by Luke Walker
“If you say so,” Tom replied.
“We’re not.”
I took a moment to study them. None of them had any meat on them. Their clothes were old, dirty and torn. Two hugged themselves as if cold despite the heat. A third swayed on his feet. It hit me. They lived in the woods. Homeless men from the woods.
“We’re just passing through,” I said to the first man. “You should head that way.” I pointed the way we’d come.
“Why?”
“Things are getting bad. The gods, they’re on the move and—”
“When aren’t they?” another of the men replied and I had to admit he had a point.
Tom stepped forward. If the vodka had any effect on him, it didn’t show. He moved smoothly. He held his bandaged hand against his chest, and thankfully, no fresh blood showed on the material. Cauterizing it appeared to have worked.
“It’s serious this time. Segoth’s coming out of Europe. So’s most of Europe by the sounds of it. And Naz Yaah is coming this way from the north. Gatur’s down in Devon, but I don’t think it’ll be long before she heads this way, too.”
The first of the homeless men to speak eyed us. “Naz Yaah?”
“No word yet, but it’s probably just a matter of time,” I said.
“Where are you going?”
Tom moved even closer to him. “Who are you lot?”
It appeared for a moment as if the homeless man wouldn’t reply. He pointed his branch to the trees. Wind blew through him, making the leaves whisper.
“We live here. We stay away from people and we live off the land.” He smiled, exposing bad teeth. “It’s not an easy life, but it’s better than anything out there.”
“You’ve probably got a point. Listen, have you seen—”
“Dave, no,” Tom shouted.
“It’s fine. We can trust them.”
He remained still, loose hair blowing in the breeze.
“It’s fine,” I said again and turned to the homeless man. “Have you seen a teenage girl anywhere near here? Someone new to the area? Short. Dark, straight hair to her back.”
“She had it cut,” Tom muttered. “It’s to her neck now.”
The homeless man watched this snatch of conversation with interest, clearly gathering our relationship with those few words.
“Your daughter?”
“Yes.”
“No. Sorry. New people don’t come here much. It’s just us and the people in the village. Everyone around here stays out of everyone else’s way.”
Tom laughed bitterly. “Same everywhere, mate.”
I nodded my thanks to the homeless man. “You should get away from here. Get away from this part of the country.”
“Nowhere’s safe. Everywhere’s like this.”
“I know, but…”
“You should get out of here, too.” The man gestured to our surroundings. “This light’s not right. Something’s wrong here. Go somewhere safer.”
With that, they retreated back between the trees, vanishing after thirty seconds. Not wanting to, I studied the strange daylight. The sky was growing from blue to purple. Flashes of silent yellow light lit it. I waited another ten seconds, then gestured for Tom to follow me to the van. Inside, we checked the news on the radio. There was nothing about Segoth or the other gods. Instead, we had music on every station.
“News blackout,” I said. The lack of news scared me more than any report could have done.
Tom nudged his bag with his foot. “My iPad.”
I fished the device out and brought up the Net.
“I know a site,” Tom said. “Real news. People who know what we’re told is crap run it. It keeps getting shut down, but keeps coming back up. Problem is if they know we’re looking at it, they’ll find us.”
I didn’t have to ask who they were. If the police found us looking at an illegal site, we’d be taken away to be sacrifices, no questions asked. The only thing on our side was being in the middle of nowhere. There’d be no police for miles.
“We can get two minutes or so out of it, but that’s the maximum,” Tom told me.
“That’s all?”
“It’s all monitored, Dave. You know that.”
I did. Nothing anyone did online was private.
“It’ll have to be enough,” I said.
Tom rattled off a series of numbers that formed the site address and we leaned over the screen.
The picture was poor, the sound dodgy, but we got enough to know things had got a lot worse.
Segoth was on the rampage throughout southern England, crushing and burning most of it, killing thousands with his simple touch. The people from Europe who’d run through the tunnel were either dead, in custody or engaging the police and military in running battles through major cities. Everything within fifty miles of the coast was burning ruins. The violence from Gatur had spread from the low counties up through Gloucestershire. The sky was reported to be one huge green mist for several hundred square miles. And Naz Yaah.
Our worm god was responsible for what appeared to be the death of every single person in Greater Manchester. She’d wiped out cities, towns and villages and was currently moving back and forth across the country to mop up any people she’d missed. The current theory was she’d head south once she finished with the north.
“That’s enough,” I said and clicked out of the Net. “You want to leave it here?”
Tom wiped his mouth with a shaking hand. I could take a guess he was wishing for more vodka. “No. I don’t think…I don’t think we’ve got much chance whatever we do. Do you?”
The boy looked at me, mouth opening and closing. I said the only thing I could.
The truth.
“Probably not. But I tell you, Tom. We get to Ashleigh and that’s it. Job done. Right?”
He sighed as if all the air had fallen out of his lungs. “You’re not scared?”
“Shitless.”
He gave me a tiny laugh. Better than nothing.
His mobile let out a soft beep.
A text message.
We both went for the phone at the same time.
34
Tom got to his phone before me. Pretty good going for a man with a hand wrapped in a thick bandage.
“It’s her. It’s her.”
He ran his wrist over his forehead, wiping sweat, his face alive for the first time in hours. Maybe the whole day.
He scanned the message. “She’s in the grounds of the hall, moving around. Currently hiding near the two lakes. Waiting for night. Will break in. Tells us to stay away. Says she knows where the mirror is.” He stared at me. “What fucking mirror?”
“Let me see.”
I took the phone from him. The text was more or less as he’d read it to me. Cursory facts and no room for debate. Pretty much Ashleigh all over.
The mirror. What the hell was that all about? The Little Naz had mentioned it as if expecting me to know. Now Ashleigh was doing the same. Maybe she figured since we’d worked out the whole deal with Thacker and Makepeace and the love affair with Lady Ashton that we knew about the mirror.
I tapped out a quick text, telling her she had to get out of there, she had to find us, telling her what she was doing was beyond dangerous. Message sent, we waited. Nothing came back. After five minutes, I handed Tom his phone.
“She knows we’re here. She knows we’re not going anywhere. We have to go and get her.”
“Let’s go,” Tom said, nodding to the wheel.
“We can’t. Not in daylight.”
“Shit.”
Outside, the steady minutes between day and sunset held strong. The air had become an unpleasant bruised yellow and the breeze had died. We could have been the only people in the world.
A new sound filled the air. From ahead or behind, a car was coming towards us and coming fast.
Tom heard it at the same time. “We need to go,” he shouted.
I fumbled with the key, heart a drumming machine in my chest. And my
only thought was that we couldn’t fail so close to Ashleigh.
“Shit,” Tom yelled. “Behind.”
I stabbed the key into the ignition. A police car shot up the road, aiming for us. Its sirens were off, but the speed gave it away. This was trouble.
The car skidded to a stop in the middle of the road a little way from us and both men jumped out, guns drawn.
“In the van,” one yelled. “Out, now.”
I eased the gun under my seat and opened the door. “Just stay calm.” Tom gave no reaction to my whisper. “Don’t give them any reason to start shooting.”
“They don’t need one,” Tom replied.
A nasty interior voice told me I’d been wrong about the police taking us away. They’d drawn their weapons before we’d had the chance to move.
We got out of the van. The two officers, both guys with shaved heads and muscle, left the cover of their car and advanced on us. Straight above, more of the silent light flashed.
“Watching a little news?” one said.
“What?”
Playing for time was the best I could do.
“I’m Officer William Grayson and this is my colleague Officer Sam Halliwell. We’re here to talk to you about your Internet habits.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. We’re just driving. This is my son-in-law. My name’s Dave. My wallet’s in my pocket.”
The two cops exchanged a look. And both raised their guns to aim them directly at our heads.
“Hey, wait. This is—”
“One,” Grayson said, smiling, enjoying himself.
“Two,” Halliwell replied.
Everything slowed, giving me time to see it happening before they pulled their triggers. I knew it all as if I’d written the scene for actors only to end up playing myself.
“Thr—”
Two gunshots, one less than a second after the other, and the officers’ heads exploded in the same way I’d seen mine and Tom’s detonate. Skull, blood and bone flew in all directions; their bodies collapsed. Buzzing flew past my head and it took me a moment to realize one of the cops had squeezed their trigger as their final act. The bullet missed me by inches.
Tom ran to me; I held the boy as tightly as I could, and scanned the surrounding trees. Nothing moved. All we had was ourselves and the murdered police.
“What the fuck’s going on?” Tom whispered.
I eased him away and motioned for him to be quiet. Still, nothing made a sound other than the rustling leaves. I took a few steps closer to the bodies. Circles of blood ran around their necks and the chunks of bone remaining from their heads. Horrified, I realized the white flecks in the red were pieces of their skulls. My stomach rolled; I took a few breaths to calm it and held my hands up. Facing the woods on the other side of the road, I shouted to the trees.
“We’re not a threat and we’re not armed. We just want to go on our way.”
Nobody replied.
“Dave,” Tom whispered behind me. “Come on.”
“Wait,” I said, then shouted again. “We’re going, all right? As far as we’re concerned, this didn’t happen.”
I backed up and Tom ran to me. Before I could stop him, he bent and grabbed both fallen guns.
“Tom, drop them.”
“No.” He held one towards me. “We need them.” He jerked his head towards the trees and lowered his voice. “If whoever’s in there wants to kill us, they’ll have done it by now.”
His logic was sound. While barely a minute had passed since the shooting, that was plenty of time for the killer to fire at us.
I kept my voice as low as his. “All right. Run for the van as soon as I take that, okay? Don’t look back.”
He swallowed. “Yeah.”
“On three. One, two, three.”
I grabbed the gun, spun around and ran. We hit the van at the same time; I dropped my gun, smashed the key into the ignition and we sped forward. The van veered all over the road until I slowed a fraction and put us on the left-hand side. We drove for at least a minute before Tom spoke.
“Someone will find the bodies.”
“I know. Nothing we can do about it.”
Expecting the shooter to be following us, I checked the rearview mirror. There was nothing but road and trees behind us.
“Who was it? And why did they do it?” Tom said.
“No idea. Not a clue.”
“This is mental.”
“Yeah.” My stomach rolled again and the shakes raced up and down my arms. Reaction kicking in. I gripped the wheel, fighting the shakes.
Their heads exploded.
I banished the thought and the images of the falling bodies. Someone had saved us. I had to focus on that. And more than anything, I had to focus on Ashton Hall and my daughter.
Not the fact that we had next to no chance of surviving this.
35
At the exact moment we reached the road, which in turn led to the main drive of the hall, darkness fell. I’m not talking sunset or a gradual end to the daylight. It was as if the sun fell away. Shadows rushed in from all sides, turning the road and trees black, making us blind. Swearing, I hit the headlights and slowed a little.
“How the fuck’s this happened?” Tom shouted.
I kept quiet. Tom knew the answer. The gods. Always, the gods. They were doing what they wanted when they wanted to. At least the night got rid of the flashes in the sky.
We drew level with the main drive and pulled over. There were no streetlights. All we had to illuminate our surroundings were the headlights. The white light shone on the road and the suggestion of squat trees lining grass ahead.
“Right, we go in, we drive fast and we find her,” I said.
“We’re just going to drive straight in there?”
“Any other ideas?”
“We’ll be seen straightaway. There’s got to be some security here.”
That seemed unlikely. The place looked old, tired and alone. I clicked the radio on to the news. Segoth had reached the center of London and was continuing his slaughter. Naz Yaah was expected to reach Lincolnshire within twenty minutes, and Gatur’s influence now covered six counties.
“We’re out of time, Tom. We have to go in.”
“Let me text her.”
He fumbled with his phone, trying to text with one hand. The odd lighting flashed, giving us a brief glimpse of the hall and its grounds. From what I made out, the place was huge—wide grounds of green growing wild leading to a long stretch of windows and chimneys. The lightning died and movement in the rearview caught my eye.
Flashlights. Half a dozen of them, coming closer.
“Oh, shit.”
Tom saw where I was I looking and shoved his phone away.
“It’s the people from the village,” I whispered.
“How did they know we’re here?”
In my head, I saw the homeless men from the woods again. I saw them backing away, heading east. Heading towards the village.
Not homeless men at all. Men who looked as they did because there was nothing for them out here but their dying village. Men who guarded that village from strangers like Tom and me.
The lights drew closer and I imagined I could hear their voices in the dark.
“Tom, keep hold of the guns.”
He grabbed for them with his unbandaged hand as I took us towards the grounds’ entrance. Behind us, the people carrying the lights broke into a run. We smashed through a makeshift gate, scattering pieces of old wood and rusted metal to the road. Trees shot by on either side, then a long row of buildings. The main part of the hall was a wide shape straight ahead, rushing at us in the poor light. We left the drive, hit long grass and clipped a dry fountain, then a statue. The van veered out of control; I fought to right it and we came within inches of hitting another fountain. Screaming, I shot us around the crumbling block, crushed a wide flowerbed and we hit a gravel path. Stones flew below us. Our path straightened and we faced the main entrance to Asht
on Hall.
Even in its current state, the building was an impressive sight. Dozens of windows and rooms lined its front; high chimneys stretched above, and gardens and grounds ran away to either side, disappearing into nothing after a little way.
“Around the side. We need to get out of sight,” Tom shouted.
I took us along the front, still crunching gravel, dodging squat trees. We hit the corner of the building, turned with it and entered a wide courtyard. From what I could make out, side buildings formed a barrier opposite the hall. Archways led farther into the grounds.
Something white ran out in front of us. I yanked the wheel, sending us into a spin. We smashed into the side of one of the smaller buildings. Glass broke, Tom was a screaming noise beside my ear and the white shape was coming straight for my window, a skinny arm holding a long knife.
I grabbed one of the guns from Tom’s seat, twisted back around, finger already squeezing the trigger, bringing the weapon around to the hole that had been my window.
A face filled it.
Ashleigh.
36
A tiny, horrible second raced around me when it seemed my finger on the trigger wouldn’t relax, that I would shoot my own daughter in the middle of her beautiful face.
“Dad?”
Still, my traitorous finger wouldn’t relax. Tom leaned past me, reaching for the gun, reaching for Ashleigh.
“You’re here?” he shouted. “You’re really here?”
“I really am.”
“Dave, put the gun down. What are you doing?”
My mouth opened and shut. Finally, I managed to lower my hand and stared at my daughter. She’d lost weight since I’d last seen her and she’d had a haircut. Otherwise, she was still my gorgeous Ashleigh.
Swearing, crying, I thumped the door until it opened, dropped out and embraced Ashleigh. She hugged me, crying against my chest. “Dad, you shouldn’t have come here. It’s dangerous. It’s—”
“We know. That’s why we’re here. We came to get you away from this. It’s too much. You can’t do this, Ashleigh.”
She backed away from me. In the van, Tom was trying to push himself out. I made no move to help despite his wounded hand.