Sentinel

by Joshua Winning

  “Who said anything–” Sam began, but Liberty’s no-nonsense glare caused his protestations to swiftly die.

  “Tonight,” Liberty said.

  “Yes, tonight,” Sam echoed softly.

  They climbed back down the ladder and began to descend the staircase. They were almost at the foot of the stairs when Sam noticed Liberty grip the banister rail until her knuckles turned white.

  “Liberty?” he began, but then he felt it, too.

  A chill prickled the air and pressed right into his heart.

  Warily, they peered through the railings into the dim living room, where a silhouette stared back, and a pair of cat-like eyes flashed.

  “Won’t you join us?” purred a voice that Sam recognised. The woman. The snake-like curls of her hair.

  Sam felt a stab in his gut at the sight of her, as if she’d buried something sharp in him. But she was still by the mantelpiece, resting a slender arm against it.

  Sam and Liberty remained on the stairs, transfixed by the outline of the woman. As Sam’s eyes adjusted to the murk of the afternoon light, he saw that her white teeth were gleaming in a sultry grin.

  “Here I was looking forward to a catch up,” the woman burred in mock disappointment. “It appears you’re not as pleased to see me as I am you. You break my heart.”

  “You have no heart, wench,” Sam said evenly, having found his voice.

  “You’ve been close enough to say that with certainty,” Malika returned silkily. She trailed a finger across the exposed skin of her shoulder, then down to where her heart should be.

  “Enough,” guttered another voice.

  Sam shuddered at the sound. It vibrated through his bones.

  “Join us.”

  Though every muscle in his body screamed against it, Sam found himself following Liberty down the stairs to the living room doorway. The room was awash in gloomy half-light as the dismal afternoon gave way to an equally morose evening. As the few dying rays of the sun pushed through the netting at the window, they framed a child, who stood with his back to them.

  A boy.

  His hands were clasped confidently behind him.

  “So this is the pair who’ve been causing me so many problems,” rattled that tremulous voice. The boy turned and looked Sam in the eye. It was the boy from the street, the one Sam had caught sight of earlier.

  What was wrong with him?

  The boy’s pupils were milky white and his skin looked parched, like it was drying from the inside out, and flaked away in pieces.

  “What are you doing in my house?” Sam breathed.

  The boy’s cracked lips twitched into a grimace. “You have something we want,” he stated simply.

  “There’s nothing here of value,” Sam assured him, his voice level, though his insides were shuddering. “Take whatever you want.”

  Those eyes. Those swirling, bone-white eyes. They were like blocks of ice, and the coldness they emanated drew him in, made him weary and heavy, forced him to feel every one of his seventy-one years.

  “Going to stop us, Sammy?” came a third voice.

  Sam shook himself out of the daze.

  There was Richard, reclined lazily in his armchair. He was wearing Sam’s fedora, which cast his gaunt, bearded face in shadow. He was twisting a bloody knife in one hand.

  “I always fancied this for myself,” the man sneered, running his fingers along the brim of the hat.

  “Richard,” Sam said.

  “Richard’s dead,” the other man spat, his spindly frame tensing in the chair.

  “I hope that’s true,” Sam replied. He eyed the knife. “The Richard I knew would never kill harmless children.”

  Richard let out a roaring laugh and stabbed the blade into the arm of the chair. “I wish I’d had the pleasure,” he said, practically drooling at the prospect. “Sadly, they were not mine for the taking.”

  “Enough,” the boy by the window rasped. Though he barely moved a muscle, his presence filled the entire room. He shot Malika a look. “Take her.”

  Malika’s dress whispered snake-like rustles as she approached Liberty. Even as she reached for the woman’s arm, though, Liberty struck out with her fist and caught Malika in the jaw. The red-haired woman’s eyes burned bright with admiration.

  “Feisty,” she said, touching her jaw. “Can’t wait to see what breaks you.”

  She flew at Liberty in a flash of glittering crimson, scratching and punching, a blur of frenzied movement.

  “Liberty,” Sam began, but before he could go to her aid, Richard sprung at him and forced the old man up against a wall.

  “Come old boy, hold me,” Richard hissed, pressing a bony arm into Sam’s throat.

  The two women crashed into the living room wall, dislodging a painting. Liberty spun to face her attacker, fist raised, which was when she made her fatal mistake.

  She looked into Malika’s eyes.

  Liberty’s cry of agony made Sam blanch. What was happening? Malika wasn’t touching her, but Liberty’s face had crumpled in pain. Her eyes were wide, unblinking. She was caught in Malika’s malevolent glare.

  “Yesssss,” the red-haired creature hissed.

  “Liberty!” Sam yelled, squirming in Richard’s grasp.

  “Not yet,” Richard jeered through clenched teeth, his putrid breath blasting in Sam’s face. “You and me, we’re staying right here. Won’t that be nice?”

  “I-I-” Liberty was trying to speak, but she couldn’t form the words. She swayed unsteadily.

  “You’re mine,” Malika said softly, persuasively.

  Liberty’s face became blank. The pained creases evened out and she stood still, her eyes never leaving Malika.

  “Come,” the boy commanded, leaving the living room. Sam heard him open the front door and trudge out into the snow. He watched as Malika moved after him, Liberty mindlessly following her.

  “Liberty!” he cried again, struggling against Richard. But he was helpless in the other man’s grip. Liberty couldn’t even turn to look at him as she went out into the hallway.

  “Shame I didn’t get to play with the old man,” Malika purred from the door, glancing at Sam over her bare shoulder.

  “Make it slow,” she told Richard.

  Then the front door slammed and Sam was alone in the living room with Richard.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Hunting

  NICHOLAS SQUEEZED ONE EYE SHUT AND focused on the tree. Then he pulled the trigger. The rifle bucked alarmingly in his hands and the sound of the shot exploded deafeningly in his right ear.

  Beside him, Melvin Reynolds let loose a jubilant hoot and slapped Nicholas roughly on the shoulder. “Nice shot!” he hollered. “You swear you’ve never used one of these before?”

  His ear still ringing, Nicholas shook his head. His cheeks were flushed and his heart was hammering like he’d just cleared the finish line at a marathon – it was as if the gunshot had jumbled his insides up and they were hopping around trying to return to their rightful positions. He hadn’t expected firing a gun to make him feel like that. Powerful and in control. It felt dangerous somehow, as if he shouldn’t feel that way.

  The boy stared at a tree not twenty feet away. There, in a sheet of paper nailed to the trunk, was a ragged bullet hole.

  “If we come across Garm, I’ll let you do the shooting,” Reynolds declared, though Nicholas suspected he was joking. He handed back the weapon.

  The woods were peaceful at this time of day. It was gone lunchtime, but there was barely any sun and the trees were gathering together against the frosty weather. Bundled up in his coat, Nicholas could barely feel the cold. Maybe it was the exhilaration of the hunt that was keeping him warm. The boy watched Reynolds as he discharged the used cartridge from the rifle and replaced it with a new one. He was an unusual man – large in every sense of the word. He wasn’t as tall as Nicholas, but he was easily twice as wide. There was a strange mix of the delicate and the savage in him. Just when Nicholas though
t he’d figured him out, Reynolds said or did something that surprised him. This morning was a perfect example. Before they’d taken to the woods in search of Garm, Nicholas had found Reynolds hunched over the shop counter at Rumours, his eyes magnified to almost ten times their normal size by a pair of bizarre metal goggles.

  “Just taking a look through my collection,” the shopkeeper had said, holding up what looked like a postage stamp. Sat on the worktop in front of him was a scuffed cardboard box packed with hundreds of similar little squares.

  “You collect stamps?” Nicholas asked.

  “Give me some credit,” Reynolds returned drily. “Here, look.” He slipped the lenses off and handed them to Nicholas. Putting on the over-sized glasses, the boy picked up one of the stamp-like squares. Except through the magnifying lenses, he could see now that it was a painting of a beach. The detail was remarkable – everything from a striped red and white deckchair to tiny, speck-like seagulls had been carefully inscribed in the miniature canvas.

  “It’s a painting,” the boy marvelled.

  Reynolds smiled. “Art has many forms,” he said. “This one is my favourite. It makes us appreciate that not everything is what it seems, and that even the smallest of things can surrender the most surprising of wonders.”

  Now, lost in the dense forests that enclosed Orville like a prickly, protective wreath, Nicholas realised that it was Reynolds’s inscrutability that he liked. From discussing art to hunting the beast Garm and using a tree as target practice, Nicholas never knew what he was going to do next. He found himself wondering if all Sentinels were this unpredictable. Could they all turn their hand to whatever their work required? Could his father have taken up a rifle and shot a hole in that target? Again, that sucking feeling of regret created a vacuum in his chest, and Nicholas attempted to swallow it down, force himself to remain in the present. It was so easy to get lost in the memories, and he’d always been inclined to daydreaming. He watched Reynolds working at the rifle and pushed thoughts of his parents away.

  Isabel observed the pair from a log. She wasn’t happy with the child’s decision to leave the house again, and she made her feelings abundantly clear. Begrudgingly, she’d insisted that if Nicholas really had to take to the woods with the shopkeeper, he must keep the dagger with him at all times. Accepting this as a reasonable price for his freedom, the boy had strapped it to his belt, and now the cold metal sheath of the Drujblade dug reassuringly into his thigh.

  The cat looked up as birds that had been startled by the gunfire returned to their roosts, wittering at one another in irritation. Without knowing why, she began pondering what blackbird tasted like, and, horrified, quickly banished the unwelcome thought.

  “Where do you suppose he is?” Nicholas asked. “Garm.”

  Reynolds gave the firearm a check over. Nicholas noticed that he’d discarded the red and gold cartridge case on the ground and the boy retrieved it, turning it over in his hands. It was still warm.

  “Damned if I know,” Reynolds said. “Been sweeping the forest every morning for a month without any luck.”

  “Do you think he goes underground?” Nicholas asked, casting about the forest. The leaves rustled against one another above his head. “Maybe he burrows like a rabbit.”

  “If he does, he hides the holes well,” Reynolds commented. He raised the rifle and aimed it at the paper nailed to the tree. “Gives us time for a little target practice,” he added. “Besides, the sound of gunfire should tempt him out.”

  “It wouldn’t scare him off?” Nicholas asked, watching the other man. He was overweight yet surprisingly nimble. He used his ample belly as a rest for the rifle.

  “Nah. He’s been shot before, knows it doesn’t do much.” Reynolds shrugged his shoulder, jiggling a large blade that was slung over his back on a strap, like a quiver of arrows. “That’s what the knife’s for.”

  He fired at the target, making a second tattered hole in the paper. The crack of the gunshot echoed through the trees, and the birds scattered into the air once more, shrieking their annoyance. Isabel eyed them distrustfully.

  Reynolds sat down on a log with a sigh and pulled a yellow rag from his pocket. Carefully, he began to clean the rifle.

  Nicholas perched on a tree stump opposite him, and knew this was his moment. “You’re a Sentinel, aren’t you?” he asked the man.

  Reynolds didn’t seem surprised by the question. He carried on cleaning, his chubby fingers working efficiently over the weapon.

  “Wondered how long it’d be before you asked,” he commented jovially, immersed in the task. “What gave it away?”

  “The tattoo,” Nicholas said. “I saw it the other day when you rolled your sleeves up. It’s a Sentinel mark isn’t it?”

  “Aye,” Reynolds said. “Only some of us get them nowadays. They’re a tradition more than a requirement. They’re always on the right forearm, too – the fighting arm.”

  “Dad didn’t have one,” Nicholas mused. “Probably thought it’d hurt too much.”

  “So you’re part of the brotherhood, too,” Reynolds observed. “Knew no ordinary boy could come away from a clash with Garm quite so unshaken.”

  Nicholas smiled, pleased that he might even partially resemble a Sentinel, even if this was all so new and confusing.

  “There are more like Garm, aren’t there? Monsters or whatever they are.”

  “Garm’s a cuddly puppy compared to some of the things I’ve seen over the years,” Reynolds replied soberly. “There are others, aye, all over. That’s what the Sentinels are for. Things like Garm are always wriggling through the gaps, finding a way into our world, tempted by the smells and the promise of blood. I imagine our world’s a sight more pleasant than whatever hell dimension he’s clawed his way out of.”

  “And there are different types?”

  “More’n you could ever imagine. They’re all different. There are some, like the Garm, that live on instinct alone. They’re wild animals only stronger, viler, deadlier. You’ve heard of Bigfoot? The beast of Bodmin? They’re all monsters that have been spotted, caught in the act. Normally they’re pretty good at staying out of sight.”

  “So most demons just want to eat you?”

  Reynolds chuckled. “For the most part, But then there are the Adepts. They’re just as hideous, only they have a calculating intelligence - they’ll tell you they’re killing you as they do it.”

  Nicholas remembered what Jessica had said about demons being banished centuries ago. Where had they been banished to? And how did they get back in?

  “How many are there?” he asked.

  “How long’s a piece of string?” Reynolds asked back. “They’re always finding cracks in our reality and forcing their way through. Impossible to count them.”

  Nicholas nodded faintly and let this sink in. The casual manner in which both Reynolds and Jessica talked about such otherworldly things still made him uncomfortable. He decided to steer the conversation into less uncomfortable terrain. “Have you always lived out here?” he asked.

  “Aye, ever since I was a boy. My uncle raised me. Hard man, fiercely traditional. Taught me everything I know about fighting. Rumours used to be his. Except back then it was an armoury. Can’t say I ever had much taste for weapons, though.” Reynolds paused, perhaps aware that he was contradicting himself as he sat diligently polishing the rifle. “Old habits die hard, I suppose.”

  “Your uncle’s not around anymore, though?” Nicholas asked.

  “Oh no, he’s been underground for years.”

  “The people in the village,” Nicholas began, “they’re… odd.”

  From her log, Isabel sniffed in what Nicholas knew was her usual disdainful manner. Reynolds didn’t notice.

  “You could say that,” he nodded. “Orville can do that to people. Sometimes a place has a soul, and Orville’s is a troubled one, no doubt about it. It has a bloodier history than most, and that history can rub off on the people who live here. Terrible things have happe
ned here. Things that’d turn your hair white.” He set the rifle aside. “That’ll do. What say we head back to the shop and get a bite to eat?” He patted his generous belly. “Makes for hungry work, this hunting.”

  Nicholas laughed. They hadn’t exactly done much hunting, but he wouldn’t say no to a steaming cup of hot chocolate to bring the warmth back into his fingers. Reynolds reached for the rifle, then stopped when he saw Isabel. Her ears were flat against her skull, and she was staring off into the distance, sniffing the air curiously.

  “What you picking up, then?” Reynolds murmured. The cat didn’t seem to hear him. A faint breeze ruffled her fur, making it almost stand on end.

  Nicholas was looking at her as well now.

  “Think she’s picked up his scent?” he asked eagerly. “Isabel, what is it?”

  The cat looked at him, and the boy knew that she’d sensed something even if she daren’t voice it in front of Reynolds. Then he heard it. A stealthy cracking of twigs that only got louder with each second that passed.

  Instinctively, Nicholas wrapped his fingers around the Drujblade sheathed at his side. Reynolds seized the rifle, spinning down onto one knee and resting the gun on the log he’d just been using as a bench.

  “Here he comes,” Reynolds breathed in a low voice.

  Between the trees Nicholas saw a great, hulking shape galloping toward them, crashing through the greenery and kicking up dirty snow as it came. He tensed, standing behind Reynolds with Isabel at his side. The cat moved close to Nicholas.

  With a throaty squeal, Garm broke into their little clearing. In the daylight, the creature was even more hideous, scrabbling in the dirt with powerful, sinewy limbs. Its scales were a dull green, the patches of fur that erupted in spikes along its spine the same brown as the mud, and the swivelling eyes were a vibrant red – the red of blood.

  Without pausing, Reynolds fired into the mountain of muscle and the Garm snorted tetchily, barely noticing the bullet as it rebounded off its scaly armour. Reynolds fired again, but the monster kept coming, its slimy tongue lolling out of its incisor-lined mouth. The shopkeeper didn’t have time to reload the rifle before the creature was upon him.