“I’d like to take Will Danza and Dean Folan with me, and have them authorized to fire weapons on the surface. They know how to deal with people who have been sequestrated. Cathal Fitzgerald too; he’s seen the virus at work.”
“They’ll have the authorization before you land.”
* * *
Duchess had risen above the horizon by the time Colsterworth came into view. The red dwarf sun occupied a portion of the horizon diametrically opposite Duke, the two of them struggling to contaminate the landscape below with their own unique spectrum.
Duchess was winning the battle, rising in time to Duke’s fall from the sky. The eastward slopes of the wolds were slowly slipping from verdant green to subdued burgundy. Aboriginal pine-analogue trees planted among the hedgerows of geneered hawthorn became grizzled pewter pillars. Even the stallion’s ebony hide was darkening.
Duke’s golden glow withdrew before the strengthening red tide.
For the first time in her life, Louise resented the primary’s retreat. Duchess-night was usually a magical time, twisting the familiar world into a land of mysterious shadows and balmy air. This time the red stain had a distinctly ominous quality.
“Do you suppose Aunty Daphnie will be home?” Genevieve asked for what must have been the fifth time.
“I’m sure she will,” Louise replied. It had taken Genevieve a good half hour to stop crying after they’d escaped from Cricklade. Louise had concentrated so hard on comforting her sister, she’d almost stopped being afraid herself. Certainly it was easy to blank what had happened from her mind. And she wasn’t quite sure exactly what she was going to say to Aunt Daphnie. The actual truth would make her sound utterly mad. Yet anything less than the truth might not suffice. Whatever forces of justice and law were dispatched up to Cricklade would have to be well armed and alert. The chief constable and the mayor had to believe what they faced was deadly real, not the imaginings of a half-hysterical teenage girl.
Fortunately she was a Kavanagh. People would have to listen. And please, dear Jesus, make them believe.
“Is that a fire?” Genevieve asked.
Louise jerked her head up. Colsterworth was spread out along a couple of miles of a shallow valley, growing up from the intersection of a river and the railway line. A somnolent little market town with ranks of neat terrace houses set amid small, pretty gardens. The larger homes of the important families occupied the gentle eastern slope, capturing the best view over the countryside. An industrial district of warehouses and small factories cluttered the ground around the wharf.
Three tall spires of filthy smoke were twisting up from the centre of the town. Flames burned at the base of one. Very bright flames. Whatever the building was, it glowed like molten iron.
“Oh, no,” Louise gasped. “Not here, too.” As she watched, one of the long river barges drifted past the last warehouse. Its decks were alight, the tarpaulin-covered cargo hold puffing out mushrooms of brown smoke. Louise guessed the barrels it carried were exploding. People were jumping off the prow, striking out for the bank.
“Now what?” Genevieve asked in a woeful voice.
“Let me think.” She had never considered that anywhere other than Cricklade was affected. But of course her father and that chilling young priest had stopped at Colsterworth first. And before that . . . A midwinter frost prickled her spine. Could it all have started at Boston? Everyone said an insurrection was beyond the Union’s ability to mount. Was the whole island to be conquered by these demons in human guise?
And if so, where do we go?
“Look!” Genevieve was pointing ahead.
Louise saw a Romany caravan being driven at considerable speed along one of the roads on the edge of town below them. The driver was standing on the seat, striking at the cob horse’s rump with a whip. It was a woman, her white dress flapping excitably in the wind.
“She’s running away,” Genevieve cried. “They can’t have got to her yet.”
The notion that they could join up with an adult who would be on their side was a glorious tonic for Louise. Even if it was just a simple Romany woman, she thought uncharitably. But then didn’t Romanies know about magic? The manor staff said they practised all sorts of dark arts. She might even know how to ward off the devils.
Louise took in the road ahead of the racing caravan with a keen sweep, trying to work out where they could meet it. There was nothing directly in front of the caravan, but three quarters of a mile from the town was a large farmhouse.
Frantic animals were charging out of the open farmyard gate into the meadows: pigs, heifers, a trio of shire-horses, even a Labrador. The house’s windows flashed brightly, emitting solid beams of blue-white light which appeared quite dazzling under the scarlet sky.
“She’s heading straight for them,” Louise groaned. When she checked the careering caravan again it had just passed the last of Colsterworth’s terraced houses. There were too many trees and bends ahead for the driver to see the farmhouse.
Louise sized up the distance to the road, and snapped the bridle. “Hang on,” she told Genevieve. The stallion charged forwards, dusky red grass blurring beneath its hooves. It jumped the first fence with hardly a break in its rhythm. Louise and Genevieve bounced down hard on its back, the younger girl letting out a yap of pain.
A jeering crowd had emerged on the road behind the caravan, milling beneath the twin clumps of geneered silver birch trees which marked the town’s official boundary. It was almost as if they were unwilling, or unable, to venture out into the open fields. Several bolts of white fire were flung after the fleeing caravan—glinting stars which dwindled away after a few hundred yards.
Louise wanted to weep in frustration when she saw people walking out of the farmhouse and start down the road towards Colsterworth. The Romany woman still hadn’t noticed the danger ahead.
“Shout at her! Stop her!” she cried to Genevieve.
They covered the last three hundred yards bellowing wildly.
It was to no avail. They were close enough to the caravan to see the foam coating the nose of the piebald cob before the Romany woman caught sight of them. Even then she didn’t stop, although the reins were pulled back. The huge beast started to slow its frantic sprint to a more reasonable trot.
The stallion cleared the hedge and the ditch running alongside the road in an easy bound. Louise whipped it around to match the caravan’s pace. There was a tremendous clattering coming from inside the wooden frame with its gaudy paintwork, as if an entire kitchen’s worth of pots and pans were being juggled by malevolent clowns.
The Romany woman had long raven hair streaming out behind her, a brown face with round cheeks. Her white linen dress was stained with sweat. Defiant, wild eyes stared at the sisters. She made some kind of sign in the air.
A spell? Louise wondered. “Stop!” she begged. “Please stop. They’re already ahead of you. They’re at that farmhouse, look.”
The Romany woman stood up, searching the land beyond the cob’s bobbing head. They had another quarter of a mile to go until they reached the farmhouse. But Louise had lost sight of the people who had come out of it.
“How do you know?” the woman called out.
“Just stop!” Genevieve squealed. Her small fists were bunched tight.
Carmitha looked the little girl over, then came to a decision. She nodded, and began to rein back.
The caravan’s front axle snapped with a prodigious crunching sound.
Carmitha just managed to grab hold of the frame as the whole caravan pitched forwards. Sparks flew out from underneath her as the world tilted sharply. A last wrenching snap and the caravan ground to a halt. One of the front wheels trundled past her cob horse, Olivier, then rolled down into the dry ditch at the side of the road.
“Shit!” She glared at the girls on the big black stallion, their soot-stained white blouses and grubby desolate faces. It must have been them. She’d thought they were pure, but you just couldn’t tell. Not now. Her grandmother�
��s ramblings on the spirit world had been nothing more than campsite tales to delight and scare young children. But she did remember some of the old woman’s words. She raised her hands so and summoned up the incantation.
“What are you doing?” the elder of the two girls yelled down at her. “We have to get out of here. Now!”
Carmitha frowned in confusion. The girls both looked terrified, as well they might if they’d seen a tenth of what she had. Maybe they were untainted. But it if wasn’t them who wrecked the caravan . . .
She heard a chuckle and whirled around. The man just appeared out of the tree standing on the other side of the road from the ditch. Literally out of it. Bark lines faded from his body to reveal the most curious green tunic. Arms of jade silk, a jacket of lime wool, big brass buttons down the front, and a ridiculous pointed felt hat sprouting a couple of white feathers.
“Going somewhere, pretty ladies?” He bowed deeply and doffed his hat.
Carmitha blinked. His tunic really was green. But it shouldn’t have been, not in this light. “Ride!” she called to the girls.
“Oh, no.” His voice sounded indignant, a host whose hospitality has proved inadequate. “Do stay.”
One of the small kittledove birds in the tree behind him took flight with an indignant squawk. Its leathery wings folded back, and it dived towards the stallion. Intense blue and purple sparks fizzed out of its tail, leaving a contrail of saffron smoke behind it. The tiny organic missile streaked past the stallion’s nose and skewered into the ground with a wet thud.
Louise and Genevieve both reached out instinctively to pat and gentle the suddenly skittish stallion. Five more kittledoves were lined up on the pine’s branches, their twittering stilled.
“In fact, I insist you stay,” the green man said, and smiled charmingly.
“Let the girls go,” Carmitha told him calmly. “They’re only children.”
His eyes lingered on Louise. “But growing up so splendidly. Don’t you agree?”
Louise stiffened.
Carmitha was about to argue, maybe even plead. But then she saw four more people marching down the road from the farmhouse and the fight went out of her. Taking to her heels would do no good. She’d seen what the white fireballs could do to flesh and bone. It was going to be bad enough without adding to the pain.
“Sorry, girls,” she said lamely.
Louise gave her a flicker of a smile. She looked at the green man. “Touch me, peasant, and my fiancé will make you eat your own balls.”
Genevieve twisted around in astonishment to study her sister. Then grinned weakly. Louise winked at her. Paper defiance, but it felt wonderful.
The green man chortled. “Dearie me, and I thought you were a fine young lady.”
“Appearances can be deceptive,” she told him icily.
“I will enjoy teaching you some respect. I will personally see to it that your possession takes a good many days.”
Louise glanced briefly in the direction of the four men from the farmhouse who were now standing beside the placid cob. “Are you quite sure you have mustered sufficient forces? I don’t want you to be too frightened of me.”
The green man’s laboured smile vanished altogether, as did his debonair manner. “Know what, bitch? I’m going to make you watch while I fuck your little sister in half.”
Louise flinched, whitening.
“I believe this has gone far enough.” It was one of the men who’d arrived from the farm. He walked towards the green man.
Louise noticed how his legs bowed outward, making his shoulders rock slightly from side to side as he walked. But he was handsome, she acknowledged, with his dark skin and wavy jet-black hair tied back in a tiny ponytail. Rugged; backed up by a muscular build. He couldn’t have been more than about twenty, or twenty-one—the same age as Joshua. His dark blue jacket was dreadfully old-fashioned, it had long tails which came to a point just behind his knees. He wore it over a yellow waistcoat, and a white silk shirt that had a tiny turned-down collar complemented with a black ruff tie. Strange apparel, but elegant, too.
“What’s your problem, boy?” the green man asked scornfully.
“Is that not apparent, sir? I find it difficult to see how even a gentleman of your tenor can bring it upon himself to threaten three frightened ladies.”
The green man’s mouth split into a wide smile. “Oh, you do, do you?” White fire speared out of his fingers. It struck the newcomer’s blue jacket and flared wide into clawing braids. He stood calmly as the coils of incandescence scrabbled ineffectively across him, as if he wore an overcoat of impervious glass.
Unperturbed by his failure, the green man swung a fist. It didn’t connect. His opponent ducked back with surprising speed. A fist slammed into the side of the green man’s torso. Three ribs shattered from the enhanced blow. He had to exert some of his own energistic strength to stave off the pain and repair the physical damage. “Fuck,” he spat, shocked by this inexplicable recalcitrance on the part of someone who was supposed to be a comrade. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I would have thought that obvious, sir,” the other said from behind raised fists. “I am defending the honour of these ladies.”
“I don’t believe this,” the green man exclaimed. “Look, let’s just get them possessed, and forget it. Okay? Sorry I mouthed off. But that girl has the devil’s own tongue.”
“No, sir, I will not forget your threat to the child. Our Lord may have deemed me unworthy to join Him in Heaven. But, still, I count myself as more than a beast who would commit rapine upon such a delicate flower.”
“Delicate . . . You have got to be fucking joking.”
“Never, sir.”
The green man threw his hands in the air. He turned to the other three who had accompanied his opponent from the farm. “Come on, together we can boil his crazy brain and send him back to the beyond. Or maybe you can ignore them pleading to be let back into the world,” he added significantly.
The three men exchanged an uneasy glance.
“You may indeed best me,” the man in the blue jacket said. “But if I have to return to that accursed nowhere, I will take at least one of you with me, possibly more. So come then, who will it be?”
“I don’t need any of this,” one of the three muttered. He pushed his way past the other two and started to walk down the road towards the town.
The man in the blue jacket gave the remaining two an inquiring look. Both of them shook their heads and set off down the road.
“What is it with you?” the green man shouted furiously.
“I believe that is a rhetorical question.”
“Okay, so who the hell are you?”
For a moment his handsome face faltered in its resolution. Pain burned in his eyes. “They called me Titreano, once,” he whispered.
“Okay, Titreano. It’s your party. For now. But when Quinn Dexter catches up with you, it’s going to be the morning after like you’ve never fucking believed.”
He turned on a heel and stalked off along the road.
Carmitha finally remembered to breathe again. “OhmyGod!” Her knees gave out, and she sat down fast. “I thought I was dead.”
Titreano smiled graciously. “You would not have been killed. What they bring is something far worse.”
“Like what?”
“Possession.”
She gave him a long, mistrustful stare. “And you’re one of them.”
“To my shame, my lady, I am.”
Carmitha didn’t know what the hell to believe.
“Please, sir?” Genevieve asked. “What should we do now? Where can Louise and I go?”
Louise patted Gen’s hands in caution. This Titreano was one of the devils after all, no matter how friendly he appeared to be.
“I do not know this place,” Titreano said. “But I would advise against yonder town.”
“We know that,” Genevieve said spryly.
Titreano smiled up at her. “Indeed you do. And
what is your name, little one?”
“Genevieve. And this is my sister, Louise. We’re Kavanaghs, you know.”
Carmitha groaned and rolled her eyes. “Christ, that’s all I need right now,” she mumbled.
Louise gave her a puzzled frown.
“I regret I have not heard of your family,” Titreano said in what sounded like sincere regret. “But from your pride, I venture it is a great one.”
“We own a lot of Kesteven between us,” Genevieve said. She was beginning to like this man. He’d stood up to the horrors, and he was polite. Not many grown-ups were polite to her, they never seemed to have the time to talk at all. He was very well spoken, too.
“Kesteven?” Titreano said. “Now that is a name I do know. I believe that it is an area of Lincolnshire. Am I correct?”
“Back on Earth, yes,” Louise said.
“Back on Earth,” Titreano repeated incredulously. He glanced over at Duke, then switched to Duchess. “Exactly what is this world?”
“Norfolk. It’s an English-ethnic planet.”
“The majority,” Carmitha said.
Louise frowned again. What ever was wrong with the Romany woman?
Titreano closed his eyes, as if he felt some deep pain. “I sailed upon oceans, and I thought no challenge could be greater,” he said faintly. “And now men sail the void between stars. Oh, how I remember them. The constellations burning so bright at night. How could I ever have known? God’s creation has a majesty which lays men bare at His feet.”
“You were a sailor?” Louise asked uncertainly.
“Yes, my lady Louise. I had the honour to serve my King thus.”
“King? There’s no royal family in the Earth’s English state any more.”
Titreano slowly opened his eyes, revealing only sadness. “No King?”
“No. But our Mountbatten family are descended from British royalty. The Prince guards our constitution.”
“So nobility has not yet been overthrown by darkness. Ah well, I should be content.”
“How come you didn’t know about old England?” Genevieve asked. “I mean, you knew about Kesteven being a part of it.”
The Night's Dawn Trilogy Page 126
