Tim Lebbon - Reaper's Legacy

The explosion would kill everyone. That, Nomad did not mind. She had killed so many through her actions, and more would only add to her damned tally.

But…

I cannot allow Jack to die. He is my greatest hope, the pure version of every impurity I seeded. He has to survive to make everything right. And perhaps…perhaps for Jack to survive, the girl has to die.

The cries of inhuman things welcomed them to the north. They were awful, alien sounds, and they set Lucy-Anne’s nerves on edge. First from one direction, then another, they seemed to sing across the dark city, imparting secrets that everyone but she knew, and however much she tried to deny it, she could not shake the idea that she was at their centre. The shrieks had an intelligence to them that she found disconcerting, and Rook had no answer when she whispered her fears. That he was also troubled made everything that much worse.

She had rarely ever experienced true night. Society steered away from darkness, consciously or not. During the day the sun stood watch overhead, but at night there was need for artificial suns to keep at bay those demons and monsters from less enlightened times. In the village where she’d lived alone for two years since Doomsday there were street lamps, exterior lights on houses, and the cool borrowed glare of TVs behind curtains, all of which bathed village streets and gave them at least a pretence at daylight. Since the tragedy that consumed London, the worst monsters had been on the inside. Perhaps they always had been. So fending off darkness with artificial light was a token gesture that was easy to make.

Here in the wilder, most deadly north of London, darkness had found a home. With a newly overcast sky there was barely any light at all, and their surroundings existed beneath a diffused night-sky sheen. Shadows watched them from everywhere.

Lucy-Anne held Rook’s hand tightly as they walked through the tree-lined streets of Primrose Hill. She feared that if she let go she might lose him; he and his rooks wore the night rather than drawing back from it. She could see him only because he was close, and she could not see the birds at all. They were shadows wafting by her cheeks, or occasionally cawing from above.

The avenue’s trees were little more than ghostly stumps, the street’s uneven surfaces broken with creeping weeds, vehicles wrecked like the memories of long ago. It seemed that the farther north they came, the farther back in memory a healthy London existed.

Maybe they can change time, Lucy-Anne thought. Maybe everything is older here now. They’re gone ahead, evolved even more, and we’re invading somewhere we should never be.

“We’re being watched,” Rook said softly, and without slowing down.

“By what?”

“I don’t know. Just keep moving.”

Lucy-Anne looked around but could see only shadows within shadows. But though sight was stolen by the almost-unnatural dark, she could still smell the stench of beasts.

The terrible, shattering idea that Andrew could be one of these had already hit home, though she refused the idea time to take root. It was simply out of the question that her brother had survived only to become a monster. If that had happened, everything about him would have changed. Those people they had seen in the park were barely human, and the sense of things around them now was truly alien, and other.

The man in the hotel had sensed Andrew as part of her bloodline. And the strange woman Sara had narrowed his smell to Hampstead Heath. Surely they would not have been able to do that if he had not remained human?

But in truth, she did not know. She was clutching at straws.

“How far to Hampstead Heath?” she asked.

“Couple of miles.” Rook’s reply was clipped, stressed. She squeezed his hand but received nothing in response.

A rook landed on her shoulder. Its claws dug in and she winced, but did not cry out. She turned, face-to-face with the bird, and in the faint light she could just see its head jerking left and right. Another landed beside it, and the two of them flapped their wings to try and maintain purchase on her jacket, wings whispering across her face. More landed on Rook—two on each shoulder, one on his head, and then two more when he extended his free arm.

“What?” Lucy-Anne whispered.

“Scared,” Rook said, and she wasn’t sure whether he meant himself or his birds.

More birds drifted down low, fluttering as they attempted to fly as close to Rook as possible, and soon her vision was obscured by shadows that moved rather than those that hid. Her dream came back to her—the birds attacking her—but she knew this was far from that. This was something worse.

Rook started running, pulling Lucy-Anne with him. His grip hurt her but it was a welcome pain. Secure. She could not imagine letting go and losing him in this darkness, where anything might dwell.

Shrieks came again, closer this time. And for the first time she thought perhaps they came from above.

“Flying things,” she said, and Rook’s brief squeeze confirmed that he already knew.

Something passed above them. Lucy-Anne gasped and looked up, unsure how she had sensed it—smell, or motion, or sight, or perhaps a combination. She saw nothing, but the sense of being watched increased to an overwhelming extent, and she waved her free arm over her head, terrified that she would feel something above her. There was only air.

The rooks started caw-caw ing, flapping their wings but not taking off. Lucy-Anne squinted as a wing slapped across her eyes and stung, blinding her for a moment. It made little difference. She blinked rapidly until she could see again, and Rook was steering them across the street towards a hulking shape.

More shapes passed overhead, and something reached down and snatched at Lucy-Anne’s hair. She screamed as a tuft of hair was ripped from her head, and felt the warmth of fresh blood spreading across her scalp.

Rook whistled, and above them Lucy-Anne heard rooks impacting something larger and more vicious. Birds cried out and immediately started raining down around them, broken and torn. She stepped on one and felt the gentle give as its bones crumbled beneath her foot.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said. Rook tugged hard on her hand, urging her onward.

More birds swooped in and something else screeched above and to the left. It was a terrible sound—pained, angry, and undeniably human.

“In here!” Rook said. He shoved her towards the shadow, and she saw it was a vehicle of some kind. The door scraped as he pulled it open, then she was thrust unceremoniously into the driver’s seat and the door slammed behind her.

Silence. And the smell of decay.

“Oh my God,” Lucy-Anne whispered. The passenger door was opened, the sudden sound making her jump, and Rook tumbled in. He held the door for a moment and whistled again, and the inside of the car was suddenly filled with flapping, panicked shapes. He closed the door, the shapes quickly settled, and the silence was shocking.

Something scraped along the roof, like nails on a blackboard. Lucy-Anne shrunk down in the seat, holding her head, bending forward, wishing that everything would go away. I’m back in Camp Truth with Jack , she thought. We’ve just woken up from a snooze, I’ve dreamed all of this, all of it, and there’s an hour before Sparky and Jenna will arrive. We’ll kiss each other, and perhaps more. We can do whatever we want, because I’m just so glad this was all a dream!

But it was not a dream. The big flying things were circling the car and skittering their claws across the roof. And inside the car, something dead sat behind her.

Rook spoke as soon as she shifted.

“Don’t look back,” he said.