Heatwave by Oliver Davies (the red fox clan txt) 📗

TV,” Jules said, and I turned slowly back to face him. They hadn’t made another attempt to grab me yet, but I had no doubt that their intentions towards me weren’t good.

“What do you want?” I said, working hard to keep my voice steady. My heart was thumping, but not from exercise this time.

“Nope, you’re not the one asking questions, mate,” he said, sneering the last word. “Not this time. You come to my house, you steal our stuff. Did you think we weren’t gonna be mad about it? Did you think, what, that we couldn’t touch you?”

He laughed, hard and mean. I cursed him in my head and hoped that my call through to the station had arrived before Jules had broken my phone and that someone would take it seriously enough to send someone out. When Sam and I had gotten together, I’d intended to spend more time in the gym with her, where she did frequent boxing training. I’d not kept up with it, preferring to run outside rather than sweat inside boxing gloves. I was regretting it now, even though my odds against ten or so riled up young men would have been awful, anyway.

I’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell, I thought bitterly.

The only options seemed to be to run or to talk my way out of it, but I couldn’t see either of them working. They had me well surrounded and, though I was a good deal taller than many of them, I didn’t doubt that they could stop me if I tried to shove my way out of the circle they had me trapped in.

“Alistair Pumphrey, right?” I said, half-desperately. Jules had wanted me to respond to him, no doubt, but I was focusing on the fourteen-year-old for now. “You’ve been missing for over a week.”

The kid looked at me dully. His face was pale, but he didn’t look malnourished or even particularly tired. His dark hair looked recently washed, and he was wearing clothes that fit him. All signs pointing to a child who was living somewhere he could look after himself or where someone else was taking care of him.

“Where’ve you been?” I demanded. “Your parents were worried you were dead.”

The teens, perhaps predictably, laughed at that.

“You missing your mum, Ali?” one taunted before others launched into similar, unoriginal jokes.

My attention stayed on Alistair, and I realised I’d judged it wrongly when his expression darkened. The kid might’ve possibly been my only ally, but I’d embarrassed him by mentioning his worried parents. He wouldn’t lift a finger for me now if he’d ever been planning to.

Jules slung an arm over Alistair’s shoulders and gave me a cold, sharkish smile. Alistair’s expression didn’t change, staying eerily flat.

“Ali can go home anytime he wants. What did y’think? That we were keeping him locked up in some cellar or something?” He gave a sharp laugh.

Alistair shrugged his shoulders, brushing Jules off. I half expected the older teen to ignore the movement, but Jules backed off and gave the kid his space.

“You’ll gain nothing from attacking me,” I tried to reason with them. “In fact, the police don’t take kindly-”

Jules swore at me. “I don’t care what you pigs want. You’re the middle-aged jerk tryna hunt us down. We’re not doing any harm!” He twisted his lips into a grin. “Not much, anyway.”

“The focus on you will double if you start targeting police officers.”

It was a struggle to keep my tone neutral, and sweat made my back itch. I kept glancing past the teens’ heads, hoping to see red and blue lights come blinking round the corner or hear the wail that signalled help was coming, but neither was forthcoming.

“We’re not intimidated by you,” Alistair said, to my surprise. His voice was thin, but it carried, and there was a thread of absolute certainty in it that sounded unnervingly adult coming from a young teenager.

“Do you understand the conse-?” I started, knowing that it was useless but unable to stop myself from trying.

Threatening them wasn’t working; they were too proud. Jules couldn’t back down from attacking me now, not in front of all of his followers, and I didn’t know how to change his mind. The end of this encounter felt inevitable, and it was making my legs feel unsteady.

“Shut up,” Alistair said, and Jules didn’t stop him. For all that I’d pegged the tall, blond boy as the leader, all the teens listened when Alistair spoke, and Jules didn’t talk over him. “You’ve got no power here. You’ve got no power over this city. The police are weak, and we’re going to show everyone.”

A shudder went down my neck at his words and the dark look on his pale face, his eyes seeming black. All the beauty had gone out of the summer evening, and the light, previously golden to my eyes, now seemed sickeningly tinted. The stifling, orange glare from a distant fire.

“We don’t need an army to show how useless you are,” Alistair went on. Unlike Jules, there was no sneer or visible emotion in his tone, just a cold deadness. “But we have an army, anyway. You don’t understand now, Darren Mitchell, but you will.”

The shorter boy gave Jules a nod, seemingly of permission, before he turned and walked away, leaving the circle that had been surrounding me. I tensed rigid, knowing even before Jules stepped forwards what was going to happen. They were done talking.

The police weren’t the first to find me. Instead, a young couple came to my aid, calling an ambulance for me. My thoughts drifted and slipped away as the paramedics arrived, and time seemed to jump forwards and stop at random. Sharp moments of pain cut through, but the rest of the time was fuzzy.

I thought about how I needed to call Sam because she’d be worried. I thought about how mad Stephen was going to be and that Gaskell would be disappointed to see me in hospital again. It didn’t register till later that Gaskell