emotions; a terrible, dark spiral that had no end.
'What are you thinking?'
Laura started; she hadn't realised Ruth was awake. 'I'm thinking, `Boy, I hope she doesn't start whining any time soon.''
Ruth managed a weak laugh; her voice sounded like autumn leaves. 'You'll never change, will you?'
'Count on it.'
Ruth tried to lever herself into a sitting position. Her arms were feeble and her belly was enormous; she seemed to have gone almost full-term of a natural pregnancy in a matter of days. Eventually she gave up and settled for halfsitting, half-lying. She snorted with laughter at her own pathetic attempt.
'How do you keep so up? You've had the bum deal to end all bum deals. Some psycho slicing off your finger. Getting tortured by the Bastards. Now this-'
'Now I'm pregnant with the one-eyed God of Death and he's going to burst out of my stomach in a few days and tear me apart. Well, when you put it like that…' She laughed again, before breaking into a coughing fit.
'What is it with you? When I first met you, you were such a poker-up-the arse kind of girl. Some spoilt little middle-class moron. I thought you'd fall apart at the first sign of trouble.'
'What's the matter? Jealous?'
Her words were lighthearted but they stung Laura as if she'd been slapped. 'You have a real sense of the absurd, don't you?'
'I'm dying. You're supposed to be nice to me.'
Laura watched her impassively.
'That was the point where you were supposed to say, `Course you're not dying. Everything will work out in the end.'' Ruth threw an arm across her eyes. Laura couldn't tell if she was trying to hide her emotions, but she felt bad anyway.
But not bad enough she could bring herself to be nice. Nice was for losers. 'What do you expect me to say?'
'I don't know. Nothing to say, is there? I'm dying. I know I'm dying. And any chance I have is the longest of long shots.' She removed her arm and Laura was surprised to see a remarkable peace in her face.
That twisted the knife in her gut even more and suddenly she felt like crying; the words just bubbled out. 'What is it? Church, you can see he's a hero. It's stitched right into the heart of him, always beating himself up about responsibilities and obligations and doing the right thing. Shavi's just Mister Decency. You know he'd give up his life if the cause was right. Even Veitch, the Testosterone Kid, a fucking murderer by his own admission! Even he's fighting against type to be good, to be a hero. And despite all his very obvious limitations, you know he's going to come through, when the chips are down and all those other cliches. And then there's you, kicked around and tortured from pillar to post, taking all this shit that nobody should have to take. And dying with dignity. I don't fit in here. You give me a choice between saving my own skin and doing the right thing and you watch my dust!' The self-pity was sickening, but she seemed unable to control herself.
'You're not being fair on yourself-'
'Don't start analysing me. I don't need it. And for God's sake, don't start being nice to me.'
'I won't-'
'Just don't.'
'Look, can't we just be friends? Even now?' Ruth's eyes filled with tears; despite her calm, her emotions were on a knife edge.
Laura remained silent, staring at the wall. The mass of scrawled writing disturbed her immensely and in all their time there none of them had felt up to making any effort to decipher it. It was just part of the oppressive mood that lurked in the comers of the house. She was sure Ruth sensed things there that she wasn't talking about, and there were times when she felt it acutely herself, and she was less sensitive than anyone she knew. Something bad had happened, Ruth had said, and something bad was going to happen. Perhaps that was it: not an echo of the past, but a premonition. She felt it so strongly she could almost touch it.
'You've always hidden yourself away from all of us.' Ruth's voice was hazy and Laura could tell she was on the verge of drifting into one of her intermittent periods of delirium. 'Hiding behind your sunglasses, trying to be smart and glib all the time so no one knew what you were really thinking. Even that name-Laura DuSantiago. That's got to be an alias, a new persona to hide in.' She swallowed; her mouth sounded sticky with mucus. 'Tell you what,' she continued weakly. 'You tell me your real name now. I won't tell a soul. A dying woman's last wish.' She laughed hollowly.
Laura sat quietly for a moment, then moved to the bedside and knelt so her mouth was close to Ruth's ear. Ruth strained to hear.
'Go fuck yourself,' Laura said softly.
Then she rose and calmly walked out of the room in search of Church.
Breaker cursed under his breath as the lead bus began another difficult threepoint turn in the middle of the road. About half a mile ahead they could see the tailback leading up to the police checkpoint. It looked like the police were barring every road they tried; Shavi had lost count of the times they had turned around and sought an alternative route. But that wasn't what was troubling him. It was the things he increasingly caught glimpses of from the corner of his eye, moving as fast as foxes, or slipping back into shadows when he half-turned his head. He hadn't mentioned them to Breaker or the others, but he knew what they were: the Fomorii were abroad.
He took some relief from the fact that they were still wary enough to stay out of plain sight; just. They must be terrified about having let the essence of their god slip through their fingers, if it were possible for such creatures to feel fear. But he was concerned about how widespread they were and how their number appeared to be increasing. If they were this close to the surface now, what would happen when desperation set in as Lughnasadh neared?
He knew they were searching for any sign of Balor, but was it possible they could sniff out the Pendragon Spirit too?
'You look worried.' Breaker cast a sideways glance as he pulled up behind the bumper of the bus in front.
'I was merely trying to second-guess the obstacles which might lie between us and my destination.'
'You reckon the Finger Hunter is somewhere nearby? I don't see how he could be keeping up with us unless he's smelling us on the wind.'
Shavi thought that was a distinct possibility, but said nothing.
'The biggest problem is the cops. We need to stay out of their way. I don't know what's happened to them. They were always bugging us, but now they seem to be hassling everyone. All these checkpoints. What the hell do they think they're trying to do?'
Some of the police at every checkpoint had waxy faces, Shavi had noticed; it was obvious to him what they were trying to do. And it appeared that there was some link between what Breaker called the Finger Hunter and the Fomorii too. Shavi had an overpowering image of a net closing around him. Perhaps he would never reach Windsor at all.
After leaving the camp where Penny had been buried, they had taken a couple of days to pick a relatively short route past Banbury before cutting through the lanes between Oxford and Bicester to reach their current position just north of the M40. On the map Windsor looked to be only forty minutes' drive away. Two rapidly successive technology failures slowed them down even more, but every attempt to cross the motorway failed and they were continually pushed east towards London. With only a week remaining before Lughnasadh Shavi could ill afford any more delays.
'We can't get too close to the Smoke,' Breaker said, concerned. 'A convoy this size'll draw too much attention. We'll get snarled up and they'll have us off the road in a minute. Plus, some of our valued members get very uneasy whenever they're near any built-up area. All that pollution.'
Shavi barely spoke any more; his attention was directed at the apparently empty countryside. Thoughts were piling up inside his head, forcing him down a very worrying path. The one who killed Penny was obviously not Fomorii, but possibly had some kind of link with the Night Walkers. The killer knew who Shavi was travelling with, probably knew exactly where he was. What if the killer decided to point the Fomorii in his direction? Shavi scanned the fields cautiously. He had not seen any sign of the Fomorii for some time. Perhaps they too were wary of getting too close to the Capital. Still, he would be on his guard.
