‘It’s what it calls itself.’
‘Oh, Jonah, we have so much to talk about.’
‘Through there,’ he said, pointing behind her.
‘No.’ She was loading a fresh bolt into the crossbow.
‘Yes!’ They had to leave here, because the freak had revealed himself to both of them.
‘No, Jonah. No way. They’re close.’ She looked behind her and, though he could see no shadows moving through there, Jonah could see that her fear was very real.
‘Who?’
She pointed her crossbow at the first fury that had come through and started all this. ‘Like that,’ she said. ‘Hundreds.’
‘Oh.’ Jonah stepped closer to her. She smelled strange, but she was still his Holly.
‘Is there anywhere safe?’ she asked softly.
‘I don’t think so.’
Holly’s face fell. She leaned against Jonah, hugging him tight.
‘Oh, Jonah, what have we done?’
He had a thousand questions for her – about the crossbow, her clothes, the smell, her knowledge, the things through there, what she had seen, what she had heard . . . But one most of all.
‘The Inquisitor,’ he said.
‘Drake mentioned it.’
‘Drake?’
Holly pulled back, and her slight smile shocked him. ‘In a way, he’s their version of you.’
Jonah froze. ‘Holly . . .’
There were figures moving behind her, through the breach. The darkness throbbed and shifted, a pulsing riot of shadow that was drawing closer.
‘Might be the guards,’ Holly said, but there was doubt in her voice.
‘Guards?’
Holly concentrated, peering through the breach, turning her head slightly left and right. She lifted the crossbow again, and it seemed such an unconscious gesture that Jonah wondered how much she had changed. When she’d gone through she had been a scientist, now . . . now she looked like someone out of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not the guards. Don’t know how time changes when . . .’ She grabbed Jonah’s arm and started for the door. ‘We have to get out of Control and lock it up, tight.’ She looked around the large room, and he knew what she was searching for.
‘It’ll come again,’ he said. ‘But . . . you hit it, and it went?’
‘I’m sure the bolt got it in the shoulder,’ Holly said. She shook her head, frowned. ‘Maybe it was a caster.’
‘Caster?’
‘Furies that don’t move, just observe. They watch through them.’
‘You know about them?’
‘Oh, yeah. Come on. Out of here, then we’ve got some catching-up to do.’
The breach was moving now, and through the hole between the two worlds Jonah could see limbs and shuffling bodies.
‘Power’s off all over?’ Holly asked.
‘And communications.’
‘You’re alone down here?’
Jonah didn’t answer that, and the image of the Inquisitor rose up again.
Holly grabbed Jonah’s arm and pulled him up the stepped ramp. They closed Control’s doors and set about piling the furniture against them again. They gathered more items from the storeroom close to the staircase – several cots to prop against the corridor’s opposite wall, filing cabinets, and more chairs.
‘This won’t hold for ever,’ Holly said.