He thought of his family and wondered where they were. Still alive? He’d failed them, too, in so many ways.
All he wanted to do was to make amends, but the only option left to him would change nothing. No one would even know he had pulled the trigger.
Absently, he flicked through the very latest intelligence report that Reid’s department had prepared for him. It was about the gang of thugs who wore black T-shirts marked with a red ‘V’. They’d terrorised the country for months, growing in number with each passing week. All of them had now gathered in Hampstead to carry out some kind of crazed ritual in the belief that they could bring Ryan Veitch back from the dead. The population was dying in their millions and a bunch of nutters had decided to turn some rotting Brother of Dragons into a messiah. The whole world had gone insane, the General thought. What was the point in any of them carrying on?
Reid breezed in. He glanced at the gun and then at the General, but if he had any understanding of the situation he didn’t show it; he probably didn’t care, the General reflected.
‘The men need a pep talk,’ Reid said.
‘What’s the point?’
‘It’s not over yet.’
The General fixed a cold gaze on the spy. ‘Have you got something planned?’
‘Come on.’ Reid marched out, ignoring the question.
The General sat for a second in thought, then pocketed his pistol and followed. There would be time for honour later.
In the Divinity School, the survivors chatted with incipient hope that victory had been achieved. Thackeray, who knew the worst was yet to come, did nothing to dash their optimism — after all they had been through, these people deserved at least that. Instead, he quietly found Caitlin, who was squatting in one corner, catching her breath. When she saw him coming, she stood up and they hugged each other, and then they kissed passionately, which was a shock to both of them.
‘They’re already talking about you in the same breath as the Five who fought at the Fall. They’re going to put your name up in lights,’ Thackeray said.
‘Only if we win.’
‘You will. I have every faith in you.’
His words filled her with a powerful sense of the responsibility that had been bestowed on her.
They were interrupted by Hunter, who urged her to come with him and Mallory to the high-security wing under Brasenose. Laura approached, her hand now fully healed. ‘I’m coming, too,’ she said.
Hunter bluntly refused. ‘You have to find Sophie. We need her. Tell her she has to come to Brasenose immediately — she can’t waste a second. All five of us have got to get together to prepare for the Void.’ He turned to go, then added, ‘And when you’ve done that, go and help Ruth. She needs you.’
Laura nodded once in agreement, and departed without another word.
‘When are you going to fill us in on who the fifth Brother or Sister is?’ Caitlin asked as she ran alongside Hunter and Mallory through the frozen night.
‘When I’m sure that information isn’t going to prejudice our survival,’ Hunter replied.
On the journey through the cold night from Corpus Christi, Sophie had never let her attention waver from Manning. Sophie didn’t trust her at all, despite what Shavi had said about them having no other choice. The woman’s contemptuous nature made Sophie’s hackles rise, but there was some other troubling quality about Manning that Sophie couldn’t quite define.
The corridors they were now walking along were dark and quiet. Sophie didn’t know Oxford well enough to be able to work out where they were and Manning had refused to offer any guidance. Shavi wasn’t any help, either. Since they had left Corpus Christi he had been slipping in and out of a trance state, as if the ritual he had conducted earlier refused to let him go.
Manning suddenly stopped short, as though sensing something beyond Sophie’s range of perception. ‘There’ll be things coming down here soon,’ she hissed. She chose a door at random, then ushered Sophie and Shavi in.
Shavi slumped into a corner, barely conscious. Sophie turned on Manning, her patience gone. ‘You said you were taking us to the Void.’
‘I lied.’
The baldness of Manning’s response brought Sophie up sharp, but within a second she was preparing to summon up the power that the Craft put at her disposal.
‘Don’t try any of your witchy stuff on me. Really, it won’t do any good,’ Manning cautioned. ‘Let me rephrase: I lied about taking you to the Void, but that wouldn’t help you anyway. You’d be destroyed in a second. But I have brought you here for a reason.’
‘You’d better explain yourself quickly. I’m not going to be pushed around any more.’
‘All right. Now’s as good a time as any. You need to be here-’
‘Why?’
‘Because here is where everything’s going to end. And if you’re not here it would ruin my plans.’
‘A trap, then.’ Sophie’s eyes narrowed. She steeled herself, ready to attack.
‘Really, there’s no hope of winning this battle,’ Manning said. ‘But just to show you what a good sport I am, let me tell you how it all is going to end. I’ll tell you the truth. About everything. I’m sorry to say you’re not going to like it. Even worse, you’re not going to be able to tell a soul.’
The guards led Hal through the maze of corridors, then up a flight of stairs and out into a small courtyard that smelled of rotting refuse. Walls rose up on either side, making it oppressively dark.
‘Kneel,’ one guard barked. He motioned with a handgun to the centre of the courtyard.
The realisation that this was the place where he was going to die hit Hal hard. A shudder ran through him, closely followed by the absurd acknowledgement that the location was so mundane. He’d end his life, unmourned and forgotten, in a place where rubbish was disposed of.
As he knelt in the thick snow, the blood thundering in his head, every sensation was heightened: the stink of old cabbages; the bitter cold making his skin ache; the distant, undefined noises of the city; snow crystals glimmering like jewels in the thin light that filtered into the courtyard; the bitter taste of bile in his mouth.
The hard muzzle of a gun pressed against the back of his head. For a second, Hal thought he was going to be sick.
And in that instant, remembrance surged through him like a shock of electricity. His hand shot into his pocket and his fingers closed around the Bloodeye for the final time. Words sprang to his lips unbidden: ‘Far and away and here.’ Just a rustle in the stillness of the courtyard, but they were heard a universe away.
A shadow like a giant spider fell across the snow. One of the guards choked on an exclamation of horror in his throat.
The gun fell into the snow and hot, sticky liquid splattered over the back of Hal’s head. The other guard was shouting into his radio: ‘The prisoner is escaping. Repeat, the prisoner is-’
There was a tearing sound, a gurgling and then silence. Still shaking, Hal raised his head to see the bodies of the guards lying nearby, broken and bloody.
‘Come, Brother of Dragons.’ The voice sounded like fingernails on glass. Hal looked around to see Shadow John from The Hunter’s Moon lurking in the twilight area between the shadows and the snow, his seven-foot-tall, painfully thin figure given extra height by his stovepipe hat. Yet there was something different about him. In the pub, he had appeared jovial and elegant, but in the cold, hard night of the real world there was a menacing air about him. He was hunched slightly, one gimlet eye darting hungrily back and forth, those stretched-toffee fingers now sharp as razors and stained with blood.
Hal stood up, fighting to steady himself. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he ventured.
‘Do? You must run, Brother of Dragons. Run!’ Shadow John waved a skeletal arm wildly. ‘And hide! Your enemies here will kill you if they find you! Run! And we shall protect you!’
There was a frightening insistence in Shadow John’s voice, verging on madness. Hal didn’t wait a second longer. He turned and bolted back the way he had been brought.