‘He was a stupid bastard for volunteering.’ Hunter paced across the sumptuous rugs, stretching his lithe body. A large black tattoo of a snake rose up his spine from somewhere below the waistband of his trousers to the nape of his neck, slithering as the muscles beneath it rippled.
‘How can you be so hard-hearted?’ Hal protested. ‘Glenning sacrificed himself for the sake of the country.’
Hunter stared at Hal in disbelief. ‘Don’t start falling for the propaganda. It’s not good for your health.’ He pulled on a loose-fitting red silk shirt that masked his hardness with a dandyish air. ‘Glenning was a drone who jumped through hoops whenever anyone higher up the pecking order shouted at him. That mission was always going to fail. You know that.’
‘Someone has to try-’
‘Yeah?’ Hunter shrugged. ‘Why?’
‘We’re at war, fighting for the existence of civilisation… everything we’ve achieved-’
‘And what have we achieved, exactly?’
‘There’s no talking to you when you’re in this mood.’ Hal marched to the antique sideboard and poured himself a glass of vintage wine from a crystal decanter. ‘It shows our resilience as a race that we’re still clinging on after all we’ve endured in recent times. The basic rules of science shown up for what they are — just one way of looking at the world, and not the most important by a long way. Society turned on its head-’
‘You say all that as if it’s a bad thing.’ Hunter flopped on to the edge of the bed and pulled on his boots.
‘It’s amazing that we’ve managed to establish a new Government here in Oxford after what happened in London. We’ve even got the power back on, instituted some semblance of normality. A year ago, no one would ever have thought that would have been possible.’
‘You said it yourself — we’re clinging on. What’s the point in trying to hang on to the old days? They’re gone. The way we lived, the things we believed in… they’re all part of the past. We’ve been presented with a whole new set of possibilities. We should be reinventing ourselves to live now… to create a better world, not just repeat all the old mistakes simply because it makes us feel comfortable.’
‘It’s not that-’
‘Yes, it is. We’re all terrified of change — especially the big change, death — so we try to pretend that there’s some permanence in this world that change can’t influence. It’s all metaphors and symbols. I thought you were the smart one in this friendship. You know that nothing has meaning on the surface. The surface is just a clue to what’s locked underneath-’
‘I didn’t come here for a philosophical discussion.’ Hal drained the wine in one go.
‘There’s no talking to you when you’re in this mood,’ Hunter mocked, but gently. ‘We’ve got the chance for a good thing here, but we’ll never see the benefits. Do you know why? Human nature. Forget the gods and the monsters — we’re our own worst enemies. It’s hard-wired into us. Someone will come along to fuck things up for the majority, just to get a shot at making more money or gaining more power for themselves. Wait and see.’
‘Why do you do this, Hunter?’ Hal said, hitting back in the only way he knew how.
‘What?’
‘All the women, the drink, the drugs… You’re just trying to run away from who you are. Can’t face life as the big, scary Hunter. It’s childish, you know.’
‘Yep.’
Hal sighed. ‘Don’t you have any self-awareness?’
‘Nope.’
‘That’s it, isn’t it,’ Hal said morosely. ‘I do all the thinking and you do all the doing.’ He sagged on to the edge of the bed.
Hunter laughed and clapped him heartily across the shoulders. ‘Come on, let’s get tooled up.’
While Hunter went to his flat to get a shower, Hal wandered the maze of quiet streets in the ancient quarter between Cornmarket and Longwall Streets. In the long shadows cast by the Divinity School and the Bodleian Library, it was possible to imagine he was back before the Fall and that sooner or later he would bump into some students making their way home after a late-night party.
As he rounded on to Catte Street and approached the Radcliffe Camera, he was met by a strange sight. Although it was night, four thrushes sat side by side on a wrought-iron fence, silent and immobile, while a fifth hopped around in a circle on the pavement. Hal came to a halt, curious at the bird’s antics, but he was even more surprised when the bird on the pavement appeared to notice him. It hopped up to his foot and stopped before raising its head to stare at him. Hal looked from the strange visitor to the four birds on the fence and back; all of them were staring at him, or so it seemed. He waited for the bird at his feet to fly off, even shook his leg slightly to encourage it, but the longer it remained, the more his curiosity gave way to an unsettled feeling. In the end, he walked off himself. Ten yards away he glanced back. The birds were still where he’d left them, but they had turned to watch his departure.
Hal laughed it off, but the unnerving sensation clung to him like autumn fog. Soon after, it was compounded. On the first storey of a building on the High Street, five windows in a row were lit, but one had a blind half-pulled down. Further on, four bicycles leaned against a wall, while a fifth lay on its side in the gutter.
Coincidence, his rational mind insisted, yet an age-old instinctive part of him couldn’t help feeling slightly uneasy at this pattern manifesting itself in the most mundane things. His mind conjured an image of the universe as one living creature, breathing slowly like a man at rest, an entity that had, at that moment, chosen to notice him in particular, and to communicate some incomprehensible but vital message to him alone. Shaking his head at the odd turn his thoughts had taken, he continued along the main thoroughfare.
Suddenly, a man lurched out of a darkened alley. His tattered clothes were filthy from a life lived on the streets, his skin so black with ingrained dirt that his eyes stared out wide and white, his hair and beard a matted mane of mud-stained grey and black. He reeked of engine oil and urine.
Hal stepped back, instantly on his guard. The man held out one filthy hand, fingers splayed. Four stood erect; the thumb was missing, a ragged sore seeping at the joint.
Involuntarily, Hal ran, not stopping until the comforting lights of Magdalen burned off his fear. He told himself how stupid he’d been, but nothing would have convinced him to return to the dark maze of ageless streets that night.
Hunter sat at the back of the auditorium, alert and serious. Hal knew it was only a front for his superiors. Six other men were scattered around the rows, waiting silently, all of them former SAS or SBS. Their cold inhumanity scared Hal; they were prepared to do things no normal member of society would consider. Hunter always insisted Hal go easy on them: he was allowed to sleep peacefully because men like them existed. Hal could see the logic of that argument, but in truth he didn’t think Hunter really liked any of them either.
The General stood at the front, relaxed and confident. Hal knew that the military had been pushing for more direct involvement in day-to-day events for a while, but they had always been restrained by the intelligence corps and the politicians who feared showing the Government’s hand too soon. But the power base appeared to be shifting in the eternally baffling, subtle machinations that thrived in the shadowy corridors of the Government headquarters.
‘Some background,’ the General began. ‘The mission on which you are about to embark is to seek out and capture one of the group known as the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons. You will recall the first stories of their appearance at the time of the Fall. We discounted them as rumours and concentrated on a traditional response to the threat facing us.’ His face grew grim. ‘A mistake. The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons were instrumental in preventing a catastrophic defeat. The powers arrayed against us were held back. Some — the worst — fled after the Battle of London. Others adopted a watching brief, but are still a threat.’
‘They did us a favour,’ said a man at the front, his face marred by severe acne scars.
‘Our advisors tell us that they are some kind of champions chosen by the… forces that are active in the world at present.’ Hal could see that the General was uncomfortable dealing with concepts that were alien to him. Forces. Gods. Magic. ‘They are empowered by some kind of subtle energy that runs through the planet. It gives them certain abilities…’ His voice trailed off.
‘Maybe it doesn’t.’ Hunter smiled a wry smile. ‘Maybe they’re just better than everyone else. You don’t have to be Special Forces to be a champion.’
The General stifled a hint of irritation and continued, ‘One of the abilities they do have is to cross the barrier that separates us from our enemy’s homeland. If we want to strike at them where it hurts, we need that ability.
