Darkest hour

Chapter Four

In daylight the Old Town seemed less oppressive, but there was still an uneasy undercurrent which made them keen to move through it quickly. Witch wondered if the authorities had any idea what was happening among the jumbled clutter of ancient buildings; although it hadn't been sealed off, the tourist office was closed and the crowds that moved in the historic sector were even thinner than on the previous day. The body of the frozen man had been removed.

From the Royal Mile they stopped to survey their destination. The extinct volcano of Arthur's Seat presented them with the curve of Salisbury Crags, dark and formidable.

"At least 350 million years since it last erupted," Laura said, consulting the tourist guide she had shoplifted earlier; Church had been forced to return to the bookshop to pay for it. "But with our luck…"

"This is an ancient landscape," Tom mused. "There were people hunting here nine thousand years ago."

"Wow, that's even older than you," Laura Jibed.

He harrumphed under his breath. The others couldn't understand how he always fell for Laura's Jibes. "You know, the Celts recognised the importance of this place," he continued with his back to Laura. "The Castle Rock was a stronghold for the Gododdin tribe, who named it Dunedin, the hill fort. But they weren't here because the high ground was easily defendable. It was that." He pointed to the soaring heights of Arthur's Seat. "The sacred place of power."

With the help of Laura's guide book, they ignored the steepest paths to the top. Hiring a car for quick passage along the winding route of Queen's Drive, they drove up through the increasingly rough countryside towards the 823-foot summit. At the start of their journey they passed an odd grille set into a wall before being drawn by the placid waters of St. Margaret's Loch, overseen by the grim ruins of St. Anthony's Chapel. Not long after they arrived at Dunsapie Loch, where they found a path with a gentle gradient. The summit presented them with an astonishing view across the city and beyond, to the Borders and Fife. When he saw it, Tom grew still as he quietly studied the homeland he had left so many hundreds of years before, and after a moment or two he wandered off to be alone with his thoughts. Veitch and Shavi set off in a different direction to explore the surroundings.

"This is amazing." Church was surprised to hear wonder had driven the cynicism out of Laura's voice. "We're right in the middle of the city!"

"I didn't expect you to be bowled over by lyrical views," Church said.

She glanced at him from behind her sunglasses. "Shows how much you know. Nature is the only thing worth believing in in this shitty life."

She slumped down on a rock in her usual couldn't-care-less manner, but Church knew she wanted him to join her. He sat close, feeling her body slowly come to rest against him. "Nature girl, eh?" He mentioned the unusual desktop wallpaper of interlinking trees he had seen on her portable computer not long after they met. "You nearly took my head off when I asked you about that before, but it was an environmental thing, wasn't it?"

"Oh, you're so sharp. It's an Earth First design."

"What's that?"

"A radical environmental group. I'm a member. We believe in taking action where it's called for, like when some developer is ripping up ancient woodland or some farmer's trying to make a fast buck growing GM foods."

This surprised him. "You're good at keeping secrets, aren't you? I didn't think you believed in anything."

"Everybody has to have something to believe in. And that's mine." She adjusted her sunglasses slightly, then let her fingers stray to her scar tissue. "So do you still think I have something to do with Little Miss…" She caught herself. "… with Ruth disappearing?"

"I never said I thought that."

"No. You never say much of anything that's important." There was a sharp edge of bitterness in her voice.

"It was just seeing you with all that blood. I knew you weren't getting on-"

"So naturally I'd go and slit her throat and hide the body. That makes a lot of sense. For the leader of this sorry little clan, you really are a moron." She sighed. "I just want a little trust, you know. Is that too much to ask? I know I've not gone out of my way to endear myself like some perky, eager-to-please telesales girl, but that's my way. You should be able to see through that."

"I'm sorry. I-"

"Everybody else can act like a moron, but I have high expectations for you."

Her words contained a weight of emotion that was in conflict with the blandness of the surface meaning; so much, it was almost too charged for him to deal with. He felt attracted to her, cared for her, certainly, but beyond that he had no idea what she meant to him. The pressure of events made his own deep feelings seem like a foreign language to him.

He searched deep in himself for some kind of comfort to give her, but all he could do was put his arm around her shoulders and pull her closer. That simple act appeared enough to satisfy her, and that made him feel even more guilty.

"So what do you reckon our chances are?" Veitch clambered on to an outcropping of rock, his muscular body compensating for the buffeting of the wind; he was fearless despite the precariousness of his position. "You know, of finding her alive?"

"I can tell you care for her a great deal." Shavi smiled mischievously; he knew his words would plunge Veitch into a clumsy attempt to talk about his emotions.

"She's a good kid." Veitch kept his gaze fixed on the landscape spread out before them.

"And you feel that way even though she treated you so harshly for killing her uncle?"

"I deserved it. I did kill him. Are you going to answer the bleedin' question or not?"

Shavi squatted down on his haunches and absently began to trace the cracks in the rock. "I have hope."

"You know, I'm going to kill the bastard who did that to her."

"Revenge never does much good, Ryan."

"It makes me feel good. Do you reckon Blondie had anything to do with it?" He glanced over to where Church and Laura were sitting.

"I do not know. My instinct says probably not."

"I just want to be doing something. All this sitting around is driving me crazy." He found a pebble and hurled it with venom far out across the landscape. After he had watched the descent of its arc, he said, "After we find her… if we find her… do you think, you know, me and her could ever get together? I know we're chalk and cheese and all that, but you never know, do you?"

"No, you never know." Shavi watched Veitch fondly; for all his rage and barely repressed violence, at times he seemed like a child; inside him Shavi could sense a good heart beating, filled with values that were almost old-fashioned.

Veitch laughed. "I don't know why I'm talking about stuff like this to a queen."

For the first time Shavi sensed there was no edge to the slur; in fact, it was almost good-natured. "I don't-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know what you're going to say. Men, women, they're all the same to you."

"And emotions are all the same as well, whoever you care for."

Veitch eyed him thoughtfully for a second, said nothing.

Shavi came over and sat next to him on the rock. "There is a belief in many cultures that we create who we are through will alone."

"What do you mean?"

"That we are not a product of breeding or environment. That if we wish ourselves to be a hero or a great lover, and wish hard enough, than we will transform ourselves into our heart's desire."

Veitch thought about this for a second. "And if we mope around thinking we're a nothing, loser, stupid, small-time crook, then that's what we end up as well."

"Exactly."

"So why are you telling me this?"

Shavi shrugged. "I just want to help."

Veitch looked at him curiously, but before he could speak, Tom wandered up to them along a muddy path worn into the scrub. Shavi and Veitch made no attempt to read his mood; at times his thought processes were as alien as those of the Tuatha De Danann or the Fomorii.

"'s up?" Veitch asked.

"I can't find any sign of the gate to the Well." Tom stood next to them, as detached as ever.

"You didn't have any problem down in Cornwall," Veitch noted.

"The power here has been dormant for a long time. There are no structures or standing stones to keep it focused. It may even be extinct."

"So, what? We're wasting our time? Those haunts wouldn't have bothered mentioning the place if that was the case."

"The Aborigines have a similar view of an earth energy. In fact, it is an extremely widespread cultural belief around the world." Shavi brushed his wind-whipped hair from his eyes. "The Aborigines call it djang, the creative energy from which the world was formed. In their stories of the Dreamtime, djang spirit beings transformed into things in the landscape-rocks and trees, bushes and pools. That residue was always there so the people could tap into their spiritual well at any moment. And like the ley lines we have discussed before, there were dreaming tracks and song lines linking sacred sites. But the djang could also be conjured up with correct, traditional dances and rituals."

Tom's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "Your shamanic abilities are very potent. Do you think you could find the dreaming tracks that would lead us to the source?"

"If I have that ability I do not know how to access it. Yet."

Veitch noticed Shavi's faint smile and tapped him firmly on the chestbone. "But you could learn!"

"Possibly. Given time-"

Tom shook his head. "We have little time for you to fritter away meditating. You'll need to do what shamans have done throughout history when they were searching for information or guidance."

Shavi looked at him, puzzled.

"Ask the spirits of the dead."

They made their way down from Arthur's Seat in the early afternoon. The day had grown cloudy and thunderheads backing up in the east suggested a storm was approaching. Just off the comforting modernity of Princes Street they located a small cafe where they discussed Tom's suggestion.

"Why are you asking Shavi to do it?" Church asked Tom between sips of a steaming espresso. "You seemed to have a good-enough handle on it when you called up the spirits at Gairloch."

"To continually contact the dead allows them to learn to notice you. And then they will never leave you alone." Tom's tone suggested this was not a good thing.

"So it's all right for the Shav-ster to set himself up for a lifetime's haunting, but you have to protect yourself," Laura said sharply. "You sound like one of those First World War generals sending the boys off to die."

"I may be remarkably talented," Tom replied acidly, "but Shavi is the one with true shamanistic abilities. He is more able to cope with the repercussions."

Laura began to protest, but Shavi held up his hand to silence her. "Tom is correct. I fully understand my responsibilities. It is the role of the best able to do all they can for the collective, whatever the outcome."

"You sure you're all right with this?" Veitch said with a note of concern. "Nobody ought to be bleedin' bullied into doing something they don't want."

"I will not deny that the prospect is unnerving, but then everything about life at the moment is very frightening. There are no longer any certainties." Shavi smiled to himself. "Perhaps there never were. I have had difficulty adjusting to my new-found abilities." His face darkened. "On the way to Skye, when I gained control of the sea serpent, I felt like my mind had been spiked. That sense of losing control, of finding yourself in something so alien, it was like waking entombed beneath the earth, of giving up your body and never knowing if you could ever get back…" His voice drifted away, but after a moment his smile returned. "It was a little like dying. But now I am resurrected."

Laura snorted derisively. "You're saying something like that isn't going to screw you up forever? Yeah, right."

"Only if I let it. The shadow is still there, the fears. But not to do something because of fear is even worse."

Laura's expression suggested she didn't understand a word he was saying. She focused on her cappuccino.

"Okay, it's agreed," Church said. "But where's all this going to take place?"

"Somewhere suitable," Tom replied. "Somewhere regularly frequented by the dead."

Laura threw the guide book across the table. "It's all in there," she said with an odd note to her voice. "God help you, you poor bastard."

Early evening sunlight streamed into the hotel bedroom, catching dust motes in languid flight. Through the open window came the gritty sounds of the city, rumbling and honking with optimism and stability; the normality was powerfully soothing. Church and Laura lounged in the tangled sheets, listening to their subsiding heartbeats, daydreaming of the way the world used to be. The sweat dried slowly on their skin as they held each other silently. For a long while nothing moved.

Even then Church couldn't find complete peace. The thoughts that had been creeping up on him since that evening on the quayside at Kyleakin had gathered pace; of Niamh and the kiss that had filled his entire being, almost forgotten in the upheaval of Ruth's disappearance; of Laura and her slowly revealing deep affection for him; of his own strained ambivalence. For too long it had seemed like events were uncontrollable and now he was beginning to feel his personal life was going the same way. After so many months trapped in the sphere of his grief and guilt over Marianne's death, his emotional landscape was an uncharted territory. He knew he felt an attraction to Niamh, but whether it was physical or emotional, or even pure curiosity, he wasn't entirely sure. And the same with Laura-why couldn't he read what he felt about her? The only time he was truly in tune with her was during that moment in sex when his conscious mind switched off and the shadow person at the heart of him took over.

"What are you thinking about?"

He glanced down to see her eyes ranging over his face. "Life, death, and all things in between."

She nodded thoughtfully.

He slid down and threw one arm across his eyes; the darkness was comforting. "What did you think I was thinking about?"

"It would have been nice if you'd said, me."

"Sorry." There was a stress-induced unnecessary sharpness in his voice which he instantly regretted.

He felt Laura's muscles tense next to him and a second later she had levered herself up on her elbow to fix an incisive eye on him. "What's on your mind?"

"What isn't? The weight of the responsibility on our shoulders. All that bullshit the spy told us last night-I can't get it out of my head, even though I know I should. The fact that I'm eaten up with vengeance for whoever it was killed Marianne and your mum." He caught himself. "You've never told me how you feel about that."

"I don't feel anything. I'm not even numb. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it wasn't me who did it to the old bitch-at least I can still look at myself in the mirror-but it's not as if I'm tearing myself apart that she's dead. After all she did." She shifted self-consciously to hide the original set of scars on her back.

The tone of her words made him feel uncomfortable. "That sounds a little-"

"What? Cold? Psychotic? Don't criticise me. You don't know anything about my life."

"I'm trying-"

"Not hard enough."

He suddenly felt angry that he constantly had to pussyfoot around her; it was more strain that he didn't need. He knew she had her own problems-the rumbling trauma from the scars Callow had inflicted on her face, the doubts over why Cernunnos had marked her-but all of them had problems and no one else acted like a spoiled brat.

They sat in silence for five minutes watching the dust motes dance in a sunbeam, and when she spoke again she sounded calmer. "Anything else on your mind?"

He paused for a long time, then admitted it aloud, to himself as much as to her. "That I should be sending us all to look for Ruth instead of-"

"What? Trying to save the world and everyone in it? That makes sense." Another whiplash in her voice; he felt the irritation rise again.

"I'm on your side. Why do you always give me such a bad time?"

"I'm having a bad life."

"It's not all about you, you know," he snapped. "I sit here with my thoughts and I can't even tell who I am any more. Thanks to that stuff I drank from the Danann cauldron, sometimes I think I can hear alien voices chattering at the back of my head, saying things I can't understand but I know they're terrible. Then everything flips on its head and I feel the rumblings of whatever the Fomorii did to me with the Roisin Dubh, deep in the same place-"

"Well, boo-hoo for you."

Unable to contain the building rage any longer, he hammered his fist into the mattress. "Shit, why am I here?"

"Yes, why are you here?" She gave him a harsh shove to the other side of the bed. By the time he'd turned back, angrily, she was out and starting to get dressed. He wanted to shout at her, that she was the one destroying the relationship, but then her mask of cold aloofness dropped slightly and he saw the hurt burning away underneath. He had never seen such emotion in her face before.

The shock of it calmed him instantly. "Look, I'm sorry. We're all under a tremendous strain."

She muttered something under her breath as she marched to the door, then turned and said, "Go fuck yourself," before slamming it behind her.

Laura hated the way she had to blink away tears of anger and hurt as she marched out of the hotel. For years she'd been good at battening down any emotion so that even those closest to her had no idea what she was thinking. But now it seemed as if the stopper had come out of the bottle and wouldn't go back in again. And Church seemed to have a particular talent for painfully extracting feelings, even when he wasn't trying; and somehow that made the process hurt even more.

However much she tried to pretend to herself she didn't like him, she realised she felt something closer to a childish ideal of love than anything else she had experienced in her life. At first she had hoped it was purely sexual, like so many of her previous relationships. Then she wished it was born of circumstances; of fear; of desperation. But it wasn't. Emotionally she'd suffered enough at the hands of her parents. And now everything was happening just as she'd feared.

She headed directly towards Princes Street, hoping to lose herself in some of the trendy bars which were still doing a roaring trade. Shavi and Tom, who had been in search of psychoactive substances for their respective rituals, hailed her as they returned to the hotel. She pretended she hadn't seen them.

She opted for the noisiest, most crowded bar and forced her way to the front to buy a Red Stripe. Although her attitude never wavered, it wasn't long before the locals were trying to pick her up. She fended a few off with acid comments, but as the drink took hold a little company that was interested in her seemed increasingly attractive.

For the next two hours she found herself at the centre of a group of young men and women whose only concern in life appeared to be having a good time. The conversation was sharp and witty, the jokes raucous, the flirtation charged. There was no talk of darkness or death. Laura found herself gravitating increasingly towards two of the most powerful characters in the group: Will had short brown hair and blue eyes that were gently mocking, a supremely confident demeanour and a certain sexual charisma; Andy was more openly loud and humorous, taller and bigger-boned, with corkscrew hair and a wispy goatee.

After a long, sparring conversation, Will grinned at Andy knowingly before turning to Laura. "So, you up for going on somewhere else?"

"Subtle. Wouldn't happen to be your sweaty, beery bedroom, would it?" Laura sipped on her beer, enjoying the game.

"You've got me all wrong." Will's grin suggested she hadn't got him as wrong as he'd like her to think. "We're going on to a club. Great fucking place. Different venue every week. Cool fucking crowd. Good beats. You'll like it."

"Ah, I don't know… I'm getting a bit old for clubs. I'm usually tucked up long before now with something hot and comforting."

"You can't pull out on us now. Or we'll have to call you a big, blonde, soft, southern saddo." Andy pushed his face into hers in a mock challenge.

"There might be another way we can convince you," Will interjected. "Come to the toilet with us."

"Like I haven't heard that one before."

He took her by the hand and led her through the crowded bar to the toilets at the back. Laura whistled at the men at the urinals before they herded her into a cubicle. Once the door was locked Will surreptitiously pulled out a small plastic bag from his Levi's pocket. Inside were five or six yellow capsules.

"Es?" Laura said.

"Like none you've ever tasted before. The best MDMA cut with a little something extra. Same loved-up strength with a little more trips. Straight off the boat from the States." Will waved the bag in front of her face. "Our gift to you, just to show you how much we want you along."

The sight of the Ecstasy made her suddenly uneasy. Too many unpleasant memories surfaced of the months she'd spent in Salisbury and Bristol blasted out of her head, driving herself to the brink with a wilful disregard for her own health, both mental and physical, before she'd finally cleaned herself up. Drugs weren't good for her; or rather, she wasn't good for drugs; and she didn't want to go down that road again. But she'd had enough of all the repression and fear of the last few months. She wanted to celebrate life with abandon, forget Church and the stupid mission that was ruining her life, forget who she really was. She just wanted to have fun.

She dipped her hand in the bag and then, fighting back the nagging doubts, she popped one of the capsules on to her tongue. "Let the good times roll," she said with a grin.

The grim shadows that gripped the Old Town by day had merged seamlessly into the oppressive darkness of night as Shavi made his way cautiously along the Royal Mile. He had attempted to put on a brave face for the sake of the others, but he felt a nugget of dread heavy within him. Each new experience since he had discovered his aptitude for the mystical and the spiritual seemed to have taken him another step away from the light of humanity into a tenebrous zone from where he feared he would never be able to return. All he had to see him through was an outsider resilience honed through the disenfranchised days of his youth. He hoped it was enough.

He started as the slam of a door echoed along the length of the near-deserted street. Someone emerged from one of the pubs further down the way, glanced around uneasily at the gloom, as if surprised by the lateness of the hour, then broke into a jog towards the bright lights of North Bridge.

Shavi sucked in a deep breath to calm himself. He had read and reread the guide book entry for his destination, but its terrible story had done little to ease his anxieties. The handful of mushrooms taken to enhance the shamanic experience hadn't helped either. At the cobblestoned Heart of Midlothian at Parliament Square he paused briefly and spat, as custom dictated, to ward off the spirits of those executed at the old Tolbooth Prison. It might have been ineffective-the customs of the Unseen World were unknowable-but he thought it wise to proceed with caution; he had no desire to be confronted by the spectral severed heads of those dispatched and later exhibited in the area.

Across the road loomed the Georgian facade of the City Chambers. It spoke of elegance and cultured discourse, the best humanity had to offer; like all of the modern world it hid a multitude of sins. Beneath the chambers was what remained of an entire city street, Mary King's Close, locked away in darkness. The guide book described it as the most haunted place in all Scotland, which was hardly surprising. The City Chambers had been built there to seal off forever a part of Edinburgh history the people hoped to forget, couldn't bring themselves to face, with all its shame, guilt and suffering. But like all bad memories it refused to stay buried.

In 1645, when Edinburgh was in the grip of the Black Death, the filthy, overflowing tenements of the Old Town were filled with the diseased and the dying, and Mary King's Close was worse than most. A sickening plague pit, the city fathers had said. The rich, cultured, upstanding Great Men of the City had a view of the poverty-stricken that was less than human, and in an act of brutality that reverberated down the years they ordered the entire close blocked up. They called it quarantine. The truth was not so clean: every resident was left to die without food or water in the hope that the disease could be contained. And if that was not enough of a monstrosity, when the moans of the inhabitants had finally drifted away, two butchers were sent in to dismember the corpses.

Shavi shivered at the extent of the cold-hearted cruelty. No wonder the spirits of those who had suffered couldn't depart the prison of their misery. For hundreds of years, visitors to the hidden street had reported the most awful, shrieking spectres, accusing revenants, a little girl, her china doll face filled with such overwhelming sadness it caused physical pain in those who saw it, watchers from the shadows whispering threats and prophecies of suffering and pain; an oppressive atmosphere of despair hung over all, and even the sceptical left the place changed on some fundamental level.

Shavi surveyed the City Chambers carefully, then let his gaze slowly drop to ground level. If even normal, rational people experienced such dread, what would he find, with his super-charged perceptions? With apprehension tightening a band around his chest, he set off across the street.

The entrance to the buried close was a nondescript, rickety wooden door off Cockburn Street. He flicked on his torch the moment it opened, listening to the echoes disappear into the depths. Spraying the light around inside, he was confronted by a path that rose steeply to another entrance. To his left, about halfway up, was an ancient front door almost lost in the gloom. Dust was everywhere, in thick layers on the floor and hanging in choking clouds in the air, so that he continually had to stifle coughs; the resultant noise, twisted by the echoes, was like the bark of a beast prowling nearby.

Slowly he moved through a maze of bare rooms, claustrophobic in the dark, where an oppressive atmosphere gathered among the creaking timbers that propped up the ceilings. He tried to shake off the knowledge that he was alone there, far beneath the road where no one would ever hear him if he yelled, but the thought kept creeping back.

The mushrooms turned the echoes of his footsteps into percussive bursts rattling off the confining walls in a syncopated rhythm that rose and fell, grew and receded; there was something about the quality of the reverberations that didn't seem quite right and in the brief snatches of silence that lay inbetween them he was sure he could hear other disturbing, muffled sounds. He didn't pause to listen too closely. The air grew dank as he moved deeper into the heart of the Close's system of ancient bedrooms, living rooms and kitchens, where families of ten or more were forced to live together in abject poverty.

After a while he stopped to try to get his bearings; the last thing he wanted to do was get lost down there. In the darkness that lay beyond the beam of his torch he thought he could see sparks of light swirling like fireflies; he dismissed it as a trick of his eyes, although it continued to nag at him. The atmosphere was even worse than he had anticipated, alive with dismal emotion and sour memory, brooding for centuries, ready to lash out with bitterness.

Shavi attempted to maintain his equilibrium. His gradual understanding of the Invisible World told him that whatever power lurked there away from the light would see anything less as a sign of weakness; and that could, very possibly, be a fatal mistake.

He sprayed the beam around. He was in a small room next to an old fireplace. The plaster on the walls was cracked and flaking. There was nothing out of the ordinary until something caught his eye in a flash of the torch beam: one corner was filled with an incongruous collection of dolls, teddy bears, photos, dollar bills, Tamagotchis: a pile of offerings left by those who had been there before him. It was just rubbish, but there was a strange, eerie atmosphere that surrounded it.

The place was starting to affect him; his breathing had grown shallow. A compulsive desire to flee came in waves, forcing him to grip the torch tightly as he fought it back. Briefly he stared at the torch, trying to clear his mind; despite years of meditation, in that spot, it was almost impossible. His heart was pounding so wildly, the throb of his blood made his head ache. But somewhere he managed to find the reserves of strength for which he was searching. He switched off the torch.

The darkness was all-encompassing.

His breathing stopped suddenly, until his head spun and he thought his lungs would burst. And when the ragged inhalation did come, it sounded so loud he wanted to tear the air from his throat for fear it would mark him out. Cautiously, he lowered himself to the ground and sat cross-legged, and through an effort of pure will he managed to calm himself a little; at least enough to remain in that awful place.

The dark gave him the destabilising sensation that he was floating in space. There was no up or down, no here or there, just a sea of nothing, with him at the centre of it. Gradually his other senses became more charged to make up for his lack of sight: distant, barely perceptible echoes bounced off the walls which seemed, unnervingly, to have no particular point of origin, but which he attributed to changes in the temperature of the building fabric; the floor was dusty and icily cold beneath his fingertips; his nostrils pierced the cloying mist of damp to pick up subtler smells which intrigued him-tobacco smoke, perfume, leatherwhich he confidently told himself were the fading memories of visiting tourists.

But he knew what he was really sensing: the smells and sounds and textures of the resting body of that place, which was, in a very real sense, alive, more than an amalgamation of bricks and mortar, a creature bound together with the bones of pain and the blood of suffering, guts of despair and the seething, sentient mind of hatred. He knew. And he knew he was there at its mercy.

For nearly half an hour, he sat in the deep dark, listening to the sound of his own breathing. He had just started to wonder if the place would keep him there in torment without presenting itself to him when his nerves began to tingle; his heightened senses had picked up a subtle change in the atmosphere. The temperature had dropped by a degree or two and a strange taste like milky coffee had materialised beneath his tongue.

There was no sound or movement, but he suddenly felt an overwhelming presence looming behind him. His mind demanded that he turn round, defend himself; somehow he managed to hold still. He could feel it, he was sure; it wasn't his imagination. Whatever was there seemed to rise up over him, poised to strike, still silent but radiating a terrible force. It hung there, his hair prickling at faint movements in the air currents. The effort to turn round almost drove him insane, but he continued to resist. And in that instant he knew, although he didn't know how, that if he had turned, he would have been struck dead immediately.

Although it was dark, he closed his eyes and concentrated. He could feel it above him, frozen, waiting for him to make any move that would allow it to attack. Shavi sensed oppressive, primal emotions, but not what it truly was.

And then, when he thought he could bear it no longer, it receded like a shadow melting in the dawn sun, slipping back and back until Shavi felt alone once more. He released a tight breath of relief, although he knew it was not the end.

He didn't have long to wait. At first he couldn't tell if the odd movement his eyes registered were the purple flashes of random nerves sparking on his retina or if it was some external phenomenon. White dots sparkled in one spot, like dust motes in a sunbeam, but moving with a life of their own, coming together almost imperceptibly, coalescing into a shape. His heart began to beat faster.

The shape glowed with an inner light, took on a pale substance, until he realised he was looking at the form of a small girl. Her blonde hair was fastened in pigtails, her face as big and white as the moon, from which stared the darkest, most limpid eyes he had ever seen. She wore a plain shift dress and had her hands clasped behind her back. More than her presence, it was what she brought with her that truly disturbed Shavi: an atmosphere of suffocating despair. It didn't simply make him sad; he felt as if it was being curled into a fist and used to assail him.

"Hello," he said in as calm a voice as he could muster.

Her eyes didn't blink. The more he looked into them, the more he felt they were not human at all: alien, demonic, too dark and deep by far.

"I hope you will help me," he continued.

"Ye shouldnae have come here." It was not friendly advice.

Knowing what was at stake, Shavi arranged his thoughts carefully. "I understand your pain. I recognise the wrong that has been done to you. But I come to you with open arms, seeking aid. Would you turn your back on another who walks the long, hard road?"

Shavi's heart seemed to hang steady in the long, ringing silence that followed. He couldn't tell if the girl was ignoring him or if her dark, luminous eyes were coldly weighing his presence.

Eventually the glass sliver of her voice echoed once again. "You're a wee hank of gristle and bone. There's no a handful of meat on ye."

There was something about her words that made him shiver.

The little girl looked away from him into the sucking dark. "I can hear Mama calling. Always the same. `Will ye no come here? Marie. Marie!"' Her voice rose to a sharp scream that almost made Shavi's heart stop. "But I've no had any food for days and my poor belly hurts! And then the night closes in and still Mama calls!" Her face filled with a terrifying fury. "And now the men with the choppers are coming, with the sound of squealing pigs in their ears and dirty old rags tied across their faces!" She turned the full force of her regard on him and his head snapped back involuntarily. "Are ye sure ye wish tae lay your heart afore us?"

Her question was weighted with some kind of meaning he couldn't discern, but he felt he had no choice. "I am."

There was another unnerving period of silence and then she suddenly cocked her head on one side, as if she had heard something. A few seconds later Shavi heard it too: a sound like chains rattling. It was accompanied by the overpowering, sickly-sweet stink of animal blood.

The little girl looked back at him. "They're coming. Ye better run now. Ye better run."

And then she took a slow step back and the darkness folded around her until she was gone.

The appalling claustrophobic atmosphere of pain and threat grew even more intense. Shavi realised he was holding his breath, every muscle in his body rigid. Then, in the blink of an eye, he was abruptly aware he was no longer alone. He couldn't see who was out there in the dark, but he felt that if he did perceive their forms, he would go instantly insane. He swallowed, unable to ignore the feeling that his life hung by a thread.

"Welcome," he began.

"Ye come with death at your heels and darkness like a cloak." The hollow voice cut Shavi off sharply; there wasn't a hint of warmth or humanity in the sepulchral tones.

"We hate all life." Another voice, even colder. "Here, in the deep dark, we are imprisoned. Abandoned tae shadows, forgotten by almost all. We have nothing tae believe in but revenge. So we wait. And we remember. And we seethe."

Shavi steeled himself. "I know your story. You were the innocent victims of abject cruelty." Somewhere distant came the dim sound of chopping, growing louder, becoming distorted before disappearing; bitter memories, trapped but continuously recurring. "There is nothing I can say to assuage your suffering, but my heart goes out to you."

"And ye think that is enough?"

Shavi swallowed again; his throat was too dry. "It is all that I can do, apart from offer my prayers that you will soon be freed from this Purgatory to find the rest you deserve."

A heartrending shrieking erupted all around. Shavi's heart leapt and he wanted to clutch at his ears to shut out that terrible sound. After a few seconds it died away and then there was just the tinkling of nonexistent chains and faint movement in the dark. He hoped what he had said was enough.

Then: "Ye have fair eyes and ears tae sense us. Most only feel us like a shiver on the skin."

"What d'ye want?" Another voice, gruffer, more uneducated; a hint of threat.

"Knowledge," Shavi replied. "I can see some, but not all. From your dark place, you can see everything. You have great power. I bow to you and ask for your aid." Shavi smelled woodsmoke and that disturbing stink of animal blood once more.

"Speak."

"The world is plunging into darkness-"

"Why should we care?"

"Not everyone is like your persecutors. Somewhere, descendants of your friends and family still live. Do not forget the good-"

"Dinnae preach tae us!" The voice cracked like a gunshot.

The atmosphere of menace grew stronger; Shavi knew he was losing control. "Then I will not argue my case at all. I will simply say, we need you. And the world needs you." In the absence of a reply, he continued talking, hoping that at least the sound of his voice would keep them at bay. "The old gods have returned and they are already wreaking havoc across the land. But now some of them are attempting to bring back the embodiment of all evil. Balor." The dark susurrated with their whispers. "You must have sensed all this?"

"Aye."

"And if he returns, it will truly mean the end of everything. He will draw the darkness of the abyss across all existence. Somehow we have to stop the Fomorii. Whatever they are planning is beginning here, in this city. But where? And how can we stop them? They are so powerful, we are so weak. But there must be a way. We will never give up while we breathe." Shavi tried to order his thoughts. There were so many questions he wanted to ask, but he had to be selective; the dead would have only limited patience, if they told him anything at all. Yet there was only one other question that truly mattered. "And I would beseech you to answer one more thing. One of our number is missing, presumed dead. Ruth Gallagher, a good, decent woman. We hope in our hearts she is still alive. Perhaps you could guide me towards the truth."

As his words drifted out into the dark, he was sure that whatever was out there had drawn closer while he spoke. Every sense told him if he reached out a hand he would touch… what? He shook the thought from his head.

"There is a price tae pay for anything gleaned from the other side."

"I will pay it."

"Do ye not want tae know what it will be?" The words were laced with stifled triumph and sharp contempt, which unnerved him greatly, but it was too late to back out.

"It does not matter. I have my responsibilities. This information has to be uncovered. I will have to bear the burden of whatever you demand, however great."

"So be it."

Shavi felt a wash of cold. He couldn't shake the feeling he had agreed to something he would come to regret, but what he had said was correct: he had no choice. Whatever the price, he would have to find the strength to pay it.

"The woman lives, but only just. And her future looks very dark. Hold out little hope." Shavi had not heard the voice before. It was clearer, younger and had an intelligence that wasn't present in the others.

Shavi didn't know whether to feel joyous or disheartened by the answer. "If there is anything we can do to save her we will do it," he said. Odd, muffled noises which sounded like mocking laughter echoed away in the gloom.

"Seek out the stones from the place that gave succour tae the plague victims if ye wish to find the path beneath the seat." A woman's voice this time. The words were cryptic, but Shavi had expected no less; the dead were helping and hoping to torment at the same time.

"But the Well of Fire will not be enough tae help ye. The worms have burrowed deep in their nest and the Cailleach Bheur is tae powerful for even the blue flames."

"Then, what?" Shavi asked.

More mocking whispers rustled around the edge of his perception. When the woman spoke again, her voice was tinged with a dark glee. "Why, call for the Guid Son, Long Jack. Only he can help ye now."

Shavi hoped Tom could make some sense of their cryptic words. "I thank you for all the aid you have given me. But one thing still puzzles me-"

"The where," the educated voice interrupted. "Know this: the girl and the worms keep their counsel together, deep beneath Castle Rock."

Shavi felt the tension ease slightly; he had all he came for. But his muscles still knotted at the prospect that the dead had merely been toying with him and, having given up their secrets, would not let him leave alive. Tentatively, he said, "You have been most gracious in your aid." He took a deep breath and steeled himself. "I am ready to pay the price you requested."

"That has already been put intae effect. Your time here is done. Get thee gone before we rip the life from ye."

Shavi bowed slightly, then made his way in the direction of the exit as hastily as he could muster without breaking into a run. The hatred of the jealous spirits was heavy at his back and for a few steps it felt like they were surging in pursuit of him, unable to contain themselves any longer. Anxiously he flicked on the torch, which appeared to make them hold back beyond the boundary of the light. But he didn't breathe easily until he was up in the empty street, sucking in the soothing night air, his body slick with cold sweat. The intensity of the experience had left him shaken, even after everything else he had been through over the past few months; he had never believed he could suffer such mortal dread.

But he had come through it and that alone gave him strength. Knowing it wasn't wise to tarry in the Old Town any longer than necessary, he hurried back towards the hotel, desperate to tell the others everything he had learned; but most of all that Ruth was still alive.

As he marched back towards the lights of the New Town, he didn't notice a dark shape separate from the shadows clustering the entrance of an alley. It began to follow him, shimmering in the light, insubstantial, as it dogged his every step. If he had thought to glance behind him, curious at what price the spirits had asked of him, he would have recognised it instantly: his friend and lover, murdered in a South London street two years before.

There were no longer songs, just drum and bass suffusing her brain and body, mixing with the drug, driving reality away on waves of sound. Laura couldn't even recollect a conscious thought for the past hour; she had given herself up to the trip of flashing lights she could hear and noise she could see, dancing, sweating, not even an individual, just a cell in the body of the crowd-beast.

Will and Andy had led her to an old building on the eastern edge of the Old Town. From the outside it didn't appear to have been used for years, but inside it had been transformed by vast batteries of lights, stacks of speakers fifteen feet tall and machines pumping out clouds of dry ice and occasional frothing spurts of bubbles. The place was big enough to cram in several hundred people, yet managed to avoid feeling impersonal. By the time they arrived, the trip had already started and the two young Scots were growing animated.

Will leaned forward to whisper in her ear, "This drug always makes me feel horny. Come on, let's away to the toilet for a bit of slap and tickle."

He was right; her pleasure centres were already being caressed by the warm waves that washed through her and she felt herself grow wet at the thought of him between her legs. It wasn't as if she hadn't had numerous other episodes of seedy, horny, loveless sex while off her face in some club or other. She wasn't a prude; it was fun, like taking the drug in the first place; nothing more. At least that's what she had always told herself, but although it would have been the easiest thing in the world to give in to, she suddenly realised she felt strangely reluctant. Part of her was telling her to do it to punish Church, but even then, she couldn't bring herself. It didn't make sense to her at all, and the more she thought about what it meant, the more uneasy she felt.

In the end she grabbed hold of his right hand and raised it in front of his face. "This is more your scene."

She flashed a fake smile and left hurriedly to get a drink of water.

On her way back she got drawn into the heart of the dance floor where she lost herself in the music. It was the relief of nothingness, but as the trip reached one of its plateaus, she was irritated to discover occasional thoughts leaking through to her foremind. Most of them concerned Church, but she didn't want anything to bring her down. Angrily, she looked for something to distract her, losing the rhythm of the music in the process. Stomping off the dance floor she leaned against a pillar with her arms folded, where she waited for the trip to pick up again. A good-looking young man with an annoyingly untroubled face came up to talk to her, but she couldn't hear a word he was saying over the unceasing thunder of the music. She waved him away furiously.

After a few moments, she was relieved to feel the drug begin to take her to the next level and her mood calmed. A smile sprang to her face; she was surprised at how good it felt. The closeness of all the other clubbers cheered her, made her feel part of something. She surveyed the moving crowd warmly, then found her gaze drawn to the flashing lights which a moment ago had seemed dissonant, but now, with the music, made perfect sense: red, green, blue, purple. A white flash. Red again. A strobe. The meaning of life. Slowly she raised her eyes heavenwards, revelling in the growing sense of bliss. And there, as if in answer to her feelings, was an astonishing sight. The entire ceiling was sparkling like a vast canopy of stars in a night sky. She caught her breath as a revolving light splashed upwards, adding to the coruscation. "That's amazing," she whispered in wonder.

In the throes of the trip she suddenly became obsessed with sharing her breathtaking vision with Will and Andy. The crowd was so densely packed she felt a moment of panic that she wouldn't be able to find them, but after pushing her way back and forth through the dancers for a few minutes, she spied Andy sitting at a table near the door with a glass of water before him and a cigarette smouldering between his fingers.

"You've got to see this!" she called out. He didn't respond, even glance her way. She guessed her voice had been dragged away by the rumble of the music. She waved excitedly to catch his eye. Still nothing.

The trip started to roll with force and she was almost distracted by the music and the lights, but one thing stuck in her mind and wouldn't shake itself free: the sparkling that had glimmered across the ceiling had now transferred itself to Andy. His corkscrew hair glistened in the occasional beam of light, stars gleamed in his goatee.

"Amazing," she whispered once more.

But the thing was still niggling at the back of her head, like fingernails scratching on a window pane. It was something more than the spangly effect; something discordant. What was it? she mused. She tried to take a step back through the effects of the drug. His skin, too, had that faint twinkling quality. It wasn't that he had been dusted with the gold make-up some of the women dancers used, nor was it the drug. She was seeing it. Wasn't she? Her inability to distinguish reality from mild hallucination began to irritate her, throwing the drug off-kilter.

Be careful, she warned herself. You don't want this trip to go bad.

She concentrated, focused. The effort twisted the trip a little more.

And there it was. The water before him had risen a full half-inch above the level of the glass. And there it hung, suspended in time.

First the scratching at the back of her head turned to an insistent hammering. Then the trip turned, sucking up the anxiety from the pit of her stomach. She knew. If only she hadn't been drugged she would have seen it long before. She wouldn't have gone there at all. She would have known better.

The water hung, suspended. Frozen.

She took a step back, desperately trying to stop herself falling into full-scale panic. Her heart was thundering like it was going to burst out of her chest. She was finding it difficult to breathe.

Andy's stare was locked on the dance floor. It didn't waver, he didn't blink. There was no movement in him at all.

Frozen, she thought.

Behind him, the walls, too, glistened. It was spreading out gradually from the doorway like an invisible field, creeping across surfaces, leaving its tell-tale sign.

Poor Andy, she thought obliquely. Then, a drug-induced twist: My God! He's dead!

And now that she knew, she could feel the bloom of it on her skin; the temperature had dropped several degrees and was still falling fast.

She's conning. The notion drove her into action. She ran for the door, but as she neared it the cold was almost unbearable; her skin appeared to sear from its presence. It was more than winter, more than Arctic; it seemed to Laura to represent the depths of space. She took another few paces and then gave up as the hoar frost thickened on the door. She began to shake as cracks developed in the wood. She was already backing away rapidly when it was torn apart by the freezing moisture and burst inwards with a resounding crack.

The Cailleach Bheur was framed in the doorway, painted red, then blue, then green, then purple by the club's lights, like some hideous MTV video effect. Laura's breath caught in her throat. At first she couldn't quite make out the creature's appearance as the shape shimmered and danced, becoming briefly this and then that. But then her mind settled on a form which it found acceptable and Laura saw an old crone hunched over, dressed in tattered, shapeless rags, her face a mass of wrinkles, her hair as wild as the wind across the tundra. She supported herself on a gnarled wooden staff that was bigger than she. And all around her the air appeared to shift with gusts from unknown origin, suffused with an icy blue illumination that seemed immune to the club's lights; in the glow were flurries of snowflakes that came and went eerily without leaving any trace on the floor behind her.

She moved forward spectrally, almost as if her feet weren't touching the ground. And then she slowly turned her terrible gaze on everyone in the room. In the depths of those swirling eyes, Laura saw nothing remotely human; they contained the desolation of the ice-fields, of the depths of frozen seas. And the sight triggered the trip to bring up a fear so powerful and primal it wiped out all conscious thought. Laura turned and drove herself wildly through the crowd, knocking people over, punching and gouging to get away, oblivious to the angry shouts directed at her.

She was on the other side of the club, huddled behind a table on the beerpuddled floor, when some semblance of sense returned to her, and even then the panic was coming and going in waves. She cursed the drug, but knew she had no option but to ride it out; and that could last for several more hours.

The lights were still flashing, the music still pounding, but through it she became aware of sudden frenzied activity. The dancers had recognised the threat of the Cailleach Bheur. They were surging around crazily, searching for an exit, trampling anyone who fell before them in their panic. Raw screams were punching through the beats like some hellish mix. Laura tipped over the table in front of her to offer her some kind of protection and then desperately tried to order her thoughts enough to get out of there. An emergency exit. Surely there must be one somewhere. But it wasn't a regular club, probably wasn't even legal. What if there was only one way out?

That brought another wave of panic which almost sent her fleeing into the tumult, but she'd used enough drugs in her shady past to know how to calm herself a little. She focused on one of the flashing lights and did deep breathing to clear her mind. When the wave had passed, she peeked above the lip of the table to get her bearings.

What she saw filled her with dread. The walls, floor and ceiling shimmered with ice, reflecting the flashing lights in a breathtaking manner that was amplified by the drugs coursing through her system: it was the ultimate light show. But the wonder was corrupted by the grisly piles of frozen bodies heaped across the floor, faces locked in final expressions of terror, hands clawed, legs bent ready to thrust forward, taken by the cold in seconds. Laura instantly flashed back to sickening images of World War I battlefields she had seen in a history lesson.

And moving through the scene slowly was the Cailleach Bheur, her face as dark as nature. The cold came off her in waves, metamorphosing at the tips into snaky tendrils which reached out to anything not yet touched by the icy blast of eternal winter. The speakers fizzed and sparks flew off the decks. A second later the ear-splitting music ended in a shriek of feedback. That only revealed the awful screams of the surviving clubbers huddled in one corner of the room. Laura covered her ears, but couldn't drive out the sound. She couldn't even tear her eyes away as one of the tendrils wound its way along the floor like autumn mist before wrapping itself around the ankle of a young man who was futilely trying to kick it away. It was followed instantly by an odd effect which, in her state, she found both fascinating and horrible: ice crystals danced in the air before forming around his leg, moving rapidly up to his waist. Yelling, he tore at it, but it simply transferred to his hands where he touched the crystals, turning the skin blue, then forming a film of ice over it.

A second later he fell to the floor with the same rictus, catching the light like a gruesome ice sculpture.

Laura was convinced she was going insane from the magnified panic and terror. Irrationally, and with desperation, she threw herself over the table and ran to the men's toilets. The door slammed behind her just as a rapidly pursuing wave of cold crashed against it. She heard the familiar cracking sound as the wood froze, but when it didn't burst in she guessed the Cailleach Bheur had turned her attention back to the remaining clubbers.

Frantically she tore around the small room and was overjoyed when she discovered a tiny window over one of the cubicles. She wrenched it open gleefully, oblivious to the breaking of a fingernail and the spurt of blood as it ripped into her skin. When she saw the solid bars that lay on the other side she burst into a bout of uncontrollable sobs.

"I can't think straight!" she yelled at herself between the tears. "Why was I so stupid? I'm a loser! A fucking loser!"

The screams echoing dimly through the walls were bad enough, but when they finally faded away, the silence that followed was infinitely worse. Laura collapsed into a corner of the cubicle and hugged her knees, realising how pathetic her whimpers sounded, unable to do anything about it.

The silence didn't last long. The telltale sounds of forming ice and cracking wood gradually made their way towards the toilet door. Laura pressed her back hard into the wall as if, just by wishing, it would open up and swallow her. Her cheeks stung from the tears which had soaked her top. She was already making desperate deals with God: no more drugs, no more stupidity, if He whisked her out of there to safety, turned the Hag away from the door, did anything, anything-when she suddenly noticed a curious sight which broke through the panic. The blood which dripped from her cut finger was green. It wasn't a trick of the light or a vague visual hallucination; an emerald stain had formed on her top. Cautiously she touched the tip of her tongue to it; it didn't even taste like blood. It reminded her, oddly, of lettuce.

"Jesus Christ, what's going on?" It seemed like the final straw of madness. And an instant later she heard the toilet door begin to break open. Her breath clouded around her; the temperature was plummeting.

Clarity crept back into her mind as the drug entered one of its cyclical recessions, and with it came a decision not to die screwed up on the floor of a toilet like some pathetic junkie. She jumped up on to the toilet seat and began to wrench at the bars on the window in the hope that they were looser than they appeared.

By now she was shivering uncontrollably. The door groaned and began to give way.

"Come on," she pleaded, but the bars held fast. Then another strange thing happened. Where her blood splashed on to the bars it appeared to move with a life of its own, spreading over the metal, changing into something which, in the gloom, she couldn't quite make out; all she could see through the shadows was movement and growth. Instantly the bars began to protest and a few seconds later they burst out of the brick.

The sound of the toilet door bursting inwards and the wave of intense cold that followed drove all questions from her mind. She pulled herself through the opening and fell awkwardly into a dark, litter-strewn alley that smelled of urine. Pain drove through her shoulder where she hit the ground. Ignoring it, she forced herself to her feet and hurried away just as a white bizzard erupted out of the window above her.

The relief that hit her was so overwhelming she burst into tears again, but by the time she stumbled out on to a main road her head was spinning; there was no point trying to make sense of what had happened until the trip was over. Yet she couldn't resist one last look at the green smears across her hands. An involuntary shudder ran through her that did not come from the cold.