‘He’s gone.’
Caleb pulled away from the boy’s chest, patting the dead boy’s shoulder. His face was inscrutable beneath his new bruises. But there was no mistaking the limpness with which he sat back against the wall, the way he squeezed the big rock of his fist as he looked up to the ceiling. His sigh was thin and hard out of his ruined throat. ‘Fuck.’
Steph pulled her blanket closer around her and heaved an inward sigh of relief. Eight hours Skeebs had held on, his lingering departure one weight too many to carry. His pain and need for his brother threading the air, something to be inhaled.
Skeebs had screamed until his vocal chords had torn. And then he’d kept trying.
Caleb had proposed putting the boy out of his misery and Reeves had denied him. There would be no escaping their decision, he had announced.
She frowned down at her books. Hard as she tried, she couldn’t muster any strong feelings. Nothing that wasn’t rooted in self-interest. Though they’d never seen eye to eye, both Amanda and Caleb were upset, taking it as some grown-ups did by turning to stone.
But the whole carriage had been a death bed since Skeebs had started dying and Reeves talking. The unspoken rules had changed. It dictated terms and if they disobeyed, the consequences could be severe. Loud noises were unpermitted, distractions like cards were forbidden, anything that didn’t display solemnity for the situation.
Steph had had little choice but to throw herself back into the books, tried to plan around the fact that the tattoo was no longer happening. If she could find a way to counteract the side effects… It helped take her mind off the biting cold at least.
She wondered if Amanda could learn it in time. Now that Steph was no longer in the firing line she wondered if she should do it after all. She had years of practice behind her. She had strength, she knew it. The flash she’d used to blind Skeebs, the other small tricks she’d learned at home, they’d all performed outside her expectations. Even her mother had lifted an eyebrow when measuring her abilities. It was just specific knowledge she lacked. Only knowledge. This was a job for a scalpel not a sledgehammer, which was what Amanda would be. As much as she’d wished Amanda would do it herself, now that was what was happening it seemed woefully misguided.
She wished she could have a private word with Amanda. She wanted to say she was sorry for her loss though she wasn’t sure if she meant it. But she couldn’t.
Reeves hadn’t allowed them to put the hood back. It was in charge and now it was impossible to say anything. His keen hearing picked up every muttered aside or whispered word. He replied as though they were directed at him, his retorts full of mockery and poison that made them retreat back into themselves, wishing they’d never spoken. She wanted to talk about the plan more than ever and couldn’t. How could she when the man they were plotting against was feet away? Amanda thought the same, she could see it in her eyes, the way she’d look at her and pressed her lips tight. It was just another way Reeves had rendered them impotent.
‘We need to get him out,’ said Amanda, her voice brittle with fatigue. She was dark around the eyes, her cheeks sunken.
Caleb nodded, grimaced as he steeled himself to sit up.
Steph watched as they gently packed Skeebs away, folding up his hands, tucking in his elbows, making sure his eyes were closed. The sleeping bag became a body bag.
Caleb moved stiffy, his ribs paining him. Amanda was bent over like a woman twice her age, burdened by invisible weight.
They moved like they were sleep walking. Slow and quiet, trying to make as little noise and fuss as possible. Everything was said in looks, glances, nods and points. ‘Get the door open.’ Amanda held out the keys to the padlocks. Steph, reluctant to get involved, took them. Cinching the blanket closer around her shoulders, one gloved hand holding it closed, she got to her feet.
But Skeebs’ spiralling hadn’t stopped her studying. If anything, it had spurred her. Spurred Amanda too. There had been a time she’d clung to the thought of returning home a hero, a demon banisher, bringing a revolution in magic theory with her. Now even surviving seemed a remote possibility. The fact that she kept working at all was only a stubborn, desperate act of self-preservation.
She just wished they could compare notes without Reeves scoffing, making their theories sound like childish burbling. She could see Amanda struggling, throwing her pleading looks to help. The idea of even doing the ritual terrified her but there she was, doing her best for her daughter. Determined to see things through so Skeebs’ death wasn’t for nothing.
The keys slipped easily into the locks. It took all of her weight to roll the door open.
The wind stampeded in at a deafening volume, sending food wrappers whipping around the carriage. The pages of Skeebs’ last magazine turned from beginning to end in a blur.
The fresh air filled her with life to the tips of her fingers. Eyes streaming against the chill breeze, blinking in the cold, white light she squinted to look out at the world.
The sky was a rich, velvet purple, the night’s stars giving their last twinkling alls before conceding to the sun that was just only beginning to water the night away with a grey that promised blue.
The ground below was thick with black trees, dusted white with snow. She stood amazed. With the cold and no windows to peer through all she had had to go on about Siberia was what her own imagination could supply. What she had pictured was wasteland more akin to Antarctica than the swathes of frosted greenery that stretched before her.
If she’d thought it was possible to feel colder, she was wrong. The inside of the carriage was positively balmy compared to the great expanse outside. The cold near cut her in half and brought an involuntary moan from her lips.
‘Steph! Come on!’
Amanda and Caleb shuffled forward, side-on. They lifted the bag between them slowly, small-stepped their way across the carriage, frowning with exertion.
Steph stood aside, holding her glasses to her face, hair whipping at her burns, a chocolate bar wrapper catching in her blanket for a moment before diving away, down to join the splendour in front of them.
Reeves looked on, eyes glittering. His presence discouraged any attempt at a eulogy. They would have felt too self-conscious doing anything in front of that leering, mocking smile.
‘On three,’ said Amanda, hands tucked into the folds of the sleeping bag and under Skeebs’ arms.
‘One.’
Steph swallowed. It was a long drop into the trees. In the bag, bones would snap and cuts would leak sluggish, stagnant blood. The end result would be more like a bag of something bought from a butchers.
‘Two.’
Animals, Steph pictured birds, wolves, would be drawn to the smell of good meat. If the bag tore during its passage through the branches, and she was certain that it would, they would feast.
‘Three.’
‘Sorry, Skeebs.’
The final swing and the body was gone. Wind pummelling their faces, snowflakes settling in their hair, they watched as it quickly shrank behind them. It turned end over end before disappearing with a ripple into the first fronds of the vegetation.
Steph turned her back to the wind, her face numb and wind-burnt. Reeves gave her a smile.
‘Close the door,’ Amanda yelled.
Steph turned to stare hard into the blurring wilderness. Maybe she should jump. Wasn’t that a better way out of this?
Amanda put herself between the girl and the yawning outside.
‘Close the door,’ she repeated, and did it herself.
The sound of the outdoors muffled as the door slid home but Steph could still hear it, pattering its fingers against the shell of the carriage. All that space less than a step away. Almost three days they had spent inside this thing with only boxes, three people, four walls, floor and ceiling to look at. She had needed that stark reminder that that wasn’t all there was.
The padlocks went back. The keys went back. Amanda took two.
The carriage seemed so much emptier without Skeebs. He’d taken up more space than his slight frame suggested. Or maybe the place was just so cramped that even a few extra square feet of space felt like a luxury.
Caleb eased himself back into his spot, taking a long moment to stare at the vacant space where Skeebs had lain.
A chair clattered as Amanda turned it to face the back of the carriage, away from the others. She slumped down into it her face hidden.
Steph exchanged a look with Caleb. They had both seen the pressure getting to their leader these past hours. She’d helped look after Skeebs, feeding him water when he was able to drink. She’d pressed hard at studying the books, learning the ritual she’d have to perform until she knew the steps by heart.
But learning was very different from doing.
Shivering, clenching her jaw so that her teeth didn’t chatter, Steph went to see what Amanda was doing.
The woman had the string fetish out again, her hands going through the forms she’d need. It wasn’t ideal, the control the fetish lent would negate the strength of Amanda’s power but without it there was more chance of her being devoured by Reeves or by the demand of the task without a tattoo. That said, there was even more chance the ritual wouldn’t work at all.
There were two dozen forms she needed to learn and she needed to slip from any one to any other in a heartbeat, channelling power, knowing when to channel and how. Directing her power through the knife while simultaneously opening the gate in the circle of stones both pushing and pulling Reeves through at the same time while not going through herself.
Scowling with concentration, Amanda moved slowly from form to form, picking them at random with such a glacial pace that Steph grimaced. Two dozen forms. That meant a huge number of combinations. Amanda froze, her lips tightening as her fingers stiffened, middle and ring fingers crooked unable to complete the move she needed them to. The string cut deep into her fingers and along the backs of her hands.
Giving up with a hard sigh of frustration, she let the string slacken. She swiped an angry hand over a drip that formed on her nose but whether it was sweat or tears Steph couldn’t say.
Draping the string over her knee, Amanda reached into her pocket to pull out her pack of cards. It rattled it was so empty now. They’d clearly meant a lot to her, Steph knew, the way she’d reacted when she’d lost them. She’d seen a few, pictures of her and who she presumed was Amanda’s late husband. They’d clearly been so much in love. Something Steph wouldn’t have conceived a person like Amanda was capable of.
The woman flicked through a couple, pouring over the illustrations before she finally noticed Steph watching. She flinched at the attention then seemed to relax.
‘Just taking a break,’ she said. ‘It’s hard with…’ She flexed her shoulder against the weight of Reeves’ chains. ‘I know card tricks but I’m telling you this string is something else.’ She said it in a cheerful tone that fooled neither of them. ‘We’ll do it though. I’ll do it. Skeebs won’t have… I mean, it won’t have been for nothing.’ She snorted. ‘Kind of funny, I pull this off I’ll go down in history as the first person to banish a demon. Can’t say I ever saw that coming.’
Steph wanted to scream. She wanted to shout. They were running out of time and they were just as fucked as they’d ever been. She couldn’t say half the things she wanted to say not without Reeves hearing, not without it shooting her down. They were fucked, fucked, fucked unless Amanda got better at this.
‘I show you these?’ Amanda raised the cards. ‘He made them for me, one for every week of our first year together. Wasn’t long after that we were married and we had Michaela. And I vowed I wouldn’t end up like my father. This man, my little girl, she was my chance at getting away from all that. And now…’ she raised a hand and let it fall again. ‘We all end up back where we started. There’s no running from it. Michaela and this pack, they’ve all I’ve got left and they’re more important to me than anything. But look at how they’ve ended up. Might be they’ll be better off if I’m gone. And I can’t get… When I think of her…’ She jerked her knee, the fetish shifting across it.
‘Here,’ Steph took it, carefully removing her gloves. The cold made them hurt, every touch to them like glasspaper. The skin was pale, skin flaking. Amanda noticed and bit at her lip, Steph said nothing fearful of how Reeves would reply.
It took her a few moments but she made the form that Amanda had been in then smoothly and slowly showed her how to slip into the next. ‘See?’
‘Not like card tricks,’ Amanda took it back. ‘Reckon I’ll learn it all in time?’
The cards were still resting high on her knee. The illustration was Amanda walking in the park, arm entwined with her husband’s, her face pressed to her shoulder, a wide, bright smile across her face. Her husband was handsome.
‘Yeah,’ Steph lied. ‘Definitely. You almost had it.’
Amanda nodded, intent on the string.
Steph tried not to let it show on her face that it felt like she had tight straps around her chest. Years of practice had got her as good as she was today and if she had it right they had less than a day now. Amanda wouldn’t be ready and no amount of tutelage from Steph was going to change that.
She admired the woman’s bravery. She’d changed since their talks. Working together, Steph had to admit, had brought them closer together. It had made Amanda seem more of a person. She hoped the reverse was true as well. But maybe it was time for Steph to be brave as well. Karina would do it. Her mum would have done it. Didn’t she want to live up to these women’s examples?
‘How’s the knife going?’ asked Amanda, struggling to imitate the movements Steph had made.
‘Something still isn’t right,’ said Steph. ‘There’s something in the notes about “frequencies” but the rest of the page is missing.’
‘Give me another half hour with this and I’ll come and have a look.’
‘There’s another problem too.’
Amanda’s fingers were frozen in the same position as last time, refusing to cooperate. She collapsed the cradle in frustration. ‘What?’
‘Even if we get the blessing figured out, there’s no telling if he’ll let us do it. If he stops us then we’re not going to have any choice but to let him go.’
‘Then what do we do about that?’
Reeves was watching them. That’s all he did now, watch. He never slept, never shivered, never moved, his eyes drilling into her, reading her. Reminding her that in this room, they had no secrets.
‘I don’t know,’ she lied again. ‘I’ll need to figure something out.’
‘Then do it soon,’ said Amanda. ‘We don’t have much time.’
‘He might not, though. He wants the ritual to happen. He wants the confrontation. He knows we won’t let him go.’
‘Well hurrah for that. We’re really showing him a thing or two.’
Steph bit back a response. There was no time for arguing either. No time for hurt feelings. If Amanda could act and do as she wanted then so could Steph.
She nodded and went back to her space.
She took her time, flicking through the pages, careful with each turn to spare the singed and brittle paper.
A few more minutes of checking and re-checking and she thought she might have a plan. Despite what she’d said, there was no knowing Reeves’ mind. Maybe he would interfere with the blessing. But if this worked, she could protect them and, more crucially, win them a small victory they all so badly needed. She just needed to get it to Amanda without Reeves knowing. There was only one way that she could think of to do that.
It was the work of a moment to slip the pen up her sleeve. She went through the pages again, trying to hold it all in her memory as she slowly tore an empty page from the back of the text book, holding it behind her body to conceal it from Reeves.
She could feel his eyes on her as she worked, pressing the paper so it tore under her thumb a bit at a time. Once she had it, eased it out, she went through the slow process of folding it small enough to hide in her fist.
For once she was glad that she wouldn’t stop shivering. It hid the way she was shaking head to toe, the tin-taste of adrenalin on her tongue as she stood and made to go to the bathroom.
‘Stop.’
The word was like a shot in the back, tearing through her body and spreading her open.
The entire room froze. Steph’s mind screamed, a high-pitch non-sound that wiped out all thought. It took everything she had not to piss herself.
‘Come here.’
There was no disobeying that voice. Reeves didn’t need powers to control any more. Feet heavy and numb she turned.
Amanda was bolt-upright in her chair. Caleb was blinking, mouth open like he wanted to speak. It was five steps to Reeves. It felt like fifty.
Someone do something, she pleaded. Someone say something.
But there was nothing to do. Nothing to say.
The thing’s face, so like the man on Amanda’s cards, was sharp now the bruises were gone. High cheek bones and cold eyes and a look behind them that was far from human. ‘Show me.’
Tears leaked down to her chin as she unclenched her fist to reveal the paper, already damp with sweat.
‘What were you planning?’
‘Nothing, I—’
The cold flashed through her, more potent than it had ever been. She felt her heart freeze a moment. It spiked the words in her throat.
‘What were you planning?’
‘A chaff spell. If we could stop you from interfering with the blessing, I thought…’
‘Eat the paper.’
Steph looked down at the torn page in her hand. She wondered if it would be easier to eat folded as it was or strangled into a little ball. There was no question of disobeying.
‘Do it,’ said Reeves.
A ball then. Steph squeezed the page up in her fist, gathering it into her palm with her fingers.
Amanda wouldn’t look at her. Head down, eyes down, the woman looked for all the world like a child caught talking in class, waiting her turn with the teacher.
Steph placed the wadded up page on her tongue and began to chew.
It tasted of petrol from the fire, a sharp chemical hit, but she held down the urge to cough and swallowed the page down as quickly as she could manage.
The demon watched, expressionless.
Neither Amanda or Caleb said a word. What would they say? But she wished they would say something. But no, despite what she wanted, Steph had to face facts – if she wanted to survive, there were things she would have to do alone.
There was only one option left. One way she could take control.
Amanda sighed as the girl swallowed down the paper and went back to her seat. She wouldn’t meet Amanda’s eye.
Everything was difficult.
Amanda’s burn itched and chafed against the cold, constant rub of Reeves’ chains. Her limbs felt stretched, rubbery and weak, every movement the product of intense consideration. Even lifting the string was difficult, turning the pages of the books an effort.
She sat slumped in the cold chair, insulated by blankets and layers of clothing, her legs stretched out. Anything to ease the weight, which constantly pulled her down. Hunger that wasn’t hers gnawed at her belly, cold that wasn’t hers chilled her.
Any vestige of morale she had left was sinking into the depths, dragged down by the cold, leaden weights.
She tortured herself with thoughts of her daughter. Cord cutting her wrists. Gag cleaving her mouth. Cold. Hungry. Alone. Surrounded by animals that pretended to be men.
The room was silent except for the murmur of the train. Caleb’s breathing was more laboured than ever. His face, rocky to begin with, was now a ruin of swellings and bruises. He’d removed the bandage from around his head, saying it irritated him. Now he kept the brim of his hat way back, revealing the ugly, stitched gash across his forehead.
Their travel bags were gathered under him, allowing him to sleep sitting up, easing the pressure on his broken ribs. A bottle of painkillers sat within reach, bottled water beside them. He’d tried helping with the books, given up soon after. He liked reading a bit of fiction now and again but what was in these books were beyond him.
‘Teacher told me I should have tried harder,’ he’d rumbled. ‘Never crossed my mind she might be right.’
Steph stumbled to her feet – hard work while she was clutching her blankets as close to her body as possible. Shivering, teeth chattering, she shuffled to the toilet. No doubt to cry in private.
The two adults had got off lightly compared to the girl. She had been given the lion’s share of Reeves’ hunger and cold. Her face was pale and drawn, her lips tinged a corpse-like blue. She shivered in her blankets, the centre of a molehill of layers –- her clothes, Skeebs’ spare clothes, her blanket, Skeebs’ blanket. They’d debated whether or not they needed to be warming her or Reeves, him being the source of her discomfort. The demon had delighted in tormenting them over it. He’d refused blankets, any attempts to warm him. They didn’t dare use the stove in case he caused another incident.
The girl pulled the melted remnants of the shower curtain closed, left alone with the final bucket of bleach.
‘Hope,’ said Reeves.
Amanda’s breath caught. It always did whenever Reeves spoke, her son’s voice twisted at something deep inside her.
The demon was standing tall, his skin flushed and healthy. It was hard looking at her son’s face, there was a cruel bent to it, a smirk and a narrowing of the eyes that Amanda found hard to look at.
‘Such a hard thing to snuff out. Every single one of you I’ve killed, it’s the last thing to die. Not a one of you can imagine a life without yourselves. You ignore the inevitable, certain that some new path will present itself. It might even be my favourite thing about you, the challenge of breaking it. I could spend years on it if I were granted the time.’
‘Good thing you don’t have any left.’
‘I have plenty. Do you really expect to find some panacea to all your problems in those pages?’
‘Learning more every moment. That’s not hope, that’s knowing the angles.’
‘It’s a stall. Everything about humanity is a stall. Animal instinct wrapped in pretence.’
‘Then what are you worried about? Shut up and let me read.’
‘Does it make you feel closer to your father? Do you know more of his mind? Feel the tingle in your blood?’
Amanda ground her teeth. The truth was that she’d thought of little else. Reading through these books brought back a lot of dormant memories she’d rather have left forgotten. Small rituals brought into context, items scattered around the family home given purpose. Whether she wanted it to or not, these books were a passage into the past, small details attracting larger memories, cutting open old scars.
‘There is a lot to be said for blood sacrifices,’ Reeves went on. ‘Have you found any in your books yet?’
She had. Spells of illusion and extreme self-enhancement. Details of blood drained from certain parts of the body that made her body ache from childhood wounds.
‘The ones using your own blood are dirtiest, not as effective but a quick and dizzying high. There were times when young boys and girls were kept for the express purpose of bloodletting. That must make you feel some sense of being part of history, to know that there were young concubines before you with the same scars.’
It shouldn’t have hurt but it did. Her father had abused her, there was no new information there but to have them seen through a new lens, her body put to another cruel purpose made the whole thing seem fresh.
Reeves was trying to get to her again and it was working.
She looked around for a distraction. And realised that was what Reeves had been doing: distracting her.
She hadn’t heard a single noise come from behind the curtain since Steph had disappeared behind it. There had been no crack of the bleach lid, no sobs, nothing.
‘Steph,’ she called.
Lifting herself from the chair seemed to take an age, the leaden weights forcing her to hold the wall for support. She shuffled across the floor, still bent like a woman twice her age. ‘Steph.’
She scanned the floor as she went, couldn’t see the knife.
Now she could hear it, the sounds of someone trying to cry quietly.
She pulled the curtain back so hard it almost came off the railing.
The girl pushed herself against the wall, knife held to her chest, point to her chin. Her layers of blankets lay pooled around her feet, her sleeves were rolled up to reveal pale, goose-bumped flesh. Her mother’s bowl was in her lap.
Amanda would have believed her possessed were it not for that knife in the girl’s hand, or the expression on her face. She looked up with a defiant pout, her eyes red with crying.
‘What are you doing?’ Amanda asked.
‘We need to hold him off for the blessing,’ the girl protested. ‘You can’t do it, I’m not strong enough and he won’t let me show you how. But it doesn’t matter because you won’t learn in time. If I can’t have the tattoo then at least I can have the power. Maybe it’ll be enough to protect me. Using my own blood will be less powerful but—’
‘Give me the knife.’
‘I can do this,’ the girl insisted. ‘I’ve got to.’
‘The knife.’
‘You don’t get to tell me what to do. This will give me power. Understand? We’ll be able to beat him. You won’t have to worry about me, I know people. People who’ll look after me.’
‘You’ll kill yourself.’
‘Well at least I’ll die trying. That’s what you wanted right? I don’t want him to kill all those people. I don’t want my mum remembered for that.’
‘I didn’t agree to this.’
‘How could you? We can’t even compare notes. Not with him listening in. It’s up to me,’ she tapped her chest with the knife tip. ‘And I choose this. There’s no other choice. You go and…’ she sniffed, ‘go and… get bandages ready.’
Amanda didn’t move.
‘I said go on,’ she shoved the woman with her free hand but Amanda held her ground. When Steph tried to pull the curtain closed she held it open, her arm trembling with the effort.
‘You don’t need to do this.’
‘I want to do this,’ Steph insisted, the knife coming down to her side again. She swallowed. ‘I want to try. You talk about your daughter or friends and family but there’s lots of other people out there who might die. Innocent people.’
She put her arm to the lip of the bowl, her wrist pointing down into it. The knife came around, light flickering across the blade as it shivered in her hand.
‘I thought if I did this, got addicted, then you’d have no choice. You’d have to give me your blood anyway.’
Amanda licked her lips. Did she want her to do this? If it made their job easier? Get Michaela away from AK? If the girl wanted to do this then didn’t that make it OK?
But she made no move toward the first aid kit.
The edge crept towards the thin, veined skin. Amanda could see every goose bump, every fine blonde hair on her arm.
The girl held her breath, then hesitated long enough that she had to take another one.
Amanda’s wrists and ankles ached with standing for so long but she didn’t dare move. Even Reeves was silent, watching hungrily.
She wants to do this, Amanda repeated in her head. She wants to do this.
‘I can’t.’ The knife came away, the girl in tears again. ‘I can’t do it.’
Without thinking, Amanda had gathered her into a hug, holding her close. ‘It’s OK. It’s OK.’
‘I’m just so tired. I’m cold all the time and my face hurts and we don’t know if we know everything and even if we did he’s so powerful.’
‘Then let’s start there. Can we break the connections?’
‘You saw when I gave you the sight. We can’t even touch them. He can give and take what he wants. I can feel him literally stealing the food from my belly. Anything I eat, he gets it all. I’m literally giving him the energy he needs for his next attack.’
‘You’re not getting any food at all? But you’re eating…’
‘I keep it for a while. The connection, I think he has to physically draw it from me. It’s not instantaneous.’
Amanda gave her a sympathetic frown. ‘We’ll figure it out.’
‘Does this look like figuring it out? He’s beaten us already. I’m sorry, I tried to let you learn but you haven’t got the technique and I don’t have the time to teach you. There’s nothing we can do. I don’t want to die.’
Amanda shook with the effort of holding her, of standing beside her. All she wanted was to rest. She had no more energy to fight or struggle. Maybe it would be easier to just give up.
‘He’s going to come after me,’ Steph mumbled into her. ‘When we do the blessing he’ll try to stop it. I know it.’
‘We have to try,’ Amanda replied. ‘There are people depending on us. We’ll figure something out.’
She looked to Caleb. ‘Whatever it takes.’