an inner fire could take a stand against the hordes of hell and win. That the source of their victory would be presented to them. That he — that all of them — were up to the job, with no weak links anywhere.
The alternative was unthinkable.
When he returned to Laura, she was sitting cross-legged in the snow, her head bowed. What little he could see of her skin was as white as the icy blanket that lay all around. At first he thought she was sick — or worse, had been killed by the enemy. But when she heard the crunch of his boots, she raised her head and forced a smile. Her face was filled with a debilitating exhaustion, as if her life had been sapped from her.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked, dropping to his knees to put an arm around her shoulders.
‘It’s not easy being the saviour of the moment. One thing you learn in this business, there’s always a price to pay. For everything.’
Hunter could feel heat radiating off her, and when he pulled her closer a tingling sensation ran from her body into his, as though she was generating electricity. It was then that he noted the new green shoots breaking through the snow all around.
‘You’d better stand back,’ she said. ‘I’m ready now.’
‘What are you planning?’
‘Wait and see.’ As she bowed her head again, Hunter moved away from her to calm the horses, which had grown jumpy. He stroked their noses and whispered in their ears while he watched Laura. A tremble ran through her, then she bucked as though in the throes of a convulsion. A second later she pitched forward, slamming the palms of both hands down hard through the snow to the ground beneath. There was a discharge of blue light that slowly faded to green.
The horses’ whinnying grew more insistent. A rumble like thunder rolled across the land. The ground beneath Hunter’s feet began to shake, gently at first, but then with more and more force. He held on to the horses’ reins tightly, and watched waves roll out from Laura’s epicentre.
The tremors built until the ground was rent open in a line running from Laura towards the Lament-Brood. From the churning soil sprouted shoots, rapidly growing into saplings, then soaring up into trees, rushing to meet the sky, leaves erupting from the branches. Thirty years of nature’s growth condensed into a few seconds.
Laura bucked and writhed in a frenzy that could have been pain or ecstasy. Sparks, blue becoming green, fizzed around her fingers where they dug into the earth. Hunter was rooted in shock. He had been astounded by her abilities ever since they had met in Lincoln, but he had never guessed she was so powerful.
As the frozen soil tore apart, the noise was deafening, and the land rippled like water in all directions at the upheaval. The flourishing trees formed a densely walled avenue ten feet wide, the branches meeting high overhead to form a natural arch; the leaf cover was so thick that no sky could be seen through it.
The row of trees rushed out across the countryside through the ranks of the Lament-Brood. Though the detail was lost in the dark, Hunter imagined the trees tearing through the massive force, throwing those twisted, once- living bodies to either side as the avenue ploughed on towards Oxford. The sheer scale of what Laura had accomplished took his breath away, and left him a little uneasy at what she could have done to him if he’d pushed her temper a step too far.
After ten minutes, the sparks stopped arcing from her fingertips and she pitched forward into the snow. Hunter ran forward and lifted her up in his arms. Her eyelids fluttered; she was completely drained. ‘Match that, soldier-boy,’ she said hoarsely.
Hunter knew what had to be done. As Laura slipped into unconsciousness, he sat her on her horse and did his best to lash her to the saddle so that she wouldn’t slip off. Setting her mount off ahead of his, he urged the horses into the dark avenue and then forced them to gallop as fast as they could manage. He didn’t know whether the trees would soon start to wither and die or disappear as magically as they had grown. The last thing they needed was suddenly to find themselves stranded in the middle of the Lament-Brood army.
But Existence hadn’t let him down yet. Oxford beckoned and the last stand was only hours away.
The Damask brothel on St Michael’s Street was packed to the brim. In the ground-floor office space, in the sprawling first-floor lounge and the many bedrooms on the two floors above, the Tuatha De Danann moved like golden ghosts, aloof, introspective, silent as the night, while the girls gaped in awe or ran giggling to discuss the new arrivals in the confines of their changing rooms or the torture dungeon.
Mrs Damask wrung her hands, repeatedly dashing to the velvet-curtained windows to peek out into the deserted street. ‘I would never have agreed to this if Jeffrey had told me what he was planning,’ she wittered in her Scottish accent.
Mallory smirked. ‘So Hunter has a first name.’ He was sitting back in a plush armchair, boots up on an antique table, a crystal goblet of brandy in his hand. Washed, fed and dressed in clean clothes, he felt renewed.
‘If the authorities investigate, they’ll close me down for certain.’
‘The authorities have more important things on their minds,’ Shavi reassured her soothingly. He leaned on the mantelpiece next to the roaring fire, occasionally tipping back his head and closing his eyes as he smelled the perfume that wafted through the room.
‘I’ll expect to be well paid for this. Well paid,’ she repeated, glaring at Mallory as she flounced out.
‘Humanity’s on the brink of extinction and only the privileged few know,’ Mallory noted.
‘What would it benefit the rest to know?’ Shavi said. ‘There is nothing they could do. Better they enjoy some normality in their final hours, if final hours they be.’
The ornate clock ticking away on the wall showed that it was just after one a.m. Mallory swigged back his brandy. ‘I’m going out to look for Sophie.’
‘This is a big city. I would think she has probably already sought shelter somewhere.’
‘I know. But I need to see her again before everything blows up.’
Mallory acted blase, but Shavi could see the emotion coursing through him. ‘I understand,’ Shavi said. ‘But take care in those dark streets-’
The door swung open and Lugh and Ceridwen marched in, their mood intense. ‘Brother of Dragons, please come with us,’ Lugh said to Mallory. ‘Time is short.’
‘What’s up?’ Mallory looked from one god to the other.
It was Ceridwen who answered. ‘There are many of our kind already here in the Fixed Lands. They can help us in the coming battle. Indeed, their presence may be vital, for they count amongst their number some of the most powerful of the Golden Ones. We must contact them. But we need your help.’
‘How can we help?’ Shavi asked.
‘There is a ritual,’ Lugh said, ‘known only to our kind. It calls to the ties that bind us, however far apart we may be. Now that there are so few of us left…’ He paused, letting the words sink into his own mind. ‘Now that there are so few of us, those ties may be stronger. And our own brothers and sisters may be summoned to fight for the cause.’
‘Why do you need me?’ Mallory asked, with one eye on the clock.
‘The fire that burns inside you will give strength to our call,’ Ceridwen said.
‘The Pendragon Spirit is the key,’ Shavi said to Mallory. ‘The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons are like batteries. Sometimes that power heals them; on other occasions, others may tap into it — if you so allow.’
‘All right,’ Mallory said, not attempting to mask his irritation. ‘Get on with it.’
They collected the items they needed from Mrs Damask and then Lugh and Ceridwen led the way up a back staircase to a vast, dark attic room that had been knocked through into the houses on either side. Mallory shivered, pulling his cloak around him. Ceridwen marked a circle on the dusty wooden floor with a piece of dressmaker’s chalk and then lit candles at the four cardinal points. Mallory was intrigued by how closely the gods’ ritual resembled Sophie’s work with the Craft.
‘Is all this necessary?’ he said to Shavi. ‘They’re gods. Can’t they just snap their fingers or something?’
‘Magic,’ Shavi said with a strange smile, ‘is the cheat code of reality. We are in a vast program of repeating patterns, a superstructure of encoded rules. Reality has been constructed, and once you know the code that underlies that construction you can change it.’
‘And thereby change reality?’
‘Reality is not fixed, Mallory, even here in what the gods call the Fixed Lands. It is less changeable than their home, but it is still possible to unpick the construction. Sound and symbol are the keys. Words of power. Arcane marks. In our literalist, rationalist society, we see those sounds and symbols only as what they are on the surface, but their true power to break through the inherent programming of reality is hidden behind them.’
