‘It’s nice to find someone to talk to after so long behind the wheel with only the radio for company,’ the stranger continued.
Shavi smiled politely. ‘I am sorry. I am not very good company tonight.’
The stranger laughed. ‘I suppose it’s not really the hour for chitchat.’
Shavi glanced out of the window. There was no sign of movement at the van, or anywhere around the car park that he could see.
Drip-drip-drip. The noise caught his attention again and this time he identified the source. A dark pool was slowly spreading over the recently mopped floor in one of the aisles. One of the diners sat over it, the entire sleeve of his jacket sodden. It was blood and Shavi could now see that the man was dead.
His heart thundering, Shavi quickly took in the rest of the cafe: the other two diners were also dead, propped up in the position they had been in when they were alive, or simply murdered so quickly with a flash of a knife across their throats that they had not had the chance even to register their own passing. On the floor, a hand was just visible reaching out from behind the counter.
‘I’m sorry. We’ve not been properly introduced,’ the stranger said. Shavi thought he could see red coals glowing fiercely behind the sunglasses. ‘My name is the Libertarian.’
‘Why did you kill those men? They had nothing to do with this.’
‘I killed them because I could. To show you that in this world everything now falls before my will.’
‘Then you are the one behind everything that has happened.’
The Libertarian laughed coldly. ‘I am the strong right arm. Nothing more.’
‘Then who-?’
‘Don’t waste your breath asking me.’ The Libertarian took another noisy sip of tea. ‘It’s much bigger than your tiny little brain can deal with.’
‘Are you made of spiders, too?’
‘I’m made of flesh and bone like you, only better.’
Had the Libertarian already killed the Bone Inspector and was simply toying with him? ‘Why?’
‘That’s a good question. One of the big ones. Why are we here? Why does anything happen? Why do fools fall in love? Ah, I see. Why are we tormenting you? Why are we hunting you up hill and down dale? And why are we going to wipe you out of Existence as if you never were? Actually, we never intended to take this course. If you had kept on sleeping with your eyes open, and doing the silly, pointless things that mundane people do, like going to work for most of your waking hours, shifting things from here to there, picking up a few extra quid that might buy you a drink at the weekend or a shiny new piece of useless technology, and then repeating it over and over again until the day you died, none the wiser for having lived, then we could happily have left you well alone. But no, you chose to make trouble. You chose to give up your job. You fool. You chose to ask questions, and you chose to break the rules. Our rules. And make no mistake, we set the rules, all of them. And if we find a troublemaker, we take him or her out of the game. We don’t allow anybody to ruin things for everyone else.’
Shavi listened to the Libertarian’s gently threatening mockery and realised that something unspoken lay behind it. ‘You are hunting me down because I am a threat to you.’
The Libertarian’s laugh was harsh but unconvincing.
‘You let me “sleep with my eyes open” because it was safer than taking the risk of trying to destroy me,’ Shavi continued. ‘For by doing so you might have brought about that very same awakening. And then …?’ Shavi let the words hang in the air, and in his mind. And then what?
‘Let’s get things straight.’ The Libertarian put another two spoons of sugar into the remnants of his tea. ‘There’s as much point to you racing back and forth now as there was to your existence before. That Blue Fire you love so much? Gone. All those pretty little ley lines fizzing with energy, that hippie-shit network of love and power? Gone. All those Fabulous Beasts who are symbols of the power, who are the power, who feed on the power, or whatever …’ He yawned theatrically. ‘All long gone. There’s nothing here for you at all. You’re an anomaly in a world that’s moved on. Different things matter now. There are different rules. There’s no point wishing, or praying, or carrying out little rituals and spells.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘My job.’ He smiled. ‘What anyone would do with an anomaly — take it out of the system and pretend it never existed.’
‘And then your world of work and money and power and consumption can carry on turning smoothly.’
‘Exactly.’ The Libertarian finished his tea. ‘All gone. Time to die.’
The cafe was suddenly flooded with light. In the car park, one of the lorries had come to life with a loud growl. It began to move, slowly picking up speed, rushing directly towards where Shavi and the Libertarian were seated.
The Libertarian was rooted, uncomprehending. Shavi realised what was happening just in time to scramble over the back of the seat and throw himself down an aisle as the lorry ploughed straight into the side of the cafe. The deafening explosion of shattering glass and bursting brick brought the roof down around the point of impact.
Shavi crawled through clouds of dust and debris until he reached the door. In the car park, he saw the extent of his lucky escape. The lorry had rammed right across where he had been sitting. Flashing gold sparks of electricity arcing from torn cables lit up the night.
The Bone Inspector wriggled out of the lorry’s side window and limped quickly towards Shavi, blood streaming from numerous cuts.
‘I thought you could not drive.’ Shavi said.
‘It’s a bloody good job I paid attention to what you were doing all that time in the van.’
‘How did you get the keys-?’
‘All right, all right, I picked up a few things in my long, miserable life,’ the Bone Inspector snapped. ‘Now stop your stupid talk. We need to get away from here before any more bastards turn up.’
As they ran to the van, the Bone Inspector said, ‘I think we should head north. Maybe get over to Callanish, lie low for a while-’
‘No,’ Shavi said firmly. ‘We are going to Stonehenge.’
6
Church reeled as he withdrew from the images the Wish-Post had been imprinting on his mind. His shock at seeing the Libertarian was profound, but he was confused: had the Libertarian survived until the twenty-first century, or had he started his journey in modern times and moved into the past? With time and space and all of reality so fluid, it was difficult for him to get a handle on the truth.
One thing was apparent: the threat against the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons was as potent in the twenty-first century as in the earlier periods of human history Church had visited. The Army of the Ten Billion Spiders was already attempting to kill Shavi; how long before it turned its attention to Laura and Ruth?
What could he do? He needed to know more, and so he immersed himself in the Wish-Post again, desperately hoping it would lead him to Ruth.
Instead he found himself watching Laura in a park, transfixed by the flowers and the bushes. Church couldn’t begin to understand what she was attempting to do, though she appeared to be alternating between talking to the plants and concentrating on them, growing more distressed by the moment.
Finally she stalked away in disgust, but behind her back Church saw a section of vegetation grow rapidly. It was clear to him that Laura had caused it in some way.
As she walked off, a figure separated from the nearby tree line and followed her. It was Rourke, the man who had been associating with Shavi, Laura and Ruth.
When Laura left the park, Church saw road signs identifying the area as Northampton. He began to devise a plan.
He made one more attempt to utilise the Wish-Post, and this time it did take him to Ruth. He was outside her flat, but as he attempted to use his ghost-like abilities to enter he became acutely aware of the same dark presence inside the wardrobe that he had experienced before, and it was aware of him.