Blood Beast

treasure. Messing about. Loch was teasing Bill-E. Everything was normal. You can’t suddenly go from that to a life-or-death situation like this.

Except I know from past experience that you most certainly can.

Besides, things weren’t normal—the face, the whispers, the throbbing, the sense that we were in danger. I should have been more forceful. Made them leave. Insisted they go home.

The sickness within me grows.

The noise of the whispers increases.

Loch’s blood continues to flow.

Still talking. Telling Loch he’s got to stay alive for Reni’s sake. “She’ll be a mess for years if you die,” I sob. “Trust me, I know what losing a sister does to your head. You can’t leave her, Loch. She needs you.

It feels like hours since Bill-E left. Loch stopped breathing again a few minutes ago. I resuscitated him, but it took longer than the first time. I was in floods of tears by the end of it—sure I’d lost him.

What’s keeping them? Damn it, they should be here by now. Don’t they know how perilous this is, how much danger Loch’s in? I can’t keep him alive forever, not by myself. If they don’t—

Loch’s breath stops again. Cursing, I start with the chest pressing and mouth-to-mouth. The beast within me wants to suck in air, not breathe it out. It wants to draw the life from Loch, feed on all that blood around his head and shoulders, sip from that terrible pool, dark in the dim light of the torch. If I dropped my guard, just for a few seconds, there’s no telling what it—I—would do.

The whispers increase. It’s like I’m being shouted at now. I want to roar back at them but I need all my breath for Loch.

Press—two, three, four. Press—two, three, four. Mouth-to-mouth.

Nothing’s happening. I don’t panic. It was like this last time. I just have to keep going, stay calm, stick with it. He’ll revive eventually.

Press—two, three, four. Press—two, three, four. Press…

It doesn’t work. No matter how much I press and breathe, Loch doesn’t respond. His face has shut down. His lungs don’t move. His heart is still.

Third time unlucky.

“No,” I whisper. “I don’t accept this. He can’t be… “No!”

I bring my hands up, meaning to press again, harder than before, wildly. But something about Loch’s expression stops me. It’s peaceful, calmer than it ever was in life. Staring at him, I know with total, awful certainty—he’s lost. I could press and breathe from here till doomsday and it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference.

Loch Gossel is dead.

Stumbling around the cave. The whispers deafening. Tears streaming down my cheeks. The wolf within me howling to be set free. Loch dead. Muttering, “This can’t be so. This can’t be so. This…”

My right foot hits either a large stone or small stalagmite. I fall flat. As I’m picking myself up, the face of the girl forms in the floor in front of me. Her expression is the same as Loch’s. I gaze at her in horror. This is what Loch will be like for all eternity, or at least until his body rots. Blank, lifeless, ever still, ever serene, ever—

The girl’s eyes snap open. Her lips part. She shouts at me, words I can’t understand.

I scream and propel myself backwards. Scream again. Halfway through, it turns into a howl. With an effort, I force the howl down, then fix my eyes on the face in the floor. “No,” I snarl, pressing my hands hard against the sides of my head. “NO!” I roar.

Something shoots out of me. A force I haven’t felt in all its power since I fought Lord Loss and his familiars in Slawter. I shut my eyes, feeling energy zap out of me. The scream rises and rises. I feel as if I’m floating above the ground. I think if I opened my eyes I’d find that I am floating. I hold the scream, the cords in my throat feeling like they’re going to burst, until…

A sound like cannon fire. Then sudden silence. The scream dies away. My head flops. I collapse. My hands come away from my head, to protect my face from the fall.

When I sit up, I’m breathing hard and crying. But the whispering has stopped. I glance at the spot in the floor. The girl’s face has disappeared. And I don’t feel sick anymore—only small, lonely and scared.

Standing, I shine the torch around, trying to pin down the source of the cannon fire. It only takes a few seconds to spot it—a large crack in one of the walls, close to the waterfall, which wasn’t there before. Did I divide the rock with my magical scream, or is the crack coincidence, the result of air flowing into the cave or a change of temperature? I don’t know. At this particular moment, I don’t really care.

I stagger over to Loch and slump beside his lifeless form. Impossible to believe he’ll never move again, or laugh, or wrestle. You think your friends are never going to die, that all the people you know and care for will be with you forever. Then the world makes a fool of you, so quickly, so simply, that you wonder whether any of your family or friends will see out another day intact.

I want to bring him back. I want to shake him, kick him, pump magic into him, make him breathe, make him live. It should be easy, like starting a stalled car or a crashed PC. There should be rules, instructions, things you can do. But there aren’t. When it comes to humans, death’s death, that’s that, and you’re a fool if you think any different.

Crying, I lean over Loch to hug his empty shell and tell him how unfair this is, how good a friend he was, how he shouldn’t be dead, how much I want him to live, how scared I am. And it’s only when I grab his shoulders and haul him up, pulling his head in towards my chest, that I realise—his head, the coat and the area around his shoulders… they’re all dry.

At first, I’m so distraught I don’t understand why that should be so strange, why it strikes me as being out of place. I’m about to dismiss it, to banish it from my thoughts, when the significance hits and I do a confused, incredulous double-take. Then, because I still can’t make sense of it, I cry the question out loud, in case giving it a voice will help me find an answer.

“Where the hell has all the blood gone?”

PART TWO — JUNI

THE PROMISE

Dervish regards the cave with something close to religious awe when he enters. For a long minute he doesn’t even glance at where I’m hunched over Loch. His attention is fixed on the walls, the roof, the formations, the waterfall. Then Bill-E nudges him softly and mumbles, “Over there.”

Dervish snaps to his senses and advances. “Billy told me what happened,” he says, still several metres away. “How is he?”

“Fine—” I say and Dervish smiles “—for a dead man.” The smile vanishes. He slows. Behind him, Bill-E covers his mouth with his hands, stifling a sob or a scream.

“You’re sure?” Dervish asks softly.

“Check for yourself,” I say hollowly. “Prove me wrong.” My face crinkles. “Please.”

Dervish kneels and gently pushes me away. He examines Loch. Rolls his eyelids up. Puts his ear to the dead wrestler’s chest. Goes through all the same resuscitation tricks that I tried. I don’t bother telling him that he’s wasting his time. Let him find out for himself.

Eventually he draws back, saddened—but worried too. He looks at me. Then at Bill-E. “Tell me again what happened.”

“He slipped,” Bill-E moans. “I tried to grab him but I couldn’t reach.”

“There was nobody else in the cave?” Dervish presses sharply. He looks at me and licks his lips. “Nothing else?”