Vengeance

by Douglas Hill

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

After a violent confrontation with Fray and Kannis, two of the Cartel's more senior mages, Nick and Julia, lie wounded, assumed dead, while Paddy, April and Sam have been captured by demon forces. But Nick and Julia aren't dead. With the help of the learned Alderon and the creepy Bertrand Nowell they race against time to find their friends before the Cartel destroy their minds and keep them enslaved, doing their evil bidding, forever. Armed only with his trusty knife and his incredible quick-wittedness, this is Nick's toughest challenge yet - to enter the heart of the Cartel's domain and destroy it or . . . die trying . . .

Release date: August 28, 2014

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 320

Sample

It wasn’t much of a track. Probably because no one had been brave enough to walk along it for a good while. Often it faded away almost to nothing, lost in the moor’s coarse grass. And the heavy clouds and thin drizzle didn’t make it any easier to see, especially with the afternoon light starting to fade.

I felt uneasy, but then uneasiness – with worry and alarm and fear and the rest of that gang – had been with me for a long time. Especially over the last two weeks or so. I’d pretty much learned to live with them.

Besides, my companion was striding on ahead, swinging her sturdy hiker’s staff, as if the track was a paved road and as if she had never heard the word ‘tired’. So I tramped steadily along behind her.

We didn’t talk as we walked, which had become normal. We each tended to be lost in our own dark thoughts, as well as keeping a watchful lookout around us. But then Julia and I had never had much to say to each other.

She was the partner of a man who’d been a real friend of mine – a good man – and someone who was now lost … perhaps dead. Along with two others, also close friends – the only ones I’d ever had. So Julia and I had been thrown together, two sad survivors. I hadn’t known her well before – and now it felt as if I’d never known her at all.

She looked the same, still thin, pale, faded-blonde Julia. But all her nervous, edgy timidity had simply vanished, as if she had thrown it off like an old coat.

The new Julia had a steely glint in her blue eyes and a determined set to her chin.

This Julia was fearless, and tough.

So clearly there’d always been more to her and, to my shame, I hadn’t noticed.

Hadn’t bothered to look.

But I was paying close attention to the new Julia. Without her I would have been lost and desolate, ready to do something totally insane and get myself killed. With her I had a purpose, a reason to stay alive as long as I could.

She had brought us from the city to that bleak wet moor, where she was looking for someone: a powerful person who might tell us how to find someone even more powerful, who might in turn help us locate the place that was our real goal – a place of unimaginable dangers.

And if all that wasn’t enough, Julia and I both knew, as we walked on, that somewhere nearby something terrifying was looking for us.

That morning, when the sun was still pushing late-spring warmth through the massing clouds, we’d been in a small, cosy village talking to a small, cosy woman.

She was in charge of the post office, and Julia had gone to her to ask directions to an even smaller village.

‘But we’re not driving,’ Julia had explained. ‘We came here by coach.’

‘Ooh,’ the small woman said. ‘On holiday, are you? You and your son?’

I’d been taken for Julia’s son before, since we set out together, despite her lank blonde hair and my thick black hair. At other times, because I have the sort of lean, chiselled face that can look older than it is, people who weren’t looking too closely had thought I was her boyfriend.

In fact, Julia was somewhere in her mid-thirties and I was only fourteen.

But then … I’d been fourteen for years.

‘Yeah, that’s right …’ Julia said vaguely, ‘… a holiday.’

The small woman frowned, not sure what to make of us. We were both in worn shirts and jeans, with scruffy backpacks, travelling by coach … Not normal tourists.

‘There’s no bus to where you want to go,’ she said at last. ‘And it’s a terrible long way round by road. Miles and miles.’

‘Isn’t there a shorter way over the moor?’ Julia asked. ‘Some kind of path?’

I twitched. Not long before, my four friends and I, including Julia, had spent some time on an otherworldly ‘Path’ – a path of untold horrors. And I didn’t care for the word now.

The small woman shook her head. ‘It’s not a good path. And you don’t want to be on the moor if the weather closes in.’

‘Can you tell us where the path is?’ Julia asked, ignoring the woman’s concerns.

The small woman looked distinctly worried. ‘I don’t know, dear. No one ever walks that way now. There’s … um … it can be dangerous …’

‘Dangerous how?’ Julia asked.

‘It’s hard to say.’ The woman twisted her hands. ‘Strange things …’

‘Like what?’ Julia said in a no-nonsense tone.

Hearing the edge in her voice, the small woman clearly decided not to argue any further – if we wanted to face bad weather and ‘strange things’ on the moor, it was our business. She wasn’t going to make herself look even more silly and superstitious by trying to stop us. So from her doorway she pointed us to the gate that would take us on to the footpath, winding across a field and out into the small sea of grass and scrub brush.

We’d been walking for only ten minutes when the first spits of drizzle began.

We’d been walking for only half an hour when we heard the howling.

Julia didn’t stop, just took a firmer grip on her staff and looked carefully at the empty moorland all around us. And I looked as well – while reaching for the knife sheathed at my hip. The always-sharp, unbreakable knife that only magical people could see.

The blade glowed bright silver, but I’d expected that. It turns golden when evil magic is nearby, but the howling had sounded fairly far away.

‘Strange things …’ I muttered. ‘A farmer’s dog? Or something hunting?’

‘We haven’t been hunted so far,’ Julia said. ‘It might be a sort of warning.’ She went on, without further explanation, so I shrugged and followed. There was no point wasting energy worrying. Whatever had done the howling would probably show itself soon enough.

But as time passed and the drizzle faded and we kept walking along the barely visible path, we heard no more howls and saw nothing but wet grass and bushes.

Until at last, in that dim late afternoon, the path – getting more and more hard to see – wound along the foot of a slight incline with a dense cluster of thorny bushes and small twisted trees at the top of the slope. And Julia stopped.

‘Up there,’ she murmured. ‘I’m sure that’s it.’

I stared up the slope. I saw no house there, not even a hut. Wondering if the someone that Julia was looking for was a wild man who lived in thickets, I glumly followed as she set off up the incline. At the same time I drew the knife again, glad to see that the blade was still silvery.

But for no real reason – perhaps a nudge of instinct or intuition – I kept it ready in my hand, just in case.

And just as well.

We were only a few strides from the edge of the thicket when the greenery just ahead of us rustled violently.

And from it burst two dark beasts like huge growling dogs, but with the thick fur, slanted green eyes and glittering fangs of giant wolves.

I drifted to my left, trying to draw both of them away from Julia. But they smoothly separated and leaped at us. I had a glimpse of Julia swinging her staff but then going down under the weight of the wolf. In the same instant I slashed at the one attacking me, making it swerve away.

Then I turned and dived at the one snarling at Julia’s throat.

Somehow, flat on her back on the grass, she was using her stout stick to block its jaws. I drove the knife at its neck, but it twisted away so that the blade left only a shallow gash, and in that moment the second wolf landed on my back.

I gasped as its fangs sank into my shoulder, tearing at the flesh. But I managed to hang on to the knife, stabbing blindly behind me, hearing the yelp as the blade went home. At the same time Julia, still on the ground, crashed the staff into the face of the other wolf, producing a second yelp.

And then a man’s voice spoke a sharp word in a language I couldn’t understand but had often heard. And the wolves were pulled away as if by invisible elastic cords.

As the man’s dark shape loomed out of the thicket, and Julia got panting to her feet, leaning on her staff, I glanced at the knife again to confirm the amazing fact.

The blade was smeared and dripping with wolf-blood. But, beneath that redness, it glowed its normal silver.

The man seemed fairly young, in his twenties perhaps, wearing a black raincoat, dark trousers and shiny boots. He had a pale, strong-boned face, thick, dark shoulder-length hair and eyes the colour of the rain. And though he had called his wolves off, his glower didn’t look friendly.

I’d seen his eyes widen slightly at the sight of the knife, so I knew he was magical.

Then he proved it, moving a hand above each of his wolves, making the wounds I’d given them disappear.

‘What do you want here?’ he snapped. ‘This is private property.’

‘Put up a sign,’ I growled.

‘You must be very anxious to stay hidden,’ Julia said. ‘With such sentries.’

The man’s glower darkened even more. ‘They wouldn’t have attacked if you had fled, as most intruders do. Most Powerless ones anyway, as I know you two are …’

He stopped, his eyes widening again, as he noticed that the gory damage to my shoulder was quietly repairing itself, as always.

Julia gave him a thin smile. ‘I believe you’re Ethan Wells, and we need to talk to you. My name’s Julia McBride, and I live with someone you know, Paddy Gorman. And this –’ she indicated me – ‘is Nick Walker.’

The man, Ethan, nodded jerkily. ‘Even here I’ve heard of the Changeless Boy. And of course I know Paddy. I suppose he must have told you about my place. But I still want to know what you’re doing here.’

‘We’re here,’ Julia said, ‘to ask you to help us find your old teacher, Paddy’s uncle Alderon–’

‘No chance,’ Ethan broke in harshly.

‘Because,’ Julia went on, her voice steely, ‘Paddy has been taken, along with two others who are also close to us. And Alderon is the only mage I know of who might be able to help us, and help them.’

Ethan stared at her for a moment, his pale eyes glinting. ‘Come in then, and tell me about it. But I promise nothing.’ He turned to the wolves, who had never taken their eyes off us. ‘Watch with care. If anything comes that is not human, kill it.’

It wouldn’t have been fun pushing through the thicket’s wet thorn-bushes, but the branches all helpfully swayed aside as we followed Ethan through them. In the heart of the thicket we came to the thick trunk of a big, old, half-dead tree – and I jumped when it suddenly turned into a tall, narrow door. Just a door, standing there with nothing but brush on either side.

But when it opened, it showed us a flight of polished steps, leading down. And when we went down, we found ourselves in a small, elegant underground house.

Nice hideaway, I thought. Magically secret, guarded by giant wolves, with Ethan’s powers – fairly high-level, I thought – doing the housework and providing all the comforts. He even had a huge plasma TV.

But a hideaway meant that he was hiding from something. And I could guess what that might be. I also guessed that he was there on his own. He had that look – of someone who’d learned that loneliness is one of the prices you pay for safety. Along with non-stop, nerve-twisting watchfulness.

I’d learned that too, years before.

We settled in a cosy lounge with a warm fire burning without fuel. Ethan did us the favour of drying us off, magically, and mending my torn shirt. And I had a small lump in my throat, thinking of how often someone else had repaired me that way.

‘Now tell me what’s happened,’ he said at last, as we sipped cups of hot tea that had appeared from nowhere, ‘and why you’re seeking Alderon.’

Julia took a deep breath and began. But of course she started with the terrible, evil, violent happenings back in the late autumn and early winter.

For me, though, the story had its real beginnings years before – not long after I had actually turned fourteen.

At the time I’d been a street kid for a few years, alone and homeless ever since my mum finally drank herself to death. One night, looking for a place to sleep, I met a strange woman named Manta, all huge green eyes and red-gold hair. And I learned, the hard w. . .