Horror rose in Amanda like a tide, enveloping her triumph from the bottom up.
Reeves. It had to be.
She turned. Or tried to, her intentions breaking against her muscles like waves against rock. She was locked in place and it was only now that she realised that she’d felt Reeves taking control this whole time and not seen it for what it was.
Too late. It was all around her, threaded deep through her muscles like vines through stone, holding her in place, knelt over her friend, the murder weapon clutched in her hand.
She could sense the wrongness, the darkness, the sheer otherness of Reeves squirm in her mind.
It was the box all over again. The beating Caleb had given Reeves had only worked so long, now he’d regained some strength, was finding his way around Bridget’s wards. If she could just hold him off, fight back somehow, eventually he’d weaken and let her go.
Trying to stand, she managed no more than a shudder and a cough. Bile burned the back of her throat, felt hot on every panted breath. She hadn’t expected Reeves’ attack to be so subtle, so unlike the early experiences of her childhood when her father had forced her compliance with binding spells.
The second attempt to free herself was no better.
Reeves was finished with subtlety. Amanda felt her enemy coiling inside her, tense and strike. She heard herself wretch, her vision dimming, as Reeves swept through her, an overpowering blackness that left nothing in its wake; memories, feelings, habits shattered to splinters.
She could feel the weight of the tin in her hand, lifting for a second blow.
Teeth creaking in her gums, sweat stinging her eyes, she fought. Skin fought muscle fought bone, working against one another so hard she thought her arm would break.
She knew this. She’d spent her youth fighting like this.
But did you ever win?
She didn’t know if that was Reeves or her. Didn’t matter. Concentrate.
The tin trembled in the cold air, Amanda’s body hanging slack beneath it, like it was holding her up off the ground. There it stopped.
Steph and Skeebs slept on. That was Reeves too. Amanda could feel him holding them under, locking them in sleep.
Her vision blurred again. For a few moments she was fighting just to stay conscious. No knowing what would happen if she blacked out.
Why was she fighting?
The darkness had consumed so much. She couldn’t recall where she lived, her mother’s face, her favourite food. All that was left was a little shining pearl of will.
What was waiting for her if she won? Let Reeves have his way. Kill them. Unlock the chains. The end would come quick.
She’d be with her family again.
She brought the can down. It crashed into the floor by Caleb’s head, the impact jarring her arm up to the shoulder.
Joints glowing from the relief of it, spine cracking, tendons fit to snap, her arm rose again, this time coming down hard onto the meat of her thigh.
Pain blossomed, drove the darkness back and Amanda grabbed for the clarity that followed. The pain was hers to feel, Reeves wanted no part of it, retreated from it.
The pain was quickly replaced by anger, anger at Caleb. Why was he making her do this? After everything—
She hit herself again.
The hurt helped, clawing back more space inside herself, more room to manoeuvre, to fight back.
So she did it again.
She thought of Simon, thought of each of her kids, thought of Michaela, waiting for her.
Her right leg folded beneath her as she stood, deadened from the blows. She was drenched in sweat, trembling from effort, from the cold, from anger.
Blood was still spreading in the sleeping bag, a horrendous amount, soaking the material.
The prisoner was just as he’d always been, head dipped and arms stretched, his influence spreading like the bitter-smelling sweat from his pores.
Amanda shut her eyes as her gaze snagged on the tattoos again, feeling the tangled scrawl reaching inside her, scribbling over her thoughts. It was spiked again, unreadable.
She could still feel Reeves inside her, fighting for purchase.
The tin was still in her hand, the metal giving under her fingertips, buckled by the impacts, the label dark with sweat. She could feel that pull, like the tin and not her hand wanted to fly at Caleb’s head.
But she held it in place, her arm stiff and aching from the effort, her body wracked with twitches and tics. There had to be something she could do to drive Reeves from her completely.
The manacles hurt to look at, the symbols etched in the metal like holes in her sight, just as those on the blade had been. She forced herself to stare at them, teeth gritted and eyes watering. She’d recoiled from the blade before, there was something to that.
Caleb was bad. He’d beaten Reeves. Everything would be better once he was free.
The symbols held power. Reeves might be strong enough to slip his influence through and around them but to be in direct contact with them…
No. There was no telling for sure what it would do. Magic had its way of turning you about. What if her touching the symbols in some way negated them and gave Reeves even more scope for his powers?
Touch the symbols.
She managed a step away from Caleb’s body, her knee locked, muscles up and down her leg trembling with conflicting messages.
She had to stick with what she could trust. What could she trust?
Pain.
The air worked against her, thickening to tar as she forced herself toward the man in chains.
She fell to her knees before the prisoner, her leg screaming in protest. There were licks of pain all the way to her chest now, her breath hot as ash in her lungs. The label on the can peeled from the metal as she readjusted her grip.
The urge to bring it down on Caleb came back stronger than ever – to make sure the job was done. Amanda wouldn’t, couldn’t hold out forever.
Eyes rolling in her skull, steam hissing from between her teeth, She sought an escape. But she knew what she had to do, the knowledge making her sick to the pit of her stomach. She could feel Reeves’s grin, daring her.
She’d fled when Caleb had done it, closed her ears to it. She’d spent years avoiding it, desperate not to be like her father and now…
She clenched her fist around the can, feeling the metal bend beneath her fingers as she fumbled at her coat pocket.
A couple of blows to the prisoner’s ribs, maybe another to the face that’s all it might take.
You played your hand too soon, she told Reeves. Tried when you were still too weak to overcome the symbols. Back down. Get out of my head.
Do you really think you can hurt me?
It was Reeves’ voice, cold and mocking and right in the centre of Amanda’s head.
No, she replied. I don’t think I can. She hadn’t been able to watch the violence Caleb had done in the train yard, she couldn’t do it herself now. Instead, she pulled the cigarette lighter from her pocket, brought it up to her wrist and hit the flint.
The pain was excruciating. The flame licked at her cuff, reddened her skin, reaching right into her nerve endings. She had to fight herself to keep the lighter in place.
She thought of her son, her husband, her daughters, fixed them in her mind, teeth gritted, sweating bullets, tears running down her face. She didn’t know how much longer she could—
Amanda gasped as she felt Reeves’ influence relinquish all at once. The carriage span around her, her feet struggling for balance. She snapped the lighter off and fell to the ground clutching at her burned wrist. The tin fell from her nerveless fingers.
A sigh escaped her chest like a punctured tyre. She groaned, half sobbed with the pain.
Steph and Skeebs burst awake, deep, lung-rattling gasps, kicking themselves upright against their sleeping bags.
Sparks gnawed at the edges of Amanda’s vision.
She could picture the scene. Caleb’s bag soaking through with gore, zipped up like a ready-made body bag. Amanda at his feet, the blood-stained murder weapon inches from her hand. And Reeves hanging over them, like a magician presenting his latest trick.
Steph froze with a tiny squeak, her complexion turning to the colour of milk, her gloved hands clenched in the material of her sleeping bag.
Skeebs exploded, redoubling his efforts to fight his way from the confines of his sleeping bag, tripping over himself, hand thrust in his pocket.
Amanda, shaking, started to push herself to her feet, her limbs like water, her arm a constant scream of pain.
Caleb wasn’t moving. The horror of what Amanda had done threatened to envelop her but she pushed it back.
Skeebs pulled his hand from his pocket with a hiss of success. He had a knife, a cruel, sharp little thing. He turned, the point darting from Reeves to Amanda to Caleb and around to the girl, eyes wild.
Steph recoiled and the knife swung back to Reeves, moving like it was pulling Skeebs behind it, sniffing for blood.
‘Keep away,’ the boy trembled, backing away towards the supplies again, keeping them all in sight. ‘I’ll fucking stab them, I swear.’
‘Skeebs,’ Amanda’s voice was hoarse, ‘put that down.’
‘Don’t fucking move.’ Skeebs steadied the knife in both hands. ‘You think I care about these people? I been rehearsing this since I got on. I ain’t afraid.’
Steph climbed backwards up the wall, keeping herself as far from Skeebs as possible. She flinched as the knife swung back around, a frightened squeak escaping her throat as she hot-stepped backwards to Amanda’s side.
‘I said no one fucking move!’
But just as quickly the knifepoint was back on Amanda.
‘No one fucking move,’ he said again, lower this time, rocking on his feet like he was preparing to lunge.
He shuffled around towards Caleb, gave him a kick. Amanda willed the big man to stir, to give some sign he was alive. Nothing.
‘Skeebs,’ Amanda spoke slowly, a warning.
‘Shut up. Just shut up!’ The knife came away for a second as Skeebs clutched at his head. ‘Fuck!’ Before he realised that he needed it levelled and stabbed it out at the women again.
But it was already too late. Steph had already ducked down and pulled the knife from Bridget’s bag. She came up holding it like a sword, both hands around the handle, a desperate fiery look in her eye.
‘Woah, woah, woah,’ Amanda held out her hands, trying to stop things from escalating. She’d never seen a knife fight that ended well for either party.
‘You take it,’ the girl jerked the knife toward her.
‘She makes another move and I’ll fucking slot her, I swear,’ said Skeebs.
‘We can’t let him ruin this,’ said Steph. ‘We work together. You take this and I can—’
‘No one’s fighting,’ said Amanda. ‘Back off. Skeebs, put the knife down.’
Skeebs almost laughed, the noise twisting into anger and tears. ‘I ain’t her fucking bitch,’ he said to Reeves. ‘I ain’t yours.’ Now he looked to Amanda. ‘You were always ordering me around. Like you was better than me. I was telling you. I told you this would happen. You treated me like a fuck up.’
‘Skeebs, Caleb’s hurt,’ Amanda insisted. ‘We need to check on him. I need to see what damage Reeves did. I can’t do that with either of you waving those things around.’
‘You think I’m falling for that? What, are you going for his key?’ Skeebs clutched at his pocket, checking his was still there. ‘You,’ he flicked the knife at Steph, ‘drop that and kick it over here.’
The girl didn’t move, swallowing hard, breath wheezing in her throat.
‘You think I’m fucking kidding?’
‘Put it down,’ said Amanda.
‘Take it from me,’ Steph insisted, proffering it again. ‘We can work together. I can use magic.’
‘No magic.’ The girl had more nerve than Amanda had thought. Who knew, if she hadn’t picked up the knife Skeebs might have attacked and this would be over already. But if the girl got herself hurt, or worse, killed, that would be bad for all of them. The thought of the girl bleeding out, eyes wide, begging Amanda for a solution made her sick to her stomach.
‘You think I’m going to hesitate stabbing them, think again,’ said Skeebs, still talking to Reeves. ‘I’ve been thinking on stabbing this bitch for days. And think I care she’s a little girl?’
‘No one’s being controlled by Reeves,’ said Amanda. ‘He had me, I shook him off.’ She showed the skin of her wrist, red and blistered. ‘The chains are working. Now, again, you’re being a complete arsehole, standing between me and my getting my little girl back.’
‘And you’re between me and my brother. He says I can’t see him again unless you’re in the ground.’
‘Yeah? Well fucking sucks to be you, doesn’t it? Because you kill me and Reeves’ll have you bent over faster’n you can blink. Then your brother. Then any other of your little dipshit friends you’ve got left. But your brother doesn’t care about that because he’d rather see you dead than have people think he’s weak.’
‘Shut up.’
‘Danny doesn’t care about you. Danny only cares about Danny and nothing you ever do is going to change that.’
Skeebs launched forward. Steph gave a squeal as Amanda pushed her aside, out of harm’s way. No time to do anything else, every nerve a live wire, Amanda braced herself.
Skeebs barged her aside, his shoulder hitting her squarely in the chest.
Trying not to step on Caleb, Amanda stumbled. The tendons up her arm twanged as she caught her elbow on the wall. The ache in the deadened muscle of her bruised thigh made her grimace.
Skeebs wavered as he reached Reeves, stiffening his resolve, and brought up the knife.
‘NO!’ Amanda made a clumsy grab for the knife, scrabbling at Skeebs’ arm.
They fought, the knife waving between them, Amanda trying to push them away from the prisoner.
‘Not waiting for some fucking ritual,’ Skeebs forced out between gritted teeth.
‘You fucking idiot,’ Amanda replied. ‘You kill him now and one of us dies.’
Some of the strength went out of Skeebs as confusion took hold.
‘Just let me explain. It was the night Reeves was summoned. I was there.’