World's End (Age of Misrule, Book 1) (21 page)

"Look, I tumbled through that hole to God knows where by accident," she said to Church. "I spent hours wandering around those corridors getting my head well and truly screwed, and then I met Lady Freakzone who insisted I'd be contacted by some Brother of Dragons and I had to bring him straight to her. She didn't have to say or else-I'm not stupid, and I'm not about to mess with someone who lives on a big floating castle in space. I had no idea if you were the right one. I hoped, because I didn't want to keep jumping on the Nightmare Shuttle. But I didn't know. And I certainly didn't have any idea about whoever those geeks were who jumped the old guy and Miss Smarty Pants here."

Ruth glanced at her coldly, then said, "The point's moot now. We need to find what's happened to Tom and move on."

"You're not leaving me behind," Laura said. "I'm in on this now."

Ruth turned to Church. "We can't take someone with us we can't trust. And she's just excess baggage-"

"Who made you-"

Church silenced Laura with his hand. "The woman on the Watchtower told me there had to be five of us-the right five, the chosen ones, I supposeinvolved in this mess and I don't reckon she would have involved Laura if she wasn't one of us."

Ruth chewed on her lip. Reluctantly she said, "You had better tell me what else you were told."

For the next fifteen minutes, Church related everything that had happened to him on the Watchtower, 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.

hutch 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.

"And let's face it, I'm a different person now," Laura continued. "I've done a few drugs in my time. It's not big or clever, but, hey, I enjoyed myself. And if you've done drugs you know they change you. Suddenly you find yourself apart from all your old friends who haven't done them. They couldn't ever understand what you've been through without experiencing it themselves. After crossing over to that castle, that's how I feel now. It was such a big thing, such a lifechanging experience, bigger than the wildest trip, there isn't a single person on earth who understands me now. Except you. We've got an affinity, Church-dude. We're beyond everyone else. Could you go back to your life after that?"

Church felt Ruth stiffen beside him. He couldn't tell if Laura was specifically trying to annoy her by making her feel excluded, but he guessed she was. "We've all experienced weird things," he said. "I suppose that puts us on common ground."

"But we don't have to like each other," Ruth said coldly.

Laura looked away; nothing seemed to concern her.

"So what's all this nonsense about Brothers and Sisters of Dragons?" Ruth said directly to Church. "It sounds like some ridiculous secret society."

"She was implying we were important somehow. Different. Special." He wrinkled his nose; it didn't make sense to him either.

Ruth snorted ironically. "The way you told it suggested it was some kind of destiny thing. But we wouldn't be here now if we hadn't been under Albert Bridge at that particular moment in time, and that was chance. A big coincidence. If I hadn't had that row with Clive and got out of the taxi, if you'd stayed in bed for five minutes longer, none of this would have happened to us. So how can it be destiny?"

Church shrugged. "Well, she wasn't lying to me-at least it didn't seem that she was. Maybe she was mistaken."

"She wasn't lying," Laura said emphatically.

"How do you know?"

"I just feel it."

"But maybe that explains why those things have been going for the nuclear option in trying to stop us," Church mused. "It would have helped if the mystery woman had told us exactly what our little dragon group is supposed to do. Something about our heritage, she said-"

"If Tom were here I bet he'd have something to say about it," Ruth mused.

"Yeah, he'd be sitting back dispensing enigmatic wisdom like Yoda," Church said. "He was obviously keeping stuff from us-we couldn't trust him. Maybe we're better off without him."

"Do you reckon he's scattered in bits and pieces across Salisbury?" Laura stared out some elderly local who was watching her curiously.

"Who knows where he is. Maybe he fell through another of those holes in the air. Maybe he's hiding out and doing this just to wind us up."

"Oh, he helped us out, Church. He was just selective in what he said." Ruth pondered for a moment, before adding, "He seemed a little scared when you told him about that black dog."

"You should have seen it."

Ruth glanced out of the window, but the lights were too bright within to see anything clearly. "I wonder how much longer we've got?"

"What do you mean?"

"Before the next thing comes after us. The Wild Hunt, Tom said. The worst thing we could expect."

Outside the pub, while they waited for Church to return from the toilet, Ruth could no longer contain herself. Laura was chewing on some gum and kicking stones at the parked cars.

"You ought to know I don't trust you," Ruth said, "and I'm going to be keeping an eye on you."

"Ask me if I'm bothered." Laura continued to boot the stones; one rattled on the side of a brand new BMW.