by Ross Turner
One by one Reaper ferried them across the vast gorge that cut so deeply through the world.
All except for Midnight.
The old man astounded Marcii yet again by making his own way across.
Malorie was first to go with Reaper and she seemed not in the slightest bit uneasy.
Marcii followed, and though her heart still fluttered with adrenaline as he leapt the gap, she was becoming slowly more accustomed to it now.
That left only Kaylm and Midnight.
Twice the young Evans watched Reaper disappear into the darkness, sailing high over the gorge, before he returned to collect him.
Kaylm swallowed hard and peered nervously over the edge and down into the pitch black below, though of course he knew that was probably the worst thing he could have done.
“It’s perfectly safe my boy.” The old man Midnight reassured him.
Kaylm turned to look at him with disbelieving eyes in the darkness. The old man just smiled as Reaper crashed carefully into the ground.
Midnight took a few measured steps back from the edge of the canyon, shaking his old legs loose in preparation. Reaper rose slowly to his full height and stepped aside slightly to give the old man room, watching curiously, but seemingly without too much surprise.
“Close your eyes if it helps…” Midnight suggested to Kaylm as he began forwards.
The young Evans didn’t even have chance to reply.
The old man leapt from one foot and disappeared into the darkness, sailing high up and out of sight over the sheer drop below.
Kaylm cursed under his breath and the enormous demon Reaper looked sympathetically down at him.
Nonetheless, there was no way around it, save walking miles out of their way, and Kaylm knew it. He had travelled the route personally, several times in fact. Reaper had leapt the canyon carrying Kaylm twice already. Admittedly though, the first time, he’d barely been aware of it due to his wounds.
Still, it made the whole ordeal no easier. The fact that he knew what was coming actually deepened his fear, rather than lessening it.
Without a sound Reaper scooped Kaylm up into his arms and squared up against the vast drop.
“Are you sure?” He asked, his voice quivering slightly in the darkness.
Reaper glanced down at him understandingly and his expression spoke a thousand words. He assured Kaylm as best as he could that it was necessary. The young Evans just nodded and gritted his teeth.
Thinking of Marcii, Kaylm set his gaze forward, determined for some reason not to close his eyes. He felt in some way that if he did he’d be cheating somehow.
He didn’t want to let her down in any way, if that were even possible.
Kaylm felt the rush of air barrage him as Reaper leapt and his eyes traced the blackness far below them. It was too dark to see much more than a few dozen feet down and it dropped much, much lower than that before the river even grew close.
Flurries of snow surged into Kaylm’s eyes and battered his cheeks, but he refused to yield.
Reaper smashed into the ground and suddenly Marcii appeared in the darkness once again. Concern touched her eyes as Kaylm dropped from Reaper’s grasp.
She knew beyond doubt that the enormous demon would never let any harm come to her friend. But that wasn’t what she feared.
The young Dougherty had had many days, weeks even, to grow accustomed to Reaper and to this new life.
He was, after all, terrifying.
But Kaylm seemed to be taking the whole thing in his stride.
Truly, he would have followed Marcii to the ends of the earth, if for no other reason than to protect her.
Malorie smiled, sidling to Reaper’s side as she did so. She reached out her hand and linked her fingers with the thick, matted hair that covered his arm.
The old man Midnight approached too, for the silence between them said more than a thousand words ever could.
They were indeed a strange looking group.
But that mattered not.
They were in this to the end.
Ravenhead beckoned far beyond the horizon and would grow no closer by itself.
Whatever awaited them beyond the night, no matter how dreadful, Marcii just hoped they would be ready for it.
Chapter Fifteen
By the third night the snow was building up in banks deep enough to considerably hinder their progress.
Reaper’s enormous strides were hardly affected by the foot or two of powder that had settled upon the land, but he could not carry them all at once. So instead, making best what they could, the rest followed close behind him, keeping strictly to the enormous demon’s ploughed tracks.
Ravenhead came into view just as the sun tipped the horizon behind them, bathing Marcii and her companions in a cold, orange glow. The landscape glittered and sparkled all around them as millions upon millions of icy crystals reflected the sun’s glorious rays in all directions.
The beauty of the land seemed more pronounced to Marcii than ever before in that moment, as the settled snowdrifts highlighted every undulation with their magnificent blankets of ice.
They had rested and eaten at various points since leaving Newmarket, but they’d still come a long way and Marcii was very tired.
Even though the day was only just dawning it had been many long and arduous hours since they’d last slept.
The abandoned mining town was more ghostly than ever. Rows upon rows of small stone houses stood desolate, as they had done for many years, only now they were blanketed in pure white dust.
Vines that had grown up the sides of the tiny stone houses were now either covered in snow or had wilted and shrivelled from the cold. The tiled roofs that still maintained some structure bowed under the weight of the snowfall and looked at any moment like they might collapse.
Reaper cleared the way into the first of the streets that seemed to be cut from the earth itself. Marcii felt herself sweep lightly into Ravenhead almost like she had always belonged there.
The young Dougherty glanced across at Malorie, feeling for some reason as though there was something amiss.
Malorie’s eyes were filled with a longing that Marcii couldn’t describe. The lost look in her gaze swiftly faded however, replaced by a certain and unmistakeable contentment.
As the day wore on the snow settled relentlessly, yet at the same time the sun continued to shine coldly.
Reaper retreated to the old, unused mining tunnels, seeking the cover of blackness. Though they were supposedly safe now that they’d once more reached the confines of Ravenhead, Marcii knew the enormous demon still favoured the concealment of the shadows.
Surprisingly though, since Marcii would have automatically presumed that she would, the witch Malorie did not accompany Reaper into the darkness, and instead permitted him his solitude.
Instead, turned melancholy and pensive, Malorie retired up to Raven’s Keep. She ascended the tower slowly and purposefully, as if she had long awaited, unfinished business there.
Midnight too seemed restless. It had been many years since he had stepped foot in this place and memories flooded back to him in great flurries.
The world had changed vastly, especially in his not so short lifetime. But it seemed amidst everything that Ravenhead had hardly altered at all.
“My apologies…” The old man breathed distractedly, looking around bleakly as he spoke.
Malorie and Reaper had both already disappeared and now he too felt drawn away by a force unknown.
“It’s been such a long time…” He continued. Marcii and Kaylm looked over at the old man understandingly. “I left so suddenly. There were so many things I had to leave behind…”
Suddenly Marcii understood.
She could see a desolate hope in the old man’s black eyes.
Provided the roof had not caved in, Marcii imagined that all of his belongings would still be here. Ravenhead had been abandoned since he’d left. More likely than not, everything would be exactly where he l
eft it.
With a slight nod, seeing that indeed she did understand, Midnight stole away down the frosty streets. The sound of snow crunching beneath his feet slowly faded into the distance.
There was so much history here, for everyone, Marcii realised.
She and Kaylm were left alone in exhausted silence.
Naturally, as could have been expected, they slept.
Morning soon passed and afternoon eked in.
For some reason though, as time soldiered on and the day whiled away in gloomy cold, Marcii found that sleep came in only troubled and fitful bursts.
Eventually, after waking for perhaps the seventh or eighth time, she abandoned the notion altogether and found herself on the move.
Ice and snow crinkled beneath her with every step that she took. Without any real direction the young Dougherty found her tired, aching legs carrying her aimlessly up and down and round, exploring abandoned areas of the citadel that had not seen life for many years.
Tall, grey buildings rose up around her, littered with icicles and snowdrifts that glittered magically in the afternoon light.
Contrasted against the many, tiny mining houses that she thought the town was almost entirely made up of, some of the empty districts that Marcii passed through left her in awe. The architecture was rivalled only by her imagination as spiralling, stone staircases wove up and down the sides of buildings and crossed the streets high above her head, creating a vast network of walkways between buildings and rises.
Great archways rose up over her head here and there and the seemingly endless lines of crevasse streets wound all around.
This place was even more complex than Newmarket.
And in many more ways than simply architecturally.
Suddenly a noise caught Marcii’s attention and her wandering senses sharpened in the cold air, attuning themselves to the sound of silence all around. She listened intently for what it might have been that had so rudely broken the quiet.
Turning another corner, finding herself heading down a slightly narrower alleyway, Marcii cursed under her breath at the crunching of her own footsteps, giving away her every move.
Walls closed in around her as she whisked along, fretting that she might not find the source of the noise.
It had sounded like a softly closing door, she thought.
Perhaps it was Midnight.
She had no idea where his Ravenhead home had once been.
Scurrying down the next snow covered alleyway, and the next, and then the next, Marcii’s heart pounded heavily in her chest, writhing against her ribs in anguish.
Why adrenaline coursed so roughly through her veins she had no idea.
But she soon found out.
“Ahh…Marcii Dougherty…” A voice sounded behind her. It echoed from the alleyway that she had just come, only moments before.
The tone resonated like Midnight’s, except coarser and much more rugged.
Turning, her breath catching, Marcii set her gaze upon the figure looming behind her.
Had she not been so certain that it wasn’t him, she could easily have mistaken the figure for the old man Midnight.
Clad in thick wolf furs, the aged man with silver hair and piercing black eyes stood perfectly still. His burdened gaze bore into Marcii fiercely. His lips curled up slightly into a stern smile, though the sight of it filled Marcii with infinitely more dread than it did comfort.
By the way he stood, poised and ready to pounce, he seemed at first glance to be more animal than he was human. His body was lean and clearly muscular, much more so than Midnight’s, regardless of the years that it carried behind it.
Marcii swallowed heavily.
The old man Midnight had continually surprised her with his strength and his athleticism. Undoubtedly though his brother would match that, if not surpass it.
“Do not be afraid.” The old man’s gravelly voice sounded again, sending chills flying up and down Marcii’s spine.
“Alistair…” She breathed, her tone shaky and filled with uncertainty.
He smiled cruelly and his jet black eyes glinted against the brilliant white all around.
Marcii looked on helplessly.
How she could look into the same black coals of Reaper’s eyes, then Midnight’s, and now Alistair’s, and yet read three such different tales, she would never know.
It seemed almost impossible.
Almost.
“What are you doing here…?” Marcii eventually managed, though her words still quivered uncontrollably.
His grin only broadened until his lips curled up into a malicious sneer. It was clear that he saw the world through tinted glass, stained blood red.
“Why don’t we take a walk, you and I?” He suggested.
His words melted through the cold air to reach Marcii’s ears, soothing her, whilst somehow at the same time warding her off.
She opened her mouth to speak, to reply, but not a sound escaped her grasp.
There was something he wasn’t telling her.
Something nobody had told her.
She could sense it.
His malicious sneer withheld something from her so vital and so personal that she yearned to listen to him.
Every sense within her told her to leave.
But she couldn’t.
He didn’t even offer her what she wanted.
Smiling, he kept it concealed, simply to torment her.
Finally, giving in at last, Marcii swallowed heavily and drew a deep breath.
“Okay…” She conceded.
Chapter Sixteen
Kaylm Evans stirred into waking and stretched his aching body upon the hard, icy ground. The fire that he’d fallen asleep beside had stifled and died and in turn the cold had crept past the dancing orange barrier to sink into the young man’s bones.
Glancing around, he saw that he was alone.
He felt quite guilty when he realised that his initial reaction was relief.
So much had happened that he didn’t understand and each notion he thought of filled him with more disbelief than the last.
Finally, settling upon one emotion, his racing mind quelled and quieted.
Grief seized him as he thought of his parents.
Surely Marcii had gone through the same thing when her parents had been killed? After she’d disappeared?
Strangely though, Kaylm’s mourning didn’t grip him too tightly. After perhaps half an hour or so it began to slip from his grasp.
Once again guilt swarmed through him.
He was supposed to feel the dreadful pain of loss, wasn’t he?
But then, as his thoughts raced and threw images at him: horrible, disgusting images of all those people who had been tortured and mutilated and murdered of late, Kaylm thought that perhaps he shouldn’t dwell too much on just one loss.
There were too many for him to abide such thoughts for all that long though. Very soon he began to feel decidedly depressed.
Rising to his feet and pushing such notions to the back of his mind as best he could, the young Evans went in search of somebody.
Malorie and Reaper were nowhere to be found and Kaylm wasn’t even sure where to start looking.
It would be easier to locate Marcii or Midnight, he decided, as he found two sets of tracks in the snow that were clearly theirs, branching off and out into the abandoned town.
Naturally he followed the smaller prints, searching instinctively for Marcii.
It wasn’t that he disliked the old man Midnight, but rather that he was wary of him.
He had deceived so many people for so long and in fact seemed more twisted up in these killings than anybody else that it really was quite unnerving.
Sighing, unsure what to think anymore, Kaylm trudged through the cold in pursuit of his dearest childhood friend. Perhaps Marcii could even be called his childhood sweetheart, for she had always been at the very centre of his world.
He trailed after her through the empty streets, all but devoid of l
ife to the naked eye.
For the best part of an hour he followed her tracks through the snow, winding left and right down streets and alleys and gullies. After a while Kaylm wondered where in the world she was going, though of course she had no way of knowing that she was leading him there too, wherever that might be.
Confusion flitted into Kaylm’s eyes as he saw that the tracks he presumed belonged to Marcii were joined by another.
Midnight’s perhaps?
Though, the more he examined them, the more he thought they didn’t look the same as those he’d seen leading away from the fire…
At last, rounding another corner and passing beneath a spiralling stone staircase that seemed to somehow wind up and across the street above his head, Kaylm spied movement out of the corner of his eye.
He turned and saw the flicker of a figure passing in and out of sight.
It was not Marcii’s sheepskin that he’d seen, but instead the sleeve of a rumpled, black suit.
Though wholly inappropriate for the weather, and for travel alike, the old man Midnight had never even suggested that he needed to change into more suitable attire.
Either way, nobody had questioned it.
Kaylm instinctively headed after him, breaking into a jog filled with urgency that he didn’t quite understand.
Eventually he caught up with the old man.
Seeing him ahead he called out his name.
Midnight flinched and dropped to a crouch, spinning and whipping his head around to face Kaylm with a wild eyed glare.
Halting, and in fact even taking a step or two back, Kaylm raised his hands defensively, filled with fearful uncertainty.
After a moment or two though, seeing that it was Kaylm, the old man’s gaze softened and he raised himself back up to stand. He approached the young boy with apologetic eyes.
“I’m sorry.” He offered as he drew nearer to Kaylm. “I thought you were someone else…”
The old man’s eyes looked troubled and filled with concern.
