Amanda didn’t know what to say. Even if she did, she didn’t know if she’d be able to say it past the lump in her throat. Her truest friend, willing to kill himself for her daughter.
‘Thank you,’ she managed.
‘What are family for?’
It was an awkward embrace, Amanda could barely lift her arms, Caleb was too sore to be touched.
‘Weirdest beating I ever gave,’ said Caleb as they pulled away. He cracked his knuckles. ‘Good thing I’m an expert.’
‘Will this do?’ Amanda asked Steph.
‘I think so,’ she replied, wide-eyed.
‘Get ready then.’
‘Fuck, can’t feel my hands,’ Caleb shook them to keep the circulation going. ‘Going to avoid the face, work the right-hand side a bit more.’ He tapped the demon’s ribs with his left hand. ‘Cracked the left ribs, don’t fancy doing them worse.’ He took a deep breath, gingerly scratched at his nose. ‘Weirdest fucking beating I ever gave.’
‘Just don’t start until I say.’
‘You are a pawn,’ said Reeves. A smirk hadn’t left his face since they’d started talking. ‘You think this your own idea but she has manipulated you.’
‘Sounds like he’s scared,’ said Caleb.
‘I think you’re right.’ Amanda wished she could smile at the thought.
‘Just say the word.’ Caleb set his feet, fists up like a boxer in front of the punching bag.
‘You ready?’ said Amanda to Steph.
The girl had managed to throw her fatigue aside. She’d rooted through her bag, gathered what she needed.
‘This still might not come out right,’ she said, working the string around her fingers.
The knife was beside her, the blade polished bright. Amanda weighed it in her hands, studied the symbols in the metal.
‘We’ve done everything we can. You can plan and plan, but eventually you got to shit or get off the pot. The rest you take as it comes.’
Steph frowned as she set her hands apart, stretching the string taut between them. She was trying not to cry though whether for Caleb or for herself it was hard to say.
As instructed, Amanda delicately placed the knife flat over the loops. ‘Be quick. Do it right.’
‘What if this doesn’t work?’
‘Do I try to break the string like last time?’
‘There’s the knife, you’ll hurt yourself.’
‘Let me worry about that.’
Steph breathed hard down her nose, brow furrowed.
‘You ready, Caleb?’ The words almost caught in Amanda’s throat.
Caleb’s fists came up. ‘Say the word.’
‘I’ll have the painkillers ready for when we’re done.’
‘Aye. Can’t get enough of those. You’re going to owe me so many pints when we get home.’
‘Believe me, you’ll get them.’
Steph clenched her teeth, nodded, the string playing between her fingers.
‘Just be ready with the first aid box or something?’ Her hands started working; simple, silent knots. Amanda did as she was told, setting the box down next to her and holding it on her lap.
‘You should be looking at me, Amanda,’ said Reeves.
Caleb rocked on the balls of his heels. ‘Want me to—?’
‘Just give her a minute,’ said Amanda. ‘Let her get into it.’
Steph’s hands began to move faster and faster, the knots more and more complex. But this time the blade was part of the pattern, turning this way and that as the strings pushed it, spinning it around like a pin in a gyroscope.
The knife-blade taste of magic touched Amanda’s tongue.
‘Amanda?’
‘Do it.’
‘Look at me, Amanda,’ Reeves snarled. ‘Look at what you’ve brought this—’
The first punch caught it straight in the nose, a practiced, measured jab that snapped its head back.
Amanda flinched, forced herself to keep watching as Caleb shot her a look of apology. Reeves growled, blood from his nose staining his lip and bared teeth. Both his lips were split.
And then they weren’t, the cuts sealing themselves before their eyes. Blood pattered to the floor as Caleb’s nose began to gush.
Caleb only sniffed, wiped at his face with the back of a hand. ‘This takes the fucking cake,’ he said, thickly, stepped forward again for a second shot.
The girl was well underway, the blade darting and flicking in every direction, as though held in place by a shimmering bubble of string, trying to nose its way out. Amanda couldn’t help but lean away, picturing the thing flying out and burying itself between her eyes.
There came the familiar butcher’s sound behind him – Caleb hard at work. The smack of meat, the cry of pain mingled with the big man’s grunt of exertion.
It felt like the last time. She was back sitting on that upturned filing cabinet, curled over and cringing at every blow, sweat from her palms salting her cigarette.
She forced herself to watch.
Caleb was already beginning to slow, his breath laboured, his face and clothes ribboned with blood. He let out a low growl ‘fuck’ and shook his head in an attempt to clear it.
‘Are you watching,’ Reeves called. His tone was ice cold, depths cold, but there was effort behind it. It was as Amanda expected, centuries tearing through people however it pleased, had made the demon soft. Reeves didn’t like to experience pain and now all of his attention was on shifting his wounds to Caleb as quickly as the chains would allow.
‘You OK?’ she asked Caleb.
‘Never better,’ Caleb mumbled. ‘You finished yet?’
‘Not yet.’
The blade between Steph’s hands was a blur, humming in a silver ball, everywhere at once. Steph was looking at it intently. Only one of her pupils were missing, looking elsewhere while one stayed fixed on the blade that was resolutely here. Though sometimes it wasn’t. In the space of a blink, Amanda was sure that there were times when she was only looking at squirming string.
She didn’t dare ask how it was going, didn’t want to break the girl’s concentration.
Another smack behind her, the sound striking her to the very core, like her ribs were rattling around her heart.
It was impossible not to see her son in those chains. The bruises and swellings gone, so like his father, being beaten by the disfigured abomination in the boots and long coat. Her little boy was in trouble.
She silently urged Steph to hurry. What was taking so long? It had been minutes already.
Caleb looked over to her, his tongue flicking out to taste the blood that ran from his nose and down his chin. His eyes were bleary, glazed with pain. ‘Want I should stop?’
She wanted to say ‘yes’. She could feel Simon watching her, could feel his disapproval, feel his pleading inside her. ‘How you feeling?’
‘Keep going if you want me to.’
It took a ruthless, callous bastard to say yes. ‘Not long’, she promised. ‘We’ve almost got it.’
The blade was definitely disappearing. Each time it flickered from sight for longer, and as it did Steph’s remaining pupil contracted, shrinking down until it was gone.
There was only the string now, but Amanda was sure that she could see where the knife wasn’t, a space where it would have been, where it still might be, just, somewhere else. The string writhed and undulated around the girl’s flickering fingers.
She began to sing, shaky at first then growing in confidence, repeating the notes that Caleb had taught her.
This was it. If there was any time the girl was at her most vulnerable, it was now.
Another crack and Caleb gave a long animal moan of pain, ending in a gargle.
The big man was bent over double, breathing hard. Sweat dripped from the tip of his bloody nose. The broken skin over his knuckles was shining, the palms staining his jeans as he gripped his thighs for support.
Reeves stood tall in his chains, looking down his nose on the crouching hu
lk before him with an imperious air.
‘You OK?’ asked Amanda. ‘Caleb?’
‘I can’t…’ Caleb’s lips were pressed tight, like he was trying not to vomit. When he spat it was red. ‘Head’s fucking swimming.’
‘You have to keep going. She’s not done yet.’
Caleb convulsed, a thin dribble of puke leaking through his swollen lips, beading down his front and mixing with the blood.
Steph gave a shuddering gasp like ice cold hands had grabbed her around the middle. She stiffened and for the smallest moment the pattern failed, a note cracked in half.
‘No, wait. Leave her,’ Amanda ordered Reeves.
Reeves’ pupils were gone, leaving only her son’s hazel irises. He was deeper in that void, deeper in that place where his shape wasn’t a man’s.
‘Caleb, hit him.’
Caleb tried to straighten and jerked back down with a huff of air like there was a hook in his belly.
‘Caleb!’
The big man shook his head, eyes squeezed shut, trembling like a kicked dog.
Spit flecked Amanda’s face as Steph chuffed through her teeth, face screwed up and growing pink with pain. Her fingers were faltering, the smooth motions beginning to stutter.
Amanda clenched her fists, knowing what she had to do, unable to tell her muscles to do it, tendons taut and frozen.
Steph’s cry rent the air, blood spilling from her nose in a sudden stream. She was doggedly trying to keep up the chant.
It felt like Amanda was floating, watching herself as her fist crashed into the side of her son’s jaw. She shouted something, but didn’t hear what it was, the word jagged in her throat.
Reeves’ head snapped to the side, blood spattering the floor and wall. Caleb spat out the rest onto his hands.
The girl gave a gasp of relief, heaved lungful after lungful of air.
Amanda shook her hand, the pain of the collision incredible. Inside her gloves, she could already feel the split skin on her knuckles.
Reeves was back up, his pupils disappearing again. Amanda was weaker than her friend, she was fighting the weight of the chains. There was no way she’d be able to keep it up or be even half as effective as Caleb had been.
She had to try something else.
Steph began to moan again.
Caleb was still bent double, his breathing rough, arms cinched around his middle.
It was up to her. She had to do something. There had to be something. Something in the room she could use.
Steph’s moan became a scream.
Her hands were around her son’s throat. Darren’s eyes bulged as Amanda settled her grip, fingers stiffening to iron bars, thumbnails digging, digging.
Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think.
Caleb fell to his knees.
She couldn’t stop herself, Amanda realised. Even if she wanted to, she didn’t dare stop. She was tired and angry and in pain and she just wanted it to end. She wanted Michaela, she didn’t want to think of her in AK’s hands any longer, every minute she spent with him another wound.
Strengthless hands pushed against her back, Caleb trying to stop her, his crushed throat unable to make a sound. Darren’s eyes were bloodshot urging her on.
‘Amanda!’
There was the blade. She saw it between Steph’s hands, for a split second. It was coming back.
But she didn’t dare let up. Every muscle and tendon up her hands and arms was a string of hot pain.
Caleb slumped to the floor behind her, incapable of little more than a rhythmic click in the back of his mouth. The smack of his lips was like a drowning fish.
Silence. Nothing but the flutter of the string in Steph’s fingers.
The blade was almost completely visible again. Slowing its gyrations until Amanda could make out the details on the handle once again.
Amanda’s hand fell limp to her side, every tendon in her hands stretched and sore. She felt like she’d gone ten rounds and on the inside… She squeezed her eyes, not wanting to think on it. Dirty, she felt dirty and sick.
Reeves didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. His jaw was swelling where Amanda had punched him, the bruise growing before his eyes, like watching an apple rapidly moulder.
It didn’t fade, a guilty reminder of what she’d done.
Swallowing back the urge to vomit, Amanda crouched down at Caleb’s side, rolled him onto his back.
‘No. Caleb. Fuck. Wake up. Come on. Please, Caleb.’
She couldn’t see the man’s eyes, hidden under the bruising. But the continuous growl of his breath had stopped. ‘No. Shit.’ Amanda worked two hands into the folds of man’s neck, looking for a pulse, finding none.
She didn’t remember what happened next.
There was an effort to resuscitate him but she didn’t know CPR. There was screaming. There were tears. There was black, black guilt.
But Caleb never came back.
Chapter 31
Amanda
The present – ten hours to destination
She sat by Caleb’s body, the hole inside her wider than ever before. How much of her life had she destroyed now? Almost all of it. Her family, her house, her friends. Caleb had been that final pillar of support, someone to help her navigate the aftermath should she manage to walk away from all this. Now she’d spent him too.
She could kill Reeves, save Michaela, but there was no going back to the woman she was before. A life was as much built on the people and places around a person as the thoughts and feelings on the inside. Now she was truly adrift, alone in a void with only her daughter to guide her. No Simon to mellow her, no Caleb to offer caution, no Darren and Emily to anchor her.
And she’d done it all to herself. To survive. And to keep that little piece of herself, that fierce independence, that sense of self-worth, that she seemed to hold higher than everything else.
That little piece she’d forged herself the day she’d killed her father. The day she’d made herself a legend.
Thirty years ago
Amanda had memorised every nick and scratch in the front door. She’d been staring at it so long it was a wonder that she hadn’t burned holes in the woodwork.
The bedroom at the top of the stairs was quiet, Mum’s sobs had reduced to tears to whimpers and then to nothing at all. She’d be sleeping now. And when she woke she’d put on her face and fresh clothes to hide the bruises, put dinner on and talk in a bright voice that would have all the warmth of the microwave bulb. Amanda would be expected to join in on the act, sit at the table, answer questions about school, a conversation they wouldn’t even be having if they were actually happy. And Dad would sit there, shovelling food into his mouth, staring across the plate, daring his daughter to break character.
The anger was trembling through her like her nerves were hot copper wire, her blood cold battery acid that she could taste on the tip of her tongue. The fresh cut on her arm throbbed with her pulse. She held the hurt close, recharged her fury minute by minute. She had to keep wiping her brow and licking her lips.
The gun shook in her hand. In the films they seemed to weigh nothing. This thing tired her arm just holding it, so now it sat in her lap, her grip adjusting and readjusting, finger on the trigger, both barrels pointed at the door.
The phone started to ring and the gun almost went off. She rocked back on the stair, eyes rolling to the ceiling cursing herself for almost fucking the whole thing up.
She let it ring, each trill of the bell grating her ears.
She counted them, trying to breathe in and out in time with each burst. It reached eighteen and a half before it cut off, the last ring dying into silence.
Minutes passed, measured out in mops of her brow, another corkscrew of the same thoughts and fears boring down through her head. What if she missed? What if the gun didn’t go off and she was left sitting there, Dad glaring from the front step? What if it went off but the old man didn’t die?
But each time she felt the cut on her arm,
thought of her mother’s sobs, she readjusted her grip, airing her palms to dry the sweat. She was angry, determined and fourteen years old.
Dad had pulled this shit since she was eight. At least she thought so. Maybe that was just when she got old enough to understand that what Dad did was wrong.
She’d always known her Dad was an Abra, knew he did it for people who were less than legal. But to a girl, her old man had been a hero, a magic-user flouting the law like Robin Hood, or the Sundance Kid. She’d liked the secrecy of it, of playing make believe with her friends, hypnotising cops, turning guns into rabbits and making cash disappear from vaults. Dad had laughed when Amanda had told him. It didn’t work like that, he’d said and later when he’d been drinking he’d asked how a daughter of his could be so fucking dumb.
But then something had changed, or become more obvious, Amanda didn’t know which. Dad had started bringing magic home. He controlled people at work, made them do things, why not his wild kid and mouthy wife? First it had been punishments when they didn’t behave, then it had been when Dad had been out drinking, then it had become all the time. He couldn’t do it to both of them at once but he didn’t need to. As Amanda had grown, so had her strength until she could overpower her mum when she was made to. When it was the other way around, her love for her mother had stopped her from defending herself. So long as one was under, they were both controlled.
It got to be that Amanda was desperate for the escape of school. Weekends were long sessions of torture, where her body wasn’t even her own. She’d go to school angry on Mondays, tearful Tuesdays, happy Wednesdays and fretful again Thursdays. If she went to school at all. Sometimes she just needed to be gone, somewhere where no one had a say over what she did. Her body was hers. Her decisions were hers.
Well this was her decision now.
She’d already tried running. Second time, wise enough not to trust any of his Abra friends, she’d managed to scavenge enough money for a train. But the old man had noticed Amanda’s eagerness for him to leave the house and forced the information from her. The third time she’d had an idea to get some drugs, put them somewhere to be found and call the police, get her father sent away. Amanda didn’t even get as far as thinking how to acquire the drugs. Dad, catching the look in her eye, had beat twelve kinds of shit out of her until she’d given up what had been in her head.
The End of the Line Page 33
