Mirela screamed again. Samantha, tears streaming, stood up from behind the car.
‘STOP!’ she yelled as loudly as she could. She stepped into the street and faced Scarface. For the third time, he smiled at her. She followed his obsidian eyes into his mind, searching for mercy. She found murder, torture, death.
A silver Mercedes sports car screeched around the corner into the street, mounting the gutter and taking out the table at which the old men had been playing cards just moments before. Scarface reached out and gripped Sam painfully by the bicep. He dragged her, dry-mouthed and sweating, towards the car. She felt completely numb, powerless, gummy with apathy and defeat.
Just as they reached the black-windowed vehicle, Samantha registered faintly the sound of glass breaking. She turned her head to see Mirela launch herself onto Scarface, stabbing with a broken bottle at his neck and shoulders.
Using the elbow of the arm holding his sword, the tattooed man jabbed, hard, with his elbow and Mirela smacked to the ground.
Still gripping Samantha tightly, Scarface cast his eyes to where Mirela lay, unmoving. Blood pulsed and drizzled from several puncture wounds in his neck and shoulder. Samantha watched, mesmerised, as it formed a ruby road, snaking its way across a snarling, forked-tongue devil tattoo and then down over his unmarked hand, onto his sword. Samantha knew that he too watched the blood. She felt his arousal, his delight, his insatiable craving for more blood. He lazily swirled the tip of the sword over Mirela’s unconscious body.
Samantha felt a flood of love for her friend that was so powerful her knees buckled. Scarface yanked her upright, but she barely noticed. Rushing through every cell in her body ran a liquid energy, golden and sweet like honey. It shot tingles from the very centre of her heart out through her extremities. She’d never before felt anything like it.
Scarface loosened his grip.
‘Please,’ she begged, her eyes locking with his. ‘Please, don’t hurt her.’
The stench of his violent hate suddenly became less rancid in her nose and mouth. His sword dropped to his side. Without knowing what she was doing, she sent more of the honeyed light through her skin and watched her captor’s face. The hard angles slackened and he stared at her, amazed. His grip loosened further.
She heard sirens, but she knew they’d be too late. The street was already littered with bodies, moaning or out cold. Bystanders brave enough to remain in the open stood, hands over their mouths, watching as she was herded towards the car.
Tensing carefully, she tested Scarface’s grip on her arm and found it tentative, almost gentle. She looked up again into his face, and this time his eyes reflected light and he actually saw her. For some reason she knew that if she ran now he’d let her go. She turned her head slowly, trying to spot a place to run to, to hide. She readied herself to break free. She figured that with the police on the way she could run until someone stopped her – the goodies or the baddies. It had to be better than getting into that car.
And then the rear door of the Mercedes cracked open and a girl stepped out.
‘Kirra,’ whispered Scarface, as though beginning a prayer. The warm-glow thing winked out instantly.
And Samantha knew she had no chance.
The girl seemed clad in a black rubber membrane. Toe to throat, she wore a single skin-like sheath that slicked across lean limbs and muscles. She wore a high, shiny-black ponytail, a filigreed-blossom tattoo on her neck, and a smile like nuclear waste. Samantha’s first thought was to wonder whether they might be the same age; her second was to decide that she had never seen a more beautiful girl. Her third thought tore at her heart: who or what had created a creature so completely devoid of human feeling?
The buzz-cut boys flanked her now and she knew that she was going to be forced into the Mercedes. The girl Scarface had called Kirra stalked around to the passenger side of the car and Scarface shoved Sam forward. Where will they take me? I’m never going to see my family again! Am I going to end up like Belinda – stolen and shipped off to Russia, owned by the mafia? Did the gypsy king send these people? Am I going to die? The thoughts scudded through her mind like debris caught up in a hurricane.
They reached the car and Scarface thrust her towards the back seat. A frantic terror gripped her and she struggled, jamming her feet against the doorframe, screaming.
And that’s when the shooting started.
The first bullet caught Scarface. She felt the pain of the impact rip through his body like a lightning strike; the remnants of the fiery energy zapped out through his skin and into hers. He dropped her. And the sword.
‘Samantha! Run!’
She bolted towards the voice, all senses on fire. Gunshots continued to crack and whistle around her. Sirens were screaming now and she thought she might be too, but she couldn’t be sure.
From the corner of her eye, she caught a dark blur of movement and made the mistake of glancing back towards the car. Kirra had launched herself up and over the roof of the Mercedes, hitting the road in a crouch. And then, in the second it took Samantha to swallow, the cat-girl sprang from squat into flat-out sprint. Samantha pushed even harder. Ahead of her, Birthday Jones and Mirela waved frantically at her from behind a car.
More gunshots. Samantha reached her friends at the same time as police cars tore into the street. She risked a quick glance behind her. Scarface and the ninjas were no longer on the road. But Kirra stood there, a sliver of midnight that had somehow pierced its way into the sunshine. She met Samantha’s eyes and hissed, then turned and sprinted back towards the Mercedes.
Birthday Jones dragged her forward. Ahead of them Fonso and two other kids held up a grate in the gutter.
Birthday pushed her through the hole and down into the sewer.
Dwight Juvenile Justice Detention Centre, Sydney, Australia
When he opened his eyes Luke found – half-surprised, as he always was – that he’d survived the night after all, and in the shower block before breakfast he realised that he felt better than he had in the past couple of days. Whatever had caused that pain in his head last night seemed to have left him alone this morning. And what with the silent lockdown on all dorms and most of the staff out looking for the escapee, he’d slept like a dead person. Right now, though, he couldn’t wait for a chance to talk to Nguyen about their freaky new friend, Abrafo. Last night seemed like a dream, and he needed to know what the hell had happened in there.
Turned out, he’d have to wait until after breakfast. The screws in the dining hall maintained the silence rule throughout the meal. Although no one told them anything, it wasn’t difficult to guess that they hadn’t caught Abrafo overnight. Anyone could see from their worried glances and huddled whispers that they were freaking out about having lost an inmate. Curiosity steamed from the boys at the hushed tables, whiting-out the windows of the hall, fogging them in from the icy morning outside.
Luke absently kicked a foot against his chair, itching to leave the room. Zac seemed to be deliberately avoiding his eyes. He fiddled with a single-serve packet of strawberry jam, flicking the foil lid back and forth, praying that the screws would allow them out to the oval for a run. He glanced up with the clatter of a bowl on a table across the hall to find Toad watching him, brows lowered, top lip pulled back in a sneer. Toad indicated with his chin that his plate was empty, and then pointed his eyes deliberately down to the slice of uneaten toast on Luke’s plate. The other boys watched the silent interaction. You got pretty good at speaking without words when you were in Dorm Four. Holt kept them in silence half the time they were awake.