As the darkness was built across the entrance to the chamber, and the woman in here with him became more and more afraid, as she always did in this part of the dream, Quill heard a sudden high sound from outside.

A priest was singing a single note: a chant that was being repeated all down the hill, a straight track of sound that reached all the way back to the new wooden circle in the village. He sustained the note and made it resonate back to him from the end of the kennet. It was a last stab.

Quill felt it like a needle lancing through him.

It was to provoke her. It was to make her feel her imprisonment.

Then the workers slammed the last great stone against the chamber they were in and sealed it, and the note was cut off. The moonlight vanished. The great note of horror rebounded down the length of what was now absolute darkness, echoing and echoing, building and building into a great cry of rage.

Quill groped around him, overcome with sadness, trying to find her with his hands to comfort her. He reached out and felt bones. He had a hand inside her ribs, into her heart; he stretched out quickly with his other hand, intending only to steady what he’d found, and caught her skull, and she was falling apart in his grasp.

That was only her body. Her real self roared into his head. She was going to … to … she was trying to get inside him! She thought he might be an escape, a way to claw her way out. She needed a body, any body! She could form one if she was given the power, but if not she would take what was within reach. She was going to take his body and use it to get out of here, back to the world she needed to be part of!

Quill held up his hands and screamed.

Chapter Eighteen

EIGHTEEN

Quill looked around him and saw that people right down the length of the train carriage were glaring at him for screaming.

He lowered his hands. He made eye contact with the woman sitting opposite him, whose frown had turned into a laugh. He let out a long, relieved breath. Then he realized that he should record what he’d seen, that it had all felt important. He jotted down some quick headings in his notebook. Then he texted the other three to let them know that, at least with portable defences, their terrifying problem was still a problem. He’d give them all the details tomorrow.