will be, and it is moving even now to prevent your awakening.'
Mary's thoughts were cotton wool, swaddling his words so that the sharp meaning could not be felt. But she struggled with them until some semblance of understanding emerged. We're in danger?'
'A time of frost and fire approaches.'
'Why do you care?' She jerked, not meaning for her words to sound so emboldened. When he didn't answer, she said, 'What do you expect me to do?' though she feared the answer.
'Nothing is as it appears. You will need new eyes.' He reached out, and his arm appeared to stretch like melting rubber. Fingers that were not fingers scratched the centre of her forehead and Mary's vision fragmented in jewelled images and starbursts. When she could finally see again, the stranger had raised his arm and was pointing out of the door. 'Go. See.' She found herself at the village hall without any memory of how she had got there from her cottage. She still had on her slippers, but didn't have a coat, and she shivered in the early-morning cold. Dreamily, she made her way into the hall.
Her hand flew to her mouth at the choking stench. Gideon, the chairman of the parish council, and some teenage boy whose name she didn't recall, dozed in chairs, worn out by futile caring. She tried not to pay any attention to two unmoved bodies that lay blackened by the plague in the centre of the room, and instead made her way to the side room where lay those still clinging on to thin life. But the instant she stepped across the threshold she was shocked rigid.
Tiny figures as insubstantial as smoke danced and twisted above the heads of the woman and young boy lying on the tables. Black-skinned, with a mix of human and lizard qualities, their twirling tails and curved horns reminded Mary of nothing more than medieval illustrations of devils. A malignant glee filled every movement as they soared and ducked, pinching and stabbing their unfortunate hosts. And where they touched the woman and boy, blackness flowed from them into the strange meridians the plague left on the bodies of its victims.
As Mary clutched the door jamb in disorientation, the devils appeared shocked that she could see them. Their malignancy returned quickly, though, and they silently jeered and mocked her with offensive gestures, knowing she could do nothing to stop them.
Mary grabbed a yard brush from the wall and swung it to swat them away, but it passed straight through them; they weren't there, not in any sense she understood.
Staggering back into the main hall, understanding swept through her. Now she knew why the medication didn't work, why the plague was like none seen before; it wasn't of the world at all. And after that, other thoughts surfaced in a mad rush of release, but the most important was this: Caitlin had gone in search of a cure without realising the plague's true nature. She may well have been sent to her death.
Chapter Four
'Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land.'
The Oxfordshire countryside was coming alive. Buds were bursting on all the branches and overgrown hedgerows, and burgeoning wildlife scurried everywhere Caitlin looked. The already crumbling roads were camouflaged with thistle and yellow grass. Caitlin fought back a wave of grief at the realisation that Grant and Liam weren't there to experience it with her. Sometimes the despair came from nowhere, like a storm at sea, and she had to battle to keep in control. Other times she was simply numb.
To distract herself, she turned her attention to Mahalia and Carlton while Crowther drove.
'Where were you going when we met you?' Caitlin asked.
Mahalia thought for a moment, then said, 'To meet you.'
Caitlin didn't hear any sarcasm in the comment, but she couldn't be sure. She still hadn't decided whether she liked Mahalia, or if the girl's sullen attitude was simply a defence mechanism.
Mahalia saw what was going through Caitlin's head and gave an annoyed shake of her head. 'Carlton saw you in his dreams. Yeah. Really. He was determined that we should come after you.'
The boy looked up at Caitlin with wide, innocent eyes that made him seem even younger. She saw in them something of Liam and instantiy wanted to hug him. 'He dreamed about me?'
Mahalia read Caitlin's expression and threw a protective arm around Carlton's shoulders. 'He's special. Aren't you, mate?' He giggled silently as she squeezed him. 'I didn't believe it at first, but he soon showed me. He sees things.'
'Visions?'
'I suppose. He knows all sorts of stuff that he shouldn't. Sometimes he has trouble making me understand exactly what he's saying, but I get most of it. He's got us out of a few scrapes. There was a time in Southampton…' She shook her head to dispel the sour memory. 'I wouldn't be here now if not for him.'
'But why me?' Caitlin said.
Mahalia's contemptuous expression said that she had no idea either.
'What is it, Carlton?' Caitlin asked gently. But all the boy would do was smile.
'He does that sometimes,' Mahalia said. 'He'll tell you in his own good time.'
'So when were you going to tell me this, Mahalia?'
'Oh, soon,' the girl replied lightly.
Caitlin didn't fall for it. She wondered what else lay behind Mahalia's diamond-hard exterior that the teenager wasn't revealing. They made their way through picturesque villages that belied the advent of the Fall. In many of them, life appeared to go on as normal: wisps of smoke floated up from the chimneys of stone houses and washing fluttered on lines in back gardens. Villagers out on their errands would stop and stare in amazement as the car roared by, wondering what the apparition signified. Other lanes were blocked by horse-drawn carts transporting produce from one village to the next, the drivers yanking the reins tight to prevent their horses from shying at the unfamiliar beast.
Eventually, reaching a minor road along a windswept ridge on the edge of the Cotswolds, Crowther pulled up against a mass of vegetation that had once been the verge.
'We're here?' Caitlin said, looking for some sign of a specific destination. All she could see were untended fields turned wild, and burgeoning hedgerows and copses.
Crowther grunted something incoherent in response and set out along the road without waiting for the others, his staff clattering an insistent rhythm. Mahalia and Carlton crawled out from behind the seats, stretching aching muscles. It was still and peaceful, with insects flitting over the long grass and birds singing in every tree.
As Caitlin, Mahalia and Carlton hurried to catch up with the professor, the chattering at the back of Caitlin's head grew louder as her inner selves became feverishly excited.
Mahalia could feel something, too, for the contempt had left her face to be replaced by an out-of-place uncertainty. 'Where are we going?' she asked. Carlton gave her hand a supportive squeeze; of all of them, he appeared the most at ease.
Crowther pointed to a weather-worn rock rising up in a field to their left. Rusty iron railings imprisoned it. 'Well, there's part of it,' he said gruffly. He turned swiftly through a gate concealed by overgrown vegetation and led them past a small hut with yellowing pamphlets in a dirty display case. And then they were there.
Surrounded by trees and hedges on three sides was a small stone circle forty strides across. Only a few of the pockmarked, eroded limestone pillars still stood tall. The majority were broken stumps. On the fourth side, two gateway stones opened out on to sunlit fields rolling down into a valley.
'The Rollrights,' Crowther intoned. 'A Neolithic stone circle.'
'This is where we get to that other world?' Caitlin asked.
'Where we'll make the attempt to cross over.' Crowther led the way cautiously, his darting eyes searching
