Whoosh — SMACK!
It was over.
In a move that took a whole second after it had happened for Jack to work it out, Esme simply flipped through the air over Charlie, lashing out as she landed with a vicious high kick with her right leg. Charlie turned to follow her — just in time to receive the sole of her foot squarely in the middle of his face. His legs went out from under him and the back of his head struck the floor. He actually slid for a clear six yards before coming to a stop.
Esme jogged a couple of steps lightly on the spot, her hands dangling loosely at her sides again.
Suddenly, Jack remembered to breathe. His eyes were out on stalks.
Charlie reached a hand to his face and groaned.
"You okay there, son?" called Raymond, not sounding too bothered either way.
"My dose hurds," was the muffled reply from the floor.
"You poor dear," said Raymond. "Sit up, let's 'ave a look at you."
Charlie sat up, gingerly feeling his face, a stunned look in his eyes. His nose was a weird putty-gray color, almost as flat as Raymond's, and the blood was running from it freely. Jack was almost about to go and help him, but before he'd even completed the thought, he felt a massive and steely grip on his arm. Raymond had grabbed him without even looking.
"Take your hand away," said Raymond to Charlie.
Charlie looked at him.
"Take your hand off your nose," Raymond repeated, none too patiently, "and close your eyes."
Frowning uncertainly, Charlie did as he was told.
"Now... concentrate."
There was absolute silence in the room now. Wondering what was supposed to happen next, Jack looked at Raymond. The big man still had Jack's arm in a viselike grip, but all his attention was focused on Charlie.
"Stop the pain," said Raymond, almost whispering. "And make it better."
Frowning, Jack looked over at Charlie, and his eyes went wide again.
No way!
Charlie's nose appeared to be straightening itself. The tip came out slowly at first, almost as if Charlie were pushing it out with his tongue, but the shape of it was re-forming and the color was going back to normal. In another moment Charlie opened his eyes, crossing them as he stared at his good-as-new-nose. Then he wiped off the last of the blood in a long streak along his arm — and he smiled.
"No way," said Jack, aloud this time.
"Haaaaaaaaaaaah," said Charlie.
"Get up," said Raymond.
Charlie did, still smiling.
Without looking at Jack, Raymond let go of his arm.
"Right," he said quietly. "Now, before Esme beat you again, what did I say?"
Charlie's smile faded. "You... said I should concentrate."
"After that," said Raymond.
"That I was wasting your time?"
"After that too."
Charlie frowned back at him, trying to figure out whether this was a trick question. "After?" he said.
"That's right," said Raymond. "After I told you to concentrate, before Esme beat you, what did I say?"
There was a long and heavy silence.
It was Jack who took a deep breath, then said, "'Fight'?"
Raymond turned on him with blazing eyes.
"Sorry," said Jack.
Raymond turned back to Charlie, who was trying for an 'isn't he ridiculous?' type of smile, in the hope of breaking the ice with him.
"Stop bloody grinning!" barked Raymond.
The grin vanished.
"Your friend here," said Raymond quietly again, "would appear to have been listening more carefully than you were." He turned to Jack and acknowledged him with a polite nod. Jack just stared at him.
"Fight," Raymond went on, turning to face Charlie again.
"That's what I said. Now, which part of that didn't you understand?"
"What?" asked Charlie.
"God save us," said Raymond, looking up at the roof. "'Fight,'" he repeated, staring hard at Charlie. "'Come to blows,'" he added. "'Exchange a dose of fisticuffs.' 'Engage in single combat,' for crying out loud."
"I don't understand," said Charlie.
"No," said Raymond. "You don't." He sighed. "Do it again," he said. "Face each other. Get ready."
Frowning, Charlie did as he was told. Esme stepped back to make way for him: she rolled her shoulders a little — Jack heard a soft pop from the muscles in her neck — then she dropped back into her crouch, waiting.
"Now," said Raymond. "We'll start again. Only for heaven's sake, I want you to lay one on her this time."
Charlie stared at him blankly.
"Hit her!" said Raymond exasperatedly. "If you can," he added, when Esme raised her eyebrows at him. "Ready?"
Jack blinked a couple of times to clear his eyes and leaned forward to watch. Charlie was scowling.
"Right. Fight."
Charlie pulled back his right arm and let fly.
No chance. Warding Charlie's fist off easily with her left hand, Esme stepped toward him, into the blow. Her whole body weight, therefore, plus whatever forward momentum Charlie had put into his punch, was concentrated in the heel of her right hand as it struck the point of Charlie's chin, palm open, hard.
The force of the blow lifted Charlie off his feet. He sailed a clear ten yards back through the air and hit the wall again, with a solid, sickening crack.
"Tchuhh," he said, or something like it, as he came to rest on the floor.
There was a pause.
"God's teeth," said Raymond. "What d'you call that?"
"But..." began Charlie, simultaneously holding his chin with one hand and rubbing the back of his skull with the other. "I... can't," he said, his voice coming out in a kind of whine.
"No," said Raymond, "if that's the best you can do, then maybe you're right. My gran could punch better than that — mind you," he broke off, turning to Jack with a wink, "she was a terror, that one."
Jack just stared at him.
"Come on, man: on your feet. I can see we're gonna have our work cut out with you. Have you no backbone at all?" he added, when Charlie didn't move straightaway.
Charlie picked himself up once more. His face was turning red. "Just how the hell," he began, his voice going high and strangely quavery, "am I supposed to—?"
"I told you," said Raymond. "Concentrate."
Charlie stared at him, speechless.
"Now, again," said Raymond. "Face each other."
This time, however, Charlie didn't move.
Raymond grinned. "Face each other," he repeated.
Still Charlie didn't move. All the color seemed to have drained out of his face. His mouth had hardened into a thin, bloodless line. He blinked once, but still kept staring at Raymond.
Uh-oh, thought Jack.
"Ready?" said Raymond, with elaborate sarcasm.
Esme looked at Raymond. Raymond's grin just widened. She shrugged and turned back to face her opponent, dropping into her crouch again.
Jack watched, holding his breath.
"Fight," said Raymond.
Esme leaped, sweeping her right leg up for a kick—
—but then something strange happened.
About two centimeters from the side of Charlie's head, her foot simply stopped in midair. For a moment Esme just hung there, off the ground, frozen except for the frown of incomprehension beginning to dawn across her face. Then, quietly — distantly at first, but quickly getting louder — a rumbling sound began to echo around the room.
Charlie had turned to face her. His arms were coming up either side of him, and as he raised his hands toward the hovering girl his face twisted slowly into a mask of sudden and absolute fury.
Esme sank to her feet. Her hands too were coming up as if to protect herself. Her eyes were wide. Her legs were bending as if she were pushing against some terrible weight. The air in front of her seemed to be shivering — rippling.
And now, slowly, Esme's feet were beginning to slide back across the floor.
&n
bsp; Jack stared.
Charlie leaned forward, eyes bright with rage, his fingers clawed and stiffening. The weird shivering in the air around Esme's outstretched hands was spreading, turning a heavy bruise-black, stretching and folding back around her. The rumbling got louder: the beginnings of a grimace of pain appeared on Esme's lips, then—
"STOP!" roared Raymond.
Charlie turned, arms still outstretched—
Released, Esme dropped to the ground with a thump—
Something hot and electrical rushed past Jack, almost knocking him down. Then—
Silence.
Charlie's arms dropped to his sides. He was breathing hard.
"W—" said Raymond, then cleared his throat. The big man looked pale and shaken. "Well," he sid. "That's certainly... more like it. You okay, Esme?"
She nodded. Lying where she'd fallen, propped up on her elbows, Esme stared up at Charlie for another moment before flippng smoothly to her feet.
"You're... obviously a lot stronger than I thought," Raymond told Charlie. "I can understand what Nick saw in you."
Esme's face fell.
"Your control could use a lot of work, though," Raymond announced. "And Esme'll need to put you through your paces till you learn some technique. Kicking and punching," he added. "Yeah, 'specially punching." He smirked. "You punch like a girl."
At this, Esme managed a thin smile.
Jack looked from her to Raymond and finally to his best mate, who apparently really was some kind of superhero. He noticed a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach, and it took him a moment to work out what it was.
Jack was scared, he realized: scared of what was happening and scared of where it all might go.
Charlie just grinned to himself.
"So," he said. "Tell me about this demon."
KNOWLEDGE AND POWER
"The Scourge isn't an easy thing to describe," said Raymond.
They'd set up the conference table again, and he, Esme, Charlie, and Jack were sitting around one end of it. The afternoon sunlight was streaming in through the butterfly room's big round window, making the dust motes sparkle in the air.
"Try," said Charlie.
"It's not... physical, like you or me," said Raymond, giving Charlie a look. "The Scourge doesn't have a fixed size or weight of shape. It's intangible: a thing of chaos and magic. That's one of the reasons it's so dangerous."
The boys looked at him blankly.
"The laws of physics — gravity and so on?" Raymond shook his head. "They don't apply to the Scourge. I've seen it be in two places at once, and it can travel big distances apparently instantly. It never gets old. It never gets tired, and we don't think it can be killed."
The boys' mouths started to open.
"However," Raymond went on, holding up a hand to forestall them, "it does have one important weakness. It's this."
He leaned forward, putting his beefy hands on the table.
"The Scourge seems to need a host body," he said. "Like a home base to come back to. A person," he emphasized. "Someone who'll let the demon live inside them and work its will through them."
He gave the boys a moment for what he was telling them to sink in.
"Do you mean it's... kind of like a parasite?" Jack asked.
"A little, I guess — yeah," said Raymond, nodding. "One thing, though: it seems like once it's got itself established in someone, the Scourge can also project itself out of them somehow. It can take a piece of itself and send it out into the world — like a ghost or a double or... a shadow. That part of it can go wherever the Scourge likes: it can speak and find out stuff; it has physical strength and it can fight. But for... certain things, the Scourge has to stay completely in its host. Or... that's what I think, at any rate."
"You think?" Charlie echoed, raising his eyebrows. "You mean you don't know for sure? Why not?"
"Because until fourteen years ago," Raymond replied bleakly, "the Scourge had never escaped before."
Jack frowned. "But... what about the Brotherhood?" he asked.
"Yeah! Didn't they know anything?" asked Charlie.
Raymond sighed.
"Look," he said, "there are two things you need to know about the Brotherhood. The first is that it's very old. The earliest account we have is from Anglo-Saxon times, around fifteen hundred years ago, but the secret was passed down by word of mouth before then, and there's no way of knowing for how long. Nick always believed the Brotherhood began much earlier: centuries, even millennia earlier. And as to how it began — and who it was who first imprisoned the Scourge? Well... He shook his head. "Nobody knows."
The boys gave him a skeptical look.
"The other thing about the Brotherhood," Raymond went on, regardless, "is that it's secret — perhaps the most closely guarded secret in the world. There are other groups that have powers. There are other groups that use magic or have dealings with what you might call 'the supernatural' — but there's nothing else out there like the Brotherhood. And no one outside this room — apart from two others who I'll come to in a moment — has the faintest idea we exist."
"Why?" asked Jack.
"Yeah," said Charlie. "If the Scourge is so dangerous, why don't more people know about it?"
"Think about it," Raymond replied. "The Brotherhood was founded with a single purpose: to keep the Scourge imprisoned. Everything we do or have done, for thousands of years, comes — or came, I guess I have to say now — down to that. The order's members, right down to Nick's father, Jeremy, believed that the more people who knew about the Scourge, the more likely it would be that someone would make a mistake — that the Scourge would be released and that the Brotherhood would fail in its purpose. And... well, when you think of all that's happened, who knows?" Raymond's face turned sad. "Maybe they were right."
"How did you get involved in all this?" Jack asked.
Raymond looked at him. "Nick chose me." He smiled wryly. "Against his dad's wishes, I might add. Nick chose us all: picked us out for our different skills. There was me, two sisters, Belinda and Jessica — and another feller called Felix. Four disciples, one master."
"Five's not really much of a brotherhood," Charlie commented.
"Believe me," Raymond replied, "even five was a lot more than there had been. By the time Nick's dad got round to telling him about the Scourge, there was no one else left who knew the secret but him. When Nick announced he was going to find some new recruits, they had a row so big that they even stopped speaking to each other — right up until Jeremy's death. But Nick did his best to make the Brotherhood strong again: if it wasn't for Nick, none of us would be here." He paused.
For a second — that was all, before Raymond's self-discipline took over — Jack had a glimpse of just how much the big man wished his old leader were there with them now. Frankly, this didn't make Jack feel any better about things.
"Now, our job, as I say," Raymond went on, "was to keep the Scourge from escaping."
"Escaping from what?" asked Charlie instantly.
"A tree."
"A tree?" said Charlie, looking from Raymond to Esme incredulously. "A tree? "
"The Scourge was imprisoned in the roots of a tree," said Esme.
"That's right," said Raymond. "A big oak, it was, in..." He hesitated, looking suddenly secretive. "Well, you don't need to know where now."
"But this tree," said Charlie, obviously having difficulty with the concept (and Jack couldn't blame him: he was too). "Was there something special about it? I mean, how did you actually know it had a demon inside it?"
Raymond ran a hand over his shiny bald scalp and frowned, remembering.
"Again," he said, "it's... hard to explain. You could sort of... feel it."
He stopped and thought some more.
"When you were out looking after the tree," he said, "pruning or what have you, you'd sometimes catch yourself... thinking things. Unless you were awake to it, you might not even've noticed you were doing it, but you'd find yourself getting.
.. ideas."
"What ideas?"
"One time," said Raymond, "and I'm not proud of this — I caught myself thinking about the rest of the group. I started thinking about magic, about how rubbish I was at it compared to Belinda and Jessica and Nick — and I found myself wondering if the others thought..." — he frowned — "less of me for it."
He looked up at the boys.
"That's what it does, the Scourge," he said. "It manipulates you. It looks all through you for weaknesses — all your little hurts and resentments — and it exploits them. I think that's what happened to Felix," he added. "I think that's how the Scourge escaped."
"Nope," said Charlie, making an 'over my head' gesture, "You've lost me."
"How?" asked Jack. "How did it escape?"
Raymond sat back on his chair and looked into the past.
"Felix was jealous, that was his problem," he said. "He always took things personally. He saw coming second-best as a slur on his spirit — second in magic, in combat, in anything. And when Belinda and I fell in love," he added and paused. "Well, I think that's what pushed him over the edge."
"What happened?" asked Jack.
"Felix went to the tree and let the Scourge possess him," said Raymond. "There was a fight: the rest of us managed to force the demon out of him, and Nick recaptured it in his staff. But Belinda, my wife, was..." He trailed off. "Well, she died. Esme was only a baby at the time."
Quietly, without fuss, Esme touched Raymond's hand with one of hers. Jack was looking at them, but Esme noticed, so he stared down at his lap.
"Ever since then, we've trained," said Esme, taking up the story. "Every day since then I've worked and waited, perfecting my skills in case the Scourge ever escaped again. And now," she added, and her amber eyes glittered, "now, my chance has come."
Jack looked at Esme — at the way she held herself, the set of her mouth and the cold hard glow of her strange amber eyes. At that moment, the gulf between him and her seemed so wide as to be uncrossable. What must it be like for her, living like this? Really, he knew, he could have no idea. To dedicate your whole life to one purpose, to spend every single day training and preparing... Sometimes, in the past, Jack had imagined himself doing something similar. Sometimes he'd even liked the idea. Just then, however, he knew that imagining was going to be as close as he was ever going to get. And to be honest, he wasn't very sorry about it.