Hunter felt a real weight descend on him as he led the way across the rooftops, and became increasingly uncomfortable when it refused to dissipate. Climbing down another fire escape, they emerged into the crowds around Piccadilly Circus as the rain stopped. Hunter propelled Tom into an all-night cafe, where they sat at the back, drinking espresso in the steamy atmosphere.
‘What were those things?’ Hunter was angry, and in two minds about giving the irritating old hippie a pasting just to make himself feel better.
‘They come from another place, a world that’s only a step away from our own.’ Tom removed his glasses to clean the raindrops from the lenses. ‘The things there have populated our myths for millennia as they crossed back and forth between worlds, and the Baobhan Sith are one of the worst nightmares to crawl out of that place. Any time you read a tale about some blood-sucking woman drifting out of a cemetery in a shroud, you can trace it back to them.’
‘This wasn’t some random attack-’
‘The Enemy controls them. The Enemy controls everything monstrous and frightening and unpleasant because its currency — its entire ethos — is despair. The Baobhan Sith spread poison in this sad and miserable reality, but on this occasion they were directed to eliminate you.’
Hunter tapped his spoon on the Formica table. ‘So essentially I no longer have any choice about getting involved in this madness.’
‘Correct. The Hunter has become the hunted.’
‘Nice joke. You know I can actually kill a man with this spoon?’
‘The smell of testosterone is overpowering.’
‘Where do you come into this? Are you the Grandpa of Dragons?’
Tom eyed Hunter over the rim of his coffee cup. ‘I have an interest in your success, shall we say. I accompanied Master Churchill for several hundred years-’
‘You wear it well.’
‘-most of it spent in the timeless Otherworld. The war has affected everything. It has destroyed lives, changed the course of time, shifted reality once, perhaps on many occasions. The stakes are the highest imaginable-’
‘Survival? That’s what it usually comes down to.’
‘On one level. The survival of our dreams for a better world, for meaning, for humanity finally to attain its true potential.’
‘So why am I so special?’
‘Yes, hard to believe, isn’t it?’ Tom sipped his coffee and smacked his lips. ‘The story goes that at the start of everything, two powerful opposing forces were created. Call them Good and Evil, if you want to be stupid. Dark and Light, in symbolic terms. The Dark got the upper hand and decided how the universe should be, and it got to rule it. That explains why there’s Evil in the world, because if the universe was ruled by Good, Evil would not be tolerated. That’s the essence of Gnostic thinking.’
‘Okay — Good, Evil, Light, Dark. I think I can get my head round that.’
Tom kept one eye on the door. ‘When the Light and the Dark were formed, slivers of Light were embedded in all humanity. It’s the key to our salvation — if we use that Light we can oppose the Dark, and turn things around for the universe. And those slivers of Light go by another name around these parts. The Pendragon Spirit.’
‘And that’s what links the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons.’
‘You lot get to access what everyone has hidden within them. That’s what makes you champions of Life, whether you want to be or not.’
‘Not a very good story, is it?’ Hunter finished his espresso and ordered another.
‘I’m just repeating what I’ve been told. Who knows what the truth is?’
‘So there’s a little group of us — a few plucky guerrillas — hoping to overthrow the evil god of the universe.’ Hunter considered that for a moment. ‘I like those odds.’
‘You’ll fit right in.’
‘You’re saying the Enemy won’t let me walk away. That I don’t have a choice about getting involved in this.’
‘You always have a choice. You just have to be prepared to live with the consequences.’
‘Basically, it’s suicide whichever way I turn.’
‘Death’s not all it’s cracked up to be.’
Hunter saw a shift in the impassive edifice of Tom’s face. ‘What?’
Tom looked into the black depths of his coffee and mused, almost to himself, ‘Sometimes I dream of my death. I remember the details of it as clearly as if it really happened. Yet here I am.’ Absently, he stirred in another sugar. ‘I feel out of joint and I don’t know why.’
Hunter watched cars pass the window in a wet haze of reflected light. Piccadilly Circus throbbed with the comfortable rhythms of steady life, red, amber, green, red, amber, green. Yet now he found his attention drawn beyond the surface to details he had never found a need to recognise before: the movement of mysterious shadows across the upper storeys of a building; the sudden, frightened expression on the face of a passer-by, as if a terrible secret had been whispered into their ear; vibrations permeating the walls and floor that felt like a distant heartbeat. He knew then and there that no good would come.
3
Church held Ruth’s sweat-slick body tightly to him. Through the thin walls of the rooming house they could hear Laura singing a Basement Jaxx song loudly, with scant regard for any other occupants.
‘How long do you think we can keep doing this?’ Ruth asked sleepily.
‘What, having sex?’
She looked up at him through heavy-lidded eyes. ‘Running. Hiding. Trying to stay one step ahead of the Enemy.’
‘We’re not doing so badly.’
‘We’ve been lucky. Sticking to ley lines, staying at any vaguely safe place we can find en route. Church, it’s not sustainable. Sooner or later we’re going to get caught out.’ She nuzzled into his neck. ‘I’m just being pragmatic. The Blue Fire can hide us from the Enemy’s view, but it doesn’t make us indestructible. It’s not just the Void, or the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders, or any of the supernatural things lined up against us. There’s plenty of normal people working for the Enemy, too. We don’t know who we can trust. We only need to get flagged up on some CCTV camera, or pulled over for jumping a red light …’ Her voice trailed away wearily, but then she surprised him with a long, deep kiss. ‘I still wouldn’t trade this for the world, though,’ she added softly.
‘You’re sure?’
‘I was so lonely in that fake life the Void gave me. I knew I was missing something really important, but I just didn’t know what it was. I suppose that was all part of the punishment.’
‘You still can’t remember anything from before it all changed? Us together?’
‘Not the detail. But the emotional memory is getting stronger all the time. If I wanted to get all girly I’d say I feel love, that real aching need to be together, just not the reasons how or why that love came about. Does that make sense?’
It did. ‘Maybe the memories will come back once the Void’s illusion fades completely.’
‘I hope so.’ She pulled the duvet around her shoulders and receded into it. ‘Church, do you think Veitch did something to us?’
He knew what she meant: that moment when Ryan Veitch had impaled himself on his own sword in Cornwall and a bolt of black lightning burst through all three of them. ‘If he did, it hasn’t worked. Don’t worry about it.’
She smiled, nodded, but Church could see she was still worrying. ‘I’m going to get a shower.’ She gave him another kiss and skipped to the bathroom.
Church turned to the pack of tarot cards on the bedside cabinet. They were a unique set left for him by Niamh, his long-time companion from the Tuatha De Danann, who had been worshipped as gods by the Celtic
