I charged through the cottage and up the stairs. The loft hatch was open, and beneath it, Gus lay motionless on the bare wood floor.
For a split second I froze, horror building as I took in Gus’s pale skin, white lips, and the obnoxious bruise on his temple. Fuck. He’s dead. Then his chest rose with a shuddery breath, and I came back to earth.
I scrambled forward and dropped down beside him.
“Gus. Gus. Jesus fucking Christ, wake up.”
Nothing happened. I shook him as hard as I dared, given the bruise on his head, but he fell slack against me, with no sign that he knew I was there.
“Fuck!” I fumbled for my phone. It was jammed in my pocket. I prised it out and swiped at the screen, but it didn’t seem to be working properly. The numbers on the keypad were blurred and in the wrong places, and the more I fucked with it, the less coherent it became.
I dropped it and searched for Gus’s.
It was on the floor by his foot. The battery was dead. I shouted again and tried harder to wake him up, but the more I shook him, the less he seemed to move. He was a dead weight, and my arms felt like jelly. I fell sideways and sucked in a deep breath. For a fleeting moment, it worked, and my head cleared, then a fog descended that was so profound, I couldn’t see the floor beneath me.
What the hell? The foreboding I’d carried all the way from Rushmere cut through the nausea blooming in the pit of my stomach, joining the fresh panic lancing my veins. Beyond the fact that Gus was out cold, something was really fucking wrong.
My brain felt like it was made of treacle. Thoughts entered and got stuck before they were clear enough for me to read them. My eyelids grew heavy. I fought them as they started to close, and crawled to where Gus was still lying. Get him out. You have to get him out.
I hooked my arms around him and tried to sit him up. “Gus, come on, man. We’ve got to get out of here.”
He didn’t respond. And he was a big dude. I struggled beneath him and dragged us both to the top of the stairs, as my heart beat too fast, and my hands stung with weird pins and needles.
His scarred knee hit the banister post. He didn’t make a sound, and another jolt of fear got me moving again. I couldn’t see how we’d make it down the stairs without breaking our necks, but that fate seemed better than whatever was killing us inside.
I looked down at Gus. His lips were beginning to turn blue.
“No.” I wriggled from beneath him and slapped his face. “No! Don’t fucking die on me, you stubborn fucking arsehole.”
I took hold of him again and tried to manoeuvre him down the stairs. My shoulder screamed in protest, and I latched onto the pain, amplifying it to keep me awake. We made halting progress and reached the halfway point, then my balance deserted me, and we slid the rest of the way down.
We landed in a heap. My head hit the stack of disconnected radiators in the tiny hallway. The impact made my ears ring, and I held onto that too, and staggered upright to unlock the front door.
The key was as prehistoric as the rest of the cottage. It stuck, and so did my brain. For long seconds I fought with it, until it finally turned, and the lock clicked in the right direction.
I bashed the handle with clumsy hands, retching as more nausea overwhelmed me.
The door didn’t open, and a desperate shout escaped me, echoed by a muffled moan from the bottom of the stairs.
Gus. Fuck.
I abandoned the door and crawled back to him. He was on his side, how I’d left him, limbs slack, olive skin bleached pale. “Gus. We’re nearly there. Come on. I need you to wake up.”
But he didn’t wake up.
I wobbled to my feet and returned to the door. I hit the handle over and over with new desperation. Finally, the latch caught, and the door opened. I lurched sideways, relief sweeping through me, and stumbled back to Gus.
He was heavier than ever. But the open door gave me new hope. I dragged him to the step and we tumbled down onto the gravel driveway.
Fresh air hit me. And wetness too. It had started to rain.
Gus was still out cold. The notion that I’d imagined him being otherwise took my legs from under me, and I fell onto the damp ground.
Footsteps sounded on the gravel. But I was too dizzy to look up. Was Gus dead?
As my eyes closed for good, I had no fucking idea.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Billy
Gus wasn’t dead. A dude with red hair and a dreamy Irish accent woke me up and told me so.
“My name’s Rupert,” he said. “I’m a firefighter. There’s an ambulance on its way. I’m going to help you as much as I can until they get here, okay?”
“Gus. Don’t help me. Help Gus.”
“I am. But I’m going to need you to breathe into this mask and stay awake. If you pass out on me, I’ll have to stop helping him to help you, so I need you to do that for me.”
His words made no sense. And I had zero clue when I’d moved from the front steps of the cottage to the old oak tree by the garage, or who’d called 999. But there was a mask in my hand, attached to a tank at my feet.
The fireman pushed my hand to my face. “Breathe,” he said. “So I can help your friend.”
I stuck the mask to my face and took a breath, then another, and another, until I was breathing like a fucking yogi. The air rattled through the tubes, and the mist clouding my brain
