Marc Chadbourn - The Devil in green

'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.'

'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.

A chill ran through Mallory. The prints were cloven, but with a hooked toe or claw at the rear, clearly belonging to something that walked on two legs.

'We didn't see it.' Sophie's voice was low and rigid. 'It was almost on top of us and we didn't see it at all.'

'Fools and lovers are protected,' he muttered, pulling her close, aware how fragile they were, how defenceless in a dangerous world.

They moved closer to the fire where the heat made their skin bloom, and decided to take it in turns keeping watch. Mallory constructed a makeshift shelter with some of die sacks and selected items from the pile of rubbish near the farmhouse to keep the snow off them.

'You still haven't told me what we're going to do.' she asked him sleepily.

'Tomorrow,' he replied, 'we're going to petition the gods.'

In the pale morning light, Mallory retrieved a couple more animals from the fresh traps and delivered them to the woman and her husband, before they set off north. They walked a fine line, keeping beyond the edge of the city's built-up area yet not straying into the open countryside. Danger lay all around. The snow had abated, but it was still thick underfoot and the going was hard. Occasionally, Sophie or he would disappear into a drift, but they still found the energy to laugh at each other's misfortune, and that helped the time to pass.

His mood changed when he finally saw the bulk of Old Sarum rising up against the snow-filled sky. 'You know we're linked,' he said obliquely. She eyed him curiously. He told her what the Caretaker and Rhiannon had said about the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons.

Sophie was shocked, then humbled. 'Ruth Gallagher, the woman who taught Melanie,' she said, 'she was a Sister of Dragons, one of the five at the time of the Fall.'

'And now you're following in her footsteps.'

'But she was a great person!'

'Yeah, I can hardly believe it either. Somebody must have faith in us.'

His revelation appeared to be lying heavily on her, so he changed the subject by telling her about his experience on Old Sarum on the night he met Miller.