> So now I’ve got a psychologist in my head as well as an endocrinologist.
< Nothing you don’t already know, or couldn’t work out.
She recalled something Greenaway had said earlier, about the pre-cogs.
> So you’re just an advisor who can whisper good advice into my ear?
< I’m not a separate entity, Kara. I’m intertwined with you. We’re an “us”: a mutually dependent co-operative.
> And what do you get out of it?
The mental equivalent of a shrug. < Eyes, ears, mobility. Oh, and let’s not forget the entertainment value.
> Why doesn’t he have a name for this alien pre-cog empire?
< It’s real, not a comic book. You okay being empath of the year?
> Does my brain look big in it?
< Interesting. Your amygdala glows faintly when you think about it. As does your Broca’s Area. Do you want a diagram?
A passing fox froze as Kara laughed in the night.
> I wouldn’t understand and you know it. But I do miss Marc and Tatia.
< And we’ll find them, Kara. Yes we will. Oh, Greenaway cares about you.
> I knew that. She felt strangely pleased.
< You fancy him.
> Don’t be ridiculous. She remembered when they’d been held captive, beneath the Science Museum. How he hadn’t been ashamed to show vulnerability. How he’d trusted her to save his life. > He’s not like your average general.
* * *
Kara walked along the shoreline for a few minutes until she reached the bare-boned hulk where Greenaway had stood earlier. She took out a joss – mild Tangier grass and even milder Burma heroin – to help her relax and reflect. The river air was cool, the sky clear enough for a thousand stars to break through the haze of light from Bristol and Cardiff City States.
Starlight reflected on the river. Out in the centre. Multi-coloured light.
Kara froze as the river began to gleam with the same colours she’d seen on Dartmoor, when Haytor had become home to a predatory force.
No, not predatory. She understood that now, since Marc had told her of his night in Scotland. These mysterious entities could kill, no doubt. And the one on Dartmoor did apparently collect human... intellects? Emotions? Bloody hell, she thought, is this where I start believing in a soul? But even if she did, it wouldn’t mean belonging to a sect, or tripping lightly on the dew-bejewelled dawn grass while wearing something flimsy and floating. No poetry, no belief in a saviour. Just an essence, a focused awareness that... maybe... was more similar to the entity now twinkling on the River Severn than most humans could ever guess. Or would ever want to know.
The lights spun faster and faster, rose from the surface in a spiral and then vanished. Kara again knew sadness, as if something special and unique was gone forever. Were the entities humans had once called nature spirits or gods leaving Earth?
She was aware of another figure close by. Anson Greenaway, staring up into the sky. She doubted it was at the stars.
Kara walked towards him, not annoyed by his presence but strangely excited.
“I couldn’t sleep...”
His face was a blur in the dark but she heard the confusion in his voice.
“Saw you, was going to go, and then that... that...”
As before on Dartmoor her senses were heightened. His personal scent was like seasoned oak and hot metal. Under his confusion, in fact part of it, was a once-dormant but now awakened ecstasy, perhaps similar to the emotion felt by worshippers of Pan or the Eleusinian Mysteries. Kara’s fascination with the past extended far beyond hundred-year-old movies. If he moved towards her, Kara knew, if he held out his arms she’d be in them and they’d be coupling with the freedom and intensity of wild animals. And that would be both wonderful and a terrible mistake. Much as she distrusted Greenaway’s single-minded obsession with the programme, it was needed to help bring her people home.
He held out his arms.
* * *
Colour danced on the ground, in the air around them.
Colour danced in Kara’s mind, the night air cool on her naked skin, clothes abandoned around her, no memory of losing them, only the echo of cloth tearing, to be drowned by the sound of a frantic piping that was actually a nightingale, but no place for romance or beauty, only a savage want and need.
Both naked they sniffed and tasted each other until Kara turned, dropped to hands and knees and presented herself as the colours danced on the river again.
Each thrust took her closer to the entity. She snarled when Greenaway left her, the anger forgotten when she was twisted to lie on the ground, her thighs wide and welcoming, and instead of the entity she stared into Greenaway’s eyes which, like hers, were glowing. She pulled his head down, kissed his mouth as the first tremors powered through her.
“Your eyes glowed,” she said, starting to get dressed then deciding what the hell, she wasn’t cold. “Not from netherspace. From whatever it was out there.” For the first time since her first time Kara felt a little shy after sex.
“I’m a country boy.” He touched her cheek. “Are we going to talk about this?”
“The sex?” In which she’d totally lost herself, something that never happened on a first date.
“The glowing eyes.”
“Mine are from netherspace. Yours were like the entity.”
“Just a country boy,” he said again. Then, “It’s the Wild in me.”
Bloody hell, she thought, now I’ve done dad and daughter.
* * *
And managed to turn an insistent giggle into a cough.
Half an hour and a shared shower later they sat side by side outside Kara’s Merc. There was a glowing fire pit and mugs of chocolate laced with old dark rum. There was a new ease between them, the mutual acceptance of a growing affection. Kara knew there were many reasons why she should dislike and still distrust him. But she didn’t and it wasn’t only sex. Maybe it was empathy working overtime. Maybe it was because they’d both been possessed by whatever lived
