Always Forever (6 page)

The Bone Inspector had suggested Balor would not be at its peak until
Samhain, one of the Celtic feast days marking an occasion when the great cycle
of existence unleashed powerful forces. From a Christian perspective it was chillingly fitting: the Church had made Samhain into Hallowe'en, when the forces of
evil were loosed on the earth. And there was no doubt the threat was gathering
pace. The progression was like the darkness eating away at the edges of the vision
of a dying man: each day was a little gloomier. Soon all hell would break loose.

There appeared little they could do; and just three months before the doors
of Samhain opened: no time at all. But Church's experiences over the preceding
months had left him with the belief that there was a meaning to everything; he
refused to give in to fatalism, however dark things appeared. If the Tuatha De
Danann could be convinced to help them, they stood the slimmest of chances.

To win over the Golden Ones, he had to expunge the Fomorii corruption
from his body, an act he had been told could be achieved only in the mysterious
Western Isles, the home of the gods somewhere in T'ir n'a n'Og. The journey to
that place began at Mousehole on the Cornish coast, and a landmark called Merlin's Rock where legend said it was possible to spy a fairy ship that travelled
between this world and the next. But one thing in the myths disturbed him
greatly: his destination had another name-the Islands of the Dead.

More than anything, Church was glad he had Ruth along with him. Her
suffering at the hands of the Fomorii had been terrible, but she had survived to
become a much stronger person, free from the fear and doubts that had consumed her before. Now when he looked into her eyes it was like looking into a
dark river where deep waters moved silently. She maintained she had died in the
last few minutes before Lughnasadh, when she had been close to giving birth to
Balor; only Laura's monumental sacrifice had brought her spirit back to her
body. Whether that was simply a hallucination on the verge of death or the truth
of the matter, it had forged something strong inside her.

As their journey to the southwest progressed, she had been relieved by the
reappearance of her owl familiar. But when Church saw it dipping and diving in
the grey sky, all he could think of was its manifestation as a strange bird-man
hybrid when it had warned him of Ruth's capture in Callender. Could something so alien be trusted, he wondered?

Yet the abilities it had bequeathed to Ruth were extraordinary. She had told
him how it had whispered knowledge to her that wormed its way into her mind
as if she had known it all her life. When Church fell ill with a stomach bug after
drinking from a dirty stream, she knew just the plant for him to chew to restore
his health within hours. When they were beaten down by an electrical storm
with nowhere to shelter, she had wandered a few yards away from his gaze and
minutes later the storm abated. It was amazing, yet also strangely worrying.

Across the roiling, grey sea, lightning twisted and turned in a maniac dance.
There was too much of it to be natural: nature's last stab of defiance. Resting
against the edge of the window in the bedroom that had been prepared for Ruth,
Church let his thoughts drift in the fury of the storm, considering their options,
praying the power of hope carried some kind of weight.

"I hope you've got a strong stomach for sailing."

Ruth's words pulled him from his reverie and he turned back to the
pleasant, old room with its wooden floorboards and walls draped with nets and
lanterns and other sailing memorabilia. He felt secure in its warm aroma of
candle smoke, dust and fresh linen.

Ruth sat on the edge of the bed, finishing the cold lamb, mashed potatoes and
gravy the locals had prepared for them. "I wish we could pay them back for this."
She speared the last piece of meat. "They must be worried about maintaining their
supplies, yet they offered to take us in without a moment's thought."

"Doing what we hope to do will be payment enough."

She made a face.

"I'm not giving in to hopelessness. Not any more. You know the band
Prefab Sprout? They had a song which went,
If the dead could speak, I know what
they would say-don't waste another day
. That's how I want to live my life. Whatever's left of it."

The candlelight cast a strange expression on Ruth's face, both curious and
concerned. "You really think there's a chance?"

"Don't you?"

She shrugged. "I try not to think beyond the end of each day."

The window rattled noisily, emphasising the frailness of their shelter. "I
think about the others. A lot."

Ruth drew a pattern in the gravy: two interlocking circles. It hypnotised
both of them for a second. "They might still be alive," she said after a moment
or two.

"I feel bad that they might be back at Mam Tor now, wondering where
we've gone."

"If they're alive, I think they'll find us. That bond brought us all together
in the first place. It could do it again."

"That's another thing." Church sat on the bed next to her, then flopped
backwards, bouncing on the sagging mattress. "Everything we've heard spoke
about the five Brothers and Sisters of Dragons being one. The five who are one.
One spirit, one force. And now-"

"Laura's dead. No doubt about that one." Ruth shifted uncomfortably. "Where
does that leave us?" The question hung in the air for a moment and then Ruth
pushed away the rickety table and sat back. "No point thinking about it now."

"There's something else that strikes me."

His voice sounded odd enough for her to turn and look at him; one arm was
thrown across his face, obscuring his eyes.

"Three months ago when Tom called back the spirits of the Celtic dead,
they said one of us would be a traitor-"

"You know any help the dead give is always wrapped up in mischief." She
waited for him to move his arm so she could read his mood, but he lay as still
as if he were asleep. "It's not me, if that's what you're saying."

"I'm not saying anything. I was just mentioning-'

"Well, don't."

He mused quietly for a moment. "I hope I'm up to it."

"What?"

He gestured vaguely. "Everything. I do my best, like anyone would, but-"

"Not anyone. That's the difference."

"-I wonder sometimes how much is expected of me."

"I've never really been one to believe in Fate, but the more I've been
through this, the more I've come to understand it's just a name for something
else. We've been chosen, there's no denying it-"

"By God?" he said incredulously.

"By existence. Whatever. We have a part to play, that's all I'm saying."

He sighed. "I feel weary. Not physically. Spiritually. I don't know how much
longer I can go on."

"You go on as long as you have to. This is all about a higher calling. It's
about doing something important that's bigger than you and me. We can both
rest when we're dead."

There was a long, uncomfortable silence until he said, "First light, then."
He sat up and kissed her gently on the cheek. It was an act of friendship, but
Ruth couldn't help the conflicting emotions she felt for him. "The two of us
together, just like it was right at the start."

"You and me against the world, kid."

Voices echoed up from the bar as Church made his way along the dark landing
to his own room: the locals, still trying to make head or tail of a life turned suddenly senseless. There was a twinge of sadness when he listened to their planning and rationalisations. Whatever they did, it would all amount to nothing.

He lay on his own bed for a while, staring into the shadows that clustered
across the ceiling as his mind wound down towards sleep. A song by The Doors
drifted in and out of his consciousness. Despite everything, he felt a deep peace
at the very core of his being. He was focused in his intentions, ready to live or
die as Fate decreed. Some of the debilitating emotions he had felt over the last
few months were now alien to him: his despair after Marianne's suicide; the cold,
bitter desire for revenge when he discovered she had really been killed. The
knowledge that her spirit had survived death was a source of transcendental
wonder that had lifted him from the shadows. He had known it from the first
time her spirit had materialised to him outside his London flat, but in his
misery, he had not realised what it truly meant. It was such an obvious thing,
he still couldn't believe it had taken him so long to fully understand the monumental, life-shaking repercussions, but life was full of noise and the signal
often got lost. The message that made sense of their suffering was plain, at least
to him: live or die, there is always hope.

Gradually his thoughts turned to Laura. Amidst the sadness there was a
twinge of guilt that he had misjudged her so badly. She had been selfish, cyn ical, bitter, cowardly, yet in the end she had sacrificed her own life to save
another. He missed her. He had never come close to matching the intensity of
her feelings for him, a love driven by desperation, loneliness and fear that
burned too brightly, but he had certainly felt a deep affection for her. Given
other circumstances, perhaps he could have loved her more; he wished he had
been able to give her what she wanted.

Somewhere above him there was a loud clattering. The storm had plucked
some slates from the roof, or torn down a chimney pot. The gale buffeted the
building, wrapping itself around the frail structure, yet deep within the wind's
raging he was sure he could hear other sounds. The slates sliding down into the
gutter, he guessed. He strained to listen. Despite its violence, the storm was
soothing, like womb sounds. Slowly, his eyelids started to close.

And then he was suddenly overcome with the strangest sensation: that he
wasn't in a room in a pub on a storm-tossed coast in a world turned insane by
ancient powers. That he was in a stark white laboratory with lights blazing into
his eyes, strapped to some kind of bench, with shadowy figures moving all
around. Somebody had a syringe waiting to inject into him.

And there was a voice echoing in his head, saying, "It all depends how we
see the world."

Uneasiness started to knot his stomach. He wanted to shout out, but he
couldn't move his lips.
You're daydreaming
, he told himself. Sleep came up on this
image suddenly, but the words remained.

"It all depends how we see the world."

Of late Ruth didn't find sleep easy. Whenever she was on the cusp, her mind
flashed back to lying in the cottage on Mam Tor on the brink of death, with the
obscene sensations of Balor growing inside her: snakes writhing in her gut,
slithering along her arteries and veins, her head resounding with the sensation
of a thousand cockroaches nesting in her brain. But the worst was when the final
date drew near and the thing had matured. One day she had become aware of
alien thoughts crawling through her mind; then the awful feeling of another
intelligence nestling at the back of her head, listening to her every secret,
knowing her heart, slowly consuming her. It was like she was in a dark room
with something monstrous standing permanently behind her shoulder.

She always woke with a start when she reached that point. It had been the
ultimate violation, the scars so deep she was terrified she would never forget.
And in her darkest moments, she feared much worse than that: that it hadn't
gone away at all; that a permanent connection had been made.

Sleep finally came.

Ruth was dreaming, but some part of her sleeping mind recognised that it was not
really a dream at all. Few details made sense, only abstract impressions adding
shape to her thoughts. First was suspicion, until that gradually coloured into a
growing apprehension. Then came the unmistakable sensation that something was
aware of her. It was not simply unpleasant; she was overwhelmed with an allconsuming mortal dread; she felt she was going to choke and die on the spot.

Somewhere an eye was opening. Before she could drag herself away, the
awful weight of its attention was turned fully on her, like a burning white light
that made her brain fizz. And crackling through that contact was the intelligence she feared: a familiar, ugly hand reaching out to grip her. Her entire being
recoiled. She wanted to flee, screaming, but it held her fast, probing continually,
peeling back the layers of who she was.

She dreamed of a black cloud, as big as the world, and in the centre of it,
the unflinching eye that watched her alone. It was the source of insanity and
hatred and despair. It was the worst of existence. The End of Everything.

It had noticed her.

Balor, she thought, and snapped awake as the word burned through her
mind.

Her eyes ranged around the room without seeing. Aspects of the contact
still seared her mind. She remembered.... Black forces moving up around the
edge of existence, starting to skin the world, pecking away at humanity,
preparing to strip the carrion from the bones of all life.