Burn by Weston Paula

Author:Weston, Paula [Weston, Paula]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2015-05-19T07:00:00+00:00

LIGHT THE FUSE

The questions keep coming, and Jude and I try hard not to lie.

I wait for someone to mention our mothers. It’s ironic: the secret we were most afraid to share—the bitter slice of history we kept from everyone for more than a century—is the very thing we laid bare a few hours ago. Our parting shot to Nathaniel before we left: that he killed them and stole all of us.

But nobody brings it up. I don’t know if it’s because the news is still too raw, or too big to grasp. Either way, I’m relieved when I hear the Butlers’ four-wheel drive in the gully.

Conversation stops as the battered car clears the trees. The boys park where the track ends, at the edge of the sagging tarp. They climb out and face us, shoulder to shoulder: Mick, Rusty, Joffa, Woosha and the blond mullet.

Mick glares at the Rephaim. Rusty folds his arms. All of them on edge. They smell of petrol and cigarettes. It’s a wonder they didn’t blow themselves up.

‘Okay?’ Jude asks Mick.

Mick sniffs, nods. ‘The fireys and cops’ll be up there in an hour. Then they’ll come looking for us.’ He digs a nail between his two front teeth and flicks away whatever he finds. ‘Sarge won’t believe us no matter what we tell him, but he’ll have nothing so it won’t matter.’

‘Plus,’ Rusty says, ‘there’ll be serious shit going down by the time they get around to harassing us. You come up with a plan yet?’

Mick hawks up something thick and wet from the back of his throat and spits it on the grass. ‘I dunno about you lot, but we’re clearing out the town.’

Jude raises his eyebrows ‘And how are you going to do that?’

‘Simple.’ Mick taps the side of his head. ‘We make a bomb threat and get the town evacuated—let a coupla charges go on the esplanade to get everyone moving. Then when the place is empty, we blow up the main road either end of town and block access. Nobody gets back in for at least a few days.’

‘Yeah,’ Rafa says. ‘Genius.’ He leans his leg against mine, almost absently. I don’t move away.

Mick looks around the campsite. ‘Okay, so what’s your big plan then?’

‘We’re working on it.’

‘What’s so fucken hard?’

Jude sits forward, his boots resting on the car bumper and forearms on his knees. ‘It’s not hard. It’s the first time we’ve had to plan a defence. Usually, the demons are already wreaking havoc wherever they’ve set up shop. We go in, check out the situation and make a plan to ambush them.’

I’ve only been on one Outcast ‘job’—two if you count the farmhouse—and that’s pretty much how it went down.

‘This time we have to wait for Zarael and company to show,’ Jude says. ‘We know they’re coming during a storm, but not exactly when. No idea of numbers, no idea where they’ll strike.’

‘They’ve never come after humans before,’ Ez says. ‘Not like this. So that’s a whole other issue.’

Malachi catches my eye.

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