Page 132 of The Shadows Beyond
His mum will be so mad if she sees them like this. She only washed them the other day.
So he’ll just scoop some water into his hand and wipe them. That’ll do the trick.
Fluffy ducks quack cheerfully at him as he does so, the last thing he hears before the water rushes in, silencing the world above.
This is the part where he panics, right? This is the part where he splashes and screams and chokes and drowns. But not this time, for Cinn is sinking, sinking, sinking. Sinking far deeper than the river in the park would ever be.
Cinn doesn’t try to suck in air. He doesn’t need it as he lets himself sink down, watching the sun’s weak light get dimmer and dimmer until there’s only a murky blackness.
A punch to his chest, and Cinn is no longer in the dark. He’s back at Feltham Young Offenders, in the shower room, fully clothed but sopping wet from the water that’s jetting down on him. He stares down at his soaked shoes, wondering how on earth he’ll dry them, as another punch comes, to his stomach this time.
There’s three of them. He knows this without looking up. The usual three that hadn’t left him alone, that first month at Feltham, before he’d joined the Spiders and become cocooned in their web of protection.
He doubles over in side-splitting agony, falling into a defensive ball on the floor. Then the kicks begin, followed by the slurs. Ones about him being a sissy. One about his mother, and who she likes to fuck. One about what they’ll do to him, if he dares to report them to the warden.
This isn’t what happened!A tiny part of him cries. Because they’d only kicked him a few times before Tyler had burst in to save him, tipped off by a mate. He’s yet to make an appearance this time, and Cinn’s body continues to be battered by a torrent of unrelenting, vicious blows.
It stops.
He lifts his head slightly.
Stretches out his bruised arms to assess the damage.
Confusion strikes him, because now he’s staring at his hand and the tiny scar is missing from his thumb. The one he’d got week one at Feltham, from being under pressure to chop too quickly in the prison’s kitchen.
He uncurls himself fully, stands up, blinks twice—he’s now in the small garden of one of his many foster families. A blue bike lays sprawled on the ground, being claimed by weeds.
Then, he knows the day. It’s the day of his arrest. His first arrest.
Because he’s standing by the shed, the shed where they made him hide all the cash they’d nicked, and the gate is swinging open, two male police officers bursting through it.
They made me do it, he’ll say to them much later, in the interview room.They said they’d burn my house down.It won’t matter. Not with his previous minor offences. Not with the amount of cash in that shed.
The cash. He needs to get rid of it. Spinning, he darts into the shed and slams the door behind him. When he turns however, he’s not in thedamp, cramped space stuffed full of paint tins filled with forged bank notes. He’s in the office at Rosewood Parlour, standing by the safe.
Now there are two different police officers with him. Two different officers, and the two men Richter had sent to accompany him, and him, heart pounding, knowing he’s about to shadowslip. He reaches for the headphones around his neck that aren’t there, then digs his fingernails into his hands.
It’ll be futile, of course. He’ll slip, then bring back the man with the scarred face, the one that’ll slaughter all of them.
Blood on his hands.
Mud on his trousers.
Mud on his trousers, that he needs to clean.
thirty-five
Julien
“Alright, let’s get this show on the road.” Julien turned to Darcy. “Luminaquartz birch bark?”
“Check. I ground it at home,” said Darcy, holding up a bag of powder. “Ink?”
“Check.” Elliot wiggled the dark bottle.
“Last minute change of heart?” Darcy asked hopefully, and Julien shook his head.
Outside of the hospital room window, a full moon peered curiously down at the array of items now scattered across Cinn’s hospital bed. It was past eleven and Julien’s favourite nurse had just finished her final round of the evening, bringing apple juice for all three of them.
