Desolation (27 page)

The shadow leapt at George's back. Cain saw it as a blur against the sky, stars blinking as it passed through the air and landed on his assailant. George shrugged, shook his head, frowned, and looked around. The shadow battered at his head and shoulders with its clenched fists, but George seemed to feel little more than a breath of air. He twisted against Cain, kicked his feet as if to dislodge an annoying child, and the shadow fell away and blended into the night.

Cain screamed in his throat, begging it back.

George was only George. He stank, but his teeth were his own, and the palm pressed across Cain's face was slick, sweaty, and hairless.

“Evening, Cain!” George said. “So I guess Magenta's had at you?”

Cain stared up into his eyes, trying to give nothing away.

“Why else would you decide to follow me? You saw what happened to Peter, you saw what did it. Why else follow, other than to try to make yourself believe? And I know you . . . I
know
you! I've heard your nightmares. You'd only be doing this if you were filled with doubt.” He pulled back slowly,
releasing Cain's mouth and sitting astride his stomach. He never lost eye contact; the threat of violence was overt. Cain could scream, but it would do him no favors.

“I have no doubt that you're a monster,” Cain said.

George smiled, then shook his head. “I'm no monster,” he said. “I'm a monster killer. It's just my Way. I need to feed, and I feed on the weak, the meaningless, those with lives of no significance.”

Cain thought of the people he had passed in the street, the histories and futures he would never know. “Who are you to judge?” he said.

“I'm something of a miracle,” George said. “There are very few like us—”

“I'm
nothing
like you!”

“I'm not referring to you, little Cain. I mean
us
—me, Whistler, Magenta, the Sister . . . even Peter. Poor old Peter. Never quite fulfilled his potential, but he was still better than most in this world.”

“You're full of shit.” Cain hoped that the shadow was listening somewhere and enjoying this. “And so humble with it.”

“You are what you eat, so they say.” George looked down at Cain as if examining an interesting animal trapped in a specimen jar. “So what are you doing?” he asked.

“What?”

“What's your choice? Are you going to make Mummy and Daddy proud?”

“Fuck you!” Cain bucked and twisted, but George seemed to be growing heavier, immovable.

“I'm peckish,” George said. “It's not my choice,
this hunger. It never was. But once the Way came to me, it's just the route I took. Everyone's different, Cain, and I ended up needing food. Real food. Lots of it. And as I said, I only pick on those with no lives. They work, they eat, they watch TV, they shit, they work . . . Who'll miss them? Who'll miss just a few of the drones?”

“Someone must. Someone knows you're out here doing this, and it's just a matter of time—”

“Time? Come on, I'm sure you saw Peter's photograph album. I've been around for a
long
time. I travel far, and I'm very picky. And besides . . . I'm removed from the petty concerns of society. What I do is equally removed. You think they'll ever find Peter's body? It exists somewhere else now that I've been at it, somewhere more honest. And hidden from most.”

“You're so arrogant,” Cain said. “You, Magenta, all of you. So filled with your own superiority.”

“Not filled with it.
Comfortable
with it.” George stood then, his knees crunching like two gunshots. He stretched his fingers and Cain heard them popping, one after the other,
click-click-click
. “Make your choice and live with it.” He looked down at Cain. His face had stretched, his jowls dropped, and his eyes seemed to take on a golden tint, though there was no light to be reflected.

“How could I ever want to be like you?” Cain said.

George shook his head sadly, but his eyes glittered. “You have no idea. Tonight, just for you, I won't be so careful. Follow. Witness the freedom of the Way.”

Something passed by close above them, swishing through the night and sending a waft of displaced air down at the ground. Cain thought of the shadow, but then he caught a brief whiff of honey, rich and sweet and so filled with memories.

“Must go,” George said. For an instant before the changing man fled, Cain saw a troubled look cross his face.

George ran back into the lane. He must have been waiting there for Cain all along. Now, invited to follow, Cain saw no reason to change his mind.

I won't be so careful
, George had said. Five minutes earlier, Cain would have taken this as a threat, but not now, not here. George thought himself beyond such pettiness. Once changed, the first person he met would be his food for tonight.

“Thanks for your help,” Cain said.

The shadow emerged from behind a fence. “It's all down to you, and you know it. Did you smell—?”

“Yes, I know. That troubled George. I'm going to follow.”

“Of course you are,” the shadow said, darting ahead and entering the dark lane. Cain followed. He ran blindly, not bothering to put his hands out in front of him to feel for obstacles. Tonight, his own safety was no longer his prime mover. More and more he felt as though he was on the route to discovery.

I'll not live like them
, he thought, bitter and defiant.
I won't
be
like them
. But he ran on into the night, and he found a strange excitement growing inside at what may have changed come morning.

 

Trying to keep track of the shadow was impossible, so Cain followed George's footsteps instead. They were changing. At first they had thrown back the sound of leather on stone, but now they were softer, punctuated by a sharp, piercing scrape after every impact. Claws. George was changing, or had changed already, and Cain did not have long to catch him up. He had no idea what he would do when he did.
Watch? Am I really just going to watch while he butchers someone?
But he would face that problem when it arrived.

He ran headlong into a garden fence overgrown with rosebushes, cursing as thorns pinned him and stems seemed to curl around his limbs to hold him fast. He struggled, kicked, pulled, and a dog started barking from the other side of the fence. Soon there would be lights and an angry homeowner . . . but then the shadow was there, helping him snap thorns from his clothing and tear his legs free of the offending growths.

“I can't hear him anymore,” Cain said.

“Can't you smell him?”

Cain was not sure, but still he ran blindly along the lane. It was much longer than he had expected. Gardens opened up on the left and right, then a row of vandalized garages with doors only half closed, and then a large timber building that seemed to be rotting on its frame. Now that the overhanging hedges and tumbled fences had vanished, he could see more, the landscape silvered by starlight and the weak moon. All colors were washed away.
Blood will be black tonight
, he thought.
Black as the shadow
.

A howl rose somewhere nearby, and a chill of
fear set Cain's hair on end. The cry ended with a chuckle and a cough, and Cain realized that George was doing it just for him. The shadow emerged from a hedge of brambles, giggling.

Cain ran on. He glanced up on occasion, wondering whether it really had been Sister Josephine flying overhead. He could not help thinking of her naked, magicking herself up before him, and the smear of her magic cream on his thigh when he woke up from what he had thought was a dream. If he had enough of that cream, could he—

No! I'm not like them. I'm like
me!

“Here,” the shadow said. “This way! I think he's stopped.” It flowed ahead, turning left and heading across an area of open land toward a house on the opposite side. Though still in the city the house stood on its own, isolated by common land on one side and a huge area of allotments on the other. A light shone in a downstairs window. Briefly, terribly, Cain saw the thing that George had become silhouetted against the light.

“What are you going to do now?” the shadow asked in his mind, and the question was loaded, the voice ready to mock.

“I don't know.” He could say no more, because that was the truth.
I don't know
.

Cain ran across the open land. He stumbled once and went tumbling, banging his head on a rock and feeling blood burst across his scalp. It cooled him as he ran on, trickling down his neck and into his shirt. He did not care.
It's only blood
, he thought. And he imagined Magenta saying,
It's only blood, son, only the stuff of the flesh
.

The second he reached the low stone garden wall, he heard glass smash and a short, startled screech. The shadow was already there, lurking at the edge of the pool of light leaking out from the lit window. The
broken
window. It had been pulled completely from its frame, shattered glass sparkling across the ground. He saw George's shadow cast against one of the inside walls, the light swayed and shifted madly, and then there was a roar and the light went out. Another shriek—louder this time, its owner having had more time to
see
—and then George uttered something between a chuckle and a growl.

Cain climbed the wall and paused on top. He could go either way. Let himself fall back and flee across the open ground, leave the city forever, find his way to Tall Stennington and live whatever life he could make for himself at Afresh. Or he could tip forward and go for the window, try to stop George from spilling innocent blood, and in doing so educate himself in another facet of Pure Sight. The shadow hung there with him, smeared across the wall like spilled oil. Cain thought to ask it what he should do, but he knew what the answer would be; this was all down to him. The shadow exuded knowledge and wisdom, but really it was attached so firmly to his own actions that it may as well be his third arm. It awaited his decision.

There was a riot of noise inside the house—someone running upstairs, another scream from a child's mouth, an adult shouting and raging—and then George let out a roar that shook the remaining windows. This one was pure and basic, no
longer simply for Cain's benefit. This was George at the height of the hunt, releasing an ecstatic celebratory howl seconds before the kill.

Cain leaped from the wall and ran at the window. He had no idea what he was about to do. Something drove him, a feeling so deep down that he had never felt it before, and as he dived for the window he wondered if it was valor. He rolled across the floor and stood in one movement, wincing at the broken glass that had pricked and gashed his back and head. He was alone but for the shadow. He headed for the door.

“We have to do something,” Cain whispered.

“We do?” the shadow asked, pausing on the bottom step of the staircase.

Cain ran right at it, head down, storming upstairs without realizing that the shadow had stepped aside. He thought perhaps he had it draped across his head, some rudimentary camouflage from George. What he would do in the second or two it gave him he had no idea, but he could hear a little girl crying now, and that thing that had risen from deep inside forbade any true consideration of the situation. Valor or stupidity, it drove him on. Even when he reached the landing and realized that the shadow was ahead of him again, he did not stop. The crying came from a room at the end of the landing, pink door smashed from its hinges, George hunkered down in the doorway, growling, drooling as he advanced slowly on whoever cowered on the bed.

Cain glanced through an open doorway to his left and saw the body of a man lying on the bathroom
floor. He had been struck across the throat, his windpipe and carotid artery opened up, and he blew bubbles as a puddle of blood spread across the vinyl. His hands were clasped to his throat, trying to press the wound together, fingers buried deep in himself. Cain met his gaze and saw the message straightaway.
My baby. My baby!
He looked away from the dying man and advanced on George.

He passed the shadow and it held back, slouching down at the head of the staircase, expression unreadable as ever. “Scared?” Cain asked in his mind.

“
You
should be,” the shadow said. For the first time, Cain believed the shadow had spoken aloud.

He was three steps from George. The man had transformed into something monstrous and yet still so obviously George. There was no gray pelt, no lengthened legs, no extended snout filled with wolverine teeth. He was still a man, but in whatever grotesque manner the Way had twisted his soul, it had also acted on his naked body. His back was arched, ribs pressing against the skin below his shoulder blades. His face was transformed by a hunger that mere food could surely never satiate, and his eyes reflected some inner pain, red and ravenous. Claws tipped his fingers and toes, thickened and sharpened nails curled into wicked cutting and slashing weapons that were black with old blood and red with new. He stood on all fours, the weight of his change pulling him down.

Cain stood there for a few seconds, waiting for George to turn around. But the monster had not
noticed him. Whether he was obsessed with the child inside the room or simply unconcerned at Cain's presence, George showed no signs of knowing he was there.

“You're ugly, George,” Cain said. He had no idea where he was finding the courage to face this thing, but he had never really been tested before, not like this. Perhaps he had always been brave.

George tried to turn around, but he was trapped in the doorway by his widened shoulders. Cain took the opportunity to glance past the monster and into the bedroom, and he saw the little girl cowering on the bed. She had the blankets pulled up around her stomach, unable to bring herself to hide away completely from the horror. Perhaps her child's logic had already told her that shielding herself would do no good. She wore Barbie pajamas, had long blond hair, and her eyes begged Cain for help. She saw a monster and a grown-up, so it was obvious to her who the enemy and friend must be.