From the line of pine trees two miles distant, a silver hand caught the moonlight as it traced patterns in the crisp snow. Veitch watched Church and Hunter make their way back to the hotel. He could almost feel their raw emotion.
‘Life hurts, doesn’t it, mate?’ he said quietly.
Behind him, horses that were not horses stamped their hoofs and blasted steaming breath from their nostrils. Etain and the other Brothers and Sisters of Spiders stood silently. Frost rimed their hair and faces, but they were oblivious.
Ruth was nestled in the crook of Veitch’s arm. He gently brushed the snow from her cheek. The blanket in which he had swaddled her would soon bring warmth back into her limbs.
‘It’s a funny old world. We see everything around us, and we know what it’s like, but we always want something more. So we’re never able to rest, never happy.’ He kissed Ruth on the forehead. ‘I love you, darlin’. Always have and I always will. We’re setting off on a long road now. It’s not going to be pretty, but it’s the only way, right up to the bitter end. Ryan and Ruth, side by side against the world, like it was always meant to be.’
In Etain’s dead eyes, there was a faint glimmer, like the twinkling of a star in the furthest, coldest reaches of space. And the cold wind blew, and the snow fell, and silence lay across the land.
Chapter Five
1
Black feathers gleamed across a vast arc around the hotel as if darkness was welling up out of the ground and across the pristine snow. Shavi watched the
‘The birds are responding to Church’s thoughts,’ he mused. ‘Almost an extension of his personality.’
‘He’s a bloody idiot.’ Tom rapped on the glass to try to scare the ravens away. Beady black eyes stared back at him unflinchingly. ‘He has a job to do and he’s mooning over some woman.’
‘We are all addicted to being in love. It is the human condition.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that, would I?’ Tom said sarcastically. ‘Ever since those so-called gods cut me up and put me back together, I’ve not been much of anything.’
Hunter came over, swigging from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. ‘He’ll be all right. He’s a tough bloke.’
‘Why did she do it? It is not like Ruth,’ Shavi asked.
‘Something between the two of them,’ Hunter replied. ‘Don’t ask me — I don’t do all that relationship shit. But you’re right — it’s not like her, given the little I know of her, which leaves me thinking she’s still alive. Can you see anything?’ he said to Tom.
Concern briefly softened Tom’s harsh expression. ‘Nothing of her.’
‘But you are starting to see snatches of the future now?’ Shavi asked.
‘I’ve had a few flashes in the last half hour. As events happen, more and more falls into place. The future is becoming solid.’
‘And not good, by the look on your face,’ Hunter noted. ‘What happened here to make a bad outcome more likely?’ He brushed the question off instantly. ‘No point thinking about what might be. We need to find our target. Are you ready to locate him?’
‘I am ready to try,’ Shavi replied.
‘Not going to lose any more body parts, are you?’
Shavi smiled tightly. ‘I have the upper hand now.’
2
Dawn was breaking when they left the hotel in a four-wheel-drive. They had found several other people sacrificed to Tyr, hanging in their rooms. Hunter had been keen to burn the hotel to the ground to cover their tracks in what would be seen as another terrorist outrage, but Church was adamant that the bodies needed to be left intact for their relatives to claim.
‘You recovered now?’ Laura lounged in Shavi’s lap in the back. ‘You looked like shit when you came out of your little ritual room.’
‘It is becoming easier, but never easy. At least we now know where we are going.’
Church brooded in the front. His eyes flicked continually across the landscape, always searching. ‘Interpol’s going to be looking for us,’ he said. ‘This isn’t going to be easy.’
‘I know a few tricks,’ Hunter said as he steered onto the deserted main road.
Church allowed himself one last look for Ruth. Even after everything that had happened, he still had hope.
Behind them, the
3
In the Court of the Soaring Spirit, the night was white with lightning flashes. The storm whirled ferociously around the foothills, bringing with it rain as hard as bullets and thunder so loud it shook the glass in the windows.
Mallory sat beside the bed in the room at the top of the tallest tower, where he had sat for most of the day. Rhiannon barely stirred. Occasionally her eyes would flicker as if she was in the throes of dramatic dreams, but she showed no sign of waking from the Sleep Like Death.
Caitlin slipped in. ‘Still nothing?’
‘Maybe I’m wasting my time. I keep hoping she might come round long enough to give us a hint as to what’s going on here.’
‘Sophie’s been in the ritual for hours. She looks exhausted.’
‘She found nothing?’
‘The Market of Wishful Spirit might as well have fallen off the edge of the world. That’s what she said.’
Mallory cursed under his breath. ‘Everyone’s counting on us.’
‘She’s doing her best. We all are.’
Mallory gently mopped Rhiannon’s forehead with a damp cloth; it appeared to soothe her. ‘I keep thinking there’s something staring me in the face and I can’t see it. The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons that Church rescued are missing. Lugh and Math and some of the other Tuatha De Danann are missing. The whole population’s terrified. And the Market of Wishful Spirit has gone into hiding. We just need to find the pattern that links it all together and then we’ll start getting somewhere.’
‘You think the Enemy’s already here in the court, undercover?’
‘I’m certain of it.’
Caitlin thoughtfully fingered the axe she now carried at her waist. Mallory was impressed by the transformation that had come over her; she appeared more together than at any time since he had met her.
‘I think we should start questioning people,’ she said. ‘They know something. We just have to find a way to make them talk.’
