“That doesn’t mean to say he couldn’t control one if he wanted to,” Mason added. “He could tap into the Source and use the energy flowing through a vehicle’s individual parts to make it move. But it’s a lot less draining to control flesh and blood. He’d also get an energy boost from all of the negative emotions passing through the person he’s controlling.”
“Exactly,” Adam agreed. “Which is exactly what he did last night. He was on his own when he left the vicarage. He had things to do. But eventually he came back and fetched Simon.”
“Simon?”
“The vicar. He took him to the Post Office, and they stole the van. Obviously I couldn’t get too close, so I didn’t see exactly what happened. But they were in there longer than it took to break in and steal the van. I can only assume some of that time was taken up by the Raven forcing Simon to torture the dog.” He looked meaningfully at Martin. “Like we said earlier, he wouldn’t have done it himself. He’d have fed off the loathing and shame and anguish that a man of the cloth would have experienced in carrying out such a barbaric act.”
There was silence in the room for a few moments as they all let that thought sink in. Then Adam continued.
“Simon drove the van up to the farm. Obviously, I didn’t see everything because I was on foot. But I saw them turn into the farm entrance, and later I saw them come back on foot. After they’d gone back into the vicarage, I went up to the farm and looked around. That’s how I know the van was in the barn.”
“It’s not there now, though,” Martin told them.
“We know,” Claire said. “We’re pretty sure he’s used it to go to another part of the country. But he’ll be back.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because his home is on this same spot three hundred thousand years ago. And it’s a lot easier to cover distances in a motor vehicle on tarmac roads than it is over the sort of terrain he’s got to deal with there. He’ll want to go back from the village. Besides, he’s done this before. Betty Sullivan was his driver twenty-five years ago. And on previous visits he’s taken others, either to drive him or guide him through the intricacies of contemporary activities like buying rail tickets. Every time, he’s come back. And, having chosen the barn to hide in last night, the chances are he’ll hide it there again when he comes back.”
“Which, presumably, is where I come in?”
“It isn’t a coincidence that you’re staying at Forest Farm,” Adam said. “Something drew you there -”
“My dad was working there.”
“- and something made the McLeans invite you to stay there.”
“I think that might have had something to do with Tanya’s interest in blokes, to be honest.”
In most environments, he would have expected to see knowing smiles from the men. What little reaction he saw suggested pity more than anything else.
“These are all factors, Martin,” Adam went on. “And you could probably point to the troubles within the McLean marriage as well as the financial difficulties they face as being issues that support those factors. But it does beg the question as to why everything should fall into place now.”
“Coincidence?”
“If the Raven returns to the farm, you can decide for yourself whether it’s a coincidence or not.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Just be alert. And let us know if the Raven returns. That’s all. Don’t confront him, don’t try to intervene. We just need to be aware.”
“And what will you do?”
“Hopefully we do nothing. But we’ve got John and Ed here to help, and we can get others if we need them.”
Martin looked at Mason and Croft in turn, before looking at Adam again. “You made that sound as if they don’t belong here.”
Adam gestured to his wife and sister. “Normally there are just the three of us. John and Ed got here this morning.”
“From France?” Martin asked, surprised that they’d been able to get there so quickly.
“Yes. You saw them arrive.”
The surprise turned to confusion. “I’m sorry?”
“You were here when we all came back?”
The confusion evolved rapidly into bewilderment. “What are you talking about?”
“You were here, weren’t you? We saw you.”
That was true, he realised. He had been at the farm this morning. And they had appeared from nowhere. He thought he’d hidden himself well, but then he recalled Adam saying “Welcome back,” when they’d first arrived in the Land Rover. He clearly hadn’t hidden himself well enough. Or maybe no amount of hiding would have kept his presence away from them. Adam’s words started to make a kind of sense to him as other things began to click into place.
“Wait a minute. Did you say, when you all came back?”
“Yes. Claire and Jennifer and I had been to the Refuge. We thought it was best to report everything in person.”
“So you didn’t just telephone?”
“We don’t have a telephone.”
“And you definitely haven’t had time to fly over and back again. So how do you do it, then?”
“We have ways...” Adam deliberately tailed off.
“What, a kind of ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ arrangement?”
Unsurprisingly, none of them seemed to know what he was talking about, but in spite of that, he guessed he was on the right track.
“You’ve got something in that barn that allows you to travel to this Refuge, haven’t you?”
“Something like that,” Adam agreed. “But let’s not dwell on that. The main thing is that we’ve got access to more help if we need it.”
“And do you think you will need it?”
“We should all pray that we won’t.”
Part Four - Families and How to Survive
One
Yesterday had been a long day. Productive, but long. Roads were confusing to him, dark tracks that seemed to go on endlessly, jostling vehicles crowding them in a way he didn’t remember from his last visit. The journey had taken much longer than he expected, but he’d quickly realised that the vicar’s navigational skills were little better than his own. Even so, he knew he couldn’t manage it by himself, not over such a prolonged period of time.
Arriving at Aldermaston in the afternoon gave him a chance to survey the village and surrounding countryside. Then, when it was dark, he’d used the Amulet to travel a thousand years into the past. He didn’t know how long ago the Atomic Weapons Establishment had been there, so he played it safe. They drove a mile and a half across open grassland before returning to 1989, and the inside of a building within the AWE. Having bypassed the external security, completing the rest of their mission was relatively straightforward.
Even so, he’d been exhausted by the time they returned to the vicarage. There he’d slept, grateful for the soft warmth of the vicar’s bed. Physically re-charged, he’d then needed the psychic re-charge. Terror, abhorrence, frustration and guilt provided that for him in abundance. Energised, he was looking forward to tonight.
On previous visits, he’d spent much longer. Sometimes weeks and months had passed as he learnt what was on offer. And usually what he learnt had given him only limited advantages. But this had to have been the quickest visit yet, and surely he had the greatest prize. They called it a bomb. He didn’t know what that meant, but he’d seen enough to understand what it could do. There had been vague references to it last time he was here, so he knew it had potential. Now he knew more. The vicar had been able to show him pictures of its effects, and described the devastation caused by the two bombs dropped nearly fifty years earlier. He couldn’t pronounce the names of the places mentioned, and he didn’t really consider them important anyway. What was important was the death toll. Curiously, there didn’t appear to be any definitive numbers mentioned in the notes Cantor had been able to obtain for him. But with the lowest figures for one site being in the region of sixty thousand people and the other being ninety tho
usand, it was clear that the power this afforded him was beyond anything he could have previously imagined. For a start, he’d never encountered populations in his own time that came close to these numbers. So if he set one of these devices off, it would virtually guarantee that anyone and anything within a radius of a few miles would be destroyed. Even more importantly, the pain and suffering caused would generate massive amounts of psychic energy for him to tap into, boosting his personal power beyond anything he could have experienced before. Added to that, the after effects on survivors in a wider area would mean a continuing flow of that energy to him for years to come.
Such was his thinking, and thus the cause of his excitement. What he had yet to consider fully was how he was going to benefit from this death and destruction without putting himself in danger. In one sense, that didn’t matter. He had time on his side – literally. So he could consider how to resolve that issue later. The main thing was to have one of these bombs in his possession. And the thrill of that knowledge coursed through him, together with the anticipation of what he would find as he went still further forward in time.
Of course, he knew he couldn’t go too far forward. Although he didn’t know when it would happen, he had been told there was an end coming to the world. The cause was unknown to him, but it seemed reasonable to assume the ever increasing power of the weapons he was discovering would have something to do with it. With each leap in their development, he felt sure he was getting ever closer to that time, and as the rate at which their destructiveness escalated, he grew more cautious. His journeys forward in time grew shorter. There was no scientific calculation made, just a natural wariness. The sheer scale of the devastation this bomb could inflict suggested that the time was very near. Already he was contemplating a reduction in the number of years before he would return to the village. Maybe ten would be a safer option. Or maybe he should satisfy himself with the arms he had managed to accumulate so far.
In spite of his abilities, he was only human. When he learnt of the amulet’s existence, it came from the lips of a desperate creature who had managed to travel to a point where the Earth had already torn itself apart. What would be the point in going that far? He had used these trips through time to gather tools that would give him greater power at home. Of course, there appeared to be advantages to living in other periods of history, and he didn’t rule out returning to some of them. But there was something strangely comforting about the familiarity of his own time. Not that he needed to make any decisions right now about whether he should return to Ravens Gathering in the future.
Tonight, he would take the bomb home with him and add it to the growing collection of weapons he was accumulating. Before he did that, he needed to make his presence felt in the village. In a way, he knew he already had, but that was only in small ways. He had been drip-feeding his malevolence to the general population since he arrived here three days ago. It was the norm for him. The locals would be irritable, argumentative and malicious. Conflict would arise, and bloom outwards, much like the mushroom clouds he’d seen moving images of. And all he had to do was pause outside their homes and make those mental deposits.
Of course, he was also responsible for more obvious trauma. The tractor that had injured Peter Salthouse had been under his control, as had Simon Cantor when he butchered the dog.
The village was stirring, its misery rising. But tonight he would take things to the next level. Tonight he would have a reunion. He had acquaintances to renew, and the horror those people would feel should create more than enough energy to sustain him for several weeks to come.
As he walked up the track towards the barns, he was aware of the ravens. Some hovered overhead. Others perched on nearby fencing. There was no order to them yet, but that would come later when they all gathered at the clearing.
Beside him, the vicar stumbled along, filled with the anguish of having watched helplessly as his wife was raped. For now, he was needed. The bomb was too heavy for them to carry into the woods, so Cantor would drive the van to the clearing. Once it was in place, he would send for the old acquaintances. They would join him in the clearing before he returned home.
Everything was going according to plan. Until he reached the old outbuildings.
Two
The significance of the truck didn’t strike him at first. There was a large open space outside the buildings, and it didn’t seem unreasonable for it to be used to park a vehicle. It was when they opened the door to the old barn that he realised something was wrong. For a start, there was no sign of the van. Which meant there was no bomb.
Even though he knew the barn must be empty, he wasted half a minute or so roaming around it, peering into dark corners. He knew it wasn’t possible for the van to feel fear or, driven by that sensation, to sneak into the shadows and hide. Nevertheless, he searched, and with every passing second he felt tension rising inside himself. His breathing grew heavy, the sound more pronounced in the enclosed space.
Where was it?
He had picked this place because it was abandoned. The farmhouse was occupied, but it was clear that the building was unused - a fact that had been confirmed by Cantor. So how would anyone know about it?
Tension had already evolved into anger, which in turn was becoming a burning rage. After all the effort he’d expended, the energy he’d used up to get them into Aldermaston. It had left him drained, barely able to control the vicar for long enough to get them back here. And for what purpose? He was furious, desperate to find the source of his frustration so he could lash out at it.
No one knew about this hiding place. No one except him and Cantor.
It was a thought that brought him up sharply.
Cantor!
Rational thought was gone. The fact that the vicar had been secured in his own cellar all day was a detail that escaped him. He withdrew his knife from the sheath at his belt, turning as he did so. The blade plunged into Cantor’s stomach, and the sensation provided him with a release similar to the one he’d felt less than an hour ago with the vicar’s wife. He felt wetness on his hand, and the slickness spurred him on. The rage poured out of him as he ripped and slashed and tore at the man of God that he had possessed over the past few days. Even when he fell to the floor, all life draining from him, the Raven continued to stab, stopping only when he heard the door open wider.
Although there was no obvious indication that anyone was there, he knew it hadn’t been a gust of wind that widened the gap between door and frame. The movement had been too precise. And, more importantly, he could smell them. Sweat and fear are a potent combination.
Wiping the blade, he slipped the knife back into its sheath and stood up straight.
Two. He was sure there were two of them there. One on either side of the gap. The door itself was to the right of him. He stretched out his right arm, hand open, feeling air, heavy with latent energy, flow across his palm. Curling his fingers, drawing the Source in, he felt an intense surge of power build up, then twisted his hand outwards, palm directed at the door, and pushed. The distance between his hand and the door was a good twenty feet. The effect was as if he’d used a truck with a battering ram attached to the front of it. In an instant, the door exploded, splintering outwards, tearing into the soldier who was standing on the other side of it. He felt the soldier’s pain, fed on it. But only for a moment. Then all life expired from him. Fortunately, the other soldier must have seen enough in the dim light to know that his colleague had been literally torn apart in the blast. The Raven tasted the revulsion and terror that came from that quarter. Already, he was striding towards the doorway, his right hand directed at the wall that was shielding the survivor. His movement gave him momentum, just as his anger did, and the energy he was drawing from the frightened young soldier. From fewer than ten feet, he let loose another blast, punching a hole in the brick wall. Naturally, it wouldn’t break as easily as a wooden door, but the hole was about two feet square and at chest height. He heard the scream from the other side
of the wall, and the clatter of something metallic hitting the ground, together with the unmistakable heavier thump of a body.
When he stepped out of the building, he could see the vague outline of a man lying down. It was misshapen, partly due to the section of wall lying across his upper torso, and partly because of the fact that his torso was flatter than it should have been. Black liquid was pooling at his side.
He didn’t need to see the soldier’s eyes to know he was afraid. That fear was pulsating out towards him. Fear of death, fear of further injury, fear of the pain that was already more intense than anything he’d ever felt in his life. Even – and this was something the Raven couldn’t begin to comprehend – fear of letting his comrades down.
“Pathetic fool,” he muttered. He had no intention of inflicting any further damage to him. To do that would kill him, and the Raven couldn’t feed off a dead man. He walked on, heading for the track. Not that he knew where he was going to go, or what he was going to do exactly. But he knew that staying here would serve no purpose.
There were lights on in the farmhouse. He could see them over the wall that stood between the house and the track. Maybe the people inside there could enlighten him about how the van and bomb had been discovered. And more importantly where it was, so he could go and retrieve it. He closed his eyes, allowing his mind to focus on the house and the other minds in it. It took a few moments for him to find them. One was dormant – sleeping, he supposed. The others were in different parts of the house. He felt some conflicting emotions coming from one of them. A little more pain for him to draw on.
Then the thoughts changed, and he heard them as if they were being spoken in his own head.
What a relief that they had managed to move the bomb and take it back where it had come from.
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