“Okay,” said Damien, “into the van.”
Tosco and his squad piled into the back of the nondescript white vehicle while Damien hopped up front. Maddy helped Nancy climb into the passenger seat beside him.
“There’s enough for three,” said Damien. “Hop up.”
Maddy obliged, sliding in beside Nancy and slamming the door closed. She went to pull on her seatbelt, before remembering that traffic collisions were a thing of the past. “You have many vehicles?” she asked.
“Five or six,” said Damien, leaning forward to start the engine. “The problem is finding petrol. For a while we siphoned it from all the wrecks, but it seems like it’s going bad or something. Nothing we get running lasts very long.” As if to prove his point, the van’s engine coughed and spluttered before catching. Once it was rumbling though, it sounded perfectly healthy. Damien glanced at her as he pulled onto the main road. “The guy with you is American, but you’re not. Where you from, Maddy?”
“Reading. I was a paramedic. Still don’t know how I survived. Suppose I fell in with the right crowd. I ended up in Portsmouth a few weeks after everything started.”
“Portsmouth?”
“There are thirty thousand people there. We’ve been fighting the demons for months, and we’ve been winning, but…”
“But it isn’t over. Yeah, people feel that here too. Something bad is coming. Don’t ask me how I know, but the demons are rallying for one last clash. If we’re not ready…”
Maddy sighed. There was no need to finish that sentence.
Nancy began sobbing quietly. Damien rubbed her back with his gear-shifting hand, but he split his focus between Maddy and the road. “So, you planning to get everyone south to Portsmouth?”
“No! Portsmouth was safe once, but now it’s a lit firework. There was a woman in charge named Amanda Wickstaff, who locked down Portsmouth before it was overrun. Thousands survived because of her.”
“So what happened?”
“A tyrant murdered her and took over. He would’ve killed me, too, but Tosco and his men got me out. We came here looking for sanctuary.”
Damien’s knuckles clenched around the steering wheel. “Nothing’s changed then? Greedy men are still willing to kill to get what they want.”
“Listen, Damien, if you want peace and unity, then General Thomas is your enemy. The woman he killed was a hero. He’s an arrogant, dangerous piece of work.”
“I’ll take your word for it. Everyone thinks their side are the good guys; don’t mean it’s true.”
Maddy rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and what makes you such a moral authority?”
Damien half glanced at her and chuckled. “I’m a path walker, maybe the last one in existence. I didn’t even realise there were more of us until there wasn’t. It’s like a part of me got severed. I don’t think there are many of God’s worlds left.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Are you trying to say you’re some kind of saviour?”
“No, nothing like that – I’m just a nobody from Sutton Coldfield – but I can create gates. If things don’t go our way, I’m the last chance of getting us out of the fire.”
“You can open gates? Like those that brought the demons?”
“Similar, yeah, except my gates open across the tapestry. The demon gates only connect to Hell.”
“Huh?”
“The tapestry is like a web. It connects all of God’s worlds to each other, and to Heaven and Hell. Path walkers can traverse the tapestry. Sometimes they can see things from other worlds too, or see back and forth along a single strand.”
“You can see the future?”
“No, but others like me could. I just have the gate thing. My powers are stronger whenever I’m near totems. Oh, totems are people who exist on other worlds too. They’re like copies. Path walkers are the same, except we have powers.”
Maddy had to laugh, even though the world had moved beyond the scrutiny of the supernatural. Science clearly hadn’t known everything. “How did you learn about all this?”
Damien manoeuvred them onto a country road and shrugged at her. “It just came to me suddenly. I think it came from other path walkers, those who died. It’s like I gained their knowledge or something. Do I sound crazy?”
“Yes! You sound insane.”
Damien chuckled. “Yeah, I would have thought that too, not so long ago. Anyway, I’m just a part of things. Maybe you are too.”
“Then we need to help each other. There’s not enough of us left for any other option.”
“I agree.” Maddy knew she was being unreasonable by taking offence. This young man didn’t know her from Adam. Of course he wouldn’t risk his people just to keep her safe. That might change over time, but right now it was too early to ask a stranger to go to war.
Although I did just save his life.
Twenty minutes went by in silence while Maddy watched the ruined scenery pass by. Skeletal corpses littered the landscape. Dogs roamed the roadsides, staring like hungry ghosts.
Damien broke the silence a short time later when he announced, “We’re here.”
Maddy straightened in her seat and stared ahead through the grimy windscreen. The country road they’d entered was little more than a dirt track now, with thick woodland on either side. The trees thinned out after a while, revealing ragged stumps where they’d been felled.
“Everyone at Kielder has worked to clear a perimeter around the camp,” explained Damien. “They needed the wood to build, and the space gives advance warning if anything tries to come at us. We’ve dug moats and put up other defences. All in all, we’re not an easy target, if the demons even manage to find us.”
Maddy’s mouth fell open as the van hopped and wobbled over the uneven ground. The trees continued to thin out, until the van entered a massive stretch of open ground punctuated by wooden spikes, trenches, and other fortifications. At the end of the killing field was a grassy hill with a castle.
This wasn’t Portsmouth.
“Home sweet home,” said Damien, switching off the engine. “Hope you like fish.”
Maddy turned her head and saw a
