"I know how you're feeling," he whispered as he struggled onward. Though Natasha did not answer, he felt her listening. "I lost my son. And even though I don't think he was in that hole, he's still been lost to us for ten years."

My family are lost and dead.

"I don't know what you are. You pretend to know about Steven, but you can't. You've been down there … so you say. How can you know?"

We'll talk more later, Natasha said. But if Mister Wolf catches us, time will stop. For both of us. I'm very scared.

"I am too." Tom was not sure whether it was the answer the little girl wanted—Little girl? She's a dead fucking bundle, a bag of bones, and it's your own madness driving you to do this—but it was all he could give her right now. The truth. He was scared, and confused, and close to exhaustion.

Tom ran. Not because of that gunshot or the shadow of the man he had seen climbing the unclimbable fence, but because of the seed of hope that had been planted. The hope that Steven may yet be alive. Small and unlikely though this seed was, it fueled whatever madness had taken him and drove him on.

Here, the voice of the girl said. Behind this rock. Climb up and wait on top.

"You see it?"

I see through you. But now I'm cold … I'm cold! She sounded pained, tired and distant, and in Tom's mind her voice was very small, the echo of a child from far away.

"What is it?"

The bullet … still in me …

"What bullet?" The voice drifted away, and Tom felt something leave his mind.

He closed his eyes. He felt so alone, so cold and alone and abandoned, even though it had been his own choice to come out here into the wild. Now it was dark and Jo would be panicking. It was a sensitive time for both of them, and all sorts of thoughts would be running through her mind. She would have called the police, but they would probably not begin looking for Tom for some time. He seemed to remember from all the TV police shows he'd seen that an adult was not a missing person until they had been gone for three days, or five, or some other statutory time. He'd been away from Jo for maybe ten hours. Her panic would be hot and deep; he was her rock, and she was his. They held each other up. Had he now driven something between them that could never be removed?

He looked down at the shape at his feet, the mummified girl wrapped in chains, and the unreality of this bit at him again. He had come out here to look for Steven's grave—and yes, to dig it up, he supposed that had always been his intention. And now he was lost on the Plain, trying to hide from a man with a gun, and he had a child's body at his feet. Not a normal child, either. She was misshapen, mummified … and after so long, still there. A ghost? A monster? A vampire? Tom believed in none of them—not even ghosts, not even after Steven—but there was something happening in his head.

"I'm going mad," he whispered at the dark, but there was still the body. He could reach out and touch her leathery skin, feel the cool chains retaining the coldness of the grave. However mad he may be, he still owned his senses. The slickness of the metal, the smell of the pit, the sound of the nighttime breeze wandering across the Plain, carrying with it the echoes of ages—Footsteps?

Tom picked up the girl and hurried around the rock she had pointed out. His heart thumped, and the pursuing man would surely hear that, so he breathed again, opening his mouth slightly and breathing light and shallow.

Silence, but for the breeze. Tom eased himself up onto the rock and hunkered down low, suddenly realising that he would be offering his silhouette to anyone who cared to look. And if Mister Wolf caught them he would put Natasha back into the ground with her family, and probably take off her head to ensure that she was dead.

Tom almost laughed. Take her head off? This was madness, pure and simple. He ached to feel the heat of Jo's breast as he cried into her chest, the soothing hush of her voice, her hand stroking his head as she calmed him down and forgave him his madness, as she would always forgive everything. He stared into the growing dark and whispered for his wife. …

And then the footsteps came again, a few seconds of rapid padding before they stopped. Tom turned his head slowly to look the way he had come, and he saw a shadow kneeling beside a clump of ferns.

He'll see me. He'll look up and see me, and I'll feel the bullet before I hear the gunshot.

But Mister Wolf did not see. Instead he stood, hurried over to the large rock and knelt almost directly below Tom.

Tom raised himself onto his elbows and looked down. He saw the top of Mister Wolf's head, and the glint of metal in his hand. And without thinking, he knew what he had to do.

Natasha! But the girl remained silent. Sorry, Natasha. And then Tom shoved her body, chains and all, over the edge of the rock.

He heard a grunt from below, and then a longer groan.

Wolf wolf wolf wolf wolf! Natasha cried, and Tom winced at the terror in that little girl's voice. He stood and shuffled to the edge, trying to gauge the distance to the ground. He could make out the sprawled figure of Mister Wolf, and beside him the twisted shape of the body and chains. He jumped, landing beside the man, falling back and cracking his head against the rock. Even as Tom cried out in pain he heard another groan, a long, low sound that must mean that Mister Wolf was hurt, if not unconscious.

The gun! Tom thought. He remained leaning against the rock, feeling a dampness on the back of his head as blood seeped from his skull.

You're bleeding! Natasha said.

"It's not too bad," Tom said, and he thought, How does she know? It felt like a lot of blood, and in his madness would he really feel the pain? Even if his skull was cracked would his sudden lunacy let him know about that? He thought not. And yet in the same instant, he decided that it did not matter.

He pushed himself away from the rock. A breeze swept in across the moors and his back felt cold, sweat and blood cooling and sending a chill through his shoulders. He closed his eyes, remained on his feet, shook the dizziness away. When Mister Wolf groaned again Tom stepped forward. He had no idea what he was doing. Here was a soldier, a killer, armed and ready to shoot, and Tom was tackling him. He had never done anything like this in his life. The nearest he had come to any sort of trouble was helping a young lad being mugged outside a town centre pub in Newport, and even then the cowardly assailants had run off with a shouted "Fuck you" over their shoulders. Now he was standing over a prone man, looking for a gun.

He laughed. He could not help it. The sound was frightening in the darkness; the sound of a madman. But it also comforted Tom because it was a real voice, not a whisper in his head—Lots of blood!—and not the wild sound of the Plain at night, when anything could be abroad.

He stepped over the shadow of the fallen man, waiting for a hand to close around his ankle to trip him. But Mister Wolf groaned again, and Tom felt a smile in his head.

"He's not dead," Tom said.

Kill him, Natasha said. She still sounded weak and distant, and behind the words there was a vulnerability that was almost hypnotic.

"No!"

If you don't, Daddy, he'll wake up and—

"I'm not your daddy! And I'm not killing anyone."

Tom bent down beside the man and felt across the ground. His hand soon closed around the greasy metal of the pistol, still clasped in Mister Wolf's hand. He prised his fingers away from the stock. Even in unconsciousness the man held tight.

Kill him, Daddy.

"Shut up."

Natasha's voice withdrew from Tom's mind, and again that sense of loneliness washed over him. His head had started to ache from the impact. Blood ran cool down his neck and between his shoulder blades. As he stood with the gun in his hands, dizziness assailed him once more and he staggered back to the rock for support.