Vaneclaw came to stand with Hannah. They leaned forwards together, trying to see if there was anything in the shadows.
Aunt Zo and Sniveldash looked at each other. ‘I like your hair,’ the pebble said.
‘Thanks.’
‘Shh,’ Vaneclaw hissed.
‘I’m scared,’ Hannah said. ‘Where’s the Devil, anyway? Shouldn’t he be helping us?’
‘Not sure what occurred with him, and to be honest with you,’ the imp said, eyeing the trees cautiously, ‘you’re better off without him at this stage. I yield to no one in my respect for the big man, but bear in mind he is in fact the Father of All Lies. As such, his counsel can be misleading.’
‘But this is his place!’
‘Well, yes and no, as it happens. He can lay paths in here but he can’t actually make you do things.’
Aunt Zo caught her breath. Deep in the darkness between the trees, she’d seen a figure. ‘Someone’s here,’ she whispered.
‘Was it the chef?’
‘No. It looked like it was dressed all in black.’
‘Ooh, that’s not good,’ Vaneclaw muttered. ‘Wasn’t wearing a pointy hat, was it?’
‘I think so. Oh God – there’s another one.’
Hannah could see them now, and there were more than two. At first you weren’t sure if they were different to the other shadows. They felt like the emptiness in the last drawer you check when you’ve been searching for something you loved but which is now lost. They were like the silence that falls when you give someone a chance to reassure you that everything’s going to be OK, and they still love you, but instead they hesitate. Like that all the time, permanently, and forever.
There were six of them. No, seven. They were moving now, like a pack of animals. ‘Watchers,’ Vaneclaw said dismally.
Eight. Nine.
Hannah blinked. ‘The Watchers are real?’
Ten. Eleven.
‘Yes. My advice is we run away, very fast. Snivel – can we count on you?’
‘Always.’
‘Cheers, mate,’ the imp said, and tossed the pebble on to the forest floor between them and the tattered shadows hovering between the trees. He turned to Hannah and Zo. ‘Run. Now. Imagine nearly a dozen Fallen Angels are right behind you.’
‘Will that help?’
‘Might do. Also, it happens to be true.’
And so again they were running, crashing through the trees and darkness that seemed to be tugging at them as they passed.
Hannah glanced back and saw the pebble spinning on the ground, causing something to happen around it. The air went glassy. It looked sharp. It seemed like it would cut anything that came near it, but as though the wounds would be nowhere that you could see.
‘What’s it doing?’ she gasped to Vaneclaw, who was sprinting alongside her.
‘What he does best. He’s well harsh at it, too, but those things are miles out of his league. They’re out of everyone’s league. If they come after us … it’s bigly un-good.’
Hannah started running even faster.
Aunt Zo was ahead, trying to keep an even pace and to avoid twisting her ankle on the rocky ground, and at the same time fighting an impulse that horrified her – namely to run as fast as she possibly could and worry later about what happened to everyone else. She knew she couldn’t do that, but she wouldn’t have been human if the idea hadn’t occurred to her. She too risked a glance back, and was bewildered to see the pebble – now spinning so quickly it had become a blur – being joined by something that jumped down out of the trees.
It looked like a squirrel. One of those black ones, with the tufty ears. It landed next to the pebble and stood on hind legs, holding its paws up in front.
Then it opened its little mouth and made a sound like a storm cloud rolling over in its sleep, a deep boom that seemed to shake your bones from the inside.
‘Blimey,’ Vaneclaw said, very unnerved. ‘It’s all kicking off. Faster, people.’
And faster and faster they went through the trees but it was hard to keep going as the ground started to thump and shudder and cracks of jagged black lightning shot between the trees from the conflict behind them, turning everything they touched to ash and blood.
‘There’s something up ahead,’ Aunt Zo panted.
Hannah could barely see her now, it was so dark. ‘What?’
‘A light of some kind.’
‘Vaneclaw, what is it?’
‘Dunno,’ the imp gasped. ‘But we’d be better off spending the night up Beelzebub’s arse than stuck out here with that going on behind us. Head for the light, whatever it is. Quick as you like.’
And they ran, and for a while it seemed as if the light ahead wouldn’t get any closer, which gave Zo a chance to hope the imp really was as stupid as everyone said and this was a dream – or nightmare – after all.
But finally they started to gain on it, and Hannah shouted, ‘That’s my house!’
Zo saw she was right. Inexplicably, non-dream though this allegedly was, her niece’s house was ahead in the forest, lights blazing. That had to be a good thing, surely.
A very, very loud noise came from the forest behind, a sound that could mean nothing but destruction. It was the kind of rupturing crack a bad planet might make in the moments before splitting apart to let all the dead babies out.
Hannah found speed she’d never realized her legs were capable of, even managing to draw level with Aunt Zo, whose lungs were giving out on her again, and then they were only yards away from the house – her house. She sprinted for the door, hand outstretched, but stopped so abruptly that she skidded in the leaves.
‘Why aren’t you going in?’ Zo asked. ‘Open the door!’
The imp was trying to see what was going on behind them in the forest. ‘Yes. Seriously, love, it’s getting well out of hand back there. Open the door.’
‘But will it be safe?’ Hannah asked. ‘Will it be my actual house? The restaurant we were in wasn’t real.’
‘Yeah, it was. You was just seeing it from behind.’
Hannah looked at the windows of her house, glowing yellow and warm. ‘But what’s the Behind going to be like in there?’
‘Dunno, love. But if the Fallen get one tince more fractious, it’s game over. There’s a lot of posturing and push-and-shove with that lot, but sooner or later one of them will genuinely lose his rag and the universe will have a new black hole. You do not want to be in the middle of that action, trust me.’
Still Hannah hesitated. Another dull boom came from behind. A beat later, a hundred trees burst into flame.
‘If your mom’s going to be anywhere,’ Aunt Zo said gently, ‘it’ll be in here, don’t you think?’
Hannah didn’t know what to think. But home is home is home.
She opened the door.