Sixteen Souls by Rosie Talbot

Author:Rosie Talbot
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic
Published: 2022-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

20

THE RUINS

Stumbling into the crumbling house on the square, I sink into shadows and wait for the men to pass. They’re looking for me. No, for her. She’s standing in the ruins of Saint-Lô, rust dripping from her fingertips, making the ground bloody.

She doesn’t run. She must not show fear. They almost caught up with her at Caen, but she bluffed her way out before they found her. She used glamours to change identities, made it this far. She can do it again, be someone else, new name, new person.

I peer around the crumbling doorjamb and breathe in dust and the stink of mud and smoke. I know what comes next.

A truck pulls up. Door opens. Two cold-eyed Englishmen. It’s too late to run. The taller man leans over a torn-up body in the rubble. Whatever he whispers chills my spine and I feel my disgust quicken.

The man with thick curls and Sam’s face calls me by her name. I spit at him, cursing. Rough fabric scrapes my skin. I’m pulled down, hitting muddy water that squelches through my fingers. I gasp against a stench that makes me heave: rotting flesh, ammonia, charcoal, hot metal and burnt earth. I’m lost, I’m lost in her memories and I can’t get out.

Rope bites my wrists. My skin burns.

Someone shouting. “Cut again, dig deeper. Carve it out of her if you have to.”

The woman watches me from the corner. Her eyes are dark pools, the life long gone. The blood dripping from her fingertips becomes a trickle, then a stream.

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