on your mind.' The flicker across his face gave her answer. 'Spit it out.'
'Okay, there's one thing that worries me, and it's a big thing.' He rolled over so he was lying next to her, staring at the ceiling. 'Everything was tidied up nicely on the ship, except for one thing. You've seen the Tuatha De Danann. You know what they're capable of. And now they have the Wish-Hex.'
Chapter Fourteen
ater began to flood in around Laura as she shivered in the cold beneath the insipid dawn light. The Bone Inspector attempted to force the rag back into the hole, but it only made matters worse. 'We're going to go down like a brick,' he hissed.
'I can get a bit further if I throw you overboard.' She leaned up just enough to peek over the rim. They hadn't even made it as far as the Dartford river crossing. Nearby, gleaming mudflats lined the bank. There was no movement anywhere, nor was there any sound, not even birdsong. The stillness was unnatural.
'If we drag it over to the side, we might have a better chance of plugging it up again,' she hissed.
The Bone Inspector grunted before rolling over the side into the waist-deep water; he appeared oblivious to the cold. Laura allowed him to drag the boat close to the flats before she jumped out to help it across the last few feet.
Once they'd beached it, the water drained out and the Bone Inspector could attempt the repairs a little easier. But it was soon apparent why the previous owner had abandoned the craft. As the Bone Inspector worked the rag in tightly, his hand went right through the bottom, taking out a chunk of rotten wood about a foot square.
'You ham-fisted git!' Laura slapped a shaking hand over her eyes. 'Now what do we do?'
The Bone Inspector ignored her attempts at blame. Quickly surveying the area, he pointed toward some streetlights beyond an expanse of waste ground. 'The Fomorii may not have spread this far out of the city. If we proceed cautiously, it would be quicker to use the road to put the city behind us.'
Laura wrapped her sopping arms around her. 'All right. But you go first.'
The wasteland had been used as a dump. Burst dustbin bags lay around amidst broken bottles, empty milk crates, a burnt-out car and decaying furniture. It smelled of chemicals and excrement. The road beyond was deserted, apart from a jackknifed petrol tanker.
'Looks safe,' Laura mused after ten minutes in the shadows of the hedgerow. 'Shall we chance it?'
'No choice.' The Bone Inspector sniffed the air, then stepped out on to the pavement.
They'd gone only a few yards down the road when Laura experienced a prickling sensation. Looking back quickly towards the city, all she could see were a few birds swooping in the grey sky. She attempted to dismiss the nagging feeling, but if anything it was growing stronger. She took a few more paces and only then realised that since she had woken in the charnel house she had not seen any birds at all. With a shiver of dread, she turned back.
The dark smudges had moved much closer in the seconds between looks, and now she could see they were far too big for birds. Their uncanny speed held her rapt for a few seconds and by then she could see they were winged Fomorii. 'Shit. I didn't know some of them could fly.'
The Bone Inspector turned at her strained voice, before grabbing her arm to propel her back the way they had come.
'Away from them!' she yelled.
'There's no cover.' His voice was remarkably calm, although his body had dropped into a low, loping posture that reminded her of a hunting wolf.
He was right; their only chance was to attempt to hide and hope the Fomorii couldn't see where they were going, but there was hardly anywhere in the flat open landscape.
The only place in view was the jackknifed tanker. It offered little protection, but if they could crawl beneath it they might be able to scurry into the ditch beyond where the Fomorii would have trouble reaching them. In the heat of the moment Laura didn't have time to consider how sickeningly short-termist that was.
The Fomorii had the terrifying speed of jet fighters. The tanker was still yards away when the wash of driven air buffeted Laura and the Bone Inspector. There was a smell like rotting meat and what sounded like a power drill. Their peripheral vision was filled with constantly changing horrors; a deep, arctic shadow fell across them. The Bone Inspector knocked Laura to the ground and threw himself across her.
They both felt the breeze as the Fomorii tore through the space where they had been. Despite his advancing years, the Bone Inspector was on his feet in an instant, hauling Laura up behind him as if she weighed nothing.
Amidst the frantic activity and danger, Laura was surprised to find an area of deep serenity in which she could step back to observe herself. What she saw surprised her: just weeks ago she would have been paralysed by fear. Instead she felt calm and focused and, if it hadn't sounded so incongruous, brave.
She was thrown out of the moment by a hard impact to her right shoulder. Relieved that the Fomorii had missed clubbing her to the ground she continued a pace before an object came flying past her to skid across the road. It was an arm. Her arm.
The shock of the sight brought her to a halt. Her vision wavered a second; impressions rushed towards the front of her mind, but didn't coalesce. She was dimly aware of several shapes converging on her.
The Bone Inspector was in her frame of vision, yelling something she couldn't hear. A second later she was being lifted across his back as he ran the final few yards. They dived beneath the tanker as the road erupted at their heels.
Laura came out of her daze, aware of a dull ache at her shoulder. She didn't look at all. Shards of metal clattered across the road as the Fomorii tore frenziedly at the side of the tanker to get at them. 'Keep moving,' she croaked. 'I'm fine.'
The Bone Inspector cast a searching eye across her face, and then scurried into the ditch. Laura followed, keeping low, feeling brambles tear at her face and hair, not really caring.
The Fomorii continued to attack the tanker. 'Stupid bastards,' Laura said under her breath.
The two of them had managed to crawl three hundred yards away when the inevitable happened. The tanker went up in a massive explosion that rained burning debris all around them. They had just crawled in a culvert that ran beneath the road as the hedgerow disappeared in a blur of flame; trees turned to charcoal and the field beyond disappeared in red and yellow smoke. For a second or two, Laura couldn't breathe, until fresh air rushed in to fill the vacuum. Her ears rang from the blast.
She slumped back against the culvert, suddenly convulsed in tremors. The Bone Inspector was at her side in an instant, ready to bandage her shoulder with his shirt. When he paused suddenly, she gasped, 'I know. Green blood.'
'And not much of it.' He pressed the shirt against the protruding socket joint and torn arteries. Despite his comment, it quickly grew wet.
'It had to be the right one,' she said miserably. 'Now I'll never beat Veitch at darts.' Her attempt at humour sounded pathetic. She let her chin slump on to her chest, listening to the roar of the inferno.
'We'll rest here for a while,' the Bone Inspector said. 'We'll start moving again when the fire dies down.'
'Good idea,' Laura murmured. 'I feel so tired.' She closed her eyes and drifted away.
'I'm just saying it's bad strategy, that's all.' Veitch finished up the last of his plate of rabbit stew hungrily and eyed the black pan on the old range with a measure of hope. Through Tom's judicious herbal treatments, he had recovered from the shock of the amputation and appeared back to his old irascible self, a piece of white cloth he washed obsessively was tied around his stump.
'Ryan is our strategist, after all.' After his dinner of steamed vegetables, Shavi gnawed on a raw carrot, his dessert, much to Witch's disgust.
Tom furiously dunked his homemade bread in the last dregs of gravy. Before he could launch into a bad- tempered tirade, Davenport, the farmer who had taken them in earlier that day, poked his head round the door. He
