Reaper's Legacy: Book Two (Toxic City)(27)

The sheer wilderness of the place was overwhelming, and Lucy-Anne kept close to Rook.

“Can't we go around?” she whispered.

“You saw what awaited us out there,” he said. “We're in the north now. The streets around here…” He shrugged but said no more.

“You've sent your rooks to see?” she asked. Rook did not reply. He seemed unsettled, tense, so she did not force the issue. Her one desire became to make it through the park and out the other side.

The path they followed soon vanished beneath a spread of tough grass, and Rook grabbed her hand and pulled her towards a wall of darkness beneath a copse of trees. Lucy-Anne did not want to go that way—she felt like a child afraid of the dark—but Rook's birds swooped in and away again, one landing on his shoulder as soon as another took off. She could only assume that they were imparting information and telling him whether it was safe. Her life was in his hands.

She had not willingly been totally dependent on another person for a very long time.

As they approached the trees Lucy-Anne saw the first shadow moving down amongst the boles. It darted from tree to tree through the shadows, seemingly merging with one trunk before skitting across to the next.

Calls and cries came from across the park, but the copse before them had fallen silent.

Rook paused, head on one side and a rook cawing on his shoulder. “You'll see strange things,” he said, then he walked on.

Lucy-Anne took a deep breath and followed. Something caressed her ear and she waved at it, expecting to find a drooping branch. But she touched nothing, and when she glanced up she saw a shadow lifting and dipping above her as it flapped its strong, silent wings. Other rooks hovered farther away. Protecting her.

The shape slinked out from behind the first of the trees, scampering through the grass and then standing upright on two legs to glare at them. It was a man, but his arms and legs were deformed and bent like a dog's. At first she thought he was black, but then she spotted the pale patches of skin across his stomach and abdomen, and realised that he was mostly covered in a heavy, dark pelt. His face protruded, nose wide, wet nostrils opening and closing as he took in their scents.

He shouted at them, and it was a bark. It sounded pained.

“Don't panic,” Rook said.

“Oh my God,” Lucy-Anne said, appealing to a deity she had forgotten since her childhood. “Oh my God, what is that, what is that?”

“A man turning into a dog,” Rook said.

Lucy-Anne laughed out loud at his stark answer. But he was right.

The man shouted again, a heavy, deep bark that could not have issued from a human's throat. He fell to all fours again and scampered away, kicking through the long grass, skitting back and forth, and a rudimentary tail swished the air behind him. Soon he was lost to the darkness, and moonlight could touch him no more.

Lucy-Anne was glad. She wished the moon and stars would shut themselves away for the rest of the night.

Amongst the trees, the darkness was even deeper. Rook moved quickly, and every now and then one of his birds would flit down out of the darkness and land on his shoulder. They were scouting the way forward, but Lucy-Anne knew that they might not see everything. There could be anything hiding in the dark.

A man turning into a dog! she thought. She had never seen or imagined anything like it, and it was a whole new aspect to what had happened to London. She'd heard of and met people whom Doomsday had changed, giving them talents or abilities that had been pure science fiction until two years ago. But the changes had all been on the inside. Here, things were different.

“Rook, what is this?” she whispered. He kept walking. “Rook?”

He paused and turned around. “We need to move quickly,” he said. And that was all. Any explanation would have to wait until later, because he set off again at a fast pace. Sometimes, Lucy-Anne had to run to keep up.

They passed through the wooded area, and just as they emerged close to a lake several shadows rose from the ground before them. Rook skidded to a halt, startled, and Lucy-Anne bumped into him. She maintained the contact.

Rooks flapped and cawed somewhere out of sight.

The shapes were people, naked, caked in mud, hair set in extravagant designs. Their limbs seemed too short, too thin. When they moved, Lucy-Anne saw why.

They had reared up from their stomachs, and the first woman slumped down to the ground and curled away through the undergrowth. She shifted from side to side as she went, withered, sore-covered arms dragging along on either side and legs fused along their insides to form a long, thin tail.

As Lucy-Anne gasped, the woman hissed. The two other snake people eased back down onto their stomachs and followed the woman, and soon they were lost from view.

“They were…” Lucy-Anne said.

“Lucky we surprised them,” Rook said. “Let's hurry before they come back.”

“Are they poisonous? Constrictors? Do they…how much like real snakes are they?”

“You want to stay and find out?” He ran and she followed him, skirting around the lake's edge but not getting too close. Things were splashing in there. From the dark came wretched cries. It must hurt them, she thought. Such a huge change, so quickly. It must hurt! Though scared of them, she also felt pity.

Rook ran over a small footbridge that passed over a stream leading into the lake, and without pause headed across a wide area of long-grassed lawn spotted with occasional clumps of trees and wooden seating shelters. Moonlight silvered the land, setting fire to treetops. To their left and right shadows ran to keep pace with them, but Lucy-Anne could only assume that Rook knew about them. A rook landed on her left shoulder, its surprising lightness startling her, and a thought came unbidden: They're graceful and beautiful. She understood some of Rook's attachment to these creatures then, and for the first time she felt a pang of jealousy at his incredible abilities. Perhaps because he was closer to them than he ever could be to her.