Zero Page 4

  Chapter Four

  The pieces of dead...whatever...were still lying on the ground. Neve saw me looking at them and kicked them into the corner of the room. My mouth was wide open and I didn’t seem to be able to close it.

  Neve and Oriel pulled over crates and sat down next to each other, and for a moment they just watched me, like I was a rare and exotic zoo animal.

  Oriel started. He cleared his throat. ‘You probably have some questions.’ I stared him and gave a silent bark of laughter at this wild understatement. ‘Some of the things I’m going to tell you are going to seem...strange, but I promise you that none of it is a hoax or a lie of any kind.’ Automatically, I looked over to the corner of the room where the pieces of three-mouthed cat lay.

  He looked over at Neve and she flicked her hand at him impatiently before he went on. ‘When you walked into the office in the warehouse, you went through a portal into a different world. That is, a different version of the world. You’re not in Exeter any more; you’re in a town called Saltmarsh in a country called Gileath.’

  He looked at me, assessing my reaction and was mildly surprised when I gave none. ‘Thousands of years ago, the world looked a lot different to the way it does today. Society was more agrarian, more rural; people were generally uneducated and were superstitious and fiercely religious, believing in a pantheon of gods.’ He paused, but he didn’t seem to be doing it for dramatic effect. He didn’t seem like a dramatic effect kind of boy. ‘And the world was overrun with demons.

  ‘Demons could sense the life in our world and were drawn to it. They wanted to consume it, destroy it. It’s what they exist for. There is a barrier between our world and theirs, but while demons may not be particularly intelligent, they’re persistent and they managed to find ways to cross over, bringing death and destruction and chaos with them.

  He said all this without a glimmer of a smile, as if he was explaining how to do quadratic equations or something. He glanced briefly at Neve, who nodded at him to go on.

  ‘No one knows when the first demons crossed over to our world from the Anarchy, but eventually incursions were so frequent it looked like all life would be wiped out.

  ‘To combat the demons, the gods sent three powerful warriors into the world. They banded together and tried to strengthen the barrier between our world and the Anarchy, to keep the demons from breaking through. Their efforts failed.

  ‘In desperation they decided to create a new plane of existence, one that the demons would never find, judging that this would be the best hope for the continuation of life as we know it.

  ‘The Sundering created a duplicate world, the Sanctuary, a world hidden from the demons. The Jeopardy, where we are now, remained, and acts as a buffer between the Sanctuary and the Anarchy. Technically we inhabit the same space, but we can’t see your world any more than you can see ours. If the barrier between the Jeopardy and the Anarchy is a thin piece of gauze, the barrier between the Jeopardy and the Sanctuary is more like a sheet of steel. Nothing from the Jeopardy or the Anarchy can get through.’

  He looked at me intently. ‘How are you doing with keeping an open mind so far?’

  I looked behind him at the doorway and then down at my hands in my lap, as I tried to keep my voice steady. ‘I don’t know how you’ve set this up or why you’ve picked on me for this stunt, but this isn’t funny. It’s mean. I thought I was doing some community service thing in exchange for wiping my shoplifting charges, but it’s-’ I gulped to try and loosen the tightness in my throat. ‘You’re just taking the piss.’

  Oriel looked faintly horrified and Neve, who until this point had been letting Oriel do all the talking, leapt off her crate and knelt on the floor beside me and fumbled for my hand. ‘This isn’t- We didn’t- We would never do something like that to you. Roanne, everything Oriel is saying is the truth. The Sundering, the Three - these are stories that every child in the Jeopardy has grown up with.’

  ‘Yeah? Well how come no one in the Sanctuary,’ I usually despised sarcastic air quotes, but I thought that perhaps this situation warranted them, ‘has ever heard of this stuff?’

  ‘People, the general population, didn’t know the Sundering was going to happen. It’s not like there was this big, worldwide announcement. And hardly anyone realised once it had happened. People woke up in houses that looked the same, in villages that looked the same and maybe one or two of their neighbours disappeared, people who’d been left behind in the Jeopardy, but in a world where demon attacks were commonplace that wouldn’t have been anything out of the ordinary. Don’t forget, this was thousands of years ago; the world was a smaller place back then - fewer people, no communication networks. And yeah, the very first humans in the Sanctuary knew about demons, but over the centuries they became the stuff of legends.’

  Neve squeezed my hand and looked at me imploringly with huge eyes. ‘Roanne, it’s true. All of it. And now our brother has been kidnapped and we desperately need your help to rescue him.’

  My gaze flicked between them both. I tried to come up with a way I could have walked into an office in a disused warehouse and ended up in a storage room, but failed.

  I also tried to rationalise the two creatures I’d seen Oriel and Neve kill, and failed at that too.

  Oriel saw me craning my neck to see them, trying to convince myself that they were elaborate animatronics. ‘Come and have a look at them, if you like,’ he offered. ‘They’re dead; they can’t hurt you.’

  He guided me over to where the bits of cat-scorpion lay on the floor, his hand on my elbow. I stopped a few metres away and he stood beside me. ‘We call them clingers.’ I flinched slightly at the word and he pretended not to notice. The...things...had been sliced cleanly and I was afforded a clear view of their insides. ‘They exist in the dark spaces between worlds, constantly on the lookout for living energy. They’re demonic, but not strictly demons, if you see what I mean.’ Totally didn’t. ‘When they felt you crossing over, they hitched a ride.’

  ‘Are they- Um, are they deadly?’

  ‘Yeah...’ he said slowly. ‘I mean, I’ve not seen clingers exactly like those ones before - in their natural state they just exist as a spirit, more of an idea than an actual thing. When they break through to the Jeopardy they take the form of any random living thing and warp it. That sting looks pretty lethal.’ He toed the demon’s scorpion sting, laying a little way from the rest of its body, and a dangling drop of bright green venom dislodged and spattered against the flagstone floor. ‘And I don’t fancy poking around near those teeth, do you?’ He flashed another grin at me.

  I almost started laughing with him, before I remembered what we were talking about and shook my head. ‘You’re talking about dimensions and demons and shit, like they actually exist. They don’t. They’re fairy stories.’ I looked up at Oriel trying to see if he understood me.

  He nodded slightly. ‘Kallista?’ The sulky girl got up and slouched over to us. Without changing her expression or even looking at us, she pushed the sleeve of her tunic up and cupped her hand in front of her. Her pinkie finger twitched slightly and a ball of flame appeared, flickering in her palm. She twitched again and the fire shimmered into a ball of ice. She tossed it to the floor, where it splintered into hundreds of tiny shards.

  She turned and levelled a suede blue gaze at Oriel. ‘Am I done? Can I go now?’

  Oriel was busy watching my astonished reaction. ‘Yeah, yeah, see you later,’ he said distractedly. He didn’t notice the hurt look she gave him, and she didn’t notice Neve murmuring a goodbye and giving a sad finger-wave to her retreating back.

  ‘Okay, let’s suspend reality for just a sec and pretend like I believe what you’re saying,’ I said. ‘You said our worlds were separate from each other. How did you even find me? And where’s Adam? The suit guy. I thought he’d be here.’

  Neve gave a significant glance to Oriel, pulled an impressively long knife out of her belt and started poking bits of dried mud off the bottoms of her boo
ts. ‘You explain. This is your thing, not mine. I’m just here for the moral support.’

  Oriel’s expression flickered to nervous-uncomfortable and he steepled his fingers, tapping them lightly against each other. ‘Um, ye-e-es.’ He bit the side of his lip. ‘Okay, so we don’t know where exactly it came from, but a relic was discovered a few years ago in the city where we live, the Citadel. We call it the Window. It looks like a giant mirror but it actually allows us to see through to the Sanctuary; all over the world. We found you a while back and realised your potential. And Adam...’ He started to glance around, poking at some of Kallista’s fallen ice shards with the toe of his boot. ‘Well, a little while ago we found a ritual that would allow us to use the Window and ...visit. Sort of. It’s a bit like astral projection?’ He raised an eyebrow to see if I knew what he was talking about. I did, but I shot him a doubtful look anyway. I didn’t like the way this was heading. ‘If there’s...ah...a body....nearby, the ritual would let us temporarily, and causing absolutely no harm to it whatsoever, take control of it. Guide their actions, speak through them, that sort of thing.’ He spoke offhandedly, as if he was trying to make his words sound less creepy and weird than they did.

  I looked at him in disbelief. ‘You possessed him?’

  ‘Possess is a very strong word.’ He actually contrived to look offended. ‘I guided him, and only because there was no other option.’

  ‘Listen, as fascinating as this sounds - and believe me I’m thrilled to find out that a bunch of people have been watching me without my knowledge - I think I’m going to go home.’ My voice rose at the end like a question and I pointed to the door in case they didn’t know what I meant. ‘I just can’t do this, be here. It’s too weird.’ I tried my best to sound authoritative and controlled, but my voice caught as I deliberately looked away from the pile of creature parts in the corner of the room.

  The only door in the room was over the other side. Was that really where I’d come in? I strode over and grabbed the handle.

  ‘Roanne, you can’t-’ Oriel began.

  ‘Look,’ I interrupted quickly. ‘I know I promised to do some kidnap rescue thing, and I’m sorry, I really am. If there’s a problem with letting me off my court case, then I’ll go back and face the music, I don’t mind. I just-’ I broke off and looked over at the clingers again.

  Shuddering, I yanked the door open. The sooner I was back home, the better. So long, weirdoes.

  At first I thought I’d got the wrong door. The room I was looking into was a pub. A very spit and sawdust pub, but a pub nonetheless. Scuffed circular tables dotted the wooden floor and a row of booths lined one wall. A barman wiped the bar lazily with a cloth while a few patrons sat at tables, nursing drinks. One of them looked up at me and murmured something and his friend laughed.

  I whirled round. There were no other doors leading out of the room I was in. Oriel and Neve watched me calmly. Neither of them seemed surprised that there appeared to be a half-empty pub on the other side of the door instead of a warehouse.

  ‘That’s not where the portal is,’ Oriel said, rather unnecessarily. ‘Roanne, please listen to me. Just hear me out, and then if you still want to go home I’ll show you where the portal is,’ Oriel said. ‘See, Neve and I have got a younger brother. Owen. He’s still only a baby, but he’s kind of special. Some people are born with certain abilities gifted to them. We call them Blessings. The gods bestow people with Blessings in order to give humanity a fighting chance against the demons, to make them warriors. Some people have physical Blessings, speed, strength and so on, and some have psychic Blessings, like Kallista does. Our parents are Blessed, so are Neve and I, which means Owen likely will be too. We think - we know - this is the reason he’s been kidnapped.

  ‘Neve and I are paladins, Blessed soldiers. We serve in an army called the Protectorate. Two of our colleagues have agreed to help us get Owen back, but we can’t do it alone. We need your help.’

  Oriel and Neve looked up at me solemnly, waiting for my reaction. They both had wide green eyes and high cheekbones with aquiline noses. Both were pale, but Oriel’s dark hair was an almost perfect contrast to Neve’s blonde.

  Up close, I realised that they were about my age. And they were soldiers.

  I sat on a crate opposite them, having given up my attempts to find the secret doorway back to the warehouse. ‘Look, I really appreciate you having so much faith in me to be able to do this, but you’ve got the wrong person. I can’t rescue this kid. I’m not a soldier. I’m so not a soldier that I’d actually be a liability to you. Honestly, you’ll be better off without me.’ I looked at them both earnestly.

  Oriel shook his head briefly. ‘We don’t need any more paladins. What we need is someone who’s got our backs. An archer. Defensive purposes only,’ he said.

  ‘An archer?’ I yelp-laughed. ‘An archer. Are you joking?’

  Neve looked confused and the look she levelled at Oriel demanded that he explain my outburst, but Oriel merely shrugged. ‘You’re great at archery. Your coach pushed you to try out for the Olympic squad.’

  ‘That was ages ago! I haven’t touched a bow and arrow in, like, two years!’ I wailed. My hands had gone clammy and I was starting to see spots.

  Neve’s eyes narrowed. ‘Seriously, Oriel? Two years? Any reason you neglected to tell me that part?’

  Oriel looked hurt and confused and apparently unable to see that he’d done anything wrong. ‘It’ll be fine. She’ll be fine.’

  Neve started to rub her temples. She glanced up to me and a look of solidarity shot between us. ‘Oriel, I can’t believe you’ve done this. You told me she was a competent archer. I can’t believe-’

  ‘Fine, then,’ he interrupted. ‘Let’s just go to the shooting range and Roanne can show us what she can do.’

  I took one last glance around the room, hoping beyond hope that I would spot the portal and be able to jump through it, waving goodbye to this craziness. No luck.

  I could, I reasoned, start searching the room for this portal, and maybe if I dashed here and there for long enough I’d eventually fall through it, but I’d seen how fast Neve and Oriel could move. Holy hell they were fast. And strong. The swords they were waving around looked like they weighed a ton. They’d be able to catch me before I’d even taken two steps, and god only knew what they did to people who’d pissed them off.

  On the other hand, if I pretended to go along with their mental scheme, maybe, maybe, I’d be able to give them the slip. I turned to Oriel and Neve, who were watching me carefully, and sighed quietly. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’