detailing the four items they needed to find and showing them both the lantern with the blue flame.
'This is getting crazier by the minute,' Ruth said. 'Soon we aren't going to have any frames of reference at all. But in our current insane world I suppose it makes a certain kind of sense. So we have a deadline? What's this Beltane?'
'A Celtic festival,' Church said. 'It falls on May 1 and celebrates the onset of summer.'
'Barely two months! How the hell are we supposed to find things that have been missing for eons in that short time? And why is it down to us?' Ruth seemed irritable and exhausted after the shock of her experiences. 'And what's happened to Tom?'
Church recalled the blasted site; if Tom had been caught in the explosion there wouldn't have been much hope for him.
'The last thing I saw he was running away from the depot, then the explosion hit,' Ruth continued. 'I searched everywhere. Questioned the firemen …' Her voice trailed away dismally.
Only a sliver of red sun was visible on the horizon, painting Salisbury scarlet and ruddy browns. With the flakes of soot whisked up by the wind and the choking smell of burning, it felt like a scene from hell.
'We can't wait here for him,' Church said eventually. 'You heard what he said about the Baobhan Sith. They'll be hunting tonight.'
'But we can't just abandon him,' Ruth protested.
'He's smart enough to lie low if he's okay.' Church felt a tinge of guilt at not discovering what had happened to Tom, but they had no other choice but to press on. 'We need to get out of town by dark, see where this takes us. The roads might not be safe at night, but we don't have much choice, do we?' He turned to Laura. 'What about an overnight bag-'
'I travel light. I'll pick up some things along the way-that's the wonder of credit cards. And the way things are going, I'll never have to pay them back.'
The lantern flame was already leaning heavily in one direction, as if it was caught in an air current. With a certain apprehension, Church eased the car through the winding streets until they were heading the same way: north.
Yet his emotions were in such turmoil it was almost impossible to concentrate on the driving. Now he knew what the old woman on the banks of the Thames had meant: it was a premonition of his death. He would have thought the knowledge would have destroyed him, but he couldn't quite work out what he felt: disbelief, despite what the woman had said, hope that it would all work out differently, even some relief that the tiring struggle of the last two years was coming to an end. But it was too soon to consider that. In the brief time he had spoken to the woman she had given him so much information his head was spinning. What did it all mean, and why was he involved? And was he finally going to find out the answer to the only question that mattered to him: why Marianne had taken her life? He switched on the radio in the hope that it would drown out his chattering thoughts.
As the music filled the car, he knew it would prevent Laura hearing any conversation, so he said quietly to Ruth, 'Do you ever think about dying?'
She looked at him suspiciously, as if she could see right through his question. 'Not if I can help it.'
'But you never know how much time you've got, do you?'
'Did something happen to you in that place that you're not telling me?'
He kept his eyes firmly on the road ahead. 'I think if I knew I was going to die, I'd like to do something good, something unselfish for once.'
Ruth could see the heaviness of his thoughts echoed on his face and it upset her that he didn't feel he could open up to her.
Suddenly it didn't seem right to talk any more. The sun slid beneath the horizon and they fell into an uneasy silence as the car headed out into the night.
Chapter Seven
Chutch wanted to keep to the well-lit roads while following the lantern's general direction, but that would have meant heading back towards Stonehenge, where Tom had said the Baobhan Sith had posted sentries. Instead he had to follow a looping route which took them on to an unlit road across Salisbury Plain. As they left the sodium haze behind and the night closed around them, they all thought they could see strange things moving off across the plain; odd lights flickered intermittently, will o' the wisps trying to draw their attention, and at one point a large shadow loomed at the side of the road. Church floored the accelerator to get past it and didn't look in the rearview mirror until they were far away.
It was a disturbing journey; they all felt the countryside had somehow become a no-man's land filled with peril. At first, hedges were high and trees clustered against the road oppressively, but as they moved on to the plain it opened out and they were depressed to see there were no welcoming lights anywhere. They passed a sign for Ministry of Defence land where a red flag warned of military manoeuvres; Church wondered briefly if they were already having to cope with things that shouldn't exist; whether they could cope.
They felt relief when they reached the outskirts of Devizes. The lantern pointed them towards the north-east as they passed through the town and they found themselves on another quieter road, although there was not the same sense of foreboding they felt on Salisbury Plain. The landscape on either side was ancient, dotted with hill figures and prehistoric mounds. By 10 p.m. they had wound through numerous tiny villages and eventually found themselves in Avebury, where the lantern flame relaxed into an upright position. The village was protectively encircled by the famous stone circle, its lights seeming a pitiful defence against the encroaching night. Church pulled into the car park in the centre where they could see a handful of the rocks silhouetted against the night sky; he felt oddly unnerved by the synchronicity of long lost times shouting down the years.
'More standing stones,' Ruth said, peering through the windscreen at the squat, irregular shapes. 'What are we supposed to do now?'
'It's too late to do anything now.' Church stretched out the kinks in his back.
Laura leaned forward between the two of them. 'Looks like we've just driven into the dead zone. Any danger this place has a pub?'
'We're not here for the night life,' Ruth said sourly.
'No reason why we can't enjoy ourselves while we're waiting for the world to end.' Laura picked up her computer and mobile phone and climbed out.
Although it was only just March, the night was not unduly cold. An occasional breeze blew from the Downs, filled with numerous subtle fragrances, and the lack of any traffic noise added to the time-lost feeling which was, oddly, both comforting and disconcerting. The Red Lion pub lay only a short walk along the road, an enormous, many-roomed inn whose black timbers creaked beneath the weight of a thatched roof.
'I can't help feeling we should be digging out a foxhole instead of sitting down for a quiet drink like nothing was wrong,' Ruth said as they settled at a table.
'When everything is going insane, it's reassuring to do normal things,' Church replied. 'Pubs have a lot of power in situations like this. It's all about humanity coming together, celebrating in the face of-'
'Do you two always talk bollocks like this?' Laura took a swig of her beer from the bottle, then leaned back in her chair. 'Because, you know, I'm starting to see an upside to Armageddon.'
Ruth bristled. 'You're still on probation. It would be a shame if you made us dump you here in the dead zone.'
Laura smiled mockingly which irritated Ruth even more, then directed her comments at Church. 'Mystic Meg wouldn't have told you all that information if she didn't think you could do something with it.'
Church nodded. 'You're right. She thought we were capable of it.' He took a long draught of his beer, then looked at Laura curiously. 'You've got a good job, a life. Why did you decide to come with us?'
Laura shrugged, then glanced around the bar with studied distraction. 'I can't go back to my life and wait for the world to go to hell in a handcart.'
'No, you want to give it a helping hand down the slope,' Ruth said acidly.
