you’ve got no problems, my friend. I hear you’ve also been having rains of blood in these parts—and I wish we had these up in the Dales, where my garden is. Save me a fortune in fertilizers. Now, what you do is, you dig them in to your … ” CROWLEY?
Crowley said nothing.
CROWLEY. THE WAR HAS BEGUN, CROWLEY. WE NOTE WITH INTEREST THAT YOU AVOIDED THE FORCES WE EMPOWERED TO COLLECT YOU.
“Mm,” Crowley agreed.
CROWLEY … WE WILL WIN THIS WAR. BUT EVEN IF WE LOSE, AT LEAST AS FAR AS YOU ARE CONCERNED, IT WILL MAKE NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL. FOR AS LONG AS THERE IS ONE DEMON LEFT IN HELL, CROWLEY, YOU WILL WISH YOU HAD BEEN CREATED MORTAL.
Crowley was silent.
MORTALS CAN HOPE FOR DEATH, OR FOR REDEMPTION. YOU CAN HOPE FOR NOTHING.
ALL YOU CAN HOPE FOR IS THE MERCY OF HELL.
“Yeah?”
JUST OUR LITTLE JOKE.
“Ngk,” said Crowley.
“. . . now as keen gardeners know, it goes without sayin’ that he’s a cunnin’ little devil, your Tibetan. Tunnelin’ straight through your begonias like it was nobody’s business. A cup of tea’ll shift him, with rancid yak butter for preference—you should be able to get some at any good gard … ”
Wheee. Whizz. Pop. Static drowned out the rest of the program.
Crowley turned off the radio and bit his lower lip. Beneath the ash and soot that flaked his face, he looked very tired, and very pale, and very scared.
And, suddenly, very angry. It was the way they talked to you. As if you were a houseplant who had started shedding leaves on the carpet.
And then he turned a corner, which was meant to take him onto the slip road to the M25, from which he’d swing off onto the M40 up to Oxfordshire.
But something had happened to the M25. Something that hurt your eyes, if you looked directly at it.
From what had been the M25 London Orbital Motorway came a low chanting, a noise formed of many strands: car horns, and engines, and sirens, and the bleep of cellular telephones, and the screaming
of small children trapped by back-seat seat belts for ever. “Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds,” came the chanting, over and over again, in the secret tongue of the Black priesthood of ancient Mu.
The dreaded sigil Odegra, thought Crowley, as he swung the car around, heading for the North Circular. I did that—that’s my fault. It could have been just another motorway. A good job, I’ll grant you, but was it really worthwhile? It’s all out of control. Heaven and Hell aren’t running things any more, it’s like the whole planet is a Third World country that’s finally got the Bomb …
Then he began to smile. He snapped his fingers. A pair of dark glasses materialized out of his eyes. The ash vanished from his suit and his skin.
What the hell. If you had to go, why not go with style?
Whistling softly, he drove.
THEY CAME DOWN the outside lane of the motorway like destroying angels, which was fair enough.
They weren’t going that fast, all things considered. The four of them were holding a steady 105 mph, as if they were confident that the show could not start before they got there. It couldn’t. They had all the time in the world, such as it was.
Just behind them came four other riders: Big Ted, Greaser, Pigbog, and Skuzz.
They were elated. They were real Hell’s Angels now, and they rode the silence.
Around them, they knew, was the roar of the thunderstorm, the thunder of traffic, the whipping of the wind and the rain. But in the wake of the Horsemen there was silence, pure and dead. Almost pure, anyway. Certainly dead.
It was broken by Pigbog, shouting to Big Ted.
“What you going to be, then?” he asked, hoarsely.
“What?”
“I said, what you—”
“I heard what you said. It’s not what you said. Everyone heard what you said. What did you mean, tha’s what I wanter know?”
Pigbog wished he’d paid more attention to the Book of Revelation. If he’d known he was going to be in it, he’d have read it more carefully. “What I mean is, they’re the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, right?”
“Bikers,” said Greaser.
“Right. Four Bikers of the Apocalypse. War, Famine, Death, and—and the other one. P’lution.”
“Yeah? So?”
“So they said it was all right if we came with them, right?”
“So?”
“So we’re the other Four Horse—, um, Bikers of the Apocalypse. So which ones are we?”
There was a pause. The lights of passing cars shot past them in the opposite lane,