A mighty crash shakes the building. I shelter my face as a shockwave of heat and dirt hammers into me. Of course. The rebels planted more explosives. The church is predominantly stone, so there would be little to feed the flames once they’d devoured the wooden furnishings. We stumble from the door, clinging to each other, hacking and spitting.
And suddenly Saskia and Matthew are beside us, wrapping us in their arms and guiding us from the smoke. And when we’re far enough away that the air feels cool against our skin, we all slump for a moment, transfixed by the flames, as if watching a procession of cobras dancing to eastern music, the orange reflected in our eyes. Rebel Headquarters, gone for ever. Strange to think, after centuries upon centuries of worship and humanity and war and technology, something as primeval as fire should tear it to the ground. And it’s impossible to look away, like watching a lion take down a gazelle – in spite of the horror and the overriding sadness, you can’t help admiring the sheer strength of the beast.
Finally, Ash leans into me. ‘We need to run.’
But he’s too late. I’m too late. Thorn hasn’t forgotten my earlier confession, and as I try to stand, he’s already pounced on me, dragging me back to my knees. And I’m reminded again of the lion. But I feel no admiration now I’m the gazelle; only pain and indignity and terror.
‘No!’ Saskia screams. ‘She was just saying it to save her friend.’
‘Thorn, please,’ Katie yells.
Ash rams into him, but he makes little impact against Thorn’s heavy frame.
Thorn turns to Matthew. ‘Keep a tight hold of her boyfriend. I want him to see this.’
Matthew twists Ash’s arms behind his back, murmuring something directly into his ear. I don’t know what Matthew said, but it’s enough to drain away all of Ash’s fight.
‘Are you ready, Little Flower?’ Thorn asks.
Cold metal pushes into my temple. I can’t breathe. White spots gather in my vision. My lips go numb.
Katie moves in front of us. Her body blocks out the church so it looks like she’s on fire, like she’s some terrifying demon. She shows us the white of her palms and fixes Thorn with that look. ‘You don’t have to do this. Please, for me, let her go.’
I hear his voice, filled with anger and hate. ‘She betrayed us, Katherine. She told the Gems about the raid on the Meat House, they ambushed us at the Coliseum. She led them right to us – she must have worn some sort of tracking device. They killed dozens of us, captured the rest.’
Katie’s voice remains measured yet firm, her hair merging into the red of the flames. ‘Violet would never betray the Imps.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I know Violet.’ Her gaze clicks somewhere else for a moment, and I see the slightest of cracks in her calm demeanour. ‘I had a lot of time to think about the things you told me when we were in the cell together,’ she says, changing tack.
He pushes the gun into my skin. ‘What things?
‘The things you told me about Ruth.’
‘You leave her out of this, Katherine’
But Katie continues in her gentle manner. ‘At first I thought I reminded you of her.’
‘You do.’
‘Yes, but there’s more to it than that, isn’t there? The clue’s in the timing – she hanged nearly twenty years ago.’
He doesn’t reply, but the tremor of the pistol makes me think he may be crying.
‘You lost more than just Ruth that day, didn’t you, Thorn?’ Again, her focus slips to a point just behind him, like she’s watching . . . waiting.
‘Stop it,’ Thorn says. ‘Just stop it, Katherine, I warn you.’
She takes a step forward. ‘You lost something – someone – just as important.’ She’s dragging out her words, buying time.
The nose of the gun rocks against my skull. My breath grows increasingly shallow, my vision increasingly hazy, and I find looking at Katie too hard, the flames burning my eyes. I let my gaze slip to Ash – his wonderful, irregular face – and I just wait for the peace and calm of nothingness. But something behind those winter eyes doesn’t meet my expectation. They don’t look scared or sad or angry. They look full of hope. Excitement.
Katie takes a step towards us. ‘But the real clue was the way you looked at me,’ she says.
I force myself to look at her again. She looks so empowered, so in control, and I realize that the whole time I was at the manor, trying desperately to keep us safe, to send us home, she was back in that ochre room doing exactly the same thing. Buttering up the enemy, gathering information, looking for chinks in the armour. She takes another step forward so that she blocks out the flames entirely and I see only the smoke, gushing into the sky.
She smiles a soft, kind smile. ‘Because you don’t look at me like a lover. You never did. You’ve always looked at me like a father.’ She takes one final step, closing the gap between us, and reaches a steady hand out towards Thorn. ‘Ruth was pregnant when she died, wasn’t she?’
But he never gets to answer. I hear a strangled scream. Something hot and wet and metallic-tasting sprays into my mouth. The gun falls away from my temple. I turn to see it bouncing off the tarmac. Then, I see Thorn. Both hands clasped to his throat, blood spurting between his fingers and streaming down his forearms. He collapses to his knees and stares at me, blinking in slow motion. I imagine I can hear the moist click as his upper lids finally connect with his lower rims – a pair of camera lenses shutting. Finally, he falls on to his side, blood pooling around my knees.
He doesn’t blink again.
Saskia stands in his place, bloodstained knife in her hands. And I finally understand that Katie was keeping him talking so Saskia could creep up on him. I inhale a huge lungful of air; a strange, shaky noise escaping into the night.
Saskia raises an eyebrow. ‘Sweet Jesus, he’s a big bastard. I almost needed a ladder to reach that throat.’ But the frantic rise and fall of her chest belies her nonchalant tone.
Katie falls on me, squeezing my body against hers. ‘Are you OK, Vi? God, I thought he was going to kill you.’
‘Yeah,’ I manage to squeak.
Ash and Matthew help me up. Ash kisses my forehead and wraps his arms around me, his eyes wet with tears of relief. ‘I was sure you were a goner.’
I wipe my mouth and my hand comes away scarlet.
Saskia cleans her knife and sticks it back in her belt. ‘Gem blood, Imp blood – it all tastes the same.’
I notice I can pick out every one of her features. The strong line of her nose, the sapphire of her eyes, the texture of her port wine stain, slightly rippled like crepe paper. Which means only one thing – the searchlights of the Gem helicopters are approaching. Thorn’s cost us precious time. We need to hurry.
We look to the sky to see an army of helicopters arriving. Small, dark smudges fall towards us – a sheet of explosives that penetrate the blaze of the church and lift more stone and debris our way. A blast to my left sends chunks of paving battering into my ribs. Another blast and the Humvee bursts into flames. We slide to a halt and watch as our escape route disappears beneath a blanket of fire.
I can hear only the crackle and pop of the blaze, the whir of the helicopters – no explosions, no flying tarmac. At first I think my eardrums must have ruptured, but when I look to the sky, I see the bombs have stopped falling.
A series of cables spiral towards the ground.
‘Move, move!’ Matthew shouts.
We don’t wait to see the spiders falling downwards, nor do we wait for the shower of bullets to nip at our heels. We just turn and sprint – as fast as our damaged bodies will allow – into the winding side streets of the metropolis.