Thirty seconds.
I stood the length of one rugby pitch from the doors of the saw mill. I started to count down, and I set off in a sprint.
I could do this. Not a problem. I had done this dozens of times in training. In tennis shoes, on a tarmac road, I could do this.
Twenty seconds.
My mum was on the other side of those doors. She was there, and we would get her back. We would have to fight two fey—at least two fey—to get to her, but we would get her back.
Ten seconds.
The plan was simple. Because I was magic-proof, I wouldn't set off the magical alarms. If Éven and I entered at the same time, one through the front door and one through the back, the guards would think they only had one intruder. They would hear the alarms, and they would see me. They wouldn't know about Éven until it was too late.
Zero.
I heard the jangle of bells like wind chimes in a furious storm a moment before I threw open the doors. That was the alarm, and it meant Éven was in here somewhere.
Mum was here as well.
She was in front of me.
In the dark interior of the mill, among the stacks of rotten wood and the rusted old machines, behind a mound of rocks and rubble, her prison glowed like a lantern—a pillar of water that reached from floor to ceiling. Mum floated in its centre like a drowned woman. She swayed gently as the water corkscrewed around her. Her hair swirled over her head like a crown, and her spectacles danced on the end of their chain. Her eyes were closed, and no bubbles escaped her lips.
My heart caught in my throat.
"Mum?"
I whispered it first, and then I repeated it louder.
"Mum, can you hear me? It's Ben. I've come to rescue you. I've come to take you home."
As I ran towards her, a figure leapt from the shadows and landed on the rock pile in front of me. Selkie's henchwoman from the beach. Huracan. She was armoured, and she held a weapon of a sort I'd never seen before; a long wooden sword studded on both edges with shark teeth. I'd seen a weapon just like it in an Aztec display at the British Museum.
"The boy himself," said Huracan. "This building should be masked to your kind. I don't know how you found us, but my mistress will be most pleased to have you."
"Your mistress will want me in one piece," I said. I could hear the surge of hysteria in my voice. I had expected the guards to attack me with magic. I couldn't do anything about swords or shark teeth.
"She will want most of you in one piece," said Huracan. "If you run, I can take a piece or two. Get down on your knees, little man."
I turned and ran. I darted between two wood stacks and around the corner of a band-saw table. This was not how I expected this to go. This was open combat. This was war.
I wished my brother Danny was here. He would know what to do.
But Danny couldn't walk through the doors and sneak Éven in. Only I could do this.
So where was Éven?
Huracan dropped from the rafters and landed in front of me. She swung her shark-tooth sword at my head. She was going to take my head clean off. This was it. I was dead.
Huracan stopped the blade just short of cleaving me in two. She held it steady, her arms taught. The tips of the shark teeth pricked against my skin.
"Run again, and I'll take your legs," said Huracan.
A figure swept through the shadows.
Éven hooked his arm around Huracan's neck, and the effect of his sleeping enchantment were instantaneous. Her arms sagged, her fingers loosened, and her eyes drooped halfway closed.
Huracan had been surprised this way once before on Hastings beach; I was sure she wouldn't be taken the same way twice. She forced her eyes wide open, let out an angry snort, and threw her elbow in Éven's face. Her blade cut the air in an arc that could have ended Éven, but he was fast. He ducked out of the way and kicked her into the wood stacks.
I scrambled under a table and looked around for a weapon. Soldier or not, I had a fight on my hands—I just didn't have the training or experience to know what to do about it. I wasn't going to be a warrior, but I could at least try to be brave.
Éven drew his sword, which shone like the moonlight, and defended himself against a vicious swing, but Huracan had twice his reach, so Éven retreated and Huracan pursued. I ran out from the cover of the table with a foot-long wrench and swung it at Huracan's head.
I was not stealthy. Huracan brought her sword around to meet me, this time with no regard for my value. I felt the shark teeth rip into my arm and I fell onto my back with a whimper.
I don't know how badly she cut me. The pain was so great and so sudden that I thought I might pass out. A thick splash of blood ran down my sleeve.
My blood, red and wet, soaking my shirt. My first war wound. And maybe my last.
Éven shouted my name and lunged for Huracan again. He was distracted. He wasn't focusing like he ought to. Half his attention on me, when it ought to all be on her.
She caught him across the stomach.
Éven fell.
I screamed.
War. Goddamned war. Goddamned duty.
First it took Dad. Then Mum. Now Éven. Now me.
I lay on the ground and looked up at Mum, hanging in that twist of water, turning like a lifeless body caught in the churn of the tides. And I knew that I had failed her.
Huracan glowered down at me.
I was a bloody, terrified mess; my face streaked with tears.
Éven was not moving.
We had lost.
Maybe I would see Dad again soon.
Huracan tapped me under the chin with the wooden tip of her sword, drawing my attention from Éven's fallen body and up at her gloating face. I pressed my hand to the gushing wound in my arm and gritted my teeth.
"First, I will take your lover's life," said Huracan. "Next, I will take your mother's. Then I will drag you into the ocean, where we will bind you in chains and prod you with hooks. Does that sound like fun?"
I thought it might be better to die, now that I had failed everyone I cared about.
Huracan spun her sword around and raised the hilt to strike me.
Éven sprung up behind her, grabbed her arm and threw red sand in her face.
Huracan screamed and dropped her sword.
The effect of the sand was dramatic and terrible as I scrambled away from her. It hit her like poison. Huracan's skin tightened and her muscles shrivelled; she tried to wipe the sand away, but it clung to her. It sucked the life out of her. In seconds she turned from a warrior to a waif. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed.
I didn't know how to react. I could only wipe the tears from my eyes.
Éven kicked her sword away. There was red sand all over his arms, and it poured from the cut across the belly of his tunic.
"What did you do?" I asked. "Is that the sand from Tiana's attic?"
"I fashioned it into an armour of sorts," he said. "It has many uses. Her kind cannot abide it. She will survive, if she gets to water in time."
Éven helped me to my feet. With his tunic already shredded, he tore off a strip and used it to bind my wounded arm. Now that I had a chance to look at the wound, I could see it was longer than it was deep, and hopefully not too serious.
"I thought you were dead," I said.
"No-one can kill me today," said Éven.
I smiled at his confidence. I needed to believe in it.
"She is alive, right?" I said. "Mum is alive?" The way she was hanging in that swirling column of water, I found it hard to believe.
"She is alive, and held in an enchantment," said Éven. "You may only need to touch her prison to set her free."
"What about the second guard? You said there were two."
"I see no sign of him. He must be patrolling."
I wasn't going to wait for him to come back. I hurried across the warehouse and scrambled up the pile of rocks that lay between me and my mother.
The rocks shifted under my feet. I slipped. I struggled to stay upright. The rocks rose up and I fell.
The rocks were alive.
I landed on my back and looked up in astonishment as the rocks formed the shape of a gigantic man.
This was the second guard, and I had woken him up.
The guard was at least ten feet tall, with a body of misshapen boulders and a face like craggy broken brick. In his right hand he held a petrified tree branch that was large and heavy enough to crush a man. Malachi had been terrifying enough in the tunnels beneath Belas Knap. This creature would make Malachi turn and run.
The giant swung the club at me. Éven grabbed me by the collar and pulled me clear, and the club smashed a hole in the concrete floor.
"Run," said Éven. "It will be easier for me to fight him when you're safe."
I scrambled to my feet and ran for the door. The ground shook beneath me, and I looked back to see how Éven was faring. The giant ignored him and came straight for me.
Éven leapt on the giant's club arm and thrust his sword in its shoulder. The monster let out a dusty roar and swung his arm. Éven flew across the warehouse and hit the wall with a terrible crack. He dropped down behind a cabinet and left a red smear on the wall, and the giant pounded after him.
The giant was going to kill him.
"Come after me," I yelled. "I'm the one you want. Come and get me."
The giant did not listen. It swung its club over its head.
I couldn't see Éven, but I had seen him fall. There was no way he would get up again in time. He was defenceless against the giant.
"I'm the one you want," I shouted again. "Come after me!"
The giant brought the club down with a thud. And another. And another.
My heart stopped. My blood ran cold.
The giant turned to look at me. Its club was stained red.
"Éven?" I shouted.
There was no sign of him. He did not get back up.
"Éven, are you there?"
I edged away. The giant roared again and came after me.
Éven had said that no-one could kill him this day. He was wrong. And I was next.
"Saxum. Stay your hand."
The voice came from behind me. The giant stopped. It set down its club and lowered its rocky head. I turned.
Lord Kain stepped in through the doors of the saw mill with a wretched sneer across his smug, awful face. I had never hated anyone as much as I hated him at that moment.
Kain took a vial of liquid from the folds of his coat and tipped the contents over Huracan. She shuddered and gasped for breath.
"Good morning, Ben Frazer," said Kain. "Your defender is gone. Your mother remains at our mercy. You will surrender quietly, I hope?"
I wanted to run at him and choke the breath from his lungs, but I knew I couldn't take him, and it would only get Mum killed.
For her sake, I surrendered.
* * *