My voice carried well enough to send a shocked murmur through the carriage. The guards drew breath and one prodded my ear with his rifle. In their world it must be unthinkable to make threats against demons of Vileheart’s high standing.
Ignoring me, Luther Vileheart addressed the Shuffleheads in that reverse-sounding tongue. They pushed us towards the prisoners.
‘Take your place with the others,’ one Shufflehead said. ‘Steady now. One false move and they’ll . . . we’ll hit you with all we’ve got.’
The train rocked and a shrill squeal of brakes needled into my skull. Outside the window, ghostly tunnel lights gave way to a first sight of the platform under Mercy Road school and a splash of white wall running alongside it.
‘It won’t be long, Mum,’ I said, kneeling over her. ‘It’ll soon be over.’
She stared into space, frail-faced as she’d been on the day of her first hospital clinic.
Now Becky settled down with her, gathering Mum’s good hand in both of hers. If Becky was afraid, she was putting on a bold face. ‘I swear I won’t let anything happen, Ben. Don’t worry about us, think about what you’ve got to do.’ She paused. ‘You know what I mean.’
The brakes shrieked again. The train was slowing. Luther Vileheart’s eyes fixed on something outside the window.
The platform was as busy as the one before, but there was no order here, only chaos and confusion. Vigilants who’d come to seize the train had been met by heavy resistance and were running pitched battles with enemy guardsmen. Bodies from both sides littered the red-spattered platform under a shroud of smoke. Some defenders were attack-dog-shaped, iron-jawed and sharp-fanged, like those on the train. Three were playing tug-of-war with a Vigilant who lay tattered and struggling on the ground. His eyes met mine through the glass for an instant, then rolled up to white. A demon staggered past the window in flames, thrashing its many limbs until a hail of rifle shots felled it. The thing lay still, radiating black smoke and ashes.
There were shots and cries and jets of flame everywhere. Shadow-like entities swirled above the mayhem, others swept down to join in. One closed itself over a Vigilant, smothering him from head to foot in darkness until there was nothing of him to see. The Shifter soared away, carrying him screaming with it.
Meanwhile, further down the platform and barely visible through the smoke, four figures were making an exit. A blast of fire at their heels – a Vigilant torching a many-mouthed attack dog as two others sprang at him from behind – made one of them, Kate Stone, stop and turn.
Even from here I could see the nerves tugging at her face. She and Joe Mort had the last two Bad Saturday prisoners, a hobbling elderly couple, and were guiding them towards a walkway tunnel. The conflict had given Joe’s team a perfect opportunity to steal in, and it was still escalating along the platform when they quietly slipped away.
Luther Vileheart gave a furious shout, and the train jerked ahead without stopping. Without the two elderly souls the Ministry had recaptured, it had no reason to stop. While I hadn’t understood a word he’d said, I knew he’d given the order to keep going.
Moments before we re-entered the tunnel, an almighty roar went up on the platform and a figure flashed through the warring crowds towards the train, moving so fast I saw only a black and bronze blur. Its power must have been enormous. Enemy guardsmen scattered around it like wind-blown leaves, collapsing to the ground in a blood-red mist. The train lurched, struck by an incredible force. A shock wave rolled through the carriage, throwing a number of demons to the floor while others flapped for balance.
‘True to his word, as ever,’ Mr October said to Luther Vileheart. ‘Unless I’m mistaken, a certain one-man army has just crashed your party.’
Vileheart’s eyes faltered. His expression turned rapidly from bewildered to terrified to murderous, and if looks could kill, I thought, Mr October’s name would be arriving on the telegraph anytime now.
‘The berserker,’ said Vileheart.
The enemy guardsmen shuddered.
The train rolled on into the dark.
‘The very same,’ said Mr October. ‘So why don’t you and your pestilent minions cut your losses while you can and give back what you’ve taken?’
‘Over my festering body,’ said Vileheart.
‘As you wish,’ Mr October replied – but it was Luther Vileheart who struck first.
With blinding speed he lashed out a hand, and a streak of white lightning leapt from the tip of his long curving index finger to thump Mr October full in the chest, rocking him back on his heels. A smell of singed clothing filled the cramped space. The guards held their straining attack dogs, ready to unleash them on Vileheart’s command. The train thundered on, dipping and swerving from dark to deeper dark.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ said Mr October, his features contorting. ‘You won’t like me when I’m angry.’
‘I never liked you in the first place,’ said Vileheart. ‘Or did I not make that clear?’
We’d entered a kind of stand-off, us and them, everyone silent and twitchy and waiting for the next move. And all the while a confusion of roars and screams further back in the train were coming nearer.
‘Becky?’ I said.
Becky nodded. She knew what I wanted and had already draped herself over Mum to protect her. She knew it was about to start, and Mum sensed it too, letting out an anguished cry.
‘There now,’ Becky said. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right. . .’
Becky shouldn’t have come, I hadn’t wanted her to, but now I was glad she had. I couldn’t trust anyone else to do what she was doing. If anyone could take care of Mum, it was her.
‘Forget about us, Ben,’ she said. ‘Get your mind right!’
‘Quit jabbering,’ Vileheart said, training his lightning finger on Becky.
I stepped in front of her as he let rip, and a bolt of pain jarred my hip, spinning me full circle. It felt like something had bitten a chunk out of me. A metallic scent of blood mingled in my nose with the smell of scorched clothing, and I only kept my footing because Lu put out an arm to steady me.
‘You go to hell,’ I told Vileheart, and without effort, hardly aware of what I was doing, I rolled a thought out towards him – a little parcel of anger.
Vileheart looked at me in total astonishment and touched his upper lip, feeling the first trickle of the nosebleed. He frowned at his slick red fingers, then glowered at me, baring a mouthful of pointy off-white teeth.
‘Well, now,’ he said. ‘What else have you got?’
‘There’s more where that came from,’ I said. ‘I’ll show you.’
And then it began.
All at once the attack dogs were free. Another lightning bolt lanced across the carriage, missed Lu by a fraction and punched out a window behind her. In response, Lu turned her invisible blade on the first snarling dog that came her way, stopping it dead in mid-leap, while Mr October flicked a fireball which took out two guards at once. One moment they were shouldering arms, the next they were tottering figures of flame.
But I’d turned my sights on Luther Vileheart. Our eyes locked across the carriage. I knew what should follow – that nosebleed was only the start – but a hooked weapon sliced my midriff, and a stunning blow caught me under the jaw, knocking me off my feet.
For the next few seconds I was gone. Like the train, I was hurtling through a tunnel with no light at the end, but a thunderous roar brought me back, a terrifying sound from the carriage behind.
The adjoining door disintegrated, and the Shuffleheads jumped aside as a procession of enemy guards poured through. We were already outnumbered, we didn’t stand a chance against this many – but they hadn’t come for us. They were fleeing in terror from the full-blooded battle cry behind them. A tidal wave was crashing through the train, an unstoppable force of nature, and its name was Kirk Berserker.
He came like a man possessed, twirling an axe in one hand and a sword in the other, slicing and flattening eve
rything in his path. On his head he wore a helmet with a red Uruz symbol, across his chest a breastplate of burnished bronze. His face was a bare-toothed picture of fury as he tore through the carriage, spraying the walls with enemy blood, and all the while his shout rose and soared. He paused only to tip me a wink as he went.
‘Hi kid, how’s it going?’
He then set his sights on a charging attack dog, plucking it from the floor with one huge hand, making a face in disgust at the snapping mouths that covered its body and hurling it with great force at the doors.
Meanwhile another fearsome warrior had materialised in the carriage, a shield and gleaming sword in his hands. He fought in a frenzy, tearing into the guardsmen as they threw themselves at him, and when some reverted to shadow shapes he sliced with precise strokes of the blade, carving apart their darkness until there was nothing left but empty space.
The two warriors exchanged a glance and a respectful nod. I’d been wondering who this new one was and where Mr October had gone, but now I knew that they were one – this was the personality Mr October preferred to keep hidden, the one Kirk called the whirlwind.
The train raced on, sucking hot air through its fractured windows. The demons were still multiplying, their shadows drifting in from the tunnel through air vents and cracks in the glass. The darkness they brought threatened to overtake us, and now the lights were failing again.
‘Ben!’ Lu said.
She was sprawled on the floor nursing a scalp wound, the blood matting her forehead and darkening her fingers, but she wasn’t the least bit concerned about the injury. She was gesturing at the far end of the carriage, where Luther Vileheart was backing away, feeling for the door-handle behind him, beating a coward’s retreat.
If he thought he could slip away unnoticed, he’d better think again. Setting off after him, I ducked to avoid a flying head severed by a swing of Kirk’s axe. The head rebounded from a window to land at his feet, its lips spitting curses and its eight eyes staring hatefully up at him until Kirk kicked the thing away like a football.
I looked again for Vileheart. Vileheart wasn’t there. The door he’d taken flapped open and shut in time with the train. A pathway had opened all the way to it between piles of hacked-off limbs and twitching tails, but the injured hadn’t given up the fight yet. One severed hand lashed at my ankles as I ran, and a suckered arm looped itself around my knee, tightening like a vice. Lu, on her feet again, sliced it away.
I didn’t look back. Leaping clear of a snake demon slithering across my path, I flung myself through to the next compartment.
Luther Vileheart had reached the far door when he sensed me there and spun round. A forked tongue flicked around his lips and his vertical pupils sent a wave of icy bad air my way.
I started towards him. He stood his ground. A fireball detonated in the prisoners’ carriage behind me and I felt its heat on my back but refused to look. It was just me and Vileheart now.
Fear, Mr October had said, makes us make mistakes but also gives us focus. I was gripped by fear, frozen by it, but I had something else – and all my pain was directed at the entity in front of me. All of this carnage and hurt and misery were because of him.
He knew what I was thinking. The doubt crossed his face and he again touched his lip, expecting the nosebleed. His dark aura crackled, and I felt a pressure in my skull as if the bad vibes he was sending out carried a physical force. I didn’t dare turn away, but it sounded like the hostilities were tailing off. Kirk Berserker’s roar was becoming a triumphant cry.
‘It’s ending,’ I said. ‘Vileheart, you’re finished.’
Vileheart scoffed. ‘Didn’t they tell you? There is no end. There’s no beginning. This is how it always was and will be. You’re marked for life, Harvester, because of the choices you’ve made – and not just for life. In a moment I’ll break you to pieces and then you’ll see for yourself.’
‘Why should I listen to you? You’re a murderer, a liar, a coward—’
‘And you’re even less than that.’ The black cloud snapped with white lightning. ‘You’re a statistic, a number on our hit list.’
‘You know what you can do with your list,’ I said, but I didn’t get to finish what I’d started.
I’d been watching his hands for sudden movements, but the lightning bolt leapt from the aura itself, flashed across the carriage and caught me full in the chest. Its force was astonishing, like nothing I’d ever known. It slammed me back against the wall, stopping my heart for several beats. My mind whited out and I started to sag, but the next thing I knew I was being lifted off my feet, not by Vileheart’s hands but by the strength of his mind.
His face was rigid with concentration and his hands were uplifted like an orchestral conductor’s. When he flipped at the ceiling I must’ve hit it hard enough to leave a permanent imprint across it. The impact was still rattling my bones long after I’d hit the floor.
‘Imagine an eternity of this,’ Luther Vileheart said in a voice that sounded miles away, trapped in an echo chamber. ‘An eternity of suffering. That’s what you signed up for when you took sides.’
I was straining for consciousness, willing myself not to slip away. As my head slowly cleared I looked down my body, aware of a throbbing pain coming from somewhere. I must have broken something, at least cracked a couple of ribs, but the sight of my left hand’s little finger doubled back on itself nearly made me pass out.
The commotion in the prisoners’ compartment sounded more muted. A series of shots, a gargling high-pitched cry, the ferocious swish of a blade . . . all of these sounds floated past me. But then another sound, the faintest of voices, came into my head.
‘Ben . . . where’s Ben?’
My mother. She was still here, still with us, and she knew my name. That was all I needed to know. Thank you, Becky, I thought. Thank you for being there.
And somewhere inside the whirling space in my head I found what I needed, I saw what I wanted to see. With every rattle and roll of the train the picture came clearer.
The train I was hearing wasn’t this one. It was the train Dad had taken from Edinburgh to London four years ago. I saw him now, seated by the window, looking out at the green and brown land, not knowing that this journey home would take so long to end. And I heard him years before that, reading me bedtime stories in a mellow voice that made me feel safe. I saw the mischievous look in his eye one night when Mum went to bed early and he let me stay up with him to watch my first horror film, Brides of Dracula. I remembered how he’d covered my eyes with his hand during the scary parts and said, ‘Don’t look now!’ Mum would’ve gone spare if she’d known, but she never found out. It was our secret, something we shared, and next morning at breakfast Dad had smiled and winked at me over his newspaper when Mum asked why I looked tired.
Don’t look now, Dad, I thought. This one’s for you.
As I hauled myself to my knees, Vileheart made a whimpering sound and stumbled back three, four paces. By the time I was on my feet he was visibly shaking. The nosebleed hadn’t started again, but instead his bloodshot eyes were streaming crimson tears down his cheeks. He clamped both hands to his head as if to stop it exploding, but that wouldn’t help him – nothing would help him now.
Vileheart staggered back, his mouth locked open in a silent scream. The pain poured out of me and all the way through him. This was for what he’d done to my family, for everything he’d taken, for Mum and Dad and all the hope and faith and love he’d tried to smash.
And when hope and faith and love run out, I thought, remembering the comic adventures of the Lords of Sundown, you’re left with one thing only.
‘You’re out of luck,’ I said, and that was when Luther Vileheart’s face began to cave in.
A few more seconds and it would be over. I’d teach him a thing or two about suffering. I had my focus, the picture was bright and sharp, and I was only vaguely aware of the raised voices and heavy footsteps in the carriage behind me.
Two gua
rdsmen passed me left and right, skirted around Luther Vileheart without looking at him and ran to the carriage in front. I didn’t give them a glance or a thought. I couldn’t be distracted now. The picture was nearly complete, and it was time to finish what I’d started.
Vileheart slumped to his knees, clawing with both bony hands at his rupturing face. ‘Please. . .’ he said, although it was hard to understand because he no longer had much of a throat. ‘Please, I was only following orders. . .’
‘Orders to kill and steal,’ I said.
‘Ben?’
A voice at my shoulder. I shrugged it off.
‘The train, Ben,’ the voice came again. Becky’s voice. ‘The Shuffleheads went to stop it. We have to leave. We have to get off now.’
My concentration snapped. My body went slack. That must have been the moment Luther Vileheart slipped away.
A firm hand steadied me and I looked up into the placid eyes of Kirk Berserker. Behind him were a range of other familiar faces – Lu and Becky, still holding on to Mum, and Mr October with the three Bad Saturday survivors.
‘Sometimes, kid,’ Kirk said, scratching his beard, ‘you have to know when the battle’s won and there’s nothing more to do.’
But I was shaking, still seeing red.
‘Ben, that’s enough,’ Becky said, looking at me as if she didn’t recognise me. ‘You have to stop now. Let it go.’
‘But I had him,’ I said, looking at the bloody patch on the floor where he’d been. It had taken him only a fraction of a second. He must had fled in shadow form through a vent or a door-space, perhaps changing shape again after that. He could be anywhere now. ‘I could have finished. . . I should have. . .’
‘You’re forgetting,’ Mr October said, beginning his sentence as the warrior and ending it as the gunslinger-pirate. ‘We have what we came for. Your mother is safe, their forces are in tatters and our business here is done. I’ve told you about personal feelings, Ben. There’s no place for revenge in our work.’
‘I see you have a few anger issues,’ Kirk Berserker said. ‘Believe me, no one knows more about that than me. We’ll have a little talk sometime, just the two of us.’
The Great and Dangerous Page 24
