Giles stood up. ‘I’m afraid there is. It’s Adam’s only hope.’ He glanced out into the darkness. ‘I’ll go. You all stay here.’
‘You’ll never spot it, Giles. Not in all the wet heather and mud.’ Liza appealed. ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘I’ve got to try.’ He gave her a grave smile. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll keep my eyes skinned. I’ve got a good torch this time. I’ll find it.’
The three women watched as he retraced the route they had taken earlier, flashing the torch all round, onto the ground in front of him, then again into the trees ahead. Beside them Ken lay back in Moira’s arms, his teeth clenched against the pain.
‘I’m such a fool.’ Beth dropped to her knees beside Liza. ‘Oh God, this is awful.’ She glanced over her shoulder. ‘We wouldn’t see her if she crept up in the dark, would we?’
‘No.’ Liza was cradling Adam against her shoulder. ‘No, we wouldn’t.’
‘It’s my fault. If I hadn’t dropped the phone …’
‘Beth, you didn’t do it on purpose. No one is blaming you.’ Liza switched off her own torch with a shiver. ‘We’d better preserve the batteries and let our eyes get used to the dark. We’ve a better chance of spotting her that way.’ She was remembering Meryn, thinking of his strength, surrounding them all in her mind with a wall of impenetrable light.
Huddling together, from time to time they caught sight of Giles’s torch beam in the distance, methodically raking the ground as he drew further and further away towards the pines. Every now and then he swung it up into the air, drawing a quick sweep around him as though to check that there was no one there.
‘Will she attack us again?’ Beth huddled closer.
Liza shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’ She put her hand gently on Adam’s forehead. ‘Where is he, Beth? If he has gone into her time, why isn’t she there with him? Why is she still here?’
Beth stared at the old man’s face. His eyes were closed, his skin, wet with sleet, pale. There was no sign of inward struggle. His expression was serene. ‘You think he has transported himself into another time?’ She was speaking quietly so that Ken and Moira couldn’t hear.
Liza nodded. ‘I think he probably has, but maybe he got it wrong. Maybe he has gone to the wrong place or the wrong time. Oh, Beth, how do we know?’ She stared out to where Giles’s torch had temporarily disappeared. ‘Maybe Brid could tell us if she wasn’t so intent on killing us.’
‘I can’t see him.’ Beth too was searching for the sight of the distant torch beam. Her voice rose in panic. ‘Liza, I can’t see him!’
Liza tensed, staring round.
A-dam. Where is A-dam?
She was hearing the words somewhere in the back of her skull.
‘I still can’t see him!’ Beth had risen to her knees.
‘Wait.’ Liza put her hand on Beth’s arm. ‘Listen.’
‘What is it?’
‘I heard a voice. Her voice.’
‘Brid’s?’ Beth whispered the name. Both women listened, trying to tune out the sound of wind and rain.
A-dam!
‘There.’ Liza clutched at Beth again. ‘Did you hear it?’
The figure was barely visible in the periphery of her vision. She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the rain in her face and stared again. Yes, there, on the edge of darkness, a darker figure, barely more than a shadow, the long hair and cloak part of the rain itself. She swallowed. ‘Brid?’ she called. She felt Beth stiffen in terror. ‘Brid, we have lost Adam too. Help us to find him.’ She held her breath. Was the shadow drifting closer? ‘Please. He’s lost. We all love him. Help us find him.’
The figure was definitely closer now. The terrified women could make out the details of her cloak, see the silver brooch which fastened it, the sweep of her hair under the hood now, her white face with its regular, pale features, a vivid, raw, blood-stained scar above her nose, the expressionless eyes and the rigid set to the mouth. She did not seem to be looking either at them or at Adam, but rather between them on the ground.
A-dam!
Her mouth didn’t move.
A-dam, I love you!
She was standing about twenty feet from them, her eyes now fixed on Beth’s face.
‘We all love him, Brid.’ Liza tried to keep her voice steady. She held her breath as the figure drifted closer.
Then, without warning, it launched itself at them and they both at the same moment saw the vicious, long-bladed knife in her hand. Beth screamed as she pulled Liza out of Brid’s path and found her eyes only inches away from the blazing fury of the fixed gaze. Desperately she raised her arm again to try to save herself. She was fending off the knife once more when she heard a voice from beside her.
‘In the name of Christ, go!’ Ken was sitting up, his hand shaking as he made the sign of the cross.
Brid hesitated. The knife still clutched in her hand, she paused in her attack.
‘It’s okay. I’m here!’ Giles had seen it all. He raced the last few yards towards them and, gasping for breath, he reached out towards Brid. ‘Leave them alone, you hell-hag!’ He was trying to grasp her knife. The torch arced up into the air and fell to the ground nose-down in a clump of tangled, wet heather, and he found himself flailing about in the dark.
A-dam!
Her pitiful scream tore through their heads.
A-dam, save me. I love you!
He felt the sharp bite of metal on his palm and he swore, desperately trying to wrestle it from her, but he was already exhausted. He couldn’t catch his breath.
A-dam!
Beth had climbed to her feet. She groped for the torch and shone it wildly in the direction of the struggle.
‘In the name of Christ, go!’ Ken was sobbing with pain.
Giles and Brid were circling, their feet slipping on the wet ground. In the torchlight and intermittent lightning Beth could see the flash of the blade. Behind her Liza rose to her knees, Adam still cradled in her arms. ‘Beth, no!’
‘I’ve got to help him.’ Beth crept closer to the fighting pair, the heavy torch raised high, ready to bring it down on Brid’s head if she could get close enough. She could hear Giles’s frantic, breathless gasps, see the knife only inches from his face. She was almost there when, with a deafening roar of engines and a whirlwind of spinning darkness, a helicopter swung in over the shoulder of the hill and hovered twenty feet above the cross-slab, flooding the area with light.
With a scream Brid dropped her knife and looked up, her hair and cloak streaming in the down-draught.
When Giles and Beth looked again, she had gone.
22
By tacit agreement neither Giles nor Beth mentioned their knife wounds when the helicopter lowered the doctor to the ground. It was obvious it could not take them all and it had been equally obvious that Liza and Ken should be the ones to go with Adam. Liza’s indomitable spirit had not flagged, but the whiteness of her face and the shakiness with which she had at last stood up had alarmed Beth.
As they stood watching the machine rise into the air and swing away towards the south, Giles put his arm round her shoulders. ‘I’m sure Brid has gone,’ he murmured. ‘Courage?’ he grinned at her.
‘Courage,’ she agreed. She knew it was not what she felt.
Without delay they set off, turning their backs on the cross-slab with its enigmatic carvings, every nerve tensed, each waiting in spite of what they had said, for a growl from the trees, or a glint of a knife in the dark. Ahead of them Moira plodded determinedly on, not allowing herself to think about the white, strained look on her husband’s face as the doctor listened to his heart or the way he had reached out to take her hand as the stretcher had lifted him from the ground.
‘Are you okay?’ Giles caught her up and then stopped and waited for Beth, trying to catch his breath. His arm was back in the sling, he had a sharp pain under his ribs and his left shoulder seemed to have gone numb.
Beth wiped the rain from her face. ‘Can we rest a minute?
Are you sure this is the right way?’ There was no sign of movement behind them. If they could get into the trees at least they could have something at their backs, anything other than this vast expanse of heather and scree and blackness.
They reached the treeline at last, where the path dipped dizzyingly downward into the larch and spruce which clung to the hillside in the narrow ravine. There they managed to find the moss-covered trunk of a fallen tree where they could sit, their backs to a solid boulder, and fight to recover their breath.
Moira grinned at them shakily. ‘I’ve been up here dozens of times. Don’t worry. It’s easy, even in the dark. Shall I go first?’ Her hair had whipped free of her scarf and framed her face in a tangled mass of rain-glossed curls.
Giles swept the beam of the hand-held halogen spotlight, which the doctor from the helicopter had given him, around them and nodded. ‘Once we reach the burn we can follow it down. It should be easy then, shouldn’t it?’ He gave them a determined smile. ‘Keep your chins up.’
Slowly they retraced their steps, stopping frequently to regain their breath. Once Beth looked at Giles and reached out to touch his arm. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Sure.’ He nodded. He looked up at the sky. Lightning was still flickering amongst the clouds, although he thought the thunder had abated. The storm was drifting north. ‘I’m fine.’ He breathed a silent prayer: Give us the strength to get back. We can’t do it on our own. And, please, keep that witch away from us. He thought he could make out the path now, in the heather; a streak of darker mud and rock, where on summer days a steady stream of visitors would make their way along the signposted path towards the cross-slab on the hill.
He wasn’t sure what made him turn suddenly. An instinct he hadn’t known he possessed gripped him so strongly that already as he whirled round he had raised the lamp clubwise in his fist. In a split second he saw Brid so close behind them he should have heard her – would have heard her if she had made any sound at all – and he knocked the knife from her hand.
She stopped and he saw her waver. She shook her head slightly as though puzzled, then before their eyes she began to fade. In a moment she had gone.
‘Giles!’ Beth cried out. ‘Are you all right?’
‘In the name of Jesus!’ Moira tumbled up beside them, her feet slipping on the muddy rocks. ‘Say that if she comes again: “In the name of Jesus!”’ She swung her torch round. ‘Where’s the lamp? What happened to the lamp?’ Her voice rose hysterically.
‘I dropped it.’ Giles was gasping heavily. ‘It must have gone out.’ His hands were shaking. ‘Oh God, I hope it’s not broken!’
Brid had been close enough for him to be able to see the jagged bruising on her forehead, and those strange unseeing eyes, fixed not on him but on Beth behind him. He swung Ken’s rucksack off his shoulders. Swallowing his fear he searched the rough canvas with cold frantic fingers, looking for another torch. He found, rattling round at the bottom, an old Swiss Army knife. Slipping it into his pocket he went back to feeling for the torch. His fingers closed over a heavy square shape and he drew it out and glanced down at it. A pen flare kit. Why in God’s name hadn’t Ken remembered these flares when they thought the phone call had not got through?
‘Giles!’ Moira’s strangled gasp brought him to his feet abruptly, his heart thundering with terror.
Brid was there again, only a few feet from them.
Beth’s scream was cut off by Moira’s voice. Her confidence and her faith were strong. She was very calm. ‘In the name of Jesus go, woman. Leave us alone. Go away.’ She stepped forward and put her hand out towards Brid.
‘Moira, be careful!’ Giles’s shout had no effect. Moira stepped forward again.
Brid’s attention was suddenly full on her. She narrowed her eyes. She had not touched the priest; his power was no doubt as strong as Broichan’s, though she had not felt it, but this was the priest’s woman. She was of no importance. She had no power. And she was in the way. The silver knife was back in her hand. With a faint smile she raised it and struck.
Moira’s piercing scream was cut off short as the blood spurted from her throat.
A surge of power shot through Brid and with the dripping knife in her hand, she turned her attention once more towards Beth.
Paralysed by shock, Giles stood between Moira’s body and Beth. The flare gun was still in his hand. Somehow he had freed his arm from the sling again. With fingers almost too weak to move, he tore off the launcher and screwed it with shaking hands into one of the flares, his eyes never leaving Brid’s face. She had taken a step closer and he could see the look of wild exultation in her eyes. He pulled the flare off the clip and began to push back the spring.
‘Giles, help me!’ Beth had picked up a flat piece of rock and was holding it in front of her. She was beyond fear.
Brid smiled, her eyes still fixed unswervingly on Beth. She raised her hand and they both saw the glint of metal from the knife’s blade, still streaked with Moira’s blood, as she began to move.
The spring was too hard. Desperately Giles pushed it back with his thumb. His hands were slippery with sweat, his strength gone. It was their only chance. With one last effort he had it back full. He pointed the flare straight at Brid and let go.
The burning ball of magnesium caught Brid full in the chest. For a moment they saw her, her clothes in flames, her face a mask of fear and pain, then she had gone.
The blackness once the flare had died was total.
‘She was going to kill me.’ Beth closed her eyes. She felt as though she was going to be sick. ‘You saved my life. Oh God, Moira!’
She glanced round in terror. She couldn’t see her. Panic-stricken she groped around for the dropped torch. When at last she found it, she ran a few steps back to where Moira was lying huddled on the path. ‘Moira, are you all right?’ The light beam fell on her and Beth could see the blood soaking through her clothes, pooling on the wet rock, seeping into the grass. There was no doubt that she was dead. ‘Giles!’ Beth’s shout came out as a whisper. Suddenly she was crying.
‘Christ. What do we do now?’ Giles stood looking down. ‘Oh Beth.’ He knelt beside Moira and took her cold hand, feeling hopelessly for a pulse. There was none.
He glanced up into the rain. ‘Poor Moira.’ He took a deep breath. Then he looked round again. ‘I’d better go and see what’s happened to Brid.’ Forcing himself to stand up he took a step forward. Then another. His legs were shaking so much he could hardly move.
Moira’s torch in his hands, he walked slowly back up the track till he reached the spot where the burned branches and scorched grass showed where the flare had landed. He searched round with the help of the torch, shining it over the edge of the rocks, down into the water, up amongst the lichen-draped spruce, into the rocks. There was no sign of Brid.
‘She’s not here. There’s no trace of her. She’s gone. Back to wherever it is she came from.’ He went back to Beth. ‘Are you all right, darling?’
She was leaning against the rock, her face white in the torchlight, tears pouring down her cheeks. Slowly she opened her eyes. She took a long, deep shuddering breath. ‘Are you sure she’s gone?’ She was trembling violently.
He nodded. ‘There’s no trace of anything. No clothing. Nothing. If she had been burned by that flare she would have been unconscious or screaming. Believe me, she has gone.’ He put his hands on her shoulders and gave them a hard, reassuring squeeze. ‘At least for now.’
Adam had nearly made the mistake again.
Each time he had found himself out of his body, his shock and surprise that the technique had worked, and then his subsequent elation and sense of triumph, had been so great he had rebounded straight back into it again and lain there, his heart thudding against his ribs, wondering if he were going to have a heart attack.
At first he had treated Brid as a spirit, a ghost who could be conjured from the dead, and he had wasted precious months practising from ancient texts on necromancy. Then his brai
n had kicked in. She was a priestess. An initiate of one of the most powerful magical traditions the Western world has ever known. She was not dead. And she was not undead in the vampire sense. She was a time traveller and still very much alive!
The technique had taken a long time to perfect. Different books gave different instructions. None of them gave enough. He suspected many of them, especially the ones he categorised as Celtic California, had been written by people who had never tried it themselves at all. But he had persisted in his studies. If Brid could do it, so could he. Using modern terms and techniques, self-hypnosis was the key to the intentional out of body experience; creative visualisation with a bit of magic thrown in. But he had studied reproductions of Grimoires as well. And John Dee. And Crowley. And Castenada. And finally he had done it. He had found himself poised somewhere near his bedroom ceiling and for the first time stared down at his body, seemingly asleep on his bed. He had learned cautiously to move – drift, really – and then to explore the house room by room. Finally he had plucked up courage to go out and drift around above the garden. One thing terrified him still. In all the literature, fiction and putative fact, there was a silver cord – the link which remained between body and soul, the lifeline by which the traveller could find his way back to his body. He did not appear to have one, or if he did, he could not see it.
There was more to learn of course. He needed to be able to travel vast distances, and he needed to be able to travel in time. And still he did not see how Brid could bring with her on her travels a solid, real body.
This, he suspected, was where the stone with its mirrored sign came in. It was the gateway, the place where the parallel planes somehow interconnected. Perhaps all standing stones marked gateways such as that. By tradition the countryside was full of such sacred places. Water-courses, fords, crossroads, special venerable trees, unusual rocks, hills. They were numerous and well documented. He remembered the time when as a student he had allowed himself to be lured down to the Eildon Hills by Liza to the place where Thomas of Ercildoune had slipped into Elfin Land and stayed there lost for seven years. Try as they might they had not found the exact place!
On the Edge of Darkness Page 53