Silence. Then, in the heartbeats after the barely dressed man and woman had appeared in the midst of Evensong service, bombs started to rain down about the cathedral, and the congregation rose and fled for the exits to the shelters.
Catling and Grace faced each other in the dark heart of the labyrinth.
Catling was furious, so angry her eyes and clenched hands blurred in and out of focus with each breath she took.
She was shouting incoherently at Grace, who stood before her, wan and exhausted, but preternaturally calm.
None of the words that streamed from Catling’s mouth were intelligible, but that hardly mattered. Grace did not need intelligible words to understand what Catling was trying to vocalise.
“Stop it,” said Grace, “you don’t frighten me any more.”
Catling stopped mid-invective, her mouth remaining open for a heartbeat before she slowly closed it.
“You have only one weapon against me,” said Grace. “Only one effective weapon, and that is death. But to kill me you need to murder yourself as well, and, frankly, I don’t think you’re up to that right now.”
Catling’s eyes glowed an intense silver, then settled back to a seething blackness.
“Anything else you try to use against me,” said Grace, her voice now very quiet, “I will simply use to further my own power.” She slid her wrists out of the long sleeves of the coat, holding them up before Catling.
The diamond bands glowed and sparkled in the dark evil of their surroundings.
“Behold the agony you visited on me,” said Grace, “now celebrated and used. The hell you sent me to, understood and managed, and then utilised. Believe it, Catling—whatever you throw at me, short of your own death, I will likewise make use of to further my own power. Do you really want that? Do you really want me to grow much stronger?”
“What the fuck do you think you’re going to gain from this?” said Catling. “I will rain destruction on both land and Faerie! Do you want that?”
“Better that than you holding complete dominion over land and Faerie,” said Grace quietly.
“Really?” said Catling. “Come with me, then, and see what I can do.”
In the panic to get to shelters, several people had left their coats behind in a vestibule, and Jack grabbed them for himself and Noah as they fled St Paul’s via a small door on the south face of the cathedral.
“Sweet Jesus,” Jack muttered as he stared heavenward, “has Hitler sent the entire Luftwaffe?”
Noah hunched into her coat, standing as close to Jack as she could. “Not Hitler,” she muttered.
London was alight. The German bombers were dropping massive quantities of incendiaries intermixed with high explosive bombs, and wherever Jack and Noah looked, they could see fires glowing in rooftops and within the windows of buildings.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Jack said, pulling Noah forward.
“Jack—”
“I know. We’ll talk once we get out…Jesus Christ!” A huge blast from a warehouse not fifty yards away almost knocked them off their feet.
Jack slid an arm about Noah’s waist, pulling her towards the street. Ordinarily he would have used his power to get them out of there, but both he and Noah were exhausted from their exertions in the cathedral—he far more than her—and Jack thought that even trying to use their powers would probably result in more injury to themselves than if they attempted to flee through the burning buildings.
“Grace…” Noah said, trying ineffectually to pull herself from Jack’s grasp.
“Grace will have to look after herself for a time,” said Jack. “For now, our hands will be full enough trying to save our own lives.”
“Do you recognise this place, Grace?”
She shook her head, looking about. Catling had brought her to the top of a hill that appeared to be in the northern suburbs of London. The summit was gently rounded, and its perimeter was marked by a score or more of standing stones.
“This is Pen Hill,” said Catling, “as once it was. Now, of course, it is smothered in dull terrace-style housing and, so I believe, a murky little reservoir. But this is how it once was. One of the sacred Veiled Hills. Your mother had a fine time here, once.”
Grace did not comment.
“Do you recognise the standing stones, Grace?”
Again Grace did not comment.
“They’re Sidlesaghes. Been good friends to your mother over the years. Been important to her.”
“Don’t do it, Catling,” said Grace. She had now turned and was looking steadily at Catling, her face as calm as it had been in the dark heart of the cathedral.
“I want to impress upon you,” said Catling, “just how much I am going to make you pay for what you did in the cathedral.” Again, as it had in the dark heart of the labyrinth, Catling’s face suffused with anger, then blurred slightly. “I want your mother, and your lover, and all the Faerie besides, to know just how disappointed I am, and I want them to know it is your fault. You will get the blame for this, Grace! Yours will be the guilt!”
Again, Grace just looked steadily at Catling, which only increased Catling’s rage.
“I am going to murder them, Grace. What do you say to that, eh?”
“That it is something you will spend eternity regretting,” Grace said, “as it is something which will sadden me for the rest of my days, but I refuse to bear the blame or guilt for your deeds, Catling. Do what you will, but bear the blame entirely.”
Her astounding aura of calm had, if anything, deepened.
London had suffered some disastrous bombing raids since the start of the offensive, but this night would go down in history for the ferocity and destruction of the raid. Within days the press had labelled it the Second Great Fire of London.
But for this night, anyone caught up in it had only one thought.
Survival.
The high explosive bombs caused massive damage wherever they fell, but the true horror were the small and seemingly inoffensive incendiary bombs. About the length and diameter of a forearm, they fell in their thousands on rooftops and down chimneys and into gutters where they fizzed out a shower of molten sparks for several minutes. At almost one thousand degrees centigrade, those sparks set fire to anything flammable within several yards’ diameter.
The incendiary bombs were easy enough to put out. All one had to do was dump a bucket of sand on them and they would go out.
But there were not enough buckets of sand, nor enough people to dump them, for the hundreds of thousands of incendiary bombs that fell that night.
It was a calculated tactic on the Luftwaffe’s part. It was the Christmas weekend, a Sunday, and the City would have very few people about to fight the incendiary bombs. If ever the Germans wanted to burn central London to the ground, this would be the best night of the year on which to attempt it.
What they hadn’t counted on was additional support from a maddened Troy Game. Catling had been within a breath of completion—Jack had actually been going to complete her, not destroy her!—and had had her goal snatched from her at the last possible moment. She took what the German High Command sent, and made it immeasurably worse.
Catling wanted London, as well as Jack and Noah and all associated with them, to pay.
London burned.
When the firemen tried to pump water from fire hydrants, they discovered that the high explosive bombs had shattered most of the City’s water mains, and there was little to no water available.
When they tried to pump water from the Thames, they discovered a supernaturally low tide, and there was little to no water available from the river, either.
Within an hour of the bombers first appearing overhead, central London was ablaze.
Catling seethed. She twisted around and around in the centre of the ancient circle atop Pen Hill, her form moving so fast it blurred. Her arms were flung out, her head twisted back, and from her throat emerged a stream of noise so vile it appeared almost as if it would rend apart the very sky.
Grace stood to one side of her, looking not at Catling, but at the surrounding stones.
They were changing.
Cracks appeared in their base, then zigzagged up the face of the stones.
Grace was in touch enough now with her own power, both as a Darkwitch and a Mistress of the Labyrinth, to know what Catling was doing.
She was unwinding the Sidlesaghes’ existence.
“Don’t,” whispered Grace.
Catling only increased her efforts, and the stones began to crumble. As they did so, a great wailing filled the air, and Grace knew it was the death screams of the Sidlesaghes.
“Don’t,” Grace whispered again.
Your fault, came Catling’s whispered reply. This is your fault. If you hadn’t stopped Jack and Noah, then the Sidlesaghes would not now be being torn apart.