Eutopia - Apocalypse

Chapter 9

‘Horace.’

‘Jinn?’ The old man took a step back from the door, horror and confusion deepening the lines on his wrinkled face as his sightless eyes grew wide. ‘There’s nothing here for you or your kind, get away from here.’

‘Ah, that’s where I think we have a difference of opinion old man.’ Jinn’s thick arm rested on the doorframe so that his elbow wedged the wood open as Horace tried in vain to close it. ‘I have information on the child you fostered, the girl.’

‘Eutopia?’ Phoibe wrenched the door open at once, tearing it from her husband’s hand and barging his frail frame out of the way with her plumpness. ‘Where is she?’ she demanded instantly, her brown eyes as hard and dry as the untilled earth in a drought as Jinn eased through the doorway after her. ‘What have you done with Eutopia?’

‘Dead.’

‘Dead?’ It was more of a sound than a word, hushed out in a whisper of breath that escaped Phoibe’s trembling lips as she sank to her knees at Jinn’s feet. Her claw-like hands gripped at the hem of his thick blue cloak as though she were afraid she would slip off the face of the world if she should let go of him. ‘Dead how?’ Floods of tears, hot and salty, cascaded down her rough cheeks and splashed unchecked into the floor and soaked into the fabric she held. Jinn twitched his cloak out of Phoibe’s clutching hands, whipping it away as if disgusted by her display of emotion.

‘You?’ Horace’s voice was low and gruff but the quavering note could be heard by all three gathered in the small room, made smaller still by the presence of the angel.

‘She refused to give me the information I needed. Michael deemed her useless and so she was only in the way.’

He deflected the blow that Horace aimed at his head with little effort, the stout wooden stick the old man sometimes used to help him walk came crashing down on Jinn’s forearm with astounding ferocity. It should have broken a bone but instead fractured upon itself, splintering in half. The sharp crack of wood shattering against Jinn’s arm was drowned out by the animalistic wail of Phoibe as she flung her head back and howled like a wolf-mother mourning her cub, tearing at her hair so that it fell loose from her usually sharp bun around her quaking shoulders.

‘My baby!’ she cried, all the strength leaving her in one helpless moment. Her old body sagged down and her arms cradled her head as if she could block out what had just been said.

‘She wasn’t your baby, Phoibe, we all know that. You took her off the street, snatched her away from her family to replace the child you had lost. For that all three of you should have been put to death. We overlooked it, because you were Elite.’

Muffled, gut-wrenching sobs were all that Phoibe was capable of.

‘She rescued her, saved the girl from death at the hands of your kind.’ Horace turned his head and spat as though the words were too bitter in his mouth. ‘Phoibe found her alone in the street after the town curfew. She was just a baby, unable to care for herself and minutes away from being spotted by the Night Watch.’ Tears glistened on his old face as they slipped in rivulets through the creases, worn upon his skin with age. ‘The girl had no family, no one came forward to claim her and Phoibe knew if she’d left her there she would have been murdered at once because of your rules. We know age is no mitigating circumstance for you. Phoibe was still mourning for our boy, our son that you murdered because you’d had a whiff of suspicion that we were leaving the Elite. That poor child. We gave her a good life.’ Horace shook his grizzled head, bowed with grief as he pressed a hand to his eyes and Phoibe’s wail grew louder.