Thyla - Kate Gordon [63]
Then he looked me right in the eyes.
And he smiled.
My blood turned to ice.
In a fraction of a second they were gone.
Then Lord’s men – the ones who had survived – retreated too, without a word or a backwards glance. They had come to us in a flash, like lightning, and they were gone every bit as quickly.
And we were left – the ones of us who survived – stunned and panting. Once we could breathe again, the forest echoed with our cry.
‘Rhiannah!’
Perrin tried to chase them. He tried to get her back. But he returned to us alone, and with a face that looked as though it was made of marble. He shook his head. ‘They disappeared,’ he murmured. I felt as though my heart would explode.
‘But shouldn’t we even try?’ I cried, pushing the sobs back down my throat. I do not cry.
Perrin shook his head. ‘They will have set up sentries to trap us. If more of us go now, unprepared, we will all be killed. We need to make a plan. Rhiannah is in danger. We don’t want to put her – or any of the rest of us – in more danger. Besides, we don’t know where to go. We don’t know where they hide; where their headquarters are.’
Isaac continued. ‘Lord lets me in only as much as he needs to. I only see him on neutral territory. Perhaps if I allowed myself to be changed into a Diemen, he’d let me in more, but I have him convinced it’s better that I stay “human”. They need someone who doesn’t need to feed the way they do – someone who doesn’t need to hunt – to be their eyes and ears while they’re doing so. This has its advantages – I don’t need to transform into a blood-bathing psychopath – but it also means we don’t know where their den is. In times like this, that would be useful –’
Perrin interrupted. ‘You will promise me you won’t go off after her, okay, little girl? I know you want to protect her, but I won’t let you get …’
He trailed off. I felt anger flame deep in my belly.
‘Little girl’. He always called me that. I hate how he calls me that.
I glared at him. Made my Angry Tessa face.
But even as anger bubbled and boiled within me, the pull towards him grew stronger. I wanted to go to him. I wanted to put my arms around him and say it would be better. I would make it better. It was only Isaac’s presence that prevented me.
And the knowledge that I would have been lying. Rhiannah had been taken. I had no idea how to make that better.
None of us knew. What we did all know was that despite the hundred and sixty years of similar fights behind us, this time it was different. For one thing, there was Ms Hindmarsh. Through gaining her trust, Lord had infiltrated Cascade Falls. We wondered how many other people there were working for Lord, embedded in places he could use for his … game.
And Rhiannah had been taken. Alive. The other Sarcos didn’t know why she had been taken. Not yet. But I did. I told Isaac what the Diemen had whispered to me, and I told him what I saw on the day of my accident.
‘This is not good,’ he murmured. ‘It’s starting.’
I didn’t ask Isaac what ‘it’ was. I knew. ‘It’ was the Solution. ‘It’ was the thing we Thyla and Sarcos had feared for centuries. ‘It’ was the Diemens finally achieving enough power to truly balance ours.
I looked around me, to the other Thylas and Sarcos. To the others who would share this struggle.
The Thylas stood on one side of the clearing and the Sarcos on the other. The air between us was filled with tension and with unbearable pain.
On the forest floor were two of our own, slain. One Thyla. One Sarco. There were at least five of Lord’s men as well, face down in the mud. They were beginning to sizzle and melt into blackness, but their defeat did not come close to compensating for our loss.
Mr Beagle was dead. I had seen him fall, and heard Isaac’s tortured howl as he saw it too. They were friends.
Sara was dead too. I could see her curls, now matted down with blood and mud.
They still had white ribbons woven around them.
We mourned. And yet we did not mourn together. We were in two camps: Sarcos and Thylas.