"So can you stop me from being thirsty?" he asked, shaking his head at the idea that he was talking to himself.

We have to go, Natasha whispered, cool psychic fingers stroking across the insides of his mind. They were exploring there—he suddenly realised that, wondered why he had not felt it before—touching places that were dark to him, hidden ideas and memories long since consigned to the past.

"What are you– ?"

We have to go, Daddy! Mister Wolf is up, the bad man is awake, and he'll be coming for us already!

"I threw his gun," Tom gasped. The nausea had given way to an intense tiredness. Reality was more distant than ever. The only thing that kept him awake was the dead girl's voice in his head.

He's a killer. He'll have more than one.

"Don't call me Daddy," Tom said. Natasha did not answer, and he pushed her across the ground toward the fence. The chains caught on ferns and trailing stems, and he pushed harder, hands flat against the firmness of her mummified skin. He dug in his toes, shoved, kicked, and eventually the body and chains slid down into the crawl space, sliding against the slick soil and passing underneath the fence. Tom followed, one hand held out ahead of him to push Natasha through. It took only a few seconds to struggle to the other side and he stood immediately, picked up the bundle and stumbled back to the road.

The girl was silent, and her presence had retreated from his mind. He thought that maybe she was asleep, or whatever it is dead things do. He wanted to continue questioning her about Steven, but there would be plenty of time later. For now he was content to struggle through his exhaustion, welcome the madness that enveloped him—I'm at home in bed, the doctor's there, I'm drugged up, I'm dreaming, tasting and smelling and knowing things that can't be real, but dreaming nonetheless—and make his way back to his car.

When Tom arrived at the vehicle he saw Mister Wolf's Jeep parked a hundred yards farther along the road. Too tired to think straight, he did not even consider trying to disable it, perhaps by slashing the tires or ripping wires or pipes from the engine. It was simply there, ready to follow him, and that was how he perceived it.

Later, the possibility of that missed chance would haunt him. It could so easily have changed the heartache that was to follow. And later still, he would begin to wonder exactly where the dead child Natasha had been at that moment, when everything could have changed.

Tom put the body in the boot, collapsed into his car and drove away.

Cole lay in the darkened streets of his mind, mugged, attacked, unconscious, and the voice was coming from very far away.

Fuck you, Mister Wolf.

He twitched, feeling the damp ground beneath him. The voice echoed throughout the subterranean world of his mind, filling that space but only leaking out from a few badly sealed openings. Manholes that did not sit quite straight in their frames, perhaps. Old, rotted doors opening onto unused basements, which themselves held steel doors rusted open, leading down into darker places where forgotten memories and old guilt dwelled. She was calling him from far away, but still he heard.

We're leaving now, Wolfboy. You stupid shit. Call yourself a soldier.

Cole shifted, and the whole substructure of his mind moved with him. It flexed to allow the words entry and then clamped shut behind them. If he entertained those echoes they would become true. He could hear, but he did not have to listen.

And there was something else behind the words. A slippery intent, an unwanted invitation. Burying her voice away could not hide the way in which the words were spoken. Mocking. Scathing. Even deep in unconsciousness Cole knew that he had to follow the girl, and he knew that she knew.

He slowly began to surface. The cool pavement beneath him changed into the soft damp ground of the Plain. The dark building beside him turned into the rock from which Roberts had ambushed him, dropping the girl wrapped in chains on his head. As his unconscious underground receded and hid itself away, Cole heard the voice again, dulled by distance instead of the divisions of his mind.

Goodbye! Goodbye, fucker!

Cole pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. The world swayed and threatened to tip him off. His head ached like a bastard, and there was a patch of dried blood above his ear, tight in his hair and crackling as he flexed his scalp. He touched it, feeling around the edges for any telltale softness. Painful, sore, and he would have a headache for days, but he thought he had escaped lightly.

Escaped.

"Little bitch!" he said. "Oh shit, how could I have been so stupid!"

The Plain was utterly silent at night. Even the occasional breeze gave little more than a sigh, and any animals were stealthily hunting for food. Cole cursed, winced at the thud of pain in his head, and heard a car starting up in the direction of the road.

Roberts. And he had Natasha with him, and they were leaving. Natasha—a berserker as mad and vicious as any—was leaving Salisbury Plain for the first time in ten years. And Cole knew where she would be going. She would take Roberts, lure him ever onward until she had what she wanted: her kin around her, and a chance to live again.

He did not waste any time looking for his gun. He had another in the Jeep and time, suddenly, was something that had taken solid control of his life. He stood, swayed, but urgency drove his pain down and fear gave balance.

"I'm coming for you, you little bitch," he said to the dark. Nothing answered, but Cole had a sense that his words were heard. They were heard very well indeed.

Chapter Five

After half an hour of driving Tom had to pull over. He had begun to shake and he could not stop. He tried breathing deeply, but that only made his breath stutter, which in turn encouraged his shaking even more. He turned off the engine and reclined his seat, crossing his hands in his lap, hoping that he would calm down soon enough. The shaking was exhausting.

He was alone. Already he was wondering what he had put into the car boot. A dead girl wrapped in chains? Really? Or perhaps only a bundle of twigs and grass?

Natasha was silent on the matter. Tom's mind jumped and danced with his body, slipping from belief to disbelief, terror to confusion. It skitted from reality to madness as well, though Tom did not know which was which. His feet knocked against the pedals and his hands jumped in his lap, knuckles rattling against the door on one side and the gear level on the other. He groaned, begged for it to end, but nobody was listening.

It took ten minutes for the shaking to die down. He supposed it could be shock. However much he tried to deny what had happened, he had grave dirt beneath his fingernails. And whenever he doubted he had heard a voice in his mind, the memory returned of the way it felt when Natasha was there. The intrusion was gentle yet definite, and when she withdrew … he felt so alone. Abandoned. Like a body buried alive, destined to spend eternity underground with only the true dead for company.

He suddenly remembered the man who had been chasing him, Mister Wolf, and he knew that the chase was still on. Tom had been shot at tonight! That in itself was almost beyond belief.

He started the car and pulled away. He was still shaking, but it was little more than a hangover shake now. He was used to those.

The headlights carved a tunnel of light through the darkness, throwing back occasional reflections from pairs of eyes hiding away in the hedgerows. Road kill, Tom thought, and the word sent a shiver through him.

His thoughts turned to Jo and Steven. Everything happening now was all because of his love for them. Natasha's suggestion that Steven could still be alive pounded at his mind, rivaling the pain from the back of his head. It drove him on. The possibility had, he supposed, enabled him to do what he had just done. He had come to the Plain hoping to find out where Steven was buried, and instead he had been told that he may not be dead at all. How trustworthy his source, he could not tell, whether it really was a living-dead girl from out of the ground, or his own mad hallucination. But the idea was all that concerned him for now. Exploring it would come later, when he arrived back at the cottage and opened the car boot. If he found Natasha in there, he could ask her the dozens of questions presenting themselves to him right now. If there was nothing but a pile of twigs, then he would have to question himself.