tractors and a farm ranger were parked outside a small access door. “Are there any possessed here?” she whispered to Titreano.
“No,” he whispered back.
“What about normal people?”
His brown face creased in concentration. “Several. I hear them over in yon houses. Five or six are malingering inside this second barn.”
“Hangar,” Louise corrected. “We call them hangars nowadays.”
“Yes, lady.”
“Sorry.”
They swapped a nervous grin.
“I suppose we’d better go and see them, then,” she said. “Come here, Gen.” She pointed the shotgun at the ground and took her sister’s hand as they walked towards the second hangar.
She really wished Carmitha hadn’t given her the weapon. Yet at the same time it imbued her with an uncommon sense of confidence. Even though she doubted she could ever actually fire it at anyone.
“They have seen us,” Titreano said quietly.
Louise scanned the corrugated panel wall of the hangar. A narrow line of windows ran the entire length. She thought she saw a shiver of motion behind one. “Hello?” she called loudly.
There was no reply.
She walked right up to the door and knocked firmly. “Hello, can you hear me?” She tried the handle, only to discover it was locked.
“Now what?” she asked Titreano.
“Hey!” Genevieve shouted at the door. “I’m hungry.”
The handle turned, and the door opened a crack. “Who the hell are you people?” a man asked.
Louise drew herself up as best she could manage, knowing full well what she must look like to anyone inside. “I am Louise Kavanagh, the heir of Cricklade, this is my sister Genevieve, and William Elphinstone, one of our estate managers.”
Genevieve opened her mouth to protest, but Louise nudged her with a toe.
“Oh, really?” came the answer from behind the door.
“Yes!”
“It is her,” said another, deeper voice. The door opened wide to show two men gazing out at them. “I recognize her. I used to work at Cricklade.”
“Thank you,” Louise said.
“Until your father fired me.”
Louise didn’t know whether to burst into tears or just shoot him on the spot.
“Let them in, Duggen,” a woman called. “The little girl looks exhausted. And this is no day to settle old grudges.”
Duggen shrugged and moved aside.
A line of dusty windows was the sole source of illumination inside. The aeroambulance was a hulking dark presence in the middle of the concrete floor. Three people were standing below the plane’s narrow, pointed nose; the woman who had spoken, and a pair of five-year-old twin girls. She introduced herself as Felicia Cantrell, her daughters were Ellen and Tammy; her husband Ivan was an aeroambulance pilot, the man who had opened the door. “And Duggen you already know, or at least he knows you.”
Ivan Cantrell took a vigilant look out of the hangar door before closing it. “So would you like to tell us what you’re doing here, Louise? And what happened to you?”
It took her over fifteen minutes to produce a patched-up explanation which satisfied them. All the time guarding her tongue from uttering the word possession, and mentioning who Titreano really was. As she realized, those two items would have got her ejected from the hangar in no time at all. Yet at the same time she was pleased with her white lies; the Louise who had woken to a normal world yesterday would have just blurted the truth and imperiously demanded they do something about it. This must be growing up, after a fashion.
“The Land Union with modern energy weapons?” Duggen mused sceptically when she was finished.
“I think so,” Louise said. “That’s what everyone said.”
He looked as if he was about to object when Genevieve said: “Listen.”
Louise couldn’t hear a thing. “What?” she asked.
“The church bells, they’ve stopped.”
Duggen and Ivan went over to the windows and looked out.
“Are they coming?” Louise mouthed to Titreano.
He nodded his head surreptitiously.
“Please,” she appealed to Ivan. “You have to fly us out of here.”
“I don’t know about that, Miss Kavanagh. I don’t have the authority. And we don’t really know what’s happening in the village. Perhaps I ought to check with the constable first.”
“Please! If you’re worried about your job, don’t be. My family will protect you.”
He sucked in his breath, blatantly unhappy.
“Ivan,” Felicia said. She stared straight at him, pointing significantly to the twins. “Whatever is going on, this is no place for children to be. The capital will be safe if anywhere is.”
“Oh, hell. All right, Miss Kavanagh. You win. Get in. We’ll all go.”
Duggen started to open the big sliding doors at the end of the hangar, allowing a thick beam of pink-tinted sunlight to strike the aeroambulance. The plane was an imported Kulu Corporation SCV-659 civil utility, a ten- seater VTOL supersonic with a near global range.
“It has the essence of a bird,” Titreano murmured, his face gently intoxicated. “But with the strength of a bull. What magic.”
“Are you going to be all right inside?” Louise asked anxiously.
“Oh, yes, Lady Louise. This is a voyage to be prized beyond mountains of gold. To be granted this opportunity I shall give full praise to the Lord tonight.”
She coughed uncomfortably. “Right. Okay, we’d better get in; up that stairs on the other side, see?”
They followed Felicia and the twins up the airstairs. The plane’s narrow cabin had been customized for its ambulance role, with a pair of stretchers and several cabinets of medical equipment. There were only two seats, which the twins used. Genevieve, Titreano, and Louise wound up sitting together on one of the stretcher couches. Louise checked the safety on the shotgun once again and wedged it below her feet. Surprisingly, no one had objected to her carrying it on board.
“This is all we need,” Ivan called back from the pilot’s seat as he started to run through the preflight checklist. “I’ve got half a dozen systems failures showing.”
“Any critical?” Duggen asked as he closed the hatch.
“We’ll survive.”
Felicia opened one of the cabinets and handed Genevieve a bar of chocolate. The girl tore the wrapper off and sat munching it with a huge contented smile.
If she craned forwards, Louise could just see the windscreen beyond Ivan. The plane was rolling forwards out of the hangar.
“There are some houses on fire in the village,” the pilot exclaimed. “And some people running down the road towards us. Hang on.”
There was a sudden surge in the bee-hum from the fans, and the cabin rocked. They were airborne within seconds, climbing at a shallow angle. The only thing visible through the windscreen were daubs of insubstantial pink cloud.
“I hope Carmitha is all right down there,” Louise said guiltily.
“I feel certain she will remain free from harm, lady. And it gladdens me that you resolved your quarrel with her. I admire you for that, my lady Louise.”
She knew her cheeks would be blushing, she could feel the heat. Hopefully the smears of mud and dust would be veiling the fact. “Carmitha said something to me before she left. Something about you. It was a question. A good one.”
“Ah. I did wonder what passed between you. If you care to ask, I will answer with such honesty as I
