He put the bowl to one side and stared at the flames that still roared in the remains of the barn, ignited, he guessed, by the Fabulous Beast. Did it really have the intelligence to provide them with warmth? Was it a beast at all?
'I can't work you out at all,' Sophie said sharply. 'You just switch off when a subject comes up that you don't want to talk about. And how many of those are there? Like the past…'
'The past doesn't matter.'
'You're an intelligent man, so why do you say such stupid things? The past makes us who we are.'
'You say.' He was quite aware how petulant he sounded.
Sophie bristled. 'So let's talk about the past, Mallory. I know nothing about you-'
'You know everything about me. Everything you see is everything you need to know. This is who I am.'
'Do you know how arrogant that sounds?'
'That's one of those character flaws I just have to live with.'
'And me by association, I suppose,' she said with irritation. 'Have you ever had a proper relationship? Do you understand even the most basic rules… of sharing, trust… openness?'
Mallory hardened; he wasn't going to be pushed into the forgotten wasteland of his past by anyone. 'All right. The past shapes us, but that doesn't mean we have to live in it… always revisiting it… always suffering. Somewhere down the line you have to try to leave it behind.'
Sophie watched his face carefully, picking up subtle clues. Her detailed attention made him uncomfortable.
'You want to know about my past?' he said sharply. 'Well, it's unpleasant… the details will make you sick, all right? They make me sick. But the details don't matter. I carry it around with me every day, like a big fucking pile of bricks on my shoulders, but that isn't enough. Oh, no. There are still things out there that feel I need to be reminded… or punished… I don't know, I don't care.'
'Is that why you don't believe in anything?'
He kicked over his bowl so that the remainder of the stew flowed into the sizzling snow. 'No, no, don't you understand? We're not shaped by incidents, whatever stories and movies and TV always told us. We're made by a thousand little things, and incidental thoughts, and half-considered ideas. We're built up like bits of chewing gum stuck together into a ball, and only when it's big enough to recognise do we step back and see what a monster we've made. What happened to me doesn't matter. What I am now matters, and what I'm going to be in the future. Good or bad, that's what matters. That's what matters for all of us. Don't look back, look forwards.'
'I don't know if I agree, Mallory-'
'I don't care.' He stood up abruptly and walked away.
He wandered until he came to the farmhouse, hating himself for uncovering the rawness, for letting Sophie see that big, big part of himself that he wasn't proud of at all. He wouldn't be surprised if she wasn't there when he returned. He probably deserved it.
Half of the farmhouse was little more than a shell, but the remaining half was still habitable. He couldn't understand why Sophie hadn't got them ensconced in there, away from the elements, until he saw the detritus piled high against the entrance: a washing machine, fridge, a sodden sofa, other pieces of furniture. It would take them an hour or more to pull them away to gain access.
He was just considering returning to Sophie to apologise — a first! — when he spotted a movement behind a filthy, streaked window. His hand jumped to the hilt of his sword, though he sensed no immediate threat.
As he approached the pile blocking the entrance, he noticed a path through it, hidden unless you looked closely enough. He considered leaving be whoever was inside, then shrugged, dropped to his knees and crawled into the hole; it was preferable to opening himself up to Sophie's questioning again. Halfway in, he thought he was mistaken and would have to wriggle out backwards, but then he found himself at a door that hung ajar. He slipped through and pulled out his sword.
'Who's there?' he called out.
His voice echoed. The carpet underfoot was sodden and smelled as if it was rotting, but furniture was still placed around a hearth in which a single ember glowed. The door to the back room was closed. He steeled himself, then wrenched it open, his sword glowing dimly in the half-light.
A painfully thin woman in her early thirties moaned desolately, her face buried in her hands. 'Don't kill us,' she whimpered. 'We haven't got anything!'
Behind her, a man who appeared little more than skin and bone lay unmoving on a camp bed beneath a thin, dirty sheet that would have provided little warmth in the bitter cold of recent days. Mallory looked around the room, gradually realising the couple had been existing, just, for some time in that dismal place. The man was clearly ill, barely clinging on, the woman worn down to near nothing by caring for him.
'I'm not going to hurt you,' Mallory said.
The woman didn't appear to hear him. She sobbed, rocking backwards and forwards, her face still hidden. It took Mallory five minutes to calm her, and then a further five before he could get any sense out of her. His first impressions were right: the couple had been living here since the Fall, eking out a living as best they could on their land while fighting off the occasional looter and the more frequent supernatural visitors. They'd survived, despite the destruction of half of their home by one large band of looters, and from then on had taken to subterfuge to continue existing.
Winter was the hardest time for them, particularly after the looters had gone off with their stockpile of food. The husband had managed to trap a few animals to keep them going, but then he had fallen ill — pleurisy, Mallory guessed after examining him — and the woman had not known how to continue the hunt for sustenance.
Mallory eventually convinced her to come with him to Sophie, who provided a degree of comfort that was beyond Mallory. She gave the woman the last of the stew, which was devoured hungrily, while Mallory was sent out to inspect the farmer's traps. Most of them were filled with animals that had decomposed too far, but one contained a freshly caught pheasant. As he removed the dead bird, he couldn't prevent his thoughts from turning to the guilt that was eating away at him; the background buzz became a frenzy when he considered the repercussions of his decision to leave Miller to his fate. At the least, punishment would be severe, but Mallory had the queasy feeling that with Stefan's current frame of mind, he might have condemned Miller to death.
And all because he had responded like a spoilt child in his hurt that Miller had shaken his faith. It wasn't Miller's fault he wasn't the incorruptible person Mallory had imagined him to be, just so that Mallory could believe in goodness and decency and his own salvation. And it wasn't fair that Miller would be punished so terribly for shattering that illusion. In his own way, Mallory had been as bad as Stefan.
It had been one moment of stupidity, and if he allowed it to stand he'd be as bad as he had always feared; he'd be damned, for sure.
As he made his way back to the farmhouse, he began to piece together exactly what he had to do, but it was only when he saw the thin, broken woman sitting next to Sophie that he accepted completely the path that lay ahead of him. The woman could no more have abandoned her responsibility to her husband than Mallory could have denied Sophie. Selflessness, sacrifice, hope and salvation all sprang from one source, but he'd never been able to see it before because he'd never felt it before.
It could have been the exhaustion, or the hunger, or the fading memory of the Fabulous Beast, but his internal barriers crumbled and fell and he was suddenly struck by a blinding revelation, so simple in retrospect, almost naive, but so much predicated upon it. The consequence of what that realisation meant to him and those around him sent his thoughts spinning wildly.
The epiphany dragged back the memory of his grandfather and the dying bird he had relived so acutely in the Court of Peaceful Days, and now he knew exactly why the symbolism had struck him on a subconscious level. Everything was linked — that was the meaning of the Blue Fire — everything was valuable. And it was the duty of humanity to care for it all bec
ause by doing so it was caring for itself. All things were linked; and all tied into that little thing he felt for Sophie that from his new perspective was bigger than both of them, larger than the whole universe.
He stood watching Sophie and the woman for ten minutes while his thoughts raged. He felt liberated, his own burden beginning to lift as he realised that salvation was still within his grasp if he was prepared to take a leap into the dark for the sake of others.
The woman, who finally revealed her name was Barbara, ravenously devoured her steaming meat with an edge of desperation that made Mallory turn away. He never thought he'd see starving people in Britain.
Afterwards, the woman took in some of the bird for her husband, though Mallory would be surprised if he ate anything; he didn't seem to have long left.
'What's on your mind?' Sophie asked.
'Why do you ask?'
'You seem different.'
He picked at the remnants of the meat. 'The way I see it, we've got three options. We can run away together — you've already thrown that one out. We can go back to Salisbury and round up your people, lead them somewhere else to regroup.' He paused, his mouth dry. 'Or I can go back and try to put things right at the cathedral.'
She smiled as if she'd been proven right. 'This is about Miller, isn't it?'
'I've saved his life twice. The third's the charm. Truth is, he's lost without me.'
'OK,' she began thoughtfully, 'so what are you going to do? Waltz up and bang on the gates, ask them to stop being so naughty? Because otherwise it doesn't seem like you've got any alternative.'
'Yes, I have. I'm going to see the Devil.'
She drew herself up, alert, intrigued.
'On a very basic level, my enemy's enemy is my friend, and at the moment Stefan is definitely my enemy,' he explained. 'But the fact is, I don't believe Stefan's explanation, which is that the Devil is attempting to wipe out the Church in some final apocalyptic battle between good and evil.'
She smiled.
'What?'
'I don't believe in the Devil, anyway. Satan is a Christian invention, something the Church used to demonise my religion.'
'So if it's not the Devil, it's… something else. And if it's not the Devil, the motive Stefan identified goes too — it's not about good and evil. There's another motive.'
'What could that be?'
'All this started when the Blues brought back a relic to the cathedral,' Mallory began. 'I didn't think twice about it until I realised the authorities have been lying from the start to cover up the Church's use of the earth energy, something that might have been seen as ungodly… blasphemous. There's a history of geomancers in the Church who've been attempting to utilise this supposedly pagan force since the Christian Church first established itself, and they've always kept it secret,' he explained.
'What's this got to do with some relic?' Sophie asked.
'The relic is the bones of Saint Cuthbert, which had been kept for centuries at Durham Cathedral. Only I don't think it's the bones at all. That was just a smokescreen.'
Sophie's eyes narrowed. 'What have they done?'
'I think they stole something… something vitally important to all those supernatural forces lined up outside the cathedral walls.'
'What could they possibly have stolen that would have been that important?'
'No idea, but it's got to be something to do with the Blue Fire… something that amplifies its power. That's what the Caretaker was talking about when he spoke of something warping reality — pulling in all those new buildings… raising the dead… affecting people's minds. Something incredibly powerful. And the Adversary, whoever or whatever he is, wants it back. It all comes down to arrogance — the Church thinks it has some right to take this thing and use it. Instead of winning hearts and minds the slow, laborious way, it's using this mojo to boost the spiritual energy so that the Church quickly becomes a powerful force again.'
'Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys here, Mallory?'
'Well, they brought it on themselves… maybe they thought they were doing the right thing, I don't know. That doesn't matter now. But if we can convince the Devil that we can get back whatever it is he wants-'
'And you reckon you can reason with something that has the power to lay siege to the cathedral in the way that it did? I think you should go back to hammering on the gates and begging Stefan to be good,' she teased.
'Yeah, it's a risk, but you know me… I'm nothing if not confident in my abilities.'
'You're a big-headed bastard, Mallory,' she laughed. 'So how do we find this Devil?
'No,' he said, shocked. 'I'm going alone.'
'No, you're not.'
'Yes, I am. It's too dangerous.' If he'd believed she would attempt to go with him, he would have slipped off silently during the night.
'You're nothing without me, Mallory. You'd better get used to it.'
He could see there was no arguing with her. But it changed everything: failure was no longer an option.
Darkness fell. They'd stoked up the fire in the barn with any item of wood they could find and by then it was blazing merrily. Sophie snuggled under Mallory's arm, both of them buried beneath old sacking under the shelter of the eaves. A cold wind blew from the north, bringing more flurries of snow.
'Do these count as warm towels?' Mallory held up an edge of the dirty sack.
Sophie laughed. 'In your dreams, Mallory.'
Mallory brought his fingers up to the smooth skin at the back of her neck and gently massaged it; her shoulders loosened at his touch. 'In this world, now, you need to hold on to any comfort you can get,' he mused aloud.
'I intend to.' Sophie felt under the sacking until she found his thigh. 'But then maybe it was always that way.'
In the roaring of the flames and die drifting of the snow there was an elemental magic. Mallory could feel it affecting him, pulling out emotions that had been concealed by the crystalline protection needed to make his way in the world they had inherited.
'The universe is a wonderful place,' Sophie continued dreamily, watching the snow against the night sky. 'When you're with someone you love and you're feeling as though they're the only person in the world for you, think of all the random decisions that brought you to that point. Maybe you decided to stay in instead of going down the pub that night… or maybe you'd taken a different job the year before and ended up in a different city… or maybe you'd gone to a different university and had a whole different career… and you'd never have been at that point… never met the only person in the world for you. Yet all those things aligned to get you to that exact spot when everything was right. And it didn't just happen for you, it happened for people all over the city, all over the country, all over the world, for as long as people have been on the planet. And then people try to tell you that there's no intelligence in the universe.'
'Some would say it's just chance. That there's plenty of people for you in the world, and you'd have found one sooner or later whatever you did.'
'Do you believe that?'
He thought for a long moment. 'No.'
'Romantic,' she gibed gently.
'If you close your eyes and listen to yourself… listen to your heart… you know. You know in a way that you could never explain to someone who only believed in the Selfish Gene and the evolutionary drive. There is only one person for you.'
Sophie rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes; the warmth of their bodies together was soothing.
'And you'll find them,' she said, 'if you trust the universe. That's the thing. You give yourself up to the universe and it helps you out.'
She turned to look at him, her dilated pupils reflecting the snow so that it looked as if she had stars inside her. 'This is our time,' she said softly. 'The world's gone to hell and the old order's gone with it. This isn't a place for big business… for those who're only interested in making money… the soul-dead. It's a place for dreamers and romantics… the passionate… the hopeful.'<
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'Hippie.'
'There's no point being anything else. We make the best of what we've got. Life's short. You've got to love what's around you.'
He brushed the hair from her forehead. 'I used to be like that.'
Her eyes shimmered. 'You're still like that, Mallory. You just can't see it.'
She leaned forwards until her lips were brushing his. They were like velvet, so full of life that Mallory could almost feel the pulse of blood. He moved against them; her mouth was soft and warm and moist, yielding slowly, following his rhythm perfectly. Her fingers touched the back of his neck and it was as though electricity jolted through him. Everything about her was supercharged. In comparison, he was sluggish, like someone emerging from a coma.
The air was filled with energy. Mallory was surrounded by frost and fire, opposites coming together in an alchemical union that made them more than they were before.
'We' re special,' Sophie whispered in his ear, before nuzzling into his neck.
His hand moved across her breast, feeling the rise of the nipple, the subsequent surge of power in his groin. She didn't resist; she met him move for move, desire for desire. Her fingers eased over his body, down to his jeans, fumbling for the buttons. Their clothes loosened, their temperature soared, hardness and softness lay under their hands.
In their passion they were like beasts clawing at each other, completely consumed by the raw feelings of the moment. When Mallory penetrated her, he thought he would come immediately, so powerful was the rush. But he kept himself going, and they kissed, and they bit, and rolled around half-naked despite the coldness of the night.
Afterwards they lay in each other's arms, feeling their unified heartbeats slowly subside. Mallory dragged the sacking back over them when they became aware of their breath clouding, and for a long while they said nothing, barely believing what had happened and what it meant for both of them.
Sometime later, Sophie suddenly jerked and exclaimed, 'Look there.'
Footprints tracked their way across the blue-white snow barely ten feet from them.
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