Always Forever (74 page)

Veitch came back to her side once Old Street and Moorgate stations were behind
them. The air had grown several degrees colder and there was a deeply
unpleasant smell that Ruth didn't want to examine too closely.

"Back in your good books now, am I?" she asked tartly and instantly hated
herself, but she had been unable to resist the gibe.

This time it washed over Veitch; he had other things on his mind. "Bank
next. We'll have to go up top soon." He paused. "That fighting we heard must
mean there are Fomorii down here. We've been lucky not to meet any of them."

"Luck doesn't begin to explain it. I can't believe they've left one of the main
routes into their most sacred places completely free from guards."

Lugh hurried back, hushing them into silence.

"There," Ruth hissed childishly, "tempting Fate again."

Distant sounds carried to them from ahead. It suggested many bodies on
the move; the occasional foul stink caught on the air currents told them it was
the Fomorii.

"They're going to push us all the way back to Moorgate before we can find
somewhere to lie low," Ruth said dismally.

"Shit!" Veitch looked around like a cornered animal. "We can't waste the-"

One of the Tuatha De Danann was motioning to a shadowy area on the
eastern wall. They hurried over to see a small tunnel wide enough for a couple
of people. Veitch dived in to investigate. Less than a minute later he was back,
grinning broadly. "It leads to another tunnel. We can hide in there."

"Haste, then," Nuada said. "They are almost upon us."

They bustled in as silently as possible. They had barely vacated the Northern Line when they heard the heavy tramp of many feet drawing closer.
From the noise and the time it took them to pass, Ruth guessed there must have
been at least five hundred, possibly on their way to fight the Tuatha De Danann.
She hoped that meant the Fomorii forces they were joining were doing badly.

At one point, it sounded like the Fomorii were coming down the connecting tunnel so they all hurried several hundred yards away and flattened
themselves against the wall, desperately trying to shield their torches. After a
couple of minutes, Ruth's pounding heart subsided a little.

The tunnel had patently not been used for a long time. Most of the tracks
had been torn up, and the occasional signs appeared to date back to the earliest
days of the tube system in the late nineteenth century. Ancient junction boxes
rusted against bricks covered in the white salt of age and damp. Where the rails
should have been there were numerous hummocks and rough piles that Ruth
guessed were the dust-covered detritus of work on the other tunnel.

Once all the sounds of the Fomorii had faded away, they relaxed. "God, they
smell so bad!" Ruth protested.

"They are being driven by their Caraprix." Nuada was looking back and
forth along the tunnel. "When the Caraprix take an active role in direction it
stimulates a powerful aroma."

"Even in you?" she said acidly.

"We, of course," he said with a smile, "smell divine."

They set off back the way they had come, but after they had been walking
for five minutes it became apparent to Ruth they had gone past the connecting
tunnel in the dark. "We must have missed it," she called out to the others.

"I didn't see anything," Veitch said, much to Ruth's irritation. "Let's carry
on a little way."

Three minutes later their torches began to illuminate irregular shapes in the
distant gloom. "Look, it's a station," Ruth sighed when they were closer. "I told
you we'd gone past it."

Veitch held up his torch to read the sign over the platform. "King William
Street?" he said. "Never heard of it."

"It must be one they don't use any more," Ruth said. "There are quite a few,
aren't there? But you're right, I've never heard of this one."

Veitch's torch illuminated dirty, broken tiles and some torn, peeling
posters. One said Light's Out! Another, Loose Lips Sink Ships.

"Looks like it was used as an air raid shelter in the Second World War,"
Ruth said.

"We need more wood," Lugh said. "The torches are burning through quickly."

"There might be some here," Veitch said. "Send your men in to check."

Lugh eyed him darkly; this sounded very much like an order, but then he
motioned for three of the Tuatha De Danann to investigate.

"What time do you reckon it is?" Veitch said, leaning against the edge of
the platform.

Ruth shrugged. "My body clock says eleven ... midnight ... Maybe later."

"We should rest."

Ruth was glad Veitch had raised it. She felt exhausted, but she was afraid to
bring it up herself in case the others thought her weak. Nuada nodded in agreement and passed the information to his followers.

"We're close enough to spare a couple of hours," Veitch continued. "And
we'd be no use to anyone if we turned up at the Big Bastard's door completely
knackered."

"You don't have to convince me." Ruth clambered wearily on to the platform and found a spot against the wall at one end. Behind the windows of an
old office she could see the torches of the Tuatha De Danann moving around like
lazy fireflies as they searched for wood.

Nuada, Lugh and the others sat quietly at the other end of the platform,
talking in low voices. Ruth was surprised when Veitch sat next to her; he didn't
speak, but the fact that he was there was a loud statement. He closed his eyes
and was asleep in an instant. Ruth wished she could rest just as easily, but by
the time the thought had entered her head she was out.

She stirred uncomfortably, irritated by the cold surface of the hard platform floor
against her behind. As her eyes flickered open when she tried to shift into a more
comfortable position, she realised she couldn't have been asleep for very long at
all because lights were still moving behind the office windows, beautiful, like a
golden snowstorm, lulling her back to sleep.

She was so tired, enjoying the comfort of rest. Her limbs felt light and airy,
after the leaden weight of the long march. Her troubled mind was cocooned in
a fuzzy, yellow warmth. Yet as she tried to snuggle back into her pleasant state,
she was annoyed to feel something nagging at the back of her mind. With
annoyance, she tried to damp it down, but it wouldn't go away. The warmth
slipped further away. Finally she realised the only way she was going to get any
sleep was to examine it; something about what she had seen.

She opened her tired eyes again. The platform and track was quiet and still.
The Tuatha De Danann sat in close conversation. Veitch was beside her asleep.
Nothing out of the ordinary.

She tried again to get back to sleep, but it was lost to her now. The feelings
of alarm wound up a notch. There was something there. What was she missing?

She looked around once more before settling on the light in the windows.
She pulled herself shakily to her feet. Still half asleep, she focused hazily on the
light shimmering through the panes. Earlier she had thought of it as fireflies,
and now it seemed even more like that. Through her daze it was hypnotic in its
dreaminess. Fireflies. No, more like butterflies. And then she had it. At first she
felt shock, and then a deep iciness, before she was running along the platform
to raise the alarm.

A face loomed up against the glass, hollow cheeked, contorted with terror,
a sight made worse by it being the face of a god. The eyes bulged, pleading with
her, with anyone, and then it snapped away as if it was on elastic.

The clouds of golden moths ebbed and flowed, fluttering against the glass,
caught in the torchlight.

"No more!" Lugh was yelling. "How many Golden Ones must depart this
day?" All the Tuatha De Danann looked on in horror, paralysed by the realisation that even away from the field of battle their kind were being wiped from
existence in a manner they could never have realised in all their time.

Veitch powered past Ruth, his sword already out. "No rest for the bleedin'
wicked." He levelled a flying kick at the office door. It burst from its hinges.

The three Tuatha De Danann lay dying on the floor, their bodies slowly
breaking up. All around grey shapes flitted, although at first Ruth thought they
were shadows cast by the flickering torches that lay where they had fallen.

While she was transfixed by the activity, Veitch was backpedalling along
the floor where he had fallen and then propelled himself to his feet with undue
haste, his sword waving in front of him. "Shit," he muttered.

"What is it?" Ruth asked.

Four figures burst from the doorway, their mouths held wide in an eerie
silent scream, grey like mist, and at times just as insubstantial before there was
the faintest shift and they took on a terrifying substance. They moved like light
reflected off mirrors; Ruth only had an instant to take in their appearances: all
women, beautiful in a haunted way, dressed in shrouds, their hair flying wildly
behind them as if they had been caught in a storm. Ruth had a flash of talons
like an animal's, of too-long teeth, sharp and pointed, and then they swept by
her and she had only a second to throw herself out of the way.

The talons caught in her hair, ripped out a chunk, but she had avoided
being caught; she had evaded those teeth.

"The Baobhan Sith!" one of the Tuatha De Danann said in fearful awe.

But Ruth didn't need reminding of the bloodsucking creatures that had
attacked them on the lonely Cumbrian hills when Tom had betrayed them.

"They did have bleedin' guards posted!" Veitch threw himself out of the way of clutching hands, rolled and jumped to his feet. He lashed out with his sword,
but it either passed through the creature or the Baobhan Sith avoided the blade
so quickly Ruth didn't see it.

Veitch grabbed her wrist and pulled her out of the way of another of them.
He chopped with his sword again. This time the spectral woman became mist
as the blade cut through her, reforming as it passed.

"Christ, there's no fighting them!" He yanked Ruth hard and they both fell off
the platform, landing with a bone-jolting impact on the hard stones of the track.

The Baobhan Sith moved up and down the platform wildly, twisting and
turning in an imaginary wind, avoiding any attack the Tuatha lle Danann made
with any of their weapons. As Ruth watched in horror one of the creatures distended its mouth seemingly wider than its head and the razor sharp teeth folded
out like kitchen knives. It flew towards one of Lugh's soldiers and clamped on
his neck, the teeth snapping through the substance to suck up the god's essence;
and however much he threw himself around or lashed out with his sword it
could not be removed. A moment later the golden moths began to fly.

"Let's get out of here," Veitch said quietly.

"We can't leave them!"

"We stay here, we die. There's too much at stake." He could see she was still
unconvinced and added, "They'll soon catch up with us."

The Tuatha lle Danann already had formed a phalanx and were backing rapidly across the platform. One of the Baobhan Sith tore another from their midst.

"Look at that," Veitch said. "No point dragging our heels. Just bleedin' run."

He made to grab Ruth's hand again, but she had jumped up to snatch a
torch from the edge of the platform where it had fallen. Then she was sprinting
at his side, glancing over her shoulder. One of the Baobhan Sith had left the
platform to pursue them. "They're coming!" Ruth gasped.

Their breath formed white clouds in the cold. Ruth was afraid she wouldn't
have any energy left to escape. The ground was uneven, threatening to trip
them, and the motion put the torch in danger of going out so that she had to
shield it with her body. She didn't dare look over her shoulder any more because
she couldn't go any faster if she tried.

"Which way? Where's the other tunnel?" Her thoughts fell over each other
in her panic. This is a nightmare. The words blazed white against the background
darkness of her mind.

"What's that?" Veitch was pointing into the shadows ahead; the edge in his
voice turned her panic up a notch.

No more, she prayed.

There was movement on the ground ahead, not just in one spot, but in many. The soil and stone of the track floor was moving in little piles. Obliquely,
Ruth realised it was the strange hummocks she had taken to be building rubble.

From one of them, a grey hand rose slowly.

Ruth couldn't restrain a brief shriek. They skidded to a halt. The hand
became an arm as the stones and soil sloughed away. Across the myriad other
humps the same scene was being played out as the Baobhan Sith emerged from
their resting places. Earth showered from their wild hair and fell from their open
mouths as they levered their shoulders up, then their torsos. Their faces turned
towards Veitch and Ruth, all of them shrieking in silence, scattered from wall
to wall and away into the shrouded distance. Ruth was too terrified to consider
how many of them were waiting there in the tunnel.

The sheer weight of terror elicited by the Baobhan Sith emerging left Veitch
and Ruth rooted for an instant. But then Veitch shoved Ruth forward and they
were sprinting once more, throwing themselves into a wild dance away from
grasping hands.

Behind them, the first to emerge were already on their feet, shaking off the
lethargy of slumber, flitting in pursuit. Ahead, the hummocks in gradual
upheaval stretched on forever.

The Baobhan Sith rose up with increasing swiftness, and however fast Veitch and
Ruth ran it was obvious they would soon be surrounded. Talons bit deeply into Ruth's
ankle. She yelped as Veitch's flashing sword forced the creature to become insubstantial. They continued to drive forward, knowing that if they slowed an instant they
would be lost, but already the Baobhan Sith were massing ahead of them.

A few seconds later the route ahead was blocked with shimmering bodies.
"Shit." Veitch ground to a halt and whirled round, his eyes feral. The Baobhan
Sith swept up from all sides.