Lugh hurried back, hushing them into silence.
'There,' Ruth hissed childishly, 'tempting Fate again.'
Distant sounds carried to them from ahead. It suggested many bodies on the move; the occasional foul stink caught on the air currents told them it was the Fomorii.
'They're going to push us all the way back to Moorgate before we can find somewhere to lie low,' Ruth said dismally.
'Shit!' Veitch looked around like a cornered animal. 'We can't waste the-'
One of the Tuatha De Danann was motioning to a shadowy area on the eastern wall. They hurried over to see a small tunnel wide enough for a couple of people. Veitch dived in to investigate. Less than a minute later he was back, grinning broadly. 'It leads to another tunnel. We can hide in there.'
'Haste, then,' Nuada said. 'They are almost upon us.'
They bustled in as silently as possible. They had barely vacated the Northern Line when they heard the heavy tramp of many feet drawing closer. From the noise and the time it took them to pass, Ruth guessed there must have been at least five hundred, possibly on their way to fight the Tuatha De Danann. She hoped that meant the Fomorii forces they were joining were doing badly.
At one point, it sounded like the Fomorii were coming down the connecting tunnel so they all hurried several hundred yards away and flattened themselves against the wall, desperately trying to shield their torches. After a couple of minutes, Ruth's pounding heart subsided a little.
The tunnel had patently not been used for a long time. Most of the tracks had been torn up, and the occasional signs appeared to date back to the earliest days of the tube system in the late nineteenth century. Ancient junction boxes rusted against bricks covered in the white salt of age and damp. Where the rails should have been there were numerous hummocks and rough piles that Ruth guessed were the dust-covered detritus of work on the other tunnel.
Once all the sounds of the Fomorii had faded away, they relaxed. 'God, they smell so bad!' Ruth protested.
'They are being driven by their Caraprix.' Nuada was looking back and forth along the tunnel. 'When the Caraprix take an active role in direction it stimulates a powerful aroma.'
'Even in you?' she said acidly.
'We, of course,' he said with a smile, 'smell divine.'
They set off back the way they had come, but after they had been walking for five minutes it became apparent to Ruth they had gone past the connecting tunnel in the dark. 'We must have missed it,' she called out to the others.
'I didn't see anything,' Veitch said, much to Ruth's irritation. 'Let's carry on a little way.'
Three minutes later their torches began to illuminate irregular shapes in the distant gloom. 'Look, it's a station,' Ruth sighed when they were closer. 'I told you we'd gone past it.'
Veitch held up his torch to read the sign over the platform. 'King William Street?' he said. 'Never heard of it.'
'It must be one they don't use any more,' Ruth said. 'There are quite a few, aren't there? But you're right, I've never heard of this one.'
Veitch's torch illuminated dirty, broken tiles and some torn, peeling posters. One said Light's Out! Another, Loose Lips Sink Ships.
'Looks like it was used as an air raid shelter in the Second World War,' Ruth said.
'We need more wood,' Lugh said. 'The torches are burning through quickly.'
'There might be some here,' Veitch said. 'Send your men in to check.'
Lugh eyed him darkly; this sounded very much like an order, but then he motioned for three of the Tuatha De Danann to investigate.
'What time do you reckon it is?' Veitch said, leaning against the edge of the platform.
Ruth shrugged. 'My body clock says eleven… midnight… Maybe later.'
'We should rest.'
Ruth was glad Veitch had raised it. She felt exhausted, but she was afraid to bring it up herself in case the others thought her weak. Nuada nodded in agreement and passed the information to his followers.
'We're close enough to spare a couple of hours,' Veitch continued. 'And we'd be no use to anyone if we turned up at the Big Bastard's door completely knackered.'
'You don't have to convince me.' Ruth clambered wearily on to the platform and found a spot against the wall at one end. Behind the windows of an old office she could see the torches of the Tuatha De Danann moving around like lazy fireflies as they searched for wood.
Nuada, Lugh and the others sat quietly at the other end of the platform, talking in low voices. Ruth was surprised when Veitch sat next to her; he didn't speak, but the fact that he was there was a loud statement. He closed his eyes and was asleep in an instant. Ruth wished she could rest just as easily, but by the time the thought had entered her head she was out.
She stirred uncomfortably, irritated by the cold surface of the hard platform floor against her behind. As her eyes flickered open when she tried to shift into a more comfortable position, she realised she couldn't have been asleep for very long at all because lights were still moving behind the office windows, beautiful, like a golden snowstorm, lulling her back to sleep.
She was so tired, enjoying the comfort of rest. Her limbs felt light and airy, after the leaden weight of the long march. Her troubled mind was cocooned in a fuzzy, yellow warmth. Yet as she tried to snuggle back into her pleasant state, she was annoyed to feel something nagging at the back of her mind. With annoyance, she tried to damp it down, but it wouldn't go away. The warmth slipped further away. Finally she realised the only way she was going to get any sleep was to examine it; something about what she had seen.
She opened her tired eyes again. The platform and track was quiet and still. The Tuatha De Danann sat in close conversation. Veitch was beside her asleep. Nothing out of the ordinary.
She tried again to get back to sleep, but it was lost to her now. The feelings of alarm wound up a notch. There was something there. What was she missing?
She looked around once more before settling on the light in the windows. She pulled herself shakily to her feet. Still half asleep, she focused hazily on the light shimmering through the panes. Earlier she had thought of it as fireflies, and now it seemed even more like that. Through her daze it was hypnotic in its dreaminess. Fireflies. No, more like butterflies. And then she had it. At first she felt shock, and then a deep iciness, before she was running along the platform to raise the alarm.
A face loomed up against the glass, hollow cheeked, contorted with terror, a sight made worse by it being the face of a god. The eyes bulged, pleading with her, with anyone, and then it snapped away as if it was on elastic.
The clouds of golden moths ebbed and flowed, fluttering against the glass, caught in the torchlight.
'No more!' Lugh was yelling. 'How many Golden Ones must depart this day?' All the Tuatha De Danann looked on in horror, paralysed by the realisation that even away from the field of battle their kind were being wiped from existence in a manner they could never have realised in all their time.
Veitch powered past Ruth, his sword already out. 'No rest for the bleedin' wicked.' He levelled a flying kick at the office door. It burst from its hinges.
The three Tuatha De Danann lay dying on the floor, their bodies slowly breaking up. All around grey shapes flitted, although at first Ruth thought they were shadows cast by the flickering torches that lay where they had fallen.
While she was transfixed by the activity, Veitch was backpedalling along the floor where he had fallen and then propelled himself to his feet with undue haste, his sword waving in front of him. 'Shit,' he muttered.
'What is it?' Ruth asked.
Four figures burst from the doorway, their mouths held wide in an eerie silent scream, grey like mist, and at times just as insubstantial before there was the faintest shift and they took on a terrifying substance. They moved like light reflected off mirrors; Ruth only had an instant to take in their appearances: all women, beautiful in a haunted way, dressed in shrouds, their hair flying wildly behind them as if they had been caught in a storm. Ruth had a flash of talons like an animal's, of too-long teeth, sharp and pointed, and then they swept by her and she had only a second to throw herself out of the way.
