The House (39 page)

“Yes,” was the
only reply I got. It sounded like Marlow but I could hear the edge
that meant his throat, at least, had shifted.

I heard the
sharp click of a lock breaking. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to
physically break the locks. It was too obvious, but then people
would always assume that we had found some other way. Nobody would
believe that someone could simply pull it apart with their hands.
It wouldn’t matter that there were no tool marks. Nobody believed
in us any more. Sometimes that thought saddened me but for the most
part I was incredibly glad.

It didn’t stop
the nervous hiccup in my heartbeat. I had been conditioned to cover
up my differences from a very early age. I’d had the life lessons
to go with it too. I had to concentrate heavily on the here and now
to stop flashing back to that fateful day. To the flames.

The gate
opened smoothly. The last thing we needed was a squeaky gate to
announce our arrival. A slither of light slipped through and I saw
that the gate was actually several inches thick. It must have
served to protect the docks well until we arrived. I also saw that
the walls weren’t actually grey, they were more of an off- white.
The paint was dirty but not actually peeling. Someone took care of
this place.

Marlow opened
the gate just enough to squeeze through. We all trailed after him.
I almost fit through without turning sideways and moved across the
wall after Marlow, Hercules and Eddie so that we were lined up
against it. It reminded me a little too much of the pictures of
people who were about to face a firing squad for comfort. I had to
work very hard to get that visual out of my head.

The docks were
spread out before us; the amount of open space was amazing. There
were several large warehouses across a concrete sea. We were
clinging to the wall like scared children. My excuse was that I was
following Marlow. I wasn’t really kidding myself though; I could
feel my heart in my throat. There weren’t any people that I could
see but there were cameras.

If the people
who had taken our shifters were here the chances were they had
hijacked a few cameras, or put up their own. It wouldn’t be hard to
add a few here and there to cover one warehouse. I found myself
analysing all of the cameras in turn to see where they were
pointing and if they looked normal. I had slipped into Marlow’s
surface thoughts again. It scared me even more when I realised that
I hadn’t meant to do it.

I looked out
on the space with my own eyes. Mostly all I could think was that it
was big. It was the biggest space I’d seen outside of the Covenant.
I got the feeling that it wasn’t supposed to feel this empty. The
workers could have gone home but there was still something missing.
Then I realised that there were no ships here.

I’d seen
pictures of docks with huge ships up on struts ready to be fixed or
just finished being built. There were no ships there. A part of me
thought that the ships must be all in the water. I told myself that
that must be it; the docks couldn’t be abandoned. In truth, I’d not
even thought about it. I felt myself holding the wall even tighter.
Of course the docks were abandoned. I could see it then. There were
metre high weeds growing in some places and the concrete was
starting to crack.

I hadn’t
realised how little we used the sea. The fish we ate came from
farms along the coast. Britain had closed her borders and the
number of docks we had must have proved a problem. They allowed too
many people in and out so they were closed down. I had no doubt
they were watched closely too. The thickness of the back alley door
attested to that.

“What do we
do?” I whispered, vaguely in Marlow’s direction.

“We move,
carefully, towards the warehouses.” It was James that replied. I’d
forgotten that James was just as capable as Marlow. In some ways
James was better, he hunted hunters. As far as I knew Marlow just
killed people. I assumed that they were bad people but I didn’t
look too closely at it. There was a reason I was closer to Shayana
than to Marlow.

Thinking of
Shayana brought a flash of her to my mind. I got an edge of pain
and fear; then it was gone. I fought to recapture it but I didn’t
recognise Shayana’s mind. I hadn’t ever entered it before. I had
always tried to stay out of my friend’s minds. I wondered if,
subconsciously at least, I had known that I was becoming a
telepath.

“They’re
here,” I whispered. I got a glare for my trouble but at least we
knew. Shayana must have been near because I’d not got a flash of
her before. I could feel the guys around me like a vibrating
energy. There was fear in there but mostly it was excitement. They
were all looking forward to a fight. It was definitely something
you seemed to need testosterone to feel; I was just scared.

Marlow started
to edge along the wall. Apparently we were going to follow the wall
all the way to the warehouses. I looked at the cameras and could
actually see that they didn’t generally cover the walls. I thought
it was an oversight on the part of whoever put them there.

Then I saw
that most of the cameras looked oddly skewed. Someone had clearly
been here before and fixed the cameras to allow a route through. I
wondered if it was the people who had our friends or if it had been
like that before then. I had a feeling that it was someone before
us. I could feel some stains on the wall behind be that felt
suspiciously like old, dried blood.

It made the
image of a firing squad return. I knew it was silly; there was no
way that the shooter could have stayed out of sight of the cameras.
What I hadn’t expected was that touching the blood gave me a
flashback. I saw blood and pain and heard screams, smelt the tang
of fresh blood and burst bowels. I had to swallow my own scream at
the feel of so much blood. Everywhere there was blood – the world
was painted red. Then it was gone.

We moved on.
As my hand moved off the blood on the walls the visions faded. I
didn’t tell any one what had happened. I glanced back at James.
Everyone ahead of me was looking the other way and James was
looking back. He hadn’t seen anything. I was glad for the most part
that my brief insanity had gone unnoticed, but a part of me wished
someone had seen. I felt like I needed a hug. I was procrastinating
from the task at hand.

I looked
around with more than my eyes. I tried to look with my telepathy.
It felt like I hit a blank wall. A blank wall that pushed me back.
I took a deep breath. I had to stop trying to use my powers; it
wasn’t good for me. I could feel something was wrong when I tried,
so I stopped. It was one of the smartest things I had ever done,
and as I trailed along the wall I fought myself every step of the
way to stick to my resolve.

I wasn’t
paying attention to what we were doing, so much so that I almost
didn’t notice when we hit the metal fencing and had to turn a
corner. I realised that I was starting to lose it again and I
didn’t think it was because of my powers this time. I could feel my
heart in my chest going at what felt like a million miles an hour.
My palms were starting to sweat and my top, which was actually very
soft, felt scratchy.

I had had an
insight into Shayana’s mind. I was sure it was Shayana’s. I had a
glimpse of so much pain it had me worried. More than worried, it
terrified me. I wanted to warn the others. I wanted to tell them
that Shayana was scared. It would take a lot to make Shayana feel
like that. But it was more than that; she was broken. I could admit
to myself that was what had really got to me, that we were about to
walk in on people who had broken Shayana. Something I would have
sworn was impossible.

I held myself
away from the fence. I didn’t want to make any sound. If anyone was
going to make a mess of it, it was probably going to be me and I
wanted to be better than that. I was not going to be the reason
that they found us and we ended up like Shayana. I could admit that
as well, that one of the things I was really scared of was being
taken.

I looked
around again; it felt important that I knew what was going on, that
I know exactly where we were going. I would need to remember when
we came out. I kept telling myself that. That I would need to know
where to go because we were going to come back out. I ignored the
voice that said that if I needed the recall it meant that nobody
else with me was able to function enough to tell me. We would all
make it out. We had to.

The open space
looked far scarier after realising that if we were running for our
lives it would leave us very exposed. I had to think about
something else. I looked ahead at Eddie. I still wasn’t sure why he
had come. He was so new. I didn’t entirely trust him but I couldn’t
refuse his help. I couldn’t leave him home alone either.

I analysed
that as I walked. I thought about why I couldn’t leave him behind.
It was easier than thinking about what we were walking into. I had
allowed myself to become responsible for Eddie. When Marie vanished
I took it upon myself to make sure we kept him. It came as a shock
to realise that I wanted to keep him. He was already becoming a
fixture in the House and he’d been there all of a week. Of course,
by ‘keep him’ I was thinking more in terms of a pet than a
person.

I was brought
back to reality when James grabbed my arm to keep me from walking
into Eddie. I looked up at him and could feel my face showing
shock. I felt like I was in shock.

“What’s
wrong?” he asked. I could see the concern in his eyes; he thought I
was going crazy again.

“Shayana is
here,” I whispered. James just nodded and took a deep breath. I did
a very long blink and turned back to look at the direction we were
going. We were nearly at the end of the fence. We’d stopped because
there was a camera in the corner that was going to catch us if we
took another step.

“We go through
when it points over the other side of the fence,” Marlow said. I
looked up at the camera and indeed it was moving, very slowly but
it was moving. We all nodded our understanding and waited as
quietly as we could. I wanted to ask questions, I couldn’t believe
that I hadn’t already asked them. I hadn’t asked what our plan was,
or what we were going to do. We had all assumed, or at least I had,
that Marlow and James would do all the fighting.

The camera
finally moved beyond the scope of where it could see us and Marlow
waved us forwards. We ran. I ended up ahead of Eddie and Hercules.
They only arrived half a second later but it messed up our
arrangement. I let Eddie and Hercules ahead of me again so that
they would be the first to face whatever was in front of us. We had
gone through this at least before we left. I let the guys stay in
front of me. It wasn’t really sexist; they just heal better. I
wasn’t really likely to survive a gunshot and some of them could
walk it off.

The next wall
belonged to a warehouse. It wasn’t the one we were headed for, but
it was close. If it was possible, my heart rate sped up even more.
It was like I could feel the adrenalin pumping through my veins. I
fought to calm myself again. My power would be useless with so many
chemicals rushing through my system.

I started to
put my hand to the wall so that I could follow it without looking
but Marlow took a step away from the wall and motioned for us to
follow. I saw why when I’d taken a few steps and the weeds started.
They were as tall as my shoulder and so thick that I couldn’t see
the wall. The concrete had come away from the warehouse and the
weeds had taken root with a vengeance. Somehow it made it seem like
the docks were more abandoned than before.

The scream
that pierced the evening air as we approached the corner started us
running regardless of the cameras.

We ran around
the next corner and down the gap between the warehouses. The
screaming continued. It sounded eerie. The only thing I could tell
was that it wasn’t anyone I knew. I don’t know how I knew since I’d
never heard any of them scream but I was very sure of it. The fact
that it wasn’t someone I knew didn’t really help. It was still
screaming. It was still a sound of fear and pain.

I lost track
of where we were going as we ran. I had to be careful not to
overtake Hercules and Eddie. Marlow clearly wasn’t running full out
because he wasn’t pulling away. We were running very quickly
though. The world was blurring around me and I had to focus
carefully on Eddie in front of me and pray that they didn’t run
into anything.

Marlow stopped
before we rounded the last corner. I could hear the screams from
the warehouse next to us. The door was only metres away and we had
to wait. I had to grab Eddie by the back of his t-shirt to stop him
in time. We needed to be quiet.

At least our
speed should stop most cameras from picking us up. We would be on
the cameras, especially if they used the modern high-speed ones,
but someone watching them would really have to know what to look
for to spot us. I noticed that the cameras had stopped once we’d
gone past the outer ring of warehouses.

Maybe they had
run out of money and assumed that they would catch anyone entering
or leaving. Or maybe they didn’t really care any more. The docks
had been forgotten. They were almost a part of the back alleys now.
In fact, in a few years they probably would be. When the cameras
had been destroyed and not replaced the illegals would move in.
They would make this place their home and I couldn’t altogether
blame them.

My breathing
was hard and fast. I was in danger of hyperventilating if I wasn’t
careful. I took the few moments we rested on the corner to catch my
breath and keep calm. It was hard to remember with the screaming
that we weren’t supposed to be there for a fight. We were there to
see if we could safely rescue our friends. I guess I’d known all
along that we were going to get them no matter what. The only way
we would have left would be if they hadn’t been there. Even then we
would have made a good go of finding out where they actually
were.