With a wordless cry she dropped to her knees beside him and tried to roll him over. He was heavy but she got her shoulder beneath his arm and heaved and finally he moved, his arm flying out to crack against the hard floor.
A knife was buried in his shoulder and his eyes were fluttering, half open. ‘Martin, can you hear me, Martin?’
He forced them open, blinking slowly. ‘Scarlet. Go home, go home now. You shouldn’t be here. This isn’t your fight, not anymore. Go home.’
‘But you’re dying.’ Her hands rested on his chest and she sobbed, the tears creeping up on her. His hand came up, surprisingly strong.
‘I’m not dying. But you can’t be here anymore. I should have sent you away after the first one. Go home.’
‘But—’
‘NOW.’
She stumbled to her feet shaking her head, heart hammering in her chest. His head rolled to one side, but his chest was still rising and falling. What was she supposed to do? His head rolled back, eyes open again, and he whispered now.
‘Joanna Slater, as your master, I command you to leave here now, and return to a place of safety.’
He had that official tone on that made her want to punch him, but she glanced at the body on the desk and thought for the first time that maybe he was right. She ran to the door, looking back at him. He nodded, slowly, and she could see his eyes were already wider, alert, and his mouth was moving, chanting.
With a whimper she opened the door and dashed out into the tunnel, slamming it behind her.
She didn’t remember the journey home, only sitting on the bus hugging her knees to her chest as she stared out at the dim light of the late afternoon, seeing again and again the bodies and the sightless eyes that followed her the entire way.
—-
She awoke to find her quilt on the floor and her body bathed in sweat. It didn’t help that she still had her clothes on. She peered out the window at the dull light creeping in. It was morning, earlier than she cared to see and, she realised, the first proper day of holiday.
Christmas was now only two days away, which meant two days until everything ended. The thought was laughable, and she desperately wanted to cry. She grabbed for her laptop, craving distraction, and flicked onto facebook.
No messages, nothing new there then. The few people she had as friends, normally school associates who were kind enough to respond to her friend requests, were up to their usual tricks. Jenny and Ashika got really pissed last night, and posted loads of random videos. Won’t be watching them, then.
James had a new high score on COD. Yay. The nice thing about James was he had almost as few friends as she did and most of them were twelve year old gamers from the states whom he took great pleasure in luring somewhere in the game, then turning on them, earning wails of distress down the headset.
He’d told her all this in great detail, which was about the most boring thing ever, but as he’d patiently listened to the entire plot of ‘The Half-blood Prince’, she couldn’t really argue.
A message! The little box sprung up from the bottom of the screen and she stared at it, waiting for it to go away or announce she was a competition winner courtesy of some completely inappropriate alcohol.
She maximised it and read it, then read it again. Then blinked and read it again.
‘Scarlet, my name is Lara. I know about the Undying and I want to help. Pls respond. Btw, your profile picture is hot! ;)’
Her profile picture was hot. Heh. She clicked through and was immediately annoyed that the line had already been taken. Lara was, like, the epitomy of hot. Possibly, assuming epitomy meant what she thought it did.
With an efficiency born of experience she trawled Lara’s profile, building up a pretty good picture of her in a few minutes. She liked the right sort of music, Green Day, Paramore; she loved Anime, Disney, and the works of Luc Besson, whoever that was. She read lots, all sorts of books, and loved cats. She was, basically, made to be her wife.
She had the most amazing eyes, green, almost grey, that seemed to jump out of the screen, but not in a crazy way. Her hair was shortish, back-combed, but not in a terrible eighties way, and she was sporting a pout that made parts of Scarlet sit up and take notice like they never had before.
Her hands were actually shaking slightly as she hit reply. ‘Hey Lara, thanks for the message. I’d love your help, and maybe your babies… delete, delete.
Hey Lara, thanks for your message. Yes please, I’d really love some help. Where are you?’
She stared at it for a few minutes, trying to work out how she could mention the whole really sexy thing, but failed and hit send before she could bottle out.
A few seconds later her computer pinged again and the message popped up. ‘Actually, sorry for the creep factor, but I’m at the bottom of your road.’
Next Installment Monday 12th February
