Ruins

by Joshua Winning

  “That’s a new wrinkle,” Sam admitted. “Though we know little about Harvesters, we believe they used to be recruited. Anybody could be a Harvester. The fact that Sentinels are being turned is merely an insidious new torment concocted by the agents of the Dark Prophets. The good news, if you can call it that, is that they’re human, and therefore fallible. But most spend their entire lives training, fighting and killing. A Harvester knows at least a hundred spectacularly violent ways to kill you, if not more. They’re deadly and adaptable.”

  Nicholas thought of Snelling, the only Harvester he’d encountered. Snelling had posed as a shop owner, calling himself Melvin Reynolds and preying on Nicholas’s naivety to gain access to Hallow House. Harvesters weren’t just killers, they were lethal manipulators. He couldn’t believe how naïve he’d been. It was only a week ago, but Nicholas felt like a completely different person. His eyes were open now. He couldn’t imagine ever trusting anybody that readily again.

  “How do you spot them?” he asked. “I mean, they look like normal people, right?”

  “There are no tell-tale signs,” Sam admitted. “That’s what makes them so dangerous. The man who stops you in the street to ask for directions could be a Harvester. Or the woman who sits next to you on the bus.”

  “So you pretty much don’t know until they’ve got a knife in you.” It wasn’t a comforting thought.

  “That’s why Sensitives are invaluable in the fight against Harvesters,” Sam said, clearly attempting to instil some hope in what seemed like a hopeless situation. “They’re able to sense what others cannot. In time, you should be able to do so.”

  “But only if you train,” Isabel put in.

  Nicholas ignored her. Sam pulled a book towards them and began talking about battle strategies. There were more than Nicholas could have ever imagined. Sieges, coercion tactics, charges, counter-attacks... Then there were things called tactical objectives and attrition warfare, plus different types of battles – offensive and defensive, even counter-offensive.

  They spent over an hour going through it all. Sam drew up theoretical battle plans and asked Nicholas to do the same, offering suggestions for ways to improve them.

  “Who taught you all of this?” Nicholas asked, his head swimming.

  “My parents,” Sam said. “All Sentinels are trained by a parent or guardian. There’s no Sentinel school beyond the lessons passed down through the generations. A Sentinel learns on his or her feet, in the trenches, mired in the chaos of battle.”

  Not for the first time, Nicholas felt a yearning for his own parents. He wished they’d trained him and explained how the world really worked. Instead, they’d shielded him from that life. After his talk with Jessica, he finally understood why. She had said he was chosen by the Trinity. If his parents hadn’t hidden him away, he’d have spent his whole life being targeted by abominations like Snelling, Malika and Diltraa. He probably wouldn’t have made it to his sixth birthday, let alone his sixteenth.

  Still, he felt robbed of the opportunity to talk to his parents about all of this.

  The study door opened suddenly, snapping him from his thoughts.

  “Oh,” a figure in purple uttered, freezing in the doorway.

  “Hello young lady,” Sam greeted her pleasantly. “You’re Dawn, yes? Aileen’s granddaughter?”

  Dawn nodded, biting her lip. She was chubby, her mousy brown hair dyed purple at the ends, and her gaze darted between them.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said softly, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “Plenty of room,” Sam said. “Please, come in.”

  “I’ll come back later,” the girl said, and like that she was gone, the door clicking shut.

  Nicholas didn’t know what to make of her.

  “This is all great and interesting,” he said, gesturing at the books. “But when do we get swords?”

  “Swords?” Sam asked.

  “Yeah. I thought you were going to teach me how to fight.”

  “The boy desires to fly before he has even peered over the edge of the nest,” Isabel commented dourly.

  Nicholas shot her a look. “If I’m going to end up in more exploding buildings, I at least want to be able to defend myself.” He couldn’t end up in the dirt the way he had when Esus attacked him in the forest. If Esus had been a Harvester, Nicholas would be dead now. He’d been lucky so far, but his luck wouldn’t last forever.

  “You’re right,” Sam said, surprising him. “Perhaps that’s enough book learning for today. Follow me.”

  Excitement fizzing through him, Nicholas hurried after Sam. The old man descended the steps into Aileen’s kitchen. The landlady was out and the house was quiet. Dawn must have gone to her room.

  “Here,” Sam said, heading out the back door into the garden. The sun was sinking behind the rooftops, casting a flagstone courtyard in mottled light. A vine crept up the back wall, towering over potted plants.

  Sam plucked two cushions from the garden chairs and faced Nicholas. He beat them together in front of him.

  “We start with the basics,” he said. “No swords. Basic defensive manoeuvres will toughen you up and teach you how to minimise damage during an attack. Then we move on to the more complicated stuff.”

  Nicholas hesitated. It looked like Sam expected him to hit him, but he couldn’t punch an old man, even if he was asking for it.

  “Stagger your stance,” Sam said. “Hands up. Always keep them up or you’ll find yourself with a black eye or a fat lip. And always keep one shoulder to me.”

  Uncertainly, Nicholas did as he was told, balling his fists before him.

  “Good. Now use one fist to protect your face and punch with the other.”

  “You want me to–”

  Sam beat the cushions together once more. “Do it,” he urged, as if daring Nicholas to defy him. Taking a breath, Nicholas threw a punch, battering the soft pad with his knuckles.

  “Good, but harder. What are you, five? And keep moving. Stay on your toes.”

  Nicholas wobbled onto his toes and threw another punch, frustrated that it was weaker than the first.

  “Keep going,” Sam encouraged him.

  Nicholas jabbed again. They circled about in the courtyard.

  “The visectus demon goes for the eyes,” Sam said. He held the cushion higher and Nicholas pounded it. “Good! Take its eyes before it takes yours.”

  Nicholas was already gasping for breath. He hadn’t realised how hard this would be. He didn’t stop, though, exhilaration pumping through him. His shoulders ached and sweat coated his face, but he grit his teeth and pushed on, throwing everything he had into the punches.

  “The svartulf is low to the ground,” Sam said, lowering the cushions to his side.

  Nicholas pummelled them.

  “Visectus!” Sam yelled, holding the cushions up. “Svartulf!” he hollered again, lowering them. “Visectus! Svartulf! Visectus!”

  Nicholas punched high and low, panting, his ribs crying out.

  “We’re going to that school tomorrow,” Sam puffed, still circling. “If something’s waiting for us, you need to be able to knock it back, keep it at bay. Two this time.”

  Nicholas slammed his fists into the cushions one after the other.

  One, two. One, two.

  “Hands up!”

  He hadn’t even noticed they were dropping. He wiped his perspiring forehead and raised his fists again, burying them in the cushions as Sam dodged and wove about the courtyard. Nicholas couldn’t believe how agile the old man was. He supposed that was a benefit of being trained from birth. It was second nature to Sam. The most exercise Nicholas had ever done was at school, and his life hadn’t exactly depended on it then.

  “Thirty seconds,” Sam told him. “Non-stop. Come on. Show us what you’ve got.”

  Nicholas was flagging, the strength draining from him. His mouth was chalk dry, the rest of him drenched in sweat. He clenched his jaw and summoned every last scrap of power
left in him. He hurled punches as fast and hard as he could.

  Jab, jab, jab, jab.

  “Four! Three! Two! One! Enough!”

  Sam lowered the cushions.

  Panting, Nicholas bent over and rested his hands on his knees. His whole body hummed with pain and triumph. Sam slapped him on the back.

  “Good lad,” he said breathlessly. “You’ll be a demon hunter in no time.”

  “Barbarians,” Isabel muttered from the back door.

  *

  As night drew in, Nicholas sat in his bedroom at Aileen’s safehouse, encircled by books. The room was small and had no desk, so he’d spread numerous volumes of The Sentinel Chronicles out across the floor. They were all from Aileen’s study. He hoped she wouldn’t mind that he’d borrowed them.

  “What are you doing?”

  Nicholas nearly jumped out of his skin.

  Isabel’s voice had rung right in his ear. He was poring over the volumes so diligently that he hadn’t noticed her uncurl on the edge of the bed and crane over his shoulder.

  “Jesus,” he said. “You’ve got to stop doing that.”

  Isabel stared intently at him. The lamp light brightened the silver flecks in her black fur and her whiskers bristled. It was over a week since she’d taken over the body of the cat he’d rescued in the countryside and she was behaving more like a wild animal every day. She began preening her fur.

  “You’re almost convincing as a cat when you do that,” Nicholas said without looking up from the book.

  Isabel stopped. She squinted at him and sniffed.

  “You could do with one yourself,” she told him. “It’s already starting to smell like my father’s hunting cupboard in here and we have only been here for one evening.”

  Nicholas shrugged.

  “What are you reading?”

  Nicholas raised the book over his shoulder so she could see. The Sentinel Chronicles – September 1997.

  “Riveting, I’m sure.”

  “It’s useless,” Nicholas said, not even trying to conceal his annoyance. He dumped the book on the floor. In the days that followed the defeat of Diltraa, he’d been attempting to go through every instalment of the Chronicles from 1997 to find out what had happened in the months surrounding his birth. But there was no mention of him. Nor Orville. Nor the things that had happened there. It was like the Sentinels had turned a blind eye to the events that had taken place in that spooky little village. Whether it was out of disinterest or guilt he wasn’t sure.

  “You’re trying to find out what happened in Orville,” Isabel noted.

  “So?”

  “It is only natural,” the cat said. She wrapped her tail around herself, as if to keep her toes warm. “You discovered that everybody in the village died because of you. That’s a heavy burden.”

  “Why did they die?” Nicholas demanded.

  “There’s a power in you,” Isabel told him. “It came into this world with you, and it blasted through that forsaken place like a storm of arrows.”

  “And they’re dead, but not dead,” Nicholas said. “They’re, what, frozen?”

  “They’re dead, as far as I could tell,” Isabel said. “But their souls are trapped. Pinned to that place like butterflies.”

  “Like you were in the Pentagon Room.”

  “Quite so. After my death, that room was sealed off, and me with it,” Isabel explained. “No doubt Jessica hoped one day she would resurrect me, and that meant preserving my body in the exact state of its demise.”

  “You came back,” Nicholas mused. “So that means the villagers have a chance, too.”

  “Possibly,” Isabel said. “If somebody discovered a way. Until then, there’s nothing we can do.”

  “There must be something.”

  Nicholas rested back against the bed with a sigh. He’d also been scouring the Chronicles for clues about the girl Esus wanted him to find, but that search had been equally futile.

  “This girl... Lydia,” he murmured. “How exactly are we supposed to track her down?” They had nothing to go on apart from a name that the girl apparently wasn’t using anymore.

  “Let’s see,” Isabel said. She hopped down from the bed and padded across the carpet, peering at a velvet box that rested among the books. It was the box that his parents had left him; the one that he couldn’t open. He’d found it in the study behind his parents’ bedroom wall, along with the box that contained the raven pendant. The pendant was in his pocket.

  “Ah,” the cat uttered, sounding pleased. “You have this already. This should help immensely.”

  “What are you talking about now?”

  “The box,” Isabel said. “Open it. We’ll continue your training now.”

  “I’ll fetch my crash helmet.”

  “Your what?”

  Nicholas sighed. “It’s locked. Can’t open it.”

  “What a delightfully defeatist attitude you possess. It’s a wonder you even bother to get out of bed in the morning. Here, take it and I’ll tell you how to open it.”

  Nicholas grabbed the box and turned it over in his hands, just as he had the first time. It was about the size of a flat jewellery box. But it was useless. There was no way to open it. That didn’t seem to faze Isabel, though. Could she really help him uncover what was inside?

  “It is yours,” the cat said, sitting upright. “Nobody else has control over it. You alone may open it.”

  “It was a birthday present,” he said. “It’s my birthday next week.”

  I’ll be sixteen, he thought.

  “I’m sure your parents wouldn’t mind if you opened it early.”

  “They’d kill me,” Nicholas said.

  “All the same. Now, shut your eyes.”

  “You going to do funny things to me?”

  “Take this seriously,” Isabel snapped.

  Nicholas closed his eyes, feeling ridiculous.

  “Now visualise the box. Every detail of it. The smooth corners. The soft material. The weight of it. Build a picture of it.”

  “Yes, master,” Nicholas droned.

  “Have you done it?”

  Nicholas took a breath and pushed aside his self-consciousness. He tried to imagine what the box looked like. He’d had it in his hands a few moments ago. It wasn’t heavy, but it wasn’t light, either. And the velvet felt soft, almost like rabbit fur.

  “Yes,” he said quietly.

  “Now imagine where it is, here on the floor. Imagine it sitting before you, just as it is.”

  In his mind, the box was now sitting on the carpet.

  “Picture it there,” came Isabel’s voice. “Now reach out – no, not with your hands. Reach out with your insides, with your guts, and open it.”

  “But–”

  “Just. Do it.”

  Nicholas huffed and pictured the box again. He reached for it as the cat had instructed, pushing his will on to it. He saw himself picking it up and there, where nothing had been before, was a little silver catch. He flicked it.

  There came a snapping, creaking sound and a soft thud.

  Nicholas opened his eyes. The box lay open on the floor.

  “Did I–?” he marvelled, pulling the box nearer to inspect its contents. There was wood. And metal. And something shining cold and purple. It was some kind of apparatus, nestled in the soft cushion of the box’s interior.

  “Well don’t just stare at it,” Isabel said.

  Nicholas swallowed, his throat dry. Gingerly, he pulled the contraption from the box and unfolded it. Two wooden legs slotted into a flat panel that formed a base. Suspended on a silver thread was a purple disc that looked like it was made of amethyst. When it was put together, Nicholas thought it somewhat resembled a mechanical metronome; he’d seen musicians using them to keep time.

  “It’s a seeing glass,” Isabel told him, as if she had known all along what was in the box. “Many Sensitives use them to begin with; it helps them to hone their skills. This is a particularly fetching specimen.”<
br />
  “What does it do?” Nicholas asked.

  “It helps you access what’s already there, inside you.” She blinked at the seeing glass. “You set the crystal swinging and it puts you into a trance. It relaxes you so that you can concentrate solely on seeing and sensing beyond what’s in front of you.”

  “So it’s going to hypnotise me?”

  “Not exactly,” Isabel said. “Let’s try it.”

  Nicholas eyed the instrument unsurely. Accessing that part of himself, the part he didn’t understand, made him nervous.

  But it might help him find the girl.

  “Set the crystal going,” the cat instructed. “Send your thoughts out into the spirit planes. Ask the question you need answered. Ask for the whereabouts of the girl.”

  Trembling slightly, Nicholas tapped the purple disc and it began to swing from side to side. He reclined against the side of the bed and shook out his arms and legs to dispel any nervous energy. He followed the crystal as it swung. Whenever the small disc reached the mid-point of its arc, it caught the light and flashed.

  Swing. Flash. Swing. Flash.

  Nicholas felt both heavy and light, like he was suspended in water. That familiar prickling sensation stirred deep in the pit of his stomach.

  Swing. Flash.

  Flash. Swing.

  Nicholas’s eyes began to droop.

  “The girl,” he commanded in his head. “Show me the girl.”

  Flash. Swing. Flash. Swing.

  His stomach knotted. The light in the room softened, darkened, until all he saw was the flash of the little purple disc.

  Flash. Flash. Flash.

  Fire. People running, screaming. A man with a cane stalks the streets. Something monstrous screeches inhumanly and tumbles from the night sky.

  Nicholas heard himself panting. He tried to slow the images down, but they wouldn’t be curbed. They poured into his mind like lava and he felt himself drowning.

  A red triangle sizzles. Three large objects like pods simmer in a nest of embers. Elvis Presley grins. A woman sits in a classroom and something wet slithers out of her. A silver raven pendant glimmers. Moonlight edges over the lip of a well. Malika emerges from a pool drenched in blood...

  “Nicholas!”