Shadow Breakers Read online

  Above the elevator, the floor numbers steadily climb.

  8 . . . 9 . . .

  “Yes,” says Josh. “But there’s another thing. The one element that’s always been common to it, the one thing that’s always followed it around, the one key, unwavering factor that has always seemed to be there, bridging the gap for this thing. The psychic link. The gateway. Someone who had only just arrived here.”

  11 . . . 12 . . .

  Josh looks unblinkingly at me. Sadly.

  And it is as if I am being told something I have never known, and yet, somehow, have always known; it is like that illusion where, if you stare at it for long enough, you see either an old crone or a young woman, or both. Or like those Magic Eye books, where a three-dimensional image springs out at you, both there and not there, reaching into the real world and molding itself out of the air.

  14 . . . 15 . . .

  “You, Miranda May,” says Josh. “It’s you. It was always you.”

  The thing. The Shape. The Animus.

  It’s me.

  My enemy is me.

  WHERE AM I? I am partly here, in the power station, and partly on the seafront.

  I can hear the screeching gulls and the crash of the waves as I walk, in slow motion, dragged down by my heavy legs. My bleary eyes struggle to focus as I stare at it.

  There. A long, dark cloak, fluttering like a flag across the backdrop of a slate-gray sea. Reality shifts and twists, and it is standing in front of the blazing forest again, the smoke painting the blue sky black. I can smell the smoke — angry, pungent, sooty, and sulfuric.

  The Shape does not move. But it’s more than a shimmering column. It’s a figure, hooded. Closer and closer I go, until I am standing facing it.

  You saved me, I say in my head. On the road in front of the café.

  The Shape looks up.

  The long, dark hair frames a pale face, just as it did in the vision. Only now, she doesn’t have the yellow skin and the angry pustules. Her face is moon-white, and her pale eyes glow with an unearthly light. Her mouth is a broad red stripe, and it is smiling.

  “I almost have you,” she murmurs. “Almost.”

  • • •

  I am kneeling on the floor of the power complex.

  “I’ve been afraid,” I hear myself sobbing. “Afraid even to sleep. It comes in the darkness. Comes in my dreams!”

  “We know,” says Miss Bellini softly.

  And now Cal hits a button on her phone. I hear a beep, and a second later the eight globes in a ring all light up, crackling, blue. Ghost light. I remember from the Abbey. They form a ring of power, surrounding me, keeping me safe . . .

  No. Of course not. Not safe.

  Keeping me in.

  The central pillar is glowing softly, too, and so are the computer screens.

  “Just keep still, Miranda,” says Miss Bellini. “We’re going to help you. We’re going to break it.”

  I am shaking. I can feel my body twisting, my back arching, as something forces me down.

  I am lying on the floor, my arms spasming out of my control. I feel my mouth open, hear an unearthly screech echo from it. There is a strong, harsh, burning smell.

  “Break it?” I hear myself croak, and I try to lift my head through my ragged, sweaty fringe. “How are you going to do that?”

  18 . . . 19 . . . 20.

  The elevator pings.

  The doors start to rumble open.

  A thin sliver of light emerges from between the doors, fanning out into an arc, then a dazzling square of brightness. A dark figure is framed in the elevator doorway. I am shaking and sweating with terror.

  The light spills out into the room and I cry out loud.

  The tall figure steps out from the elevator, dressed in a dark suit, soft hair around her shoulders, light glinting off her glasses. Miss Bellini, Cal, and Josh — they knew she was coming all along, of course they did — turn and look at her as she passes through into the room.

  Of course.

  It all makes sense now. What Cal said to Lyssa on the phone. You’d better let her in.

  I look up. I stare up at her shoes, her swirling skirt, her jacket, the jangling bangles. I look up farther still and I see that familiar face and that smile, the mouth that has kissed my head and read me bedtime stories on four thousand, seven hundred nights.

  “Miranda,” says my mother, crouching down and taking my face in her cool hands. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  CENTRAL POWER COMPLEX: SUNDAY 23:51

  The pillar, globes, and screens pulse gently in harmony.

  It’s here.

  Almost without any fanfare, it has appeared inside the circle of globes. A tall, dark figure that flickers and changes — from old crone, to young woman, and then to the girl with the ravaged skin and mouth.

  Slowly, the Shape and I circle one another. Watched by Cal, Josh, Miss Bellini.

  My mother is also in the circle. She walks calmly next to the Animus, unafraid.

  It shouldn’t surprise me that my mother should be tuned into something like this. I’ve been so doubtful about her powers and her knowledge, but she knows what she is doing. So they have asked her to be here. And just how much does she know? After all — my gift came from somewhere.

  The Animus is there, and yet not there. I can feel her, part of me and yet not me, as if she is a dark reflection in a deadly mirror, a black, shiny mirror into the depths of another dimension.

  The Animus shimmers, trying to stabilize.

  She is not ugly. In fact, she is quite beautiful. Her face seems ageless, her skin porcelain white and so paper-thin you can see the veins through it. Her eyes still have that unearthly glow, but I can see now that they were originally slate gray, almost blue. Her reddened lips are thin and taut like a bow, with lines around her mouth that have come from suffering rather than laughter.

  The Animus gathers the cloak around her, and as she walks, she leaves traces behind her, like afterimages — as if she is not properly tuned into time. Her breathing is hoarse and ragged. It sounds amplified, almost metallic, as if it’s being relayed through a microphone.

  “Tell us who you are,” says my mother gently. She has her fingers splayed out as if she’s touching the Animus, but she isn’t. “Tell us why you are here.”

  I fear it less now that Mum is here. I still don’t have much faith in the healing powers that she believes in, but somehow the fact that she does makes everything more bearable.

  And yet the voice, when it comes, still grabs me and shakes me.

  I can feel the reverberations, as if it’s speaking through my own larynx. I look in panic at my mother, but she raises a gentle hand to calm me. The voice isn’t agitated, but it is still harsh and horrible, as if it had been burned.

  “I was born Katherine Mary Brampton, in a small Essex village in the year of the Peasants’ Revolt. The year of Our Lord, thirteen hundred and eighty-one. I am something more, but I always remained Katherine.”

  “Tell us about your family,” my mother says.

  “My father died,” says the voice, “after the Battle of Smithfield. My mother ten years later. Nobody cared, as some had already marked her as a witch. Nobody looked after me. The witch’s daughter. Maybe a witch myself. I fled, into the forest. I scavenged, I hunted. Until one day, at the age of thirteen, I saw the pustules beginning to form on my skin.”

  I swallow hard. I don’t know what to say.

  “Ring around the rosie,” she hisses. “You understand now?”

  I hear Josh say quietly, “The Plague. Yeah, we’d worked that out. A while back.”

  “I thought I was destined to die. All those centuries ago. There, in my filthy encampment. Just another girl with the Black Death. It was everywhere. All
that rotting flesh. Bodies piled high, no time to bury them. Sulfur burning in the air. You could smell the fires from miles away. Death on the wind. And then, one day, at dawn — the riders came.”

  “Riders?” It is Miss Bellini who repeats this.

  My mother glances at her. “Anna,” she says, as if she’s telling her to keep quiet.

  But the Animus — Katherine — answers her. “Armored horsemen. Dark-skinned. Carrying flaming torches. To this day I do not know who they were. Mercenaries, maybe. But their intention was clear. To burn the forest, and everything in it. I awoke to the thunder of hooves, and before I could even properly flee, the first searing flames had started to engulf my encampment.”

  Burning the forest. The image seared into my half-sleeping, half-waking brain.

  “But you didn’t die,” says my mother.

  “The fire . . .” She pauses. “The fire swept through me. Scorching hell-heat burned me up. I was sure I would be meeting with the Devil, for I knew I was not a godly child. I knew I was going to hell.” Her eyes snap open. “But I ate up the fire. I had . . . become inhuman. Or maybe I always was inhuman. Who knows? They said my mother was a witch. Perhaps they were right. All I know is this: They burn witches, do they not? Well, I stood there in the midst of the inferno and I felt the fire burn itself out around me, and I smelled the smoke and breathed in the filthy charcoal of the ravaged trees and the scorched earth, and I lived. The fire gave me strength. I returned to the village, trailing smoke in my wake. My feet made black prints of ash on the ground.”

  A girl running from the blazing forest, smoke surrounding her like ghosts. The girl and the Shape, Katherine and the Animus, one and the same. The witch’s daughter, the demon. All these names people give to things they cannot understand.

  Pain and weakness push me down, forcing me onto the floor of the room. I cannot take much more. She is growing stronger.

  She goes on. “People saw me and fled. One man tried to kill me with an axe. It went straight through me as if it were a passing breeze. . . . Do you have any idea how simple those peasants were? How easily manipulated by stories of hell, of fire and brimstone? They believed in the Devil back then. The Devil was real. And as far as they were concerned, I wasn’t just a witch’s daughter now. I was the Devil’s Child.”

  I swallow hard, not knowing what to say. I’m shaking, feeling sick and cold and tired. She circles me, and I almost feel her body pulling mine along with it.

  I am becoming her.

  “So then,” she continues, “after my first death, I could go where I wanted, do what I liked. And that was the way it stayed until now. Expelling the heat from my body when it became too much, and absorbing it again from elsewhere when needed.” She pauses. “Call me the Devil’s Child, call me fire demon, yes, call me Animus if you want. I can soak up the energy from a burning barn or an exploding car, absorb it, use it.”

  I glance at the clock. 23:53:11. I can’t take any more. They need to do something.

  “I have had so many lives, so many names. I watched Byzantium fall to the Ottoman Turks. I saw the Boleyn girl lose her head. I witnessed the liberation of France and the breaking of the Berlin Wall. I have watched cities, monarchs, dynasties, and presidents rise and fall. I have been on this earth for over six hundred long years. This world is going to destroy itself soon — very soon. There is a darkness coming.”

  “A darkness?” The hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

  “One that even you will not be able to resist, child. I can sense it. It’s deep, buried . . . but there is a darkness even in you.”

  I don’t know what she means.

  “Yes. A darkness coming. All must change. Adapt to survive. And now this part of my life is over and I need renewal. I need to gain a hold in the world and become totally physical again.”

  “We won’t let you do it,” says Miss Bellini calmly.

  “And why not?”

  “You know what will happen. With all the accumulated, focused energy, your physical body will become a receptacle for destruction, for plague. Miranda would just be the first. You’ll need to continue to renew over and over again . . . scouring the country for someone with that psychic link as the body fails, just as your last body failed. How many would have to die, Katherine?”

  The Animus hisses like a serpent, rounding on her. “You think I care? You think I care for the people who abandoned me, left me to die, to burn?”

  Miss Bellini is still calm. “You are dead, Katherine. Accept that.Everything has its time and yours has come. The people who let you die went into the ground themselves centuries ago. Don’t let this become an act of vengeance.”

  I huddle into myself, looking from the Animus to Miss Bellini, and then up at my mother. She looks calm, beautiful, resolute.

  “You are not taking her,” she says. “You can’t have her.”

  The Animus opens her eyes wide, as red light pulses from them.

  “But see,” she whispers, “I already have.”

  Her eyes become orbs of white, sending out lashing tongues of energy that scorch everything they touch. They whip across the room, burning and melting and searing.

  The Animus steps forward, arms out in a deadly embrace, ready to enclose me. To become me.

  Gasping, I look up at the digital clock. The crimson figures read 23:54:56. They’re powering toward that computer-controlled energy spike at midnight, and nothing can stop them.

  “I can feel the Machine grow,” says the Animus softly. “Let it begin.”

  THE MOON SHINES intermittently from behind rushing, tattered clouds.

  I’m in a playground at night. It smells of decay. Swings creak in the cold wind, and laughter, ghost-children’s laughter, echoes across the cracked, weed-infested tarmac. The slides are rusting. It is like Craghollow Park — a dreamlike version of it. But is this a dream, or is it real?

  Above me, dark specks swirl in a blue-black sky. They could be birds or bats, or ash from a bonfire. Digital clock figures appear in the sky, as if written by lasers.

  23:55:17

  The carousel creaks, turning, even though there is nobody on it.

  No — she is on it. With her back to me, a hunched shadow. She turns, turns, the hooded face coming into view. She looks up at me, and I see her face in the moonlight.

  She has the face of a hag.

  Her skin is not glowing and porcelain white any longer — it is yellow, dusty, like the old paper of the Constantinople Rubric. Her nose is hooked and deep lines are scored across her face, cutting through flesh misshapen by boils and pustules. Her spotted brown hands are clawlike, with brittle nails and bulbous veins. Her teeth are like splinters of yellow bone. Her body shakes as if she finds it a great effort to stay sitting.

  “You saw this several times,” she says with a harsh, rattling whisper. “The form I have been reduced to.”

  I back slowly away. “Where are we? What is this place?”

  “Our bodies are still where they were. But now, we are battling for your mind.” A horrible smile creeps across her face. “The link — that’s all I need now.”

  “No. I won’t let you.”

  “But I am already too strong inside you, Miranda May. You are so special. It will take very little force of will now, for me to become you.” She gets slowly to her feet.

  23:56:10

  “I’m not afraid of you,” I say. A cold wind whips leaves across the path.

  It is as if I haven’t spoken.

  “I have occupied your body,” she hisses, “and now I will occupy your mind. Take my hand.”

  She moves toward me, holding out one claw, and I’m running, stumbling across the playground, through the cold wind and the flurries of leaves. Beneath the swirling ash, or bats, or birds. Beneath the dark, rushing clouds.

 
On a rope bridge, a familiar figure stands, dark coat blowing in the wind, hair tumbling across his eyes, hands firm on the ropes. Josh looks like an admiral at the stern of his ship.

  “Don’t let her win, Miranda!” he shouts. “Fight her! Break her, for us!”

  I run to the swings, and she is there, swinging backward . . . and forward . . . Backward . . . and forward . . . Just like me. I stop, back slowly away.

  Lyssa emerges from the shadows behind the swings, holding her oscilloscope. The lines are going crazy, casting green flickers across the ghostly playground.

  “You’re one of us now, Miranda. Stay with us!”

  Ollie is beside her. “You’ve got to be strong!” he says firmly. “I lost Bex. I don’t want you going, too.”

  And on top of the monkey bars is Cal, her hair fire-bright in the moonlight. “Never give an enemy a reason to rejoice, Miranda. We’re all on your side. Concentrate. Concentrate hard!”

  I fall to my knees.

  The Animus is there in front of me. I scramble to the slide, manage to get up the steps, as if the height gives me some illusion of escape. But it just makes me feel more isolated, and now I am at the top of the slide, cold, shaking, waiting to come down, just as I used to when I was a little girl.

  It’s waiting for me at the bottom. One gnarled, papery hand outstretched.

  I can feel it pulling on my mind, willing me to let go of the bar, to slide down into its embrace.

  “You need something that’s your own.”

  It’s Josh’s voice, soft and urgent. He’s beside me on the platform.

  “What?” I say desperately.

  “We can’t help you now. You need to find something the Animus can’t possess. A thought, a memory, an emotion. Something that will weaken its hold on your mind and banish it as the energy process begins.”

  We both look up at the sky.

  23:57:10

  I don’t have long.

  Something the Animus cannot own. A thought that is pure. Something that’s mine alone.