Darkest Hour (Age of Misrule, Book 2)

by Mark Chadbourn

  “I bet he had a good fairy laugh at all that,” she said bitterly.

  “No, actually. He said his people always looked after young lovers. ‘Simpletons and those in love,’ that’s what he said.” He laughed. “Same thing, I suppose. Anyway, I told him I was going to leave town and he said not to worry, everything was going to be all right for us.”

  “So where was he just?”

  Lee looked troubled. “I don’t know. He’s been in there every time I’ve been in recently. Maybe he doesn’t appear if there’s more than one person …” His voice faded away as he recognised how stupid he sounded. “Or maybe all the stuff with Mick really has turned my brain to jelly.”

  “Jelly boy!” She danced a few steps ahead before he could pinch her; instead he swore forcefully. “Okay, okay!” she laughed. “But there’s one thing I never could quite work out as a girl. Can you really trust fairies?”

  From the darkened lounge Mick Jonas watched his stepson and the Paki bitch step into the shed, obviously for a quick touch-up, and he was still watching when they headed back towards the road. He quickly switched on his mobile phone and hit the speed dial. “They’re on their way now,” he said in his thick Birmingham accent. “Follow ‘em till they’re outside Brum then get ‘em off the road. You can do what you like to the cunt, but just give our Lee a good fucking hiding. Teach him a lesson.” He listened to the voice on the other end for a second, then added, “If you want to use a can of fucking petrol on her, pal, you do it. Just make sure Lee doesn’t get burned up. The old woman would kill me.”

  He switched off the phone and lit a cigarette before lowering his overweight frame into the frayed armchair he had made his own. He felt a triumphant burst, that he’d got one over on his lefty, Paki-loving stepson who thought he was so fucking superior. But Mick had seen him sneak the suitcase out and store it in the boot of his old banger. He knew what the little shit was planning.

  He closed his eyes and sucked deeply on the cigarette, enjoying the moment and the certain knowledge that a blow had been struck against the fucking multicultural society. But when he opened his eyes a moment later he was almost paralysed by shock. Through the window he could see something moving rapidly across the lawn from the bottom of the garden. He couldn’t tell what it was-its shape seemed to be changing continuously and his eyes hurt from trying to pin it down-but it was horrible. The scream started deep in his throat, but it hadn’t reached his mouth before the window had imploded, showering glass all around him. And then it was on him.

  Maureen and Kelly returned from the local five minutes later. They tiptoed through the front door, just in case Mick was dozing after a few pints. They’d both pay the price if they woke him. But the moment she was across the threshold, Maureen had the odd feeling something was wrong. There was a strained atmosphere, like just before a storm, and an odd smell was drifting in the air. While Kelly went to the bathroom she crept into the lounge to investigate.

  The first thing she saw was the broken window and felt the glass crunching underfoot. Her mind started to roll: burglars; some of those shabby youths who didn’t like Mick’s little club.

  And then she looked into Mick’s armchair and at first didn’t recognise what she was seeing. It was black and smoking and resembled nothing more than a sculpture made out of charcoal. A sculpture of a man. And then she looked closer and saw what it really was, and wondered why the armchair hadn’t burst into flames as well, and wondered a million and one other things all at once.

  And then she screamed.

  “I don’t believe we did it!” Lee was bouncing up and down with excitement in his seat as the car pulled on to the M6 heading south.

  “Well, your fairy told us, didn’t he?” Sunita said with a giggle.

  He gave her thigh a tight squeeze. “This is about us now. We can do anything we want. We can really enjoy ourselves, just the two of us. God, I love you!”

  She smiled and blew him a kiss. “Things are strange right now, aren’t they?” she said dreamily as she stared out of the passenger window into the night. “People seeing all those weird things. You and the fairies. Uncle Mohammed having those dreams that came true.”

  “Maybe it’s a sign.”

  “Of what?”

  “I don’t know. Of hope. That things are going to get better.”

  She shook her head, her smile not even touching on the endless happiness she felt. “You’re a hopeless romantic.”

  And the road opened up before them.

  chapter one

  what now my love

  moke still billowed up from the ruins of the Kyle of Lochalsh across the water, sweeping a curtain of grey across the bright moon. Here and there small fires continued to burn like Will-o’-the-Wisps. The night was thick with the reek of devastation and despair, the smell of a world winding down.

  Jack Churchill, known to his friends as Church, sat on the sea wall at Kyleakin next to Laura DuSantiago, and together they surveyed what little of the carnage they could make out on the mainland. It provided an odd counterpoint to the tranquillity that came from the gently lapping waves and the wind which blew through the deserted village. They were both exhausted after the nerve-racking journey across Skye in an abandoned car they had found in Kil- muir. The oppressively claustrophobic atmosphere was brought down by their fears of an ambush at every bend in the road, and magnified by the eerie stillness of the surrounding countryside, devoid of any sign of human life; it had been eradicated as easily and completely as a germ culture on a microscope slide. Nor were there any bodies; whatever the Fomorii had done with the former inhabitants did not bear considering. By the time they reached Kyleakin they had to accept that the Fomorii had deemed them too small a threat to pursue them any longer, and somehow that was even more jarring than the constant fear of attack. They were worthless.

  “Well, it could be worse.” Laura brushed a stray strand of dyed-blonde hair out of her eyes as she shuffled into a more comfortable position on the wall.

  Church, his dark hair emphasising the paleness of his wearied face, looked at her askance. “How could it possibly be worse?”

  “We could be going to work tomorrow.”

  She kept her gaze fixed firmly across the water, but Church had learned to read the humour in her deadpan expression. Their relationship, if that was what it was, still surprised him. He wasn’t quite sure how he felt about her. On the surface they had nothing in common, but deep down it seemed that something had clicked; after so long in the emotional ice-field following Marianne’s death it felt good to reconnect with another human being, and the sex had been great. He hoped it was more than a simple alliance forged through the desperation of terrifying times, but there was no point losing sleep analysing it; it would find its own level soon enough, he was sure of it. Cautiously he reached out and took her hand. She was so unpredictable he half-expected her to snatch it away and accuse him of being a romantic idiot, but her fingers closed around his, cool and comforting.

  “Do you think the others have forgiven me for screwing up so badly?” he asked. The notion drove a pang of guilt through him.

  “They didn’t give it a second thought. They might look like morons, but they can see you’re all right. For a dickhead. And let’s face it, you only acted like a human being. One who doesn’t tell his friends anything, but a human being nonetheless. Who’s going to fault you for that?”

  Despite her words, Church couldn’t stop the guilt growing stronger. The Tuatha De Danann had been right in their brutal assessment of his worth; it was his own weaknesses that had dragged them down. If he had told the others about the visitations of Marianne’s spirit, about the Kiss of Frost that had corrupted him and brought about the Danann’s contempt, the world might have been saved.

  “Did you ever hear Beyond the Sea?” he asked, staring into the chopping black waves.

  “Is that by one of those dead, old white guys you enjoy so much? Some Sinatra shit?”

  “Bobby Darin.” He d
idn’t rise to the bait. “It’s the best metaphor for death I’ve ever heard. Just a simple little song, but when you think about it in those terms it becomes almost profound.” He sang a few bars: “Somewhere beyond the sea, somewhere waiting for me, my lover stands on golden sands. So sad, but so optimistic. I’d never really thought about it like that until just now, you know, about it talking about what lies beyond death-“

  “Or it could just be a simple little song.” The comment would normally have been concluded with some note of mockery or contempt, but when none came he turned to look at her. Laura’s face was still and thoughtful, and when she spoke again her voice was uncommonly hesitant. “How do you feel?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All that stuff floating around inside …” She was skating around the edge of an issue that was so monumental it was almost impossible to put it into perspective.

  “I feel okay, under the circumstances. Different, though I’m not sure how. Sometimes I get a wave of cold when the Fomorii corruption seems to get the upper hand. Sometimes I feel like I’ve got liquid gold in my veins, thanks to whatever the Danann did to me. The rest of the time I just feel like me.”

  “Must be a real head-fuck to die and get reborn.”

  “Yes.” In his darker moments he wondered if it meant he was still human, still alive, even, in any sense that people understood. How could you die and then come back? What scars did that leave on the soul, if such a thing existed? And what did it mean for the rules that were supposed to give a structure to existence? He combatted such black thoughts by trying to consider his rebirth an opportunity to leave the past and all his weaknesses behind, to become something much more valuable. It was the only way to stop himself from cracking up.

  “When you died, you know, what was it like? Inside?” It was obvious Laura wasn’t about to let the subject drop. Though her face remained impassive, there was a deep gravitas at the back of her eyes that showed how much the issue meant to her.

  He threw his mind back to when he was lying half in the stream, his blood mingling with the water, his body racked with pain. “Like slipping into a hot bath and just carrying on down and down.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “And after that?”

  He winced. “I don’t remember.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  His sigh was uncomfortable. “Just fragments … nothing that makes sense. And it’s all breaking up like a dream after you wake.”

  “But you remember something?”

  “Just something that looked like a big church.” There was a sharpness to his voice that he regretted, but couldn’t control. “Or a cathedral. Massive, going right up past the clouds. That’s it.”

  “Okay, I won’t bug you about it any more.” She made to leave, but he caught her arm and pulled her back. She gave a wry smile. “Getting frisky?” Before he could answer, she pushed him back off the wall and followed him down.

  “You ever wonder why there aren’t any bodies?” Ryan Veitch put his street-hard shoulder muscles to the rear door of the grocery shop and heaved one final time; it burst open with a crack.

  “I don’t want to think about that.” Ruth Gallagher looked around uncomfortably. Even though she knew they were the only ones in the area and that the laws of the land probably didn’t hold much sway any longer, she still didn’t feel right breaking and entering.

  Veitch didn’t have any such qualms. His increasingly long hair hid his expression from her as he headed through the doorway, but she could have sworn he was actually enjoying it. Inside the store her fears were confirmed when the makeshift torch illuminated his hard, handsome features; he was grinning. “I’ll be happier when the power comes back on,” he said.

  “Maybe it’s gone for good this time,” Ruth said morosely, as she reluctantly followed him in. Cartons of tins and breakfast cereals were piled around and it smelled warmly of fruit and bread. “Enough of the talk. Just get the provisions we need and let’s get out of here.”

  “I like to talk. Anyway, who’s going to rumble us here?”

  Ruth pushed past him with a flick of her head that sent her long, brown hair flying. She began to fill a dustbin bag with packets of muesli. “Perhaps we should leave a note for the owner. Tell him why we took the stuff. Offer to pay him back-“

  Veitch gave a derisory snort. “You’re living in cloud cuckoo land, you. Get real. He’s not coming back. None of the poor bastards are. The Fomorii have hauled them off to their larder.”

  Ruth glared at him, but his words made her feel numb and she quickly returned to her petty pilfering.

  Veitch helped her halfheartedly and then said out of the blue, “Are we going to start getting on?”

  “We’re stuck in this together. We don’t have any option.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Well-“

  “No, listen to me. I know I’ve done some bad things in my life, but you can’t keep on blaming me for what happened to your old man-“

  “How can you say that! You shot my uncle!” As she turned to face him her elbow clipped a box of Special K and sent it flying across the storeroom; all the emotions which she had bottled up for so long rumbled to the surface. She fought to hold back tears that seemed to come too easily, then said, “I’m sorry. I heard what the Danann said-“

  “That’s right! It wasn’t my fault. They made me do it, like they made all of us suffer.”

  Ruth remembered the horror she felt when the Danann explained how all five of them had been forced to experience death as some sort of preparation for the destiny that had been mapped out for them.

  “I might be a stupid little two-bit crook, but I’ve never killed anybody in my life before!” Veitch continued. “I’m not that kind of bloke. I wish you could know how much it screwed me up when I saw I’d shot your uncle …” He winced at the memory. “Listen, all I want to do, all I’ve ever wanted to do in my life, is do something that’s right, you know what I mean? Be a good guy for a change. But even when I try, it seems to go wrong. I just want a chance to show what I can do.”

  His pleading was so heartfelt, Ruth couldn’t help feeling sympathy.

  “Because I like you,” he continued. “I like all of you. You’re all trying to do the right thing, whatever it might mean to you, and I’ve never been around people like that before. I don’t want you all thinking bad of me all the time.”

  Ruth read the emotions on his face for a long moment, then returned to her packing. “Okay,” she said. “I forgive you. But it’s not going to be forgotten just like that-“

  “I know. I just want a chance.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  She could feel him staring at her like he couldn’t believe what she had said, and then he started loading up his bag with gusto. Once they’d got everything they might need for a few days, they headed back out. As they slipped away from the shadows at the back of the shop, a dark shape flashed out of the sky and circled them, drawing closer. Veitch was instantly alert, ready for defence.

  “It’s okay,” Ruth said. The owl, her gifted companion, glided down and landed on her shoulder; she winced as its talons bit into her flesh, then pushed her head to one side for fear it would start flapping its wings. It was the first time it had come close enough for her to touch. The owl turned its eerie, blinking eyes on Veitch, who was grinning broadly.

  “What’s his name?” He reached out a hand, but the owl snapped its beak in the direction of his fingers and he withdrew sharply.

  “Who says it’s a he?”

  “Well what’s its fucking name then?”

  “It hasn’t got a name.” She paused. “Not one that I know, anyway.”

  “Well, don’t you think you should give him one? Or her. It. If it’s going to be on the team-“

  “Maybe I’ll ask it later.” Her eyes sparkled.

  Veitch looked at her for a second or two, but he couldn’t tell if she was serious or teasing him. He decided t
o opt for the latter and responded in kind with a faint smirk. “Witch.”

  “Fuckhead.”

  Their eyes locked for a long moment, then they burst out laughing. Turning, they threw the bags over their shoulders and marched towards the seafront.

  “So what exactly can you do?” Veitch said.

  Ruth shrugged. “I don’t know yet. It’s like spending all your life as a man and then someone coming up to you and telling you you’re actually a woman. How do you get your head round something as monumental as that? How can you comprehend you’ve been chosen by the gods for some task?”

  “Sounds pretty cool to me. I wouldn’t mind.”

  “You might think differently if it actually happened to you. It’s hard enough understanding that the world’s changed. That different rules operate now, fundamental rules, about the way everything works. The woman I met in the Lake District-“

  “The old magic-biddy?”

  “The Wiccan. She’d spent years practising certain rites and not getting anywhere. Then, earlier this year, she woke up and suddenly found out things happened. At her command.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Altering the weather. Controlling animals …” Ruth had a sudden flashback to the spirit-flight she experienced and was surprised at the depth of her yearning to savour it again. “I don’t think it’s a matter of having any kind of power. It’s just an aptitude for controlling things. Like physicists bending nuclear power to their will. You have to learn how to access it.”

  “Any luck so far?”

  “I haven’t really tried. I’m a little nervous.”

  “I read sex helps with magic.” He didn’t look at her, but she could sense his grin.

  “Don’t go down that road. You’re still on probation.”

  “Okay. Just offering my services if you need me.”

  “Thanks, but I’d rather put my eyes out.”

  For a brief moment the wind shifted and the omnipresent stink of burning was replaced by the salty aroma of the sea and the heady tang of green hills. They both stopped and breathed deeply.