Reaper's Legacy

^{CHAPTER FIVE} THE NORTH

Lucy-Anne’s fascination with Rook was growing by the minute. And though she was seeing some terrible things, she could not deny that she was also enjoying her adventure. That’s mad, she thought. This isn’t an adventure, it’s a disaster. But she was happy to deny her inner voice.

“What’s your story?” she asked him as they left the Transport Museum.

“Mine?” Rook looked at her in surprise.

“I’m putting my trust in you,” Lucy-Anne said. “You’re taking me into the north of London.”

“I haven’t said I would yet,” he said, but the ensuing silence between them spoke volumes. She already knew that he was interested in her. Now she wanted to know why.

“This way,” he said, nodding along the street. “Let’s keep moving and I’ll tell you as much as I…” He started walking, and Lucy-Anne followed. Rooks drifted above them, like shadows of a shattered night. Much as I want to? she thought. Or as much as I remember?

“I was living in Collier’s Wood with my mother. Dad left a few years ago. Met a stripper in Soho, fell in love, took her to live in Cornwall.” He grinned without humour. “Sordid, eh?”

Lucy-Anne did not reply. She was finding it strange enough imagining Rook with a mother, living in a house. Something normal for this extraordinary boy.

“When Doomsday hit, me and David were on the way home from school. We’d stopped at a pizza place and were eating with some friends. Heard about an explosion at the Eye, didn’t think much of it. Bit of a shock, but we were just kids, you know? There’ve been bombs before. So we were just eating and messing around, and then we left and started for home. There was me and David, and…” He frowned, shrugged. “A few friends. Can’t remember their names anymore.

“It wasn’t ’til we passed Collier’s Wood tube station that we saw something weird. Loads of people rushing from the tube. They all looked scared, panicked. Most of them were on their phones, not looking where they were going or communicating with anyone around them. A fat guy was hit by a car. No one stopped, no one seemed to care. So we took off towards our street, our friends tagged along—they lived past the end of our street, usually came into our place for a play on the Wii or something after school. At the end of the street, they just…dropped. Hit the pavement. One second they were walking with us, the next they fell.”

He was silent for a while, and Lucy-Anne tried to imagine this strange, deadly boy playing computer games and walking home from school with friends. They were such mundane activities that she could not make the connection. But Rook’s expression made it for her; she had never seen him looking so human.

“A load of pigeons gathered on the rooftops took flight and flew in tight circles above us, like living tornadoes. David looked terrified. I knew it was him—I’d known for a while about what he could do, or some of it—but he’d always been afraid. I reached for him to…hold his hand, or something. But they were falling everywhere. Along the street from us two cars crashed head-on, and another flipped over onto its back and smashed down the front wall of a house. There was a really big explosion, and screaming, and then my vision started blurring. David grabbed my hand. I passed out.” Rook held up one hand as if to illustrate his brother’s touch, but then Lucy-Anne realised that he had called a halt. A rook drifted down to land on his shoulder, he tilted his head, and the bird took off again.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Irregulars. Come on.” They walked on, past the entrance to an indoor market and a jeweller’s with rings and necklaces still scattered on the pavement amongst broken glass. Lucy-Anne looked around but saw no one watching them. Whoever it was the birds had seen must have been hiding.

“What happened when you woke up?”

“Everyone was dead,” Rook said. “It was like…waking in another world. London was mostly quiet. Some shouts, screams, from a couple of people stumbling about. We never saw any, though. I suppose we were lucky. We had each other. So we went home. And our mother was dead. Sitting in her armchair, and the TV was still on, then. An advert for washing powder. Her cup of tea was still warm.

“After that things are hazy. Time seems weird. We stayed together, I know that. Outside was terrifying and horrible. So silent, and when there were voices, they were screaming or mad. It might have been a couple of days or three weeks, living in our house almost as normal. David made food, washed up, and we dressed in clean clothes every day. And when the TV and radio were off, and the Internet couldn’t connect anymore, and David’s mobile had no signal and after we’d buried Mum in the back garden, under the thornless rose bush she’d planted by the back gate so that we didn’t prick ourselves on it when we were little…after that, when we did start thinking about leaving, a man told us not to.”

“A man?” Lucy-Anne prompted when he seemed to drift off.

“A black man. He looked like he was a hundred years old. I think I’d seen him before, selling flowers at the local market on Saturday mornings. He came down our street at nine forty-three every morning. Same time, exactly. He called himself a crier, like an old town crier, you know? And he told us to stay where we were, because everything was terrible. Told us stories. We didn’t believe them, of course.”

“What sort of stories?”

“I’m sure you can guess.” He stopped walking and looked at a swathe of graffiti across a shop’s side wall. It was a strange mixture of symbols and images, as if written in an alien language.

“So we stayed at home, and then I discovered that I could…” Rook waved one hand around his head, and seven rooks circled above them for a few moments before drifting apart once more. “It was amazing to me, and strange to David. His own powers were so much greater than they’d been before, and he couldn’t handle it. The day the black man didn’t come, David went out. He was picked up by the Choppers.”

“Do you know what happened to him?” she asked. Rook glanced back at her, his eyes hard, and Lucy-Anne realised that she’d asked an intensely personal question. If he did know, and it was as awful as she feared, then she had no right asking him to relive it.

“They killed him,” Rook said.

“You…” She trailed off, unsure.

“What?”

“You’re sure?” she asked quietly. “Only…maybe the Choppers were trying to help. In the beginning, at least.”

Rook walked to the kerb and stopped, as if waiting for the motionless traffic to start moving again. “You think?”

“Well, maybe. At first. I mean, I know what they do now. We’ve heard the stories, and everything. But I just don’t want to believe they were doing that right at the start.”

“Really?” He stared at her, then his expression softened a little. “I only wish you could see.”

“See what?”

“What my rooks show me. They saw. They followed him, because my powers were young, unformed, chaotic. It was David they were for back then, as well as all the other birds. But it was only the rooks that came back to me and shared what they saw. The Choppers grabbed him from a supermarket where he was trying to break in to get food. They bundled him into the back of a van, slit his throat, collected as much of his blood as they could. Then they cut off the top of his head and took out his brain.”

Lucy-Anne blinked at Rook, unable to break his gaze.

“The birds left him, then. Dead, by the Choppers’ hands.”

“And you’ve been avenging him ever since,” she whispered. It was dreadful—this poor kid, barely older than her, made into a vessel of vengeance. A killer.

“In a way,” he said. “I accepted right away that he was gone, because I already knew that I was changing, and the rooks were no mystery to me. I was becoming more like he’d been, for whatever reason. But it’s more as if I was trying to bring him back. And now, with you…”

“With me?”

“Someone else special,” Rook said, stepping forward and touching her face. “Touched before Doomsday. Pure.”

“Oh, I’m not pure,” Lucy-Anne said, shivering at his touch.

“I’ve been waiting for you ever since David died.”

“And Reaper? The Superiors?”

Rook smiled, a terrible expression. “What I do serves them, and they can sometimes help me.”

“You feel nothing for those Choppers you killed?”

“They’re not people anymore,” he said. “They’re from outside. Another world.”

“So am I.”

“Yes. But you belong here.” He turned away from her and started walking again, and just for a moment Lucy-Anne felt under intense scrutiny. She looked up and saw several rooks sitting on window sills, a few more circling gently above, and every single one of them was gazing down at her. Their eyes, black and lifeless. Then they took flight to follow Rook, like dregs of his own psyche blown apart by Doomsday. Perhaps everything he did was an attempt to hold himself together.

Later that afternoon Rook suggested that they rest in a house for a while. He said that moving farther north during the day was dangerous, and that entering the wilder parts of London would be better achieved under cover of darkness.

“Isn’t that when whatever’s there comes out?” Lucy-Anne asked.

“What, like vampires?” Rook was mocking her, but she would not rise to his bait.

“It’s just that night always feels more dangerous. And don’t birds sleep at night?”

“Not mine,” he said. “They do what I ask of them, whenever I ask. They’ll guide us in, and we’ll be shadows. Darkness will hide us.”

The house Rook broke into had probably once been worth a million pounds, but now its fine furnishings and tasteful decor held no value when it came to survival. They tramped dirty shoes across cream carpet, and he told her to wait in the living room while he checked the rest of the house.

Several rooks had entered the house with them, and one perched on the back of an easy chair, watching Lucy-Anne. She hoped she was being protected, but suspected it was more likely that she was being guarded.

Trying not to look at the bird—it was unnaturally motionless, eyes reflecting nothing—she glanced around at the room, attempting to connect with the family that had once owned this place. She skimmed over the furniture, the paintings, the ornaments and photographs, because they were more a part of the house than whoever had used to live here. The objects that did affect her were those that spoke of a human touch. On the bookshelf, an open book lay face-down, never to be finished. On the floor beneath a small table, a children’s toy car gathered dust, its brash redness subdued by time. A sheaf of papers sat on the table. A coat was draped across the back of the sofa, and a wallet hung half-out of the inner pocket. Half-finished things that would never be taken up by their owners again. They made her sad.

Rook reappeared in the doorway, and the watching bird fluttered past him and from the room with hardly a sound.

“Family’s upstairs,” he said, glancing around the room. “We’ll stay down here. Two sofas. I’ll check the kitchen, see if any canned food’s still edible.”

Lucy-Anne only nodded, and as he left again she leaned across so that she could see the staircase outside. She felt no temptation to go up.

As she heard Rook rooting through the kitchen cupboards she sat back in the sofa and breathed in deeply. She’d had one night’s disturbed sleep since leaving her friends, and exhaustion was creeping in. Sleep lured her down, yet Andrew urged her on.

“I will find you,” she whispered, and the room seemed to be listening. But what would she find? In the north of London, where even people like Rook chose not to tread and there were bad people, hungry and cruel, would the Andrew she might find be one that she wanted?

A flutter, and three rooks entered the room. They perched in high corners and became as motionless as shadows.

She remembered him from when they were younger and tried to imagine what he might be capable of now.

Her eyes drooped. When she jerked in her sleep and looked again, one of the rooks had come closer, standing motionless on a low coffee table not six feet from her. She stared, it stared back. She lifted one foot quickly, as if to kick out, but the bird did not move. He’s watching me, she thought.

The sofa was deep and soft. From the kitchen, she heard the dull rasp of a tin being opened, and then something wet being spooned into a bowl.

Between blinks the bird vanished from sight and the room lit up, suddenly bright and airy and filled with life once more.

Rook is there before her, sitting in a chair and drinking from a steaming mug. He’s smiling, and there is no mockery in that expression now, no superiority. He starts to stand and—

Music is playing through the room’s stereo system. It’s something soft and gentle, lulling. Rook sits on the sofa beside her, and though they do not live here, she feels very much at home. She glances at the window, where net curtains are hung to conceal the view outside. She leans sideways, because between curtains and window there is a chink of bare glass, and she thinks perhaps she has seen an eye—

She is lying on the sofa and Rook is sitting by her side. She’s all but naked. Rook’s smile is both alluring and comforting, as if this has all happened before. She glances at the window, but the curtains have been drawn tightly closed.

The toy car is no longer beneath the table. The book has been closed and re-shelved. The coat over the back of the sofa is now Rook’s, and the wallet hanging from the inside pocket is spilling ink-black feathers.

She opens her mouth, but Rook kisses her—

Rook is lying on her, and when she looks past him the room is filled with rooks, perching on the picture rail, the bookshelves, the table and the backs of chairs. As she opens her mouth to cry out they beat her to it, caw-cawing as one, flapping their wings and suddenly filling the space with frantic movement.

Lucy-Anne shouted herself awake, sitting up on the sofa, waving her hands around her head to ward off the birds and push Rook away. But she was alone in the room once more, and any watching birds had gone.

Rook rushed into the room, looking around for any threat. “What?” he asked.

Lucy-Anne pressed one had to her chest. Her heart was beating hard. She shook her head.

“Dream?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She did not elaborate. How could she?

“Was this one about me, too?” he asked, smiling. Then he held up one finger and turned, leaving the room and calling back, “Food in one minute!”

Lucy-Anne stood and paced the room. She stood by the window and moved the closed curtains aside, revealing bare glass and no net curtains. Outside, the street was silent and motionless. There was no sense of being watched.

“What the bloody hell?” she muttered. Whether the dream was prophecy or desire, there was no way to know. But for a moment it had all felt so real.

Drawn like a searcher to a beacon in the dark, Nomad drifted through the streets of London.

I have felt this before, and touched him, and now Jack is just beginning to understand his potential. But this…

Nomad usually wandered, yet now she moved with unaccustomed purpose. She sensed other people seeing her and moving out of the way. Eyes followed her progress, and whispers sounded behind her, wrapping her in myth and legend.

As she approached her target, she probed with inhuman senses, constructing a picture of what she would see and why she was being impelled this way. She paused by a knot of crashed and burned vehicles.

I have felt this before, but this time is different.

Soon, she saw the girl. Purple-haired, strong, angry, confused, she was accompanied by a boy and his birds. They were heading north, searching for her brother, whom Nomad could have found if she so desired. But she did not yet wish that. She had come to learn that leaving matters to fate might sometimes steer the world.

She watched them from the shadow of a doorway, and when the girl saw her watching she froze, scared and confused.

And Nomad gasped.

She had seen this girl in dreadful dreams she did her best to forget.

The girl ran at her and Nomad quickly melted away, fleeing through buildings and across roads, down alleys and up staircases. Behind her, she sensed the girl’s confusion.

Nomad sat on a rooftop and looked out over London, the toxic city so filled with potential. For the first time ever in her new life, she was afraid.