towards the Walpurgis, the creature broke off its feeding, looked around briefly like a cornered animal, then ran towards the rails. He vaulted over them to the lower deck, hanging briefly like a sheet billowing in the wind. Within seconds he had disappeared through the door that led down into the bowels of Wave Sweeper.
Instead of pursuing him, the Tuatha De Danann gathered around Cormorel, his body now little more than fragments in a pool of white light. Church and Ruth couldn't bear to hear their howling grief, if that was what it was, and hurried back down the stairs to the far side of the deck.
Ruth had a disturbed, queasy expression. 'How could that thing kill him?' She looked around, grasping for understanding. 'I thought they couldn't die.'
Church shook his head, still trying to come to terms with what he had seen. He had witnessed Calatin's death and knew what a monumental thing it was; to all intents and purposes the gods went on forever, their vital energy unquenchable even if their forms were destroyed. It took something special to wipe them from existence.
'It doesn't make any sense,' he said. 'Why would the Walpurgis murder Cormorel? He would know he wouldn't get away with it.'
'Maybe he couldn't control himself. Driven by hunger…?'
He turned and rested on the rails, looking at the reflected starlight glittering on the waves, thinking how much it reminded him of that disappearing essence of Cormorel.
'How's this going to affect things?' he said. 'At least we know we're going to die, even if we don't want to face up to it. It's no great shock. The Tuatha De Danann think they're going on forever. Seeing something like that, it's a blow we can't even begin to comprehend. What will it do to them?'
The question hung in the air, but after all they had been through it was too much to consider. Ruth stepped in next to him and again he slipped an arm around her shoulders. They both felt like they were huddling together for warmth in a world grown cold and dark.
Chapter Four
The noises echoing around the ship that night were terrifying to hear: shrieks and howls, grunts and roars; at times it was as if a pack of wild animals roamed the cramped corridors, things not even remotely human loose on board. Church and Ruth chose to stay together in the same room for security, but they did not feel safe, even with a huge chest pulled across the door.
Although the sounds were impossible to track, they knew the Tuatha De Danann were hunting the Walpurgis into the depths of Wave Sweeper. But Ruth knew how futile that exercise was, even if the gods understood the twisted confines of their ship. And so the questing continued into the small hours until it eventually died away. The silence was bitter and they knew the quarry had not been located.
They woke in a beam of sunlight breaking through the bottle-glass windows, entangled like lovers, although they had only held each other for comfort. Their position brought embarrassment and they quickly hurried to opposite ends of the bed. Eventually, though, in the warmth of the morning sun and their relief that all was calm without, their legs were soon draping over each other as they chatted lazily.
'You don't think he did it, then?' Ruth asked as she brushed with crooked fingers at the tangles in her hair.
Church threw open the windows so they could look out across the foamtopped waves. 'There's something about it that's troubling me. When the Walpurgis was poking around in my head I got a sense of him. It wasn't quite a reciprocal thing-he had all my mind laid out before him-but I felt…' He fumbled for words. 'I don't think he kills, however black Cormorel painted him. He certainly feeds on souls-'
'So you think he found Cormorel dying?'
'I don't know.'
'Then who killed Cormorel? Who would have the power to kill him? What possible motivation could there be?'
Church held up his hand to stop her questions. 'You've seen all the wild, freakish things travelling on this ship with us. God knows what's lurking down there in the darkest depths.'
'The Malignos,' Ruth mused.
'There was plenty of opportunity in all the chaos for something predatory to attack. Perhaps whatever did it thought we were going down and it had nothing to lose.'
'I hope it's not going to deflect us from what we've got to achieve.' Ruth leaned on the windowsill, filling her lungs with the salty air. 'There's so much at risk, we can't afford any-'
'You don't have to tell me.'
The dark tone in his voice made her look round. 'What is it?'
'There's something else. When the Walpurgis was in my mind he pulled something out.'
'That's right he said he had a message.' Her eyes narrowed as she scanned his face for clues. 'Something bad?'
'He kept replaying the scene just before Marianne's murder in our flat, the one I stumbled across in that time-warping cavern under Arthur's Seat. The same thing over and over again. Someone entering the flat, a shadow on the wall. It wasn't just images-I could smell it too, hear, feel. He knew exactly what he wanted to show me, but I think he felt it was important I found it out for myself.'
'More impact that way.' She chewed on a knuckle apprehensively; Church watched, wondering. 'So did you get it? I know how dense you can be,' she asked.
He nodded. 'Part of it anyway.' He weighed his thoughts, not sure how much he should tell her, then hating himself for even thinking it. 'One of us killed Marianne.'
'One of us?'
'Laura, Shavi, Veitch-'
'Or me?'
'Everything went pear shaped before I had a chance to piece it all together. But I saw a shadow that I recognised. I smelled something-'
'What? Like perfume?' she said sharply.
'No. It was unusual. But familiar. Subtle. I don't know what it meant. Instinctively I was certain it was one of us. If I'd only had a few more minutes-'
'You're sure?'
He thought for a moment. 'I'm sure.'
She sucked on her lip. 'So who do you think it is?'
'I don't know.'
'Who do you think?'
'I don't know. Honestly.'
'Do you think it was me?'
He looked her full in the eye. Her gaze was unwavering, confident, perhaps a little hurt. 'I'm about as sure as I can be that it wasn't you.'
That pleased her immensely. Her mouth crumpled into a smile before growing serious a moment later. 'That ties in with what the Celtic dead told us about a traitor in the group. Whoever it was, they were there from the start.'
'We mustn't start jumping to conclusions.'
'No, but it makes sense.'
And he had to admit that it did, but it was too upsetting to consider. The five of them had been friends through the hardest of times. They had saved each other's lives. He trusted them all implicitly, knew them all inside out, or thought he did. None of them had the capacity to be a traitor on the scale implied, he was sure of it. But if he could be fooled through such intimate contact, what did that mean? That the traitor was truly evil, and truly dangerous.
He could tell Ruth was thinking something similar; she rubbed her arms as if she were cold despite the
