Before he had a chance to order his thoughts, Carolina had stripped off her T-shirt. Her breasts were small and pale in the torchlight. Spink followed suit; his chest was hard and bony, the ribs casting strips of shadow across his skin.
"Spink's bi," Carolina said. "Or maybe gay, I don't think he's decided yet."
She leaned forward and kissed Shavi, her mouth open and wet. Spink moved in and began to nuzzle at Shavi's neck. There was too much sensory stimulation for Shavi to keep his thoughts ordered and eventually he gave in to the pleasures of the moment.
The torch was switched off. His fingers slid over warm flesh. Hands caressed his body, stripping him naked. Their bodies moved over his, both of them hard, at times impossible to tell who was whom. The atmosphere became heightened with energy and for that brief moment he felt renewed.
The scream cut through the early morning stillness, snapping Shavi out of a deep sleep. He untangled himself from draping limbs, only just stirring, before pulling on his clothes and scrambling out on to the dewy ground. The air was chill; it couldn't have been long after dawn.
The first thing he saw brought that cold deep into his veins. There, in the tufted grass by the tent opening, was a slim, pale, severed finger.
All over the campsite people were falling out of camper vans, buses and cars, staggering bleary-eyed into the light. Shavi lurched past the finger, barely able to take his eyes off it, then tried to estimate the direction from which the scream had come. He didn't have to look far. In the no-man's land between the vehicles and the wood, a woman silently dipped down, then rose up, dipped down, rose up, a surreal image until Shavi saw her face was contorted with such grief she couldn't give voice to it. A shapeless mass lay at her feet.
Shavi ran as fast as he could, but several people reached the site before him.
He pushed through them a little too roughly. Lying at the centre of the shocked circle of travellers was Penny, the ground stained in a wide arc around where her finger should have been. She was white with death.
Shavi felt his stomach knot, his mind fizz and spark with the awful realisation that he had brought this horror to the gentle, peaceful travellers. The ground seemed to shift beneath his feet and he had to stagger away where he could no longer see the body.
Chapter Seventeen
Dust Of Creeds Outworn
"What do you mean, it's all your fault?" Breaker's face was shattered, his cheeks still stinging red from tears. Carolina stood beside him like a ghost while Meg squatted nearby, her hands pressed against her eyes, as if she were trying to stop the image from entering her brain.
Shavi explained everything, from when it had all begun on the banks of Loch Maree. The others listened intently, their faces impassive; Shavi couldn't tell if they were judging him. Afterwards Carolina asked in a breaking voice, "So why is it hunting you?"
"I have no idea." He swallowed, composed himself. "I thought we had seen the last of it in Edinburgh. I had no idea it was following me or I would not have brought it to your door. You must believe me-"
"We do." Meg came forward and hugged him tightly. "We can all see you're all right. You wouldn't have put us at risk if you'd known." She glanced over to where the body lay covered by a sheet. "Poor Penny. Just after she'd found out what'd happened to jack."
"That is why it happened," Shavi said morosely.
"What do you mean?" Breaker asked.
"The attack was meant to show there is no hope. Penny was snuffed out just as she achieved it." Shavi chewed his lip until he tasted blood. "It was a message for me. The finger was left outside the tent, a sign that the killer could have come for me while I slept."
"But why?" Carolina looked like she was about to vomit.
"To make me suffer, I would think. To make me frightened, always looking over my shoulder, so never knowing when the attack will come."
"What's the obsession with fingers?" Breaker asked.
"I have no idea. Are you going to report this to the police?"
Breaker toyed with his beard, but it was Meg who gave voice to the thoughts in all their minds. "There's no point. With all the shit going down, the cops haven't got time to look into this. They'll probably just use it as another excuse to harass us."
"Then I would suggest we bury her among the trees. The Wood-born will watch over her," Shavi suggested.
The grave party ensured the hole was six feet deep, carefully avoiding all the roots that criss-crossed the area. There were enough of them to ensure the work was done quickly, then everyone in the camp gathered for the ceremony; their faces were disbelieving, angry, distraught. Their lives had been disrupted so suddenly and completely no one had quite been able to assimilate what had happened. Breaker and Meg said a few words in a ritual which echoed the cycles of the seasons and spoke to the overwhelming force of nature.
Once the grave was filled, everyone was surprised to see a spontaneous shower of leaves from all the surrounding trees, until the overturned soil was covered by a crisp blanket of green; it was an act of such respect several people wept at the sight. Shavi felt, in a grimly ironic way, that the bond between the two groups had been strengthened further.
They decided to postpone any wake until everyone had had time to come to terms with what had happened. Instead, Breaker, Carolina, Meg, and Shavi gathered around a makeshift table in the back of Breaker's bus.
"Of course, I will be leaving shortly," Shavi announced once they were seated.
"Why?" Meg's eyes blazed.
"This sickening thing is pursuing me. When I leave he will follow me and you will be left to return to your lives."
"No," Meg said forcefully.
"I agree," Carolina added. "You're one of us now. We're not going to desert you."
"They're right," Breaker said. "They're always right about everything, that's why we love them." His words seemed honest rather than patronising. "There's safety in numbers, Shavi. You go off on your own across that deserted countryside, well, that bastard could pick you off at any time. We're organised here. We can do more, better, watches. We'll get you where you need to go."
"But-"
"Don't fucking argue," Carolina said wearily. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Think of your friend. Think of the big picture, all you're trying to do. Here's where we do our bit too."
Shavi sagged back against the window and slowly rubbed a hand across his eyes. "Thank you. You are true friends."
"Just do one thing for us," Breaker said.
"What is that?"
"If you get a chance, any time, ever, bring Jack back. For Penny."
Shavi put one hand on his heart and held the other up, palm out. "For Penny."
Church perched on a rocky outcropping over a precipitous drop, contemplating how quickly the remaining nine days would pass. Before him the Derbyshire countryside rolled out in the hazy, late morning sunshine, a patchwork of green fields, shimmering water, ribbon roads and small, peaceful villages. But it wasn't the great beauty of the scene that caught his attention.
Nearby, houses were burning. The tangled wreckage of vehicles glinted in the sunlight. Things he couldn't quite comprehend moved along the hedgerows or kept to the dark at the edge of copses. Occasionally one would be forced to cross a field, like a cloud shadow moving across the land. It always made him shiver to see it.
The Fomorii appeared to be growing in force, more daring in their desperation as Lughnasadh neared. They sensed Ruth and what she contained were somewhere in the area, but the magic Tom had identified at Mam Tor was, so far, enough to blind them to the exact location. But if he allowed himself to admit it, he knew it was only a question of time. For once, he could do nothing; it was a matter of placing his faith in Shavi, Veitch, and Tom.
Sometimes he saw the Fomorii hunter-warrior circling the area, more intense and threatening than the other shifting shapes, like a localised storm filled with lightning fury. It left him feeling fearful and nauseous. And something more than that: he was starting to
feel the bitter taint of hopelessness. Only days to go. What could they do? They were going to fail again, and it would be the end of everything.
Cautiously he crept back from the edge. What would he do when the black tide did begin to surge up the mountain? Fight them off with sticks and stones like schoolboy war games? Or sit back and pray there really, truly was a God in His heaven?
Ruth lay in her sleeping bag on a bed made of flattened fern in a corner of the room. Her skin was ashen, her hair matted from the bouts of sweating and delirium that were coming with increasing regularity. Her eyes flickered, her features trembled; terrible thoughts that did not seem to come from her own mind stumbled through her head.
They had cleaned up the place as best they could. Church and Laura had spent a morning sweeping out the rubbish and depositing it in the shadows at the back of the house. Church had patched up the roof with dead wood and vegetation, but the wind still whipped through the broken windows and sometimes it was uncommonly cold for that time of year; perhaps it was the altitude. Food was a problem. There was little to trap on the mountain and none of them were any good at it anyway. Church had made several forays into a nearby village and had stocked up the larder as best he could. The increasing Fomorii activity in the area made it too risky to go foraging any more. They all prayed the provisions would hold out.
Laura squatted in the corner, occasionally casting a subdued glance to Ruth's restlessly sleeping form. The sunglasses rarely came off these days, even at night. Her brooding consumed her. She hated the way Church cared for Ruth; there was real tenderness in his touch, an honesty in his words that made her yearn; the feeling between the two ran so deep it was as if it had formed when the earth was just cooling. She knew it was jealousy, pure and simple; it was the kind of relationship she had always dreamed about, had expected once she had hooked up with Church, yet even though all the facets seemed in place, it had never materialised, and that was the bitterest blow of all. If she couldn't find it with Church, who could she plumb those depths with?
And she could see Ruth was dying; they all knew it, though no one spoke it aloud. Yet there she was, being petty and jealous and bitter. That filled her with guilt and self-loathing, which once more fed all those negative emotions; a terrible, dark spiral that had no end.
"What are you thinking?"
Laura started; she hadn't realised Ruth was awake. "I'm thinking, `Boy, I hope she doesn't start whining any time soon."'
Ruth managed a weak laugh; her voice sounded like autumn leaves. "You'll never change, will you?"
"Count on it."
Ruth tried to lever herself into a sitting position. Her arms were feeble and her belly was enormous; she seemed to have gone almost full-term of a natural pregnancy in a matter of days. Eventually she gave up and settled for halfsitting, half-lying. She snorted with laughter at her own pathetic attempt.
"How do you keep so up? You've had the bum deal to end all bum deals. Some psycho slicing off your finger. Getting tortured by the Bastards. Now this-"
"Now I'm pregnant with the one-eyed God of Death and he's going to burst out of my stomach in a few days and tear me apart. Well, when you put it like that…" She laughed again, before breaking into a coughing fit.
"What is it with you? When I first met you, you were such a poker-up-the arse kind of girl. Some spoilt little middle-class moron. I thought you'd fall apart at the first sign of trouble."
"What's the matter? Jealous?"
Her words were lighthearted but they stung Laura as if she'd been slapped. "You have a real sense of the absurd, don't you?"
"I'm dying. You're supposed to be nice to me."
Laura watched her impassively.
"That was the point where you were supposed to say, `Course you're not dying. Everything will work out in the end."' Ruth threw an arm across her eyes. Laura couldn't tell if she was trying to hide her emotions, but she felt bad anyway.
But not bad enough she could bring herself to be nice. Nice was for losers. "What do you expect me to say?"
"I don't know. Nothing to say, is there? I'm dying. I know I'm dying. And any chance I have is the longest of long shots." She removed her arm and Laura was surprised to see a remarkable peace in her face.
That twisted the knife in her gut even more and suddenly she felt like crying; the words just bubbled out. "What is it? Church, you can see he's a hero. It's stitched right into the heart of him, always beating himself up about responsibilities and obligations and doing the right thing. Shavi's just Mister Decency. You know he'd give up his life if the cause was right. Even Veitch, the Testosterone Kid, a fucking murderer by his own admission! Even he's fighting against type to be good, to be a hero. And despite all his very obvious limitations, you know he's going to come through, when the chips are down and all those other cliches. And then there's you, kicked around and tortured from pillar to post, taking all this shit that nobody should have to take. And dying with dignity. I don't fit in here. You give me a choice between saving my own skin and doing the right thing and you watch my dust!" The self-pity was sickening, but she seemed unable to control herself.
"You're not being fair on yourself-"
"Don't start analysing me. I don't need it. And for God's sake, don't start being nice to me."
"I won't-"
"Just don't."
"Look, can't we just be friends? Even now?" Ruth's eyes filled with tears; despite her calm, her emotions were on a knife edge.
Laura remained silent, staring at the wall. The mass of scrawled writing disturbed her immensely and in all their time there none of them had felt up to making any effort to decipher it. It was just part of the oppressive mood that lurked in the comers of the house. She was sure Ruth sensed things there that she wasn't talking about, and there were times when she felt it acutely herself, and she was less sensitive than anyone she knew. Something bad had happened, Ruth had said, and something bad was going to happen. Perhaps that was it: not an echo of the past, but a premonition. She felt it so strongly she could almost touch it.
"You've always hidden yourself away from all of us." Ruth's voice was hazy and Laura could tell she was on the verge of drifting into one of her intermittent periods of delirium. "Hiding behind your sunglasses, trying to be smart and glib all the time so no one knew what you were really thinking. Even that name-Laura DuSantiago. That's got to be an alias, a new persona to hide in." She swallowed; her mouth sounded sticky with mucus. "Tell you what," she continued weakly. "You tell me your real name now. I won't tell a soul. A dying woman's last wish." She laughed hollowly.
Laura sat quietly for a moment, then moved to the bedside and knelt so her mouth was close to Ruth's ear. Ruth strained to hear.
"Go fuck yourself," Laura said softly.
Then she rose and calmly walked out of the room in search of Church.
Breaker cursed under his breath as the lead bus began another difficult threepoint turn in the middle of the road. About half a mile ahead they could see the tailback leading up to the police checkpoint. It looked like the police were barring every road they tried; Shavi had lost count of the times they had turned around and sought an alternative route. But that wasn't what was troubling him. It was the things he increasingly caught glimpses of from the corner of his eye, moving as fast as foxes, or slipping back into shadows when he half-turned his head. He hadn't mentioned them to Breaker or the others, but he knew what they were: the Fomorii were abroad.
He took some relief from the fact that they were still wary enough to stay out of plain sight; just. They must be terrified about having let the essence of their god slip through their fingers, if it were possible for such creatures to feel fear. But he was concerned about how widespread they were and how their number appeared to be increasing. If they were this close to the surface now, what would happen when desperation set in as Lughnasadh neared?
He knew they were searching for any sign of Balor, but was it possible they could sniff out the Pendragon Spirit too?
/> "You look worried." Breaker cast a sideways glance as he pulled up behind the bumper of the bus in front.
"I was merely trying to second-guess the obstacles which might lie between us and my destination."
"You reckon the Finger Hunter is somewhere nearby? I don't see how he could be keeping up with us unless he's smelling us on the wind."
Shavi thought that was a distinct possibility, but said nothing.
"The biggest problem is the cops. We need to stay out of their way. I don't know what's happened to them. They were always bugging us, but now they seem to be hassling everyone. All these checkpoints. What the hell do they think they're trying to do?"
Some of the police at every checkpoint had waxy faces, Shavi had noticed; it was obvious to him what they were trying to do. And it appeared that there was some link between what Breaker called the Finger Hunter and the Fomorii too. Shavi had an overpowering image of a net closing around him. Perhaps he would never reach Windsor at all.
After leaving the camp where Penny had been buried, they had taken a couple of days to pick a relatively short route past Banbury before cutting through the lanes between Oxford and Bicester to reach their current position just north of the M40. On the map Windsor looked to be only forty minutes' drive away. Two rapidly successive technology failures slowed them down even more, but every attempt to cross the motorway failed and they were continually pushed east towards London. With only a week remaining before Lughnasadh Shavi could ill afford any more delays.
"We can't get too close to the Smoke," Breaker said, concerned. "A convoy this size'll draw too much attention. We'll get snarled up and they'll have us off the road in a minute. Plus, some of our valued members get very uneasy whenever they're near any built-up area. All that pollution."
Shavi barely spoke any more; his attention was directed at the apparently empty countryside. Thoughts were piling up inside his head, forcing him down a very worrying path. The one who killed Penny was obviously not Fomorii, but possibly had some kind of link with the Night Walkers. The killer knew who Shavi was travelling with, probably knew exactly where he was. What if the killer decided to point the Fomorii in his direction? Shavi scanned the fields cautiously. He had not seen any sign of the Fomorii for some time. Perhaps they too were wary of getting too close to the Capital. Still, he would be on his guard.
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