“I feel…” He sighed, and a rook hopped down from his shoulder onto his knee. It pecked at a fly buzzing the window, its beak striking the glass with a musical tink!
“Feel what?”
“Different. I feel different.”
“You are different.”
“And abandoned. Do you have any idea what it’s like? Can you even think about how it felt after Doomsday, when London was filled with dead people and I was left…alone. We survived for a time, me and my brother. We thought there’d be rescue attempts. But then they took him, and I was alone, and I knew that was it. So yeah, I’m different. I’ve moved on. London’s the whole world now, but that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes get scared. Doesn’t everyone?”
“Everyone human, yeah. Dunno about the Superiors.” She glanced sidelong at him when she said this, but she already knew what he thought about them. He was as much Superior as he was Irregular. Rook was one of the few who was completely his own person. His only allegiance was to his birds.
And now perhaps to her as well.
“Slow down,” he said. “Need to find out where we are.”
She slowed the car at a road junction but left it running, and Rook opened his window. The rooks in the car with them took flight immediately, flitting through the window and spiralling up above the car. Lucy-Anne leaned over the steering wheel and looked up, but they were quickly lost to dawn’s glare.
“So what else have you heard about the north?” she asked. “Those weird gargoyle people. And snake people. I’ve seen nothing like them before.”
“Just that it’s where the monsters came.” A bird fluttered through the window and landed on his shoulder, and moments later he glanced at Lucy-Anne. “Hampstead Heath’s half a mile from here.”
“Half a mile.” If that Sara woman was right…if Andrew was still alive, and not changed like those other weird things…if Rook was telling her the truth.
“Maybe we should walk from here,” he said.
“Yeah,” Lucy-Anne said. A distance was growing around her. She frowned and ground a knuckle into her thigh to wake herself up.
“Or perhaps a rest.” Rook’s voice was farther away now.
“No time,” she said. “No time to…” But her eyelids drooped, and she could not remember the last time she’d had a good sleep. The release of stress now that she’d stopped driving the car allowed her weariness to the fore.
“Don’t worry,” she heard him say, and his hand was warm on her arm. “I’ll look after you.” His voice, so distant; his words, such a comfort.
She was already dreaming as she fell asleep, and the woman was waiting for her.
She feels Andrew close by but can’t find him. His presence is overwhelming, as though he has just spoken to her or given her a playful pinch on the arm, like he used to when they were kids. She turns a full circle and expects to see him at any moment, but nothing around her is normal.
A dream.
At first she is alone. The sense of Andrew is strong, but it’s as if he has been found and lost again, and suddenly he is a memory once more. She sobs out loud. So unfair.
She is somewhere wild in this old city. The undergrowth is overgrown and lush, luxuriating in freedom from shears and mowers—grass touches her shins, shrubs hang heavy, tree limbs have fallen across barely visible paths. Once this might have been a pleasant place to wander and reflect, but now it is back with nature.
I’m dreaming…
She walks towards a vague structure in the distance. It is artificial, she is sure, but its edges are blurred with ivy and time. Shapes around it might once have been picnic tables, but they’ve fallen into disrepair and been subsumed beneath rampant plant growth. There is a flash of colour inside, a hint of movement. She is troubled but excited, and deep inside she knows who and what this is.
But the Lucy-Anne in her dream—bearing her consciousness, carrying her mind—is a different person. She walks towards the building, even though she knows she should flee. She raises a hand and waves, attracting the attention of the woman inside, even though she is dreadfully aware of what will come next.
No…turn…run…
The strange woman parts a curtain of beautiful hanging plants and emerges from the building. She’s dressed plainly, yet even set against the gorgeous flowers she is stunning. Her hair drifts around her head like she is forever falling, her face is serene, and as she turns away a small smile lights her features. But the smile is not for Lucy-Anne, because the woman starts walking away.
She skirts around the building and moves quickly into the park.
Wait! Lucy-Anne tries to shout, but she has no voice.
Call her…make a voice…this is my dream and I must—
The flash. Unbearably bright, it shadows the woman from every direction and scorches her silhouette into the ground all around her. Leaves wither, flowers crumple, branches snap, and trees fall. A firestorm rips through the park and scorches everything to charcoal, and then the blast takes it apart. But the woman still stands, untouched and untouchable.
And Lucy-Anne feels the terrible truth of this scene.
In the distance a mushroom cloud deforms the sky, and there is a breath-stealing sense of time running out.
“I’m dreaming!” she shouted, and Rook was holding her arms, leaning in the driver’s door and shaking her awake. Her eyes snapped open and she looked up at him, so pleased that he was there. She breathed easier. “I’m dreaming.”
“No more,” he said, and he seemed excited. “Come on. You gotta see this.” Then he was away, and she had to leap from the car and start running to keep up with him.
Daylight seemed kinder to this part of London. Shaking the horrors of her dream, she hoped that the day would be kind to her.
CHAPTER TEN
JOINING FORCES
“Back to Breezer?” Sparky spat. “Are you out of your tiny, birdlike bloody mind?”
“Probably,” Jack said, nodding. “Maybe.” He was looking at Jenna, expecting a reaction from her as well. But she was grim-faced and silent. She seemed to understand, and he was impressed once again with his friend’s quiet intelligence.
“Why? We almost killed ourselves escaping him and coming here, now you want to go back?”
“Reaper doesn’t know where Camp H is.”
“Like hell!” Sparky said.
“Really?” Jenna frowned, then nodded slowly. “If he did, he’d have hit it long before now.”
“I’m guessing so,” Jack said. He sighed and sat down, taking a long swig from a mug of tea. There was food on the small table in their room as well—tinned beans, potatoes—but he didn’t feel hungry.
“So…” Sparky said, tapping a finger against his chin as he thought, “you persuaded your dad to join forces with Irregulars.”
“I don’t think I persuaded him to do anything. I made the suggestion and gave my reasons, and he saw some use in the idea. I think he saw me, and Mum and Emily, as a way to save face. If he went to the Irregulars on his own, it’d be like admitting he needs their help. Doing it this way, he can say it’s me who needs the help.”
“Well, it is,” Jenna said.
“Yeah,” Sparky said. “Loser.”
Jack went for him. A dig in the thigh gave Sparky a dead leg, but as Jack tried to get him in a headlock, Sparky twisted and reversed the position. His arm closed around Jack’s throat, and he rubbed the top of his head with his knuckles. It hurt, but Jack felt wonderful. For a moment it was as if nothing had changed.
“Use your deadly powers against me if you will, but I will always triumph!” Sparky said. He ran his knuckles across Jack’s scalp again.