Fuck, what if Parker had taken a child?
A memory bubbled up unbidden inside him.
‘This world is no place for a child. And we’re in no position to care for one. Especially in the current circumstances.’
‘Ever?’
His eyes on the shoe, his future disintegrated. He had wanted children, he did, but he was a practical man. Yet he wouldn’t deny that there had been nights when both Kira and Nick had slept in his arms and he had imagined hopeless dreams, pondered impossible ideas. But even if he had never considered them reality, it hadn’t taken the fantasy away. A baby with Nick’s eyes and Kira’s smile?
A child with dark hair made out of love to be stolen by animals. Christ, his heart couldn’t take the torment.
‘I can’t do this …’
Knight was in front of him. How he got there, Euan couldn’t recall, his ears could only register the buzz. Warm hands held Euan’s shoulders. The pressure forced Euan to raise his eyes. ‘You have to.’
Euan shook his head. His voice stolen by what he held in his hands.
‘You have to. You have to pull your shit together because they’re counting on you. Mickey-O told them that you would come, that you would lead them, that you would protect them. That you would save them. They worship you more than they ever worshipped him. You’re their champion, and they need you, more than anyone needs anything.’
How could he? How could he devote himself to this cause when Kira was taken, when Nick was lost? When so many deserved to die?
His focus was back on the shoe. He thumbed the pink laces. This was the future. Not the scum that roamed the highways, or the men who barracked over spilt blood. It wasn’t even the love that he shared with Nick and Kira.
Without children, there was no future. There was no human race.
If he were to fight for anything, he had to fight for them. Fight for the child that had worn this little shoe with the pink laces. Fight for the baby that would inevitably grow inside Kira, and be welcomed into the world by the three of them.
Because without that child, there was nothing to fight for.
His thirst for blood dissipated. Only the taste of ash remained in his mouth.
The hands on Euan’s shoulders tightened, and the fire in Knight’s eyes hardened the black into onyx jewels. He perceived Euan’s thoughts, and understood them. ‘They have more than just her. We’ll save her. But first, you have to help them.’
Words still would not come. Euan nodded.
Knight’s grip released. ‘Come. They’re waiting for you.’
***
They were. There wasn’t many, but it was more than he had expected. They were dirty, exhausted, battered. Haunted eyes followed his trail, emotionless faces turned as he walked past. But there was hope. They were well nourished, robust and whole. They may have only just buried their loved ones, but as he walked, their spines straightened, their chins rose. In him, they saw a prophet.
Euan couldn’t fathom why.
The shimmer in their eyes was one of persistence, bravery. Valiant. They were Valiant. Knight told him so, and Euan saw it to be true.
He walked among them as they stood, parted. Eyes wide, mouths agape. A small pond of people, suddenly in the presence of their hero. Euan tried his best not to limp. His eyepatch itched, his awareness of it severe under the assessment of so many.
The children were there. Boys, girls. Tiny little people who either clung to an adult or stood too tall, their small faces bleak. Euan’s jaw was hard when a baby cried and a mother soothed it. A lullaby was in the air along with the ash and the stink of death.
This could not continue. Not like this. ‘Lily?’
Knight replied, ‘She’s up here, come.’
Their tents were the colour of the tropics, erected hastily, but strategically on the higher, untainted ground. They approached the largest.
When the olive-green tent flap was pulled aside, one step into the shadows and the stench of blood and decay hit them with the force of a battering ram.
Euan fell back as the dam of memories burst and engulfed him without warning. He was suddenly surrounded by a log cabin with wooden walls coated in blood. The stench of sweat, of sacrifice, of burned flesh was in his nose. The erratic breaths and the final cry from a dying boy was in his ears. They hissed with the memories of loss and torture. They rang with all that Euan had attempted to lock away inside himself.
He swore and lurched out of the tent and into the open air.
Knight’s face was in his, dark skin, dark eyes, pink scars. How had he gained his tokens from battle? Had he fought with the devil and lost? Did he still dream of blood and pain? Did his ears still drum with the screams torn from a broken boy?
Oh, Christ, he was going to throw up.
‘Breathe through it.’
Strong hands were on his shoulders once again, they squeezed, tightened. He was held up, but everything else still swam. He locked his knees, or else he’d be on his ass.
‘Breathe,’ came the command again.
‘Fuck you,’ he said as he pushed himself out of Knight’s grip and stumbled two steps backwards. The black mud sucked on his boots, threatened to pull him into their dark depths. He growled at nothing like a frightened dog.
He was a frightened dog. A fucking animal that trembled with its tail between its legs, as it pissed on the floor.
People gathered. He sensed them, rather than saw. They surrounded him. There was a rage inside him that terrorised his sanity. Threatened to be set free. It urged him to lash out, roar, rant, hurt and maim. It wanted to destroy the fragile progress this tiny settlement had achieved.
Then different memories swamped him. Nick
