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Dante smiles, and rubs his back, which has begun to ache again.

'We are going to light a fire, Mr Miller. A big fire.'

CHAPTER FORTY

Behind stacks of Doritos and screenwash in the kiosk, the inquisitive and suspicious face of a uniformed attendant watches the grubby, bruised youth with long hair filling his Land Rover with explosive fuel on the forecourt of the garage opposite the West Port arch.

The smell of petrol is beginning to make Dante dizzy. When he began his preparations he enjoyed the first whiff of 'four star', but now, as the pale liquid sloshes from the nozzle of the pump into the eighth gallon drum he's filled, it makes him feel faint. All of the containers are made from red plastic, and he's collected four of them over the years he's been driving the War Wagon, which often runs dry, and bought an additional four from the garage shop. After filling the last one to the brim, he stacks the containers in the Land Rover to one side of the cabin's dusty floor. As he arranges the gallon cans to minimise their movement in the metal cabin, he thinks of the flat leased to him through Eliot. Ben Carter lived there. Why didn't Arthur tell him? He and Harry must have known. And that is the reason the police officers were uncomfortable when they took his address. No penny of rent has been paid since he's been there, he is clueless about the owner and, if Eliot has taken his own life, will inquiries be made about its present occupant? What does he do with the key? The two bedrooms are still filled with guitars, amplifiers and black bin bags containing clothes. If he doesn't make it through the night, where will it all end up? Will the remnants of his and Tom's lives be stored in a police lock-up while Johnny Law scratch their heads looking for next of kin? Perhaps Imogen's baby will inherit it, and wonder for the rest of its life what the mysterious father and his best friend were doing up in Scotland when they both disappeared.

His thoughts mingle with the petrol fumes. He leans against the Land Rover, weak in the legs. Anything suggesting finality makes him unsteady on his feet. It won't be a good end. Not at the hands of that thing. It is enough to make a man turn and run for the hills. 'Fuck it,' Dante says, his pale face unrecognisable when he sees it reflected back at him in the Land Rover's windscreen. He has to stay strong. Things were decided the night before; there is no room for doubt now. Hesitation will be their undoing. And who knows, he has to remind himself, there is a chance, slim, but a chance all the same, that he and Hart can make a difference tonight. Maybe after it all there will be time to grieve for Tom and to think of what Eliot has done, and to consider all that has happened to him and around him in the town: maybe every minute for the rest of his life if he manages to leaves St Andrews alive. But until that time, if indeed he ever lives to see it, he has to be strong.

As he pays up at the garage, he makes a joke to the assistant about Land Rover fuel economy. 'Got two fuel tanks, you know. Gets real thirsty,' he says in a daze, because he feels he has to say something to the plump woman in a green overall behind the till, who has watched him closely since he pulled on to the forecourt. She says nothing and stares at his scabbed lips and his swollen, unshaven jaw. Even though the worst of the agony is over, his back still hurts and half of his mouth has stayed numb. At least the painkillers given to him at the Memorial Hospital enable him to keep moving; his blessings are few, but that one has to be counted.

'Adios,' he mutters, and then walks back to the Land Rover. After opening the side windows and pulling his scarf over his nose and mouth, he pushes the ignition button and the War Wagon rumbles into life. On the short journey back to a parking space on Grey Friars Street a stream of salty air whistles through the cabin and helps to clear his head of petrol.

St Andrews is enshrouded in gloom. The sky appears lower than ever and it is still grey, the sea choppy, and rain never far away. A blue sky would have been preferable on his last day alive. He closes his eyes. To remind himself of the hope he felt the night before, he thinks of Hart Miller. They drank and laughed in a strange kind of healing process. Both of them were frightened out of their wits and, independently, had nearly gone insane from the thought of facing a gruesome death alone. But in the strange camaraderie shared by the desperate they immediately came together, raising each other's morale and identifying a common goaclass="underline" the destruction of the coven.

He let Hart talk until dawn, and wished he'd known him for longer. The American was full of good stories and was a veritable encyclopaedia on superstition, psychic phenomena and tribal magic.

But most importantly, Hart filled in most of his blanks about what they were about to confront. If, indeed, Beth played host to a spirit, it was very old. Once human and a beautiful woman, over the last five hundred years it had distilled itself into pure and unrepentant evil, managing to claw its way back into the physical world. But the other thing, the Brown Man of legend, as Hart called it, could only be considered with the imagination. 'Throw out your notions about reality,' Hart warned. 'Forget time. It's been existing somewhere else for longer than we can comprehend. Say another place, governed by different laws. Called by different names. Once worshipped as a god. And then forgotten until somebody created a gap, where the walls are thinnest between that place and this. Like right here in this part of the world, where a concentration of someone like Eliot's knowledge will produce results. If the situation is right and the right receptors are in place, of course, like with the students Eliot picked. Maybe it's the weather too, or the alignment of the planets, or a concentration of what we know as psychic energy in this particular locale, I don't honestly know, but it's come back and it's brought others with it. Followers or disciples trapped with it from its last manifestation. Those banished with it, maybe. And this is a kind of judgement day that no one would expect or believe in. This Dies Irae. It's revenge and the bloody reinstatement of an old order. An ancient power. It's our sick privilege to be aware of it and to try and stop it.'

Through the long night of planning and replanning, Dante found it easy to empathise with Hart. They'd both scratched around and never found a lucrative role in life. Hart was a loner and a dreamer just like him. Hart chased phantoms and myths through jungles, while he played in bands and developed concept albums. Freaks on the edge of an abyss.

But it is better this way, Dante supposes. It has been easier for them to accept the impossible and do the unthinkable. They have no responsibilities and few ties. Hart's dad is still alive, but he's nursed his son through malaria attacks twice, and probably expects the worst every time his only child loses himself in a steaming forest looking for night terrors. 'We're the chosen ones, buddy,' he told Hart. 'And don't go expecting free drinks if we actually crawl out alive.'

But something about Hart troubles him. His capacity for indecision seems at cross-purposes with what Dante has accepted as an inevitable course of action. Can he count on the stranger? The whisky talk and back-slapping could be bluster. His sudden appearance as an ally has given the American a temporary release from the worst of his fear, but the amount of alcohol Hart drinks worries Dante. Empty whisky bottles line nearly every flat service in the kitchen, and two large bin bags full of empty beer cans are slumped against the cooker. He begins to doubt whether the American anthropologist is ever sober. But after his years in the field, studying night terrors, Dante finds himself unable to be too hard in his judgement. And drunk or sober, Hart is all he has.