She muttered something under her breath as she marched to the door, then turned and said, 'Go fuck yourself,' before slamming it behind her.
Laura hated the way she had to blink away tears of anger and hurt as she marched out of the hotel. For years she'd been good at battening down any emotion so that even those closest to her had no idea what she was thinking. But now it seemed as if the stopper had come out of the bottle and wouldn't go back in again. And Church seemed to have a particular talent for painfully extracting feelings, even when he wasn't trying; and somehow that made the process hurt even more.
However much she tried to pretend to herself she didn't like him, she realised she felt something closer to a childish ideal of love than anything else she had experienced in her life. At first she had hoped it was purely sexual, like so many of her previous relationships. Then she wished it was born of circumstances; of fear; of desperation. But it wasn't. Emotionally she'd suffered enough at the hands of her parents. And now everything was happening just as she'd feared.
She headed directly towards Princes Street, hoping to lose herself in some of the trendy bars which were still doing a roaring trade. Shavi and Tom, who had been in search of psychoactive substances for their respective rituals, hailed her as they returned to the hotel. She pretended she hadn't seen them.
She opted for the noisiest, most crowded bar and forced her way to the front to buy a Red Stripe. Although her attitude never wavered, it wasn't long before the locals were trying to pick her up. She fended a few off with acid comments, but as the drink took hold a little company that was interested in her seemed increasingly attractive.
For the next two hours she found herself at the centre of a group of young men and women whose only concern in life appeared to be having a good time. The conversation was sharp and witty, the jokes raucous, the flirtation charged. There was no talk of darkness or death. Laura found herself gravitating increasingly towards two of the most powerful characters in the group: Will had short brown hair and blue eyes that were gently mocking, a supremely confident demeanour and a certain sexual charisma; Andy was more openly loud and humorous, taller and bigger-boned, with corkscrew hair and a wispy goatee.
After a long, sparring conversation, Will grinned at Andy knowingly before turning to Laura. 'So, you up for going on somewhere else?'
'Subtle. Wouldn't happen to be your sweaty, beery bedroom, would it?' Laura sipped on her beer, enjoying the game.
'You've got me all wrong.' Will's grin suggested she hadn't got him as wrong as he'd like her to think. 'We're going on to a club. Great fucking place. Different venue every week. Cool fucking crowd. Good beats. You'll like it.'
'Ah, I don't know… I'm getting a bit old for clubs. I'm usually tucked up long before now with something hot and comforting.'
'You can't pull out on us now. Or we'll have to call you a big, blonde, soft, southern saddo.' Andy pushed his face into hers in a mock challenge.
'There might be another way we can convince you,' Will interjected. 'Come to the toilet with us.'
'Like I haven't heard that one before.'
He took her by the hand and led her through the crowded bar to the toilets at the back. Laura whistled at the men at the urinals before they herded her into a cubicle. Once the door was locked Will surreptitiously pulled out a small plastic bag from his Levi's pocket. Inside were five or six yellow capsules.
'Es?' Laura said.
'Like none you've ever tasted before. The best MDMA cut with a little something extra. Same loved-up strength with a little more trips. Straight off the boat from the States.' Will waved the bag in front of her face. 'Our gift to you, just to show you how much we want you along.'
The sight of the Ecstasy made her suddenly uneasy. Too many unpleasant memories surfaced of the months she'd spent in Salisbury and Bristol blasted out of her head, driving herself to the brink with a wilful disregard for her own health, both mental and physical, before she'd finally cleaned herself up. Drugs weren't good for her; or rather, she wasn't good for drugs; and she didn't want to go down that road again. But she'd had enough of all the repression and fear of the last few months. She wanted to celebrate life with abandon, forget Church and the stupid mission that was ruining her life, forget who she really was. She just wanted to have fun.
She dipped her hand in the bag and then, fighting back the nagging doubts, she popped one of the capsules on to her tongue. 'Let the good times roll,' she said with a grin.
The grim shadows that gripped the Old Town by day had merged seamlessly into the oppressive darkness of night as Shavi made his way cautiously along the Royal Mile. He had attempted to put on a brave face for the sake of the others, but he felt a nugget of dread heavy within him. Each new experience since he had discovered his aptitude for the mystical and the spiritual seemed to have taken him another step away from the light of humanity into a tenebrous zone from where he feared he would never be able to return. All he had to see him through was an outsider resilience honed through the disenfranchised days of his youth. He hoped it was enough.
He started as the slam of a door echoed along the length of the near-deserted street. Someone emerged from one of the pubs further down the way, glanced around uneasily at the gloom, as if surprised by the lateness of the hour, then broke into a jog towards the bright lights of North Bridge.
Shavi sucked in a deep breath to calm himself. He had read and reread the guide book entry for his destination, but its terrible story had done little to ease his anxieties. The handful of mushrooms taken to enhance the shamanic experience hadn't helped either. At the cobblestoned Heart of Midlothian at Parliament Square he paused briefly and spat, as custom dictated, to ward off the spirits of those executed at the old Tolbooth Prison. It might have been ineffective-the customs of the Unseen World were unknowable-but he thought it wise to proceed with caution; he had no desire to be confronted by the spectral severed heads of those dispatched and later exhibited in the area.
Across the road loomed the Georgian facade of the City Chambers. It spoke of elegance and cultured discourse, the best humanity had to offer; like all of the modern world it hid a multitude of sins. Beneath the chambers was what remained of an entire city street, Mary King's Close, locked away in darkness. The guide book described it as the most haunted place in all Scotland, which was hardly surprising. The City Chambers had been built there to seal off forever a part of Edinburgh history the people hoped to forget, couldn't bring themselves to face, with all its shame, guilt and suffering. But like all bad memories it refused to stay buried.
In 1645, when Edinburgh was in the grip of the Black Death, the filthy, overflowing tenements of the Old Town were filled with the diseased and the dying, and Mary King's Close was worse than most. A sickening plague pit, the city fathers had said. The rich, cultured, upstanding Great Men of the City had a view of the poverty-stricken that was less than human, and in an act of brutality that reverberated down the years they ordered the entire close blocked up. They called it quarantine. The truth was not so clean: every resident was left to die without food or water in the hope that the disease could be contained. And if that was not enough of a monstrosity, when the moans of the inhabitants had finally drifted away, two butchers were sent in to dismember the corpses.
Shavi shivered at the extent of the cold-hearted cruelty. No wonder the spirits of those who had suffered couldn't depart the prison of their misery. For hundreds of years, visitors to the hidden street had reported the most awful, shrieking spectres, accusing revenants, a little girl, her china doll face filled with such overwhelming sadness it caused physical pain in those who saw it, watchers from the shadows whispering threats and prophecies of suffering and pain; an oppressive atmosphere of despair hung over all, and even the sceptical left the place changed on some fundamental level.
Shavi surveyed the City Chambers carefully, then let his gaze slowly drop to ground level. If even normal, rational people experienced such dread, what would he find, with his super-charged perceptions? With apprehension tightening a band around his chest, he set off across the street.
The entrance to the buried close was a nondescript, rickety wooden door off Cockburn Street. He flicked on his torch the moment it opened, listening to the echoes disappear into the depths. Spraying the light around inside, he was confronted by a path that rose steeply to another entrance. To his left, about halfway up, was an ancient front door almost lost in the gloom. Dust was everywhere, in thick layers on the floor and hanging in choking clouds in the air, so that he continually had to stifle coughs; the resultant noise, twisted by the echoes, was like the bark of a beast prowling nearby.
Slowly he moved through a maze of bare rooms, claustrophobic in the dark, where an oppressive atmosphere gathered among the creaking timbers that propped up the ceilings. He tried to shake off the knowledge that he was
