He let her drive. She was still groaning, an exhalation with each breath that might have been disbelief, or fear, or grief, but was probably all three. A couple of minutes later they hit a smoother road and she turned left, towards the valley crest and the long road to the nearest town beyond. She was driving too fast. Blood smeared the windscreen, forced into cracks in the glass from the impact of half of Dane’s corpse.

“Sheriff, I need to send those images to my superior,” Bone said. “She’ll send help.”

“Help. Against that.”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Bone lied, because anything else would take too long to explain. After decades he still sometimes didn’t understand himself.

“The images,” he said.

“Yeah. I can send. But not here, and not yet. I’m getting the fuck out of this valley first.”

Bone sighed and sat back into the cruiser’s rear seat, every part of him in agreement.

* * *

“Holy fuck.”

“I told you.”

“What is it?” Jordan asked.

“I’m not sure.” The same lie, for the same reason.

“I didn’t believe you.”

“I know. So, the army? You’ll send them? It’s not the only one, and some of the others... they’re different. Worse.”

“Worse than that?”

“Worse.”

The phone line crackled, and Bone wasn’t sure if some of it was Jordan holding her phone away from her head and taking deep breaths.

“Of course,” she said. “They’ll be there by dawn. I didn’t believe you, but I couldn’t take the risk. Longford already had a red mark against it, a watch notice, and the army mobilised when you first called.”

“Thank fuck for that,” Bone said.

“Will it do any good? Will they help?”

I don’t know, he wanted to say. I don’t think so, he thought. Instead he said nothing, and after a period of uncomfortable silence Jordan said, “Keep in touch,” and ended the call.

The dead air sounded deep, dark, and filled with terrible futures.

26

26

Angela and Fer stayed behind with Sammi, and Vince accompanied Dastion across the hillside and down through one of the many hidden entrances to the mines he had been working on beneath the surface of the Folded Land. Shashahanna went with them, moving like mist, mysterious and silent.

Vince couldn’t help feeling that they were working against time. The Fold was failing, its edges shredding, a tempestuous creation angry at its creator for leaving. Rain fell heavier as they entered the mines, wind blew harder. The ground itself shook with minor quakes. There was no telling how long it would hold together, nor what would happen once the edges began to give way.