A loud, earth-shaking crash makes me jerk upright, debris tumbling off, Australia fading from view. Apart from the ringing in my ears and the nauseating throbbing of my temple, I am physically unhurt.
The same cannot be said for the cottage.
Great chunks of the living room wall are missing. Through the gaps, the Russian house burns against the night, roaring. The top floor is gone. No way anyone survived that explosion. And, if they did, the fire is growing more ferocious by the second. Great tongues of flame burst from every window. I feel sick.
Kyle.
I look away, look around the cottage. The shattering of the wall shunted the heavy leather couch into the centre of the living room, missing me and the unconscious fourth man by a matter of inches. The first man was not so lucky. His black boot sticks out from under a pile of chimney bricks from the Russian house that fell through the cottage roof. I feel sicker.
The fire is beginning to spread through the cottage, driven by the sparks and flaming debris blowing inside. Lily’s drawings, scattered everywhere, catch and flare. A pot plant burns merrily like a hellish Christmas tree.
Get out of here, Lys. Get up and get out.
I push myself to my feet and promptly trip over the fourth man and stagger around the couch, which now, too, is on fire, leather blackening and splitting open and spewing white foam that singes and melts. I catch myself on the chimney bricks. My foot nudges the first man’s reddening, unmoving leg. My stomach roils. I push off the bricks, stumble through the yellow haze and the piles of burning wood and plaster. I step over the prone knifeman lying at the end of the hall rug. A piece of brick lies next to his bleeding head.
Lily, Lily, where is Lily? There is no sign of her or her captor.
In Lily’s room, the bed has skittered away from the wall, the wardrobe has fallen over, and the vase of lavender is shattered on the ground. No Lily. No Dinah either. I move on, dragging one hand along the wall. The Charles Méryons lie in pieces on the ground. Picture glass crunches under my feet. Soon the fire will come for them.
The wall ends at Claire’s bedroom. I cling to the doorframe and swing into her room. She lies in bed, sheets crumpled, eyes wide, and a black stain spreading from the neat cut in her throat across her pillow and down her nightdress.
I take a moment to throw up in the hallway.
Then, across the hall into my bedroom. It is illuminated in hellish red by the fire ravaging the Japanese garden. My window is open. Smoke billows in.
Everything burns.
Shade . . . why?
A hand wraps around my upper arm. I yelp and break free. But it’s just Kyle. Thank God. He’s a shirtless, soot-stained mess in linen pyjama pants. Blood runs from a gash on his forearm. “What happened? Who are those men?” he shouts above the roaring.
I stare at him, unable to speak in my relief. He grabs me by the shoulders and shakes and it snaps me out of it.
“I don’t know!” I cry. “They killed Claire and took Lily. One of them used a detonator before I could stop him.” The world starts spinning, tilting on itself, and it’s hard to tell if the crackling of flames is inside or outside my head. I cough and spit out a gob of black on the apricot floor. Kyle places a hand on my shoulder.
“Are your parents all right?” I ask.
His lips thin. His chest heaves, the hollows of his collarbones deepening, his blank face painted in flickering crimson.
“Their bedroom was on the top floor. There’s nothing we can do. Come on, we need to get to the bunker.”
He checks Claire’s room. I can’t look again. Then we have to sprint – the haze is thickening into smoke, the air sweltering, choking. Flames have spread to the edge of the hall rug and are creeping up the knifeman’s sleeve. We run to the living room, through the steady rain of sparks coming through the hole in the cottage wall, dodging around the roasting couch, and barrel out the front door.
Out here the Russian house roars louder. The stream flowing from the Japanese garden is coated in ash and burning debris. I try to pause to take a breath of fresher air but Kyle grabs me by the hand and pulls me into the villa where curls of brown and grey smoke hang in rafters of the vaulted ceiling. They amass and fall in slow motion, dragged towards the earth by their own weight. Hellish red light glows around the edges of the library door. Something inside the room cracks and crashes to the ground.
Kyle lets go of me at the staircase to the bunker. Down, down, down all four flights, and he slaps his hand on the pad and it blinks green and we’re in, shoving the door shut, inhaling clean air.
Everything is still. The vents have been turned off. It feels unreal. The single indicator of the catastrophe is the toppled basket of training swords. The quiet voices of the team echo through from the gear room.
Kyle suddenly doubles over and hacks up smoke-stained saliva onto the mats. He shudders, and I think he’s about to start sobbing, but he straightens and wipes his eyes with a filthy hand and coughs.
“We need to clean up,” he says.
“Okay,” I reply, and my surge of adrenaline dies.
.
Between one blink and the next, I’m suddenly in the centre of the gear room, facing the entrance to Kyle’s workshop. Kyle, Jason, Cleo, and Fudo are gone, along with their vehicles, their weapons, and armour. Damien alone stands next to the massive truck. My face has been scrubbed clean and I am wearing Kyle’s leather welding jacket over my woollen sweater, with an RP-3 strapped to my thigh and a spare magazine in the pocket of the cargo pants I wear over my leggings. They aren’t my cargo pants. I’m pretty sure they’re Kyle’s, too - a belt is all that keeps them around my waist and the cuffs have been rolled half a dozen times.
I’ve lost time. I swear under my breath.
“We need to be going. The fire’s getting worse,” says Damien. He is in his shirtsleeves and gold suspenders, golden pistols holstered against his ribcage. There’s not a hint of dirt or ash anywhere on him. He pats the truck ladder with one smooth hand, smile gleaming, and looks perfectly trustworthy.
Avoid entering unfamiliar vehicles, says my kidnapping instructor’s cheerful voice.
Call it instinct, or lingering terror from seeing Claire’s throat cut and Lily taken, but I want to listen to my instructor.
I look over my shoulder at the black hole leading to the rest of the world. A cold wind blows the distant bang and roar of the fire down to us. How long is the tunnel? Can I make it out before Damien catches up in the truck? Maybe, if I sprint. But then where would I go?
Dad. I need to get to Dad.
How? Surely there will be vehicles on the island that I could use, and a bridge to escape via, but I will need to stay out of sight until I can get to one . . .
Wait a minute, there’s a vehicle right here.
“So . . .” I say slowly, turning back to face Damien King.
And the pistol he’s aiming at my forehead.
Well. Nice to have my instincts proved right. “No courtroom banter then?”
He shrugs. “I’m not counsel. I don’t go to trial. Get in.”
Aaaaargh!
This is even better than it was the last time I read it!!