10: Wildwood

WE DROVE BACK into Devon as the dawn mist was rising from the autumnal fields, and we reached the Wood Gate just as the first touch of sun turned it to gold. I parked up and sagged over the steering wheel. Michael had let me break the journey once at a service station where I’d been permitted to doze off for forty minutes – it was either that or I’d have fallen asleep behind the wheel. I’d been aware of the two men talking as I slept, but had registered none of the words.

The cool air that washed in when Michael opened his door brought me wide awake once more. It smelt of autumn, an inchoate sorrow and yearning.

‘Get out.’

I went round to open Ash’s door and help him down. In the meanwhile Michael opened the back of the car and retrieved the tiny maquette of his cage, which he pocketed. He looked us over with satisfaction. I shivered a little, and blamed the fact I’d left my coat in Miranda’s flat. Ash looked towards the wood, the set of his jaw betraying his tension.

‘First thing,’ said Michael, ‘is that you get rid of them.’ He was referring to the tribe of protesters who stood silently in array behind the gate. Their blank eyes watched us. Perhaps it was just the result of their scrutiny, but Grange Wood seemed to throb with awareness behind them.

‘I can’t just –’

‘Do it.’ The shape of the gun muzzle showed clearly against the taut fabric of Michael’s pocket.

With a sag of his shoulders Ash turned to the protestors. ‘Go down onto the bridle path,’ he said flatly. ‘Wait by the farm gate. Do nothing.’ We watched as, without a word, they turned obediently away and set off through the trees.

Michael settled himself against the front of his car and pulled the gun into plain view, resting it casually in both hands. ‘You’ll enjoy this bit I don’t doubt, Avril. I want you to untie his hands. Ash, get your clothes off.’

I exchanged a lingering glance with my fellow prisoner as I went up behind him, hoping that he might whisper me some vital instruction, but Ash’s eyes held no hope. The silk scarf was tightly knotted and I had to work at it for some moments. His fingers were cold when I brushed them. The two magi kept a steely watch on each other. Once he was free Ash undressed slowly, throwing each garment, as instructed, at Michael’s feet. And he in turn, keeping the gun carefully trained upon us, shed his own clothes, until both men were naked. Ash stood rubbing his wrists. I rammed my fists into my pockets, biting my lip. Some witless part of my mind that wasn’t concerned with the fact that Ash and I were at the mercy of a vengeful bastard with a deadly weapon and no conscience, was flipping cartwheels with glee at that sight and I couldn’t drag my eyes away. My two lovers, bollock-naked on the dewy grass, so much in common and so different. My heart was tying itself in knots. Ash looked pale gold in the diffuse light, Michael like he’d been drawn in black ink lines against the mist. Ash was my raspberries-and-cream lover, sweet and sharp and so irresistible that I wanted to gorge myself upon him. Michael was more like bitter chocolate – impossible to take in more than tiny quantities but with a taste that ravished the senses and kept me coming back for more.

‘Tie his hands again.’

I hesitated. The gun jerked.

‘As has been pointed out, I could use him in the wood, so I’m not set on killing him right now. But I will check the knots, Avril.’

There was no choice but to obey, though I wasn’t quite so cruel with the binding as he’d been. My fingers trembled. I wanted to press my face to the smooth skin of Ash’s back and feel his warmth, smell his sweetness.

‘Now get on your knees,’ Michael commanded, opening the other man’s knife.

Slowly, Ash knelt, and the long wet grass clasped his thighs. I put my hand on his hair and he turned his face to my palm. Even his lips felt cold.

‘Normally I’d be reluctant to resort to your crude blood-and-shit mechanics,’ Michael commented, approaching with the knife and Ash’s shirt. ‘But you’ve rather forced my hand, you two.’ He squatted and grinned wolfishly at the other man, clearly conscious of the striking picture they were presenting, bared to the golden meadow and the looming wood and the rising sun. ‘Takes us right back to the 60s, doesn’t it?’ Running the knife-point down the bound man’s inner arm, he selected the precise place and twisted the tip, indenting the skin over a narrow blue vein. ‘Except,’ he added with a sneer, ‘that you never left.’ Then he pushed the point home, deep. Blood began to run out at once – alarmingly quickly.

Ash drew in a sharp breath through his teeth. I felt sick.

Michael planted the knife in the earth at his side, making sure it was out of my reach. Then he laid the shirt to the wound, soaking up the blood. Ash leant away from him against my leg, pressing his face to my thigh. When the cloth was bright red and sodden Michael sat back and wiped it over his chest.

I couldn’t watch. I held Ash tightly and looked at my hands in his hair or at the grass or at the dark oak canopies bulking out above the mist or at the car that stood ticking as the engine cooled – anywhere but at Michael Deverick painting himself in his enemy’s blood. The world seemed to spin. I wondered if I should make a grab at the knife, but I couldn’t believe it would be successful and I knew Michael was ready for me. My mouth seemed filled with glue.

He was thorough. Every inch of his skin, front and back, got baptised, including face and hands and scalp and crotch. I saw it from the corner of my eye. Then he threw the red shirt at my feet. ‘Your turn, Avril.’

‘No.’ Ash sounded hoarse. ‘It’s not necessary.’

‘Afraid it is. She’s my guarantee you’re going to behave yourself, Ash.’

Ash hesitated. In the gap I grabbed the shirt and pressed it to the cut, ignoring the wetness under my hands as I tried to close the wound by pressure alone. He winced. ‘No. No need. I’ve already sealed her.’

‘Oh?’

‘Cunt and mouth and arse. On the first day of the waxing moon.’

‘Jesus.’ Michael sounded partly amused, partly scathing. ‘You fucking Neanderthal.’

‘What’s he done?’ I demanded.

Ash didn’t answer, so Michael spoke for him. ‘He marked you as his own for the duration of the month, Avril. He laid claim.’

I met Ash’s pain-filled gaze, sickened and hurt yet again, and asked, ‘D’you ever do anything without some creepy magical reason behind it?’

‘Avril … I thought we might have to run back here. I was trying to ensure you’d be safe.’

He’d screwed that one up then, I thought. But I held on tight to the wadding. ‘I just thought you wanted me,’ I whispered.

‘Do you doubt that?’

Michael cleared his throat. ‘Sorry to interrupt you sweet young things, but time is money. Get him shipshape, Avril. We have some walking to do.’ He turned away to the pile of Ash’s discarded clothing, which he began to put on. I nearly lost it then. He’d been a grisly red like a pantomime demon, but even as he stooped for the first garment I saw the blood streaks on his back fading into nothing, soaking into his skin.

He always was vain, I thought dizzily. Then he pulled on my old white jumper and my gut clenched in anger.

‘Avril,’ Ash whispered, recapturing my attention.

I took my own T-shirt off to make a bandage, twisting it and tying it tight around his arm. By the time I was done and sure there was no serious leakage, Michael was dressed in his stolen clothes, had thrown his own into the car and locked it and there was no sign of blood on him.

The three of us made a strange posse as we faced the wood. Michael looked so out of character in Ash’s cast-offs, with the rucksack hitched over one shoulder and those long trousers crumpled up around boots that were slightly too big for his feet, but possession of a gun does tend to mute criticism. I was shivering, only a Lycra sports bra between my chest and the damp breath of the morning. Ash was barefoot and naked but for his bandage and the scarf binding his hands at his back, though he tried to hold himself with grace. I had to help him over when we climbed the gate.

Grange Wood had changed; I felt it within the first few paces. No rooks flew up clamouring this time – in fact there was total silence from the birds that should have been bustling about the leaves all around us. The silence was thick, like another manifestation of the golden mist. I felt it pressing against my eardrums like a held breath and I cringed, sure that the exhalation would be an unbearable roar. The ground felt strangely taut beneath my feet, as if it had been heaved up by pressure from below, and the soles of my feet itched with discomfort.

‘Michael …’ I wanted to say that this was not a good idea, to ask whether he couldn’t feel the intent regard of the wood turned on us, but then I saw how pale he’d gone and knew I would be preaching to the choir. His jaw was set, his lips pressed into a narrow line, and he was looking about him with undisguised mistrust.

‘Lead on.’

Ash obeyed and we turned uphill towards the centre of the wood. He moved slowly, stumbling every once in a while; his tied hands impeded his balance and I think he’d lost enough blood to make him dizzy. I walked close behind him, ready to grab his arm if he really lost his footing, and Michael brought up the rear. Our feet stirred the leaf mould and with every step I felt the pulse of the wood beat up into my bones, filling my skull with its thick surge. A sweet farmyard aroma wafted around us then vanished as we began to climb.

Ash didn’t take the same route as the last time he’d led me to the Green Man, nor the one we’d come back by. I wondered if he was stalling for time or whether the routes themselves changed, but said nothing. My mouth had grown dry. Brambles caught at my trousers and I welcomed the clinging stab of the thorns in my skin as relief from the oppressive build-up of pressure all over my body. I wanted to scratch my nails down my arms and sides. I wanted to tug at my hair. I wanted to rub myself between the legs.

We’d been walking long enough and the incline was steep enough to have us all breathing hard when Michael, stubbing his boot against a root, lurched against me and grabbed at me to steady himself. The gun clipped my hip and his open hand slapped hard against my buttock. I stopped dead, paralysed by the shock waves. As Michael caught his breath his palm lingered where it had landed. He did not miss the fact that I didn’t shrug him off and I saw the rise of his eyebrows before I looked away again, flushing. ‘Still … needy?’ he enquired. ‘You’re unbelievable, Avril. How many men would it take to wear you out?’

I’d hardly have believed it myself, except that I knew what was going on; I’d felt it before. This time, though, it was much stronger. The pulse of the Green Man was throbbing in my blood, plumping tired tissues and making nerve endings itch.

‘He’s awake,’ said Ash, who’d turned to look at Michael’s hand fondling my arse. ‘He knows his book is here and he’s fighting his bonds. You’re out of your mind, Deverick. You can’t control him. You can’t even keep your mind on the job.’

Michael released me to run his hand over his crotch, squeezing what was already a notable bulge. His mouth quirked wickedly and he leant in to breathe in my ear, ‘Looks like I’ve got wood.’ Then the humour snapped out of his eyes and they became glittering sapphires once more. ‘Get a move on.’

It was warm now we were walking and the golden mist seemed more like steam. There were no trolls this time, no summer stags. Nothing dared stir in the wood, nothing but the power of the Green Man that bled through soil and rocks and bark and flesh: the power of green growing things and red running things and dark devouring things, all the power of a primeval world seeping out from that prison, sending the wood into panic. I saw trees that were only just turning yellow for autumn already brandishing bright green sprays of new leaves from the same twigs, and white blossom springing out on branches of Midland hawthorn eight months ahead of its true time, and I smelled the garlic reek of spring-flowering ramsons. It was a power that surged in me just as surely, making me wanted to dance, to run, to fight, but above all to open my legs to a thick hard cock. That’s what the life force is about after all. As a species and as individuals we will risk pain and ruin and death for the chance to fuck. We live to fuck. Now I was squirming with discomfort, and hiding it badly. My clit felt like an overripe berry swollen with juice and ready to burst.

Ash led us to a steep rocky defile, and I had to go ahead to help him balance, pulling him up the steepest bits. Weakened by blood loss his muscles felt cool under my hands, and as we got right to the top he swayed against me. Gasping, Ash and I struggled to steady ourselves. Our lips nearly met; our gazes did, and I saw him fighting to regain focus. I slipped my arms about his waist and our bodies brushed together. Though I was hot enough that my tanned skin was glazed, my nipples stood poking up against the Lycra that bound them, the rubbing of the fabric almost painful against those stiff points. He couldn’t push me away, not with his hands tied behind him. He couldn’t shield his crotch from me. I looked down between us, belly to belly.

Then suddenly he swayed, staggering in my arms, and I knew his legs were giving way. I backed him hurriedly against a tree trunk and for a moment it seemed to give him support, but then he slithered to his knees, head sagging. A crimson runnel had worked its way from under the bandage and was sliding down his inner arm.

‘Give me your belt!’ I demanded, turning to Michael who stood breathing hard at the top of the rise. He looked askance and I barely held on to my temper. ‘I need to tourniquet his arm!’

‘Come and get it then.’

Even though it meant coming right up in front of him I did, uncinching the webbing belt and drawing it out through the loops about his waist. The familiar scent of his aftershave made the skin on my neck prickle. Michael didn’t trouble to hide his amusement. He couldn’t have hidden his arousal if he’d wanted to; the thick cylinder of his erection was pressing up against the fabric of Ash’s stolen trousers. In my dizzy state it was nearly enough to distract me from my task and I hesitated, my fingers drawn involuntarily towards it. Michael hooked his hand in the front of my pants and pulled me up against him, hard. ‘Slut,’ he said.

‘Let me see to Ash,’ I whispered. My pulse was nearly choking me.

With a nod of his chin he let me go. I wobbled over to Ash, grateful for the chance to fall to my knees myself. Binding the cloth belt about his arm was a welcome task, forcing my trembling fingers back into use. Ash sat quietly, eyes shut and lips parted, his breath ragged. I stroked his face but got no reaction. When I stood again Michael was glowering at me and cradling his groin.

‘This is crazy. I can’t even think straight. Avril, get your pants down; I’m going to have to make use of that beautiful arse of yours.’

I stared.

Michael’s mocking gaze flicked sideways. ‘You don’t mind, do you, Ash? Gives you a chance for a bit of a rest.’

A blush of rage darkened my cheeks. ‘And me?’

‘You?’

‘Cock or bullet – that’s my choice now?’

Michael grinned. ‘Avril, if I offered you cock or the riches of Solomon’s treasury you’d choose cock. If I offered you cock or eternal life you’d choose cock. You’d always choose cock because cock’s what you love and what you want and what you need. You need it right now. Mine – his – doesn’t matter, does it?’ He lifted the gun negligently. ‘If it makes you feel better about it then, yes, that’s your choice. Now drop them.’

It isn’t a pretty thing to admit, but I was glad he had the gun. I kicked off my trainers and walked over to where a fallen tree made a support. Then, turning my back on both men, I lowered my trousers, stepped out and bent over, hands on the bark, presenting Michael my backside wrapped in Miranda’s lacy white knickers. I was sure he must be able to see the darkened fabric of the damp gusset, and even as I braced my trembling legs another warm trickle of moisture escaped my inner clasp. I felt so open. He wasn’t wrong about me being a slut, either; he was going to fuck me at gunpoint in front of the man who loved me – and I welcomed it.

Michael’s hand brushed my sex. I could hear the harshness of his breathing. ‘Very pretty,’ he commented, running his fingers up the inside of the lace edge, across the curve of my bum, back down into the deep cleft beneath.

‘No.’ It was Ash’s voice, hoarse but forceful. ‘You can’t.’

A red-hot wave of shame washed me from head to toe, but I pressed back against Michael’s hand anyway and I’m not sure he even heard the protest. ‘Take them off,’ he said, as he had done in my living room weeks ago, but this time it was unequivocally an order and I hooked my fingers into the panties and drew them down to my thighs. The taut fabric dug into my flesh as I spread them further for him. ‘Oh, yes.’

‘No, you’ll kill her!’ That got our attention at last. ‘If she leaks afterwards, Deverick, she dies. We’re in too deep – you mustn’t do it!’

Michael looked at him coldly.

‘Put it in her mouth,’ Ash concluded bitterly. ‘It’s safest.’

Michael picked me up, turning me to face him. ‘You hear that, Avril? Your boyfriend wants you to give me a blow job. He wants me to fuck your mouth and shoot my come down your throat.’ He pushed me to my knees and rubbed my face roughly against his groin. ‘D’you like that idea?’

I loved that idea – though my bereft pussy ached in protest. The crotch packeted in those old army trousers smelt like Ash but felt like Michael. I pressed my hands up the inside of his thighs, seeking his balls.

‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘Now, undo my flies. With your teeth,’ he amended as I reached with my hand.

I took the metal tag between my lips and drew it down, feeling every individual tooth of the zip strain and then part. With a grunt of satisfaction Michael helped me by popping the buttons and hefting his cock out into the light. Thick and flushed dark, it stood up and swayed like a drunk – a mean drunk, because when he grabbed the back of my head and shoved my face in, the hard shaft jabbed my eyes and bruised my lips. Michael’s anger at my betrayal had not been forgotten and he used me cruelly. ‘Kiss it,’ he growled, and I kissed the hot shaft fervently. He pulled my lips up to the swollen glans. ‘Again.’ I tried to, but he angled it past my lips and shoved in hard, all the way to the back of my throat, as if wanting to choke me. ‘Take it,’ he hissed, his hand knotted in my scalp.

I did, blocking out the pain. I made my mouth and my throat a shrine for his cock, a place where it was worshipped. My tongue worked frantically about it, slicking the thick meat. I knew exactly how much Michael loved oral and I knew he could not resist the wet squirm of my tongue about the head of his cock, however much he might want to punish me in other ways. In moments I felt his grip relax, his stance shift, his thighs tremble. ‘Ah, God,’ he muttered under his breath. I slid my hand down between my thighs, sinking my fingertips into my own wetness as I sucked and licked him. I wrote eulogies with my tongue on his flesh, declaring how much I loved his heat, his strength, his hardness, the taste and the bulk of him. The slithering friction across my lips seemed to connect directly to my clit; I was hardly aware of my own fingers, just him fucking my mouth and sending me higher and higher.

I heard Ash groan.

Dizzily I eased myself from Michael’s shaft – not fully, just enough to be able to turn my head. Ash still knelt at the foot of the tree, his shoulders thrown back and chest straining, his gaze fixed upon us and his expression one of torment. His prick stood erect and glistening. I wouldn’t have thought it possible after the amount of blood he’d lost, but the Wildwood must have had its claws in deep. I knew just how he felt.

Carefully, my tongue still dancing on the helm of his cock, I lifted my eyes to Michael’s and saw no fury any more, only enthralment to the pleasure of my mouth. Only need. Wrapping my hand firmly about his shaft, I pulled away, wriggling my arse, drawing him after me. For a moment he frowned, and then he made the connection between my splayed retreating backside and his helpless captive twisting against the silk bonds and I saw realisation dawn. His eyes widened. I licked him, pleading as much as teasing, promising as much as placating. His eyelids fluttered and with the faintest bemused smile he let me have my way. Step by step he advanced across the leaf mould while I retreated on my knees before him with wide-splayed cheeks, leading him by the cock, until I’d closed the gap between us and Ash.

My poor, naked Ash. Against his better judgement and flying in the face of all his scruples, the one thing he wanted right now was to slip his aching prick into my pussy and fuck me from behind while his mortal enemy shafted my throat. His anguish was clear, but it was entirely overridden by the demands of his erection. A standing prick has no conscience, as they say. In the depths of the Wildwood Ash was as enslaved to the sexual imperative as was Michael or I. He surged towards me, unable to tear his gaze from the wet crack I was presenting him.

Michael licked his dry lips, as if not quite believing what was happening.

Pulling my panties down to my knees, I wriggled into Ash’s lap. He rose to meet me, pushing the head of his member up the slippery folds of my furrow and embedding it deep in me. I gasped to feel the penetration I wanted so much, my breath pulled up around the solid cylinder of meat in my mouth, and Michael pushed deep into my throat as if to remind us who was in charge. I took him gratefully in both hands, delving for the ripe fullness of his scrotum. Ash ground against my backside, gasping with effort, his thighs rock hard.

That was how I paid my toll to the Wildwood, with both men fucking me. I became the bridge between them: between magus and magus, captor and captive, victor and loser. They co-operated to fuck me, finding a rhythm that suited them both and nearly split me in half, rattling my mind clear out of my body, filling me and plundering me and taking everything. Michael had both hands on my head; I held onto his thighs to support myself. Ash had pushed me forwards onto my knees and was leaning hard into me, his hips shuddering as he thrust, his balls slapping my pussy as his shaft worked my wet cunt. I’d never been used from both ends like that. I’d never been so full. I grabbed my clit and held on tight as orgasm took me from arse to head, an electric arc connecting their two cocks. It kept coming, bolt after bolt. I cried out and my scream was muffled by Michael’s tool buried deep in my throat. Then he pulled back just enough, his pelvis jerking, to fill my mouth with his spunk.

Ash froze. I had just enough sense left to swallow hard and fast, gulping it down, salty and burning. Michael held my face as I sucked him clean, his fingers slackening, his thumbs tracing the planes of my cheeks and brushing my swollen lips. His eyes were unbelievably blue, like pieces fallen from a summer sky. I think my heart stopped for a moment, looking into them.

Then Ash pulled out of me and somehow managed to stagger to his feet. ‘Avril,’ he said thickly.

I turned to him and took the wet cock proffered into my mouth, scenting the sharp tang of my shameless want. I sucked those juices off, yearning for his own taste that lay beneath. From the corner of my eye I saw Michael take a step back, running his hand up and down the length of his penis, which showed no sign of flagging yet. Ash leant into me, breathing down his nose. He was far more at my mercy than Michael had been and I seized the chance to get my breath back, taking it slow and teasing. I cupped his balls, tickling the soft skin behind until he groaned. As I fell into the rhythm that would bring him off I shut my eyes, revelling in the smooth sweetness of his cock.

Without a word, Michael’s hand cupped my chin and drew me gently off Ash. I opened my eyes and his cock was there in my face, still flushed and shiny and thick with unspent lust. Both of them were there, both men standing so close that with a turn of my head I could take either in my mouth. So I did, in turn. I treated them both with absolute fairness, licking like a girl with a melting ice-cream cone in either hand. I tasted them both and warmed each in turn down my throat. Hey, there are worse combinations than raspberries and cream and bitter chocolate.

Ash seemed to be swimming in and out of consciousness at times; I had to wrap my right arm around his thigh to support him. But his cock wouldn’t stop. I felt him gather towards his crisis and I lavished more attention upon him, but Michael wouldn’t stand for that and this time he didn’t try to distract me from Ash, he simply thrust his own prick between my lips alongside his. Oh, I have a generous mouth, but it’s not that big – it felt as if my cheeks were splitting, and the shock nearly knocked me over. Ash’s eyes shot wide open, but I think he was at the point where he was incapable of withdrawing, in fact I think he wasn’t capable of anything by then except fucking to climax. Both men looked glazed, almost drunk.

It took some readjustment before I could handle this new situation and I could take neither of them very deep, but take them both I did: both cocks in the burning crucible of my mouth, transmuting darkest rivalry to pure gold. My tongue laved the two smooth bulbs, explored both seeping slits. They stood hip to hip. Michael ran his hand through my hair, supporting my head as the two of them rubbed and slipped over one another and I licked and kissed and sucked them. Ash came noisily, groaning with effort, and I opened with gratitude to the thick wash of his semen. Then straight away, to my utter surprise, so did Michael. Not so copiously, but then it shouldn’t have been able to happen at all. I think it hurt him too; his muscles were clenched so hard I was sure he would go into cramp. Their jism mingled on my tongue and my heart was pounding and I felt like I was about to melt. I held them and held them and would have held them forever, like that, kneeling between them with my lips wrapped about their pricks. What had happened had turned my world inside out. I looked up at Michael with tears in my eyes.

Then Ash slipped away from me and collapsed to the floor.

Slowly Michael withdrew. For once he had nothing to say for himself. We just stared at each other, me kneeling in the damp woodland litter, he hunched and pallid, the rucksack with his precious book lying disregarded against a rotting log.

I think there was a chance then that everything could have changed. If so, then it was my fault it didn’t; I turned away to check that Ash was all right, that he wasn’t bleeding out. By the time I’d done that Michael was properly dressed and had retrieved the rucksack, his expression closed off and sardonic.

‘You enjoyed being spit-roast, didn’t you, Avril?’ His voice was a little hoarse. ‘Who’d have thought it when you handed in your résumé?’

‘Michael …’

‘Is he still with us?’

Ash’s eyes were partly open when I looked down, but unfocused. ‘I’m not sure he can walk.’

‘Then you’ll have to help him, won’t you?’

‘Give him a chance –’

‘No!’ For the first time Michael raised his voice, his black brows knotted, but when he spoke again he sounded calm once more: ‘He had his chance a long time ago, Avril. And you …’ He shoved his sleeves up to his elbows irritatedly. ‘I really thought there was hope for you.’ He snorted. ‘Get him up.’

When I’d dressed I helped Ash to his feet, supporting him against me. His bare feet were bleeding I noticed. For a second I caught another whiff of that sweet bovine aroma, but it was a fugitive scent gone as soon as I sought for it. ‘Which way?’ I asked, unsteady under his weight. Ash nodded forwards. His face looked haggard. We set off and Michael brought up the rear silently once more.

The last part of the journey was through the boggy woodland I remembered with such distaste. This time it was much worse. I slipped and staggered under Ash’s shoulder, my fingers biting into his ribs as I kept a grip on him. He did his best to walk straight but his weakness came in waves and sometimes I had to stop to let him get his feet back beneath him. The water and mud came up to our ankles, sucking with every step, and once I lost my balance too and we both fell to our knees in the ooze. The mist had risen to form a haze that made the sky above invisible. At least the throb of the Green Man’s power was less of a distraction now – not because it had diminished, but because my internal pressure felt now equalised with the external. The wood was in trouble though: everywhere blackened leaves were falling to scab over the surface of the sludge, and bark was peeling off the trunks in necrotic sheets. It was like an acid-rain nightmare or a glimpse of a post-apocalyptic wasteland, except that glimpses from beneath my brow told me that instead of wood beneath the fallen bark the timber of these trees was variously bone or glass or gleaming silver.

By the time we pushed through the ring of yews Ash and I were mired and panting. I didn’t look directly at the stump; I didn’t dare. I let Ash slide to the floor and rest, his head against my thigh. Michael came through, bent double under the branches, and got his first look at the goal of all his endeavours here.

‘Oh shit,’ he said softly, recoiling a step.

It was good to know that something could dismay him, but he recovered quickly enough. He pulled out the book, throwing the bag aside, and opened it. Onto the vellum he laid the wire maquette and, after opening it, Ash’s clasp knife. Then, setting his jaw, he approached the ancient remnant of the oak. I couldn’t look at him straight on, my eyes were watering so much, but I saw him stagger and set his legs as if bracing himself against a high wind. His outline looked smeared, but that might have been a fault of my vision. That arcane pulse was making my skin crawl and a red pain dance at the back of my head. I was glad we’d stopped to pay our dues sexually; I think if we hadn’t we might have torn one another apart here.

‘Avril,’ said Michael bleakly, ‘move away from him. Over there.’ A jerk of his head indicated the other side of the clearing.

I put my hand on Ash’s hair. The ground was trembling beneath my feet and the air vibrating. I didn’t like the look of that open knife at all. ‘What are you going to do?’

His lips tightened. ‘There’s the small matter of the binding ritual. It requires a sacrifice.’

‘You can’t take any more of his blood,’ I protested. ‘It’ll kill him.’

Michael tilted his head, still looking at the tree. ‘Not your decision, I’m afraid.’

‘For God’s sake –’

‘Out of the way.’ He swung to face me, lifting the gun. ‘I mean it. Move.’

I moved in front of Ash. ‘No chance.’ Then it dawned on me that I’d just discovered something about the reality of my love, and the shock left me dizzier than the fear. ‘Oh God, Michael, don’t. Please.’

‘This is the man who used magic on you, remember? He made you fall in love with him.’

‘So did you,’ I said, my heart in pieces. ‘It doesn’t take magic to do that.’

I watched him grimace. I still didn’t completely believe he would put a bullet in me, not even when he aimed the gun between my breasts and cocked the hammer. And, God help me, Michael did hesitate. At that moment the yew branches heaved and into the clearing lumbered Bull Peter, snorting and wild-eyed. Michael jerked back. The changeling looked from me to him.

‘Peter!’ I cried, thrusting my hand out at Michael. The bull man charged him, head lowered, roaring.

I think he managed to fire twice before Bull Peter hit him, but it did nothing to slow his attacker down. Michael was thrown back across the clearing, the naked changeling on top of him, and the two rolled over in a tangle of kicking limbs. Bull Peter was still on top when they came to a halt, but Michael was still conscious and in possession of the revolver. He heaved it from under the bull man’s bulk, shoved it to his neck and fired three times up under the heavy jaw, the reports ringing round the clearing. Bull Peter shuddered and stopped moving.

Slowly Michael managed to crawl out from under the steaming chestnut bulk. He was clutching his hand to his side as he sat up, and blood was seeping out into the white wool of his jumper like a scarlet poppy blooming. There was blood on one of Bull Peter’s horns, sticky and glistening, blood all the way down to the base. Michael tried to get to his feet but sat back down with a bump, staring around wildly. He looked down at his hand and made a little noise of disbelief. Finally he looked over at me. It was only then that he noticed that I was holding the grimoire.

‘Avril?’

Bull Peter spasmed, a groan issuing from his lips. Michael lifted the gun again and pulled the trigger in a single reflex motion, but the hammer fell on an empty chamber with a snap. Michael’s chest was heaving as he scrabbled away across the bare earth, but he needn’t have worried, the changeling did not move again.

When he looked up at me his eyes were bright, his voice razor-edged. ‘Give me the book, Avril.’

‘Avril,’ groaned Ash, ‘run. Run!’

I didn’t do either. I took a step backwards, towards the Green Man’s oak. The look of panic that shot across the faces of the two magicians was identical. Michael pointed the gun at Ash but his wrist was trembling and his heart was not in the bluff.

‘You’re out of bullets,’ I croaked. My heart was trying to climb out of my throat.

‘Avril, for God’s sake, run!’

‘Avril, listen to me.’ Michael heaved himself onto his knees, jamming his hand against the seeping hole beneath his ribs as hard as he could. A little blood spilt out from his lower lip. ‘Give me the book. I will give you anything you want if I have the book. Anything. You have no idea what it makes possible.’

‘Don’t listen to him.’

‘I can save the rainforests, Avril. Would you like that? I can make the Amazon a no-go area for loggers and trappers. I can save the redwoods and the Taiga and the orang-utans in Borneo. I can sink every whaling vessel on the planet in its harbour. I can turn back global warming, for God’s sake! Isn’t that worth it?’

I stared at him, tears running down my cheeks. I could feel the split in the ancient trunk yawning at my back like a slavering mouth. I could feel the guilt of Bull Peter’s death clawing at my belly. I could feel my instinctive longing to believe Michael; to believe that I mattered to him, that he could be honourable, that there was more to him than power and charm and good looks. I wanted to believe that he deserved what I felt for him – feelings that were in their own way as elemental and irreducible as were my feelings for Ash.

‘Just give me the book, Avril. We can do it together.’

‘Yes,’ I said sadly, ‘and all I’d have to do is trust you.’

Turning, I flung the grimoire into gaping fissure, down into the dark. There was just time enough for me to hear both men scream ‘No!’ in unison before the tree exploded.

The blast engulfed us. For the briefest moment I felt shards of wood and splinters of corroded bronze punching through my flesh, and then I was suspended in a place where the power of the Green Man roared through me like a tide, invading every orifice, boiling the flesh from my bones. I lost my body altogether, swept away in the flood of atavistic memory. I was a bee swarm, a hundred thousand butterflies rising on crumpled wings made of soul silk, a blizzard of dust motes caught in the sunlight and turned to gold. I was a swan maiden tumbling in a gale over a black loch; I was Pan ravishing the moon; I was Culhwch in wild pursuit of the boar Twrch Trwyth; I was Meroudys returning joyfully to the arms of King Orfeo; I was Black Annis cutting the throats of children with my famine knife. They rode through me, all of them, a host of fallen angels, a wild hunt.

Then the storm dropped me. When I finally returned to my self I was on hands and knees on the woodland floor and I was facing, where once there’d been a huge dead oak stump, a shallow crater scooped from the raw earth. The light was no longer gold. The sun must have risen above the mist and the stripped trunks of the ruined yews, blasted clean of foliage, stood out black against the grey vapour. It was chilly.

I ran my hand down my torso, seeking blood. There were no wounds though my clothes were in tatters, no protruding splinters, not so much as a scratch on me. I felt shaky but unhurt.

Looking around me the first thing I saw was Ash, who’d been thrown back against a tree and lay with head and one shoulder shoved up against the base, the rest of his body buried in rotted leaf litter and torn up moss. I crawled over to him and nearly knelt on his hand, limp in the dirt. When I picked it up there were shreds of a silk scarf still knotted around his wrist. Then his fingers closed around mine and he reached up with his other arm to touch me, and in a moment we were clinging together and he’d taken my face in his hands and kissed me. I wrapped my arms round him and we hugged the breath out of one another, frantic with relief that we were both still alive. When I pulled away it was to examine his arm. The bandage and tourniquet had worked loose, but there was only a crust of dried blood on his arm and no hole. ‘You’re OK?’

‘Yes. You? You’re sure?’

Further round the clearing something stirred. I turned just in time to see Michael rise unsteadily to his feet. His clothes were shredded too. He lifted the unravelled edge of the jumper to check the skin on his left side; the puncture wound had disappeared. It was only then that I noticed that so had the body of my poor Bull Peter. I knelt up straighter, my heart thumping. Michael blinked, let the piece of fabric drop from his fingers and met my gaze. I think it was at this moment that Ash really remembered; his hands moved from my arms to close about my wrists. For a moment there was dead silence.

‘Avril …’ said Ash, painfully.

‘Do you have any idea what you’ve done?’ demanded Michael.

I pulled out of Ash’s grasp and stood.

‘You’ve let them out.’ Michael’s voice was jagged with emotion he was trying to keep under control. ‘All the dreams and the nightmares of an island that’s been sleeping for sixteen hundred years: you went and let them out, Avril. Why?’

I heard it all in that word: the anger; the fear; the awe. I set my jaw. ‘Because I had a choice.’

They both stared. Then Michael took a pace towards me and Ash scrambled to his feet, moving to my side. There wasn’t any real call for it; I knew that I’d no need to fear Michael any more. But I liked the feel of his hand on my shoulder. Right at that moment it seemed to be the only thing connecting me to the earth.

‘Too late, Deverick,’ said Ash. ‘Too late for that.’

Michael’s eyes flashed but he halted.

‘This isn’t your wood,’ Ash added. ‘And not your world any more either, I think. Things are going to be tough for you.’

‘I’ll adapt,’ Michael growled. His gaze dismissed Ash and returned hotly to me. ‘That was your decision, was it? Well, let’s hope you can live with the consequences, Avril.’

I couldn’t answer.

‘And you’d better hope you picked the right man.’ For a moment something bleaker than anger burnt in his eyes. ‘That he can keep you safe long enough for you to learn how to handle your wonderful new world.’

‘She’ll learn.’ Ash took my hand and turned it over, displaying my palm on his, his long fingers haloing mine. ‘Can’t you feel it? She was there. Ground zero. She’s part of it now.’

‘What’s going to happen?’ I asked, looking from one to the other.

‘Oh, don’t you know?’ Michael asked.

I turned to Ash. His expression was hardly kinder than Michael’s but he held his peace.

‘Don’t bother asking him,’ Michael rasped. ‘He doesn’t actually know. And I don’t either. You’ve gone and changed everything, Avril. Everything. The world isn’t going to be the same from now on. Nor are we.’

‘I know that.’ I had to whisper because of the lump in my throat. Somewhere in the woods the first blackbird had started to sing, already forgetting the oppressive presence of the Green Man and the explosive resurgence of legend, living in the now.

Michael shook his head and turned away, too overcome to find words. He ran his hands through his hair. I watched Ash lift my fingers to his lips and it seemed to me that he was not only giving reassurance but seeking it too. I laid my head against his shoulder, trying to soothe my hammering heart, grateful for the arm he slipped around me. Beyond the soft everyday sounds of the wood there were others I could hear, others less familiar. Singing as if of a distant choir, and the winding of a hunting horn, and – in the distance – the beat of impossibly mighty wings.