I’m shaking as we make our way through the camp. My teeth rattle and my head’s full of raging fire. Celene’s a few feet ahead of me, sweeping forward with the gun clasped in both hands, keeping it high so she can take out anybody who pops up to say hello.
I’m a bundle of raw nerves, my body following her, but my mind’s half here and half somewhere else.
The question keeps tearing chunks off me, exposing my bones to the freezing air.
Why did I do it?
Why did I drag her out of the bullet’s path?
Why did I save her?
I don’t have an answer, and the questions clang through me, like I’m a pinball machine and it can’t find the right slot to win the grand prize. All I know is that when I saw the man with the gun, my instinct was to stop him hitting his target.
Because I care about her?
That doesn’t feel right.
If you kill her, it goes away.
Dominic’s words surface in my mind. He told me I could break the curse by killing Celene. If the shooter had killed her, I’d have been robbed of that chance. I saved her so I could save myself.
‘Rumer.’
Celene hisses my name and I snap to attention. She uses two fingers to point at her eyes, and then she gestures to the right. A jeep sits outside headquarters a hundred yards away. The two jeeps behind it are already ablaze, their windows shattered, the metal warping into wretched shapes.
‘Quickly,’ she says.
I run for the vehicle, tearing the door open.
A crack like thunder echoes across the camp and the window shatters. I throw myself into the jeep, hearing Celene returning fire, and then she appears. I crawl over into the driver’s seat and Celene jumps in, slamming the door, slivers of glass shaking loose.
‘Here.’ She hands me the key and I gulp down the surprise, quickly shoving it into the ignition.
‘Rumer,’ Celene says, an edge to her voice. I catch movement in the rear-view mirror. Five masked gunmen fan out behind the jeep. Mara’s men. They fire at the exact moment I hit the accelerator. The back window explodes, but I don’t pay it any attention, revving through the camp. The jeep groans as it’s pelted with bullets; kernels of popcorn bursting all around us. I swerve a corner, the gates appearing ahead, and I speed up, preparing to bomb through them.
‘Seat belt,’ I say, hurriedly clipping mine in. Grimacing, Celene does the same.
I press my boot to the accelerator, the gate drawing closer and closer. We’re going so fast I have to clench the wheel to stop the jeep careening out of control, and then the vehicle shrieks and bucks, smashing through the gates, tearing them apart like pages in a book. I pump the accelerator and we shoot through, swerving out onto a dirt track.
‘Stay off the motorway.’ Celene’s voice sounds strange. I notice she’s pressing a hand to her shoulder, red oozing between her fingers.
‘You’re hit.’
‘Just keep driving.’
I don’t have any problem with that. As we zip down the road, I keep an eye on the woods either side of us, but there are no shapes racing between the trees. No gunmen. Perhaps they’re all in the camp. I wonder how many there are and if Mara’s with them. I doubt it. He’ll be relaxing in his penthouse while the others get their hands dirty.
There are no other vehicles on the road. Nobody chasing us. The track behind us is deserted, bathed in the jeep’s tail lights. Red like Celene’s hand. I try to concentrate on the road, but as I think of the red oozing between Celene’s fingers, I become aware of the blood hammering in my temples and have to remind myself to breathe.
What if it’s her turn to die?
Is the invisible clock counting down Celene’s life about to go bust? Spit springs and cuckoo feathers over the inside of the car?
It looks like she was hit in the shoulder. Probably just a flesh wound. If it gets infected, though, any number of things could happen. If the bullet’s still buried in there…
‘What happened to the others?’ I ask.
‘Frank escaped into the woods with some of the others.’ Her voice is fainter than I’m used to. ‘Others were shot or burnt.’
‘How many?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you think there’s anybody left in the camp? Alive, I mean.’
Her voice is smaller still. ‘I don’t know.’
‘How did they find the camp?’
‘They must have followed us…’
My shoulders ache and I realise I’m still wearing the backpack. The photo album digs into my back. I want to ask her about it, demand to know what the hell she’s been doing all these years, following me without ever showing herself. There’ll be time for that later, though. First we need to get to safety.
‘The woods,’ Celene says. ‘There’s camping stuff in the boot. We can pitch a tent. They won’t find us.’
‘No way. We’d freeze to death.’
‘Rumer–’
‘Just trust me on this.’
I already know where we’re going and she won’t change my mind. I just have to figure out where we are. When Celene took me to the camp, I was concussed, strung out with exhaustion. I have no idea what route she took away from the wreckage on the motorway. There’s a small screen on the dashboard that’s probably a GPS but when I dab it, nothing happens. Technology never liked me.
We’ve got a full tank, so I turn right at a junction and follow a country road through quiet fields, not worrying about where we’re headed, trusting that a road sign will turn up eventually. I resist looking in the rear-view mirror, not wanting to see the smoke rising from the camp.
Considering Camp Virtus was meant to be home to the kinds of people who can take down mob bosses, the place collapsed pretty quickly. They didn’t seem prepared for the attack.
Had they grown complacent? Celene said she’d been there for over a decade. If nobody had ever attacked before then, it stood to reason they would feel safe, tucked away in the countryside.
Mara proved them wrong.
Celene’s gone quiet and when I check her out of the corner of my eye, I see she’s barely conscious, staring intensely at the road, not blinking. She’s deathly pale and her breathing’s shallow.
Finally, road signs start appearing and I recognise the names on them. I steer clear of the motorway, weaving through the B roads. There are hardly any cars out here and, as the gloomy evening turns into night, I start to relax.
When we reach the outskirts of London, I take a breath. This is what I know. Not creaky camps and weird cults. The city is my home, corrupt as it may be. It’s good to be back.
I drive through the suburbs, not needing the road signs any more.
Forty minutes later, Celene’s eyelids are drooping as I pull up outside the house. The neighbourhood’s dark. Most of the street lamps don’t work and a shroud-like darkness has settled over the run-down houses.
I pop my door and go round to Celene’s.
‘We’re here,’ I say, tentatively touching her shoulder. She peers up at me, her eyes dull slits.
‘I didn’t mean it,’ she mumbles. ‘I didn’t– I–’
‘Come on.’ I cut off her rambling, helping her out of the jeep. Getting her into the derelict house is a struggle. I don’t have a key for the front door and I have to lead her around the back to the hatch I always use to get into the basement. After a lot of huffing, she’s in, clutching her shoulder protectively.
‘Just a little further,’ I tell her, shouldering her weight, taking her upstairs and leading her down the landing to the room with the black door. I settle her in the Dead Room, then go back to the jeep. The boot contains camping gear, a night light, some sleeping bags and weird foam pillows. I root around a little more and find a first-aid kit.
I grab what I can and lock the jeep.
When I go back into the Dead Room, Celene’s slumped against a wall, but she’s not unconscious. She’s staring at the wall opposite, which is plastered with newspaper reports and pictures of her. Her expression is torn between wonder and horror, like she’s not sure if she’s asleep or awake, alive or dead. The wall might as well be talking to her. ‘CeleneCross, this is your life.’ I doubt she likes what she sees.
‘Here,’ I say, crouching down and attempting to pry her hand from her shoulder.
‘No, no.’ She fights me but she’s too weak and I firmly remove her hand. It flops into her lap, slick with blood. I pull down the shoulder of her jacket, revealing a war zone of smeared, gloopy red, and snap open the first-aid kit. As I clean the wound, I reveal the ragged circle of flesh where the bullet entered. There’s no exit wound.
‘I’m going to have to leave the bullet in there,’ I say, more to myself than her. ‘Safer that way.’
I bandage her up and then rock back on my heels. She looks up at me, raises her bloody hand and touches my face. Her fingers slide down my cheek.
‘My girl. What did I do to you?’
Then she’s unconscious.
I ease her onto her side, place one of the foam pillows under her head and cover her in a sleeping bag. Then I sit and look at her. She’s lost a lot of blood. If she manages to sleep, she’ll feel better in the morning. I’m sure it’s not the first time she’s been shot.
My gaze roams the wall opposite.
This is the only place I know is safe. Was I wrong to bring her here?
Maybe some unconscious part of me wanted her to see. Wanted to see how she’d react to the wall; her life pieced together from snippets and monochrome snaps. My unsettled history referenced in newspaper articles. It paints a pretty bleak picture of us both.
Grabbing the other sleeping bag, I wrap it around me and then sit flipping through the photo album again. Slower this time. Scrutinising every picture, seeing that some seem to have been taken through gaps in fences or from a high window. Across a street. If Celene took them, she was close when she did.
The thought of her following me around for years is darkly funny. I’ve always felt like my mother’s ghost was breathing down my neck. Now I find out she sort of was.
A strange sensation inflates my chest, pushes my ribs apart from the inside. An odd sort of yearning. I look from the album to the sleeping shape on the floor, then to the wall. I need to remind myself of all the awful things my mother did. Immerse myself in the reports of slaughter and destruction. Remind myself what she did to me. The people who died because of my curse.
And still I saved her. I dragged her down when the bullet snapped at her, and I drove us to freedom, patched her up, cleaned her wound, wrapped her up to sleep, like she was a harmless old lady.
Horror movie shadows twitch across the ceiling. I watch them for a while, imagining they’re creating a network of secrets, each connected to the next, like the photos and articles pasted on the wall.
There’s no way I can sleep. Somebody’s jammed chopsticks into my skull and given its contents a whisk. My eyelids itch like they’re plastered with sand, but I can’t relax.
The house creaks and I think I hear something. Maybe just the wind. Quietly, I go through the house with the camp light, checking each room, making sure it’s as secure as a derelict house can be. I close all the doors, then I return to the Dead Room. Cocooning myself in the sleeping bag, I rest my back to the wall and wait for morning.