Page 102 of Only a Monster

Nick had talked about his family; he’d said that they’d all lived crowded together in a tiny flat. He’d never liked talking about himself, but he’d talked to Joan.

And now Nick had his knife to the man’s throat. ‘Why?’ His voice sounded raw. He was sobbing.

‘Because I’m a monster,’ the man said. ‘They weren’t the first and they won’t be the last.’

To Joan’s shock, Nick shoved the knife into the monster’s neck. As he fell, Nick’s knees seemed to give way too. He made an agonised sound in the back of his throat that Joan would never forget as long as she lived.

‘No,’ the woman’s voice said. ‘Again.’

1922

The kitchen was gone. Nick was standing on a street corner. He was far younger than he’d been in the other scenes. It was dusk, and the road was shiny with new rain. Cars flashed by, their lights briefly blinding.

When the monster walked past, Joan almost didn’t recognise him. He was in modern clothes this time: an ugly Christmas jumper and a blue anorak.

Nick was fast: a striking snake. One moment the monster was walking by, the next he was kneeling, arms twisted up behind his back.

‘Do you remember me?’ Nick said. This time, his voice didn’t shake. He was so young. Joan’s heart wrenched for him.

The man’s laugh was brief. Nick snapped his neck. When Nick turned, his eyes were bright with triumph.

A woman stepped into the frame. She was blonde and swannecked, with the kind of face Joan had only ever seen on marble statues. Her imperious posture seemed out of place on that dreary London street. She belonged, Joan thought, on a throne.

The woman spoke. The approval in her voice was at odds with her cruel, cold face. ‘You’re ready,’ she said to Nick. ‘You’re perfect.’

Joan’s palms hurt. She was digging her nails into them. She’d drawn blood, she saw distantly. All the hero stories started the same way: Once upon a time, there was a boy who was born to kill monsters. But it hadn’t been Nick’s destiny at all. He hadn’t been born to it. Someone had done this to him. Someone had made him into the hero.

‘She was the woman you saw in the hospital, wasn’t she?’ she said to Ruth.

‘Yes,’ Ruth whispered.

‘Who is she?’ Joan said.

‘I don’t know,’ Ruth said. Joan looked at Tom and Aaron. Tom shook his head slightly. Aaron seemed dazed.

‘What we just saw . . .’ Aaron said. ‘That shouldn’t have been possible. You can’t be in the same time twice. It’s a fundamental law of time travel. You shouldn’t be able to change the timeline like that. But they killed his family over and over—’

‘And over and over and over,’ Ruth murmured.

‘It isn’t possible,’ Aaron said. ‘How could it have been recorded? What family power can do that?’

Nick had been tortured and then rebooted so they could do it all to him again, over and over and over. . . . He’d been remade. How many times had they killed his family? How many times before they’d broken him? That last number had been 1922. Joan couldn’t stop shaking. She rounded on Tom. ‘Did you know about this?’ she demanded furiously. Because if he had . . .

‘No!’ Tom said. ‘I had no idea that the hero was—was constructed.’

‘You said this message was left for you! Left for you by—’ Something that had been nagging at Joan surfaced. ‘Jamie Liu . . .’ She paused.

Aaron appeared beside her, footsteps silent on the carpet. Joan could see the wheels turning in his head just like they were turning in hers.

‘Ying Liu has a son named Jamie,’ Joan said slowly. ‘We saw his paintings in the Liu gallery. They were all of the hero.’

Tom’s jaw worked. He couldn’t seem to stand still. He shifted his weight, fists clenching and unclenching. ‘Jamie always loved the stories of the hero,’ he said. ‘He was the foremost scholar of the myths.’

‘Was?’

‘He found out something he shouldn’t have,’ Tom said. ‘Something about the hero. Something he wasn’t supposed to know. And the Court just . . .’ Tom swallowed. ‘Took him. They just took him. It was a long time before we were even able to discover that he was still alive—that he was being kept by the Court. That they were using him to keep their stupid records.’

The Lius had perfect memory, Joan remembered. She should have realised that the archive was a Liu.

---