He took another step into the road. She put a foot on the accelerator.
'No!' Shavi shouted. 'I need-!'
From somewhere nearby there came the strangest sound. It could have been the wind blowing across the park, but it sounded very much like howling. Sirens went off in his mind; there was something important he hadn't remembered. A second passed. And then he had it: the ritual in the woods with the travellers. The spirit construct hanging in the air, warning him, something about howling. Then he had it: turn quickly.
The pain in his back felt like a red-hot poker had been rammed through his skin. His thoughts fractured. He hung on to the image of the woman's face, her mouth growing wider and wider until he thought it was going to swallow her head; the car speeding up, rushing by, taking hope with it.
No, he tried to call, but his voice had gone with the car.
The howling, like a wolf.
And then suddenly he felt an arm round his chest, dragging him back, across the road, into the park, into the trees. He tried to fight, but in his shock his limbs felt like jelly, his thoughts in disarray.
Roughly he was thrust backwards, hitting the ground hard. His shirt felt wet near his shoulder blade. He could smell the meaty odour of the blood. Quickly his fingers slipped behind him. When he withdrew them, they were dark and wet.
The shock of the image kickstarted his thoughts into life and he threw himself on to his elbows, ready to drive up to his feet.
A boot cracked sharply on his right elbow and he fell back to the ground in pain. Before he could move again a figure was over him, brandishing a knife at his face. Shavi's immediate impression was of an enormous wolf and he knew at once that this was the creature that had stalked them from the Highlands. But gradually his perception fought back, struggling for the truth, and it was as if a mist was shifting from before his eyes.
The wolf began to grow smaller, the yellow eyes becoming less and less intense, until it coalesced into the shape of a man. At first, details were hazy, but as the veil was drawn back a feeling of revulsion slowly engulfed Shavi. The veins of his attacker stood out in deep black on his pale skin, as if they were filled with ink instead of blood. His eyes were lidless, the unchanging stare charged with a mix of insane fury and crazed despair. His teeth were rotting and blackened too, which made his mouth look like the gaping maw of an alien beast; although he couldn't possibly survive in that form, whatever the Fomorii had done to him kept him going.
It was almost impossible to consider him a man; yet in the straggly mane of silver hair and the shabby, dark suit, Shavi recognised him.
'Callow,' he hissed. Ice water washed through him at the thought of what monstrous things must have been perpetrated on the itinerant to transform him into such a thing.
But once the initial shock had dissipated, Shavi was overcome with a deep loathing. Normally he tried to maintain an equilibrium for all living things, but here was the man who had slashed Laura's face, sliced off Ruth's finger and delivered her into the hands of the Fomorii to be tortured; who had tried to sell humanity to the beasts for his own gain.
Shavi clapped his hand on his wound to staunch the blood flow; it didn't seem too bad. 'What have they done to you, Callow?' he asked, biding his time while he looked for a way out.
'What have they done?' Callow rolled his eyes insanely. 'Look at me! They've ruined me! Calatin's punishment for my involvement in the farrago which you and your pathetic colleagues brought about in the Lake District. Punishing me more for his own failures. The indescribable bastard!' He made a strange noise in the corner of his mouth which could have been a laugh or a curse; the insanity brought on by his suffering was writ large in every movement he made. 'And once he had tormented me, he didn't even keep me around. He threw me out into the world to make my own way.'
'You paid a terrible price-'
'Not fair!' He wiped his mouth feverishly with the back of his hand. 'It was your fault! All of you! You are the ones who should have suffered! That was why I sought you out. To make you pay.' He waggled his filthy fingers in front of Shavi's face. One was missing; the first severed finger they had found next to Loch Maree had been his own. 'Each one of you, a little pinkie!' He chuckled. 'The five fingers that held my fate in their grasp. I will sever each of you until I am free. And any other one who dares to hold me back.'
Cautiously, Shavi dug his heels in the ground and shifted his weight, ready to throw himself at his attacker if Callow dropped his guard. 'If all you wanted was revenge, why then did you deliver Ruth to the Fomorii?' Desperately he tried to keep the conversation going.
Callow's expression grew rueful. 'I thought she might buy my way back into the Midnight Court. She is the most powerful of all of you, you see. More powerful even than you. I explained to Calatin that this would make her the perfect vehicle for the return of their Dark Lord. The delicious irony! The champion of this world bringing about its demise! Calatin had no sense of irony, but he realised her strength would make her more likely to withstand the rigours of the pregnancy.' He chuckled crazily to himself. 'Pregnant! A virgin birth! They were going to use one of their own up to that point. So he took her, and then he threw me out again! But once I have eliminated the rest of you, he will take me back. I know he will.'
'Why do you want to return when they have done this to you?' Shavi could not keep the disgust out of his voice.
Callow did not seem to notice. 'He loves me. He shaped me with his own hands. I hate him and I love him too. There is nowhere else in this world for me now, unless it's by his side.'
In his words Shavi heard echoes of Tom's twisted relationship with the Tuatha De Danann. What was it in the psyche of humankind that made them complicit in the actions of their tormentors, he wondered?
Callow wiped his knife on Shavi's trousers, leaving a thin trail of blood. 'You have to give in to them, you see,' he continued, almost to himself. 'They're our gods. They control our lives.'
Shavi eyed the sinking sun nervously. He had to break free from Callow soon or all would be lost. 'We give in to no one. If humanity is to rise again, it will not come from kowtowing to any earthly power. We must seize control-'
Callow's painful laugh cut him short. 'You think they can be beaten?'
'Not easily. Not without a great struggle. But I believe it is man's destiny to rise, not to kneel in servitude.' The pain and the wetness in Shavi's back was starting to spread. The wound might not have been deep, but it still needed treatment or he'd bleed to death there, in conversation with a lunatic.
'You'll be the first to die. Then I'll take your finger. Or perhaps I'll take the finger first.' Callow watched him slyly with those permanently uncovered orbs like twin moons, glowing unnaturally white. He started to turn the knife slowly in his filthy fingers. Shavi watched his muscles tense, preparing to strike.
'We may be able to help you,' Shavi said with a comforting smile. 'The Tuatha De Danann have remarkable abilities and their opposition to the Fomorii may induce them to find a cure for you.'
'Really?' Callow's muscles untensed.
Shavi felt the relief creep into his chest. Now was the time to act. 'Yes. We can-
Callow lunged forward like a cobra. The knife plunged into Shavi's chest with the force of a hammer, knocking him back on the ground. And again. And again. For an instant his thoughts flashed out and he was left in infinite darkness. When he came down he seemed to be buried deep in his head with only a tiny window to look out on to the world. There was an unbearable pain in his left hand, but he couldn't move to drag his arm away, couldn't even move to see what was happening. A receding part of him knew, but what remained of his conscious mind wouldn't accept the knowledge. It couldn't make sense of any thing; there were just random impressions: the comforting feel of the grass against his cheek, the summery aroma of woodland, the feel of the heat slowly fading as the sun slipped down the sky, an overwhelming but fleeting grief that he had failed everybody, a snapshot of Ruth, Church, Laura, Veitch, Tom, Lee, his mother and father.
And then he heard Callow's voice as if from across a desolate pain: 'There is no cure. This is all there is-pain and suffering.'
The sounds of Callow shuffling away. Silence. Another face moving in towards him, familiar, but insubstantial; and it wasn't even dark. The guilt and regret. The voice that tormented him on a nightly basis, softly, so softly. 'You'll be with nae soon, Shavi.' Lee bending closer to tell him terrible things that would stay with him in the Grey Lands forever.
And then there was nothing.
The sun was low on the horizon and long shadows ran across the Windsor parkland. Darkness had started to
