Ruins (3 page)

A breeze stirred and Nicholas couldn’t help trembling. “Is it safe? Out here?”

“Oh yes,” Sam said. He pointed to the trees. “Don’t you see them?”

Nicholas peered at the band of poplars and noticed that a figure stood between each trunk.

“Sensitives,” Sam told him quietly. He winked.

Nicholas’s eyes widened. Sensitives. Like him. If that’s what he was. After his parents’ deaths, he’d become aware that he could sense things before they happened. In one of the library’s books, he’d read that Sensitives could do that, too.

Sam led him further into the clearing and they joined the crowd. The Sentinels had gathered for a memorial ceremony. After they had dealt with Diltraa’s remains, Jessica told Nicholas about what had happened in Cambridge in his absence. Sentinels were attacked and turned, including one of Sam’s friends, Richard. A lot of people had died in a tomb beneath a cemetery, and Nicholas was relieved Sam wasn’t one of them. No wonder the old man looked so tired.

His insides squirmed when he thought about Malika and her demon master, Diltraa. They had orchestrated a plan to break into Hallow House and they’d succeeded, almost killing Jessica. A swell of pride briefly stilled the squirming anxiety. He’d been responsible for chasing Malika away. He’d used his powers to buckle the witch’s defences and even glimpsed some of her own dark thoughts.

He frowned at the memory. He’d seen Malika huddling naked in a corner of the Pentagon Room. The image felt old, like a piece of the past, and he still didn’t understand what it meant.

Meanwhile, Diltraa had been slain by Esus, the silver-masked phantom who guided Jessica.

Shaking off those troubling thoughts, Nicholas contemplated a crude wooden structure at the centre of the dell; it was a platform with a set of steps. The Sentinels crowded in front of it eagerly, though they were disarmingly solemn. Firelight filled the clearing; night had yet to fall, but a number of wooden posts had been driven into the ground and set ablaze. They reminded Nicholas of Guy Fawkes Night.

A sudden murmuring rippled through the Sentinels. Nicholas saw that the crowd had parted and people were craning forward, straining their necks, clawing at the rows of shoulders in front of them to get a better look at something. At first, he only glimpsed silver and black as somebody approached. Then he saw Jessica and his breath caught in his throat.

The leader of the Sentinels glided like a scythe through the congregation. In the firelight, her skin was mercurial, her eyes dark and enchanting. Stiff black feathers were fastened in her golden hair and fanned about one shoulder. A silvery-white dress – cut at an angle to expose one gleaming shoulder – swept the ground behind her. Perched on her bare shoulder was a raven, and the bird assessed the crowd with uncommon interest.

The Sentinels dipped their heads.

Every nerve in Nicholas’s body hummed, as if Jessica’s presence had forced them to spring awake.

He scowled. Behind her, swaggering with the aloof manner of an alligator, stomped a brute of a man. His boots were the size of cement blocks, his hands, strapped in brown leather, as large as dinner plates. A powerful chest strained against the confines of a leather bodice. His face was like a Cubist painting; a botched nose had clearly endured numerous blows and his squashed mouth was forever contorted in a sneer.

This was Lash. A stupid name, in Nicholas’s opinion, but fitting given his position as Jessica’s new bodyguard. Though Diltraa and Malika’s infiltration of Hallow House was being kept a secret for now (“There would only be panic, and what use is that in a war?” Isabel had told him), Lash had moved into the manor to ensure Jessica’s safety. Nicholas had only encountered him a handful of times, none of them pleasant.

Jessica swept between the adoring masses, then steadily mounted the platform. While Lash took his place at the side of the stage, Jessica revolved to address the crowd. The voice that rang over their heads was clear as the starry heavens.

“There is a darkness abroad and we are the thing it covets,” Jessica called. “It swells with each cycle of the moon and already great numbers have succumbed to its suffocating embrace.”

The tiny hairs on the back of Nicholas’s neck prickled. The woman before them was a formidable creature. Proud and defiant. When he’d first met her, Jessica had been waiting for him at the house with an impish smile. He’d seen a tear in that facade, though, the night Diltraa invaded the manor. Jessica had been reduced to a sobbing child. Nicholas found that hard to believe now.

Was this bold new image a ruse? A performance to inspire faith in her followers? Or had something happened that night in the gardens? Something that had changed her? Peering up into her heart-shaped face, he couldn’t decide either way. Whatever Jessica was doing, though, it was working. Every Sentinel had fallen under her spell.

“For your losses, I am sorry,” Jessica continued. “Those who died did so fighting the cause that their fathers and mothers fought before them. It is a proud death, though one not free from sorrow.”

At these words, Jessica’s gaze rested on a short blonde woman whose eyes were glistening with tears.

“They must be honoured,” Jessica said. “Their labours remembered. No death will ever be in vain, no spilled blood forgotten. That is the reason we are collected here today, to–”

“Tell me why my son died!”

A voice erupted from the crowd. Shocked gasps bristled through the clearing and Lash squinted, a hand sliding to the dagger strapped at his belt.

Silence fell.

“Peter Carmac,” Jessica said, barely moving. The raven at her shoulder glowered into the throng, the black balls of its eyes impossible to read. “If you wish to speak, speak.”

All faces turned toward one man. He was in his late fifties, Nicholas guessed, skin toughened by years of hard labour, a blobby nose riddled with burst capillaries. He gripped a cap in his hands but shoved his chin up at the stage.

“My son, he was one of them found at the church, St John’s,” Peter Carmac called in a voice bitter with grief. “He’d went missing a few days before, not like him at all. He was a good boy. Then he turned up dead, shot in the face. I couldn’t even…” His voice quavered and a tear-stained woman who Nicholas assumed was his wife put a trembling hand to his shoulder. He shoved it off. “I couldn’t even recognise my own boy! And I want to know why!”

Carmac
. Nicholas didn’t recognise the name, but he assumed Peter Carmac’s son was one of the Sentinels who had been turned in Cambridge. He felt a surge of compassion for the man. Sentinels were confronted with death more than the average person – they were demon hunters, after all, and their lives were fraught with risk. Many of the faces in the crowd bore the tell-tale signs of hardship and loss.

Jessica clasped her hands before her. Her skin was like marble.

“On the night of the 21st August,” she began slowly, “an Ectomunicator message was sent to every Sentinel posted in Cambridge. It requested their urgent attendance at St John’s Baptist Church. This message was sent by an imposter. It was a trap for Sentinels. Those who answered the call were mercilessly slaughtered. Later that night, their bodies were discovered in the chambers beneath the church.” She paused, absorbing the expressions of grief and horror stretched across every face. “It is our belief that Harvesters were behind the attack. They are gaining in strength and number. We believe they are uniting with a common goal. Gone are the days when they hunted alone. To that end, a ban has been placed on all Ectomunication.”

“But my son...” Peter Carmac’s voice rose, cracked.

Jessica’s expression was sorrowful. “There is much we do not know. The one thing we can say with absolute certainty is this: the days of peace are behind us. War is coming and we must prepare. But that is talk for another day. Let us proceed with the festival and honour those who are no longer with us.”

Nicholas looked up at Sam and saw that his face had crumpled. He wondered if he’d known the victims. With a start, he remembered Isabel. What had happened to her? She certainly wasn’t with Jessica, and she couldn’t be among the crowd, she’d be crushed. He scanned the clearing, then spotted a sinewy shape in the limbs of a poplar tree. Isabel’s whiskers caught the firelight and she looked wild.

There was movement on the stage. Jessica swept noiselessly down the steps, Lash clumping behind. She moved around the side of the platform and the crowd spilled after her.

“Where we going?” Nicholas asked.

“You’ll see,” Sam said, resting a hand on his shoulder.

Elbowed forward by the Sentinels, Nicholas followed the current around the platform. It was strange being among them. He didn’t feel part of their world. It was as if he was intruding on something private and painful. Nobody acknowledged his presence, though, nor challenged it. He attempted to make himself as small as possible, shrinking away from the elbows that prodded him.

Waiting for them on the other side of the platform was an immense iron cauldron. It coughed smoke that strove eagerly into the pink sky. Jessica stood to one side and waited for the crowd to settle.

“Death is forgetting,” she said at last. “The dead forget, but they will never be forgotten. Let us show them that we remember, and always will.”

With that, the raven leapt from her shoulder. It took to the air and dropped something into the cauldron. A rush of sparks and smoke mushroomed up to meet the heavens. High up now, the raven wheeled through the air, tracing the curve of the poplars.

Jessica smiled kindly at an elderly woman to her right and Nicholas noticed that a queue had formed by the cauldron. The old woman clutched something in her gnarled hand. A slip of paper. She hobbled to the cauldron and dropped it in. A flash of flame briefly lit her face, then nothing. She wiped her eyes with a silk scarf as she shuffled away.

Nicholas watched as, one by one, the Sentinels approached the cauldron and dropped in slips of paper. He felt a nudge at his side.

“Here,” Sam said quietly. Nicholas looked down as the old man pushed something into his hands. A square of paper folded roughly in half. Confused, Nicholas unfolded it. Two names were scribbled there.

Anita Hallow.

Maxwell Hallow.

His parents.

“Go on,” Sam said, his face expressionless.

Nicholas swallowed. His heart was suddenly beating very fast. He joined the queue. More slips of paper were consigned to the cauldron and the line dwindled until finally Nicholas was by Jessica’s side. She gave him the same benevolent half-smile she’d bestowed upon the other Sentinels and returned her gaze to the cauldron.

His insides trembling, Nicholas moved closer. He looked down and saw that he was clutching the folded note so tightly that he’d almost crushed it. Forcing himself to take a breath, he raised his hand and cast the paper into the flames.

“On this night, the Trinity are with us,” Jessica called. “They share our grief. Accept their comfort.”

She tapped the rim of the cauldron lightly and it hummed like a bell. Glowing embers flurried up with the smoke.

Nicholas staggered back.

The smoke snaked into the crowd, but nobody spluttered. Nicholas felt it whisper about him and where it thickened above the cauldron, flaming figures pirouetted. In golden flashes they pranced and flickered, at once bright as the sun, then hazy as candlelight.

Nicholas was rooted to the spot.

He looked around to make sure everybody else was seeing the same thing and, with a start, he found that he was alone. The other Sentinels had vanished.

The air grew melancholy. Transfixed, Nicholas watched the flaming figures bow and flex. They danced out of the smoke, twirling in front of him. They grew wings, became birds, skittered high into the air, then set the trees aflame. Nicholas gasped as the clearing transformed into an inferno. Prickling heat raged through him.

Where was everybody? Even as he thought it, he caught a glimpse of something silvery between the trees. Had Sam and the others gone into the forest to continue the ceremony? No, the forest was burning. They couldn’t be in there.

Something drew him into the trees anyway. In a daze, Nicholas stumbled toward the flickering silver. Though the voice in his head warned him against it, his legs didn’t listen. He passed into the forest, which was no longer aflame, though the trees were blackened and steaming.

Attempting to suppress the panic wedged in his throat, Nicholas fumbled onward. He didn’t dare call out.

Branches shook and he heard a rush of wings.

Snelling? No, Snelling was dead.

A dark shape bowled toward him and Nicholas only just caught sight of the raven before it crashed into his face. He threw his arms up and hit the ground.

Caaaw!

The raven swept up and away, then bowled toward him again. Nicholas cried out as black smoke erupted in the air and a masked figure emerged where the bird had been. It swung a sword at him and Nicholas tried to shuffle back, but it was too late. He squeezed his eyes shut as the blade plunged for his neck.

CHAPTER TWO

The Trinity

T
HERE WAS NO PAIN. NICHOLAS WAITED,
his heart hammering, ready for the agony of the blade thrusting into his throat. Instead, he heard something heavy land in the dirt beside him. He opened his eyes and stared up into Esus’s silver mask. The sword clasped in the phantom’s gloved hands pressed coldly against his skin, but went no further.