Mark Chadbourn - Darkest hour

He looked away, suddenly queasy. Maponus' insanity was destabilising; it sucked at him, threatening to drag him in.

Cautiously he began to move around the perimeter of the field. How long would he have to search before he found what he was looking for? Could he have guessed wrongly?

He needn't have worried. Something hit him with the force of a wild animal, knocking him painfully across the road, pinning him beneath its weight. Stars flashed across his vision, but when he looked he felt a wave of relief. Yet the Bone Inspector's features spoke of a madness waiting to break out: he looked anxious, hunted, a man driven to the edge of survival.

Despite his age, his strength was almost superhuman. Church couldn't begin to wriggle out from beneath the wiry arms that held him tight. The Bone Inspector's eyes ranged crazily, his lips pulling back from his teeth in a feral grimace. For one moment, Church thought the custodian of the old places was going to dip down and tear out his throat.

"It's me!" Church gasped. "A Brother of Dragons!"

The Bone Inspector's eyes cleared gradually. A long drool of spittle dripped on to Church's cheek. "I know who you are, you bloody idiot!" he hissed. Cursing beneath his breath, he rolled off Church, instantly adopting the posture of a cornered animal, ready to fight or run. "What are you doing here, you fool? Do you want to throw your life away?" His voice was strained with tension, but it barely rose above the sound of the wind rustling the leaves of the hedgerow.

He gave a sharp nod with his head, directing Church to a field on the other side of the lane. They scurried through an open gate and rested against a metal trough filled with stagnant water. The Bone Inspector closed his eyes for a moment, his lined face suddenly looking a hundred years old. His shirt was in tatters and a filthy, bloodstained rag had been tied roughly around his left hand. There were numerous gashes across his lithe, suntanned torso. A brief shiver ran through him and then his eyes filled with his old clarity. "I've followed him up mountains and across rivers. I've waded through a swamp of blood, seen whole villages burning. I've lived on raw squirrel meat and drunk stagnant ditchwater. I've seen the kind of pain and suffering you can only imagine." His voice was filled with a passion that bowed Church. "And why? Because your idiot brethren dabbled with something they shouldn't! What did they think they were doing?"

"It had to be done-"

"Had to be done?" The Bone Inspector's eyes blazed furiously; Church thought the old man was going to hit him. "All that death and grief was a decent price to pay?"

"That's not what I meant." His anger grew hard. He thought of Ruth and the decision he had to make, of the world he used to inhabit where there was a clear distinction between right and wrong, and then came a sudden rush and tumble of regrets and bitterness. "You can't criticise me."

The Bone Inspector seemed taken aback by what he saw in Church's face.

"We're all wading through shit trying to put this nightmare right. Nobody has the higher ground. Nobody," Church said coldly.

The Bone Inspector looked away at the waves of golden light. "Pretty, ain't it? I can't see how we're going to put it right. When he was first bound under Rosslyn there was a whole load of my people carrying out the ritual. There's no way I can do it myself. I thought it was all sorted when those golden bastards came for him-"

"What happened?"

"There were six of them. Some of the big-shots, all light and thunder and faces you couldn't see. You could tell they were desperate to get him back. `Finally,' I thought, `they're going to start sorting out their own shit.' They'd got him cornered up near Aberdeen in what was left of a village. I was down among the ruins, trying to pull out some kid, but the poor bastard was already dead. And he'd seen me, and he was coming for me." The Bone Inspector looked down at his hands; they were trembling. "They'd opened up some kind of doorway in the air and they were going to drive him through. And then that bitch came out of nowhere. Crazy. As mad as he is." He jerked a thumb towards the wash of light. "There was a big flash, felt like I'd been hit by a shovel, next thing I knew I'm here."

Church felt a pang of guilt; he wondered if the Tuatha De Danann would punish Niamh for her actions.

The Bone Inspector looked up at him piercingly. "So what are you doing here?"

"Looking for You." The Bone Inspector's brow furrowed; Church smiled. "Listen, this is what's going to happen."

As Church moved speedily along the lanes back to the tor he was gripped with fear that in his absence the Fomorii would have swept up the mountain and taken Ruth and Laura. But as he neared he could see the slopes were still clear.

The hardest part of the return journey was a wide-open space at the foot of the tor and the lower reaches of the climb. Even though the power in the mountain kept them hidden from the Fomorii senses, plain sight was still a problem. He couldn't believe he had made it to the Bone Inspector and back without discovery; it left him wondering how powerful those Fomorii senses truly were. Perhaps they didn't need to hide on the mountain at all. Was it possible that they could creep away under cover of darkness and find another hiding place far away?

The blow came from somewhere behind him, lifting him high into the air. His body exploded in excruciating pain; there didn't seem to be any oxygen left in his lungs. He slammed down on to the grass verge and bounced into a barbed wire fence. The twisted talons snagged his flesh and tore. For a second he hung there suspended like a scarecrow, thought processes fragmented, aware only of the agony that fried through him. His awareness came back in jerking fragments. A deep, dark shadow was moving across the road. He looked up for the cloud, the low-flying plane.

It hit him so hard the barbed wire burst as it yanked out of his flesh. He skidded into a cornfield. The sharp stalks stabbed his back, the dust clouded round him. Next to his face on the ground a large black beetle scurried away from the disturbance.

Full realisation only came when he rolled on his back, trying to scrabble to his feet. The Fomorii warrior loomed over him. At first there was no sense of solidity, just an impression of an immense, sucking void about to enclose him. A perception shift came as if someone had grabbed his mind and twisted it through forty-five degrees. Suddenly there was bulk, the sound of armour plates clanking into place as if they were a part of it, that familiar, sickening zoo-cage smell. Still couldn't quite get a full fix on it. It was an enormous insect with dripping mandibles and multiple legs, something that was covered with fur, with glaring red eyes, talons poised. And at times chillingly human-shaped, though as big as a tank, with the blackest armour.

Church jumped to his feet, started to run. What could have been a powerful arm lashed out, catching him full in the stomach. The pain was so great it felt like his internal organs were rupturing. He came down hard again, deep in the swaying corn. He had been so arrogant, thinking he had escaped detection. It must have been stalking him, checking he was defenceless.

His thoughts fizzed out as he suddenly found the energy to roll and run. The beast thundered like a bull, missing him by an inch. And then he was away, leaping wildly through the corn, knowing that he couldn't outrun it for an instant. The vibrations from its pounding feet felt like a mini-earthquake beneath him, but at least it allowed him to tell when it was almost on him. He threw himself to the side, and it crashed past; its size and momentum prevented it turning easily.

Anxiously, he glanced up at Mam Tor. It was close enough for him to sprint towards it. The beast was so big he might be able to lose it on the slopes where a sure foot was more necessary than strength. But if the Fomorii hadn't already established where they had been hiding, he couldn't lead the creatures back to Ruth and Laura.