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Jack felt just the fringes of The Evil’s mental might focus on Kleo and Ari, and staggered back again. Kleo fell again and kicked her legs, turning in a circle, but her eyes stayed clear.
‘No!’ she gasped. ‘No! I am stronger . . . I will not fall . . .’
Ari remaining standing, but did not speak. His eyes too remained clear.
Rennie growled and grew larger again, as hundreds more bats flew down and were taken in. A carpet of insects enlarged her feet.
++You will all join us! Troubletwisters too!++ came the mental voice. ++It is time!++
Now the force of The Evil really came to bear. Jaide fell and doubled over, clutching her head. Jack groaned, feeling his every emotion and thought being squished out of his ears.
A small hand slipped into his.
‘I’m feeling better, Jack,’ said Tara. ‘I think the doughnuts did it. And shopping.’
He could barely remember her name, let alone think of anything he liked.
Ice cream? Hot dogs? Chocolate?
They were just words, as dry as ink on an ancient page.
Hector? Susan? Jaide?
They might as well have been names on gravestones in the Portland cemetery for all the emotion they aroused in him.
But there was part of him, his deep inner self, that refused to give in. It was the part that doubted, the part that had listened to The Evil and been tempted before, the part that understood exactly what it would mean to give in because it knew The Evil best of all.
Troubletwister, know thyself. Only then will you know your enemy.
‘Never,’ he said. That single word took all the energy he had, but getting it out mattered more than anything. ‘Never!’
++Ah!++ The Evil sounded more amused than surprised. ++You are not the weak one after all.++
‘Neither of us are weak!’
++You are wrong, troubletwister. One always falls. Thus it has always been, and thus it always will be.++
Jack forced his eyes open. His sister was lying on the ground, gasping like a fish. Her eyes were open, but they didn’t see him. Was that a faint swirl of white curling in them already?
He closed his eyes again, forcing The Evil from his mind. It was messing with him – he was sure of it. First it made him doubt himself, then, when that failed, it turned on the person who mattered most to him. If he let it, The Evil would eat at his confidence from the inside until he was hollow all the way through. And then it would take him over.
Jack would never let that happen, either to him or his sister.
He was still carrying the remains of his backpack. Reaching inside, he sought and found the jar of insect repellent Grandma X had given him. He brought it out, unscrewed the top, then drew back his right arm to throw.
‘You’ll never beat us!’ he cried, opening his eyes just enough to aim.
++Then you will die.++
Rennie raised one enormous hand to strike him down.
He threw the jar into the insect maelstrom that was her midriff and watched the moths scatter.
She staggered backwards, beating at the chemical fire in her belly. ++Foolish troubletwister! You have but delayed the inevitable!++
Before she could recover, six brilliantly coloured bolts of light stabbed through her, their passage leaving black spots on Jack’s eyes. Rennie staggered again, swatting at them.
++Confounded Wardens, pricking us from afar!++
The bolts of light struck again, blasting out hundreds of insect corpses, and burned rats and bats. The Giant Rennie reeled backwards, roaring and snarling.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Jaide. Her mind was a fog. She remembered The Evil declaring that it would take her and Jack first, followed by the rest of the world.
‘The Wardens are fighting back,’ said Jack.
‘Jack started it,’ said Tara proudly.
‘Uh, not really,’ he said.
‘Either way,’ said Jaide, ‘let’s work out how to finish it.’
It looked for a moment that the job was being done for them. Rennie’s giant body was slumping against the cave wall, disintegrating into its component parts, which scurried, flapped or ran away as fast as they could. What remained of Rennie herself was little more than a scrap of humanity, blinking around her in alarm and horror.
Her eyes were clear. Her pain was real.
‘What have I done?’ she cried.
But there wasn’t time to think about her, for at that moment the locomotive suddenly lurched into an upright position. With a grinding, scraping sound, it jerked backwards a few yards, stopped, then jerked backwards again. The clashing of pistons and hissing of steam rose to a crescendo.
++We will smash you! We will crush you!++
‘It’s in the train!’ exclaimed Jack.
The Warden’s multicoloured lightning played across the locomotive, but without effect.
‘It’s backing up for a run at us,’ said Jaide. She looked around wildly, but they were trapped against the pool of water within the cave.
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Tara anxiously.
‘I don’t know,’ said Jack. ‘But I can’t feel it any more in my head. I think it’s using all its power on the train.’
Ari and Kleo were getting up, though they moved in a daze. The eyes of the bats they could see flying around in a panic were normal. Only the train was possessed by The Evil.
‘We have to fix the ward!’
‘But it’s a different ward. We can’t just pick something at random and say, “Be the ward”! It has to be someone living.’
‘What about one of us – could we do it?’
‘I doubt it. You know how afraid they are to allow a troubletwister anywhere near a ward – imagine what it’d be like if we were one of them!’
‘Then who?’
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Tara. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
They turned to face her. She was as smudged and dirty as both of them. She didn’t know anything about wards and Wardens and excisions and The Evil, but here she was, in the thick of it all.
Volunteering for more.
‘No,’ said Jack.
‘What do you mean, “no”?’ said Jaide. ‘She’s the only who can do it!’
‘No she’s not. What about all these bugs and bats and things?’
The locomotive vented steam and edged forward, rubble shifting under its wheels.
‘It’s changing shape,’ said Tara. Her voice was almost conversational, as if there had been so many shocks in the last half-hour that nothing more could scare her.
The locomotive was changing shape. Steel railway tracks were rising up behind it and slithering forward to join the boiler, where they attached themselves and then sprang out like cruel, grasping arms. Its pistons were withdrawing from the driving wheels and slanting downwards, to turn into legs. Legs that flexed, eager to dash forward.
The boiler itself was splitting at the front, separating into jaws . . .
‘We have to let her do it!’ said Jaide.
‘She can’t!’
‘Don’t I get a say in this?’ asked Tara angrily.
‘No!’ they both yelled at her.
The train was backing up like an enraged bull, snorting and furious. More piston-limbs were forming at the rear. Once they were functional, The Evil would be able to charge forward like a living battering-ram, intent on just one thing:
Killing the troubletwisters who had defied The Evil once again.
‘Let me do it,’ said a weak voice off to the side. ‘Let me be the ward’
They turned to see Rennie crawling towards them. She was conscious and free of The Evil, but horrible to behold. Worms and insects crawled all over her. Her left hand was gone, leaving only a putrid stump. Her face was so ravaged by what The Evil had done to her that she was barely recognisable. Only her eyes were the same – full of a terrible sadness that could not be put into words.
‘Oh no,’ said Jack.
‘You must be kidding,’ Jaide agreed.
Rennie coughed up a bug and spat it out.
‘I . . . I lost . . . lost my children. The Evil took my grief and turned it into a desire to hold you in their place. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought that bringing The Evil into the world would unite us, bring us together in one big happy family.’
