Love me and leave me, Rachaela thought.

"Yes, I'll leave you," Althene murmured, "but I'll come back."

Back from where, from history, from the night? Rachaela's orgasm was long and sad, sweeping like the sea, and full of tears. Something beautiful, held her through the spasms of ocean, through the storm.

Althene withdrew from her gently. "The Roman method."

Rachaela thought of their kind by night, flying over deserts and the snow. Althene came silently and fiercely against her.

Life and death, day and darkness.

"I want to sleep with you," said Rachaela.

"Sleep then," Althene said, like a magician. And Rachaela slept.

CHAPTER 37

THROUGH THE WOLF-BROWN DAY, between the iron cities, they rode out of the north. It was February, month of the Lupercal, and none of them knew it. They were a kind of black cloud roaring over the landscape. Over the wastelands in the rain.

As they got nearer the capital, they created pauses. In the motorway cafes the girls in their bright slave-uniforms treated them carefully.

On the great wide roads they burned up tarmac. Black jets with flares of blue, crimson and silver.

At the head rode Connor. His long black hair was in a tail, fastened by a cinch of steel. He had a big powerful body and the beer-gut of a Viking. He liked screwing women, but he loved Viv, who was in the saddlebag on the left-hand side. He loved her like the bike. If ever anything happened they would be together, the three of them, into Valhalla.

Viv was of middle size, white, black, and yellow, with one upstanding ear in which, long ago, another dog had bitten a hole. Through the hole now was a silver stud, a heart. Viv wore goggles to protect her eyes, and a scarf, red, with silver cat skulls. This was Connor's tribute, for he liked cats, too.

Behind Connor and Viv on the Harley Shovelhead, came the rest of the fleet. Whisper on his black beast, shouting loudly at every twist and turn, and Red up behind him, grinning with joy. And then Pig and Tina, and then Cardiff, alone and looking grim, as if he needed a shit, as he always looked. And lastly Rose, his shaven head tattooed with a flower, his hard beefy chest naked to the wind and rain, only the silver coins and chains slapping it from his black jacket.

They stormed into London, no longer walled, but clotted by dismal outskirts and high blocks of concrete, and through its Avernal avenues, as the dusk came down early.

At the pub, The Compasses, they pulled up and slipped from the saddles. Red took off her helmet and shook out her laval hair.

Connor glanced at her with approval, and then drew Viv from her bag.

"Come and put your snout in some beer, baby."

Viv smiled arid wagged her tail.

He took off her goggles and she licked him.

He carried her in the pub under one arm.