So it’s come to this, he thought. How? How has it come to this?
The others’ voices grew faint as he raced headlong into the building’s bowels, desperate for shelter, for isolation. He wouldn’t let them see what this was doing to him. They needed strength, and he was going to give it to them. But not now. He needed a minute. “Christ,” he muttered and stopped in the gloom, leaning against the wall. He breathed deep and let his head fall back, staring up at the ceiling. “Forgive us.”
A quiet snick was his only warning before a cold blade pressed against his throat. He made to struggle, but arms gripped him from behind, while the blade pressed hard enough to draw blood. Lucian stilled, gagging as an elbow wrapped around his throat. He looked over his shoulder, and was dismayed to recognise his assailant. “We let you go,” he choked.
Charlie’s face was murder. He still stank like a sewer, and was dressed in the very same rags as when they had last met. But there was something changed in him. The child was gone. It was written in his eyes. “Let me go?” he breathed. “Letting me go would have been letting me die in that sewer. What you did was worse. You took away the only thing in the world I had left and dropped me back in the world like an animal.”
He brought the blade up to Lucian’s eye. “My father deserves justice.”
“We didn’t know, Charlie,” Lucian said. “I’m sorry, but I did what had to be done.”
“Shh, quiet! I’ve got plans for you, but if they hear us, I have no problem ending this right here, right now.” The knife grew closer, a mere centimetre from Lucian’s cornea. But it wasn’t the blade he was afraid of. What really scared him was how frightened the kid sounded beneath that angry scowl. In the corner of his eye he could see Charlie’s face, and wasn’t comforted to see tears in his eyes.
“You’re a good kid,” he said. “Think about this.”
“Oh, I’ve thought about it. I’ve thought of nothing else,” Charlie spat. He wrestled Lucian’s arm back until it felt like it might snap, and clamped a cloth over his mouth. “I won’t be denied what I deserve.” An ugly sneer crossed his quivering lips. “Let’s see how the wise and powerful messiah fares without his dog to do his dirty work!”
Lucian did something of which he would have thought himself incapable. It was only the thought of Alexander that spurred him on. He begged, not with his stifled mouth, but with his eyes.
Charlie’s face filled with glee. “That’s right. You’re mine. Blood is coming, and there’s nowhere to hide. For them, anyway…It’s time they faced the music.” His eyes darkened, and he hauled Lucian back into shadow, lips pressed against the flesh of his ear. “But not for you. You’re coming with me.”