They turned at that point and kept moving towards another tunnel, blocked off with debris left from builders. Old bags of sand and cement, strips of plastic piping, tools and ladders lay abandoned and as the Watchers went past, they kept walking along the tunnel getting darker the further they went. Two more lanes turned left and right, but before them, a sign propped up on disused bricks read No Entry. No personnel beyond this point.
The Watchers went that way.
Another thirty metres along, the roof of the tunnel changed. Below a vaulted ceiling of fine artistry with moulded curves like a bishop’s mitre, they dipped and turned as they walked among crumbling pillars where they came to a standstill inside the vault.
“We must be under Imber’s old church,” Tom said. “I saw the steeple when we drove in.”
Row-upon-row of crypts covered in dust and dirt and cobwebs didn't bother Mia one bit. But then the notion of becoming so sceptical about something that normally would have frightened the hell out of her freaked her out. What was left for her to be scared of?
She heard a voice. It was Uriel. “There is a stone crypt at the far side. Go to the end of it where it meets the wall and look left. Hurry!”
Tom went first and Mia followed him as they went straight to the spot as the Watchers had instructed, and as they turned their heads left, they saw sideway steps disappearing into the wall. It was the same illusion as the other entrances in Caer Sidi, except this was made from the bare bricks and plaster of the vault beneath the church and was just as mystical as the first one they’d experienced.
Mia went through and arrived at the other side. It was as tantalisingly amazing as the others and that was something she would never take for granted.
The Watchers came through just after them, carrying their dead. Mia and Tom stepped aside as they moved forward into the tunnel leading to the otherworld. Now, they all trundled through passages of solid white chalk where the dust from its walls sat in mounds on the ground, dirty and spent.
Up ahead the Watchers were slowing down. They were running out of energy. Then, as the tunnel led to a chamber that glowed white, looking as bright as the sun scorching sand on a beach, the air spirits came. They formed dark clouds above their heads. They were mourning, gently sobbing, and their robes were grey like the bricks in the tunnel under Salisbury plain. They lifted the Angel from the arms of his brothers and as if he was weightless, they carried him away.
Mia saw Uriel use his arm to support himself on the wall of the cavern. His shoulders were drooped and his head hung until his jaw rested on his chest. She went to his side as the others waited. “I will fall last. My brother will be next and then we will all expire one after the other.”
Mia's tears flowed freely. It was all too much. "No, Uriel," she whispered, "There must be something..."
“Come,” he said as he began to move. Mia watched as they walked without their brother in a group of six, looking as unnatural as a digit missing from a set of fingers on a maimed hand.
in the magical world of Caer Sidi, the Watchers received their dead. Arriving there was a solemn occasion, unlike before when Tom and Mia saw the otherworld for the first time. Varquis and a group of maidens of Avalon were there, led by Rhiannon in all her regal greatness. She was different this time. She looked as if the essence of her whole being had left her, her radiance diminished by the loss of an Angel.
Mia watched her bow down, leaning across the body of the lifeless white Angel as her white shimmering gauze-like robe trailed in the sand on the beach. Two handmaidens stepped forward with cloths soaked in salt water from the sea. They kneeled alongside her and washed the blood from the Angel's lifeless face, cleaning him as he was being prepared for burial. When they had finished, and when the other Watchers around the city had acknowledged the one now deceased, Uriel and his five brothers picked up the body once more, lifting him aloft like grim pallbearers. Solemnly, they walked towards the spiralling castle of Caer Sidi.
Rhiannon spoke to Uriel as he went past. "We have prepared the room for you." Then the handmaidens followed them in a procession of mourners.
Mia stepped forward to speak to her. “Where are they going? What’s going to happen now?”
Rhiannon placed a hand on her shoulder to prevent her from following the group going towards the castle. “They will rest now, like brothers side by side and then when the time comes they will expire.”
“When the time comes? How long? When?” Mia was finding it hard to accept that moment of death. It was something she had never experienced before, not even with a loved one.
Rhiannon began to move away. “You must accept this. There is nothing you can do.” She took one more glance at Mia and Tom and then she left them on the beach, just as a lone turtle dived into the sea.
Then they heard a voice behind them. “There is something.”
It was Jesus.
Chapter 56
At three aM, the Prime Minister’s convoy drove slowly along Whitehall. Only army personnel and essential rescue services remained, clearing the aftermath of what had become, and what would be known in the future as, the night of the War of the Angels.
The route they had taken from the West through the capital had already been cleared of carnage for the purpose of the Prime Minister’s entourage and protection detail. All other roads were still closed, no access allowed, in or out. Everywhere leading to Whitehall, Angels were piled in the gutters, looking like dead birds with dried blood marring their once magnificent feathers.
Keri felt sick at the sight of their lolling heads, which she could only liken to dead chickens after their necks had been broken. Their eyes were blank and staring and their chests were no longer pumped up and breathing. Their limbs draped one over the other, and their wings, some broken and contorted, covered the angel beneath them as if they were already buried and gone. Somehow it seemed wrong that the angels had been mixed. The white with the black. The good with the bad.
Keri turned to Alice Burton, only now stirring from her two-hour sleep. The Prime Minister looked haggard and drawn, not from the burden of what was happening across the world, but because she hadn’t yet sat in front of a mirror. She frowned as if she had a raging headache and as she combed her fingers through the back of her hair, she looked out through the darkened windows to the streets of London where the scene of carnage was laid bare. “Oh my God.”
“It’s the end of the world,” Keri whispered as she held Sarah’s sleeping form. She was glad the little girl wasn’t awake to see outside. If it was hard enough for Keri to see. How would it be for her?
“No, it’s not the end of the world, Keri,” Alice Burton said, once more completely sure of herself and everything she believed in. “It was one night of craziness that no one will ever be able to explain, but now it’s over. We can go back to normal once this is cleared up.”
Keri gasped. “Normal? How will any of us be normal ever again?”
Alice shrugged as she picked up her phone and pressed some buttons. “Damn, I forgot we ordered lock down.”
“Lockdown?”
"Hmm…?" she said lazily as if she was just waking up to a normal day. She threw her phone into her bag and leaned forward to the driver. Harry had been replaced by two men in black and he was now travelling in the car behind. "How are we going to communicate, John?"
The one sitting next to the driver spoke for the first time since last night when he’d stepped into the car. “The ministry will hook us up when we arrive, Madam Prime Minister.”
Alice looked at Keri, still awaiting an answer to her question. “The Internet has been completely shut down. Nobody will be able to contact anyone unless they have a security code. Everything will be monitored from here on in. We have to prevent a worldwide panic.”
Keri gasped. “But…no, you can’t do that.”
“We can do whatever we like,” Alice scoffed. “We’re the ones in control here, not the general public.”
Keri was incredulous. She h
ad always known communication was being restricted, but she didn’t know how far the leaders were willing to go. “How could you have instigated the scheme so quickly?”
“The plans were already in place for the future. The Americans designed it.”
“In place for the future of what?” Keri’s thoughts whirled around her tired mind. She had so many questions, she didn’t know where to start. “You didn’t know the Angels were coming…but wait…the Watchers…they were asking you to lay down your weapons…oh, my God. You had something else planned…something devastating to our planet. To the public…”
"Stop being so dramatic, Keri. You have no idea how much pressure I'm under." She straightened her back. "For now, the closure of the Internet is permanent. And entirely impenetrable, even for our nation's computer wizards."
“Oh, my God,” Keri gasped out loud. “How will I contact my friends? I need to get Elizabeth back…How will I contact…?”
“Is that all you can think about at a time like this? Your own needs!” Alice snapped. “You just concentrate on your job, Keri and leave the communication to the experts.”
“My job,” she spat. “I’d rather quit than forget about my daughter.”
Alice reached out her hand to place it on Keri’s arm. “I wouldn’t dear. Where you are right now…You’re in the best place you can be. You’ll be protected.”
“Protected? From what, the Angels?”
“No, dear,” Alice said pulling her hand away. “From the world outside.”
With a sickening, grief-stricken feeling in her stomach, Keri looked out of the window once more. They were going past Downing Street. "I thought we were going back to the residence."
“People will expect that. No, were going to a place where we will be safe.”
“Safe from whom? The world outside?”
“Of course, dear. There’ll be hell to pay soon.”
The escorts, two cars at the front and two behind, veered left to an underground car park designed for government personnel. Alice Burton’s car was securely placed in the middle of them, flanked on all sides by her walking entourage.
The Old War Office building, across the street from number ten was the best place to be now. Later, they’d go to Chequers, the Prime Ministers country estate, to the underground complex designed for comfort rather than a military base.
The public had been duped when the Old War Office where Sir Winston Churchill masterminded World War two manoeuvres had been put on the market and allegedly sold to property developers. They did no such thing. It was one of Alice Burton's ideas. Let the public think the government were selling off government buildings to aid the economy. It was gratefully received, especially when free food banks opened around the city. No one knew they had been privately funded. The public just loved a sob story, Alice pondered.
Now, the Whitehall building, with its eleven hundred rooms and two miles of corridors, housed everything the Ministry of Defence needed to execute the beginning of World War three. And execute it they would.
Keri watched the driver’s eyes stare out of the window, watching for a green light. When it lit up, he started the engine once more when two steel doors opened to allow them to move inside. It was a basement garage, but it was state of the art. The floor was like a giant computer screen, black and shiny each of the parking bays illuminated by floor lights with banks for charging the electric cars. Standing within each bay a military guard stood to attention as the car drove to the far end of the building. A neon green emblem appeared on the floor of a double width parking bay. It was the British Prime Ministers personal emblem, a traditional shield with two lions on hind legs, one white and one black and superimposed in its centre, an airbrushed image of Alice Burton smiling face. It was the height of tackiness as far as Keri was concerned. And so typical of her.
The screen on the wall in front of their parked car instructed them to step out and that the guards would escort them to the fifth floor. Keri had already woken Sarah and now the child was clinging to her hand in a daze from her disturbed sleep. The guards opened the doors. Alice was the first to alight. “Thank God we made it, she said to no one in particular. And to the guards she said. “Get me up to the fifth floor.”
Chapter 57
Jay could hear banging. He was at the top of Glastonbury Tor, trying to find his way into the tower. The windows were blocked off with iron railings, and there were twisting vines covered in red roses and thorns climbing all over it. He was clawing at the branches, making his hands bleed, and the thorns were lashing out, tearing his clothes and his face. The knocking was coming from somewhere inside the tower. He couldn’t reach it, he couldn’t...
"Hey, Yankee boy! Are you deaf? Wake up."
Jay shot up into a sitting position and without thinking about where he was, in a daze, he paced across the floor to the door and flung it open. Deprived of sleep, his eyes were forced open as he watched Maggie walk straight into the room where she flicked on the light. "About time."
“What’s up? What is it? What’s happening?” Everything was a blur.
“Time to go. It’s three already.”
He rubbed his face. “You mean three...in the middle of the night?”
“In the morning, idiot! Three in the morning.” Maggie went to his clothes flung over the back of a chair. She picked his shirt up. “You may want to put something on.”
He glanced down at his bare chest and boxer shorts. “What the hell are you doing here?”
"It's time to leave. Sunrise is at 4.43 precisely. It'll take us half an hour to get there, so get your skates on."
Jay walked to the bed and got back in. “Turn the light off and shut the door on your way out.” He pulled the sheet over his head.
He could hear a rustling of papers. Maggie was relentless. “I had a feeling I might need a bit more leverage to get you to go back, so I’ve brought this. And if this doesn’t convince you, I don’t know what will.”
Jay pulled his head out from under the sheet. “What is it?”
She was holding a map of a large circle with an inner circle and two further circles inside. All the dots forming the circles were numbered with tiny digits.
“What’s that?”
“Avebury, of course.” She pulled out another sheet. “Do you remember the Star of David formation over the white horses?”
“Yep, yep. Sure do.” The clock was ticking.
“So how about this?”
Jay took the sheet of paper and turned it so that North was pointed up. Over the map of Avebury, Maggie had charted the same Star of David over the numbered stones.
“Neat, huh?” Maggie tapped the picture. “This is the same design as the crop circle made in 2012 at Alton Barnes.”
“So?”
She did a double-take. “So...it’s significant. It must be.”
Jay rubbed his eyes with his free hand and glanced one more time at the clock. She had been there seven minutes exactly. “Honey, you’re so desperate to find the entrance to Avalon, you’ll believe anything.” She looked hurt, but he was past caring.
“Okay, so I know you don’t believe me, but I’m telling you, this is the portal we’ve been looking for.”
“Maggie...even if it was, what do you expect to find? You think the Watchers are just going to open up when you come a-knocking?”
“Oh, honey,” she imitated with a smooth western tone. “Haven’t you seen the news?”
"No, I like to sleep at night."
She picked up the remote next to his bed and flicked on the TV. “This was live two hours ago.”
Jay stared at the screen. He shook his head as he watched black Angels swarming over London, being shot at by military fire. He sat up and shook his head. “What the f…”
“Now do you believe me?”
When he looked at Maggie and saw the smug expression on her face, just for a moment he believed she’d instigated the whole thing; made it happen in that fantasy world of hers. And for a moment
he could have strangled the damn woman.
“Look,” she said as if she was reading his mind. “It’s the summer solstice and at the very centre of that star,” she tapped the map and the noise grated on his already shredded nerves. “is stone number 212. If I’m wrong...okay, nothing will happen and you’ll get the great experience of watching the new dawn. Americans like that sort of thing, no?”
“212 is the area code for Manhattan.” He had no idea why he’d said that. He must surely be catching his conspiracy theories from the Glastonbury witch, as he’d secretly dubbed Maggie.
Maggie gasped. “I didn’t think of that...You’re from New York. It’s a sign.”
"Christ, Maggie, you see too much into things." He would have laughed if he hadn't been so tired. "One thing I know about the human mind is that we all see what we wanna see. The number 212 means diddly squat!"
“But, if I’m right...stone 212 could be the key to it all.” Sitting at the side of the bed with her bright, hopeful eyes, Maggie looked like a young girl again. “So come on then. Move your lazy butt and get out of that bed.”
Chapter 58
When they arrived at the fifth floor, Alice was rushed through a reception area, as they were held to give a finger print ID. Everyone in the UK now had fingerprint ids. It was one of the previous PM's innovations, instigated with the purpose to control crime. They began the technique in the schools, claiming if there were any shoot-outs (aggrieved pupils using a rifle in a mass shooting of their fellow students) the victims and perpetrators could be quickly identified. The scheme did nothing to raise the confidence of security in schools, but it did provide the government with a starting place to instil their new policy. Soon, everyone on the electoral list had no choice to file their fingerprints if they wanted to vote. The public once again had no choice.
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