Dark Eden

back
from
?’
    But David stepped in before I got an answer.
    ‘Never mind that now. Tell us what you mean by
killer
John?’
    Mehmet gave a weird little smirk. His head was cradled against his big fierce auntie’s enormous breasts – she’d pushed her way through the Guards like they were little kids – and he had other Batwing people standing round him, stroking him and touching him like they couldn’t believe he was real. He could tell he wasn’t in danger now and he was enjoying the attention and the power he had over us all.
    ‘Oh, didn’t you know, David?’ he asked. ‘Didn’t you know that John did for your friend Dixon Blueside? Speared him from behind when he was trying to get back here. And Gerry and Harry – you know, Gerry Redlantern and big old, dumb old Harry Spiketree – they did for the other two that Dixon had with him. Harry did for John Blueside. And Gerry, well, I’m afraid Gerry did for his own groupmate Met.’
    Oh Gela’s crying eyes! What a thing Mehmet had let loose! We’d guessed that something bad had happened, something bad enough to make whole bunch of them suddenly head off up to Dark, but we’d never known what that something was. Now John Blueside’s mum, and all the rest of Blueside group too, began to yell and bellow across the clearing at Redlantern and Spiketree, pushing forward against Guards, who held them back with the sticks of their spears.
    And Met’s mum, my own cousin Candice, turned on me.
    ‘
No, no, no, no, no, no!
’ she screamed. ‘I hate Gerry, I hate him, I hate him, I hate him.’
    She snatched at my eyes with her nails like a tree fox, scratching my face so I bled. People pulled her off me then, but she carried on screaming. Other people were joining in too, screaming and screaming: Blueside people screaming at Spiketree and Redlantern people, Redlantern people screaming at one another, all in the little fuggy space of the clearing with the thick fug all around and the fake Circle in middle of it all.
    And then Suzie Fishcreek’s mum finally heard in her mind what her ears had heard a little while ago. Suzie was dead. Her daughter had been torn apart by a white leopard that lived in Dark and the snow. Over all the other screaming and shouting, she let out one single horrible high-pitched shriek.
    ‘
Silence!
’ bellowed David.
    Everyone was quiet.
    ‘Silence,’ he said again, glaring round at us.
    Gela’s eyes, I’m a batface too and I’m no beauty myself, but he looked ugly
ugly.
    ‘Screaming and yelling won’t solve anything,’ David said. ‘What’s needed now is to get that killer John and spike him up, just like I always said we should. Him and his creepy friend Gerry and that baby-man Harry. You all thought I was being hard, but if we’d spiked Juicy John up when I first suggested it, there’d be four people alive now who are all dead. This time we’re going to do it my way.’
    ‘Yes, but they’re right across the other side of Snowy Dark,’ I whispered to myself. ‘Thank Gela, they’re
far
away from here. David is only play-acting. There’s nothing he can really do.’
    ‘Yes, John is a killer,’ Mehmet said. ‘He could have killed any of us. That’s the only reason I went with him over the top in the first place. I didn’t want to go. I spoke out against it. I told him I didn’t agree with the killings. But . . .’
    David took no notice of any of this.
    ‘You bring us down some of those buckhorses of yours, Mehmet, if you really want to be our friends. And bring us some of those warm wraps. And show us the way the others went over the mountains.’
    ‘Oh yes, I will,’ Mehmet said. ‘I surely will. I don’t want to break with Family. We Tall Tree people don’t want to break with Family. One of us was a cousin of John Blueside, don’t forget, and three of us grew up with him and Dixon Blueside in their group. We want to get back at their killers as much as you do.’
    ‘Then maybe we can sort something,’ David said, ‘us and you. Maybe you can be part of Family again.’
    ‘I don’t think that’s down to you, David,’ came Caroline’s voice from behind him. ‘It’s for Council to decide things like that, Council and me as Fam . . .’
    ‘Bucks and wraps and information,’ David said to Mehmet, completely ignoring Caroline – and from that moment on, we lost any last notion we had that her or Council counted for anything at all – ‘bucks and wraps and information. That’ll show us