Laura tapped her head. ‘It’s a tattoo.’
The Bone Inspector smiled tightly. ‘He’s marked you. Given you his patronage.’ He jerked his thumb at Shavi. ‘This one here’s a seer … a shaman. You can tap into nature in all its power—’
Laura blanched.
‘You know, don’t you? You’re trying to pretend you don’t. Well, it doesn’t wash. The two of you have got a job to do, or everything goes to hell in a handcart.’
‘It already has,’ Laura snapped.
‘You know what? You’re right.’
His knowing smile was too much for Laura. She stormed out, knocking over a shopping bag that sent potatoes spilling across the café floor.
In the street she tried to laugh off the incident, but everything that had been said troubled her on some fundamental level. She weaved her way amongst the shoppers just in case the two of them followed her. She hadn’t gone far when someone grabbed her arm. She threw it off, expecting to see the old guy. It was Rourke.
‘Hello, darlin’,’ he said with a cheery grin. ‘Going somewhere in a hurry?’
Despite laughing off Shavi’s story, Laura’s blood ran cold. ‘You’re like a limpet, you are.’ She made to go, but Rourke caught her arm again.
‘You can’t be allowed to communicate with them.’ His tone had become almost mechanical. ‘You might wake further. The risk is too great.’ Nobody was paying any attention to them and Laura was strangely sure Rourke had made it that way. ‘There is no longer any choice.’
He clamped his hand over Laura’s mouth. She fought him, but he was too strong. The moment he touched her, her lips sensed the flesh on his palm moving as though something was squirming just beneath the skin. Then whatever was in there broke through. Small, hard objects forced against her lips, her teeth, prising them apart.
She couldn’t resist. As she opened her mouth, a mass of scurrying filled it to the brim, and Laura knew exactly what they were.
The scurrying continued down her throat and into her belly, hundreds of them, thousands. Although she wanted to vomit, she couldn’t. Finally the terror and the sickening sensation were too much and she blacked out.
7
Shavi was about to catch up with Laura when he saw Rourke attack. At first he thought one of the many shoppers would rush to Laura’s aid, but they all continued on their way, oblivious.
Rourke hauled the now-unconscious Laura down a side street. Shavi didn’t know what had been done to her, but he could see her mouth bulging and that her stomach was bloated.
The Bone Inspector caught up with him. ‘Now what?’ He watched as Laura was dragged away. ‘We can’t attack him head on.’
‘And we cannot let Rourke take her away.’ Shavi slipped into the side street and kept close to the wall, but Rourke appeared to have no comprehension that he might be followed. Shavi weighed his options.
His thoughts were interrupted by a strange sight. Rourke had dumped Laura to the pavement and was carving a pattern in the air in the shape of a doorway. Chillingly, the view through the defined shape now looked oddly fake, like painted scenery in a theatre. Shavi could see a brick wall, and a flyer, now unnervingly two-dimensional. Rourke gripped the upper righthand corner and peeled down. It looked as if he was removing a sheet of wallpaper. Behind it Shavi glimpsed something that his mind couldn’t comprehend, and after a few seconds of queasy swimming it settled on the closest approximation it could present to him: a structure in darkness, like scaffolding, perhaps, or the workings of some vast machine. But what disturbed Shavi the most was a hint of movement: something lived there, behind the surface of reality.
Following that troubling revelation came another: that Rourke was going to drag Laura out of reality completely. What awaited her was too frightening to contemplate. Shavi acted on instinct.
While Rourke was occupied with creating his exit, Shavi ran forward. All he knew was that he couldn’t abandon Laura, whatever the risk to himself. Rourke began to turn just as Shavi reached Laura. Shavi glimpsed Rourke’s face becoming aware of his presence, and then starting to unfold to reveal the spiders beneath.
Shavi grabbed Laura’s waist and there was a blue flash and a smell of burned iron. Whatever had happened, it had thrown Rourke several feet away, his face split wide open with long legs thrashing wildly out of it.
Laura had revived and, struggling to her knees, she retched violently. Her convulsions propelled spiders from her mouth, all of them dead. The flow appeared never-ending, but by the time Shavi had helped her to her feet she was only coughing up handfuls of the smaller ones.