Page 60 of Sullied Saints

We can all see where this is going. I take a step back, but the exit is barred. Men and their toys close in behind us.

"I didn't know what he meant to you," Tristan assures her, his voice soft, like someone talking another down from an edge.

She shakes her head, and keeps shaking. Oily locks of her hair whip from side to side. "I love you, you’re Tris! But I loved him… We were always equals, weren’t we? Let me make it equal again." Then her face stops contorting, calming. "So, choose."

My heart leaps into my throat at her words. It’s all I can do to stay where I am as the sharp wave of terror washes over me. Me and Dirk. That’s what she’s asking. Which ofus.

Tristan just stares back at her. Cassandra’s men are closing in. Dirk has stepped behind Needler, reaching and pulling me to his side.

Cassandra smiles. Somewhere below, another fire flares, and this time, stays. I can smell the gas, rich and toxic. The shouts are a backdrop now, as constant as the rubble under screeching tyres, as the growing hum of voices. I don’t know how many are out there, if they’ve surrounding the building. There could be hundreds, staking out Crennick, determined to take matters into their own hands where we’ve failed them.

"Youknowwhat I mean, Tris."

"I won’t.” Tristan’s voice chokes. For all that he knows, even he didn’t think she’d be so far gone. He didn’t believe it would go this way, else he’d not have brought us. He still thinks she’s capable of being saved. “This isn't a game anymore."

"No! It’s very serious. Like I am. So, choose! Which of them stays, and which goes."

Tristan only shakes his head.

Cassandra looks at Dirk again. "I thought it was so… romantic last time when you offered your life for hers. Will you do it again?" She asks the last like a child asks for candy, excited and hopeful.

Sirens blare somewhere nearby, then die,. There’s no point in our backup hiding anymore. Tregam has found us. A shot is fired close by enough to make me and Dirk jump, only serving to increase the tension. A warning shot by one of Cassandra’s people down at the school entrance? Or something more direct?

"Cass, you’ve got me.” Tristan stumbles over his words. “You’ve got everything you wanted…"

"I'll choose then!" Her eyes freeze my heart when her gaze locks straight on me. "Her."

The hands are on me in an instant, rough, pulling me back. I cry out in shock as fingers dig into my flesh. Dirk shouts, lunging. Someone punches him in the stomach when he won't let go of the tether of my hand.

It all happens so fast, the struggle brief, then we’re being dragged separately towards Cassandra’s side of the room. Dirk off towards the left, spitting out curses and threats. And me, silent, gasping, to the right, to her.

I see what I’m being taken to then. There are binds; leather clasps dangling from a metal frame set up to be shaped like a cross. The edges of my vision blur, then sharpen. Dirk’s voice is a roar in my ears.

I see myself there, the next hour or more of hell now behind me and myself a drowned, dead husk like so many bodies I’ve looked upon. I see my own sightless gaze in the pictures taken by forensics, glossy and empty.

Dragged within a bare foot of the floor’s edge, I suddenly have a view out over Tregam, the first since stepping into the school.

Crennick stretches, grey and hulking, butting up against the distant towers of Downtown. Darkness is closing in, a tainted purple veil. But Crennick isn’t dark.

It’s lit up.

Even the big man handling me, directing me by my arms awkwardly cranked behind my back, falters in surprise. And the sound. Not the crunching of tyres, the hum of voices, but the crackling, roaring of flame.

Crennick is burning.

The glow was never lights or sunset. The smell of gas never a burst and then gone. It wasfire. As near as the opposite edge of the school’s street, a building, rotted and wooden, is alight. Smoke billows from further back, acrid black and pure white lifting together towards the dark sky.

How quickly it all goes up.

Lower, on the streets, I can barely comprehend the amount of people. Where did they all come from? They’re disordered but they’re here. They crowd the roads and smash what’s left of the glass in nearby windows. I see someone toss a bottle through, followed shortly by a burst of fire from within. There are no banners, no placards, no demands. Tregam isn’t here toaskfor what it wants tonight.

Across the street, on buildings that aren’t yet alight, people are climbing. Soon they’ll have a vantage upwards into this room. Will that save us? Or will it merely mean more die when Cassandra’s men start shooting?

"Stop!"

The word, sharp and sudden, constricts my chest, seeming to bring the world back to this room, this moment. Dirk has been gagged. I glance him past Cassandra, his shirt pulled askew, one man holding his arms while the other grips his head to stop him from whipping the gag clear of his mouth.

White specks of light flash. Cameras, from the other side of the street. I feel disconnected from them, like a fish inside a tank, with children tapping on the glass. Meanwhile I'm in here with sharks.

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