see grey tendrils of smoke floating past and the hellish glare of the fire burning across the meadow.
‘Running water dulls the senses of the Enemy,’ Will whispered. So Dr Dee had told him, and he hoped the alchemist was right.
Meg nodded.
But would the stream dull those senses enough to mask the presence of the quarry hiding beneath the bridge? the spy wondered.
The night was punctured by the shouts of the hunting party trying to decide which way to go along the lane. Will heard someone give an order to split into two groups. But then the strange, reedy cry echoed nearby and he felt Meg’s body tense beside him.
They waited, listening to the distant crack of the fire and the splashing of the water. The cry came again, not far from the bridge, and then ended suddenly.
It knows we are here, Will thought.
Meg sensed it too. She held the spy’s gaze, offering a silent prayer. He felt her body grow taut once more, and he was sure their hearts were beating so hard they could be heard beyond their bodies.
A soft tread rustled above their heads. It paused, began again.
Searching.
Nails scraping on stone. Low, rasping breaths. A thump as the predator leapt on to the parapet of the bridge.
The Irish woman flinched, her mouth working against Will’s hand. Pulling her close, he held her tight to prevent her crying out by accident.
‘Can’t see nothing down here!’ a young man’s voice rang out from further up the lane.
A growl rumbled out from deep in the throat of the thing waiting above. The spy heard it leap from the parapet and scuttle down to the other side of the bridge. Hiding from the approaching men, he guessed.
Footsteps pounded along the dried mud of the lane to the edge of the bridge. Dogs snuffled in the undergrowth. Within a moment, however, the hounds began to whimper and then turned tail and ran back along the lane.
‘What’s wrong with ’em? They afeared a summat?’ Will heard one man say.
‘The fire. Beasts don’t like it,’ another replied.
‘’Ere. Let’s have a look over the bridge,’ a third said.
From the sound of the footsteps cresting the stone structure, the spy guessed that three was the total number of villagers in the group. The men tramped a little farther down the other side of the bridge and then stopped. Will imagined them looking out into the night.
‘Back home?’ the first began. His next word was drowned out by a terrible roaring. The three men shrieked as one.
Meg folded into the spy’s body, glancing fearfully through the arch where the hellish fires blazed. The men scrambled backwards, their yells unintelligible beneath the deafening rage of their attacker. Will heard the thing race up the bridge, and then there was a sound like ripping silk again and again and again. The screams of the three men pierced the night.
Something fell into the stream with a loud splash. When the water settled, Will saw the dead eyes of one of the villagers staring back at him, the mouth wide in terror.
The cries became whimpers and gradually died away, but the crunch and spatter continued a while.
Then silence fell.
The spy realized he had stopped breathing. Meg was rigid too. Will tried to imagine the predator standing above his head, caught in the lamp of the moon, stained red from head to toe. Was it licking its lips? Was it looking hungrily to where the rest of the hunting party searched? Or was it listening slyly, waiting for Will to emerge from hiding?
Now he could hear the frightened, questioning voices of the other villagers following the screams of the dying men. The thing must have decided it had no further appetite for slaughter, for Will heard it turn and lope from the bridge along the lane in the opposite direction.
‘We must be away from here before we are discovered,’ the spy whispered.
His companion was loath to move and pressed her back against the stone of the arch, but Will grabbed her cold hand and gently eased her away. Within a moment they were splashing along the stream, scrambling over slippery rocks down the channel between the meadows.
Horrified shouts echoed through the dark behind them as the villagers found their fallen friends. ‘God’s wounds,’ one man exclaimed. ‘The Devil is abroad this night.’
And Will could not deny it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
‘YOU CAN NEVER OUTRUN THE THING THAT THE UNSEELIE COURT has set on your trail,’ Meg warned, her mood dark as she wrung out the hem