Bright Ruin by Vic James

Author:Vic James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

Who knew that a marble gryphon’s back would be so comfortable – though Abi suspected her thighs would ache chronically tomorrow. Beneath her, supple marble muscles moved as the creature ran, and her fingers were wound into the beast’s scruff where cold feathers met cool fur. It was disconcerting to be faced constantly with one of the three fierce heads, either Tom or Harry, constantly scouting backwards.

Up in front flew Alba. Midsummer led them, on the powerful shoulders of Leto, as the wolf made speed in silence. Renie was atop the sphinx – which was the size of a small pony – as though she’d been riding one all her life. Plainly a street childhood in Millmoor had made her adaptable to any circumstance.

The sphinx’s paws thudded on the ground, but the real earthshaker was the giant, jogging at their side. Abi guessed he was a figure of Hercules, clad in a lion skin, but in place of his marble club he’d been equipped with two twenty-pound sledgehammers, with which he periodically whacked at branches, as if practising for what would come next. Weaving in and out of the trees, barely visible, was a gargantuan snake-bodied creature, whose upper torso was a beautiful woman. Abi was happy for it to keep its distance. The humanoid animations, even (perhaps especially) Renie’s human-headed sphinx, were eerie.

Both Abi’s and Renie’s mounts responded to simple commands from their riders, but the larger monsters were Midsummer’s to control, so their first task was to get the Equal into the highest perimeter watchtower, which was also the closest to the residential blocks. From there she would be able to direct them.

They kept up a pace, marble limbs never tiring, as they closed in on Fullthorpe. Once the message had come through that Gavar’s team was moving into position, the garden centre vans had driven to a quiet country road a few miles from the jail. With supermax prisoners not being in high demand as neighbours, Fullthorpe was mostly surrounded by agricultural land, an unexpectedly bright patchwork of yellows and greens on Hilda’s images. But the closer they came, the more the tree cover thinned. It finally dwindled to a mere perimeter screen to hide the prison from passers-by – and which also, just about, concealed their unnatural menagerie.

There was a faint buzz of traffic noise from the roads. Half a kilometre away was a light industrial estate, where vehicles were ready for the getaway. The three of them and the beasts halted in place, listening through their earpieces. Renie was checking her watch with military precision. And if it was weird having their movements co-ordinated by a kid barely in her teens, well, Renie had been doing this longer than any of them. Knowing when a patrol passed, or a storeroom door might be open, was what had kept her alive and free in Millmoor for all those years.

But this would be bigger than anything she’d attempted before. Midsummer’s face was sheened with sweat that was

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