The Last City Read online

  The Skreaf stirred and Silho sent another blast of electricity into her. The witch palmed away the beam of power and rose to her feet. With a flick of her hand, she melted Silho’s electrifier into a boiling mess. Silho threw it down and the witch started towards her, but then stopped, her eyes widening.

  ‘You?’

  Looking at the Skreaf closer, Silho saw a vague likeness to someone she had known as a child – a woman named Bellum, curator of the Galleria Majora. She used to come to their house and talk to her artist father. Silho remembered Bellum had a cold, clinical stare even when her lips had twitched into the semblance of a smile and when she’d called Silho ‘my dear’.

  ‘Ms Bellum?’ Silho asked.

  The Skreaf released a terrible high-pitched shriek. She lunged at Silho and grabbed her neck, strangling with impossibly strong, vile-smelling hands. The shadows in the room swirled. They formed shapes that stepped out of the walls and came towards them.

  Silho gasped and shifted to light-form vision. She saw the writhing demon creature living inside the Skreaf’s skin. She drew power from the demon’s body-lights into her gloved hands, but had only taken a small amount before she felt a terrible burning, as though her skin was being set alight. Forced to break the connection, she used the power already gathered to shove her attacker away. As the witch flew back her fingernails scratched across Silho’s neck. Silho thought she saw a fleeting emotion in the witch’s eyes of something like surprise at the strength of Silho’s retaliation, but it was quickly glazed over by rage. The shadow figures caught the Skreaf, Bellum, before she hit the wall and she slunk back towards Silho, sinking low to the ground, her hair becoming snakes, her face a terrible sunken skull with blood-red eyes. She opened a foul, rotting mouth and spoke dark-words against Silho. Silho collapsed to the ground, agonised, as though stabbed by a thousand needles. She convulsed, unable to control her body. Her head and feet smashed against the floor again and again.

  Behind Silho a voice hissed a Cos enchant, ‘Indigo.’

  It caught the Skreaf by surprise, throwing the witch and her shadow army backward to the wall, which swallowed them up, trapping them inside the concrete. They stretched the rock like plastic trying to get free.

  Silho rolled onto her stomach and warm blood spilled from her nose and ears. Her heartbeats sounded loud and detached. A figure appeared beside her and she stared up at the skeletal spectral-breed, wrapped in a giant moth-wing cloak. The recovered Wraith stood perfectly still, more like a sculpture than a real being. An image born out of a troubled mind, blending with the shadows, beautifully grotesque. Blood gurgled in Silho’s throat. The Wraith bent down and touched her face with velveteen fingertips. Silho struggled, unable to breathe, her vision blurring. She coughed and sparks flew from her mouth, burning her lips. A red glow ignited behind the Wraith’s eyes, and it lifted Silho to her feet with a strength belied by sickly thin limbs. It whispered a word: Omarian. Silho’s senses regathered around her and she saw the wall holding the witch starting to shake and crumble.

  ‘Run!’ she yelled at the Wraith and they both bolted for the exit. The spectral-breed passed through the wall, Silho through the doorway. She crashed along the pitch-black corridor and up the stairs. She didn’t stop at the top, but kept running, losing track of the Wraith and all sense of direction, not caring now who saw that she was afraid. Buildings blurred on either side of her and she hurtled over holes in the road made by the Burrowers. A terrible presence followed her, gathering, gaining. Silho grabbed at her weapon belt, her fingers finding her communicator. She ripped the device up to her mouth, grappling to turn it on as she raced forward. It buzzed to life.

  ‘Call Eli!’ she shouted.

  The machine whined and whispered and found Eli’s system.

  He answered. ‘Silho. Why did you —’

  ‘Eli!’ she screamed into the communicator. ‘Help me!’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Eli yelled back, his voice rising several octaves. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘A witch is chasing me! She’s behind me!’ Her feet pounded on the concrete and she gasped for air. A stitch ripped along one side of her body and blood streamed from her nose over her lips and chin. She glanced behind her at the shadows swelling like a storm. Another voice murmured behind the static of the communicator, but Eli’s reply blurred it out.

  ‘Keep running! I’m calling the commander.’ Silho heard sounds of Eli crashing around, then his frantic calls, ‘Boss! Boss! Come in – are you there? Diega – are you there?’ He spoke again to Silho. ‘Their machines are off, but I’m coming for you right now. I’ll find you! I’ll . . . Oh no!’ Silho heard a clunk and Eli’s voice dissolved into static.

  ‘Eli!’ Silho struggled to breathe. ‘Eli, answer!’

  ‘Silho!’ Jude’s clear, deep voice cut in through her machine. ‘I’m here, not far from you. I’m under attack as well. Look at your locator. Can you see me?’ She heard the zapping sound of Jude firing his electrifier and something screamed horribly. Silho lifted the machine to her eyes, the dots blurry through her watering eyes, but she made out the blue spot that was Jude. He was close.

  ‘I see you!’ she said.

  ‘Keep running towards me,’ Jude yelled over the noise of weapon fire. She heard him groan. Silho took a sharp turn down an alley and a stranger lunged at her and grabbed her by the shoulders. With the entire force of her terror behind her, Silho punched him in the face and smashed him out of the way. He screamed abuse after her, but his voice was cut to a bloody gurgle by whatever was chasing her. Silho didn’t look back. She was almost to Jude – two more corners. One more corner.

  She flung herself over another hole in the street and stumbled into an alley, only to skid to a halt and freeze in terror. Skreaf witches and sorcerers crowded the backstreet. They had surrounded Jude. He was lying unmoving on the ground, covered in white Androt blood. Other people, chained to each other, stood shaking and crying nearby. The forms of some of the Skreaf were dissolving into mist and wrapping around the prisoners. One was a teenage boy with fire-red hair and Galley bloodline marks.

  All the Skreaf’s eyes suddenly snapped Silho’s way and locked onto her. They started to speak curses. Silho stumbled back, trying to escape them. A hand shot up from the Burrower hole behind her. Silky-soft fingers clamped hard around her ankle and yanked her downwards. The Wraith dragged Silho through the tunnel so quickly she couldn’t get a grip on the gravel and she couldn’t catch her breath. Abruptly, the ground vanished from beneath her and she dropped, deeper, down and down until she crashed to the ground and was buried by an avalanche of dirt and rocks. That was when blackness took her.

  15

  Ev’r had realised the extent of Ismail’s sickness when he’d tried to tell her how much she meant to him, that she was the only one he had ever loved, that they were soulmates – that even though this life had ripped them apart, they would be together again in Paradise. Together forever. The Mocking Witch had been keeping him prisoner, and keeping him alive with the elixir she hung around her neck at all times. It was a cure-all of unfathomable power, enough to prevent Ismail’s heart, pierced through the centre by a blade, from splitting in two. But the potion had worn off by all but the last drop, and their time together, brief and perfect, was over. Ev’r had half-lifted, half-dragged him into a cave in the Lava Diavol Mountains. She’d sat beside him, held his hand and watched helplessly as he’d struggled for his last moments of life. Afterwards she’d looked into his dulled eyes and understood that everything that had been her soulmate was now gone and that for all she’d loved him, she could never bring him back. Nothing ever could. That was death – and there was no Paradise at the end of it. There was nothing.

  Ev’r crouched in one corner of the silent prison room, under the ventilator gushing freezing air. It chilled the twists of chains pinning her arms firmly to her sides. The cold metal burned her skin, and her leg muscles ached under the weight of her body. Still she held her position, refusing to allow her
self to move, knowing the cold would slow the changes of her system. Memories came to her mind of a person she hadn’t thought about forever – her mother. It was a word to describe the woman, but it held no meaning for her. Though the woman had been dead in her mind from the moment she’d left her sight, Ev’r saw her with absolute clarity – cringing, crying, weak in her husband’s shadow. What he said she did, and she rushed to please him even when he hurt her children. Ev’r didn’t believe in reliving the past through pitiful self-reflection, but now that she felt her time running low, she thought about her childhood and she understood that everything in her life up until this point had been built around trying to be as far opposite to that woman – mother – as she could be.

  An image blurred by years of focused forgetting came to her. A straggly girl lay struggling on the ground, her face pressed into the dirt by a boy. He was nondescript. He had no identity, just the same ugly, snivelling face as every other scullion-born son of filth. Her father had promised her to this boy, this no one. He had grown impatient and without Ismail to protect her; he’d taken what wasn’t his.

  Torn and dirty, she’d stumbled home. She hadn’t gone to her mother then; it wasn’t until she’d felt the baby growing inside her that she had made that mistake. It was a moment of blind desperation, where she forgot all reason and truth. Maybe she had hoped, however stupidly, that the woman who birthed her might stand up and protect her when it really mattered. She hadn’t. Ev’r was blamed for what was not her fault. Her father and the other men of her family tribe kicked her out. They’d pelted her with rocks to drive her away, while her mother stood by and watched and wept, but they were selfish tears. They meant nothing.

  After this, part of her had sung with freedom from the drudgery of scullion existence, but another part had screamed to go back. Her home town was built from filth and garbage, but it was the only home she had known. Alone and pregnant, she’d faced the freezing desert nights and boiling desert days. She’d scavenged, she’d starved, she’d done everything she could to stay alive, until the day she was ambushed by desert freaks. They’d destroyed her child before it took its first breath, and though she had never wanted it, she was devastated to see it dead. Before they’d been able to finish her off, the Mocking Witch had driven them away.

  After Ismail died, she had returned to the outskirts of her town with the purpose of finding her parents, of laughing in their faces and dealing them a lesson in life from which they’d never recover. She went home to find life had already dealt its own lesson. Her father had bashed her mother to her grave, then in the same year he himself had been beaten brain-dead during a tribe war. As was the custom of the scullion people, still half-alive, he had been cast out into the desert to be picked apart by carrion birds. Though her parents were gone, she’d seen that her sisters and brothers had taken their place and were continuing in their footsteps, the link to the next damaged generation. She had broken away from this chain. She was no longer part of it, but neither was she part of anything else. She was completely alone.

  Ev’r lifted her head, sensing the outer door of the interrogation area opening. She looked up at the spyer, but the image died, concealing whoever was coming. Ev’r glanced at the table, wondering if Snack-size was watching. She guessed probably not. Just as she had known her life with Ismail was ending, she felt now her own time was up. She had no chance, but she sure as hell wasn’t going down without taking them with her.

  The door to her cell slid open and the human-breed guardians stood in the doorway – one Skreaf witch, one Skreaf sorcerer. Two demons glaring through the semi-glazed eyes of their hosts.

  The lights in the cell flickered and dipped from the magics summoning in the room. The Skreaf thought it was coming from them, but they really didn’t know who they were dealing with.

  Ev’r gathered her full psychological, emotional and physical strength. She leapt from crouching to standing in an instant and released a dark curse, taught to her by the Mocking Witch. It was not Skreaf magics, but it was still powerful, at least momentarily. The curse hit both demons, driving them to the ground like a giant crushing fist. Ev’r jumped over their bodies and ran out the door. She made it into the entrance of the interrogation area and slammed into the front door, hoping to jar it open. No such luck. She stretched her bound hand painfully upwards, straining against the chains, trying to touch the release button, but it was too high for her. The curse hit her squarely in the back and flung her forward so hard her head smacked against the concrete wall. Blood trickled down her face. She staggered up and lunged behind a table on one side of the room, but Skreaf dark-words shattered it with a raw and terrible explosion. Ev’r ducked low, trying to shelter herself from the burning debris. The Skreaf closed in on her, chanting. In retaliation, she repeated her own curse blocker, but felt her strength quickly dwindling. They were laying her defenceless, and she had only one choice – self-destruction. There was a curse that would turn her into a bomb with enough power to make rubble of the entire room, along with whoever was inside it.

  Ev’r stood, battered by the onslaught of dark-words but unmoving. Her lips formed the first word of the spell and her body begin to burn and shake. Blood ran down her face and neck. Her mouth tasted of hot metal. She whispered the second word and her knees started to give. The walls shivered. One more word and it was all over. Desperation to live held her tongue mute and she struggled against her own terror of the end. It was true, when Ismail had died, she had prayed for death to take her too, but now, faced with it, all she wanted was to live. Power siphoned from her as one of the Skreaf summoned a death-curse.

  She had to finish her incantation. Just as she opened her mouth to begin the final word, the doors to the main area flew open. The two Skreaf spun towards the entrance as a volley of missiles sailed through the air. They struck the ground all around the witch and sorcerer. A heavy, blinding gas and the most repulsive stench rapidly drowned the room. Ev’r coughed and choked, dropping to her knees. A small hand grasped her shoulders and dragged her forward. She went with it and crawled low through the haze, past the struggling, coughing forms of the Skreaf.

  Ev’r burst out of the room into the corridor, retching violently, her eyes streaming with tears. The soldier, Eli, stood beside the doors, punching in the code to relock it. Before he could, the Skreaf barged their way out. They looked from Ev’r to Eli and immediately went for their electrifiers. With unmatchable sleight of hand, Eli raised his electrifier first and shot a charge into both. They dropped dead to the ground. The Skreaf demons still alive inside them shrugged beneath their hosts’ skin like convulsions. The chest of one of the guardians started to rip outwards.

  ‘Hey!’ someone screamed from down the hallway. Ev’r and Eli spun towards the voice. The other two interrogation area guardians, the giant and the Twitchbak, stood staring upon the scene.

  ‘You killed them!’ the sabre-breed snarled at Eli. ‘I saw you shoot them.’

  ‘No!’ Eli said. ‘Renoir, I —’

  ‘Drop your weapons. Get down on the ground,’ the guardian called Renoir shouted. He aimed his electrifier at Eli and the gargantuan soldier grabbed for his communicator and called for backup. The rip in the Skreaf guardian’s chest spread.

  ‘Run!’ Ev’r barged Eli into motion, and the two of them charged back along the corridor. Electricity blasted around them. She heard Eli praying as he dashed, half-running, half-flying as fast as he could.

  ‘In here!’ he yelled, making a sharp turn and crashing through a doorway in the wall that she hadn’t even seen. She found herself standing in a stairwell.

  ‘Short cut to the roof,’ Eli panted, then cried out, ‘Nelly, no!’

  Ev’r saw something small dart out of the soldier’s pocket and scurry away down the stairs. Eli tried to chase after the creature, but a blaze of electricity from the gaining soldiers forced him back.

  He flew up the stairs, Ev’r right on his heels, with the soldiers firing behind them. Ev’r struggled to su
stain the speed without the extra assistance of her arms.

  ‘Untie me!’ she yelled at Eli.

  ‘No time!’ Eli gasped. He grabbed her by the chains and beat his wings hard, dragging her faster and faster up towards the roof. Bolts of electricity glanced off the steel of the stair rail beside them. They finally reached the top and burst out through the door. Ev’r followed Eli’s sprinting form to a vintage-looking craft.

  ‘That’s too slow!’ she shouted. ‘Jump something faster.’

  ‘Get in!’ Eli yelled back, wrenching the door open. He shoved her headfirst into the passenger seat just as an electrical surge behind them blasted their neighbouring transflyer into flames. Scrambling over her into the pilot’s seat, Eli started the engine and jetted them upwards while Ev’r managed to close the door with her legs. Seven or eight military transflyers lifted up immediately behind them and gave chase, their sirens blazing.

  ‘Speed up!’ Ev’r screamed.

  ‘Hold on,’ the small soldier instructed her. He gunned the engine and she felt her stomach lift into her chest. A gasp escaped her mouth. Then full throttle punched her backward into her seat. Her legs lifted over her head and she tumbled into the back of the craft, smacking against the rear window. A hoard of rubbish and machine parts half-buried her. If they had been flying an open-topped transflyer she would have been lost.

  Eli navigated the craft with expert skill, flying the machine faster than Ev’r had ever gone before. They soon left the military flyers far, far behind.

  ‘Activate military radio,’ she heard Eli saying.

  Soldiers’ voices blared from the speakers, describing the craft they were flying. They named Eli Anklebiter as an accessory to her escape – and to the murder of the guardians. Ev’r knew the drill. Blockades would be set up everywhere and the skyways would be crawling with soldiers. They had to get somewhere safe right now and lay low.

  She managed to scramble back to the passenger seat. When she looked at Eli, his chest was heaving and tears were streaming down his face.