The End of the Line

by The End of the Line (retail) (epub)

  ‘Darren?’ she was at the boy’s side, cradling his head, the boy’s face slack in her palms. ‘Darren, wake up, son, come on.’

  ‘His arms, Coleman,’ said Bridget, her voice cold, ‘look at his arms.’

  Amanda did as she asked, the command cutting through everything else, pulling back the sleeve of his long-armed T-shirt.

  Tattoos, just like Reeves had. But… but what the fuck did that mean?

  Bridget held open Reeves’ shirt. Beneath the filthy film of blood, the thing’s chest was bare, when Amanda had seen it scribbled with shifting tattoos the night of the summoning.

  ‘Fetch the box,’ she said. ‘We’ve got him.’

  Amanda wiped at the tears and blood in her eyes as she tried to catch up. The gun was still by his foot. She picked it up, its weight the only certain thing she had in her life.

  Bridget stepped back, hands in the air as Amanda swung it around.

  ‘Get him out.’

  Now it was Bridget’s turn to blink. ‘Coleman,’ she warned.

  ‘Move him into someone else. Move him into me.’

  ‘I can’t. Believe me. Wouldn’t I have done that already? Mr Barker—’

  ‘Get him out of my son.’

  ‘He’s gone, Coleman. I’m sorry but your son is gone.’

  Amanda glared, willing Bridget to suggest something that might just work. But she only stared back.

  ‘I can get you revenge,’ said Bridget. ‘That’s all I’ve got. But we’ll need to phone your boss.’

  Amanda’s phone chimed with a text and she knew exactly what image was waiting for her on the screen. AK had her daughter.

  Chapter 20

  Amanda

  The present – forty-seven hours to destination

  Reeves glared out from her son’s split face, as she finished explaining.

  Amanda stood frozen. She knew it wasn’t Darren any more. It was Darren’s voice but it didn’t sound like him. It was his wiry, teenage frame but it didn’t move like him. Reeves was wearing her boy’s flesh but the demon shone through as clear as the tattoos that swam under his skin.

  The wounds turned Amanda’s stomach, emotions flashing and colliding, spinning her until she was dizzy. Maternal instinct clashed with rage, love with hate. Grief was a yawning chasm in her chest and she didn’t know what to fill it with. She wanted to hug the boy. Or push his face away towards the wall so she didn’t have to see it. A scream and a sob were the same thing in her throat. She wanted to do it all at once and so she did nothing, unsure what would happen if she crossed that empty space between them. All she could do was not look away, force herself to feel the sweet-sick-bitter ache. She owed her son that much, not giving Reeves the satisfaction of seeing the hold he had on her.

  The thing was surely blind but he was looking straight into Amanda’s eyes through those big swollen slits, shadows like stitches in the folds. Reeves took in the room; the swinging lamps, the sweating walls, the detritus rolling on the floor with the rock of the carriage. The four of them, huddled before him.

  There was the ‘tap, tap’ of cooling metal where the burning quad bike had stood. The smell of petrol poisoned the air, tasted on the tip of the tongue.

  The chains creaked as the prisoner pulled his feet, toes dragging, beneath him. He stood, the chains bowing, taking the strain from his shoulders and arms. The boy flexed, bones popping in their sockets. The hardship on the boy’s body had taken its toll, fat whetted down to sinew until Amanda could see bone sliding under skin and scripture.

  There was no steam on the thing’s breath, where everyone else’s was a bright white cloud. His eyes took them in, cold and disdainful. The most pitiless gaze Amanda had ever seen.

  It was impossible not to feel small. Amanda was hyperaware of her soot-streaked face, hair and eyebrows singed, her blackened clothes, the stink of smoke. The others were no better, staring at the prisoner with varying expressions of horror.

  She realised she was holding her breath. Couldn’t let it go.

  ‘This will come to a grave end.’ It was her son’s voice, yet it wasn’t – so hard and cold. His face didn’t move properly as he talked, a mask. ‘You all feel it. None of you chose this. You have no hope. You cling to her plan for fear of drowning. She has made you feel there is no other way and that reward lies waiting for you. But there is no peace. She has already betrayed you.’

  Amanda didn’t know what to do, what to say, her mind a torrent.

  ‘Fuck’s he talking about?’ Skeebs’ voice was in constant tremor. There was a bruise blushing on his cheek.

  Was it a smile that twitched Reeves’ cheek or a spasm? ‘Your leader has made a bargain in exchange for this final desperate act. None of you will be allowed to return home. She has already provided a full confession to your employer. You will never see home.’

  They were all looking at her now. She tried, too late, to fix her expression and found she couldn’t. Reeves had flayed it away in seconds, leaving the shining, raw, ugly truth for them to see.

  ‘Fuck.’ Skeebs didn’t shout it. He didn’t need to. He took a step back, blinking like he’d just been slapped. ‘And after everything you… What about my brother, man?’

  ‘I didn’t have a choice,’ said Amanda, the words coming from afar. ‘Michaela, I… He’s just trying to push us apart. AK didn’t give me a choice. This was the only way.’

  ‘You lied to us,’ said Caleb, his face like granite. ‘Did your own thing. Again. Fuck the consequences.’

  ‘She abandoned you,’ said Reeves. ‘Your futures forfeit for her own.’

  ‘You fucking bitch. I knew it,’ said Skeebs. He began to storm towards her, stopped short when she brought the knife up between them.

  ‘She’s my little girl. She’s worth ten of any of us.’

  ‘She clings too. She doesn’t believe the plan will work, only that a solution will present itself before the circle. She hasn’t the stomach to do what is necessary,’ said Reeves.

  ‘We need to stop him talking.’

  ‘Stop him then,’ said Caleb.

  ‘He wants to punish you,’ Reeves turned his swollen eyes to Caleb, split lips cracking with a smile. ‘You have only to look at me to see.’ He twitched open his mouth, baring his red-lined teeth. ‘You shouldn’t have turned away, Amanda. You’d have seen how he poured himself into beating me. He drank every moment until he was full.’ He turned his head this way and that, allowing the shadows to play across his bruises, his bent nose. ‘He saw no killer. Just a defenceless boy – ribs cracked, teeth to splinters, cartilage to soup. Just Amanda. Reckless. Impervious. In need of a lesson on the pain he carries.’

  Caleb stared fixedly at the floor. Confirming everything.

  ‘Tell them how righteous it made you feel. You punished her for all the times she never listened. All the times she made the decisions and left you to pick up the pieces, reduced to nothing more than a tool. She ordered you to beat a boy you’d held as a babe. So that’s exactly what you did. You hate what she has made you become.’

  Amanda stood, breathless, obliterated. To hear everything that had been left unsaid spoken aloud and from the lips of her own son, no less. ‘Is…’ she could barely find the words, ‘is what he saying—’

  ‘Yes,’ Caleb growled. He looked up, his eyes shining with angry tears. ‘I tell you and I fucking tell you. And you never listen. I thought after Michael… after everything…’ Caleb squeezed his fists like he could bleed the words out. Amanda could see the nicks and scratches across his knuckles. Twenty-five years she’d seen those fists and now they stirred a cold, heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach. ‘Every time you do what you want to do and fuck the consequences. I tried to tell you in the train yard but you were already fucking us all over to get what you want. No discussion. Not even a fucking word. Amanda just doing what she wants. AGAIN!’ The words rang out, Caleb’s torn throat cracking with the effort, tears running down his face.

  ‘I told you not to go after Bre
kke. But God knows, any old friend of your father’s couldn’t walk on the same planet as Amanda. You had to try and take him so everyone would know Amanda was the smartest. Except you weren’t, were you? Then, after you fucked up and he came after you, who did he find? I had to watch him pulled from the water. My Michael. And there was… shit in his hair and I couldn’t hold his hand because his fingers were all… You did that.’ Caleb cleared his throat, words coming strong again, anger giving the words spine. ‘You did that. And I cleaned it up. I tore that fucker a new one. No fucking plans. I fucking went through him. And there were days I wished he’d fucking killed me. Instead of just breaking my throat. And sometimes I wish I’d killed him. Then I’d still be in prison. And you were so sorry. I wanted to believe you’d changed. But you never fucking did. You’re never going to change. What this thing says just proves it.’

  Reeves smiled. ‘This from the man you were going to trust to dispatch me. Do you really have what it takes to do it yourself?’

  Amanda swallowed, her throat coarse as sandpaper. She was acutely aware of the knife in her hand. She barely had the strength to keep her palm curled around the handle, let alone thrust it in between her boy’s ribs.

  She felt that weakness roll over into anger, into resentment. She knew Reeves was pulling her strings but that made no difference. The thing was using truth as a weapon, cold words cutting with scalpel precision. They cut just as deeply whether Amanda wanted them to or not.

  ‘Forget her.’ Skeebs was shaking, tears shimmering in his eyes, his bulky clothes making him look even smaller. But his mouth was set in grim defiance. His facial hair had grown in the hours that had passed, the peach fuzz only serving to make him look even younger. He flinched under Reeves’ sightless gaze and Amanda could see the cost it was taking the boy not to run. The boy’s face screwed up, like the next words were a stone, to either be spat or swallowed. ‘I’m gonna be the one put a knife in you.’

  Reeves only stared at him, no flicker of emotion until the boy began to sweat. Skeebs was standing his ground and every second was costing him.

  How had Skeebs escaped? Amanda wondered. That day when Reeves broke free? Had he really just been faster than two hundred others. Or was there more or less to it than that?

  ‘Stare at me all you want,’ said Skeebs. ‘But I’m not the one in fucking chains.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’ The response was so immediate, so sharp that the boy blanched like the words were a physical blow. Then the silence made the air weep with questions, their thoughts tugged in the directions Reeves dictated. Was it Reeves who couldn’t sleep? Who twitched with nightmares? Who jumped at small noises and suffered panic attacks?

  ‘You never delivered the message I gave you,’ Reeves continued. ‘I will finish delivering it myself. I will carve my message across your histories, on every man, woman and child who knew your names and thousands more besides. The day I broke free will seem a prelude to what I will do when I escape. Stadiums. Arenas. Rivers of blood. No demon will ever suffer the indignity of being controlled again. I will tarnish the very idea of summoning for centuries to come.’

  ‘You go anywhere near Danny—’

  ‘I will take the longest with him. And I will tell him how you pleaded for me to let you go. I will tell him how eagerly you leapt to fulfil my demands. He will die seeing you as the coward you truly are.’

  Skeebs hung his head, chastened, sweating and shivering.

  ‘You have nowhere to go,’ Reeves rattled the chains. ‘No one to turn to. But there are alternatives. Release me. I will kill your enemies. Save your loved ones. Teach you secrets.’

  There was only silence.

  Amanda looked to the others. None of them would meet her eye. They wore three identical frowns.

  She headed for the tumbled boxes.

  The contents were scattered across the floor but she found everything she was looking for.

  Steph curled herself tighter around the pages in her arms.

  There was a cloth bag tucked in Amanda’s armpit when she returned, a pair of headphones over her arm and in her hand, a ball gag. Without thinking, she held the gag out for Caleb to take.

  But the big man only folded his arms. The act of defiance was like a cold spear through Amanda – an old habit tainted.

  Reeves was watching, intently.

  ‘Open your mouth.’ Amanda couldn’t keep the tremor from her voice.

  Reeves smiled, tight-lipped.

  ‘I said open your mouth.’

  ‘I knew I could push you,’ he said. ‘Ever since our confrontation began, you have limited yourself. But remove your friend and you’ll do your own dirty work. You’ll even look your son in the face and gag him. Remove the girl and you’d do the ritual, even if it meant holding her down and bleeding her for the power.’

  Amanda’s heart caught against her ribs as Steph gasped.

  Reeves leaned forward in his chains, the metal grinding like bone on bone until they were straining at his arms. His bruises were clear on his dark skin in the light, underwired by the patterns of tattoos. ‘But it’s pointless. Your books are gone. The girl knows none of it. What she’s found is far beyond her comprehension. She hasn’t spoken out because she fears you. You’re all of you adrift. Here because you have nowhere else to be. Meaningless as pawns. I have gutted your pasts. Every choice left to you means destruction. You can argue, you can fight but it is nothing more than animal lust for survival. Your only hope is my mercy.’

  Bile burning at the back of her throat, eyes itching with more than smoke, Amanda pulled the gag into Reeves’ mouth, squeezing the strap tight. Reeves’ head bent back with the effort, the dark, stitched shadows of his eye slits locked on Amanda’s face.

  Amanda forced herself not to lick her lips, though her mouth was dry as dust. She forced herself not to cough though her throat was closing up.

  Her son’s face, she’d always marvelled at it, how much of his father was in him. Even now, she couldn’t stop seeing it, no matter how much it hurt. It had been easier to lock the fact away in her mind when Reeves had been unconscious but now here he was, standing and staring. But the more Reeves spoke the less of her boy she saw. That was worse.

  The thing didn’t look away from her. As soon as Amanda’s hands were away, it looked straight at her. Her son’s face was swollen and bruised and bloody, staring as she placed the headphones over its ears and the bag went over its head.

  Reeves didn’t struggle, didn’t demean himself by trying to talk. The chains relaxed as he stepped back, stood tall in them.

  She let out a slow breath that wouldn’t come smooth.

  The room was a big held breath, even the soot held in suspense. The air keened like a wine glass with the demon’s words, none of it a lie. The men refused to meet her eye, locked inside their own heads, eviscerated.

  Caleb was immovable, glaring stonily at the floor. Skeebs moved away to the boxes, arms up to his face, his whole body weak and trembling.

  Silent tears ran down the girl’s face, dripping from her chin, onto the papers clutched in her hand. The burned skin of her chin and mouth was a vivid, sore-looking red, speckled white by small blisters. Her eyes were pleading as she stared up at Amanda, filled with fear she’d only ever seen in the mirror.

  Amanda was numb. Her hands shook as she tried to find herself a cigarette, then remembered that Steph had taken her lighter. It would be in the debris somewhere stamped flat under someone’s boot heel.

  Her beloved cards, they were gone too.

  Soot flakes rattled across the paper as Steph twitched to life, hurriedly gathering those pages closest to her. Amanda could see that her hair had caught the flames, melted, clumped and shortened in places.

  Caleb climbed slowly to his feet. Now he was looking at Amanda, tears wet in the creases of his cheeks. She couldn’t read her friend’s expression, seeing only a stranger.

  Amanda wanted to say something, didn’t know if it would be angry or conciliatory or where she
would even begin. So she left it unsaid. Their friendship was over now. Maybe it had died the night she’d gone after Brekke. Now it was just another hole in her. What was she now but holes where her life had once been? Everything she had ever chased for, it had never filled her, only left her feeling more empty.

  Caleb retrieved his sleeping bag to resume his old sleeping spot.

  Skeebs was staring at her now, much as he’d been staring at Reeves; anger, defiance and fear mixed up and holding the boy straight. The way he trembled suggested the enormous urge to attack or curl up and die. ‘There anything else you ain’t telling us?’

  ‘We’re going home. You have to trust me.’

  ‘Trust you? Jesus, you even fucking told me. “Make it like they think the only options are the ones you’re giving them”. And as for that?’ the boy jabbed a finger at Reeves. ‘You think I couldn’t handle it?’

  ‘You didn’t need to—’

  ‘Fuck that. That why you’ve been so easy on him? That’s not your son in there. And if you don’t—’

  ‘My son!’ Amanda burst, fists screwed, face hot. ‘My son…’ She could hear her own voice, feel the brittleness of it. Any moment and it would break. She would break. ‘…is dead. He’s dead and I’m going to crack the thing that killed him out of his body. And you’re all going to shut the fuck up and help me.’

  Skeebs looked away, the emotion that darkened Amanda’s voice cowing him a moment. But he kicked back defiant.

  ‘Because that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Us helping you. I should have just told you how I got out so you could leave me the fuck alone. Saved myself the effort of dying in the cold.’

  ‘You could tell me now.’

  ‘Man…’ Skeebs shook his head and sighed, the anger draining from him. He wiped his hands over his face and for the first time since this had all begun, he seemed calm. ‘I’m not even going to argue with you. Far as I’m concerned, this is where we’re done. Your girl’s probably dead already. Because that’s how AK does…’ he shrugged. ‘I was just beginning to stand up to that thing? You see? I wasn’t afraid of it. It was awake and I thought we were… I mean I actually thought we still had…’ He shook his head like he couldn’t believe it. ‘Fuck, if we had some alcohol right now…’ Kicking things aside, he moved around Amanda and picked up his sleeping bag, shaking it to shed the sheaves of loose pages and errant playing cards that had caught in it.