He picked at the remnants of the meat. 'The way I see it, we've got three options. We can run away together — you've already thrown that one out. We can go back to Salisbury and round up your people, lead them somewhere else to regroup.' He paused, his mouth dry. 'Or I can go back and try to put things right at the cathedral.'
She smiled as if she'd been proven right. 'This is about Miller, isn't it?'
'I've saved his life twice. The third's the charm. Truth is, he's lost without me.'
'OK,' she began thoughtfully, 'so what are you going to do? Waltz up and bang on the gates, ask them to stop being so naughty? Because otherwise it doesn't seem like you've got any alternative.'
'Yes, I have. I'm going to see the Devil.'
She drew herself up, alert, intrigued.
'On a very basic level, my enemy's enemy is my friend, and at the moment Stefan is definitely my enemy,' he explained. 'But the fact is, I don't believe Stefan's explanation, which is that the Devil is attempting to wipe out the Church in some final apocalyptic battle between good and evil.'
She smiled.
'What?'
'I don't believe in the Devil, anyway. Satan is a Christian invention, something the Church used to demonise my religion.'
'So if it's not the Devil, it's… something else. And if it's not the Devil, the motive Stefan identified goes too — it's not about good and evil. There's another motive.'
'What could that be?'
'All this started when the Blues brought back a relic to the cathedral,' Mallory began. 'I didn't think twice about it until I realised the authorities have been lying from the start to cover up the Church's use of the earth energy, something that might have been seen as ungodly… blasphemous. There's a history of geomancers in the Church who've been attempting to utilise this supposedly pagan force since the Christian Church first established itself, and they've always kept it secret,' he explained.
'What's this got to do with some relic?' Sophie asked.
'The relic is the bones of Saint Cuthbert, which had been kept for centuries at Durham Cathedral. Only I don't think it's the bones at all. That was just a smokescreen.'
Sophie's eyes narrowed. 'What have they done?'
'I think they stole something… something vitally important to all those supernatural forces lined up outside the cathedral walls.'
'What could they possibly have stolen that would have been that important?'
'No idea, but it's got to be something to do with the Blue Fire… something that amplifies its power. That's what the Caretaker was talking about when he spoke of something warping reality — pulling in all those new buildings… raising the dead… affecting people's minds. Something incredibly powerful. And the Adversary, whoever or whatever he is, wants it back. It all comes down to arrogance — the Church thinks it has some right to take this thing and use it. Instead of winning hearts and minds the slow, laborious way, it's using this mojo to boost the spiritual energy so that the Church quickly becomes a powerful force again.'
'Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys here, Mallory?'
'Well, they brought it on themselves… maybe they thought they were doing the right thing, I don't know. That doesn't matter now. But if we can convince the Devil that we can get back whatever it is he wants-'
'And you reckon you can reason with something that has the power to lay siege to the cathedral in the way that it did? I think you should go back to hammering on the gates and begging Stefan to be good,' she teased.
'Yeah, it's a risk, but you know me… I'm nothing if not confident in my abilities.'
'You're a big-headed bastard, Mallory,' she laughed. 'So how do we find this Devil?
'No,' he said, shocked. 'I'm going alone.'
'No, you're not.'
'Yes, I am. It's too dangerous.' If he'd believed she would attempt to go with him, he would have slipped off silently during the night.
'You're nothing without me, Mallory. You'd better get used to it.'
He could see there was no arguing with her. But it changed everything: failure was no longer an option.
Darkness fell. They'd stoked up the fire in the barn with any item of wood they could find and by then it was blazing merrily. Sophie snuggled under Mallory's arm, both of them buried beneath old sacking under the shelter of the eaves. A cold wind blew from the north, bringing more flurries of snow.
'Do these count as warm towels?' Mallory held up an edge of the dirty sack.
Sophie laughed. 'In your dreams, Mallory.'
Mallory brought his fingers up to the smooth skin at the back of her neck and gently massaged it; her shoulders loosened at his touch. 'In this world, now, you need to hold on to any comfort you can get,' he mused aloud.
'I intend to.' Sophie felt under the sacking until she found his thigh. 'But then maybe it was always that way.'
In the roaring of the flames and die drifting of the snow there was an elemental magic. Mallory could feel it affecting him, pulling out emotions that had been concealed by the crystalline protection needed to make his way in the world they had inherited.
'The universe is a wonderful place,' Sophie continued dreamily, watching the snow against the night sky. 'When you're with someone you love and you're feeling as though they're the only person in the world for you, think of all the random decisions that brought you to that point. Maybe you decided to stay in instead of going down the pub that night… or maybe you'd taken a different job the year before and ended up in a different city… or maybe you'd gone to a different university and had a whole different career… and you'd never have been at that point… never met the only person in the world for you. Yet all those things aligned to get you to that exact spot when everything was right. And it didn't just happen for you, it happened for people all over the city, all over the country, all over the world, for as long as people have been on the planet. And then people try to tell you that there's no intelligence in the universe.'
'Some would say it's just chance. That there's plenty of people for you in the world, and you'd have found one sooner or later whatever you did.'
'Do you believe that?'
He thought for a long moment. 'No.'
'Romantic,' she gibed gently.
'If you close your eyes and listen to yourself… listen to your heart… you know. You know in a way that you could never explain to someone who only believed in the Selfish Gene and the evolutionary drive. There is only one person for you.'
Sophie rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes; the warmth of their bodies together was soothing.
'And you'll find them,' she said, 'if you trust the universe. That's the thing. You give yourself up to the universe and it helps you out.'
She turned to look at him, her dilated pupils reflecting the snow so that it looked as if she had stars inside her. 'This is our time,' she said softly. 'The world's gone to hell and the old order's gone with it. This isn't a place for big business… for those who're only interested in making money… the soul-dead. It's a place for dreamers and romantics… the passionate… the hopeful.'
'Hippie.'
'There's no point being anything else. We make the best of what we've got. Life's short. You've got to love what's around you.'
He brushed the hair from her forehead. 'I used to be like that.'
Her eyes shimmered. 'You're still like that, Mallory. You just can't see it.'
She leaned forwards until her lips were brushing his. They were like velvet, so full of life that Mallory could almost feel the pulse of blood. He moved against them; her mouth was soft and warm and moist, yielding slowly, following his rhythm perfectly. Her fingers touched the back of his neck and it was as though electricity jolted through him. Everything about her was supercharged. In comparison, he was sluggish, like someone emerging from a coma.
