Shot, he thought, I've been shot. There was no pain, no real sensation other than being winded, and he hoped that this was as it had been for Jo, this shocked numbness before death.
Death…
"I'm dying," he said.
Daddy! Natasha gasped, and he could hear her tears. Wait … it's not that bad. Stand up. Stand up now! Her voice changed on those last three words, losing their childish lilt and taking on something of age, experience, something that spoke of power and adaptability. And fury. She was enraged.
Tom groaned, pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, stood. From the BMW he heard the squeak of leather as something moved inside.
Natasha screamed in his mind, a long, loud, incoherent exhalation of pure rage. Cole had heard this before, years ago when the berserkers were at their fiercest, mad and hungry and craving the feel of living flesh between their teeth. Then they had been contained at Porton Down, and their psychic abilities had never been so strong. Now, Natasha had changed.
He tried to crawl away but the chains held him tight. Neither could he escape his own mind.
Cole screamed, but he could not hear himself.
He scrambled around on the ground and found the bolt croppers Tom had dropped. Instinct grabbed him and he snipped and cut, hardly aware of what he was doing, pulling hard at the chains until they parted and he fell to the ground. He crawled then, across the road and into a ditch. The terrible effects of Natasha's scream lingered.
It seemed like hours before the roar started to fade. But by then Cole was lost to the world, unconscious, prowling the dark places of his mind for somewhere to hide from this monster that pretended to be a little girl.
When darkness found him and took him away, he was glad.
Tom pulled himself upright against the car, still waiting for the pain to kick in. At least he could stand.
Come here, Natasha said.
He looked into the rear seat and saw the bundle that was Natasha. It seemed to have moved. Her arms had separated slightly from her body, and the face had turned toward him. There was still no expression there—no sign of anything other than the death mask he had seen before—but her attitude had changed. Whereas before she was a mummified corpse, now she was something that seemed to crave its erstwhile animation. He stared at her face, tried to remember just how he had placed the body on the seat, and then the signs of movement were obvious.
Here, she said again, a young girl's voice, yet the command impossible to ignore.
Tom leaned into the car, and that was when the pain came. He groaned, froze, hoping that lack of movement would quell the fire that was growing in his lower back. But it did not. Stoked by his spasming muscles the agony roared louder, and Tom thought, I won't remember this pain, it's nothing, it's a signal, the damage is done and there's nothing worse going on now, it's a signal that's all, a signal, and oh fuck it hurts!
Quickly! Natasha said, and though his eyes were closed Tom sensed slight movement again. Lie down beside me.
Tom slumped across the car's backseat. He felt Natasha's corpse against his chest and tried to pull back, but he had no strength, and he lay there with Natasha pressed between himself and the seat.
Closer, Natasha whispered. Closer, Daddy. Even through the pain he heard a quiver to her voice.
His eyes squeezed shut—not so much because of the pain now, but because he no longer wanted to see what was happening, what was moving, why he could hear the squeak of leather—and he felt a stab of pain in his chest. And then there was slight movement there, as if he were being tickled by a feather, and darkness came to calm his pain.
"Someone will come," he whispered.
Don't care, the girl's voice said in his mind, following him as he sank, turning into an echo and then fading away altogether.
From the darkness came the sound of the sea, and then its salty smell mixed with the odour of blood, and then he saw the boat. The darkness never went altogether—it was there at the edges, threatening to bleed back in at any instant—but Tom viewed this memory out of Natasha's mind, and try though he might he could not pull away.
The four of them—Natasha, her brother and their parents—were in the same boat that had brought them to the house. It was powering across the waves, thumping and jarring as it leapt from crest to crest. They sat in the sunken well at its centre, unable to see anything but sky and the occasional splash of spray against the deep blue afternoon. The sun shone bright and aloof overhead.
The deck around their feet was awash with blood. Some of it was their own. They all bore injuries that should have killed them, and yet they seemed more alive than ever. The strange adaptations that had been evident in the house—the elongated limbs, distended jaws, lengthened nails—seemed to have receded, but the bullet holes and stab wounds were still visible. Some of these wept blood, but others already seemed to have stopped bleeding and scabbed over, especially her brother's. There was a dark spot on his face and two on his neck where bullets had struck home, and now they were little more than heavy bruises. No signs of holes in the skin. No fresh blood. He smiled at Natasha. His pain was palpable, yet in the smile there was an adult knowledge as well, the calm certainty that everything would be alright. Even at this tender age, Peter knew that these wounds would not be the death of him.
Some of the blood was theirs. But most of it came from what they had brought with them.
Huddled between where the berserker family members sat, cowering on the floor, three naked people wallowed in the mess. There were two men and a woman. One of the men pressed both hands to his throat, trying to stem the tide of blood pumping from a ruptured artery, while the other man and the woman watched wide-eyed, afraid and yet unwilling to help.
Natasha's little brother—he must have been maybe seven years old—left his seat. He splashed through the blood on hands and knees, and the three captives cowered back, the man without the ruptured throat keening like a pig in pain. Peter paused, growled at the whining man and laughed when he started to cry. Natasha's mother and father watched with parental fondness, smiling past the pain of their own healing wounds. Peter suddenly darted to the bleeding man, pulled his hands away and took a long, deep draught of the dark red blood. Still on hands and knees he returned to his seat, glancing at the naked woman as he passed by. She remained silent, eyes downcast. Perhaps if she did not see them, they would not see her. The writhing man grabbed at his wound again, pressing hard, starting to moan now as he felt death's approach.
"You're so greedy," Natasha's mother said. Her throat was raw from the scream of the hunt and the ravaging of flesh, her voice a knife on bone.
"Yummy," the boy said, licking his lips and rubbing his stomach. Natasha laughed. Her father smiled at her and his son, then looked down at where the naked woman cowered. She was doing her best to avoid their gaze, legs and arms drawn in to make herself as small as possible. There were terrible bite marks down one side of her body, the skin ragged and Tom.
"What's wrong?" he growled. She ignored him. He kicked out, his heel catching her head and flicking it back. "What's wrong?"
She looked up at last, defiant. "Fuck you," she said, and they all laughed, and their laughs were deep and harsh.
Natasha looked down at her own bloodied body and drew her hands over the wounds. Each touch brought pain, but each pain brought comfort, because she would mend. None of them had been using silver bullets or blades. It had been quite a battle, and a good feed, but now she was tired and looking forward to getting back home. At least, she thought of it as home. Her mother and father frequently spoke to her in her mind, telling her of another place entirely, and sometimes she dreamed of the darkness and the silence and the places where her kind may one day live in peace, as they had before. They had told her of home, but there was a huge implied history to their discussions, a deep and rich past, through she had never probed further. She sensed that they were keeping her ignorant of many truths of berserker history for her own good. The Man seeks to know everything, they often warned, telling her to guard her thoughts. He would know, and he would kill us all, because he's not like the others. He's different. He sees the bad without the good, and he sees the differences between us whilst ignoring all the similarities. The Man hates us because we're not like him. Sometimes, honey, that's all a man needs to hate.