Jack of Ravens

5

The transport cafe was an oasis of light in the dark countryside. Large enough to dispense greasy fry-ups to 150 truckers at a time, its picture windows on three walls now splayed out rectangles of light across a largely deserted car park.

Shavi counted only three other diners, bleary-eyed and unshaven as they pored over outdated copies of the Star, one hand gripping a chipped mug of treacly tea. He was tired and his back ached from too long in the driver’s seat of his van. For the last five days, he and the Bone Inspector had crisscrossed the Midlands, to the best of their ability attempting to follow the ley lines that radiated out from Avebury. They always spent the night at one of the nodes of the network of fiery power identified by the Bone Inspector — at Arbor Low stone circle in the Peaks of Derbyshire to the Rollrights and Belas Knap in the Cotswolds — knowing that whatever dissipated energy remained in the ground would at least make them invisible to the forces hunting them.

Whenever Shavi was tempted to make light of the cynicism that infected the Bone Inspector’s rants about the powers secretly controlling the world, he only had to turn his mind to the numerous disturbing incidents that had dogged their path: the car with smoked windows that had attempted to run them off the road in a small village outside Oxford; the police road blocks that cropped up frequently, forcing detours; and the infestation of black spiders they had seen repeatedly along their route. Something terrible was out there, ready to attack if he ever let his concentration slip.

The Bone Inspector returned from the toilet, his lank hair now wet and slicked back after his cursory wash. Shavi had insisted it was a necessity after they had been refused entry to two cafes because of the Bone Inspector’s heavy odour of sweat and loam from the nights they had spent beneath hedges or in ditches. He slipped into the booth and hunched over his mug of tea. Shavi was pleased to see that much of his stress-induced psychosis had faded; company in his misery had helped share the burden.

‘We’re in bloody trouble,’ the Bone Inspector muttered darkly.

‘We do not know that.’

‘You want to stop with that optimism before I slap you. It’s irritating.’

‘We can leave now-’

‘No point. We’ll never be there by dawn. If we hadn’t run out of fuel this afternoon-’

‘It could not be helped. You know we had to go fifty miles out of our way to avoid the roadblock.’

The Bone Inspector slurped his tea noisily. One foot rattled in unconscious anxiety against the seat. ‘No point crying over it now. We’ll just have to keep our eyes open.’ He glanced out of the window, but it was difficult to see much beyond the light shining through the cafe’s windows.

‘How long are we supposed to keep running like this?’

‘Till you come up with a plan. I’ve spent months doing this — legging it at night from one old site to the next, burrowing under stones to get some shuteye during the day, bawling out curious tourists till they’d leave me alone. I can keep doing it, but it doesn’t solve anything.’

‘How can I come up with a plan when I have no idea what is going on?’

‘They’ve done their damnedest to run me to ground, but nothing like how they’ve gone after you. I never saw any men filled with spiders before now. They think you’re important. So it’s your bloody job. I’m just along for the ride.’

Shavi had listened intently to the Bone Inspector’s talk of the mythic Brothers and Sisters of Dragons during their long hours together in the van. The Bone Inspector professed never to have met any of the fabled heroes, asserting instead that it was information passed down through the Culture, the secret society of which he claimed to be the last living member. Shavi couldn’t see himself as some legendary warrior, but there were elements of the story with which he felt a deep connection.

Headlight beams sprayed around the walls of the cafe as a car swung into the car park with a crunch of gravel. Shavi and the Bone Inspector watched intently.

‘How are they going to come?’ Shavi said. ‘Looking as normal as Rourke, so they can sneak up on us unawares? Or like the spiders, eating their way through everything?’

‘It’ll be whatever will do the job.’

A man got out of the car and stumbled wearily towards the cafe door.

‘Looks normal. But who can tell?’ the Bone Inspector said.

‘Do you think we are taking a gamble waiting here in plain sight?’

‘What choice do we have? Would you rather face those things out there in the lanes and fields and woods where there’s no light? And I’m betting they still don’t want to draw too much attention to themselves or they wouldn’t have gone to the bother of disguising those spiders as a man.’

‘I need to refresh myself,’ Shavi said. He’d walked a few paces before he added, ‘I cannot help but think I have met you before.’

‘You think if you’d met me before there’d be any doubt about it?’ the Bone Inspector said. ‘Go on. Refresh yourself.’

In the toilets, Shavi filled the sink with cold water and soaked his face. The jolt took the edge off his creeping weariness. He had decided that he liked the Bone Inspector, despite his curmudgeonly manner. There was something inherently decent about him, but he buried it as deep as the secrets of the stones that he protected.

As he stretched, cat-like, and performed a t’ai chi manoeuvre to centre himself, his attention was drawn to the graffiti on the wall next to the mirror. It read: The Army of the Ten Billion Spiders wants you!

There were other pieces of spider-related graffiti that had been scribbled out or hastily painted over, the ghost of their intent showing through the strokes. He felt a frisson. Was it a coincidence?

There was one other piece of graffiti that puzzled him: The answer lies at Stonehenge: Heel Stone 45 pcs SW. It was scrawled in every cubicle and on the back of the main door.

Intrigued, Shavi returned to the cafe to discuss the matter with the Bone Inspector, but found their table empty. Shavi scanned the room: nothing was out of the ordinary. The three other diners sat at their seats peacefully and the new arrival was carrying a mug of tea from the counter. He was a bohemian with a black greatcoat, long black hair and a pair of sunglasses despite the fact that he had driven through the night.

Shavi could only presume the Bone Inspector had gone to fetch something from the van. As he returned to his seat, the new arrival materialised at his side.

‘May I join you?’ His voice was wry and urbane. Before Shavi could respond, the stranger had sat down. He put six sugars into his tea and stirred noisily. ‘Nice night.’

‘It is,’ Shavi replied, ‘but I am just waiting for my friend. We must be on our way soon.’

The man nodded and sipped his sickly-sweet brew. ‘Where is he, then?’

‘He will be here soon.’

‘I’ve been on the road for hours and frankly I’m exhausted.’ The stranger stretched.

Shavi was distracted by a faint, rhythmic splashing. A spilled mug of tea?

‘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.’