Jack of Ravens

7

Shavi was about to catch up with Laura when he saw Rourke attack. At first he thought one of the many shoppers would rush to Laura’s aid, but they all continued on their way, oblivious.

Rourke hauled the now-unconscious Laura down a side street. Shavi didn’t know what had been done to her, but he could see her mouth bulging and that her stomach was bloated.

The Bone Inspector caught up with him. ‘Now what?’ He watched as Laura was dragged away. ‘We can’t attack him head on.’

‘And we cannot let Rourke take her away.’ Shavi slipped into the side street and kept close to the wall, but Rourke appeared to have no comprehension that he might be followed. Shavi weighed his options.

His thoughts were interrupted by a strange sight. Rourke had dumped Laura to the pavement and was carving a pattern in the air in the shape of a doorway. Chillingly, the view through the defined shape now looked oddly fake, like painted scenery in a theatre. Shavi could see a brick wall, and a flyer, now unnervingly two-dimensional. Rourke gripped the upper righthand corner and peeled down. It looked as if he was removing a sheet of wallpaper. Behind it Shavi glimpsed something that his mind couldn’t comprehend, and after a few seconds of queasy swimming it settled on the closest approximation it could present to him: a structure in darkness, like scaffolding, perhaps, or the workings of some vast machine. But what disturbed Shavi the most was a hint of movement: something lived there, behind the surface of reality.

Following that troubling revelation came another: that Rourke was going to drag Laura out of reality completely. What awaited her was too frightening to contemplate. Shavi acted on instinct.

While Rourke was occupied with creating his exit, Shavi ran forward. All he knew was that he couldn’t abandon Laura, whatever the risk to himself. Rourke began to turn just as Shavi reached Laura. Shavi glimpsed Rourke’s face becoming aware of his presence, and then starting to unfold to reveal the spiders beneath.

Shavi grabbed Laura’s waist and there was a blue flash and a smell of burned iron. Whatever had happened, it had thrown Rourke several feet away, his face split wide open with long legs thrashing wildly out of it.

Laura had revived and, struggling to her knees, she retched violently. Her convulsions propelled spiders from her mouth, all of them dead. The flow appeared never-ending, but by the time Shavi had helped her to her feet she was only coughing up handfuls of the smaller ones.

Rourke was on his feet, his body breaking up into its component parts just as the other Rourke’s had at Avebury. Laura clutched hold of Shavi, sick with terror born of incomprehension.

The sound of a protesting engine filled the street. Shavi’s van appeared, being driven with insane disregard for its surroundings. It careered off three parked cars and mounted the kerb. Shavi had to thrust Laura out of the way at the last moment to save both of them from being killed.

The Bone Inspector threw open the passenger door. ‘If I’m going to keep doing this, you’d better give me some lessons.’

Shavi pushed Laura in and jumped in after her. The Rourke-spiders were already swarming onto the nearside, and appeared to be eating at the very fabric of the vehicle.

The Bone Inspector had seen them, too. With deafening grinding and a fountain of sparks, he ran the van along the brick wall. With the spiders scraped off, he accelerated towards the end of the street, where Shavi took the wheel.

‘Worst. Rescue. Ever.’ Laura’s stomach was still churning from the thought of the spiders nestling inside her.

‘You’re alive, aren’t you?’ the Bone Inspector snapped.

‘I was nearly mounted on the radiator grille!’ Shavi thought she was going to cry, but then she put her head back and laughed silently. ‘Fucking head rush. Spiders, urrh!’

‘Mad woman,’ the Bone Inspector mumbled.

Laura glanced at Shavi, her eyes bright. ‘I nearly died and I feel as if I’m flying. How fucked up is that?’ She smiled to herself. ‘You can’t go back to the day job once you’ve had spiders crawling around your gullet.’

Shavi had been through exactly the same process of awakening: that the life they had been ushered into should be more terrifying and dangerous than anyone could bear, yet he felt more vibrant than he ever had in his safe, secure, mundane existence.

Laura turned on the radio and scanned across the stations until she found the Chemical Brothers singing ‘Hey Boy Hey Girl’. She cranked it up to full volume.

‘The blue spark that flashed between us,’ Shavi said. ‘I think it was important.’

‘You’re right there. It means we’re two of a kind, pretty boy.’ She put her feet on the dashboard and stretched like a cat. ‘All right. Now what?’