‘No!’ Tamas leapt from the carriage and bolted after him. Mirela followed, still hollering for help.
Samantha scrambled to her feet, shoving past the ride attendant. She had to stay close enough to Boldo to use the energy. That’s if it was going to work this time. But the crowd had other ideas. They would not get out of the way. Samantha pushed and wriggled through the wall of people, but the Rom among them had recognised the gypsy king’s bodyguard and were not willing to give up their viewing position of the action. And the tourists had their lasting holiday memories to capture – a man dressed like a cowboy with a gun, dragging a little girl, being chased by a gypsy! Half of them would have their video footage uploaded to YouTube before they hit the pillow tonight. And the Gaje? Well, they were not about to step aside for a dirty gypsy girl any time soon.
Samantha almost screamed in frustration. She couldn’t even hear Mirela, Tamas and Shofranka, let alone see them. She shoved at a woman with a back as wide as a bed, but got nothing more than a hate-filled stare for her trouble. This was never going to work. These people would never move.
Except suddenly they did. They began to scatter. She rushed forward, spotting Tamas and Mirela ahead. Somehow, Hanzi and Luca had found them, and they’d surrounded Boldo and Shofranka.
And then Sam registered that the energy around her had changed completely. She felt puzzlement, shock, fear, and now people were yelling and running. She managed to turn around, almost doubled over as the feelings threatened to overwhelm her.
Behind her stood Scarface, with his sword, his two friends with Uzis and the tattooed cat-woman chick. Kirra.
They moved towards her.
Fast.
Samantha couldn’t help it. She screamed. More than the weapons carried by the men in black, the look of focus in Kirra’s eyes left her feeling completely helpless. Those eyes told her there was no way she was going to get away this time. Sam swivelled her head, desperately scanning for somewhere to run. To try to hide in the Ghost Train would mean running back towards them. She’d be lucky to make her rubbery legs run the other way, let alone in their direction. And there was only a food tent to her right – no shelter in there. She could run back towards her friends, but that would put them in more danger.
Too late, Tamas had heard her cry.
She felt him coming before she saw him, sprinting across the gravel towards her.
‘No!’ she screamed. ‘They’ve got guns!’
But it wasn’t a bullet that shattered her heart into a million pieces.
Trapped in a slow-motion nightmare, she turned her head towards the sound of a bloodcurdling battle cry. Without breaking stride, Kirra raised her hand and threw something. A whir of metal flashed past Samantha, straight into Tamas’s throat.
His eyes widened, confused; they locked with hers as blood spouted in a red arc from his neck. And then Tamas fell, his big body crashing into the dirt.
She could feel nothing. And everything went silent, even peaceful.
She didn’t see the police cars screeching around the corner, lights flashing. She didn’t see the people running, nor hear Mirela on her knees, hysterical.
She could see only Tamas, stretched out, waiting for her. She was by his side in an instant. She flopped to the ground next to him, bundled his head into her lap. She smoothed his hair carefully, while his warm blood – his life – pulsed from him.
Shhh, she told him in her mind. His eyelids flickered.
She saw the metal object in his throat. A star.
Tamas had been killed by a star.
She plucked the piece of metal from his neck and blood gushed even faster from the jagged wound.
And her emotions returned, ripping through her body as though she’d swallowed a hurricane. Because it was right then that she felt him leaving her.
She fought the hysteria struggling to claim her. She lowered his head to the ground and stood. Oblivious to everyone and everything around her, Samantha White focused inward. She gathered the internal hurricane into a fluorescent globe. And then, with every cell of her being on fire, she hurled the energy from her body into his.
And the world went white.
Elizabeth Bay, Sydney, Australia
Luke squeezed his eyes tighter to block out the light and threw a pillow over his ears to mute the sound of wind and rain buffeting against the windows. He tried everything to remain in dreamland a little longer. But it was the cat that finally woke him.
At first he felt a soft push, a gentle smudge against the side of his nose. He moved to roll over, and a needlepoint of pain snapped his eyes open.
‘Hey!’ he yelled.
Still within paw distance, the sapphire eyes of a Siamese cat regarded him disdainfully. He sat up.
Oh, wow.
It had been too dark last night to see much beyond the windows of Georgia’s house. When he’d climbed between these lush sheets he’d been so exhausted that it hadn’t registered that he was about to fall asleep in a room with one of the most expensive views in Australia.
Carefully negotiating the cat, who was cleaning itself haughtily, watching every move he made, he dropped onto the lush carpet and moved over towards the windows.
Despite, or maybe because of, the rain, he had never seen a more beautiful sight. There was nothing between his bedroom and Elizabeth Bay but a rolling green lawn and a turquoise swimming pool. Perched right on the edge of the harbour, the pool seemed the epitome of excess, as though to prove to the world that the owners of this mansion could have absolutely anything they wanted – a whole ocean to swim in, and a swimming pool, just because.
Super-yachts, moored in the bay, rocked and rolled in the wind, while rain speared into the sea around them. And although last night he’d been aware that this home was on a well-populated street, he could see no other house nearby. The tropical gardens hid the mansion from view, as though this was the only house in the world.
He stretched and wondered where Zac had slept. Wherever it was, it was infinitely better than Dorm Four. This room alone could have held the beds of the whole of Section Six. He walked around, opening drawers, peeking into cupboards. One of the doors opened onto an opulent private bathroom, and when he noticed some super-huge towels he’d at first mistaken for blankets, he decided to take a shower.
Under the double-headed steaming shower jets, he wondered whether Georgia’s father really was in prison. He’s probably just on a business trip somewhere and she figured the gaol story matched better with her piercings and attitude. Either way, Daddy wouldn’t be terribly thrilled that little Georgia had brought home two escapees, one of them a psychopath to boot.
Luke wanted to not care about that label. He’d never cared about the psychiatric pigeonholes they’d tried to shove him in before. But he still felt weird about what he’d read in his file. Also, being ripped apart from his twin sister and thrown away by his mother pretty much sucked. But why did she have to call him Lucifer on top of that?
The devil. Who would name their baby after the devil? She must have really hated me, he thought. Or else she was insane. He wasn’t sure which would be worse.
He dried himself off and stepped back into his jeans. Having only one set of clothes was going to get old pretty soon. He’d have to do something about that first up. Although he wasn’t particularly worried – money was never too hard to come by.
He wondered whether his sister had grown up in homes similar to his own. Or had she been raised in a place like this? Did she get lucky and have one set of adoptive parents? Or had she been passed around from one whack-
