The Hounds of Avalon

Blood stained the front of Hal’s shirt and crusted his top lip where he had been punched repeatedly in the face by members of the arresting party. His jaw ached and one eye was so swollen that he could barely see out of it. The guards had made it quite plain that there would be no trial, judge or jury: it had already been decided that he was guilty of the assassination plot.

He’d lost consciousness at some point during the beating, but now, as he looked around, he saw that he was in one of the cells in the high-security area in the Brasenose/Lincoln complex. Through the walls, he could hear the dim cries of the supernatural creatures that had been imprisoned down there; they all sounded distressed, frightened.

Dull panic battled with guilt. Everyone was relying on him and he’d allowed himself to be taken; he should have guessed that Reid and the others would know where he’d be hiding out. Hunter wouldn’t have made that mistake, nor would any of the others. Why was he so useless? He fought down his contempt for his own abilities and forced his mind to focus on a way of getting out. The alternative was unthinkable.

As Hal racked his brains for some kind of strategy, the door swung open and Reid slipped in.

‘Mister Reid, I didn’t do anything-’ Hal’s protestations died on his lips when he saw Reid’s slight smile.

‘Of course you didn’t.’ Reid leaned against the door and folded his arms. He was completely assured, displaying just a hint of the arrogance that he had kept in check in recent weeks. Hal could see Reid’s complicity writ large in his features.

‘You set me up. You’re responsible for this whole plot.’

‘Yes and no. I’m just a loyal servant, doing what I’m told, going where I’m ordered.’

‘Then who do you report to? The General?’

Reid laughed. ‘The General is a simple man. Soldiers do not normally make good politicians. He’s even more of a lick-spittle than me, though I’m sure he would never characterise himself in that way. Just following orders, that’s the General. The dignity and honour of being a public servant.’

Reid watched the thought processes rush across Hal’s face and shook his head, laughing. ‘You’re too simple a person, Mister Campbell. Uncomplicated, I think is the polite phrase. Not cynical. Very, very innocent.’ Reid made it sound like an insult. ‘The conspiracy extends much more widely than you could possibly guess. Everyone in the Government is involved. Certainly everyone in the upper echelons.’

‘The Cabinet-’

‘The Cabinet, the senior advisors, spies, policemen, business leaders, aristocrats — all the people who made up the great and the good before the Fall and who now keep the country running.’

Hal was dumbfounded. ‘All of them? Why? What could you possibly gain by killing the PM now, when everything is falling apart and we need a strong leader?’

‘Exactly. The PM was being particularly obstructive to the route that everyone else felt was best to preserve traditional values and our way of life. And time was running out.’

‘So you killed him.’

‘No, you killed him.’

‘There’s no evidence of that,’ Hal protested.

‘Ah, but there is. A great deal of evidence, in fact.’ Reid pulled out a digital photo of a strange star-shaped object. Hal recognised it instantly: Reid had handed it to him when he had taken Hal into the secure storeroom to give him the Wish Stone mystery to investigate. ‘Odd thing, this,’ Reid continued. ‘We still haven’t discerned if there’s a biological element to it. But one of our scientists discovered early on, to his great misfortune, that when activated it pumps ever-expanding tendrils into the body and tears it apart from within. And this innocuous-looking object was by the side of the PM’s body when it was found, with your fingerprints all over it.’

‘So you didn’t want the Stone investigated at all. It was just a ploy to fit me up.’ Hal put his head in his hands, sickened by the machinations. ‘What was the point in framing me? If there were so many people involved in the conspiracy, why didn’t you just bump the PM off and have done with it?’

Reid grew uncomfortable; he was still hiding something. ‘The majority of our soldiers and employees… the people generally… needed a culprit to focus their minds and keep them fully behind the project.’

‘But why me? Was I simply in the wrong place at the wrong time?’

Reid didn’t answer.

‘And what was happening with Manning? All the weird things I saw-’

‘Ah, Ms Manning. A very puzzling woman. She appeared to be on board at first, but recently…’ He shrugged, shook his head. ‘There’s an order out for her arrest.’

‘You think you’ve got everything covered, but it’s all a waste of time. The Void is still going to wipe everything out.’

Reid nodded. ‘Indeed.’

‘You want that?’ Hal jumped to his feet in disbelief.

Reid raised one warning finger; he remained calm, but there was a deep threat implicit in that simple motion. ‘You can’t escape, Hal. You can’t run. Every single person in authority out in the city has your description. Orders have now gone out for you to be shot on sight. You’re safer here.’

‘Why don’t you just kill me now?’ Hal flopped on to the bed and covered his face again; nothing made any sense.

‘Oh, I will. Your execution is imminent. We can’t have you blurting all this out and ruining things. But first you have one more little part to play.’

It took a second for Reid’s words to register, and by then the spy was slipping out of the door with a cruelly triumphant smile directed at Hal. The door closed with a click; the locks slipped back into place.

‘You can set me free. I’m not going to hurt anyone.’

Caitlin’s pleading voice cut to Thackeray’s heart. He could barely look at her, tied to an old wooden chair, her wrists bound behind her back and roped to her ankles, the knots pulled so tightly that they had brought droplets of blood to the surface of her pale, chafed skin. Her face looked so innocent, the Caitlin he had met all those weeks ago in the devastation of Birmingham, when he’d cared for her and first realised he had fallen in love. But with the Morrigan still inside her, they couldn’t take any chances. He’d seen what the goddess could do: one flick of a wrist could snap his neck and she’d move on without giving it a second thought.

‘You know I can’t do that,’ he said.

‘But there’s been some kind of change. I can feel it! The Morrigan isn’t controlling me any more.’

Her eyes were wide and hopeful; a faint smile played on her lips. Thackeray looked away, hating himself that he couldn’t trust her any more. Part of him wished he hadn’t been dragged into this senseless world of gods and magic, but then he would never have met Caitlin and his life would have been immeasurably diminished.

Yet when he glanced back at her, he felt that there was something subtly different about her, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was.

Caitlin put her head back, her eyes flickering. ‘It feels as if she’s… waiting,’ she muttered to herself.

The door was thrown open abruptly and Harvey launched himself into the room. He’d been keeping watch from the first floor for any developments. ‘We’ve got to get out of here. They’re evacuating the street.’ He rubbed a hand over a thin wrist for warmth. ‘Moving everybody to some buildings down in the centre. Like that’s going to do any bloody good,’ he added dismally.

Thackeray glanced at Caitlin, her head framed against the window where the snow fell heavily. Harvey was one step ahead. ‘What are we going to do with her?’

‘We can’t leave her here.’

‘It’s too dangerous to take her with us.’ Harvey’s Birmingham accent grew thicker in times of stress. ‘Bloody hell, Thackeray. You’ve got us into a right old mess. Why couldn’t you have fallen for a normal girl?’

Torn, Thackeray wandered past Caitlin to look out of the window. There was frantic activity in the street, people running, others tumbling out of doorways, laden with possessions. Unconsciously, he reached out a hand to touch Caitlin’s hair.

The snapping of ropes caught him by surprise. His wrist was snatched, gently, as Caitlin rose up and turned towards him. Across the room, Harvey flung himself back against the wall, whimpering. ‘Don’t hurt him,’ he pleaded.

But after the initial shock, Thackeray wasn’t scared. The cold, terrifying fury of the Morrigan was no longer visible in Caitlin’s face. Thackeray pulled her to him and held her tightly, her heart thundering against his chest.

When she pulled back, tears gleamed in her eyes. ‘It’s come back.’ A transcendental smile leaped to her lips. ‘I felt it enter me… blue

… so very blue. It’s back, Thackeray. I’m one of them again.’

Corpus Christi was filled with long shadows as Shavi and Sophie made their way along empty corridors where the only sound was their footsteps. Finally, they found an unlocked office and slipped inside.

Sophie battened down her anxiety and said, ‘Do you think you can make contact here?’

‘I will try.’ Shavi cleared a desk to one side to make a space on the floor for him to sit. ‘Something is amiss. There is what I could only characterise as background interference, which is impeding my attempts to reach the spirits on the other side.’

‘Interference? Is it being caused by the Void?’

‘Perhaps.’

Sophie stood quietly in one corner while Shavi sat cross-legged in the centre of the room. Slowly, he lowered his chin on to his chest, his long hair falling across his face. His breathing grew slower, more measured, until he began to make a faint soooo sound on each exhalation. It was a ritual chant of some kind, Sophie knew, designed to attract the attention of the spirits with which Shavi communed.

After five long, tense minutes, Sophie began to believe that it wasn’t going to work. But then Shavi’s head snapped back as if he had been punched on the chin. His eyes were open, but all that was visible were the whites. His breathing had become laboured, and from the twitching of his facial muscles it was clear that he was in some distress. Sophie wasn’t sure if it was part of the ritual, but was afraid that if she disturbed him, Shavi might come to harm.

Her paralysis was broken when blood gouted from Shavi’s nose, mouth and ears, and in scarlet teardrops from the corners of his eyes. She ran to his side and put her arms around him, gently urging him to break the trance.

He came round with a convulsion that threw him halfway across the room, as if he had been hit.

When his eyes finally flickered back to normal, she began to ask what had happened. His response was so violent, it shocked her. ‘It is here!’ he yelled, still in the final grip of the trance. ‘It has been here for a long time!’

Sophie gradually managed to calm him. Sitting up, with his head in his hands, he said with a shudder, ‘My consciousness touched it. I felt…’ He swallowed. ‘Nothing. A bleak emptiness of the soul. It was horrible.’

‘Are you OK?’

‘I will recover.’ Another shudder. ‘It is as I feared: it is protecting itself, hiding its location.’

‘That’s interesting,’ Sophie mused. ‘Why would something so powerful feel the need to hide?’

Shavi forced a weak smile. ‘Because the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons can stop it. It is remaining hidden until it is too late for us to do anything.’

‘We have to tell the others.’ Sophie helped Shavi to his feet. ‘But if you can’t find it, how are we going to pin it down?’

The door swung open before Shavi could respond. The silhouette framed in the doorway at first gave the impression of two people standing one just behind the other. But as the figure moved into the room, Sophie and Shavi saw that it was just one woman, her hard, pale face framed by black hair, her body swathed in expensive furs.

‘My name is Catherine Manning. I know who you are, I know what you’re doing and I’m on your side,’ she said in sharp, clipped tones. ‘You need to come with me.’

Anticipating a weapon, Sophie pulled Shavi back towards the far wall. Even when she saw that Manning didn’t appear to be armed, she still maintained her guard. ‘What do you want?’

‘We’re in the last hour of the human race.’ Manning’s eyes shone glassily. ‘Everything’s coming to an end. The enemy have broken through our defences, and you’re sitting here getting nowhere.’

‘Leave us alone,’ Sophie said. ‘We know what we’re doing.’

‘Really?’ Manning couldn’t restrain the snide tone that came too easily to her voice. ‘Do you realise what little time you have? You know nothing, do you?’

Sophie made to respond angrily, but Shavi held her back with an arm across her chest. ‘And you know something?’

She nodded. ‘I know the only information you need. I know where the Void is.’

Sophie turned to Shavi. ‘We can’t trust her. We ought to find the others.’

‘We have no choice,’ Shavi said. ‘I have failed.’ He turned to Manning. ‘Where is the Void?’

‘I have to take you there.’

‘Shavi…’ Sophie cautioned, but she knew he was right: if there was even the slightest chance that Manning knew the location of the Void, they had to seize it. ‘All right. Take us there quickly,’ Sophie said. ‘But I’ll be watching you.’

‘Stop whining and get a move on. We may already be too late.’ Manning stood back to let Shavi and Sophie pass through the door. Neither of them saw the faint outline of another figure behind her, shimmering as if fighting to gain weight and form.

The drone reverberated off buildings, setting Mallory and Hunter’s teeth on edge; it sounded as if a wasp’s nest as a big as a house had been disturbed. The whole of the High Street was filled from wall to wall with Lament-Brood. They lapped around on either side, their measured, relentless pace driving them on, eyes dead, weapons scraping against brickwork. An echo of the buzzing hummed in Mallory and Hunter’s heads, but that was the collective voice of the Lament-Brood, whispering, cajoling, spreading its message of despair. Mallory and Hunter fought back, but it felt as though a tidal wave of depression was about to break over their spirits and consume them.

Mallory clutched his sword tightly as he urged his horse back a few paces; even the blue flames that danced along the blade were dampened. He glanced at Hunter, who looked back at him before they both fixed their eyes on the darkness looming over the heads of the marching monstrous army.

They moved their horses a few more yards away from the enemy, and when they turned back, it was there. Towering a good ten feet off the ground was the King of Insects, its body a swarming mass of wasps, bees, flies, dragonflies, every tiny scurrying creature that had been sucked into its orbit. The gravity of the being far exceeded its physical dimensions. Hunter remembered when his mind had briefly touched it on the killing fields of Scotland, but now it was more powerful, stronger, more intelligent and more savage than any of the Lords, the force of its monstrous will radiating off it like the heat from a furnace. The Lament-Brood parted in small eddies as it moved amongst them, but when its ranging eyes fell on Mallory and Hunter, both of them were stunned by the voracious glee they sensed. It wanted them; it desired to rip them apart and crush both their bodies and their souls, and they knew this as completely as if it had spoken to them.

‘I’m going to need a bigger sword,’ Mallory said with flat humour.

‘We’re going to need something,’ Hunter replied. ‘Let’s find the others.’

They turned their horses and sped away, the weight of the King of Insects’ stare hard on their backs. It was speaking to them: I can bide my time. You cannot run. You cannot hide. Your end is near.

They found Laura where the High Street met Cornmarket Street. She was recovering from her exertions. ‘I killed the Lord of Lizards,’ she said with untoward glee, ‘but the Lament-Brood broke through. They’re on their way here.’

‘They’re coming from three directions.’ Hunter glanced around quickly; Laura and Mallory both knew that he was looking for a place to make a final stand. ‘Have you seen Sophie and Shavi? If we can find the Void before the rest of the Lament-Brood get here, we might actually be able to achieve something.’

‘Sophie helped me out earlier,’ Mallory said. ‘Then she drove off in the jeep with Shavi.’

‘Not seen either of them since they dropped me off,’ Laura said.

‘Where the hell are they?’ Hunter cracked his knuckles irritably, before adding to himself, ‘And where’s Hal?’

Rapid gunfire interrupted them as a small group of soldiers hurried past from the south. The leader saw Hunter and yelled, ‘Fall back! They’re coming!’ The men disappeared along Cornmarket Street. The steady tramp of thousands of feet could be heard approaching up St Aldate’s.

‘We’re going to get boxed in if we follow them,’ Mallory said.

‘I don’t think we have a choice,’ Hunter replied.

‘Shame. And it’s such a beautiful night,’ Laura said. She raised her face so that the big white flakes could settle gently on it.

Laura climbed on to Hunter’s horse and they caught up with the soldiers as they veered right into Market Street. Further along Cornmarket Street, a wall of Lament-Brood moved towards them. Mallory, Hunter and Laura galloped into Market Street, where Government workers were congregating in Jesus College and the other buildings surrounding it in a futile bid for safety.

Ahead, Hunter caught a glimpse of gold amongst the falling snow. As he neared, he saw that it was the Tuatha De Danann, their battle armour gleaming as they waited, bristling with arms. Lugh hailed them.

‘This is where we make our stand,’ Lugh said as Hunter jumped down to greet him. ‘The street is narrow enough for us to hold back the main flow of the enemy.’ He motioned behind him to the Divinity School. ‘And if we fall, you Brothers and Sisters of Dragons may retreat in there. It is defensible. You may be able to hold it for a while.’ There was little hope in Lugh’s voice, but oddly little despair, either; he acted as if impending doom was just another twist in life’s plan.

Hunter surveyed the Divinity School. It was easily the most beautiful medieval building in Oxford; he couldn’t have imagined anywhere better for a last stand. For hundreds of years, the walls had rung with the lectures and disputations of the Theology Faculty, with talk of higher purpose, of meaning. It would be a fitting context for their defeat.

Mallory gripped Llyrwyn when he saw Caitlin marching towards them from the shadows of the ancient building. Lugh held up his hand. ‘Hold your sword, Brother of Dragons. She is one of you once more. A Sister of Dragons.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Caitlin said when she stood before them. ‘I made a mess of things. But I’m all right now. I can help.’

‘How did that happen?’ Mallory asked suspiciously. He couldn’t forget the unbridled ferocity he had seen inside her on the frozen river.

‘I think saving Sophie was the key,’ Caitlin replied hesitantly. ‘I don’t know… It might have been some kind of test.’ She shrugged, smiled. ‘Whatever, I passed. The Pendragon Spirit came back into me.’ She closed her eyes beatifically, revelling in the surging energy she could feel inside her. ‘I’m a Sister of Dragons again… and I’ve still got the Morrigan inside me. But I can control her now.’

‘Nearly a full complement of the true Five,’ Mallory said.

‘Nearly.’ Hunter’s jaw was set. He wondered if Hal was really going to let them all down when they needed him the most.

The teeth-jarring drone of the King of Insects rose up once more, the noise echoing even more loudly off the closely packed buildings. Lugh gave an order in a language that Hunter couldn’t understand, and the gods fanned out across the street.

‘We should be standing with you!’ Mallory yelled to Lugh.

‘You will get your chance to fight, Brother of Dragons,’ the sun god said. ‘You form the second rank. Any of the Lament-Brood who break through must be dispatched by you.’

Hunter, Mallory, Caitlin and Laura exchanged silent glances. They all knew that it was too late to consider tactics, too late to give in to despair at their diminishing chances of survival. They were in the twilight hours and the light was fading fast. All that was left to them was to immerse themselves in the moment, to fight the battle before them, and to hope that others would save the day.

The Lament-Brood came first, a purple-tinged wave breaking against the golden shore. Hunter speculated that the King of Insects had sent them ahead to test the defences. The monstrous being hovered back, watching intensely, wasps swarming around its head. The Lament-Brood slashed and hacked with the weapons embedded in their limbs, not caring whether they lived or died. The first wave fell like corn at harvest time, but their ranks were replenished in seconds. They would not be repelled, they would not be beaten.

Even so, the Tuatha De Danann fought with breathtaking skill and fury. Hunter, a dedicated student of the art of war, had never heard of anything like it in the annals of human history. The fluid movements of the gods’ swords became a golden blur flashing back and forth, lightning strikes that sent heads and limbs flying and made a growing mountain of the desiccated, soulless bodies of the Lament-Brood. In that moment, Hunter saw clearly why the Celts had considered them gods. The Tuatha De Danann were glorious; their human form made them appear commonplace and understandable, but they were far, far beyond human, refined power like electricity briefly taking a shape humans could recognise.

Lugh was in the forefront of the battle, one foot braced against the bodies of the Lament-Brood as he cut down all who came at him, seemingly with no need for rest. To Hunter, he looked like the sun itself, for a powerful light shone off him the more invigorated he became; and seeing the dedication with which the Tuatha De Danann threw themselves into the defence of Fragile Creatures, Hunter wondered if there was a chance they could win, despite the odds.

Like the others, he was gripped by the battle and the clashing of steel, but his attention was disturbed by a presence beside him. It was Ceridwen, floating like a ghost from the Divinity School. ‘You are seeing the twilight of a race,’ she said. Tears glistened in her eyes.

And as if in answer to her words, the first of the Tuatha De Danann fell. A flurrying cloud of golden moths soared up to meet the falling snow from the place where his body had been sundered by a Lament-Brood axe. In that instant, Hunter knew that he had been fooling himself. However great the Tuatha De Danann were, they were just a handful against a multitude, and like the rocks on a beach they would slowly be eroded by the pounding waves.

Laura darted forward and retrieved the sword dropped by the departed god. She offered it to Hunter. ‘A going-away present,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘Use it wisely.’

Hunter gripped it tightly, enjoying the way it appeared to sing in his hands. ‘Get set,’ he shouted.

‘There’s just too damn many of them,’ Mallory said bitterly.

Another of the gods fell in a burst of golden wings. Caitlin removed one of the axes fastened to her back. A chill ran through Hunter as he saw the odd cast of her face: the Morrigan was preparing for battle.

‘Since the first glimmer of light in the universe, my people have been bound into the heart of Existence,’ Ceridwen continued in a low, mournful tone that oddly rose above the sound of battle. ‘We thought we would always be here, always standing proud with a view across the many lands. But now our age is coming to an end.’

‘You don’t have to die here,’ Hunter said.

Ceridwen shook her head. ‘We have chosen to make a stand with the Fragile Creatures, our kindred now. We will not let you down, whatever is to become of us. The Golden Ones will fight to the last.’

She bowed her head slightly, then returned to the Divinity School as if the battle had already ended.

At the far end of the street, beyond the looming bulk of the King of Insects, Hunter could just make out a disturbance, rapid movement, the flash of steel.

‘The Wild Hunt,’ Mallory said in awe.

Otherworldly horses, filled with power and ferocity, cut a swathe through the Lament-Brood. Their riders brought down scores of the enemy with long pikes affixed with sickle-shaped blades. Every now and then, strange red and white dogs ran up sheer walls before descending on the Lament-Brood with snapping jaws.

Though the Hunt fought ferociously in and out of the surging currents of the Lament-Brood, there were not enough of them to make any significant impact. Hunter felt his mouth grow dry, his palms sweaty, familiar signs that told him instinctively that battle was not far away.

Four more of the Tuatha De Danann fell on one edge of their defensive line, leaving a gap through which the Lament-Brood surged. Caitlin bounded forward in an instant with a blood-curdling yell and a flash of an axe, and the first of the Lament-Brood dropped to its knees, its head cleaved in two at the level of the top of its ears. Caitlin followed through with a backhand slash that took down another. And then she was fighting wildly, using not just the axe, but tearing at throats with nails and teeth if her strokes were constricted. Eyes were torn out, ribs dug open and snapped, jaws ripped off.

And then Mallory was at her side, the blazing blue flames of Llyrwyn adding a majestic counterpoint to the Morrigan’s horror of blood and death. Together they plugged the gap.

Yet there was only the briefest lull, for more gods fell at the other end of the line and Hunter threw himself into the fray to fight alongside Laura, who was using both a short sword and her own abilities to send nature rampant in the vicinity, bursting bodies with suddenly sprouting trees or tying others up in constricting ivy.

In the thick of it, there was no room for distraction; every iota of concentration and energy was given over to staying alive. Each opponent was only inches away from Hunter’s face, their eyes glassy, their flesh peeling back to reveal the bone beneath. And as each one fell, another took their place. Wounds multiplied across Hunter’s body.

Then an axe came crashing down towards him. Hunter barely avoided it, but the blow continued to fall and sheared Laura’s sword hand off at the wrist.

‘Don’t worry!’ she cried. ‘Don’t worry!’ She staggered back, clutching at the stump, her face drawn. But there was no blood.

Hunter had no chance to check whether she had crawled back to safety, for the Lament-Brood were instantly forcing their way through the gap in the line, driving the other defenders back.

‘Retreat! Regroup!’ Lugh yelled.

Hunter ran into the shadow of the Divinity School and only then did he see with dismay that a mere seven of the Tuatha De Danann remained. Lugh stood amongst them, heroically organising his dwindling band for their final stand, and though his face remained stoic and committed, Hunter knew what desperate thoughts must be raging through his head at the impending destruction of his race.

Lugh saw Hunter staring and said, ‘We stand and fall as brothers, our two peoples joined for all time. Equals. What do you say, Brother of Dragons?’

‘I say we’re proud to have you at our side, Lugh.’ Hunter’s attention was caught by Laura sitting against a wall.

‘Keep your eyes on the battle,’ she snapped. ‘I can look after myself.’

Though he couldn’t be sure, it appeared to Hunter that where her stump had been, something was growing.

Mallory was suddenly at his side. ‘This is madness. We’ve barely made a dent in the Lament-Brood and that big bastard is still waiting there, untouched. If he’s directing them, we should try to take him out.’

‘I agree,’ Hunter said. ‘But how do you propose we get through that lot?’

The next wave of Lament-Brood reached them a second later. The defenders fought furiously, but their numbers were too few. They were driven back and back, until they were pressed against the ancient brick walls. Hunter knew the signs: they were minutes from being overrun.

Another of the Tuatha De Danann fell, and then another, as Hunter yelled, ‘We can’t hold the position! Get inside the building and barricade the doors!’

But they were already too hemmed in to escape to the Divinity School’s entrance. While striking out with his sword, Lugh turned to Hunter and said, ‘Get set, Brother of Dragons. The Golden Ones will buy you time.’

Hunter knew what he meant, and felt a wave of sadness wash over him. But there was no time to consider it or even to acknowledge Lugh’s final act of sacrifice. While Hunter fought for his life against two of the Lament-Brood, Lugh drove forward with his remaining men, apparently towards the King of Insects. The Lament-Brood instantly turned all their attention on the gods.

Lugh led his men into the heart of the surging mass. There was no possible escape; blows were raining in from every side.

With Caitlin fighting a frenzied rearguard action, Hunter led Mallory and Laura through the open door of the Divinity School. Once inside, Hunter turned to look back. Golden moths were glowing amongst the snowflakes.

But Lugh fought on alone, not relenting in his determination to repel the attackers, until there was a bright flash like the sun coming up on a glorious day. When the light cleared, he was gone.