Coldbrook

protect you. Beyond there you might need this.’

‘How far?’ Jonah asked, still looking into the pit.

‘Three traps.’

A shadow closed on Jonah and pulled back again. His Inquisitor, letting him know it was there. He sensed no alarm radiating from it, no fear that Jonah was running away. He guessed that it could follow him to the ends of the Earths.

They went on, and each of the other three traps held the remains of a Neanderthal fury. Two were dead, their heads ruined. The third was pinned against a wooden frame that had sprung from the wall and been pushed back by those that had come after. It lifted its head at they approached and Drake destroyed it.

Jonah was amazed once more at the fury’s decayed state. It was over forty years dead, yet it had still had the ability to move and the will to spread its disease. He experienced a moment of panic that made his heart flutter and caused him to lean against the passage wall.

They walked on and soon passed through a final doorway in a thick stone wall. The wooden door had been pulled to one side, its top hinge pulled away from the crumbling rock.

‘I’ll reset them all on the way back out,’ Drake said.

‘I know,’ Jonah said. And I’ll be committed to this. But he hadn’t for a second thought about turning around. This might have been forced upon him, but, though he could never believe in fate or destiny, his mind was set.

‘This is it,’ Drake said, and for the first time Jonah heard a weakness in his voice. Awe did that, perhaps. And maybe fear.

The breach was in front of them, set into the original hillside like a black diamond. Light did not escape it: it neither shone nor glowed. It was simply a blackness in the shadows thrown by Drake’s torch.

Jonah held out his hand to Drake, and they shook.

‘They’ll write poems about you,’ Drake said.

‘Poems? Christ. I’m Welsh. Give me a good song any day.’

Drake laughed sadly, not quite understanding. ‘Good luck, Jonah.’

Without another word Jonah passed through, and his greatest journey began.

2

Jayne surfaced slowly from the churu coma, her senses coming alive as her pain grew. She felt as if she’d been torn apart and thrust back together again. The roar of the helicopter’s motor had stopped, replaced now with screaming and other, more terrible sounds. Something dripped. Someone cried, and it sounded like a little girl.

Jayne opened her eyes, and even that hurt. Groaning out loud, she lifted her hands and checked her body for wounds.

There was blood on the back of her head, but she didn’t think that it was hers.

‘Sean?’ she said, glancing to her left. Sean was gone. His safety straps were cut, and his absence seemed unnatural.

She closed her eyes, trying to process what she’d seen just across from her. Then she looked again.

The guy, Vic, was dead. Head flung back, from the chest up he was red. His mouth hung open, and blood dripped from between his teeth. His little girl was standing with her back to him, less than three feet from Jayne, tugging at her mother’s safety straps.

‘Hey,’ Jayne said.

The girl staggered a little, kicking something on the floor, letting out a wretched cry.

Someone screamed again, and the wrecked helicopter seemed to shake.

The woman — Lucy, Jayne remembered, the name coming to her even though she wasn’t sure they’d even been introduced — was whimpering as she wrestled with her straps.

‘Hey,’ Jayne said again. The woman looked up, her eyes wide. Her face was misted with blood, but it didn’t seem to be her own. She blinked a few times, glanced above and behind Jayne, and started moaning.

The little girl stood back and kicked the thing on the floor again. She froze, crying, and then a sharp metal snap signalled Lucy’s freedom. She snatched up her daughter and pressed her face against her chest before jumping through the hole where the cabin door had previously hung.

Jayne looked down at the thing on the floor and realised it was a head. Not Sean, not Sean, she realised, because this dead person was white. The head was smashed and the only reason Jayne managed to keep from screaming was that it was looking away from her. At least he’s safe now, she thought, and then she did scream.

The dead man opposite her lifted his head and looked at her.

‘No!’ she shouted. ‘No, he’s one of them, no, help me, help me!’

From somewhere behind her came more anguished screaming, and then she recognised Marc’s voice calling Gary’s name again and again.

Sean appeared in the doorway, streaks of vomit across his chin and down his chest. He climbed in, shielding Vic from Jayne’s view, and-

‘Get your gun out!’ she shrieked. He held her, leaning in and ignoring the vomit as he pressed close, whispering into her ear that it was all right, she was alive, alive!

‘He’s not one of them,’ he said. He half turned. ‘Vic! Vic!’

‘Yeah,’ Vic said somehow. Jayne struggled against her straps, pushing against Sean to move him aside so she could see. She’d heard Vic talking, but she had to see.

Vic’s eyes were a startling white against the blood and other stuff coating his face. He spat, retched.

‘No more puke,’ Sean said. He put one hand on Vic’s chest and brought a knife around, and for a moment Jayne thought he was going to put the man out of his misery.

Sean sawed and hacked at the restraining straps.

‘Your family,’ he said, and Jayne saw Vic stumble from the wrecked aircraft and fall to the ground outside.

‘Sean? I saw his head. I saw Gary’s head.’

Sean glanced down and then came for her, putting himself between her and what she didn’t want to see again. Behind her, Marc’s shouting had ceased, and now she could hear him whispering. She didn’t want to hear what he was saying.

‘Got to cut you out,’ he said. ‘I’ll carry you as best I can, but you can’t-’

‘Marc,’ Jayne said.

Sean glanced behind her. ‘Saying his goodbyes,’ he said, and he went to work on her straps. His eyes were wide, and she wondered what he had seen.

‘There,’ Sean said as the straps fell away from Jayne. She slid a little to the right, not realising until then that they’d come to rest at a tilt. He did not apologise as he slung her arm around his neck and lifted.

Jayne half turned as she stood, and she strained to see over her seat into the pilot’s cabin. Lights were still on across the control panels, the windscreen and its framing had vanished, and she could see Marc in silhouette, hugging his lover’s headless corpse. Stunned, speechless, she let Sean help her from the helicopter and down to the ground.

They’d crashed fifty metres from a road that skirted a large lake and had taken down several small trees in the process. Debris lay scattered across the rocky slope, and there were several deep gouges where the chopper’s rotors had struck and dug into the ground. Vic sat on a splintered tree, hands resting on his knees as he stared at the ground between his feet. His wife knelt next to him, and their daughter stood in front of them and hugged them both.

‘Mummy, Daddy,’ she said, over and over. ‘Mummy, Daddy.’ Jayne was pleased that the family was still together and when Sean eased her arm from around his neck she would not let him go.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘Can’t believe we survived that,’ he said, looking at the crashed helicopter and shaking his head. ‘How the fuck did we survive that?’