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43
Step by step, we proceed up Lochkelvin’s grand staircase, a party led purely by the desire for retribution and blood. A poised, expressionless Luke is centered within the gremlins’ protective mass, while Rory and Finlay lead the charge. Danny and I guard the rear, keeping our eyes peeled for any teachers who may come awandering.
“He was here,” Duncan confirms, sounding certain as he gestures along the fourth-floor corridor.
Without thinking about it, Finlay rams his wooden shinty stick against the first door, shoving it open. The room is empty.
I glance around, awaiting the sudden appearance of Baxter, but no one is coming.
Finlay bangs open the adjacent door with his palm this time. “Where are ye?” he asks loudly, relishing this. “Come oot, ye wee fuckin’ prick.”
At this, a small head peers around the door at the end of the corridor, and the gremlins around us go wild, hollering and pointing as though they’ve caught sight of a rare animal.
“That’s Reid,” Rory growls. “Wells will be with him.”
Without pausing, Finlay stalks on ahead, his thick boots dull, deadly thumps on the stone floor. He drags his shinty stick behind him like a sword, its curved tip trailing as jarringly as one long nail down a chalkboard.
With every slow, deliberate footstep, I feel my breath leaving my body. The tension in the air has a cold, metallic taste, and the threat of pain and violence is in every loud thud of Finlay’s boots. I look to Danny for comfort, some acknowledgment that things aren’t going to get out of hand — that Finlay isn’t going to follow Rory’s desire tomake him payto the letter.
But then Finlay would do anything for Rory’s desires. I know that feeling.
Danny’s too busy looking ahead, wrapped up in the scene before us, and I’m reminded that once upon a time, Danny used to be head gremlin. The two of us are the last ones to leave the staircase and enter the landing. A dozen of the oldest gremlins are with the chiefs for back-up, still surrounding Luke, but this time they’ve stopped moving, forming a protective barrier around him as Finlay, Rory and Duncan press ahead.
As they reach the door, Finlay turns slightly to meet Rory’s gaze. Rory nods once, and then Finlay blasts the door open with the force of the shinty stick.
“Think ye could hide fae us?” he snarls, thumping the stick between his palms in a threatening manner. “We know whit ye did, Wells. Ye’ve got plenty tae answer for.”
“Piss off!”
“This yer wee meeting point?” Finlay asks casually, leaning against the door. “Where ye talk about us as baddies? Ye cannae even get enough folk tae fit around a table.”
“Leave us alone,” comes the distinct voice of Callum Wells, and I note the anxiety subtly threading it. The kind of anxiety only boys make, I’ve noticed, where they put on a front that they aren’t bothered at all when they’re thoroughly losing it inside. Perhaps he too is captivated by the way Finlay lets his shinty stick rise and fall between his palms, the manner almost prophetic as it collides against his flesh, a promise of how he intends the rest of the hour to unfold, a sound to become used to.
“Wedid,” Rory says coolly. “But that was before. Before we found out the truth of what you’ve been up to.”
“You better stay back,” Callum warns, “or you and your cult will be fucked.”
Rory actually laughs. “See, this is what happens. This is what youdo. It’s straight out of the Antiro playbook.” He lays his hand across Finlay’s shoulder, pulling him back slightly. “Ourcult. At least your projection makes it obvious what you’re really up to. Project, project, project. It’s all you ever do.”
“We know who’s been threatenin’ violence around here,” Finlay adds, still beating the shinty stick into his palm, “and until noo it hasnae been us.”
The gremlins are too curious not to see what’s happening, and pile themselves in just behind the entrance. Danny and I follow them as they file behind the chiefs, Luke among their numbers. The instant he appears at the doorway, Callum Wells snarls and hisses with rage.
“You make people feel unsafe,” he spits, then appeals to Rory. “His presence here makes people unsafe.”
“You’rethe one who threw the hammer at another student during the games, Wells,” Rory drawls. “You’rethe one allegedly bragging about it. You’re as much of a sniveling turncoat as you always have been. So you can keep playing the scared little boy act, but we all know the things you accuse us of are descriptions of what you do, projected.”
“But that’s gonna change,” Finlay adds, “because this time we’re fightin’ back. For Luke.” He glances over his shoulder at Rory, as if asking for permission, and Rory nods, patting him on the back to give him the go-ahead.
Finlay’s never looked fiercer than at that moment. Leaning forward, he grasps the thick wooden stick between his hands, the curved end angled lethally toward the students in the classroom. His kilt and boots only enhance the warrior look.
It all happens in a flash. The few other students that had been plotting in the room with him dart outside the classroom as Finlay approaches Callum.
“Get them,” Rory instructs Duncan, and Duncan nods, whistling sharply at the gremlins around Luke.
“You heard the man. Get the bastards!”
The gremlins peel away from Luke’s side and, together with Duncan, they sprint after the other students at the end of the corridor. To my surprise, Danny looks as though he’s about to follow, but Luke stops him, grabbing his wrist and holding him by his side. “Don’t leave,” Luke says quietly, and Danny obeys.
