flames were ten metres high.
“Holy shit,” Ruth whispered. Nothing should burn that quickly.
“Mummy!” a child called from the hall.
“Horst, what
Horst shook his head, a bubbling giggle coming from his lips. “Too late, too late. Satan’s beasts walk among us now. I told you.”
A second cabin began to blaze.
“Get the children out of the hall,” Skyba Molvi shouted. There was a general rush for the door. Ruth hesitated, looking at Horst imploringly. Most of the village clearing was now illuminated by erratic amber light. Shadows possessed a life of their own, leaping about at random. A black silhouette fluttered between the cabins in the distance behind the priest.
“They’re here,” she said. Nobody was listening. “They’re here, the Ivets!” She tugged her laser rifle up. The green targeting beam pierced the air, sending relief flooding through her. At least something bloody worked. She pulled the trigger, sending a barrage of infrared pulses after the elusive figure.
The children swept out of the hall like a wave, some of the older ones scaling the flimsy metre-high side walls. Cries and shouts broke out as they tried to run to their parents.
“Jay!” Ruth called.
A line of flame streaked along the roof. It was an unerringly straight line, Ruth could see the wood turning black an instant before the actual flame shot up. Maser!
She worked out roughly where it must be firing from, and brought the laser rifle to bear. Her finger punched down on the trigger stud.
“Mummy,” Jay called.
“Here.”
The laser rifle bleeped. Ruth ejected the drained power magazine and slammed in a fresh one.
Several other people were firing into the jungle. The neon threads of targeting lasers lashed out, chasing elusive phantoms.
There was a concerted movement away from the hall, everyone crouching low. It was pandemonium, children wailing, adults shouting. The woven palm wall of the hall caught fire.
They could kill every one of us if they wanted to, she realized.
Jay rushed up and flung her arms round her waist. Ruth grabbed her arm. “Come on, this way.” She started towards the jetty. Another three cabins were on fire.
She saw Horst a couple of metres away, and jerked her head in a determined gesture. He began to lumber along after them.
A scream sounded across Aberdale, a gruesome drawn-out warbling that could never have come from a human throat. It shocked even the distraught children into silence. Targeting lasers jabbed out in reflex, spearing the gaps between the cabins.
The scream faded to a poignant desperate whimper.
“Jesus God, they’re everywhere, all around.”
“Where are the hunters? The hunters!”
There seemed to be fewer targeting lasers active now. The first burning cabin suddenly crumpled up, blowing out ephemeral spires of brilliant sparks.
“Horst, we’ve got to get Jay away,” Ruth said urgently.
“No escape,” he mumbled. “Not for the damned. And were we ever anything but?”
“Oh, yeah? Don’t you believe it.” She began to pull Jay across the stream of people, heading towards the nearest row of cabins. Horst lowered his head and followed.
They reached the cabins just as some kind of commotion started down by the jetty: shouting, the splash of something heavy falling into the river. It meant nobody was paying her much attention.
“Thank Christ for that,” Ruth said. She led Jay down the gap between two cabins.
“Where are we going, Mummy?” Jay asked.
“We’ll hide out for a couple of hours until that bloody hunting party gets back. God damn Powel for stripping the village.”
“He’s beyond damnation now,” Horst said.
“Look, Horst, just what—”
Jackson Gael stepped around the end of the cabin and planted himself firmly in front of them. “Ruth. Little Jay. Father Horst. Come to me. You are so welcome.”
“Bollocks,” Ruth snarled. She swung the laser rifle round. There was no targeting beam, even the power- level LEDs were dead. “Shit!”
Jackson Gael took a step towards them. “There is no death any more, Ruth,” he said. “There will never be death again.”
Ruth thrust Jay towards Horst. It was one of the hardest things she had ever done. “Get her out of here, Horst, get her away.”
“Trust me, Ruth, you will not die.” Jackson Gael held out his hand. “Come.”
“Screw you.” She dropped the useless laser rifle, standing between him and Jay.
“There is no sanctuary,” Horst mumbled. “Not on this cursed planet.”
“Mummy!” Jay wailed.
“Horst, just for once in your fucking pitiful life do something right; take my daughter and get her out of here. This bastard isn’t getting past me.”
“I—”
“Do it!”
“God bless you, Ruth.” He started to pull a struggling Jay back the way they had come.
“Mummy, please!” she shrieked.
“Go with Horst. I love you.” She drew her Bowie knife from its belt scabbard. Good solid dependable steel.
Jackson Gael grinned. Ruth could have sworn she saw fangs.
Chapter 14
Ione Saldana stood in front of the tube carriage’s door, urging it to open.
I can’t make it go any faster,tranquillity grumbled as the backwash of emotion dissipated through the affinity bond.
I know. I’m not blaming you.she clenched her fists, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. The carriage started to slow, and she reached up to hold one of the hand hoops. The memory of Joshua flashed into her mind—she’d never be able to use the carriages without thinking of him again. She smiled.
There was a frisson of disparagement from Tranquillity sounding in her mind.
Jealous,she teased.
Hardly,came the piqued reply.
The carriage door slid open. Ione stepped out on the deserted platform and raced up the stairs, her serjeant bodyguard clumping along behind.
It was a southern endcap cove station, a couple of kilometres away from the Laymil research project campus. The cove was six hundred metres long, a gentle crescent with fine gold-white sands and several outcrops of granite boulders. A rank of ageing coconut trees followed the beach’s curve; several had keeled over, pulling up large clods of sand and roots, and three had snapped off halfway up the trunk, adding to the vaguely wild look of the place. At the centre of the cove, sixty metres out from the shore, there was a tiny island with a few tall palm trees, providing an appealing nook for the more enthusiastic swimmers. A shingly bluff planted with coarse reeds rose up from the rear of the sands, blending into the first and widest of the endcap’s terraces.
Six low polyp domes, forty metres in diameter, broke the expanse of grass and silk oak trees behind the bluff, giving the impression of being partially buried. They were the Kiint residences, grown specifically for the
