Hope & Fury (Heroes & Demons Book 2)

The scent of the polished wood was the main thing Ruth got when her senses began to come around back to life. It was scent which always came first for her on waking – this time a thankfully dreamless unconsciousness. There was no need to wake up screaming, surrounded by the crushing dark.

Next, she felt the polished wood beneath her cheek, cool against her skin. The slowly developing awareness of her own body, the weight of it connecting with the floor beneath her told her she was lying down. A sensation that ended below the small of her back.

The world around her was still, that was the next thing to come to her. She sensed no movement and heard very little sound. Far off distant sounds too mutinous to identify. Silence within the walls of the place she was in save for soft breathing from the room’s only other companion. She remembered with a sadness that was becoming all too familiar that she recognised the sound, the soft breathing of her daughter Mary in a relaxed state. Somewhere nearby, not next to her but nearby.

Finally, she opened her eyes and took in the sight of the world around her. She was lying on the polished wooden floor of a pub. A new-ish, but made to look old, type of pub. She lay in the centre of the room, the Tudor style whitewashed walls with black beams of wood surrounded them. The bar was behind her head, nearby, tables and chairs mainly stacked neatly – though a few appeared to have fallen off.

Mary was nearby, still dressed in her plain black BioSuit, her marker of allegiance. She was sitting on a cushioned bench under the crisscrossed windows, sideways, looking out into the day that had grown cloudy. One boot was cocked up, her elbow resting on it. Ruth had to fight an urge to tell her to get her feet off the seat, a simple parental instinct.

“You don’t have to pretend to be asleep,” Mary told her without looking, “I know you’re awake. It changes the rhythm of your breathing.”

She pushed herself onto her back and pulled herself closer to the bar. She saw stairs going downwards nearby and realised they must have been above ground level. She didn’t know how or why that might change the situation – nor would it give her any further idea of where she was but she noted it.

Perhaps a possible escape route?

She managed to gather herself into a seated position, her back resting against the similarly smooth polished surface of the bar itself. More sounds began to come to her now, the sirens, the sounds of a helicopter nearby. As she looked at her daughter she realised that she could see past her and out of the window.

It seemed odd, terribly odd but there was quite clearly a cathedral on the other side of the window. Or she supposed a minster, though she never really did understand the difference. It was an imposing thing, a massive construction only part of which she could see – made from creamy white limestone which had yellowed with age. Gothic style, as many of them were.

Only, rather than lovingly stained glass windows, there were empty holes – serrated remains dangled precariously from the different lead settings like shark’s teeth. One of the two front towers had collapsed, now a jagged mess. It was a ruin. There were no ruined cathedrals in the UK – certainly not of the style she was seeing.

“Mary, where are we?” she asked.

“It’s funny, isn’t it? How fragile things are?” Mary responded, without really answering, “You know, light, sound and fury they’re all that’s needed to make people tremble. A lot of them have managed to run away before they got the cordon into place. Some are still out there – hiding in their houses and their tea rooms like little rats, waiting for something to happen. We’re all just waiting for something to happen.”

As she spoke Ruth continued to look out of the window and realised that the sky did not look like a cloud but rather the white-black combination of cloud and smoke. A complete blanket of greyness.

“Mary…” she began again. This time she did get a reaction, a turn of the head in her direction, eyes blazing with hatred.

“Don’t call me that,” her daughter snapped, “That’s the name of your daughter, she died with her father.”

“Oh bloody hell,” Ruth muttered to herself, unable to stop herself. Her daughter glared suddenly, more enraged, “we’re going down the hippie cult rebirth route, are we? Calling yourself Moonbeam and starting the Apocalypse. Did I honestly raise an idiot who doesn’t realise she’s practically become a member of the Manson Family?”

“You didn’t raise me all,” Mary spat. “Dad raised me. You were always too busy with your bloody work to even know what was going on with him, with me.”

“Oh and that upsets you does it?” she threw back, her anger beginning to grow, “Did it upset you when you ended up at a private school and got the best education? Did it upset you that the money meant we could take multiple family holidays a year? Do many kids your age spend their summers in the French Riviera? Do many people even get one family member home all the time to help raise them?”

“Is that a justification?”

“No, it’s called growing up and realising there’s a real-world out there,” Ruth snapped at her, “I did raise you because I wanted you to want for nothing and instead you’ve turned into a spoilt brat who doesn’t know the value of life. There are mothers out there who spend twenty hours of their day at three jobs, just so that they can put a cold tin of spaghetti on the table for their kids. Do you think those kids grow up resentful? Hating their mother for working so much? Or do you think they realise that only by not having their mother there they got a chance to grow up at all?”

“You stand there and judge me like you have any idea what you’re talking about. As if you hate me because I wasn’t there instead of the real reason.”

“Oh, you think you know me?” Mary spat at her.

“I think when you pop someone out of your vagina you know them more intimately than they know themselves,” she threw back, “It’s why I know you don’t hate me for not being there, you blame me for John’s death, as if by me not being there somehow I brought on the cancer that killed him.”

Mary’s eyes blazed hatefully as she disappeared and reappeared right next to her, a hand clamping around her mother’s throat.

“Don’t you talk about dad,” she whispered, dripping venom.

“If you aren’t Mary Sellers, then why you do still care?” Ruth asked her, “I love you, Mary, and for the first time you make me glad John is not around to see the thing that you’ve become.”

She felt flung, sliding across the floor and crashing into a table leg. The force was so powerful she heard in her mind a powerful crack. But only in her mind, the damage had already been done there – the actual crack came from the caved-in table that now dangled strangely above her – as if being tipped by an unseen force.

“The only reason you’re alive is because they want you to watch,” Mary told her.

“Good,” Ruth sent back, “Because it’ll give me time to find my daughter, in the mess that you are.”

“I told you,” Mary responded calmly, going back to her vantage point at the window, “She’s already dead.”