The chilling hardness of her expression made Hunter reconsider his approach. ‘All right, I don’t know her. But you must accept that her decision could mean the end for all of us.’
‘And maybe it’s all over because you lot fucked up. We’ve done our bit. We fought and sacrificed. Your Five were supposed to pick up where we left off. Now you’ve come crying back to us-’
‘OK, back off. I wasn’t trying to pick a fight-’
Laura wasn’t about to let him off the hook. ‘Ruth loved Church more than anything. She’d earned her right to be with him. But this life isn’t fair, is it? We went through all we went through at the Fall and there’s still no happy ending for her. They deserved to be together, just so that the rest of us could see what true love is really all about.’
Hunter grabbed her shoulders and gently pushed her back. He was a little disturbed at the way hawthorn shoots had started to burst out of the ground all around him as her anger increased.
‘I’m not saying she hasn’t had a raw deal-’
‘Worse than that!’
‘Whatever. But sometimes you have to rise above your own suffering. Duty, responsibility, call it what you will. Everybody’s relying on us.’
‘You’re perfect for this job, aren’t you?’ she sneered, rolling away.
They lay separated by a gulf for ten minutes, until Hunter tenderly reached out to stroke her bare back. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Forget it.’
‘We’re going to do our best. No blame. That’s the job, too, isn’t it?’
‘Suppose.’
Hunter kissed her shoulder. ‘So if you’re all plant, how do you still get pleasure from this? Wouldn’t you be happier photosynthesising or something?’
‘I get pleasure from my clitoris, and yes, like all my other organs, I have one. I can, if I like, eat and drink, but I’ve given up on the periods.’
‘Don’t you miss being human?’
‘Overrated. And I told you — I’ll never be on the rag again. You tell me one woman who wouldn’t rather be a nature spirit than have to go through that every month.’
Hunter watched her as she dressed. Her personality wasn’t the easiest thing to like, but he admired her, and there weren’t many people about whom he could say that.
He rolled over and propped up his head so that he could get a last look at her body. ‘So was this plant thing written in the stars when you became a Sister of Dragons?’
‘You ask a lot of questions. Can’t you just go to sleep after sex like a normal bloke?’
‘Stop avoiding.’
She sighed. ‘Being a Brother or Sister of Dragons is about freeing the potential inside you. Didn’t you get the manual? You run around, leading your day-to-day life, and then somewhere a switch gets thrown and you’re activated. Over time, as you do your duty, you learn, you’re changed by hardship and all the nightmarish things you face, and gradually all those hidden qualities you never dared believe you had are teased out into the open.’
‘So you always had a bit of vegetation deep down inside.’
‘With some work, you could almost be funny. I was an environmental campaigner, a member of a radical green group. Tree-huggers, the right-wing wankers called us. So it was there. And maybe Cernunnos saw that when he turned me into this. It was my potential, to be a champion of the green, living world.’
‘And Ruth became the Uber-Witch.’
‘Right. From pain in the arse to the most powerful woman on the planet. Shavi became a magician or a seer or whatever he used to call himself. He could contact spirits, see the other side, like that.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Veitch. Poor, pathetic, useless Veitch. He went from a jumped-up petty crook to some kind of Conan the Barbarian warrior. And Church…’ Despite herself, her voice took on a hint of deep respect. ‘He became the kind of leader you’d always want in a fight. And like the kings in the old stories, he sacrificed himself so that everyone could live again. End of fairy story.’
Hunter lay back, musing. ‘Wonder what I’ll become.’
Laura eyed him dismissively. ‘Probably some kind of insect hybrid, if there’s any justice.’
‘You’re just playing distant because you’re secretly broken-hearted that we can never be together.’ He sat up, scrubbed his hair and cracked his knuckles. ‘Right. I’ve eaten as many vegetables and fruits as I can probably cope with. I’ve had sex. I think I’m ready for the rest of the journey.’
They hadn’t seen a single soul on their travels south from Lincoln. Much of their route took them across the flat eastern lowlands, now a desolate frozen wasteland. Flurries of snow blew across it in little tornados and the wind cut through their thick clothes. There was no sign of any birds or wildlife. During the day, the sun blazed so brightly off the drifting snow that they had to keep their heads bowed to avoid blindness. At night it felt as if they’d been stranded on the surface of the moon.
They never spoke about what dangers lay ahead or whether they had any hope of survival. They lived for the moment, seeking what little pleasures they could, knowing full well they might be their last.
Ten miles from Oxford, just as Mallory was leading a strange group of gods through the deserted streets of the city, Hunter and Laura finally allowed their darkest thoughts to catch up with them. They looked out over a force that left them breathless with its size. The Lament-Brood numbered millions. Several miles deep, the enemy force now encircled Oxford completely, the purple mist streaming out from them in the darkness. The waves of despair that washed off them made Hunter sick to the pit of his stomach.
‘Looks like we shouldn’t have made that last pit-stop, big boy,’ Laura said. ‘Now who’s the fuck-up?’
‘Bloody hell. I never expected them to reach here so quickly. Before I set off they were taking their time, wiping every population centre clean. They must have put on a spurt.’
‘As if they knew that the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons were gathering. So they got straight to the source of the only opposition.’
‘But how would they know about us?’
Laura pushed her hood away from her face; her shock of blonde hair glowed spectrally in the dark. ‘Things like that, they can smell us. See us on some kind of level we don’t understand. The Pendragon Spirit is like a beacon in the night to them.’
Hunter surveyed the extent of the Lament-Brood, his mind racing.
‘Looking on the bright side, at least it means we’re a threat,’ Laura added.
‘Why don’t you divert your brain away from your mouth and come up with a way to get through them and into Oxford?’ Hunter said humourlessly.
‘Ask and you shall receive, little one.’
Hunter looked at her suspiciously, unsure whether her sarcastic sense of humour was at play again. She grinned, revelling in her position of strength, but gave nothing away. ‘Just give me a while to prepare.’
‘Take all the time you want. I’m going to scout around, see what other options we’ve got.’ Hunter spurred his horse back down the road and rode for half an hour, hoping there would be some gap in the enemy lines, knowing in his heart that it was not to be. It was impossible for a human army to defeat this demonic force; any rational observer would have said that the situation was hopeless. But Hunter didn’t feel that way at all. Since he had learned of his destiny as a Brother of Dragons, he had come to believe in the Pendragon Spirit and all that it represented with a faith he had not previously thought existed inside him. His life had made him cynical about human values. He had killed and seen killing, relentlessly. He had witnessed murders committed on a whim, or because someone was in a bad mood, or because of political ideology. If that was the norm, then human existence was pointless and the quicker the infestation was eradicated, the better, so that nature could get on with its benign job.
Yet the Pendragon Spirit had shown him that there was some essential structure underpinning all life, an intelligent plan, though he was loath to consider it in such a way because of all the baggage that concept carried with it. But he knew from his training that it was impossible to make judgments based on the small details — a death here, a defeat there. Only by viewing the vast, strategic plan could any decision be made about the value of what was happening. And for most soldiers on the ground, that grand plan was never visible; they simply had to trust.
He hoped Existence wouldn’t let him down. That somehow a handful of flawed men and women burning with
