It fell silent. Shavi waited.
‘The Fabulous Beast sleeps beneath the Garden of Eden.’
Shavi continued to wait, but it was clear the spirit-form was not going to volunteer any more information. But that is meaningless … The Garden of Eden does not exist.’
‘I have answered your questions, Brother of Dragons, and now I demand my price.’
‘But—’
Shavi’s protestations died in his throat. The spirit-form rushed from the hole in the air with outstretched grasping hands.
4
The howl of pain echoed across the Abbey grounds. Laura and the Bone Inspector rushed across the graveyard to find Shavi sprawled on the grass. Laura turned him over. His hands were clutched to his face and when Laura pulled them away she recoiled in horror. Shavi’s left eye had been torn out leaving a blood-encrusted, gaping socket.
5
After detouring to a costume shop in East London, Shavi had a black leather eye patch covering the empty orbit. ‘Strangely, it no longer hurts,’ he said as he gingerly probed around his cheekbone.
‘Good. So you’re ready to answer some straight questions,’ Laura said sharply from the driver’s seat. ‘You gave up your eye on purpose? Just to get a few answers?’
‘I did not know that would be the price.’
‘Then you’re more of an idiot than I thought,’ the Bone Inspector growled. You think they’re going to take something that’s not important?’
Shavi was surprised by how hard Laura had taken his sacrifice. She had already gone through disbelief, tears and finally had arrived at a cold, hard anger that currently was directed at him.
‘I think the eye patch from the costume shop is quite dashing,’ he said in an attempt to defuse the tension. It didn’t work.
Laura pulled the van over with a screech of tyres. ‘Is this what it’s going to be like, then? You give up an eye. I donate an ovary. You lose a leg. I hack off an arm. Is that it? Because if it is, I don’t want it.’
‘The burger bar is better?’
‘Yes, it is. Let somebody else do this stuff. We can go back to having fun.’
‘There is no one else.’
‘You two shut up.’ The Bone Inspector glared at them. ‘Here’s how it is: you do this or the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders cuts you – and me – out of reality. Gone. Forgotten. Never existed.’ He turned to Shavi. ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’
Shavi nodded.
‘Now find this Ruth Gallagher and maybe you’ll make a bigger spark. And then you find the other two, and then maybe we’ll discover what’s happened to the world and what the Enemy wants.’
They’d already tried a number of care homes near London’s bridges after consulting the Yellow Pages and the A-Z. There was only one left.
‘That’s it,’ Laura said nodding to a large, old house. ‘I hope she’s got more sense than you or we really are fucked in the head.’
6
Ruth felt as if she was waking from a long, deep sleep. Her mind was sluggish, but she was sure clarity lay just on the other side of the fog. Her dream of the owl-man had set something in motion, but she was not yet sure what it was or how it would turn out. The first manifestation of her new state was that she had called in sick to work, and the elation she felt when she put down the phone made her think she should give up her job completely. If she couldn’t afford the flat, she could always move out of the city.
Her phone rang. It was Rourke. ‘I just tried you at work—’
‘I called in sick.’
‘Is that wise?’
Ruth bristled. She wondered why she had put up with Rourke’s claustrophobic attentions for so long.
‘I thought I might drop round to see you,’ he continued.
‘No,’ she said firmly.
‘We could go for lunch?’
‘I’ve got things to do. I’ll call you later.’ Ruth hung up quickly. She realised that in the past he’d always managed to talk her round when she tried to hold him at bay. Was she really that weak?
A noise in the bedroom. Ruth felt a familiar shiver, but this time she didn’t shy away from it.
The bedroom was still. Her bedroom door was ajar. Before she could investigate further, she was drawn to the window by a magnetic sense that someone desperately needed to speak to her.
In the street outside stood the giant she’d encountered on the Underground. He was looking up at her window with an expression of abject concern. When he saw her, he motioned furiously for her to join him. Ruth was surprised to realise she felt no sense of threat. Away from the shadows of the Tube tunnel, the giant appeared benign. Every now and then he glanced from side to side. Ruth knew obliquely that he was watching for the spiders. At that moment, not really knowing why, she decided she would go to him.