Page 11

I am tense and waiting. Is it dead?

I stay flat on my back, fingertips pressed into the snow. I try to calculate the odds of surviving if I’m wrong about this. The teras is fast. If it catches sight of me, I’ll have no time at all before my head is in its jaws. But if I am right? If that howl was a death cry? Staying here will be death, too.

Carefully, I push to my feet.

A crunch sounds in the bushes and I freeze. The adrenaline is making me more fearful than brave. I press against a tree, frightened to move, as if the manticore could play this kind of trick. The shadows shift. They resolve into a face, then two, then three: a young man and woman walked together, the man’s arm slung around her neck. Another man walks behind them, face blood splattered.

They are Hunters of a kind, but not graduates.

The pair stop walking. I hear tenor tones that are hushed by the woman. When she speaks, it’s with a thick, Midlands accent. “You alive over there?”

I force myself to push away from the tree and stumble up the path towards them.

“Yes,” I say. A wash of shame seems to come with the admission. “I’m alive.”

The pair look like siblings. Both of their Chinese features are speckled with blood. The young woman has short black hair with a hint of a wave in it. She looks flushed standing in the cold and supporting the weight of the man beside her. He is lean but sturdy, with dark eyes. He clutches his side. Blood seeps through his fingers.

“God,” I say, stumbling forward. As I move closer, I see a large gash through the young man’s coat, shirt, and skin. Three layers peel away from the body and flap in the wind like paper. “Are you alright?”

“He’ll be fine,” the young woman says sharply. She slips her arms around his shoulder and the other man comes forward to help shift his weight.

“You’re all right,” he whispers, patting the boy’s shoulder. Then he looks up at me. “Are you from London?”

I pause. He is nearly two heads taller than me, well over six feet. White but tanned from a life under the sun, with dirty blond hair, bloody skin. The blue of his eyes is so intense it seems fake.

I don’t know how to answer. “Is my brother dead?” I whisper. No one says anything, so I start up the path.

The manticore’s corpse is nowhere to be seen. “It got away?” I ask, because I need to hear my own voice.

“It was injured,” the woman says. “It fled. But no doubt it will be back soon.”

“I thought they were Persian,” I murmur quietly. I don’t know why—my brain is running in overdrive and latching onto anything that isn’t the fate of my brother. Speaking is easy; speaking is a necessity.

The young woman slowly guides her injured brother to sit in the snow. “They are. Or they were.”

“Manticore,” I say.

“Androphagos,” the other man amends. “That’s the Greek, anyway. Man-eater.”

I grimace at this. “I thought they were rumours. Something that hadn’t quite slipped through from the mythos.”

“No such luck,” the man replies cheerily, though his face is stripped of any humour. “Whatever grand force decided to mess with the world, it made sure every myth was accounted for.”

I stare at him. I can’t work him out. He is full of muscle, bulky. He seems happy in a warped way, as if there is no other way to be. I catch the accent and figure he’s from around here, perhaps Southend. I know the lot of them are here for the Calling, and then I realise that I’m stalling. That further up the hill my brother is waiting for me. I have to know if he lives, but I can’t move.

I look down at my hands. My heart is racing. I consider vomiting into the bushes just to stop the nausea from rolling around in my stomach.

“Shit,” I say. The others stare at me. “Thank you. Excuse me.”

I head up the slope. I’m not sure if they follow. Thad is vomiting blood when I arrive. Blood and gore pour from a torn hole in his cheek. His nose has been shattered, and blood pours from that, too. Most of his guts are in his hands.

He is not dead yet, but soon.

His eyes widen when he sees me. He goes through surprise, to horror, to a daunting kind of sadness I’ve never seen in him before. He opens his mouth and I brace myself for whatever this final wish is.

“West. . . tower,” he gurgles. “Trials. Get the. . . west tower room. Facing the gates.”

I nod at him because I don’t know what else to do. “Don’t speak. It’s ok. I’m here.”