World's End (Age of Misrule, Book 1) (34 page)

There was a deafening rending as it shredded the door like paper, and then, with a tremendous heave, he tore it from its hinges. It flew up high and landed with a crash far behind them. The van was filled with the searing sound of the road and the horses. Too frightened to speak, Laura scrabbled backwards until her back pressed into Ruth's seat. Ruth's hand snaked down and caught hers, holding it firmly, squeezing for comfort; Laura squeezed back.

Framed in the hole where the door had been, the Wild Hunt drew ever closer. Ruth thought she was going to be sick when she looked at them-it was as if she was queasily drunk and everything was distorted-and she couldn't bear to look into their faces, although she was sure they were mouthing hypnotic words that hissed in the back of her head: to give herself up, to throw herself to the pack. She placed her hands on her ears and yelled.

Shavi looked at her with concern. "We are nearly there."

The dual carriageway gave way to the motorway outside Exeter just as the other rear door was torn free. Laura's nails were biting into Ruth's hands so hard they drew blood. With the extra lane, the traffic thinned enough for Shavi to slam his foot on to the accelerator. The turbo kicked in, propelling the van forward violently until they were hitting 85 m.p.h.

"We're doing it!" Laura gasped. The Hunt had dropped back several yards and were falling further behind as Shavi continued to accelerate. Cars swerved to avoid them as the horses pounded along the motorway, the hounds spreading out to fill all three lanes. A Lotus ploughed into the central reservation, showering sparks, glass and metal up into the air.

"God," Ruth whispered hoarsely, looking at the vehicles driving ahead of them. "Have we consigned all these poor bastards to death?"

"Casualties of war," Laura said.

"I wish I could be that cold."

"Better get used to it." Laura tapped Shavi on the shoulder. "Have we got enough petrol, hero?"

There was a long silence before he replied, "Let us hope."

"Great." Laura's hand went limp and slipped out of Ruth's grip. "Knock me down when I'm on a high, why don't you?"

"I am not saying we have not ..." His voice trailed off.

"Just put some miles between us."

The Hunt was a half-mile behind now, but they all knew the distance would be covered in no time if they had to stop. Secretly, they each checked their watch, wishing dawn upon them.

They lost sight of the Hunt somewhere past Bristol, but although his eyes were tired and burning, Shavi continued to drive. And when first light broke Ruth found herself crying uncontrollably, making no attempt to hide her tears. If Laura saw, she said nothing. They pulled off the motorway at the first junction and sat quietly watching the dark sky turn purple then gold and finally powder blue. It was going to be a fine day.

Ruth was the first one to see the owl hovering over a field nearby. When she'd finally recovered enough to talk, she convinced the others to follow it, without giving them any explanation; none of them questioned her anyway. Slowly it began to head back south at the side of the motorway. Laura took over from Shavi at the wheel, allowing him and Ruth to sleep if they wanted, although neither of them felt able. And at junction 23 the owl veered off to the east. Half an hour later they found themselves at Glastonbury.

he first thing Church sensed as he surfaced from a world of tormented images was a miasma of aches and pains that made him agonisingly aware of what seemed like every nerve in his body. He felt like he'd been thrown down a flight of concrete stairs. Then came the odours: dank air, stale and unpleasant, mildew, straw, the musky stink of animals, and beneath it all the sickening smell of an open sewer. Dully, he forced himself to open his eyes, then realised they were open; the place was so dark he seemed to be drifting in space. And then the sensations came thick and fast: the sound of dripping water creating echoes that testified to some kind of confined space with bare, hard walls; nausea; a burning sensation in his arms, which were hauled up above his head. He yanked at them and heard the clang of metal on rock. Chains. Manacles around his wrists, biting into the flesh. Panic swept through him as he desperately fought to recall where he was and what was happening to him. Slowly chunks of memory floated up like wreckage bobbing to the surface of a stormy sea. The Wild Hunt. The race across the moor. That awful awareness that his life was on the brink of being snuffed out. And then . . . what? A brief sensation of falling.

The cotton wool that clogged his head gradually began to clear. He must have tumbled into some kind of shaft. He knew the moor was littered with all sorts of old mine workings, but he was sure a fall of that kind would have killed him. And then how did he end up wherever he was?

At least he was alive. With a twist of anxiety he prayed Ruth and Laura had got away too. Cautiously he stretched various muscles to try and ease some of the tension in his hanging body, but the stabbing pain that followed made him stop with a groan. The fall might not have killed him, but it felt like it had been close to it. He sucked in a deep breath and that was a mistake too; fire spread out across his ribcage. He prayed it was just bad bruising and not broken ribs.

When the agony subsided, he listened for any sign of his captors, but it was as still as the grave. Steeling himself for further pain, Church checked the chains, but they seemed solid; he wouldn't be able to pull them out of the wall, even if he were fit. Morosely he leaned back against the wall and desperately tried to think of a way out of his predicament.

The total darkness tricked his mind into hallucinating that he was floating, and in that strange state he lost all track of time as his thoughts constantly drifted in and out of daydreams. For a while he thought Marianne was there with him. He could smell her perfume, hear the soft whisper of her voice on the periphery of his senses; once he thought he saw her, pale and disturbing like the time she had come to him at Stonehenge.

"Don't worry," he muttered. "Soon I'm going to find out why you did it. And I'll make amends to you somehow for whatever I did. Then I can die in peace."

She didn't reply, if she was there at all, and then his thoughts tumbled back into darkness.

Sometime later he was startled out of his deeply drifting thoughts by the noise of heavy footsteps and a muffled, hectoring voice that sounded agitated. They drew closer until a door opened, and although the light without was only a lantern, it was so blinding after the dark that Church wrenched his head away. But in that briefest instant, he got a sense of his surroundings. He was in a place which seemed to have been cut from the bedrock. A low ceiling hung only a few inches above his head and straw had been scattered across the ground. A row of rusty bars lay a few feet away; beyond them was a small passageway, before more bars for another cell which was still swathed in shadows. He heard laboured breathing and smelled the animal stink of a Night Walker. He closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see it.

"Who's that?" The voice made him jump and for a second he did look, before screwing his eyes shut again. A man was being hauled into his cell. Church heard the jangle of the door opening and the man protesting before he was shackled to the wall. He spat noisily-obviously at his captor-and an instant later there was the sound of something heavy striking him, then silence. Church heard shuffling, sensed a disturbing presence hovering over him. It made a guttural noise deep in its throat and then moved off, pausing briefly to do something in the passageway. Church waited until he heard the main door close before looking round.

A lantern had been hung on the wall outside his cell, its flickering light casting bizarre, distorted shadows around the rough room. The man hanging from the wall nearby was around thirty, with straight, dark brown hair that fell around his slumped head. He was good-looking, with a square jaw and sharp cheekbones, but there was a granite hardness in his features that suggested a tough upbringing. The most striking thing about him was the mass of tattoos that covered his naked, muscular torso, a swirling, iridescent panorama of odd pictures, strange images and symbols which Church had never seen before, but which affected him deeply on some subterranean level. At that distance, and in the gloom, it was impossible to make out the detail, but the more he looked, the more he felt even the pictures were speaking to his subconscious, stimulating half-remembered memories, faded dreams. In the end, he had to force himself to look away.

Church was thankful for the light, but its illumination didn't provide him with much hope. Even if he could get out of the manacles, there was no chance he would be able to break through the iron bars, and even then he would have to face whatever lurked without. But he refused to give in to despair and he steeled himself until his fellow prisoner recovered from the blow.

On awakening, his companion shook his head a few times as if being buzzed by an angry wasp and then he cursed under his breath. Looking round sullenly, he spied Church, remembering him from before the blow. "Who the hell are you?" he asked a little suspiciously, in the hard tones of working class south-east London.

"Jack Churchill. Who the hell are you?"

Silence. Then: "Ryan Veitch." He continued to look around furtively. "They pick you up too?"

Church shrugged. "Can't remember. I was riding across the moor on a bike and fell down some kind of hole. Where is this place?"

"Some abandoned mine. The place is swarming with them." Veitch yanked at his chain angrily, but it held fast. "Bastards." He took a deep breath, then said, "What are they?"

"Our worst nightmares." Now it was Church's turn to be suspicious. "You seem to be taking this pretty well, being confronted by something that shouldn't exist."

"I've had plenty of time to get used to it, haven't I? About a bleedin' week since the bastards dragged me down here. I was hitchin' across the moor. The first time I saw them I threw up, then blacked out. I tell you, it was a stomachfull, projectile. The second time wasn't so bad. Half a stomach and three hours unconscious. Now I've just about got used to them, and that's a horrible bleedin' thought in itself."

"Even so," Church pressed, "you're pretty much on top of it."

Veitch hung his head so his hair obscured his face. Church thought he was being cold-shouldered, but his companion was obviously thinking, for a moment later he looked up and said bluntly, "I've been dreaming about these sorts of things all my life. It's like I knew they were out there. The biggest sur prise was that I wasn't surprised when I saw them. It was almost like I expected to meet them."

"Dreams?" Church felt a tingle of recognition.

"Yeah. You see these tattoos? They're my dreams. When I was a kid they used to make me miserable. I couldn't get them out of my head. I screwed up school, had trouble making friends, couldn't keep any bird on the go for too long-anti-social tendencies, they said. Attention deficit. Half a dozen other excuses. But it was the bastard dreams. I think I'd probably have topped myself by now if I hadn't found some way to get them out of my head." He nodded to the tattoos. "Every time one came into my head and wouldn't leave I went to this place in Greenwich and had a picture of it done somewhere or other. That night it'd be gone. I tell you, this body is a picture book of my screwed-up head."

Church peered hard through the gloom and saw what seemed to be a tower floating in space. "I had dreams too," he began. "Nothing like yours, but-"

Veitch flashed him a strange, intense look that stopped him dead. "Dragons?" Veitch said, his eyes searching Church's face. "Brother of Dragons?" Church nodded. "Those words've been doin' my head in for weeks now. Just floating there. In fire, on a black background. What do they mean?"

Church shrugged.

Veitch looked truly disconcerted. "I jacked in my job to come here. Didn't mind that too much. Renovating houses near the Dome for some tight landlord to make a mint on. I just thought I'd get some bleedin' answers-"

"But what made you come here?"