Darkest Hour (Age of Misrule, Book 2) (69 page)

At the church he stopped and glanced back. The shadowy shapes were closer now, massing as they flowed down the sweeping green slopes of the garden. Quickly he scanned the area.

Eventually he found what he was looking for: an entrance cut into the hillside overlooking the park. Within lay a network of artificial caves going deep underground where the Hellfire Club had held its magic rituals and orgies. It was tucked away at just such an angle that the approaching Fomorii would not see him take the detour and would presume he had continued on through the grounds; and it was discreet enough that unless they knew it was there, they would not see it. He hoped.

He skidded inside, his chest aching from his ragged breathing; even fit as he now was, he hadn’t moved at such a clip for a long time. The catacombs were filled with an inky darkness. Lights had been installed for the tourists, but he didn’t dare attempt to put them on, even if he could have located the light switch. He moved as swiftly as he could while feeling his way along the chill, dank walls. When he rounded a corner and the ambient light was extinguished, the gloom was complete. He had a sudden flashback to the grim ruins of Mary King’s Close and felt his heart begin to pound. He had attempted to bend the supernatural to his will, but the more he had learned about the Invisible World, the more he realised how much there was that terrified him. He wondered if any remnant of the monstrous rituals carried out by the Hellfire Club had been imprinted in the rock walls; if Sir Francis Dashwood’s spirit still walked the place, trying to expunge his lifetime’s sins; if there were other, worse, things there that had been called up by the Club’s desire to be an affront to natural law.

But more than the otherworldly threat was the certain knowledge that if the Fomorii did enter the catacombs he would not be aware of them until they were upon him.

When he felt he had progressed deep enough into the heart of the tunnels, he slumped down against the foot of the wall and took a deep breath. His whole body was shaking from the strain and the fear, his blood pumping so loudly he didn’t think he would hear if a column of hobnailed soldiers were marching towards him; he forced himself to do a series of breathing exercises to calm himself. Once he had relaxed as much as he could he tried to concentrate all his energies on his hearing. In his mind’s eye he pictured the scene above ground: the oppressive force of Fomorii smashing down small trees, tearing through shrubs and flowers, sweeping up and around the church. By now they should have reached the entrance to the catacombs.

He listened intently. Nothing.

Perhaps they had already passed, thundering through the rest of the grounds, not stopping for miles, like robot drones pointed in one direction and turned on. Of the Fomorii he had encountered, there appeared little of independent thought and cunning; that rested in large quantities with their leader Calatin, and Mollecht, the Fomor who appeared as a swirling mass of crows, whom Shavi had not seen since that night in the Lake District when they thought they had snatched victory.

Time passed in deep silence. How long should he wait there, he wondered? In the dark he found he was losing track of the hours. If the Fomorii had not already found him, it would be logical, he supposed, to wait until morning before attempting to leave. They would be scouring the countryside for him and the night was not the best time to be trying to evade them. But even if he did make it through the night undiscovered, what chance would he have of reaching Windsor Park? It was not far on the map, but if there were an army of Fomorii between him and his destination, it might as well have been a million miles away.

At some point he fell asleep, and he must have been out for a while, for on awakening suddenly his mouth and throat were uncommonly dry and every muscle ached. When he opened his eyes he was completely disorientated by the dark and had to struggle to recall where he was. But as soon as his memory clicked into action he became alert; he knew something had woken him.

His first thought was that the Fomorii had finally tracked him down, but the dark caves around him seemed as empty as they ever had been. His next thought was of some supernatural presence; his instincts were as attuned to the Invisible as the visible world. But he didn’t have that queasy sensation which always materialised in the pit of his stomach whenever something uncanny was nearby.

He held his breath and listened. At first, nothing; then a sound, just the slightest scuffle of dust from a footstep that many would have missed, but his own hearing had grown hyper-sensitive in the dark. There was someone else in the caves, and they were creeping, so as not to be discovered.

The construction of the caves meant all sound was distorted, so it was impossible to tell from which direction the footfall had come. In the all-consuming darkness Shavi was loath to move one way or the other in case he bumped into the intruder. But then neither could he sit there and wait to be discovered.

Weighing the odds, he decided to attempt to make his way back to the door; at least then he would have the option of fleeing if necessary. He stood up and rested his left hand on the wall before moving forward a few paces. He paused and listened. Another few paces and he stopped again.

The unmistakable scrape of a foot on the gritty floor. A tingle ran down his spine. It seemed to come from somewhere over to his right. Cautiously he continued ahead, placing each foot down slowly and carefully, so as not to make even the slightest noise.

His breath was held tightly in his chest. He half expected to come face to face with something terrible; the dark was so deep he wouldn’t have known if there were someone standing motionless even six inches in front of him. With an effort he drove those thoughts from his head; it would do him no good; he had to stay calm.

Another noise, this time in front of him. The echoes were mesmerising. He couldn’t tell if the intruder was circling or if he was misreading the direction of the sounds. He moved back a few paces and waited again.

In the claustrophobic space of the caves, Shavi knew it was only a matter of time before his pursuer caught him. Yet there was a slim chance to weight the odds a little more in his favour. He closed his eyes and took a deep, calming breath, focusing far within himself. He still couldn’t turn his nascent shamanistic abilities on and off like a light switch, but with concentration there were little tricks he had practised. He felt the force rising within him like a billowing sheet, filling him, moving out through his mouth, to wrap itself around him. The first time he had attempted this he had been standing within a few feet of Veitch, yet the Londoner had not even noticed him, at least for a moment or two. He didn’t know how it worked, but he perceived it as a cloak which made him merge in with the surroundings. It was a subtle trick and easily punctured, yet in the gloom of the cavern it might have more force. He hoped it would be enough.

His throat had grown painfully dry. After several minutes without a sound, he moved off again. This time he progressed a long way through the caves, but somewhere in the dark he must have taken a wrong turning, for he knew he should have come across the door by then. There was no point retracing his steps-he wouldn’t have any idea when he arrived back at where he had slept anyway. His only option was to keep going left, in the hope that it would lead him to an outside wall which would eventually take him around the perimeter of the catacombs to the exit.

As he moved he listened as intently as he could, but there was no sign of anyone; at the same time he had an overwhelming and unpleasant sense of presence. And then he froze as every nerve seemed to fire at once. Was someone standing right behind him? His mind screamed at him to run, but somehow he held his ground. In that heightened moment his senses started playing tricks on him. Was that the bloom of a breath on his neck? An involuntary spasm ran through him; he didn’t even dare swallow. The most natural thing in the world would have been to run away, but he was as sure as anything in his life that that would be the end of him.

And so he waited, and after several minutes the feeling slowly ebbed away. He didn’t know if the intruder had been there, just inches away, listening, unable to see him, or if it was all in his mind. But the nausea he felt at the strain was certainly real.

He began moving again, hugging the wall, straining not to be heard.

His journey seemed to take hours, punctuated by long pauses brought on by dim echoes, the faintest footfalls, that might very well have been all in his mind.

And then, just as he was about to dismiss the entire experience as a flight of fancy, he happened to glance behind him, though his eyes were useless. The intensity of the darkness was almost hallucinatory and for a while his mind had been conjuring up flashes of colours, streaks of light, that were just brief electrical bursts on his retina. He could have dismissed it as another mind-flash, but what he saw made him stop and stare. No flash, no streak. Two tiny points of yellow away in the dark.

But then they disappeared and reappeared and he knew what they were: eyes, glinting with an awful inner light.

In his shock, he turned back and there was a thin grey band of dim light. It was seeping through the entrance. He moved towards it as quickly but as quietly as he could.

Steeling himself, his hand hovered over the handle. Then he wrenched it open and hurled himself out into a world just coming to life. On the threshold, he couldn’t resist making the most of that pre-dawn light and threw one glance over his shoulder before sprinting across the park as fast as he could go.

And then he ran and he ran, that briefest glimpse staying with him as he put as much distance between him and his pursuer as he could. What he half saw in the gloom was a shape that looked like a giant wolf, its eyes growing with a malignant fire. But an instant later his mind had started to rearrange it into something else: a human figure. The killer was still close behind him, as relentless in its pursuit as the wolf his mind presumed it to be.

But what troubled him more than the knowledge that he had escaped death only by a hair’s breadth was that in that instant when the shape had started to change he was almost convinced he knew the person it was becoming. In the gloom and the fear, he hadn’t been able to harden up the vision, and the connection remained disturbingly elusive.

To his infinite relief, there was no pursuit; nor were there any Fomorii in the immediate vicinity. But what he had half seen continued to haunt him long after the sun had driven the greyness out of the landscape.

nverness appeared out of the dark Highlands landscape like a small island of light in a vast sea of shadows. Witch and Tom walked down from the hills with leaden legs, burdened with the crushing weight of exhaustion. They had spent the last few days endlessly dodging the Fomorii, who were swarming across the purple moorland in increasing numbers. Tom had utilised some of his tricksa ritual, some foul-tasting brew made from herbs and roots-which made the two of them oblivious to the Night Walkers unless they were in direct line of sight. But that still entailed endless hours of creeping along rocky gullies, taking the hard route over peaks or skulking in woods until the danger had passed.

It was a far cry from the first leg of their Scottish journey, when they had dined out on wholesome provisions from the villages they dropped in on. Now Veitch was heartily sick of wild game, roots and herbs, however well Tom cooked it. He had an almost unbearable craving for pizza or a curry, washed down with a beer.

“You reckon we’ll get time to stop off for a ruby?” he said wearily as they trudged into the outskirts of town.

Tom looked at him blankly.

“Ruby Murray. Curry. It rhymes.”

Tom shook his head contemptuously. “Eight days left. Why don’t we go on a pub crawl while we’re at it? We could have a few drinks for Ruth. That should make her well.”

“All right. No need to act so bleedin’ crabby.” He took a few steps, then muttered, “Twat,” under his breath. That made him feel better.