World's End (Age of Misrule, Book 1) (24 page)

Suddenly she knew what she had to do. She pressed hard and the raised area sank in. A second later, there was a corresponding click and a small hatch opened at head height, flooding the alcove with a diffuse blue light. In the newly exposed area lay a shiny black stone as big as the palm of her hand. When Laura plucked it out, she was surprised, and a little disturbed, that it felt like skin, warm and soft. As she slipped it into her pocket, the doors slid back and, with a relieved gulp of dank air, she stepped back out into the cavern.

"This waiting is terrible." Church sat with his legs dangling over the edge above the lake of blue energy; he had the disturbing feeling that if he pushed himself off he would be able to walk across its surface.

"Now you know how I felt in Salisbury." Ruth was still annoyed he had allowed Laura to go on such an important mission; she was more angry at herself for feeling that way. The Bone Inspector had left them alone and was waiting silently in the shadows near the tunnel through which they entered.

Church stared into the blue depths, his hand unconsciously going to the Black Rose in his jacket; since they had gone underground it had felt horribly cold, like a block of ice burning his skin, and now the discomfort was starting to make him a little queasy. "Brother of Dragons. What does that mean exactly? I wish somebody would give us a look at the script. Why are we so special?"

"Don't you feel special?" She controlled an urge to slip an arm around his shoulders and hug him. Since he had returned from the Watchtower, he seemed different; darker somehow, more intense, if that were possible. That odd conjunction of emotional fragility and strength of character moved her on some deep level so acutely, at times she wondered if she was falling ill, although she knew the truth, and that was just as bad.

"Not in the way all these weird people are intimating," he said. "I've always felt different. Even at school I knew I wasn't like other kids. She came to me, you know? When I was a boy."

"Who?"

"The woman in the Watchtower."

"There you are, then. You were different right from the start."

"But I don't feel it inside me. I feel normal, like I always have done."

"I don't know if anybody does feel different until they're called upon to-" She was interrupted by a call from Laura, who was edging her way along the last stretch of the ledge.

They ran to meet her as she stepped back on to the rock shelf. "We'd just about given up on you," Church said.

"Bad pennies always turn up. You should know that." She dipped into her pocket and pulled out the stone; it seemed to glow with an inner light. "Look what I found."

Church and Ruth gathered round. "Is that it? Wow! I expected a lump of rock or something," Ruth said.

Church looked at her curiously. "It is a lump of rock."

"No, it's not. It's a diamond," Ruth said incredulously.

"Are you both insane? It's a black stone, like polished obsidian."

They looked from one to the other in disbelief until the Bone Inspector stepped up. "Save your breath. It has no true shape in this world. It's fluid, like everything from the Other Place. Our tiny little minds can't grasp it, so we give it some kind of shape to make sense of it."

"That's crazy," Ruth said. "How are we-"

"It doesn't matter what things look like," the old man said with exasperation, "just as long as you know what they are."

Church peered at the stone in Laura's hands. "The first of the four talismans. What does it do?"

Laura held it out to the Bone Inspector for advice, but the old man backed away hastily. "Don't bring it near me! It's too powerful. It's your burden now."

"But what does it do?"

"It doesn't do anything," the Bone Inspector snapped. "It's not a toy! It has a purpose which I'm sure you'll find out sooner or later. Now enough of the fool questions. Let's get back to the light. And not the way we came either. I have no doubt our friends from Windmill Hill will be waiting for us on West Kennet Avenue."

He led them to another tunnel off to one side. As they made their way uphill by the light of the lantern, Church said to Laura, "So did you have any trouble getting it?"

"Easy as pie," she replied.

They emerged blinking into the warm morning light on Beckhampton Avenue, the snaking route on the other side of Avebury. After the dank passages, the air was fragrant with spring flowers and the verdant aromas of the countryside.

"You leave here quickly now and don't look back," the Bone Inspector said gruffly. "Dawdle too much and you'll find the Devil at your heels."

"Where are you going now?" Ruth asked.

"I've got a country full of ancient places to tend, graves to visit, old bones to check, and in these times I think they'll need me more than ever."

"Thanks for your help," Church said, stretching out a hand which the old man ignored. "We couldn't have done it without you."

"Aye. And don't you forget it. I bloody well hope I've done the right thing. Don't go and ruin it all."

Then he turned and was loping away, over a gate and into the fields, faster than they would have believed, almost dropping to all fours at times so that he seemed more animal than man as he disappeared into the countryside.

"We could have used his help," Ruth said regretfully.

"We don't need any crumbly old folk." Laura replaced her sunglasses after the dark of the cavern. "We've got youth, good looks and sex on our side."

"Look at this." Church held up the lantern; the flame was now flickering towards the south-west.

They hurried through the quiet streets until they reached the car, and then they were speeding out of the village before anyone noticed.

On West Kennet Avenue, the cloud of whirling, flapping crows suddenly turned towards the south-west. A guttural voice filled with the grunts of beasts rolled out from the heart of it, and four shadows seemed to separate from the base of the hedges. The voice barked and snorted again, incomprehensible to human ears, and all the birds, and the cows lowing in the fields fell silent.

ou want to push me completely over the edge, you go ahead and play Sinatra one more time." Laura gave the back of Church's seat a sharp kick. "Because we've only heard `Come Fly with Me,' like, what, a thousand times? Music-induced psychosis is not a pretty thing to see."

Church ejected the tape with irritation. "What do you want, then?"

"Somebody who's not dead would be nice."

"I hate to say it, but I'm with her on this one," Ruth chipped in.

"Fine. Gang up on me."

Laura rested her arms on the back of his seat, her breath bringing a bloom to his neck. "Have you got anything that makes your ears bleed?"

"An icepick?"

"How about some golden oldies, like, say, The Chemical Brothers?"

"No."

"What's the matter? Don't you like music that makes your blood boil?"

His first reaction was to say I used to, but he realised how pathetic it sounded. If truth be told, his irritation with Laura came more from how she pointed up the parts of his character that he had lost than from her forthright manner.

"How about the radio?" he snapped, feeling the first bite of self-loathing. He switched it on and tuned across the band until he heard music.

"It'll do, I guess." Laura slumped back into her seat, successful.

The music gave way to the syrupy voice of a local DJ who rambled aimlessly for a minute or two before another fizzy, optimistic Top Ten hit came on. Outside the car the windswept uplands had given way to sun-drenched green fields, trees on the verge of bursting with new life, sparkling streams and little stone bridges. The road behind was comfortingly empty and, despite everything, Church was feeling remarkably at ease in the light of their success at Avebury. The lantern had directed them on to the A4 towards Bath where they were able to build up some speed and put some distance between them and whatever the Bone Inspector had feared was waiting for them on West Kennet Avenue. They felt confident enough to pause briefly at Chippenham, where they bought a couple of tents, cooking equipment and other camping gear for emergencies. Laura protested she wasn't the outdoor type, but, as usual, it seemed to be more for effect.

Bath was choked with traffic, the winter season already forgotten as tourists flocked to the Roman baths or to gawp at the Georgian architecture. Ruth muttered something about the bliss of ignorance, and for a brief while a maudlin mood fell across the car as they all became acutely aware of what was at risk.

But by the time they had passed through Bath into the more sparsely populated countryside beyond, their mood had buoyed as they focused on the task ahead. They were making good time and the lantern seemed to be taking them into the deep south-west, far away from the troubled areas of the previous few days.

As they travelled through tiny, picture-postcard villages south of Bristol, with the undulating slopes of the Mendips away to their left, they were shocked by a sharp, ear-splitting burst of static on the radio. When it faded, the DJ's voice was replaced by giggling, mocking laughter fading in and out of white noise, growing louder, then softer; there was something inhuman about it. It was the same mysterious sound Ruth and Church had heard on the tape in the therapist's office when they had first discovered what they had seen under Albert Bridge. Church hastily ran the tuner across the band, but the laughter remained the same, and even when he switched the radio off, it continued to come out of the speakers for a full minute. Ruth and Church shot an uneasy glance of recognition at each other.

Five miles further on, all the electrics failed.

"I'll have a look, but there's no chance I can do anything today." The mechanic glanced at a dusty clock above the door of the repair bay; it said 3 p.m. He was unusually tall and massive-boned, with a solid beer belly kept in check by his grease-stained blue overalls. His face was ruddy and his unruly black hair was peppered with grey. "Everything's going bloody crazy at the moment."

Church sat wearily on the Nissan's wing. He'd spent an hour searching for a garage with a tow truck. This one had only relented and agreed to come out after he had virtually begged.

"It's these modern cars, you see," the mechanic continued. "They build 'em to break down. Though this last week I've never seen anything like it. The place has been full every day, most of it electrical stuff, though I've had a fair share of busted alternators. I tell you, you need a bloody degree to sort out these electrics. This week I've worked on some all day long and then, just like that, they've been fine again. No explanation for it. Couldn't find any fault at all, yet they were dead as a dodo when they were brought in." He shook his head at this great mystery, then added, "Still, bloody good for business."

Church got his assurances that the car would be looked at first thing the following day, then wandered out to Ruth and Laura who sat with the camping equipment on the dusty forecourt. The garage was well off the beaten track, a rundown affair that seemed to have been barely updated since the fifties, down to the period petrol pumps that stood dry like museum pieces at the front. Only farms lay scattered around the surrounding countryside, and there was no sound of traffic, just the song of birds in the clustering trees.

"What did he say?" Ruth asked anxiously.

"Tomorrow. I think we can risk giving it a shot before we start looking around for the local Avis."

"Yeah, there'll really be one round here," Laura said sarcastically.

Ruth noticed Church's concerned expression and asked him what was wrong. He repeated the mechanic's tale of mysterious breakdowns. "I think things are starting to go wrong, just like Tom predicted. It's as if the rules of science are falling apart in the face of all these things that shouldn't exist."

Laura looked at him curiously. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," he said, nodding to the computer in the bag on her arm, "that pretty soon that will be as much use to us as it would be to some lost Amazon tribe, along with every other technological gadget. New rules are falling into place. Science is dying."

"Unless we can do something about it," Ruth said hopefully, but Church merely shouldered the tents and rucksack and began to trudge along the lane.

They found a good campsite in a secluded grove out of sight of the road. They didn't ask permission, preferring anonymity. The trees were thick enough to prevent the tents being seen by the casual passer-by, and there was a natural clearing shielded by a tangle of brambles where they could light a fire. Ruth seemed uncomfortable at the prospect of sharing with Laura, but they reached some kind of unspoken agreement, and Church slipped off to collect firewood.

Lost in thought as he scoured the edge of the copse, he failed to see the figure until it was upon him. He whirled in shock, ready to fight or run, and was then suffused with embarrassment when he saw it was just a girl of about ten, pretty, with long blonde hair and a creamy complexion. She was wearing a tight T-shirt with a sunburst motif and baggy, faded jeans.