Hooded Man (65 page)

Mary took a shot, but the woman was already gone. Then her eyes dropped to the grenade bouncing into the middle of the arsenal.

“Nuts,” said Mary under her breath.

Run, Mary, run!
shouted her brother, but her legs were already in motion. She pelted out the way she had come, making it to the steps and almost all the way up them when the explosion came.

The blast rocked the cave, blowing dust, sandstone, and Mary out with it, causing a section near the exit to fall in just behind her. She felt something heavy land on her leg, pinning her to the steps, pain.

Mary could see the light above, the open gate, but couldn’t move. She reached out her hand, yet in spite of the efforts of her brother to keep her awake, Mary found herself blacking out. It sounded like another explosion went off then, but that one was distant. She let it go, able only to focus on one thing.

Her final thoughts were of Robert, Adele’s words echoing in her mind.

Absent... or dead.

Absent...

Or dead.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

T
HEY WERE ALL
dead.

Piled up, in front of the Tsar. And he was looking down on them with such a satisfied smile on his face. Mary, Tate, Sophie, Mark. And finally Jack, thrown down there by the giant Tanek, while the two Asian women looked on, swords drawn, ready to protect their lord with their lives if necessary.

At the Tsar’s feet was the suited man, crawling, half dead; one of his hands missing and blood staining his shirt from the belly wound Dale had given him. All around them the forest was on fire. It was being attacked by the troops they’d found on the battlefield, trees mowed aside by armoured vehicles. The sound of chopper-blades could be heard overhead.

On his knees, Robert made an effort to get up and rush forward, to take revenge for the deaths of the people he loved. But he found he couldn’t move. It was like he was stuck, his limbs unable to respond to his commands. His eyes were about the only things that could, and when he dipped them, he saw a light coating of fur on his chest, on his entire body (though he couldn’t reach up this time – Robert didn’t even think he had hands – he knew there would be antlers on his head). His shoulder was bleeding profusely, and so was his thigh.

But there was something else. A figure behind the Tsar. A woman. He recognised her short black hair, the pretty features, instantly.

It was the woman he’d saved from the cultists. Adele. Indeed, the more he looked at the soldiers flanking them, the more he saw their number amongst the troops: the robed men with machetes here and there, blending in with the Tsar’s fighters.

Robert’s attention was snapped back to Adele, though, as she draped herself over the Tsar, hands on his shoulders, lips to his ear. The Russian’s grin widened, but his twin bodyguards looked like they wanted to run their swords right through her.

Then she came around the front, stroking Tanek’s bicep as he joined them. There was something about the way she looked now, something that rang a warning bell. It was as if the layers were being peeled away, revealing the real face of this woman beneath the façade. There it was in the eyes, in the crooked smile. He’d seen those features before, he’d looked into them as he’d been locked in a deathgrip. A relation? A cousin? A sister?

No. A daughter.

If only he had known earlier.

“Vengeance,” whispered Adele in a French accent, now to the side of him. Now at his ear.

The
thrup-thrup
of an attack helicopter drowned her out, about to fire its payload as it had during the battle. The battle which he’d just fought and ended up –

Tanek, in front of him, was raising his crossbow – preparing to shoot and then cut the antlers from Robert’s crown. But those damned rotor blades, they were making such a row.

So close, so close.

Tanek raised his crossbow and shot...

...R
OBERT’S EYELIDS CRACKED
open, then immediately closed again.

The noise of the rotor blades from his dream carried on. He must still be there, must still be in the dreamscape. But now he felt pain – real pain. The kind you could never feel in a dream. The kind that reminded him what he’d been through in the battle and the fight with the suited man.

Which meant that the sound of the chopper was real, too.

Robert forced open one eye. Yes, there was the outline of a helicopter. His lid snapped shut again. They’d taken out three of those things, but only incapacitated the first. It had to be that one returning to finish the job, the pilot intent on revenge, about to spray the field with bullets.

Robert kept as still as he could, feeling the shadow of the thing above him. But then his injured leg betrayed him, the pain jabbing into him until the thigh moved of its own accord. That was just great; first he couldn’t move at all, then his body was moving independently of his mind, giving him away.

He prised open both eyes, taking in the sight of the chopper directly overhead. If he was going out, finally, then he was going to meet death with his eyes wide open. Strangely, he realised he would miss seeing Mary’s face much more than he was looking forward to seeing Joanna. It was a horrible, horrible thing, but true.

“I’m... I’m sorry,” he muttered, but he wasn’t sure which one of them he was apologising to.

Then Robert braced himself for those bullets.

H
E KEPT THE
helicopter level, coming in low and sweeping over the battleground.

What the hell had happened here?

Hell actually did look like it had happened to this place. This sleepy, wintry English meadow had been the site of some kind of rift, a portal connecting our world with –

He shook his head. That was cobblers. What had happened here was man’s work, not the Devil’s. Two warring sides ripping each other to shreds.

The blackened and charred remains of tanks, jeeps, motorcycles and armoured vehicles littered the landscape. As did bodies, dozens of them. If he’d thought it was bad last time then...

“Judas bloody Priest.”

When Bill had found out that something big was going down here, from a variety of his sources, he had climbed straight into his chopper and into the air.

He’d spent much of the time since the fracas at the Bay keeping tabs on the army that had landed, and what he was hearing made him sick to his stomach. These people made the Frenchman look like an amateur. They’d crash through cities, towns and villages like a juggernaut, treating those who could defend themselves and those who could not the same, killing both in equal measures.

Somebody needed to stop them, just like they’d stopped the Sheriff.

But with guns, tanks, jeeps and armoured vehicles of their own. Fighting fire with fire. It was the only way. Not like this, not with rocks, with arrows and swords. Not on horseback! It was the same old argument, one that had seen him leave these ranks in the first place and, looking around today, he was glad he’d got out in time.

Yet, as much as he believed that, Bill had to admit they’d fared damned well. Robert had again pulled something together out of nothing, led his men in an attack that any modern army would have been proud of. Seen off greater numbers and firepower with what looked like sheer force of will. There were more – many, many more – uniformed bodies down there than Rangers; which wasn’t to say they hadn’t taken heavy casualties as well. Bill spotted two or three corpses next to a small crater that looked as if they’d been melted down like plastic. Others had been raked with machine gun fire, their bows, arrows and swords laying uselessly by their sides. Robert couldn’t have done all this with so few men, surely? Which begged the question, if there were survivors, where the blazes were they?

As he swept across the devastation, Bill saw something else. Someone he recognised down there, hood back and sprawled out on the ground. He was injured, that much Bill could tell – hasty field dressings covered his thigh and shoulder. But whether it was more serious than that, whether he was... Bill shook his head. He couldn’t be, not Robert. Ever since Bill had first seen him in action, he’d seemed indestructible. But he wasn’t some kind of superhero. He was flesh and blood like the rest of them.

Which meant he could die. There, it was in Bill’s head before he could shake it. But he wouldn’t find out by staying up in the air like this. Quickly, Bill searched for a place to set the Gazelle down. Everywhere he looked there were the carcasses of fighting machines or the ground was too churned up for a stable landing, but eventually he managed to find a small area of flat ground.

“Back in a sec, girl,” he told the chopper, grabbing both his shotgun and one of his newly acquired AK-47s. He had no idea whether there were any Russian soldiers in hiding, waiting for someone to come along, so he wasn’t taking any chances.

Cautiously, Bill picked his way across the field, hurrying when he got closer to Robert’s position. Taking one last look around him, pointing the guns in every direction, he crouched on the floor beside Robert. Putting the machine gun on the ground, though still ready with his trusty double-barrelled shotgun if he needed it, Bill checked the side of Robert’s neck for a pulse. For a second he couldn’t find one, then he realised he was panicking, feeling in the wrong place. He calmed down and brought his fingers up higher, to the crevice between the chin and neck. There it was, a faint beat. Robert was still alive.

Bill let out the breath he’d been holding. They’d had their moments in the past, but this was still the man who’d saved his life. The man he’d gone into battle with at the castle. “Rob,” he said, slapping the man’s cheek. “Rob, can ye hear me?”

There was a flicker under Robert’s eyelids.

“Rob?”

Robert opened his eyes, though they were still practically slits. “Not... not dead...” he whispered and Bill almost missed what he said. The man sounded surprised, like he’d been expecting to wake up at the Pearly Gates.

“Naw, but ye doin’ a good impression of a dead man. Look at the state of ye, lad.”

“B-Bill?” Robert managed, as if he’d only just realised who was talking to him. “Is that you?”

“Aye.”

“W-what are you – ?”

“Later,” Bill promised him. “Along wi’ the
I-told-ye-so
s.” He felt bad saying it, but if Robert had only listened to him... “Right now I reckon ye need them wounds lookin’ at. Get ye back to Mary.”

“No,” said Robert, louder than he’d said anything since Bill found him.

“No?” Bill couldn’t understand that. Surely Mary would be the first person he’d want to see? They’d been as thick as thieves since they met. And she had all that medical knowledge.

“S-Sherwood,” Robert said.

“Eh? What d’you want to go back there for? Ye really have lost it.”

Robert wouldn’t – or couldn’t – explain. He just said: “Please.”

“But –”

“Please,” Robert repeated more emphatically, and placed a trembling hand on Bill’s arm.

“All right, but let’s get yer wounds dressed properly first. I’ve got a medical kit in the helicopter.”

Robert nodded, then winced in pain.

“Ye know,” said Bill, standing. “Yer one stubborn man, Robert Stokes.”

“Look... look who’s talking,” wheezed Robert, a slight smile playing on his lips.

Bill shook his head and went off back to the chopper.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

M
ARK HAD BEEN
having the most serious conversation of his life when it all hit the fan.

Stupidly, he’d figured now was the perfect time to talk to Sophie. Dale was out of the way – though it still smarted that Robert had chosen to take him along and not Mark – and the place was more peaceful than it had been in weeks. Plucking up the courage had proved to be more difficult. He would rather have faced another dozen of the men in robes than come out and tell Sophie how he really felt. Fighting was much simpler than dealing with all these emotions.

Eventually, he decided he couldn’t put it off any longer. They were facing all kinds of threats; he might not get the chance to say anything later on. What was the worst that could happen?