Hope & Fury (Heroes & Demons Book 2)

Ruth heard, even if she couldn’t see, everything. The second-floor pub that she was on had a view of the Minster square. She had heard the arrival of the army, felt the shaking of the earth and heard the entire conversation through the open window at which Mary filmed. This was what they wanted her to see – the end.

Only, she realised it wasn’t. She saw in an instant Rick’s plan moments before the arrival of the helicopter. She saw the look of anger on Mary’s face, of shock and disbelief to see everything going out of control.

“No!” she hissed, “This shouldn’t be happening!”

“What did you think was going to happen?” Ruth asked her, sounding more like she was scalding a child. Which in many ways she was, “Did you think that we’re all just helpless fools reacting to your whims with no imagination? You may have joined in with the worst people you could find just to hurt me, but you quite plainly underestimated who else you’d be making an enemy of. Bit of a classic mistake.”

“Screw you,” she hissed again. Clouds of smoke began to billow around her and Ruth waited, knowing she was essentially going full adult tantrum. Her face screwed red, her eyes filled with hate. She was once more made aware that there was very little left of her daughter in those eyes. Very little, but some – and that was enough for a mother.

Outside the sounds of battle began. Gunshots rang out, cries of pain. A large feather yin-yang missile shot passed the window – two Angels in an embrace or a fight – who knew? They were making their final stand, their final last-ditch attempt to protect themselves from the fury of an ancient force. She oddly felt calm, serene. There in that pub, she was about to do the same.

“I love you, Mary,” she told her daughter. She wondered vaguely when the last time she had said it would have been before that day. Far too far in the past for her liking. “I love you with all my heart and before you were even born.”

“Stop it!”

“I love you not because of who you are but because I simply can’t exist in a world where I can’t,” she continued, ignoring her protests. “The day you were born became the day I knew there was only one thing in the world more precious to me than my own life. And that was yours. Your father knew it, he couldn’t stand when you and I were fighting.” She laughed softly to herself, “I suppose it was the fact that we were so similar, or maybe just the fact that we both loved the same man. Or maybe it’s just because mothers and daughters are meant to fight and that is the way of the world.”

“Don’t you talk about him!”

“I’m not going to stop, Mary,” she assured her, “Not even if you go and join that battle out there. Not even if you kill me. Not even if the God of War himself blows up all of the world. I am not going to stop. Do you know I have an earpiece in my pocket? I have this entire time, you’re a rather sloppy kidnapper not to check. At any time over the past several hours I could have pulled it from my pocket, turned it on and the others would have known my location. But I didn’t.”

“Because I love you, I know my daughter is still in there, somewhere buried beneath the pain and the anger. I don’t hope it, I know it to be true. So come with me. I put all my heart and soul into the people outside but if it is a choice, I choose you. Come over here, take my hand and take us somewhere far away from good and evil. Someplace where we can simply be.”

Something was beginning to change behind Mary’s eyes. Something she wasn’t quite ready to believe. A softening of the hate, a dying down of the embers. Tears stained her eyes red but did not fall, they hung in anticipation. It was as though she truly saw the eyes of her daughter, the little girl looking up at her mother wanting to know that everything was going to be alright.

“Mum…”

That was when the front of the building exploded. A fireball of the battle outside, perhaps a person – perhaps Sandy, she didn’t know. It tore through the old Tudor fronting and for an unholy second she was framed like a phoenix glowing in the darkest of nights.

Ruth didn’t move as for the second time in her life the building she was sitting in, puffed by the big bad wolf, fell down like straw.