Suddenly the corridor was filled with the most terrible sounds: jungle shrieks, haunted moans, insectile chittering and a low, chilling susurration. The prisoners had smelled the blood.
Hal was rooted by the sight for a second too long. Just as he was about to run back up the corridor, a small black shape bounded from the cell on to the chest of the still-twitching guard. At first, Hal thought it was a spider the size of a small dog, then some kind of lizard. Finally, he realised he was looking at an imp that would not have been out of place in a medieval wood-carving. It was the glossy black of crude oil and covered in gleaming scales. Its body had human proportions, but its head was oversized, like a baby’s. A pointed tail lashed back and forth.
‘Take that,’ the devil said with a swipe of razor-sharp talons, ‘for presumption. And that for stupidity. And this simply because it is my nature.’ The talons became a blur of rending and tearing.
And then the imp stopped, sniffed the air and turned its head in an oddly mechanical way towards Hal. Hal’s blood ran cold as the devil’s red eyes fell on him.
‘Aha!’ the imp said with jubilation. It sounded like a throaty old man. ‘Fresh meat.’
It leaped from the seeping corpse so fast that Hal couldn’t keep it in his vision. Bouncing off the walls and ceiling, it hit Hal full force in the stomach. He fell to the floor, winded, as the imp did a little mocking dance around him. Before Hal could lever himself up, the devil jumped to squat on his chest with surprising weight.
‘Now, now,’ it said, with a malicious grin, ‘no running before we exchange pleasantries.’ It hooked one talon in the corner of Hal’s mouth and pulled his lips into a grimace. The finger tasted gritty and vinegary. ‘A thin covering on fragile bone,’ the imp continued. ‘What a strange and ineffective design.’ But then it paused, puzzled, and sniffed the air over Hal’s face. ‘What is this?’ The imp grew oddly uneasy. ‘The stink of righteousness? The rank odour of life?’ It pressed its face close to Hal’s so that its burning red eyes filled Hal’s entire vision, its spoiled-meat breath nearly making him retch. ‘The Pendragon Spirit?’
Hal was too terrified to read anything in the imp’s manner at that moment, but later, on reflection, he would believe that he had seen a hint of fear.
A second later, the creature was wrenched off his chest. Four guards in ABC suits lifted the imp into the air before clamping around its neck a metal collar with an attached chain. The imp let out a high-pitched, agonised scream, thrashing wildly as if the very touch of the collar burned it.
As the guards dragged the imp back to its cell, the cacophony from the other cells grew even louder, the cumulative noise now tinged with fury and hatred. Hal pressed his hands over his ears and staggered to his feet to catch his breath. The imp’s cell door clanged shut, followed by several resounding thuds as the creature threw itself at the door.
The other occupants continued to rage until a strange sound reverberated from the far end of the corridor where Manning and Reid were being protected by other guards. It had the organic tone of a voice, but sounded to Hal something like a tolling bell. Immediately, whatever creatures lay behind the closed doors fell silent, and the quiet that followed was infinitely more disturbing.
Breathless and frightened, Hal stumbled out of Brasenose and into the High Street where two men were grunting and sweating as they attempted to fix the wheel of a cart. He was instantly hit by a wind sharp with the bite of winter. A flurry of snow stung his face. Puzzled, he looked up to see grey clouds now obscuring a sky that had been blue when he had entered the building. Snow in June? Even the final few things they had been counting on were fading away. Fastening his jacket, he turned into the icy gale and hurried towards Queen’s College.
Just after 6 a.m., he found Samantha buried behind a mound of paperwork in her tiny office in the Ministry of Intelligence. No one kept regular hours any more. Her repeated complaints about deadlines and a possible sacking fell on deaf ears and eventually Hal convinced her to take an early breakfast.
Shivering, they made their way to one of the pubs that opened before dawn for the market workers. At that time they’d be able to find a quiet corner away from the usual gossiping cliques from the Government offices.
‘I can’t believe this weather.’ Samantha sipped a herbal infusion, which everyone now drank instead of tea. ‘Everything’s gone mad.’
‘Everything went mad a long time ago,’ Hal replied.
Samantha caught his flat delivery and asked him what was wrong. Hal enjoyed the concern in her eyes. Cautiously, he related his meeting with the Caretaker and the mysterious transformation of Oxford.
‘I will report it,’ he said. ‘Soon.’
Samantha wasn’t listening. ‘“Something is coming”?’ she repeated hesitantly.
‘That’s what he said. But what I don’t get is, why did he tell me? It was as if he thought I could do something about it.’
‘Maybe you can.’
‘I’m a glorified librarian, Samantha. I’m barely any use in the job I do do. I’m not like Hunter-’
‘Stop going on about Hunter,’ Samantha said sharply.
‘The Caretaker was talking about the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons as if I had some way of contacting them. They need to be brought together, he said. But one of them has already fallen.’
‘Brothers and Sisters of what?’
‘You know — the Five who fought at the Fall.’
‘Oh. Right.’
‘They’ve been in all the recent intelligence reports. You should know that — it’s your department.’
‘You don’t think they actually let me read the files, do you? I have to look the other way while I stick them in a drawer.’
‘You’ve not heard Reid say anything?’ Hal drank his herbal brew, but wished he’d ordered a beer; he felt the urge to get completely drunk.
‘No, but then I’ve not been listening.’ She paused, stared at him curiously. ‘Do you want me to?’
‘You could lose your job-’
‘Do you want me to?’ she repeated.
Hal took a deep breath, then jumped straight in. ‘Only if you can find anything out without putting yourself at risk. I can’t believe I’m asking you to do this. Hunter doesn’t reckon I’ve broken a rule in my life-’
Samantha smacked his thigh so hard it stung, then laughed at his startled expression.
‘Sorry,’ he said, abashed.
‘Don’t make me do it again.’ She finished her drink. ‘I’d better get back. I’ll do what I can. Just don’t expect miracles.’
‘I never expect those,’ he said morosely. Then another thought struck him. ‘There was something else. You know all those cells in the high-security wing under Brasenose?’
‘Where they keep the prisoners?’
‘So they say.’
‘No prisoners?’
‘No human ones. I think they’ve captured a whole load of the things that came with the Fall. And they didn’t sound very happy.’
Samantha blanched. ‘God, if they got out…’
‘One of them did while I was there. Nearly killed me. But that’s not the point. It spoke to me. It said it could smell the Pendragon Spirit on me — does that mean anything to you?’
Samantha shook her head blankly.
‘I don’t know what’s going on any more,’ he said. ‘The only thing I can think of is King Arthur’s surname in the legends.’
‘King Arthur,’ she mused, before adding hesitantly, ‘Yesterday, Mister Reid asked me to pull some files. They all began with the codename Grail…’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Arthur Pendragon.’ Hal turned the words over thoughtfully. Then: ‘King Arthur… the Grail. It’s got to be a coincidence.’
‘In this day and age, you can’t rule anything out, Hal,’ Samantha said.
Halfway back from Somerset, Hunter had to order one of the men to render Mallory unconscious. The knight was as strong and potentially lethal as the General had intimated during the briefing. Once he’d fought his way past the pain from his broken ribs and realised that his girlfriend had been killed, he took out two men in as many seconds, one with a chop to the larynx, another with a punch that sent his victim the length of the helicopter. The blows were delivered with a cool equanimity, but Hunter could see the familiar ice in Mallory’s eyes. Every raw emotion the knight felt had been bound up and battened down to fuel his single-minded response. It was a look Hunter had seen in many a soldier in difficult circumstances. There would be no dealing with Mallory now; the knight would be like a bear-trap — get too close and you’d lose a limb, maybe an eye, possibly your life. And he’d never be satiated. He wouldn’t deal, wouldn’t help; they might as well just lock him up until it was all over.