’ Laura’s excited voice sounded closer than his mother’s. ‘I hope you’re kicking the monsters’ asses.’

  ‘I am,’ he said, wishing it were true. ‘Listen, I can’t talk for long. I want you both to hear me make this promise. I swear I will do all I can to survive. And some day I will come home and hug you both. And we will celebrate my eighteenth birthday together.’ He drew a shaky breath. ‘If I can’t do it, please believe that I tried as hard as I could, OK? I’ll do everything I can to live. Because I want to see you both again.’

  He heard a faint sound that might have been crying but he didn’t want to think about that.

  ‘Laura, if I don’t come back, please, look after Maman, OK?’

  There was a long silence before she spoke.

  ‘I promise.’ Her voice was very small.

  Sacha’s throat was so tight he could hardly say the next words. ‘I love you both. Remember that. Now, I have to go. The others are… calling me.’

  His mother spoke rapidly. ‘We love you, too, Sacha. We will see you on your birthday.’

  Sacha ended the call quickly, before he could hear any more.

  Then he rolled on his back, one arm thrown across his eyes, and tried to think of nothing.

  Thirty-One

  Sacha wasn’t the only one finding it hard to rest. One door away, Taylor lay on her bed, wide awake.

  She was staring up at the dusty ornate plasterwork on the high ceiling, but her mind was everywhere – Carcassonne, the ancient church, the Darkness she’d felt the who
le time they were there. And then Georgie, her mother, home, Oxford, St Wilfred’s…

  When the whirling thoughts became too much, she jumped to her feet and made her way down the creaky stairs in search of distraction. Her phone was in her hand. She longed to call her mother, but she couldn’t. What would she say?

  She couldn’t seem to formulate the lies she needed to tell her. And the thought of saying goodbye hurt like fire.

  Maybe it was better for both of them if she just didn’t call at all.

  The house was hushed. Dust motes danced in streams of afternoon sunlight. From the corners, statues peered out at her with blank enquiry, as if they could hear her footsteps, and wondered what she was doing there.

  The parlour was deserted. Alastair’s baseball hat lay forgotten on a table. An empty wine bottle sat where it had been left the night before. Quiet seeped up through the floorboards. The silence was unearthly. As if nobody breathed in this house.

  Taylor hurried a little as she made her way to the kitchen. It, too, was uninhabited.

  A breeze ruffled her hair, and she noticed the back door had been left ajar. Curious, she pushed it open.

  The warm day was cooling fast. The air smelled of lavender, which grew purple and wild around the back of the house.

  Sitting on a battered wooden chair near the door, Louisa stared out across the valley at the white castle towers of Carcassonne.

  Alerted by the sound of the door opening, she glanced up, her eyes toffee coloured in the late afternoon light. She’d changed out of her disguise, into a black, short-sleeved top and shorts. Against the pale backdrop of her skin, the dark ink of her tattooed alchemical symbols stood out starkly.

  ‘Can’t sleep?’

  Taylor shook her head.

  Louisa didn’t seem surprised. ‘Me neither.’

  Lowering herself onto the doorstep next to her, Taylor pulled up her knees.

  ‘The thing I can’t figure out,’ Louisa said, as if their earlier conversation had never ended, ‘is how it’s so strong already. We should have more than twenty-four hours. Sacha’s birthday doesn’t begin until tomorrow at midnight.’

  For a while silence fell between them. Then she spoke again. ‘I never told you that, before we left St Wilfred’s, I came across a book in Aldrich’s office. It was a sixteenth-century translation of a thirteenth-century manuscript called, “To Bring a Demon Forth”.’

  Taylor turned to stare at her, and Louisa held up one hand in response to her unspoken question.

  ‘I thought it was bollocks when I read it. But I’ve changed my mind. I think it explains what’s happening here right now.’

  ‘Why did you think it was bollocks?’ Taylor asked.

  ‘Aldrich had put one of his notes inside it,’ Louisa said, as if that explained everything.

  ‘What notes?’

  Louisa glanced at her. ‘You know how he had loads of books, right?’

  Taylor nodded.

  ‘Well, it got to the point where he’d read so many he could never remember his assessment of each one. Was this a book he’d read and agreed with? Or one he’d read and thought was ridiculous? It slowed him down; he was constantly re-reading. Finally, he started leaving a note for himself in each book. He had this whole system. “B” for Believable. “A” for Absurd. And so on.’ A ghost of a smile flitted across her face. ‘It was typical Aldrich.’

  For a second her voice trailed off.

  ‘What about this book?’ Taylor drew her back. ‘The one about the demon. What note did he put in it?’

  ‘“U” for “Unlikely”.’ Louisa ran a hand through her hair, sending blue sparks flying. ‘That meant he didn’t trust the author, but he didn’t fully dismiss the theories, either. Anyway, the book said if a demon made contact with a human host, and an exchange was agreed, the space between our dimensions would gradually contract. The demon can’t enter, but it can sense us.’ She turned back to the castle. ‘And we can sense it.’

  Taylor’s mouth had gone dry. She thought of the feeling she’d had in the town today – a low but overwhelming sense of dread. As if Dark power were all around her, oozing from the walls, sticking to her feet like tar.

  Louisa wasn’t finished.

  ‘The book said on the day of the agreed exchange, a door would open.’ She waved a hand. ‘And the demon will walk right through.’ She paused – her last words were barely above a whisper. ‘And then we all die.’

  Taylor’s heart thumped hard.

  ‘Do you believe that?’

  Louisa turned the question around. ‘Do you?’

  With a sense of hopeless horror, Taylor realised she did.

  Until now, it had been impossible to imagine what a demon was. The power of it. The monstrous empty violence it carried in its soul. It was something you read about in old books. Like dragons, or fairies. A fantasy.

  Not anymore.

  The red, half-healed claw marks on her hand said demons were real.

  ‘Oh sodding hell, Louisa,’ she said. ‘What are we going to do?’

  The other girl’s reply came without hesitation.

  ‘We’re going back,’ she said resolutely. ‘We’re going to find Mortimer Pierce, and we’re going to kill him.’

  ‘But how, though?’ Taylor wouldn’t let it go. ‘You felt that power today.’

  ‘I did.’ Leaning forward, she put her elbows on her knees, and fixed Taylor with a steady look. ‘But I’ve felt your power, too. I have told you before, Taylor. You are nuclear. Mortimer has been trying to kill you for weeks because he’s afraid of you. Don’t you get it?’ She cocked her head to one side. ‘He thinks you can win this thing.’

  Taylor was speechless. ‘I can’t, Lou. I haven’t had time to learn.’

  ‘You don’t need time,’ Louisa said with conviction. ‘You just need to not fear your own power. When you are in that church tonight and Mortimer comes for Sacha, let yourself be who you really are. Unleash everything you have on him. Open yourself to it.

  ‘Kill Mortimer Pierce tonight, Taylor.’

  * * *

  After that conversation, Taylor couldn’t sit still. She haunted the dusty hallways of the house, wandering from room to room, restless and nervous.

  Louisa’s words kept playing in her head on a loop.

  Be who you really are. Kill Mortimer Pierce tonight…

  All this time she’d assumed Louisa or Deide would do the killing if there was killing to be done. Now it was clear that wasn’t the case. She would have to kill Mortimer, as she’d killed the Bringers, and the revenants.

  They believed she had murder in her soul.

  Maybe they were right. But the power in that church today said she’d never get the chance.

  If she was their only hope, they were going to die.

  This realisation sent her into a tailspin.

  She’d never finish her studies, never see the world. Never even learn to drive. Never do any of the things a human being is supposed to do in a lifetime.

  It wasn’t fair.

  I had so many plans.

  The thought of all she would never get to do was almost immobilising, and maybe that was why she kept moving. Forcing her legs to take step after step, keeping the blood pumping. Proving she wasn’t dead yet.

  At the very end of the corridor, she pushed open the last door on the left. Not because she really cared what was on the other side. But because it was there.

  It swung open with a shriek of protest to reveal a tall, shadowed space, where the walls were lined, floor to ceiling, with the gilded spines of old books.

  A library.

  Taylor slipped inside, curiosity buzzing.

  Even when her world was crashing down around her ears, a library still had the capacity to make her feel better.

  The books were – of course – all in French. From a distance they looked beautiful – leather-bound with long, golden titles. Up close, though, she could see they were damaged – water-stained, sun-faded, bloated from humi
dity and poor conditions.

  Still, they were books.

  All the furniture in the room was covered in white dustcovers.

  Grabbing a stack of interesting looking books at random, she settled down on the covered sofa, ignoring the cloud of dust that rose around her.

  ‘Je m’appelle Jacques,’ she read aloud, from the pages of a book that looked like it might be for children.

  Curling up with the book in her arms, she began making her way through it, pausing to puzzle out the more unfamiliar words. She was so deep in the story of Jacques’ journey aboard a whaling ship, that when a strange buzzing sound filled the air, she looked around, as if the source might manifest from a corner.

  It took her a second to realise the sound was her phone. She’d shoved it into her pocket that morning out of habit and then completely forgotten it.

  When she pulled it out, Georgie’s face beamed up at her from the screen.

  She stared into familiar brown eyes, and then hit the answer button.

  ‘Oh my God.’ Georgie’s loud excited voice rang out in the silent house. ‘I can’t believe it. What is going on in Oxford? Do they have you tied up in a cellar? Why haven’t you been answering my calls?’

  To her complete astonishment, Taylor found herself laughing.

  ‘I’m not in a cellar. Don’t be so dramatic.’

  ‘Well you better be tied up somewhere if you’re ignoring me.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Taylor said automatically. ‘Did you actually just call me to shout at me? I’m in the library and I’ll get into trouble if they find me talking to you. Make it quick.’

  She leaned back on the sofa.

  Georgie gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Fine. I’m calling because I have news. My family and I are heading to Spain next weekend as you know, and – this is the good news part – my mum says I can bring you with us, if you want to come! They’ll pay for you to come over.’ Her tone shifted to defensiveness, anticipating Taylor’s refusal. ‘Now, I totally know you’re busy. But you could come on Saturday and go back Monday morning and none of your weirdy beardy Oxford professors would even notice you were missing. What do you say? Taylor and Georgie, together again. Knocking the boys dead on the Costa del Sol. Can we make it happen?’