I don’t look back. I jump to the side just as a pile of roof-tiles comes smacking down on the road. Houses all around are crumbling to chunks and debris.
I dodge and duck and dive, avoiding it all. Somehow, Paul got ahead of me with Kale. Maybe I’m too slow, maybe they were ahead of me the whole time. I don’t know. But I do hear the thumping of bootfalls behind me, right at my heels.
But then behind me, there’s a sudden rise of mangled screams. And a very, very audible crunch.
I stagger, my heeled ankle boots skidding against the cobblestone. Stumbling around, my shoulder collides hard with Laura barging past me. She keeps going as I search the growing darkness for the victims I heard—obviously crushed by some debris.
I don’t get another second to look or investigate before orange light rises up ahead and my heart stops. Those dark fae divided from their group are coming.
And they are close.
I turn on my heels and I bolt into the dark. I use only the sounds of footsteps pounding against the road to guide me, smacking into car doors and tripping over abandoned bags of rubbish.
We run for too long.
I don’t know if we have left the town behind, or have come into another one when we finally slow. All I know is that we have lost some people, the earth doesn’t shudder with the tremors anymore, and my legs are searing from the inside.
And one more thing…
Those stragglers—the dark fae separated from their army—are not far behind us.
4
AFTER THE FAE CAME
That dark fae army—in the hundreds—should have cornered and killed us.
They should have had their chance to do what they do; burn places to the ground, torture humans they find, slaughter.
If it wasn’t for that earthquake, that saving grace, we would all be dead. Or worse (after seeing the proof of human prisoners in the army with my own eyes) we could have been captured.
France is my home. It always has been, since I never considered boarding school to be even a home away from home. So I know that earthquakes just don’t happen here.
Whatever caused it has been the talk of the group since we holed up in this dirty, musty flat in the next village over (we figured out with street signs and our map that we ran all the way to Saint-Roch while fleeing the fae stragglers and the earthquake). Some of the others think that it was the earth rejecting the invasion—all the bloodshed, the darkness, the plague. But all that I can agree with in that reasoning is the perpetual blackness of the world. All the rest of it has been a reoccurrence throughout human history, so I don’t see why Mother Earth would get all up in arms about some virus and wars. We’ve done worse, us humans.
Even the darkness is something we have done before, though clearly not to the same extent. But what we have done is covered our cities in smog, so thick that the sun couldn’t penetrate.
So why would Mother Earth be on our side now?
I’m not buying into the theories flying about this crammed ‘kitchen’ … if you could call it that.
Maybe, since my life before the dark was all finer things and wealth and villas on the beachside towns and trips to the Swiss Alps, I’m a little on the judgey side, but this … kitchen reminds me of those found in the budget holiday vehicles; caravans. Mind, I’ve only ever seen the interior of those things on TV, but still. That’s what this kitchen reminds me of with its boxed-in space, crammed full to the brim with our remaining survivors, a hob instead of a full oven-cooker, no air-fryer in sight, a dirty white kettle that will never boil no matter how much I pray to Mother Earth that it will.
It’s made fuller by the couch and armchair we pushed in here not long after we settled in. I’ve found a cosy spot on the corner of the couch, leaning against the thick arm whose material stinks of stale cigarettes and spilled beer.
It brings an idea to mind. I rummage through my shoulder bag and pluck out a French cigarette and lighter. No one bothers to even glare at me. Not like I can go outside for a smoke, can I? Besides, this is still France. And some of the others are too deep in sleep to notice.
While some of the others sleep, most of us are wallowing in the silence that swallowed us a little while ago. Paul went back to scout the road leading into the village. We need to know if those straggler fae are coming our way. And he still hasn’t returned. Each second that door doesn’t open and he doesn’t step inside, is another second my breath feels too tight in my chest.
But the silence is more than impatience. It’s sorrowful, too. Respectful, on my part.
We lost three between the earthquake and the flat.
The quiet lone-wolf of the group, Adler, somehow vanished. He must have gotten separated from us while we ran out of the town, forever gone to the dark now. Maybe he’s still out there, wandering, searching for us. Or—more likely—the tough German will do just fine on his own.
The others we lost (two of them), I heard being crushed by debris. I’ve since learned that those two were Nate and Miranda—two British siblings, no older than me in my final year at boarding school. At least I had the chance to leave for university, but those two only had the opportunity of a world strangled by darkness and war.
Our numbers are down to eight now. Less if Paul doesn’t return. The stubborn bull insisted on going it alone. ‘Can’t risk more people’, he gruffed when Laura offered to go with him.
Laura is as close to bravery as we have among the girls here. She’s a close second to Paul. The rest of us don’t do so well in the courage-department.
I tried to be friends with her once (partly for protection, I won’t lie), but I’ve never been skilled at things like that and now she thinks I’m a ‘pretentious twat’. Her words, not mine. Said them right to my face. Apparently, she values herself higher than me because she knows how to hunt and live off the land, but I don’t.
Even in this whole new world, I guess these things still matter to some.
Not to me, it doesn’t. All that matters now is survival.
But even now, we know that survival has gone from a hope to a fantasy.
Paul bursts into my thoughts when he comes barging through the kitchen door. The sudden sound yanks everyone out of their stupor. The ones who were asleep jerk forward, eyes wide and panicked, hands reaching for nearby weapons.
My slim cigarette hovers near my parted, chapped lips, vapours of smoke slithering out of me; anticipation freezes me.
When gazes land on Paul as he shuts the door quietly then leans back on it, a ribbon of relief unwinds over us, and we all go back to poor posture, slumped.
He’s alive. He wasn’t followed.
For a minute, we’re safe.
I take a breath of my cigarette, hearing the paper crackle in the quiet.
Still, eyes follow Paul as he slides down the door and rests his forearms on his drawn-up knees. His gaze darts around the kitchen for a beat before he shakes his head.
My face falls. Blood rains out of my head and piles around my thumping heart. My hand lowers, lingering the cigarette between my knees, ribbons of smoke lifting up from it as it turns to ash.
“They are coming this way,” he tells us. “Four of them.” As an afterthought, he adds, “Saw no signs of the army.”
His add-on has no effect on the utter defeat deflating me. Four dark fae are more than enough to take us all out. Just one of them could do more damage than that. I’ve seen these things in battle—I’ve seen them rip out throats with their teeth and plunge their hands into ribcages. Gruesome stuff; the kind that sticks to dreams and turns them ghastly.