Ruins

by Joshua Winning

“He posed as a doctor for years,” Liberty said. “Dr Adams never met him, but a colleague of hers did. She did some digging and managed to get her hands on his list of patients. It wasn’t that difficult; Snelling’s been missing for weeks, somebody has to take up the slack. Turns out he was a very bad doctor. Loads of his patients died over the course of his career, but he was clever. Just a couple a year, and most of those were heart attacks.”

  Sam attempted to suppress the poker-hot anger that Liberty’s words ignited. He clenched his fists.

  “Only a few of them were Sentinels,” Liberty continued. “I suppose Richard Walden and his family were a lucky find. There was one other name that stood out on the patient list, though. A man called Thomas Gray.”

  Sam didn’t recognise the name.

  “He was a well-respected young scientist in the 1990s, but then he stopped working. He became a recluse. Nobody’s seen him in twenty years. Nobody except Snelling.”

  “How interesting,” Sam mused. “I wonder what use Snelling had for him.”

  “Here’s hoping Thomas can tell us.”

  They drove in silence for a while, the tarmac rolling under them in a dark stream.

  “Tell me, Benjamin,” Sam said into the rear-view mirror. “How did you escape Malika’s clutches?”

  Hooded eyes bore into him.

  “Nale’s not much for talking,” Liberty said.

  “Still,” Sam persisted. “Not many have been so lucky. What did you do differently?”

  “Zeus.” Nale’s voice was a bark. He petted the dog. “He’s very loyal.”

  Sam squinted at the Hunter and tried to quiet his suspicions. If Liberty trusted this man, that should be enough. He’d never heard of a Benjamin Nale, though. Hunters were elite, elusive and few in number. Odd that he’d never come across this stoic giant before.

  “It’s getting scary out there, Sam,” Liberty murmured. He noticed new crinkles at the corners of her eyes. It looked like she hadn’t been sleeping properly.

  “What have you heard?” he asked.

  “Hellfire, demons, Harvesters, the usual.” There was less humour in her tone than usual. “A swimming pool in Diss filled itself up with blood and bile yesterday. No explanation. And a cemetery in Leeds was smashed to bits. Every grave was emptied, every gravestone destroyed.”

  “Trinity spare us,” Sam breathed.

  “They found the corpses arranged in a pyre in the city centre. The Prophets are sending a message. Mum spoke to a friend who saw it himself. Apparently Esus is flying from town to town, finding, well, you get the picture.”

  The sun beat through the windscreen but Sam couldn’t feel it.

  “There have been rumours, too, about her,” Liberty said. “Malika.”

  Sam looked at her in suprise. “Rumours?”

  “That she’s working with somebody. She was spotted in Cambridge with some mystery man, apparently. All unconfirmed, but where there’s smoke...”

  Laurent, Sam thought. It had to be. Laurent and Malika were two powerful players. They must be working together.

  Twenty minutes later, they arrived in Cambridge. Liberty parked on Tennis Court Road, which was located in the city centre, and they all got out onto the pavement. Sam peered up appreciatively at Pembroke College, then let Liberty lead him down the street. Nale followed with Zeus at his heels. For a large man, he moved disarmingly quietly.

  “How are things at home?” Sam asked Liberty, hoping to turn the conversation to happier things.

  “Fine. Though Francesca’s idea of an adult conversation is hurling paint at the wall and then blaming the dog.”

  “You have a dog now?”

  “Nope.”

  Sam chuckled. He was glad to have Liberty at his side again. Though he generally liked to work alone, he was coming to the conclusion that he couldn’t do everything by himself. Not at his age. Besides, Liberty was a useful person to have around. She should be able to pick something up from this Thomas Gray, even if he couldn’t.

  “How is the little cherub?” he asked.

  “More wilful by the day. My mother has the patience of a saint. This looks like it.” Liberty stopped by a row of terraces.

  Sam noted the assortment of scientific oddities cluttering the cramped, overgrown front garden. Shiny metal devices were everywhere, some of them spinning and winking in the sunlight, others pumping water through silver tubes and into miniature jugs in an endless cycle. He was surprised he’d never noticed the house before.

  At the front door, Sam pulled an unusual lever suspended at one side – he assumed it was the doorbell.

  A desolate bell rang through the house.

  They waited.

  Zeus began to whine softly and Nale shot the dog a look that silenced him.

  “Somebody’s coming,” Liberty said a heartbeat before the door opened.

  The man who blinked out at them was in his early fifties. He wore a woolly hat despite the weather and he was shorter than both of them, drowning in a lifeless brown jumper punctured with holes. The sun appeared to hurt his eyes because he couldn’t stop blinking, and Sam noted the grey pallor of his cheeks, the dry-looking lips, the sickly, yellowish pigment around his pupils.

  “Yes?” the man said.

  “Thomas Gray?” Sam asked.

  The man nodded unsurely.

  “Might we come in for a moment? If it’s no trouble? We won’t keep you long.”

  “What you want?”

  “It’s about Dr Snelling.”

  Thomas held Sam’s gaze meekly for a moment. “Not the dog,” he rasped as he turned and shuffled back inside, leaving the door open.

  “Wait out here?” Liberty suggested to Nale. The man nodded and reached into his jacket, retrieving a cigar.

  Liberty stepped inside and Sam went after her, pushing the front door to.

  The house smelled like old cigarettes and there was a sharp metallic scent that Sam couldn’t put his finger on. Burnt copper, perhaps. Every curtain was drawn closed and it took him a moment to get used to the gloom after the brightness of the afternoon sun. The house was old and creaky, the carpets threadbare. Thomas was already sitting in the living room just off the entrance hall, absorbed into a chair that seemed to have moulded to his form.

  There was an air of tragedy about the whole place. Blankets had been thrown over what Sam assumed were mirrors above the hearth and hanging by the door, and all of the photo frames were empty. Unease heaved in his chest.

  “You knew him?” Thomas sparked up a cigarette. His hand trembled, fingers twitching as he took a drag. “Snelling. You knew him?”

  Sam removed his fedora and wondered how best to handle the situation. He’d had time to think it over in the car, but now that he was here, he found it difficult to focus. There were too many questions, and the state of the man before him threw him for a loop. Thomas Gray was ill, that much was clear. Sam wondered what it was. He eyed the woollen hat.

  Cancer. Has to be.

  “Dr Snelling is missing,” Liberty said, taking a seat on a beaten-up sofa. Sam sank down next to her. “We were wondering if you’d had any contact with him in the past few days.”

  Opposite them, Thomas took another drag of the cigarette. The orange glow jabbed momentarily at the surrounding murk.

  “Not seen him in months,” he said.

  “But he was your GP.”

  Thomas didn’t say anything.

  “The garden out front, did you build all of that?” Liberty continued. Sam wondered if she’d sensed something.

  Thomas nodded. He didn’t seem interested in them at all. Had he let them into his home merely out of boredom? Something to break up his day? He certainly didn’t seem to want them there – but he didn’t not want them there, either, or he’d have slammed the door in their faces.

  “You’re good at making things,” Liberty observed. “Did it take long to create them?”

  “Nah.” Thomas exhaled. The smoke hung around him in a ghostly haze. “Not don
e anything like that for years.”

  “Your father was a physicist,” Liberty said. She must have researched Thomas before she picked Sam up. “The physics apple obviously didn’t fall far from the tree.”

  In other circumstances, Sam would have chuckled, but he couldn’t, not in this heavy atmosphere of misery.

  “He was obsessed with the cosmos,” Thomas said finally, wearily. “He wanted to know what made the stars move, what existed between the matter we could detect. He wanted to know more about the invisible matter, the stuff that kept everything tied together up there.” He seemed to emerge from his coma, his yellow eyes offering a hint of life. “I was always more interested in things closer to home.”

  “What sort of things?” Sam asked.

  In an instant the spark was extinguished, as if Thomas had lost interest now that the topic had turned inward on his own life. “Atomic physics,” he muttered. “Same as him, but I never cared about the rest of the universe.”

  Sam noticed something strange about the cuff of Thomas’s jumper. Some material was poking out beneath the fabric – white gauze. A bandage. Thomas’s wrist had been bandaged.

  Thomas became momentarily lost in the smoke haze. His eyes grew unfocussed.

  A floorboard creaked upstairs and his yellow gaze snapped to the ceiling.

  “Old house,” he muttered under his breath. “Creaks like a damn barn all day long.”

  The uneasy feeling welled in Sam’s belly and he cast Liberty a look. Her expression was unreadable, though, and he couldn’t tell if she’d sensed anything from Thomas or his home.

  Thomas retched suddenly, coughing loudly. Finally, he calmed.

  “You’re not well,” Sam said.

  Thomas wiped the spittle from his lips.

  “Docs at the hospital don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he grunted. “Got bones like glass. They tried testing me, wanted to put me in a lab and poke me with sticks. I told them to go to Hell. I know what’s done this to me.”

  “What has?” Sam ventured.

  Silence.

  “Why don’t you tell me why you’re really here.” Thomas’s eyes glowed like the tip of his cigarette. He knew they were lying. He’d known all along. Their cover story wasn’t exactly the stuff of undercover genius, but it had gotten them through the front door.

  “You want to know about Dr Snelling?” Thomas continued. He paused, coughing painfully once more. “He came here five months ago. Last time I saw him. He wanted something and I gave it to him.”

  “What did he want?” Sam asked.

  “One of my creations.”

  It was as if somebody had slipped a cold blade into Sam’s gut. Thomas’s creation? Was he talking about the gauntlet? Snelling had possessed one. Could they be in the company of the man who had created those terrible contraptions?

  “She’d be upset I said that,” Thomas muttered. He took on a faraway look, distracted by the cigarette smoke.

  “Who would?” Liberty asked.

  “She turned up when Dad died. At his funeral. I was eighteen and alone. She gave me a project, something to busy myself with. I thought she loved me.”

  Sam resisted the urge to find an excuse for them to leave. This didn’t feel right. The house creaked and bowed around them. Thomas had started rambling and Sam began to doubt the man’s state of mind. He seemed to weave in and out of lucidity. Before he could say anything, though, Thomas was on his feet. He tucked the cigarette into the corner of his lips.

  “Hurry,” he urged quietly, beckoning them into the hall.

  Uneasily, Sam followed. He found himself in the grubby hallway. Thomas lingered outside a door under the stairs, his skeletal frame hunched. Sam shuddered, recalling the basement in Snelling’s house.

  Thomas cast a glance up the stairs, then drew the cellar door open.

  The scent of burnt copper rose up a set of cement steps. Thomas gestured at him and disappeared inside.

  Without hesitating, Liberty went after him. Heart hammering in his chest, Sam followed.

  The basement was full of strange gadgets. A single strip light illuminated an industrial-size chemistry set that monopolised a large work bench. Metal machinery proliferated every other surface. Jars held pickled body parts. Potted plants slumped.

  Sam noticed an object covered in a white sheet on the work bench.

  “Look if you want,” Thomas wheezed. He leaned against a chair, clearly struggling to stay upright. Walking downstairs had taken it out of him. What was wrong with the man?

  Shakily, Sam drew the sheet back.

  A metallic device like a glove rested in a wooden cradle. It was pristine, shimmering in the fluorescent light. Overpowered with dread and curiosity, Sam reached for it, his hand hovering over the gauntlet.

  A floorboard creaked above him and Sam froze.

  “Should’ve got out when I could,” Thomas muttered. He seemed to grow paler and more ghoulish with every passing second. He inspected his bandaged wrist. A speck of red stood out against the white material.

  “You’re hurt,” Liberty observed, reaching for his wrist.

  Thomas clutched his arm. “No,” he warned. He peered down at the speck of red, his gaze distant. “I thought she wouldn’t stop, but she did. She always stops.”

  “Who are you talking about?” Liberty asked.

  He glared at her. “She comes and goes, but she loves me. When she needs shelter, I give it to her.” He shook himself, appeared to become more lucid. “I knew you’d come eventually. Somebody has to know what we did. Somebody has to stop her.”

  “You made this?” Sam asked, referring to the gauntlet.

  The look on Thomas’s face was awful. Pride and guilt and horror mixed into one.

  “It was meant to be used to separate atoms,” he murmured. “A tiny reactor that blasted particles apart to be studied. But... it did something else. It unleashed an electrical current that peeled back the very fabric of existence...”

  “What do you mean?” Sam asked.

  “I’m the scientist, just the scientist,” Thomas murmured. “She’s the alchemist. She completed it. She completed me.”

  “What does it do?” Sam demanded, desperation knotting his stomach.

  “It lets the darkness in,” Thomas whispered.

  “Demons,” Liberty said. She hovered by the wilted plants in the corner, the strip-light catching in her dark eyes as she contemplated the gauntlet. Sam knew that look: she had sensed something. “It opens a portal inside a person. Lets a demon claw its way in.”

  A noise. The shriek of a door opening. Or the lid of a coffin.

  Thomas’s sallow gaze snapped to the ceiling.

  “You have to stop her,” he hissed.

  It was too late. Even as Sam started for the steps, he found a figure blocking his path. He felt her before he saw her. His skin began to hum and his arm hair bristled.

  “Thomas, you should have said we had guests,” Malika purred.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Sickness

  SAM IMAGINED A SPIDER AFTER IT had discovered an insect wriggling in its web. Despite the gloom of the stairwell, Malika radiated an icy vitality. Her auburn hair was coiled atop her head, her wiry form clad in a berry red dress that was square at the neck and cut off at the knees.

  “I’m beginning to think you can’t get enough of me.” The velvety quaver of her voice sought to smother him. They were trapped in the cement-walled lab. She was blocking their only way out.

  “So many people interested in my whereabouts,” Malika murmured, idling at the foot of the stairs. “How blessed I am.”

  She knew. Of course she knew. Sentinels across the country had been dispatched to track her down, to contain her, and she was here, under all their noses, making a mockery of them once more. How many had found her? How many had been killed as a consequence? Sam recalled what Nicholas had glimpsed in the seeing glass. Malika drenched in blood.

  A chuckle spilled from the woman’s throat.

>   “I do believe I have rendered you speechless,” she teased. “Old man, is it possible you fear me now? Do you finally understand that I cannot be stopped?”

  “You will be stopped,” Sam grunted. “If not by me, then somebody else. There is only one end for you.”

  “You seem so certain.” Malika’s teeth flashed ivory white. “Even the most certain of men can be proven wrong.” Her attention turned to Liberty. “Still following this old goat. Surely you’ve learned by now? Or perhaps you’re a glutton for punishment.”

  Liberty. Malika had used the Sensitive to gain access to Hallow House. She’d wormed her way into Liberty’s head, tapped into her powers and exploited them. It had left Liberty bed-ridden and Sam had feared she’d never recover.

  “Stay back,” he warned the thing by the stairs. He pressed the satchel to his side. “What’s he got you doing? Laurent never liked getting his hands dirty. You on the other hand...”

  “Such suspicion,” Malika drawled. Her attention bent to Thomas. The blood had drained from his face. His eyes were wide with – what? Adoration? What spell had Malika cast over him? She was the one responsible for his sickness. She’d manipulated him, just as she manipulated everybody. His brilliance had been twisted, wrecked, and he’d forged an abomination in her name.

  “Thomas,” Malika murmured softly. “Do it.”

  The man’s lower lip trembled and spit dribbled from his chin. He started toward the work bench; toward the gauntlet.

  “Thomas, no,” Sam said firmly, standing in his way.

  “Would you keep a man from his creation?” Silver sparks danced in Malika’s cat-like eyes. “I owe Thomas everything. We’re changing the world together. Such loyalty is rare these days. Why do you think we created the gauntlet? People don’t want to be recruited, they want to be ruled. Commanded. Controlled.”

  “Spoken like a true dictator,” Sam spat. His hand crept up the side of the satchel, feeling for a way in.

  “What is a dictator if not an agent of change? A driving force. Somebody who confronts the world with itself and sets a new order in motion.” She fixed him with an unflinching glare as he slipped his hand into the satchel. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Her gaze intensified. “Tell me, how’s the ticker?”