Read The City's Son for Free Online Page B

the gravel near her head.
    ‘Well, you look dead.’ The voice had a tinge of an East End accent. ‘But you don’t smell dead, and if that’s a heartbeat I’m hearing then you don’t sound dead neither.’
    A hand slipped behind her shoulders, another cupped her head and she was hoisted onto her feet. ‘Up on yerpins, come on.’ The boy helped her to steady herself, then stood back. He frowned, leaning against his railing.
    He looked about sixteen, but it was difficult to be sure because his eyes sat in deep pits and his cheeks were sharp to the point of looking starved. The skin stretched over his ribs was a mottled grey, as though he’d soaked up the soot and oil from the city and been permanently stained. He looked like a street-urchin from one of those old books, but wilder, more feral, and halfway to being grown-up.
    Beth stared at him, wide-eyed and confused. She looked around, but there was no sign of the train-beast. ‘Where’d it go?’ she asked, breathless. It felt like a more urgent question than her planned follow-up: Who the hell are you?
    ‘The Railwraith?’ he said. ‘I earthed it, spread the charge out through the ground.’ He shrugged ruefully. ‘Should’ve thought of it sooner, I s’pose, but when something that big and angry comes rushin’ out the dark at you, first instinct’s to stick it with something sharp, know what I mean?’
    He squinted at her critically as she stared at him, then he laughed. ‘Second thought, maybe you don’t. What in Thames’ name d’you think you were doing, yelling at it like that? Trying to reason with it? You think Bahngeists can talk ?’
    Beth spread her hands helplessly.
    Droplets of petrol-hued sweat stood out on the boy’s bizarrely coloured skin, etching paths around starkly defined muscle, tendon and bone.
    ‘You’re weird ,’ he said. He stared at her for a few more seconds like she was a particularly freakish museum exhibit, then he snorted and stomped past her towards the edge of the viaduct.
    ‘Wait!’ Beth called. ‘Wait, where are you going?’ He ignored her and Beth had to run to catch him up. She became suddenly and painfully aware of the bruises covering her legs and back.
    ‘You can’t just go – hey, I’m talking to you!’ She caught his arm. ‘I saved your life back there …’ She stumbled as he suddenly spun round.
    His teeth were bared like a hissing, feral cat. ‘Yeah?’ he snapped, ‘well, I saved yours first, and the way things are going I reckon my achievement’s gonna last a lot longer than yours does.’
    Dawn was just beginning to seep in at the edge of the sky and in the half-light Beth could see the tension around the boy’s eyes. He scowled, trying to look fierce, and her fear faded: for the first time he wasn’t some alien, cocksure street-creature but a teenager, frightened out of his wits.
    ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she asked softly. ‘What are you so scared of?’
    ‘I’m not scared.’
    Beth just kept looking at him.
    ‘I don’t see what business it is of yours,’ he said after a long pause, ‘but that Railwraith was sent – sent for me. Somebody’s trying to kill me, somebody who—’ He brokeoff and looked nervously at the horizon, where the dome of St Paul’s breached the skyline. Cranes clutched at it like cruel metal fingers.
    ‘Trust me,’ he muttered, ‘if he wanted you dead, you’d be brickin’ it too.’ He fell silent, squinting suspiciously at a pigeon flapping overhead.
    ‘And?’ Beth asked.
    ‘And what?’ He looked at her sullenly.
    ‘Who’s trying to kill you?’
    ‘Why do you care?’
    ‘Why do I care ?’ Beth was taken aback by the question. ‘I … I just—’
    He shoved his railing in between the tracks and folded his arms. The fear she’d seen vanished, hidden behind a veneer of bravado. ‘Yeah?’
    ‘Look—’ Beth gritted her teeth. He might have rescued her from being crushed, burned and electrocuted, but his high-and-mighty