Page 14

“She never said she would.” Einsa hurried to the left after the bulk of the crowd.

“We should stop her while we’re fresh, then!” Bek grabbed at Einsa’s thickly muscled arm. The girl was smaller than Lucia, but she was definitely one of the five biggest left.

“Stop her?”

“Kill her, then.”

The retreat turned to a rout as panicked acolytes began to sprint.

“She’s already dead!” Einsa shouted, not looking round.

Bek found herself at the rear of the group of girls fleeing along the side of the hall, Lucia’s bellowing growing louder at her back with each of Bek’s floundering strides. Her lungs just refused to provide her legs with the strength that terror demanded. Any trip or even stumble would put her in the monster’s grasp and certain death.

Help. To her shame, she would have cried, “Help!” But she hadn’t the breath for it. The other acolytes were suddenly yards ahead of her. Bek saw Mollandra glance back from the rear of the group, surely thanking the stars that she was faster than the slowest person.

The hand that clamped down on Bek’s shoulder felt more like an iron claw than flesh. Bek screamed despite the lack of air in her chest and began to fall.

She kept falling through a darkness that swallowed first the light and then all sound too. Bek had spent too much time imagining how she would die, how much it would hurt—not whether, because dying always hurt—and almost no time imagining what being dead would be like. She wouldn’t have guessed there would be so much falling. So much of it that after a while she stopped trying to scream against it and found that it didn’t really feel like falling anymore.

“Where…” She sat up.

A bone sky offered no light, and yet somehow she could “see” the black banks rising to her left, studded here and there with what might be thorn bushes or the antlers of monstrous deer buried too shallow. That these growths were also black didn’t seem to prevent her sensing their outlines.

The sound of her own screaming, and the wheeze of her breath rattling into deficient lungs, had both been replaced by a low, constant rushing. She saw the lightless waters now, hurtling past, almost close enough to touch. A river of frightening speed, although she sensed no gradient.

Bek got to her feet. She hadn’t recovered her breath so much as stopped needing it. She turned and stepped back in shock, one heel almost making contact with the turbulent shallows. Lucia stood just two yards away, angry eyes hunting the darkness, her back to the river.

“Hello?”

And in a swirl of noise and colour it was all gone and Einsa was hauling her across the dining room floor.

“I…I’m—”

“Good, you’re awake. Get up!” Einsa released her.

“Where’s…”

“Lucia collapsed when she touched you. Both of you did.” Einsa frowned. “This little idiot”—she indicated Mollandra—“was already going back for you.”

Mollandra danced around Bek as she struggled to stand, her attempts to help more like bird pecks.

Not far away Lucia was also getting up.

“Shit. I thought it was too good to be true.” Einsa started to back away.

“Wh-what was?”

Mollandra pushed Bek. “Go! Run!”

Flanked by Mollandra and Einsa, Bek began to run. Behind them Lucia’s howling restarted.

Bek arrived gasping at the opposite end of the hall. The girls she’d been chasing were now clustered with dozens more around Undu at the doors. Some were even foolish enough to beg her to let them out. Several were weeping, close to hysteria.

Lucia had been distracted by another knot of acolytes and was rampaging after them while a score of other girls ran along the tabletops, jumping the gaps to maintain their distance.

Bek mastered her breath as best she could, not wanting to sound vulnerable. The weak are seldom listened to.

“Can you do that again?” Einsa asked.