Louise Voss & Mark Edwards 3-Book Thriller Collection: Catch Your Death, All Fall Down, Killing Cupid. Mark Edwards

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       Dedication

      For the kids: Gracie, Ellie, Poppy and Archie.

       Prologue Sixteen Years Ago

      The world was on fire.

      Or maybe she wasn’t in the world any more. Maybe this was Hell. The heat, the taste of sulphur on her tongue, the sickness, the torment. Screams rang through the air, relentless, monotonous, a one-pitch yell of despair. She opened her eyes and saw a figure stooping over her; a hovering devil, with flaming red hair. She tried to shout but all that came out was a rasping noise, and the devil’s face was close, the brimstone smell of its breath in her nostrils.

      ‘Kate. Kate, get up. Come on.’

      She stared, blinked. Slowly, a face came into focus. Not a devil, but Sarah, her red-headed room-mate.

      Sarah pushed aside the thin sheet that covered Kate’s body and took her by the hands, pulling her up. Kate’s pyjamas were damp and cold, but her skin was desert-hot. Her fever was nearing 105 degrees. Sarah was in a similar state, but she’d been lying on top of her sheets, too ill to sleep.

      Kate’s bare feet touched the floor. It hurt. Everything hurt. Her body was a bruise, tender to the touch.

      ‘Come on.’

      Kate could still hear the screaming, and put her hands to her ears to block it out. She’d only ever felt this ill once before, as a child. She had the vaguest memory of a nurse with black skin and kind eyes sponging her down with cold, cold water which dripped down her narrow heaving chest, and soaked the waistband of her pyjama trousers. She’d cried, weakly, at the ordeal. Cried for her mother, even though her mother was already gone.

      She wished the nurse was here now, to cool her with water, to put out the fire that raged across her skin.

      Her eyes fixed on the curtains. At some time during the night, as she drifted in and out of feverish dreams, she had seen little men with malevolent eyes swinging on those curtains. Sarah opened the door and, holding each other up, they stepped into the corridor. Kate had a vague idea that she was supposed to be angry with Sarah but she couldn’t remember why.

      At the same time that Kate and Sarah left their room, another couple of young women emerged from the next room. Denise and Fiona, the Glaswegian girls they weren’t allowed to be in contact with, but had communicated with, talking and giggling like boarding school girls through the walls, figuring out ingenious ways to pass notes out of the windows, attached to the end of a cane Sarah had found in the Centre’s gardens.

      ‘Is it real?’ Fiona asked. Her voice was thick, her nose bunged up. Kate thought she was speaking a foreign language. Or maybe the language of Satan. What if these were all devils, taking her to be tortured, dragging her into Hell? She panicked and tried to pull away.

      Denise caught her and she nearly fell, but the Scottish girl managed to stop her from crashing to the floor.

      ‘It can’t be a drill,’ Fiona said, answering her own question.

      ‘Let’s just get out of here,’ said Denise, leading the way.

      She gripped Sarah by one hand and Kate, who kept pulling back, looking around her with wild eyes, by the other. Where was everyone else? Were they the last people left in the building?

      ‘We’re going to die,’ Kate said. ‘We’re going to die.’

      Denise shushed her. ‘No. We’re not. The exit’s just around this corner. Come on, Kate. We’re nearly there.’

      They turned the corner and came face to face with a wall of thick smoke.

      ‘Oh God!’

      Kate emitted a small yelp of fear and struggled, but Denise held tight. ‘Calm down.’

      They were all sweating now, as the corridors filled with heat, and the smoke pricked their eyes, bringing forth the tears. Four young women in their pyjamas; holding on to one another, paralysed by the most primitive fear of all.

      ‘We’ll have to go back,’ Denise said.

      They turned round and ran – even the sickly Kate and Sarah, with Denise and Fiona holding their hands. They heard a crack and a crash in the distance and suddenly smoke was filling the whole corridor, rushing up behind them, chasing and overtaking them. It caught them and, like drowning swimmers, they panicked and gulped in lungfuls of the stuff, acrid and bitter and lethal. Coughs racked their bodies.

      Sarah fell to her knees. Fiona stopped and tried to pull her back up. Denise let go of Kate so she could help, and as they struggled to get Sarah to her feet, Kate peered ahead. They were engulfed now, the smoke filling the whole corridor, and her eyes streamed as she tried to make sense of what she could see.

      There were figures coming at them through the smoke. The devils. Come to claim her. The screaming continued.

      One of the devils grabbed hold of her. She tried to fight but the devil was too strong. It lifted her and carried her deeper into the smoke. She kicked weakly. Each of her friends had been taken hold of too. She decided not to fight any more. She just wished she’d had a chance to say goodbye to Stephen.

      Stephen’s face was the last thing she pictured as she slipped into the welcoming darkness.

      When she came round she was lying on the grass outside. She lifted her head and saw that Sarah was lying nearby. Sarah lifted her arm and waved weakly. Kate tried to speak to her, but a moment later she passed out again.

      The СКАЧАТЬ