Church looked along the corridor to where he had glimpsed the Jack that he now realised was
Screams drew them onto the platform. Snow encrusted the roof of the newly arrived train and the windows were covered with an impenetrable hoar-frost, apart from the driver’s cab which was splattered on the inside with blood. Crashing and rending boomed within as a terrible force tore through the carriages.
Further down the platform, Jack, Mahalia and Crowther were rooted with fear. This time Church knew they were real.
As Church ran towards them, a door exploded out from a carriage halfway between Church and the detectives. From the frozen interior emerged something that had the form of a man but moved with the loping gait of a beast. Wild, black hair framed a skull-like face, the bottom half of which was smeared red with blood. It was larger than any man, with powerful, sinewy limbs that ended in broken, red-stained nails. As it moved, it appeared to alter shape briefly, becoming all beast with thick, grey fur and yellow-green eyes, before reverting back to its original form.
Shot after shot from the detectives’ guns crashed into the Wendigo. It roared with annoyance at Nelson and Tombstone before continuing to prowl towards Church and the others.
‘Why won’t it die?’ Jack said.
Nelson and Tombstone reloaded and continued to fire.
Church could smell it now, meat and wet fur and a heavy animal musk. The cold grew more intense the nearer it came.
‘Oh, God,’ Crowther whispered.
Just as the Wendigo was about to leap, Church turned his back on it and shouted, ‘Stop this now! I’m not going to play the game any more! See, I’m walking away!’
The Wendigo’s breath rasped on the back of his neck, but it didn’t attack. Church walked past Mahalia, Jack and Crowther towards the end of the platform.
Ahead of him the air shimmered and two shadowy shapes appeared as if emerging from a heat-haze. They launched themselves at each other, rolling and punching and clawing as they fought fiercely. The indistinct figures became a raven and a coyote, both trying to rip out each other’s eyes, and then two young men: one had jet-black hair, yellow eyes and pointed features, the other long brown hair and green eyes with a broader, flatter nose. They continued to roll around the platform like brawling children, snapping and snarling.
Church got between them and threw them apart. ‘Stop fighting!’
The two men crouched on opposite sides of the platform, glaring at each other.
‘You cheated!’ the one with brown hair said. ‘There was to be no involvement in the game.’
‘You cheated!’ the other one said furiously.
‘Game?’ Church interjected angrily. ‘People have died.’
‘Well, they’re only human,’ the brown-haired one said slyly.
‘Who are you?’ Church asked.
The brown-haired one bowed. ‘Your people like to call me Coyote or Akba-Atatdia, or First Scolder. I am the cleverest and the trickiest and no one can ever beat me.’
‘Except me.’ The other bowed, too. ‘Your people like to call me Raven. Or KwekWaxa’we. Or Chulyen, Hemaskas, or a score of other names. And I am the cleverest and the trickiest.’ He sighed. ‘Though it is always he who plays tricks on me.’
‘So you set loose the Wendigo-’
‘He did that,’ Raven pointed at Coyote.
‘-and all those people were slaughtered for some kind of stupid competition?’
Raven looked sheepish. ‘But that is why I chose you, Brother of Dragons, to prevent the mayhem this fool unleashed. And because I was selected as your totem, and you already have the
Church looked from one to the other with contempt. ‘Some day humans are going to move up the ladder, and then we’re going to put all you gods out of business.’
‘Surely not,’ Coyote said. ‘Then what will you do for fun?’
Drained, Church turned to walk back up the platform. The Wendigo was gone. But so were Jack, Mahalia and Crowther. Nelson and Tombstone stood in a trance, guns hanging limply.
Coyote and Raven leaped alongside Church. ‘The boy is gone. That was always the end of our competition,’ Raven said.
‘He is too dangerous to exist in our Great Dominion,’ Coyote added. ‘He will always attract trouble.’
‘Where is he?’
Coyote and Raven both pointed up.
‘Apoyan-Tachi, Sky Father God, has taken him,’ Coyote replied.
‘If you wish to find him again, you must first find your way through the Sky Maze,’ Raven stated. ‘Take a step off the highest point of any of the highest buildings in this city and perhaps you will find yourself standing on the invisible path.’
‘Or perhaps not,’ Coyote added.
Chapter Fourteen
1
New York was awake. From Battery Park to Harlem, the streets were already beginning to gridlock under the bright, silvery gleam of the dawn sky. In the diners, the cooks were preparing for the onslaught of morning customers, filling the air with steam from the coffee machines, loading trays of bagels and croissants, opening boxes of eggs. The chatter of life started low, the words not yet apparent.
Church sat on the sidewalk at Fifth Avenue and Thirty-Fourth Street, bone-weary from the night’s exertions, knowing the worst was yet to come. The Lexus pulled up next to him at speed and Laura lurched angrily out of the back seat.
‘God, the smell in there was disgusting. Ham. And shit.’
Nelson climbed out of the passenger seat. ‘You sure you want her back? I think we’ve got due cause to put her away — for being in possession of a dangerous mouth and a lethal personality.’
Exchanging a silent, knowing look with Nelson, Church hugged Laura as Tom emerged from the car carrying a long package wrapped loosely in pages from the
Bad-tempered, Tombstone threw open the driver’s door. ‘More weird shit.’ The police radio was continually interrupted by bursts of loud static, within which Church could just make out a single repeated word: Croatoan. On Tombstone’s BlackBerry, random emails blinked in, quoting the same word.
‘Multiple streams of information transmitting the same message,’ Shavi said. ‘It is starting.’
‘Then we’d better get moving.’ Church unwrapped Caledfwlch and slipped it into the scabbard on his back.
‘We’re giving you one chance here,’ Nelson said.
‘That’s all I need.’
Nelson glanced at Tombstone, unsure. ‘You think we’ve been infected with stupidtron particles?’
‘Oh, yeah. You, me and the rest of the world.’
‘My girlfriend’s always going on about shit like this,’ Nelson confided. A flicker of doubt crossed his face. “The world is an illusion. We’re all tricked into believing a lie. The evidence is there if you look close enough.” She
