Kirra silently thanked her ancestors and turned to face her crew. Suddenly she was again proud of them all; their names would live forever.
She manoeuvred a little so that her beloved, Dagger’s Breath, could see through the crack in the doorway.
‘Keep the targets alive,’ she whispered. ‘All others are disposable.’ She waited for each of their murmured assents.
‘Dagger’s Breath,’ she breathed behind him, ‘on your go.’
Elizabeth Bay, Sydney, Australia
The cupboard door smacked back and a nightmare stepped through. A screaming, sword-wielding, tattooed freak. Luke threw himself sideways as another shrieking black-clad daemon leapt into the room. But this one was definitely female – even in his shock, Luke registered her icy beauty. And behind her were more.
Before his mind could process what was happening, the female ninja launched herself right at him. He sprang up onto the bed just as Seraphina crash-tackled her and Zac hollered his name.
He whipped his head up to see Zac straining with everything he had to push the cupboard doors closed. He had no idea how Zac was keeping at bay whatever roared and smashed against the inside of the doors, but he knew he needed help fast.
Luke flew from the bed and shoulder-charged into the doors. He heard the door lock-snap into place, felt the wardrobe immediately become still, and then, much too late, registered the swipe of silver from the corner of his eye.
Samantha froze in the hallway, hearing the shrieks from the room she had just left, and flattened herself against the wall. Every sense told her to get the hell out, start running and never come back. But her brother was in there. She couldn’t leave him.
Her heart firing like a machine gun, she peered around the door frame.
The scarred monster from the Carnivale seemed to fill all the space in the room and she plastered both hands over her mouth to smother her scream.
Samantha watched, horrified, as Luke dived a split second before Scarface landed in the spot he’d been standing. Scarface hit the ground hard, and rolled.
Samantha made herself small behind the door frame, terrified that he would see her when he stood up again.
And then Kirra leapt through.
Kirra screamed the same bloodcurdling battle cry Samantha had heard at the Carnivale – the sound that accompanied the whistle of the throwing star that had buried itself in Tamas’s neck. The sound Samantha heard replaying in her mind every time she closed her eyes.
Sam pushed her fingertips into her ears, praying to just curl up on the floor and disappear, and watched, horrified, as Kirra flew towards Luke. But before she could even take a breath to warn him, Seraphina sprang from a standing start to head-height in a blur of frenzied movement, and brought the black-clad ninja to the ground.
For a single heartbeat they each lay on their backs as though stunned, and then, in a near identical move, both women propelled themselves from flat out to kickboxing without making a single sound. Samantha would have cheered, but while the two women fought viciously hand to hand, Zac threw himself at the wardrobe.
She rushed forward to help.
Right into the chest of Scarface.
This close to him Sam suddenly felt the past deaths he’d been responsible for. Their ghosts wailed and moaned, and her legs jellied as the stored-up emotions of people he’d crushed and killed seeped through his pores and into her own. He grabbed her arms as she almost collapsed, and she was swamped by his hatred for her; it scalded her skin at every point of contact between them.
He threw his head back and howled.
Whimpering, incoherent with terror, Samantha tried, but failed, to close her eyes as he bent down to her head height to make her face him. His teeth were bared in a broken-lipped snarl and she saw in his black eyes that he was beyond human reach, beyond compassion. Her legs gave out completely and she bowed her head, waiting for his sword to fall.
But, as though from somewhere far away, deep inside, she heard a voice trying to tell her something. You’ve done it before, it whispered. In the street in Pantelimon – you reached him then.
Samantha White, you’ve done it before.
Although she wanted nothing more than to just allow her mind to go blank – to do what it wanted to do: overload its circuitry and shut down – she forced herself instead to search for the yellow light inside her.
But this close to Scarface, it felt impossible. The only energy streaming through her right now was wound-red and burned-black.
She tried to shut him out, she managed to close her eyes, but she could taste blood, and the charred stench of his rage filled her nostrils.
She needed an image, a place, a time to help her channel the light.
And suddenly, it came to her.
The burning stench Scarface emitted transformed in her mind to wood smoke, to the campfire crackling in preparation for Esmeralda’s evening meal. She found herself sitting cross-legged in the long grass, her lime-green skirt fanned out around her, the purple twilight warm upon her skin. She smiled, because behind the fence, within an arm’s-reach, Tamas whispered patiently to a broken horse, his brown face just visible, nuzzling its muzzle, swapping scents.
Tears streaming, Samantha gathered his whispers, his tender promises to the horse, and sent them out as quiet energy through her skin and into Scarface.
She felt it immediately.
Scarface hissed. As though a bucket of water had been thrown over white-hot coals, the fire of his rage evaporated. His eyes, locked with hers, became panicked, confused. He swung his head around wildly, as though for the first time properly taking in his surroundings.
What have I done? she thought, as she felt fear flood through him, replacing the hatred. She sensed him slowly losing his grip on reality.
He let go of her arm and swivelled completely, swaying on his feet, gazing back at the wardrobe from which he’d come. The wardrobe Zac and Luke stood pressed against, holding back the rest of the hell-people.
And, with a deafening, demented shriek, Scarface suddenly bolted towards the wardrobe, sword raised.
‘No!’ Samantha screamed, as Scarface struck.
Luke did not hear Samantha scream.
In fact, he heard nothing at all. The world became completely silent and everything slowed to a syrupy crawl as he watched the tattooed arm swinging its sword down towards Zac. Only these two players were in pinpoint-focus on the board as the rest of the room faded to sepia. His brain computed the microseconds it would take him to pull Zac from the path of the sword, even as it continued its lethal trajectory directly into his friend’s chest.
Zac crumpled to the floor and Luke knew that there was nothing he could do. He jumped anyway, leaping up onto the madman standing over Zac, roping his arms around his neck, heaving with everything he had to pull him down.
The swordsman teetered, Luke wrenched desperately, and they fell.
Luke felt the sword piercing his heart, just as Samantha’s agonised face appeared above him. Her hand grasped his. A dark, wrenching pain ripped through him and he gasped. An aching anguish (could this be sorrow?) filled him at the thought that he was about to die and he’d never get to know her. But in that moment he was also inexpressibly grateful. Grateful that even though this would be the last time he would experience it, somehow his sister had again helped him to feel.
And finally he got it – finally he understood what everyone meant when they kept asking him, What do you think it would feel like if someone did that to you? He finally knew how someone else felt, and he was glad that the other person was Zac, his first real friend.
As his life pumped from the wound in his chest, Luke managed to drag himself a few centimetres closer to Zac.