‘
You know she is going to die.‘
‘Fuck you.’
‘
Don’t hide from the truth, Carter. Don’t hide behind your stupidity!’
‘Like you give a shit.’
‘I... I would like to help you.
‘
‘The only person you help is yourself.’
‘Not true, Carter. Not true at all - what about in Egypt, all those Arabs with machine guns? Or in Poland? That fucker with the garrotte? And then in Belfast... don’t get me started on Belfast... You should leave this place, Carter. Leave now. Get back to the Comanche, fuck Mongrel and that sniper bitch into the night and it will be like old times, just the two of us...’
‘I will wait for The Priest.’
‘You won’t like what he has to say
.’
‘And what would that be?’
‘
Trust me,’
said Kade smugly.
‘Get out of my head.’
‘
The Priest will be here in a few hours - at dawn. You need to make your decision and make it now ... if you meet with him you won’t like what he has to say. It will be a threat to Natasha’s life ... and fuck only knows you’ve moaned about that dying bitch for long enough ...
’
Carter frowned. He drank the cheap whisky, which burned his throat and his belly with its unrefined harshness. ‘How could you possibly know that? How could you know such things?’
‘
Trust me. I know.
‘
Kade’s sinister voice faded, and Carter listened to the sea crashing against the rocks in the moonlight. He frowned to himself, remembering random events from his life all leading to the insane moment where Natasha had gone down with the building under the crashing fury of the quake ...
He remembered leaping, and being engulfed by concrete.
He remembered their last kiss. A long and lingering sweet-tainted caressing of lips.
And he remembered Kade ... haunting whisky dreams with his vitriol...
Kade.
Kade ...
Something pressed against Carter’s back - a hand, its outline and the familiar pressure. It was Roxi, behind him, looking out over the dark sea. For a long time he said nothing, just allowed his mind to calm. Then, finally, he turned and looked into her emerald green eyes. Her hand slipped down and rested on his hip like an intruder.
Carter shivered.
‘You like a whisky?’
‘I thought you’d stopped drinking that.’
Carter grinned wryly. ‘You never did like my Lagavulin addiction, did you?’
Roxi smiled then, and her oval face beamed like the birth of a new sun. Carter took a drink from the bottle and then reached out, touching her cheek.
‘I just want to say—’
‘Shh.’ Her finger touched his lips and she shook her head. ‘You don’t need to say it. I understand.’
‘You
understand
!?’
‘Yes.’
‘About him?’
She nodded, then stepped to his side and leaned on the fence. The breeze from the sea whipped her straight brown hair out behind her and she closed her eyes, revelling in the coolness.
Carter blinked.
And remembered:
The bedroom. Her high pert breasts, the sheen of fear on her brow, the trembling of her fingers, the enticing pulse beating rapidly in her throat.
‘You’re fucking insane!’
she had shouted, eyes on the gun in his fist and her tongue darting out, moistening her fear. And Kade had been like a worm in the back of his mind, whispering, hissing, filling his brain with confusion ...
‘Kill her. She will betray you - betray us. And we shall be nothing. We shall be ashes and dust. Do it... or, if you’re such a fucking coward, let
me
do it...
’
Carter had walked past her, thrown the gun into the lake and Roxi had left him, hurriedly pulling on her clothes, their manic animal sex of the previous night forgotten in her need to get away from him ... From the shores of the lake he had watched her leave.
Returned, lain on the bed where he could still smell her sex and the lingering bright dregs of her perfume ...
And cried ...
‘I believe you have a problem.’
Carter snapped back to reality. He glanced sideways at her. He found it strange - almost surreal - to be talking to somebody he had assumed he would never see again. It had been years - four or five at least, he could no longer remember, since she had walked out of that cabin room. She had not reported him - his threats, his apparent insanity. He had contacted her ten, maybe twenty times but she had ignored his calls and he could not blame her.
Their missions for Spiral had never crossed from that moment forward. They had never met.
Not until now.
‘We all have problems,’ said Carter coolly.
‘With Natasha? The ECubes are alive with news of the quakes ripping across the world and the resurgence of the Nex soldiers. I saw Natasha’s name mentioned ... she was injured
... is
injured. I’m sorry.’
Carter nodded, watching the sea.
‘You here on Spiral business?’ he said, finally.
‘Yes.’ Roxi produced a cigarette, lit it, then passed it to Carter and lit another for herself. He could taste her subtle lipstick on the weed and long distant memories came flooding back—
Her naked, arching back—
Her soft skin, the welcoming velvet between her legs ...
‘No,’ he hissed to himself, exhaling smoke. He met her strong gaze and she smiled, hand reaching out, stroking his stubbled cheek, thumb rubbing at a mark on the end of his chin with obvious affection.
‘I’ve missed you.’ Her words crashed like sweet thunder in his brain.
‘I missed you,’ he found himself saying.
She reached forward to kiss him, but he halted her, smoke stinging his eyes and carried away on the breeze. ‘No, Roxi. Not now, not like this. I loved you once ... still love you. But my mind is fucked up - I haven’t the time for complications.’
‘All life is a complication,’ she said, moving closer, her voice husky. He looked deep into those green eyes and her beauty was astonishing to him. He could feel her body pressed against his and he was waiting for Kade to jump in, but the dark side of his soul had apparently vanished ...
Carter pulled away, and took a long drink of the whisky.
‘I cannot.
Will
not.’
Roxi smiled. ‘I hated you. For a long time.’
‘I understand.’
‘Do you? You kept me in the dark.
He
forced us apart, wanted me dead. But what hurt me the most was that you did not tell me. You couldn’t trust me, and that hurt more than a bullet in the face.’
‘I was ... scared. Scared I would lose you.’
‘Like you’re scared you’re going to lose Natasha?’
‘No, that’s different.’ Carter sighed, and took another long drink. He turned his back on Roxi and it took all his strength, all his will-power not to look round.
‘Maybe in another life,’ he said softly.
She came up behind him. Kissed his ear. ‘I still love you. I always will...’ She laughed. ‘Maybe in another lifetime, as you say, my love.’ And then she was gone, gliding into the darkness.
Carter shivered, retaining her scent.
He remembered it well.
It reminded him of... sex. And more.
It reminded him of love ...
Carter retired bitterly to his room to finish the bottle.
Carter was spinning, spinning down into dark dreams and the sand was hot under his bare feet, ragged trousers flapping around his ankles as the Arabs marched him out into the desert and the sun scorched his back.
Shit. Cairo7.
The Battle for the City.
Occasionally, the whip would crack against the bare raw pink skin of Carter’s sunburned shoulders and through sweat and blood he glanced left at Slater
-
who grinned a savage grin through his own individual pain - and Carter ground his teeth as the leather bit deep. The Arab screamed at him and he whirled in the sand with eyes narrowing and lips mouthing
motherfucker—
‘Let
me,’
Kade had whispered.
Like silk.
Smothering his fevered brain in an ice-cool shroud.
‘No.’
They heard the scream of the fighters. They thundered overhead, long and dark and gleaming, engines glowing and their noise a sonic boom that filled the heavens. Cairo stood, a massive swathe of buildings and here, from the distant desert, the pyramids squatted in front of the group - the glowing scene a vast expanse of beauty, almost a perfect postcard, with the city ranged behind the pyramids. Then the bombs began to fall—
The pyramids were shattered. Smashed into rubble. Cairo was crushed by HighJ and spinning silver steel.
Carter and the other captured Spiral agents watched with mingled horror, fascination, fear and awe as buildings were swept away in a tide of fire and billowing bright gas. An armoured Egyptian column caught beside the pyramids was lifted on a wall of flame and sent spinning and howling up into the fire-filled sky.
Machine guns rattled.
Men screamed ...
Carter watched solemnly as the distant soldiers fought. More fighters howled. More buildings were destroyed and, slowly, the Cairo skyline began to change, to warp, to disintegrate ...
That way!’
The whip cracked and sub-machine guns poked into backs.
Carter and the ten others were herded further into the desert, away from the savage destruction behind them. They stumbled on through the sand.
On they ploughed.
‘Where are you taking us?’ snarled Slater - and caught the butt of a sub-machine gun in the jaw for his persistence.
The Arabs, all brutal and battle-hardened soldiers, herded the prisoners through the fast-falling darkness. The men stumbled clumsily across the sand, hands bound tight and bodies covered with the marks of heavy beating.
The group halted, and were all given sips of water.
Carter felt himself growing weary, and for once he welcomed the return of Kade.
‘
They’re taking you to be executed.’
‘No, we are political prisoners. There will be an exchange. Maybe a ransom.’
‘No. They know you are Spiral. They will execute you in cold blood.
‘
‘Why don’t they kill us here, then? Why not now?’
‘
They need fucking permission from their leader, a man called A‘shiek Elmora. You should keep more up to date with your fucking reading, Carter. ‘
One of the captors, a short squat powerful man dressed in a grey shawl and wearing sandals, slowly approached. He offered Carter water, but as Carter reached for the cup he poured it at Carter’s feet. His eyes glistened with challenge.
‘You the Spiral men!’ he snarled, dark eyes filled with hatred. ‘You have killed many of our people ...’
‘No,’ said Carter, shaking his head.
The man pulled free a long curved knife, the blade black and heavily chipped from battle use. Carter stared up at the Arab, could see the twenty other shamag-cowled men surrounding him. Camels were grunting wearily in the heat and the drone of a distant Land Rover sounded in the desert air.
‘Let me,’
crooned Kade.
‘Let me fuck them ...
‘Let me eat their souls. ‘
Carter had smiled at the man then, staring at the scars across his cheeks with hate-filled eyes and said out loud, dry voice a croaking command to slaughter:
‘Fuck them, Kade.’
And slitted feline eyes opened on a desert scene carved in black and white.
Kade calmed his breathing. The scene was bleached - shades of desert grey that suited Kade just fine as he tested the strength of his bound wrists and glanced down. Rope?
‘Fucking amateurs
,’ he snarled and—
Kade leapt towards the Egyptian, and the knife came up in a clumsy movement so sudden was Kade’s attack. He twisted, and the blade sliced neatly through the rope, freeing Kade’s hands. His boot came up, connecting with the Arab’s chest as he whirled and took the curved blade from the man who grunted in pain and surprise, stumbling back under the force of the heavy blow to teeter and fall -
Everything seemed to move so slowly.
Kade grinned.
Kade leapt again, the blade hacking into the Arab even as the surprised man fell - and as he hit the sand the man’s blood gushed out in a pulsing arc. Kade stabbed him in the face and left him gurgling as the rest of the twenty men turned their attention towards this
blur
of an escaped prisoner—
Shouts split the cool desert night - tinged with panic. Sub-machine guns were cocked in twitching hands.
Kade surged forward with a savage snarl. The blade slashed left, then right, leaving scarlet globules hanging suspended for microseconds as throats gaped wide and blood flooded from the wounds ... Kade spun low and rammed the curved knife into another Arab’s groin, wrenching it to the side as the man screamed, hands clutching at the warm flow of blood. Kade smoothly took his sub-machine gun ... instantly bullets blasted from the muzzle - heads and chests caved in under the heavy impact of flying metal as Kade strode forward, deep into the group, with the gun hammering away in his powerful death-dealing hands—