The shadow urged him left again, and as the sun set, so the streets of his mind lost focus. Nearing something dark, he thought. Closing in on the terror.
The shadow disappeared and Cole wailed, bumping the car into an old stone wall. But then he saw light other than the setting sun, and he knew that he was there.
Down in a shallow valley, at the edge of a spread of industrial buildings, a ball of fire blossomed into the sky.
"We're leaving." Someone nudged Tom's shoulder and he jerked awake. For a second he had no idea where he was. He'd been dreaming of blood and death and the stink of bodies turned inside out. Awake now, relief washed through him, but the stench and taste returned when he remembered what had happened, and what was still happening.
He had to pull Natasha away from his chest, wincing as her teeth brought a flap of skin with them. He gasped, she sighed and turned her head to face him. Can she really see me? he thought.
Not yet, Natasha said, stroking smooth fingers through his mind. But soon. He looked away from the girl's face.
Sophia was rearranging her clothing, trying to hold it together in the places where it had stretched and torn. She wiped blood from her mouth and chin.
"Where are we going?" he asked. "Are we going home?"
Home! Natasha said, excitement lightening her voice.
Sophia frowned. Shrugged. "Just get up and come with us," she said. "This place will be swarming soon, and we're in no state for another fight."
Tom so wanted to ask about Steven, but something held him back. As he climbed from the rocking chair he saw Lane and Sophia helping their children into a Range Rover, holding Dan and Sarah beneath the arms and shoving on their rumps. Dan especially seemed to be having trouble climbing into the vehicle, and twice he slipped and tumbled back out, only to be caught by Lane. He had not reverted as fully as Lane and Sophia. His legs were still lengthened, though thin, and his head was enlarged, forehead wide and sloping. He saw Tom watching and growled at him. Lane turned also and gave Tom a withering look.
Tom looked down at Natasha, averting his eyes.
We're not immortal, she said, but Tom had his doubts. He had seen the bullet holes in Dan's naked body, still leaking blood, one or two seeming to emit small tails of smoke or steam. If all that did to him was made it difficult to climb into a Range Rover, then perhaps they really were immortal.
"You wake after ten years in your grave and tell me that?" Tom said.
"Come on!" Sophia called.
Tom started to carry Natasha from the wrecked business unit when the telephone rang. Normality beckoned on the end of the line, either someone with a work request, or perhaps the dead couple's childminder, ringing to tell them that their son had just taken his very first steps or spoken his first word. Steven's first word had been "Mama." Tom paused. He had no intention of answering the phone, but for a few precious seconds it took him away, seeming to instill a sense of peace over the terrible scene.
But the call would never be answered, and sometime soon the caller would learn the truth.
As he walked across the car park Tom tried not to see the bodies. Whatever strangeness had overcome him earlier—and really he knew what it was—had faded into disgust. He could still hear the roar and crackle of fire as the Chinooks and the BMW burned, the flames sparking and snapping as they consumed ammunition or exploded air pockets. The stench of cooking meat hung in the air. Tom's mouth watered. He stepped on soft things but did not look down.
"They're taking us home," Natasha said, her true voice suddenly smoother than it had ever been before. In that voice Tom heard emotion that he had never suspected her of possessing. She was a child coming back to life, a child going home, and she needed him so much.
"Yes," he said. "And there I'll find my Steven." He climbed into the Range Rover, took the cargo space with Natasha, and everyone fell silent as Lane drove them away from the cooling dead.
I don't need you any more, Mister Wolf. My new daddy has taken me to them, and you've lost, you're wasted, you're a piss in a lake. Nobody will ever know of you, Cole. Nobody will ever understand what you were doing. You're a murderer, and you'll be caught and put in prison. You'll die in there. And I wish it could be more. I wish you could meet Lane and Sophia again. And their children, remember them? Mister Wolf, I so wish you could see what has become of their children. They'd like you. Maybe raw, maybe just breathed on by a flame, blue. But they'd like you so much.
They're thriving. I hope you remember that. Living the life they were always meant to live before you bastards caught us and put us away. We're back, Mister Wolf. Back where we belong. And now we're going home.
"Stupid little bitch. Stupid little bitch! You think you're all there is? You think you're the centre of all this? There're too many parts, too many involvements for there to be any one centre. You've led me on for this long, do you think I'm just going to give up? Do you really, honestly think I don't have my own ways and means? Natasha, sweetheart, I've got a magazine full of bullets here for you, and now that I've found my shadow I've also found you."
There's nothing for you to find, Misterwolf. We were always the shadows in the night. You took away our history, but we've won it back. Now fuck off, you pathetic man. Fuck off and kill some more women.
"You sound so confident, but you can't see everything, can you? Can't see past my shadow. It's hiding things from you. Hiding what I can see. I'll see you very, very soon."
Cole's shadow rose up and filled the night, and he and Natasha could talk no more.
"We are going home, aren't we?" Natasha said, her voice a whisper in the silence. Dan was sleeping, and Sarah leaned back in her seat as her wounds healed. In the front seats Sophia and Lane glanced at each other.
"Home?" Lane said.
"Home," Natasha said, louder this time. "The place berserkers come from. The place we were always meant to find again. You've come from there, haven't you? That's where you've been, isn't it? And you're taking us back there now."
Back home, Tom thought. Back to Steven. But if that's the case, why am I so terrified to say his name?
"Oh, Natasha," Lane said, "your mother really did talk such shit."
In his arms, the girl turned to face Tom. Daddy? she said in his mind. And suddenly Tom knew.
"Where's my son?" he asked. Sophia turned in the passenger seat and looked back at him, and for once there was something other than dismissal in her eyes. It may have been regret.
That was when the Mondeo swerved around a bend in the road and struck the Range Rover head-on.
Chapter Sixteen
The shadow within had smothered him. Everywhere he looked, above and below, blackness held him within its grasp. He coughed and heard nothing. He sniffed and smelled nothing. The shadow had surged from his underground and flooded the byways of his consciousness, and it was only as a hazy light began to grow ahead that Cole realised he was being protected.
The shadow changed slowly from black to an oppressive, milky white, and Cole panicked. He could hardly breathe or move. If he opened his mouth he felt something trying to force its way in—not the shadow. He pushed forward, attempting to pull away from the thing's grasp, but it held him fast—again, not the shadow. He was not sure whether or not he was even conscious, but the pain suddenly bit into his thighs again, the throbbing raw and loud, and he started to find sense.