One Word Kill (Impossible Times Book 1) Page 15

  ‘Fine. The ground starts to heave and all around you, in a vast circle, a wall of reddish brown stone rises, shedding earth. And as you spin to take it all in you see a tower emerging at the centre, maybe quarter of a mile from you. A great stone spike. It’s already a hundred feet high.’

  ‘Can we get over this wall?’ Simon asked.

  ‘By the time you reach it, it’s over your head.’

  ‘I could climb it?’

  ‘It stops growing with a jolt, like a bolt being slammed home. The tower is still rising behind you. The wall is twenty yards high. Sheer stone.’

  ‘Can you get this damn thing off me?’ Mia thrust her hands toward me, the tube still taut between straining fingers. ‘It’s freaking me out.’

  ‘Stop pulling,’ John said. ‘I remember now. I’ve seen these before. Chinese finger traps.’

  ‘You could have said earlier!’ I shook my head.

  ‘Hey, I was up all night snogging.’ John grinned. ‘And, besides, the one I saw didn’t look the same.’

  ‘Alright. I don’t care. How do I get out?’ Mia had stopped pulling.

  ‘That I don’t remember,’ John said.

  I took Mia’s hands, glad of the excuse, holding them with more familiarity than I would have before the party. ‘Well . . .’ I could see how the weave of the material tightened the tube about her fingertips. ‘It’s not like there are many options . . .’

  ‘Scissors!’ Mia said.

  ‘Hey! No scissors!’ Elton started from his chair.

  ‘I . . . Try pushing your fingers together,’ I suggested.

  ‘Together? But I . . . Oh!’ Mia followed my suggestion even as she objected to it, and in moments she was free.

  ‘Fineous will try to climb the wall.’ Simon reached for his dice.

  ‘Sure.’ Elton nodded. ‘But there is a gate about fifty yards to the right of you.’ He drew a circle for the wall. A smaller one inside for the tower. And added a door to both.

  ‘I’ll go to the door,’ John said. The rest of us followed.

  ‘There’s an old man standing before it. Brown robe, long reddish beard. It’d probably be white if it wasn’t covered in dust.’

  ‘Where are we?’ I asked. ‘I ask the guy.’

  ‘You, young man,’ Elton did a querulous old voice, ‘are at the Tower of Tricks.’

  ‘Got it.’ Simon reached for the pieces of paper. ‘Two. Sicker. Fort. It’s Tower of Tricks. I told you he loves anagrams.’

  ‘We need to get these two cured.’ John pointed at Mia and me. ‘How can we do that?’

  ‘Just leave. Nothing that you do not desire can leave with you.’

  ‘That’s it. We can just walk out of here and leave our woes behind us?’

  Elton nodded, the tentative movement of an old man with a dust-laden beard. He gestured with one hand toward the imagined door.

  ‘Ohhh kaaaaaay . . .’ John pushed the lead figure representing his warrior toward the door.

  ‘Wait.’ Mia reached out to stop him. ‘It can’t be this easy.’

  ‘It is the Tower of Tricks . . .’ I said. ‘It could be this easy.’

  ‘Or . . .’ Mia tapped the table. ‘There could be a trick to leaving. Like the finger trap. When I tried the obvious way, I just got held harder. I had to push deeper in to get out.’ She turned to Elton. ‘I ask the old guy whether the door in the wall will really let us out, or if we need to go into the Tower of Tricks to get free.’

  Elton creaked out an answer in his old man’s voice. ‘You’re already in the Tower. We all are. We were born in it and nobody ever gets out of it alive.’

  ‘And that?’ Mia tapped the circle at the centre of the map. ‘If we go in there, can we come out again and leave our disease behind us?’

  Elton shrugged. ‘You can try. If you emerge from the physical tower that you can see, you will be shriven, free of all curses and evils set upon you. But the Tower will not want to let go of you once you step inside. Nobody escapes that building without sacrifice, and often the sacrifice is greater than the benefit they sought. It’s a trick . . . you see.’ He manufactured an apologetic smile.

  ‘Well.’ I pushed the figure representing Nicodemus forward. ‘Mia and I have to go in.’ I looked at her. ‘Coming?’ It was more than an invitation to pit herself against a tower full of fiendish traps. ‘Are you with me, Mia?’

  A smile. One of those small, wicked grins of hers that lit me up. ‘Sure.’ She advanced her priest and at the same time pressed her leg against mine under the table.

  A foolish grin spread across my face. ‘Perhaps you guys should wait outside?’

  John rolled his eyes and pushed his warrior forward. ‘One for all.’

  ‘And all for one,’ Simon said with less enthusiasm. He pushed Fineous to the rear of our little group.

  The afternoon progressed with us working our way up the tower through ever more fiendish death traps. Hours escaped, but we didn’t. Though we did rise steadily higher.

  ‘You’ve got a gift for death traps, Elton.’ John crossed off the supplies he’d used up helping us escape the last one, a black sphere that pursued us, devouring everything it touched except the walls of the tower itself. We finally figured that as it ate, it grew, and we proceeded to feed it everything we could spare, and quite a lot that we couldn’t, until it became too large to fit through the doorways and could be left behind.

  ‘How far up this tower are we?’ I asked.

  Elton shrugged.

  ‘You said there were windows,’ Simon said. ‘Fineous looks out of one. Carefully!’

  ‘You’re careful enough to avoid being beheaded by one of the steel rings that encircle the tower and rise and fall at speed. The tower stretches up above you, until it’s lost in the clouds.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Maybe we’re doing it wrong,’ Mia said. ‘The old man said nobody leaves without sacrifice.’

  ‘I’ve sacrificed loads!’ John pointed irritably to the dozen items crossed off his character sheet.

  ‘Maybe it wants more?’ Mia suggested. ‘Perhaps if the traps had got us, then that would have counted. Maybe we should just say that we’re ready to make the sacrifice?’

  ‘Really?’ Elton used his old voice and produced the figure he had used for the man at the gate, now setting it behind Mia.

  ‘I guess . . .’ She looked around at us.

  We grunted our agreement.

  ‘“On your heads be it,” the old man says. He raises both arms and darkness swirls around you.’ Elton rolled his dice in secret. ‘John, you need to go downstairs for a bit. Go bother Baggage.’

  John sighed and left the room clutching his character sheet.

  Elton looked serious. ‘You’re all in a stone walled room with one iron door. Except for John. You can see him through a window in the rear wall. He’s in an identical room, but he doesn’t seem to be able to see or hear you. You three have your ankles bound together with chains and are positioned by the wall between the two rooms. John’s warrior isn’t tied and is standing by the exit to his room.

  ‘The old man is with you. He says that if one door is opened, then the other door will lock permanently, and not only that, the floor of the other room will vanish and that the drop beneath is fatal.’

  ‘Break the glass!’ I said.

  ‘You hop closer. It isn’t glass. It won’t break, and your blows don’t seem to be being noticed on the other side.’ Elton stood from his chair. ‘I have to go down and ask John some questions.’

  Simon didn’t speak until Elton left the room. ‘John’s the sacrifice.’

  ‘What?’ Mia asked.

  ‘He’s the sacrifice,’ Simon said matter-of-factly. ‘Or we are. Whichever of us leaves the room first kills the other.’

  ‘But we’re tied and he’s by the door,’ I said. ‘If he reaches for the door, we’re dead. All three of us.’

  ‘You’re forgetting something,’ Simon said.

  ‘I hope it’s three se
ts of wings.’ I glanced down at the equipment list on my character sheet.

  ‘No.’ Mia set her finger to the last but one entry. ‘This.’

  ‘Oh.’ I pushed back from the table.

  ‘It’s him or us. And there has to be a sacrifice.’ Simon shook his head.

  Mia drew her hand back. She had pointed to the scroll we took from the vampire. Power Word Kill. I could read the word from the parchment and John’s warrior would die without ever knowing why. Without any chance.

  Elton came back and took his seat. ‘While you bang on the window, John’s warrior glances around the room, then cautiously he reached for the door handle.’

  ‘Do it!’ Simon urged.

  ‘I don’t want to. It’s wrong.’ I pushed my character sheet away.

  ‘It’s three lost or one,’ Simon said. ‘Fineous whips the scroll case from Nicodemus’s pack, knocks off the end cap, and shakes the scroll into the mage’s hands.’ He gave me a hard stare.

  ‘I could do it if he had a chance. Any chance. If he could make a saving throw . . .’

  ‘He can’t,’ Elton said. ‘You say the word, he dies. That’s how it works.’

  ‘I won’t.’ This was about more than the game. It was about control. About losing control. Taking it back. Giving yourself a chance. ‘I can’t.’

  Mia frowned. ‘Nick—’

  The door burst open and John rushed in.

  ‘Out!’ Elton roared, surging to his feet. ‘You can’t be in here—’

  John pushed him back into his chair. ‘This is serious. It’s the hospital, Mia. Your mum. There’s been a fire.’

  CHAPTER 20

  Simon’s mum drove Mia and me to the Westminster Hospital where Mia’s mother had been taken, blue-lighted from a fire at the Miller blocks.

  I stopped asking questions early on. Mia hadn’t been given much information and was giving out short answers. I didn’t think an hour’s snogging the previous night qualified me for giving comfort in such extreme circumstances. I was amazed that she even wanted me to come. Elton had volunteered and been rebuffed.

  ‘I’m impressed they found you,’ I said.

  Mia narrowed her eyes at me. ‘I let her know where I’ll be. Put the number in her purse. She’s not a bad mother. She cares. She just drinks a bit is all.’

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean—’

  ‘It’s OK. Just stop apologising.’

  ‘S—’ I caught myself and held my tongue. Sitting without speaking, I watched the lights go by as we drove through London’s bleak midwinter.

  Simon’s mum dropped us off in the car park with best wishes, two thirds of a packet of digestive biscuits, and a bottle of lemonade. ‘I’m sorry I can’t stay, Mia. You’ve got money to get home? Yes? I hope she’s better soon. Call if you need something. Nick, make sure she calls.’

  The car behind started on the horn and we tumbled out to let Mrs Brett go.

  Moments later, we were hurrying through the sliding doors into the A&E reception. When I’d escaped Ealing Hospital late on Thursday night, I’d hoped I was done with the NHS for a while, but here I was again under the too-bright lights, with the smell of antiseptic and desperation. I felt immediately nauseous and all my aches returned. I waited while Mia went to ask at the desk. I saw Eva three times, the top of her head, the side of her face, her eyes above the back of a bench. It wasn’t her, of course. Just girls with the same dark, curly hair, but my imagination kept finding her. I blamed it on lack of sleep and a late-onset hangover.

  ‘She’s up on the ward. Come on.’ Mia marched by and I followed.

  ‘Burns ward?’

  ‘General. Ward 31. Smoke inhalation.’ Mia managed quite a pace and scorned the lifts in favour of the stairs. Despite my longer stride, I had trouble keeping up.

  I waited in the corridor outside the ward while Mia went in. I walked the length of it several times to keep the ache from my legs. Somehow, standing still is harder than moving. A wheelchair stood abandoned in the ward entrance on my side of the doors. The temptation to sit down in it grew each time I passed by.

  The fire had to be Rust’s work. Under any other circumstances a fire at the home of an alcoholic chain smoker would explain itself. The woman drank herself insensible and her last cigarette ignited the bedclothes or armchair. But days after spilling Rust’s blood, hard on the heels of him pouring flammable liquid through her letterbox . . . had to be him again.

  It probably hurts to be an invalid at any age. At fifteen it crushes you. You go from feeling pretty much invincible to feeling useless. Mia’s mother had nearly been burned to death and tradition demanded that in my new role as maybe-boyfriend I step up and seek violent retribution on the two females’ behalf. And yet Mia and her mum both seemed infinitely more capable of dealing with Rust than I did. And none of us had done very well last night.

  I slumped into the wheelchair with a sigh of defeat and stared at the green wall before me. Demus must have known about the fire. Mia must mention it to me in the months and years to come, so wiping this week from my memory wouldn’t wash the fact of it away. Did he try to stop it? Or did the mathematics of his quest demand that he let it happen? If he knew it had happened and now managed to stop it, then his chance to save ‘his’ Mia vanished as he jumped us all onto another timeline. So had he sat back coldly and let it happen? If the woman died it was on him. On me.

  And what was Mia to him? An old flame? The love of his life? Mother to his children? Did he weigh that in the scales against the life of a middle-aged alcoholic? Was I that calculating?

  Or perhaps the woman burned alive in her bed in his past and this time he had saved her from it at the cost of all his ambitions. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what he had done. But whatever he had done, it was hard to feel ownership of it.

  When I was four I pushed my best friend down the stairs to claim a disputed toy. A blue metal-cast tractor, if I recall correctly. The fall had cost James Davis one of his baby teeth. It was eleven years ago and I couldn’t manage to feel the slightest bit guilty about it. That small version of me had been a different person. His decisions made in a very different context, informed by experience that now had only fractional overlap with my own. And yet, the eleven years that stood between us was dwarfed by the twenty-five that separated me from Demus.

  ‘She wants to see you.’ Mia leaned through the swing doors to the ward and broke into my musings.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. You. Come on.’ She vanished back through the doors.

  I stood guiltily from the wheelchair and followed.

  Just as Eva had been, Mia’s mother was reduced by her hospital bed. She lay like a specimen on a dish, spoiling the pristine whiteness of the sheets with her thin, swarthy arms. She had a respirator over her face, which she took off to address me in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘If my son were here, I wouldn’t be talking to you, boy.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ I nodded, aware that I was a poor substitute for her imprisoned gangland son.

  ‘That boy. Weasel-face.’ She replaced the oxygen mask and took a pained breath from it. ‘That boy ain’t right in the head.’ She tapped her brow with a nicotine-stained finger. ‘Got some screws loose.’ She nodded.

  I nodded too. It was true.

  ‘They’ll come after him for this. My lad’s lot. He’s going to wish he weren’t born, that one.’ Another painful drag on the mask. She coughed weakly and fought to stop it turning into something more. ‘But till they catch hold of him.’ She tilted her head toward Mia. ‘She wants to lie low.’ Dark eyes narrowed at me and any illusions I had that this was a polite request blew away in a cold wind. This was a mother wolf looking out for her cub. ‘You keep her safe, Nick.’

  ‘I will.’ She knew my name! Mia had talked about me!

  ‘OK.’ A tired nod and a wave of her hand. I was dismissed.

  ‘I’ll come out in a bit.’ Mia smiled at me, half-embarrassed, half-pleased.

  She found me back in that w
heelchair thirty minutes later.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Resting. The doctors seem more worried than she is. Well, according to the nurses. I didn’t actually see any doctors . . . Anyway, smoke can mess you up. They have to watch her carefully, make sure she doesn’t go downhill.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s not your fault.’ Mia’s face hardened. ‘We know who did it. And we know he isn’t going to stop.’

  I nodded. With most people, almost everyone, there’s some level at which enough is enough. The level varies from one person to another, but there is a level. You didn’t have to spend long in Rust’s company to realise that he had no threshold. He would escalate any situation with startling rapidity to the point where he could count it as a victory, which meant the other party had to lose. His wasn’t a personality built to last. At least, not in a society with laws and police to enforce them. But he would make quite a mess before he was finished. I was pretty sure of that!

  ‘So, we lie low. Like your mum said. And wait for your brother’s friends to sort it.’ I tried to hide the hope from my voice.

  Mia nodded, a touch unwillingly. ‘If I see him, though . . .’

  ‘Let’s hope we don’t.’ I levered myself to my feet. ‘Though, given that he knows where both of us live, it seems as if the option might be his rather than ours.’

  ‘We could stay over at Elton’s?’ Mia said.

  ‘They’re like sardines in there already. John’s got more room.’

  Mia shook her head. ‘I don’t think I could be civil to his mum.’

  ‘I know what you mean. His dad’s a nice guy, though. He went round to the Arnots’ to apologise for his wife and try to settle things. I mean, you can’t. It’s like trying to pick shit out of a sandwich. But at least he tried. Short of divorcing the woman, what can he do?’

  ‘I guess. But I’m not staying there.’

  ‘Simon’s then. You heard Mrs Brett. She practically invited us, and they have a box room.’ I’d stayed over at Simon’s so many times I was starting to wear a me-shaped dent in the floor.

  Mia nodded thoughtfully. ‘Let’s get some air first.’