《The Lads from Loch Allen》


 On a Yesterday that Never Was part the first

    <h4>Hairy Scottish Biker Productions Presents:


    -/-/-/-/-/-</h4>


    HEADS UP: This story takes place in a deeply flawed world, full of deeply flawed people. It is not set in a nice or peaceful world, and most of the cast are to one degree or another not nice or peaceful people. Expect black humour and general insanity; sequals may be prone to antiheroes and villain protagonists, and more than a few of my villains (including a couple of POV characters for sequels) are prone tomassive bigotry of the sort I do not and cannot agree with.


    In short anyone daft enough to take it for utopianism or is utterly mental enough to think I agree with the words I''m putting into characters mouths is going to get laughed at, long and hard, and withthat out the way all that''s left for me to say here is, enjoy the ride;


    -/-/-/-/-


    "Are you quite certain of this?" asked Captain Randal Locksley, "Our ¡®saviour¡¯," and you could just about hear the air quotes in his voice, "Appears to be in a rather poor condition."


    The captain was not in any sense a small man, in fact he was both the largest man in the entire Fleet Space Arm, possibly even the Royal Navy as a whole, and the largest man known to the majority of his acquaintances, Her Majesty the Queen included. He stood fully seven feet and eight inches tall with a massive bull-necked barrel-chested frame to match and an orderly beard and moustache as befit his status as the captain and commanding officer of one of the British Empire¡¯s most powerful spacegoing warships, the illustrious HMS Dreadnaught.


    His companion released a most indecorous bark of laughter.


    "Oh, that she is," he said, "But observe, my friend ¨C does her heart not continue to beat, what is left of her lungs to draw breath, her neurons to fire? Consider the strength of will that requires, in her condition, in this place. She is exactly what we need, and all we have to do now is see to it that she''s in the right place, at the right time, to encounter one of my ''catspaws'' - who just happens to be the greatest cyberneticist alive."


    "Catspaws," the good Captain said with a scoff and a shake of his head that caused his companion''s grin to widen. "I remain unconvinced."


    "She has the strength of will required to, in a place wherein will is the most powerful of all forces, will air into being as she breathes it, will her ravaged lungs to extract oxygen from it, will her depleted blood to convey it through a devastated circulatory system, even when by all rights she should long since have bled to death or possibly drowned in her own blood. Consider, my friend; if her will is strong enough for her to remain alive through this, quite what might she be capable of when conscious, able, and aware that the destruction in fire of all creation will include the part she¡¯s standing upon? No, she may not look like much now ¨C but make no mistake: this girl is entirely capable of the task at hand."


    "And," said the Captain with a nod, "I suppose that it falls to us to see to it that she remains so."


    "Indeed, though I do not believe we shall see too many challenges in that. As she recovers ability to function despite the small case of shellshock she¡¯ll no doubt shortly be experiencing, I have every confidence that she can and will make of herself a force to be reckoned with."


    The Captain chuckled and shook his head.


    "We shall," he said, "No doubt see¡­ you do have a backup plan, don¡¯t you?"


    "A backup plan singular? And again you underestimate me ¨C I have three dozen such backup plans, our goals are far too important to leave in the hands of just one little girl, no matter how impressive her capabilities ¨C let¡¯s face it, when all is said and done you are one of my backup plans, my friend, and when all is said and done this young lady is in fact plan... Thurisaz, I believe, where you would be plan Ansuz," and that statement got a snort of laughter out of the good Captain. "Regardless, I do not feel a crisis of this magnitude should be left to chance, thus my decision to throw as many plans at it as possible and see what sticks, and either way this young lady both owes me bigtime and has the capacity to make of herself quite some thorn, which we shall endeavour to see finds its way into your ''dear'' father''s side at an opportune moment."


    The Captain gave a single slightly pitying glance to the hideously injured girl who hung, motionless and barely alive, in the void of a place outside of space and time, and then nodded.


    "I suppose," he said, "We may as well get this done."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    <h4>The Lads from Loch Allen - a Highland Scots urban fantasy.


    Chapter the First: On a Yesterday that Never Was.


    -/-/-/-/-/-</h4>


    God, he''s breathing,'' the sensation of laying in a bed surrounded by the smell of blood and oil and warm electronics and a calm collected knowledgeable-sounding Australian man talking about something calling itself an endocrine system with a firm addenda of ¡®And as it happens ¡®he¡¯ is, in fact, ¡®she¡¯,¡¯ and finally an almost profoundly Scottish woman talking about someone called Angus with whom she was evidently quite irate, but as reality reasserted itself it was all drowned out by a quickly-growing rumble-roar almost but not quite like a big jet engine that grew and grew and seemed to pull everything into a semblance of focus as it became all but overwhelming, like a jetliner was right on top of her, then quickly went over her and began to fade a little - the jetliner revved its engines up then suddenly cut them out somewhere in the middle distance, leaving the only part remaining the earthy smokey smell and the woman¡¯s voice as she continued her one-sided conversation with a huff, her speech becoming less and less coherent as consciousness returned until, finally, it resolved itself into an oddly familiar but totally indecipherable foreign language and Alice Liddell began trying to open her eyes.


    inside her eyes, the crystal-clear vision where she¡¯d always been short-sighted and could clearly remember being blinded by something smashing her glasses into her face did not, and she could have sworn her right hand had been gone and that forearm blown to battered ribbons and her legs and left arm just proper off when she passed out ¨C the ceiling was all very rustic and age-stained, great black timber beams looking like someone had taken an entire log and peeled the bark off several generations ago supporting rough-hewn planks, the sort taken out of a log with hand tools, complete with bits and pieces of ancient bark here and there, and there was a faint but perceptible pall of smoke in the air.


    not the hands Alice had spent most of her life seeing upon the ends of her arms.


    white as snow ¨C framing a face Alice couldn¡¯t for the life of her even start to put an age to, she could¡¯ve been anywhere from fourteen to forty, with her eyepatch giving her a strangely piratical air. She had sharply-formed features, olive skin with several visible facial scars, her sole eye was a rather unsettling yellowy-brown, and she was clad all in black ¨C a black turtleneck pullover made of very thick and rough yarn, a long black skirt, and a black militaryesque duty belt of the general sort you¡¯d more expect to see on a policeman, complete with a holstered pistol and a huge belt knife.


    This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    not there any more and I''m sure they didn''t, these aren''t my hands, and," and Alice held up her hands for careful examination, "And I know I really needed those glasses¡­ what¡¯s an Inverallen, what do you mean where I¡¯ll be staying,"


    through the bloody looking-glass this time."


    that," he told her. "CRVGS connectors use induction to bridge the gap, the whole thing is electrically insulated at both sides - you can just wash it the exact same way you would a flesh-and-blood hand. These were designed for the military, they''ll work just fine in places like underwater or in a hard vacuum or covered in mud, you just need to poke the muck out and away she''ll go... There we go, everything looking good, you''ve got a slightly elevated heart rate but that''s nothing unexpected given the number and scale of surprises you''ve recently had and your implants are all functioning exactly as expected," and with that he disconnected the cable from his hologram hockey puck thing, paused, and added, "Just pull it, it''ll release automatically."


    another idea that''s going to take a while to get used to," Alice muttered.


    Next up: Alice''s arrival at the Macbane home goes smoother than she fears, less smoothly than she''d prefer.


    ,pass us a quid, keep reading, and get access to each new post twoSaturdays early?


    Cheers,


    Cal.

 Chapter 1 part the second

    less trouble she had walking in them than she¡¯d expected: a close friend had decided that heels were The Way To Go the previous autumn, and what an experience that had turned into.


    Through the looking glass indeed.


    There were junctions off to both sides of the road, after the fourth of which they rattled across a cattle grid whereupon Nick put his foot down, causing the engine''s clatter to rise to a roar as the road began to wind uphill towards the mountains Alice had seen from the other side of the bridge.


    The view from the top of the pass was breathtaking no matter whether you looked forwards or back; at Alice''s request Nick pulled into a strategically-positioned layby and they piled out for Alice to admire it for a while, with Mackie happily identifying each peak, village, section of water and in some cases which little slice of green amongst the browns and greys was whose croft, name after name that meant nothing to her but both of the boys obviously knew well.


    The rolling hills of Sutherland stretched out like a map back the way they¡¯d come to the north, and to their south the long silvery shape of Loch Allen ran from east to west, surrounded in every direction bar due west (where it opened into the Atlantic ocean) by mountains almost beyond count, fading from the dull greys of native rock through to almost smoke blue as they reached towards the horizon and, somewhere far beyond it, England. Scattered croft-houses and the clusters of villages dotted the coast and anywhere there was traces of green, and you could just make out the distant clatter of an engine and dogs barking somewhere down towards the shore; the first other road user (excluding the train) they¡¯d seen since leaving Grace¡¯s house came rattling up the hill heading towards Kylesku as they stood and gazed on the vista, a battered old-fashioned-looking white van quite similar to Nick''s if bearing a different manufacturer''s badge, this one reading ''SENTINEL''. There was a weatherbeaten-looking greying-haired man with a trade union hat in the driver¡¯s seat, and a black-and-white sheepdog sitting bolt upright in the middle of the two-person bench passenger seat watching the world go by with that very particular sheepdoggy bonkers glee; the driver waved, and Nick waved back with a cry of "There goes Murdo McMurdo,"


    "Three smashed cars and an old Army lorry down there too," said Nick. "Adair Macrae, the laddie who drives the lorry taking feed up to the big fishfarm out to the east of Kylesku, nearly ended up down the bottom of the cliff ay time as well ¨C he was losing his brakes just after coming over the peak of the pass, well he baled out of the lorry, had to go right across the cab and out of the passenger side ¨C the lorry nearly rubbed him off on the rock face beside the road, went into the inboard ditch, and they reckon from the distance it pushed the boulder it hit just coming out of the mouth of the half-tunnel it was travelling at a good hundred ten by then. That entire side of the cab was looking like someone had been taking a wrecking ball to it. Wasn''t much left worth keeping apart from the back axle, that''s on Willie Campbell''s lorry now after he blew the diff on a heavy load of cattle feed down Ullapool way."


    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    At the bottom of this the road wildly widened out and went straight through what Alice momentarily thought, as it came into view, was another barnyard ¨C but it was crossed by more railway tracks in three different widths, which joined each other into a total of two sets ¨C each composed of no less than four rails ¨C on the left side of the road and plunged into the row of sheds on the right side of the road; a gigantic and rather foriegn-looking mustard-yellow diesel locomotive was sitting silent and still on one of the pairs of rails composing the left-hand set of tracks. More railway equipment ¨C assorted coaches, a box van and a rather woebegone steam locomotive utterly dwarfed by the diesel, you just about could have fitted the entire steamer inside the diesel''s engine compartment ¨C was visible inside the sheds.


    Sheep go ¡®Maaaarrrr¡¯, the going of which apparently requires the sheep to open its mouth as wide as possible, involves a lot of protruding tongue, and may very well be accompanied by a spray of sheep dribble.


    "Maaarrr," said the sheep, continuing to attempt to gain access to Nick¡¯s pocket. "Maaarrr,"


    "Ex orphan lamb," Mackie told her, catching the look. "She was being hand-reared by Nick''s mum myself am thinking it was, as a result she¡¯s entirely unafraid of people."


    "It would be," said Mackie with an amused snort.


    "We¡¯re back," called Nick, ambling into the kitchen having ejected his boots; Mackie¡¯s followed his onto the pile of footwear, though on noting that there were people inside with shoes on Annie after a moment''s dithering decided not to emulate them, partially as she¡¯d heard it hurts to wear high heels for much of any time and she wanted to know how much time that meant given that firstly these were currently her only footwear and secondly her feet were fine after half an hour in them.


    Between cooker and entryway on the south-facing wall stood an enormous wooden kitchen table ¨C there was a white-painted bench up against the wall and a row of assorted chairs the side of the table away from the wall, and an old upright wooden armchair with a shaggy grey sheepskin draped over it at the cookerwards end of the table. The north wall had a settee against it, facing onto a low coffee table upon which was a melee of mechanical parts that, from the presence of a wooden gun stock and what looked like it could very well be a gun barrel, appeared to be the components of a firearm, along with several tools and what looked to be a can of oil; there were several chairs and a spinning wheel grouped round the coffee table and half the north wall was taken up with an enormous corkboard festooned in photographs and assorted children¡¯s drawings, most of which did not have attached names. Lastly, several musical instruments hung from the wall to the left of the door through which they¡¯d entered, and most of the floor was filled by a large beat-up floral carpet.


    really put the wind up Mum when you knocked my Bren gun over."


    "Well," said Brigid, demonstrating herself to possess the same accent as Nick, "You should¡¯ve been bloody stowing it properly then, shouldnae you," and her brother accepted that with a shrug and a what-can-you-do noise.


    weird and I dinnae mean the good sort of weird neither."


    "Neil," said Ian.


    ever used a hookup arranged like that, and when the doc took the phone apart the inside is laid out like literally no phone ever, it¡¯s got a battery that seems to be made using something called ¡®lithium¡¯ which basically nobody ever anywhere uses for batteries. Think about it! Hey," and he turned to Alice, "And what do you remember?"

 Chapter 1 part the third

    Neil, who had abruptly shut up the moment he''d realised what Alice was saying, despite all his frequent loud proud claims to be the biggest arsehole in all Scotland had the decency to look utterly mortified.


    "You can go to your room," Ian told him, and as Neil took a sharp exit in the opposite direction to which their guest had taken, the whole crew of them lapsed into a heartfelt silence that lasted until Elf eventually stood up.


    "I''m going to have a wee word with my eejit of a brother," she said. "Why don''t you lot go and see if this Alice girl''s okay?"


    "Probably a good idea," Nick said with a nod, rising to his feet - he, Mackie, Brigid, and trailing them having paused to collect a rifle Nat, went trooping outside.


    Alice had not gone far - she was in the southwestern corner of the house''s garden when they found her, leaning on a fence and staring at the view out over Loch Allen towards the Atlantic and in turn being contemplated by a cud-chewing cow and attentively watched by the Macbanes'' sheepdogs, when they found her.


    "Sorry about that twat of a brother of mine," Nick said, and she straightened up.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    In truth, Alice had been expecting someone to look for her - the way she''d lost control of herself and had to split it out of there had basically made it inevitable, which wasn''t to say she was particularly looking forwards to it.


    At least, as she turned round, she found there was no sign of Neil, who had for varied reasons recently become one of her least favourite people. Nick was visibly worried, Brigid had an utterly unreadable expression on her face, Mackie wore a look of almost exaggerated concern, and Nat - who was for some reason carting a gun - looked just as worried as his elder brother.


    "I probably overreacted," Alice said.


    "Myself am thinking yourself was being pretty restrained given Neil still has all his sensitive pieces of anatomy," said Mackie, "Yourself didnae even try to peel that giant caterpillar off of his lip."


    "Neilan Macbane, owner of the world''s most self-demonstrating arseholestache," said Nick. "You should''ve clouted him, he''d well earned it."


    "I don''t know if punching someone''s son when you''ve known them five minutes," Alice started, but Nat cut her off with a loud rude noise.


    "Are you having me on, Dad''s kent Neil for sixteen years, Dad was about that far away from clouting Neil himself before you managed to wallop Neil straight in the sense of common decency he likes to pretend he doesnae have."


    "Aye," said Mackie. "It''s been a while since myself''s seen someone shut Neil up that effectively."


    "Oh aye, when was that?" Nick asked.


    "Well myself was nae in any state to really appreciate it at the time, but in hindsight when Murdo-Alec was telling Neil before Neil was keeping on at me, ''big baby'', himself would no mind seeing Neil have his dad stomped into a paste by a bull haggis and no start greeting," Neil said. Nick visibly flinched.


    "Oh to fuck with Neil, you should''ve telt me man, I''d have been giving that bloody brother of mine something to be greeting about himself,"


    "Myself was at my father''s bloody funeral man, myself had some very important greeting to be getting on with," Mackie said with a shrug. "And there''s been a fair bit of water under the bridge since then and all."


    "What were you doing in college?" Nat asked Alice, who gratefully accepted the change in subject.


    "Archaeology," she said. "The field type."


    "Cool," said Nat.


    "Not that that means I know a ton about it, yet, I was like two months into first year," Alice continued. "I was going to try to specialise in the neolithic era - there''s all sorts of incredibly exciting stuff going on up in the Orkneys,"


    "In Orkney," said Mackie.


    "That''s what I said,"


    "No, you said ''the Orkneys''," said Nat. "Orkney''s no ''the Orkneys'', Orkney''s Orkney singular. Same rule goes for Shetland, its like how nobody''s calling Britain ''the Britains'' only with a wee bittie less land involved."


    "Whatever Mr Pedantic, there''s this place called the Ness of Brodgar, it''s a spur of land directly between the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar - a few years ago this immense complex of just huge neolithic structures was discovered, basically the entire spur of land between the two lochs there is made out of this huge neolithic settlement full of structures bigger and substantially more complex than anything of that era anywhere in northern Europe, just last year they found a carved stone ball - you know what those are, don''t you? - they found one actually in its original context within the overall Neolithic structure, they''ve been working on the place every summer for years now and there''s years left, you could spend most of a lifetime investigating just that one site. I..." She drew in a deep breath, then blew it out. "I hoped to get a place on that dig in a few years."


    "Wait, wait, wait, the Ness of Brodgar, aye, between Steness and the¡­ Myself am no remembering that one," Mackie said with a frown.


    "Well it''s not like anyone knows every site by heart," Alice said.


    "No, but myself was reading about the stone age ruins up on Orkney just this week past, it''s no like there''s all that many of them," Mackie said, then caught Alice''s expression.


    "Um, actually there is a crap of a lot of remnants of that sort of age on the- on Orkney," Alice told Mackie. "It''s just an absolute sea of archaeological remains, I''ve heard it said you can''t dig up a square metre of Orkney without finding some sort of historic artefact, whether it''s Neolithic, Iron Age, Viking Age¡­ It''s not like with the rest of the country, apart from that whole thing with one of the stones at Stenness getting blown up there hasn''t been... what''s that expression about?"


    Mackie took a deep breath, and said, "Myself am having to be thinking that whole thing Neil''s been on about, different universes, that it''s the truth of it. It''s fitting with everything we''ve been seeing and hearing - myself am assuring you, Alice, there''s no stone ever been blown up at Stenness and there''s no more than a dozen stone age ruins ever been found in Orkney - hell, there''s no a great deal of archaeology been done up north at all, with the land wars and all," and he shrugged. "There''s only been maybe three attempts at a dig that were no starting with the Sassenach bastard in charge trying to have families thrown off of their land, and if there''s a better way to be getting dead in Orkney than that myself am am no knowing it."


    "I have to wonder if," and Alice took a deep breath, only to receive a most unexpected interruption from approximately the last person she''d wanted to hear at that moment.


    "Bollocks," said Neil, "You''re far from crazy."


    "Neil," Nick started, a note of warning in his voice, but the freshly-arrived middle Macbane brother ploughed on.


    "You''re very very down the rabbit hole.


    "And if I ever get back up that bloody rabbit hole I''ll have to remember to murder my bloody parents for saddling me with the world''s second stupidest name," Alice told him, turning to glare at him.


    "No, seriously. The reference is actually appropriate this time," Neil told her. "Point of evidence one, your phone. I told you, there''s literally nothing at all like it, anywhere, ever - there''s a grand total of exactly one battery contains lithium anywhere today and it''s in your phone. Point of evidence two, that bank-card looking thingy. It''s got an issue date sixteen years into the future, and the name of a bank that went belly-up in the sixties because of the Anglo-American split all over it. Point of evidence three, nobody remembers seeing you on that train before Elf found you in the wreckage - we pulled sixty-eight survivors out of that coach including someone who was in the seat directly across the corridor from where Elf found you and not one of them saw you, the clothes you were wearing are just too distinctive and strange for nobody to have noticed you at all like that. Point of evidence three, none of the money the doc found on you, not one coin, matches anything that''s ever been minted anywhere in the entire British Empire, ever, despite some of it having dates on it from ten years ago and other bits from up to tweny years into the future. And point of evidence four, what you were just saying about Orkney. It''s just completely incontrovertible, at this point the remaining questions are how and why. Taken together everything you''ve said and everything you had on you rules out time travel and it rules out you having dreamed the entire thing up, you have a double pocket full of hard evidence backing you up... You''ve gotta realise just how new this is, right? I''ve never even heard rumours beyond the ''space aliens crash at Rockall'' level of tinfoil hattery - before you every ''visitor from another universe'' story I''d ever even heard of was just completely transparently bollocks, some lying twat trying to feel important and a couple of people who''d been dropped on their heads when they were babies or something."


    "¡­ Aliens crash at Rockall?" Alice asked.


    "Oh, it''s the oldest saw in the books, it''s right alongside stuff like that whole idiotic fairy story about an ''empire super-soldier program'', what a load of old bollocks," Neil told her with an airy wave of his hand. "According to a bunch of blithering idiots the British Empire certainly couldn''t have developed atomic rocketry OR anything even remotely resembling modern computer technology, oh no, it''s not like we had any monumental bloody geniuses like Frank Whittle or Barnes Wallis or Alan Turing or Reg Bethnal in our corner or anything now is it, oh no, surely we had to have reverse-engineered thermonuclear-powered spaceflight and modern computer technology from what was left from a bunch of space aliens crashing their starship into Rockall, I mean it''s not like Britain''s continuously been building the best planes in the world since shortly after that French bloke got the first one off the ground or anything, and apparently that and certainly nothing to do with watching out for Yank spy ships was why the Empire annexed Rockall back in the 1950s. It''s exactly as stupid as it sounds. Anyway, there''s something I need to do."


    "I think you did entirely enough earlier," Brigid said.


    "No, that''s what I need to do something about," Neil told her. He turned back to Alice. "I''m an arsehole, I know I''m an arsehole, and I like being an arsehole, you would not believe how many ginormous overinflated egos there are in this world and I just love puncturing them, but giving someone a flashback is a very different kettle of fish. I fucked up, and I''m sorry."


    "Apology accepted, I think," Alice said with a sigh, this being no time for burning bridges.


    "Thanks," Neil said with a nod, seating himself.


    "So what''ll ourselves be doing now, then?" Mackie asked.


    "I dunno, realistically that''s up to Alice," Neil said with a nod in her direction. "At this point you''re basically totally off the books with London, nobody south of the border even knows you exist which could be useful or could be a problem, depending what you want to do with yourself. Honestly I don''t think it''d be a good idea to jump straight into a decision right now, no until you''ve had some time to at least start getting your head round all this. Depends on what you want to do."


    "You mean apart from ''go home'' or ''curl into a little ball and scream a lot''? One I don''t get the sense anyone we know has any idea how to do and the other isn''t going to solve anything, I don''t know about want but I''m already pretty clear I need to, basically to land."


    "I," said Brigid, "Think you should go to college with Nick and Mackie and Annie and study archaeology."


    "As if nothing had happened," Alice asked, giving her a look of sheer disbelief.


    "No, I mean as if what''s happened isn''t going to be everything your life''s about for the next forever and isn''t going to stop you doing what you wanted to do anyway," Brigid told her, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, which in all honesty it probably was.


    Alice spent several long moments staring at her, opened her mouth, had another think, then closed it again.


    "I think," she said, "You''ve got a point."


    "Brigid usually does," said Nick.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Trouble sleeping?" asked Ian Macbane, making Alice realise that firstly he was there and secondly he must be one of those morning people when she glanced at the clock on the wall beside the odd-looking light and saw it reading five o''clock almost to the minute.


    He, she figured, didn''t know the half of it. Every time she''d managed to get her pulse rate back to some semblance of normal again and close her eyes she''d found herself back in London walking towards the scene of the explosion knowing what was going to happen and unable to change it, and at a little after three she''d put the clothes Grace had given her back on, figuring out how the corset worked in the process, and went downstairs and was attempting to distract herself by trying to finally read the book that had made her entire childhood miserable as a copy had been sitting on the Macbane''s bookshelf.


    She nodded and didn''t elaborate, and Ian seemed to accept that at face value, instead of saying anything further going and starting pottering about the kitchen part of the kitchen-cum-living room; Alice vaguely noticed porridgey smells and eventually clocked where they were coming from when Ian plunkd a bowl of steaming hot porridge, with spoon, on the table in front of her and sat down to start adding honey to his own bowl.


    "Tuck in," he said. "Won''t do you any good to go fading away to a shadow at this point," and she decided to take that in the vein it had most likely been intended, putting the book down and copying him in adding honey to the stodgy oat-based substance in the bowl; Ian glanced up again and slid a white card tub of the sort you''d expect to see salt in, complete with the shaker built into the top, over a bit towards her.


    She gave it an odd look.


    "Did the doctor no say anything about keeping your spare parts in tune?" Ian asked.


    "Oh - yes, he said something about, this is the food supplements he said about?"


    "Aye, himself was leaving a big old box of the stuff with us when he was deciding you''d most likely be coming to soon - that was late last week. There''s directions for it on the tub, must admit to getting a bit nosy and having a wee read of them."


    Alice picked it up and had a read, finding that she was advised to eat a tablespoon of the contents with each meal, with the full tub to be consumed in the course of one week.


    She frowned and tipped a little into the spoon, and had a taste with the tip of her tongue, finding the stuff tasteless with a texture almost like chalk dust - as such she sprinkled a liberal helping onto the porridge, added some more honey, and spent a few moments stirring it about.


    "Taste of much?" Ian asked.


    "No, it''s pretty much tasteless. Kinda like chalk dust with less flavour."


    "Well, that''d probably be a good thing now, wouldn''t it," said Ian with a nod.


    Alice nodded back, and that was the sum total of conversation in the kitchen until two hours later when the rest of the Macbane family began filtering down in search of breakfast, with Ian spending the interim spinning wool into yarn with a wooden treadle-operated spinning wheel and Alice trying to read.


    Elf was the first down, closely followed by Neil and then a very bleary-eyed and yawning Nick - all three helped themselves to servings of the porridge, which Ian had left on top of the range to keep it warm.


    "I''ll be headed out no long after you three," Ian said as Elf sat herself down. "Got a trailer to pick up in Inverness for Wick where I''ll be picking up a trailer off of the ferry for Glasgow, it''ll be a late one, I''m no expecting to be home until the middle of the night - Alice, if you''d let her know I''ll be late back once she''s out of her bed?"


    "Okay," Alice said with a nod, then asked Elf, "Where are you three going? Just out of interest."


    "Creels won''t work themselves," said Neil with a flippant shrug.


    "Don''t start," Nick told him. "Did nobody say about the boat yesterday?"


    "What boat?"


    "That''ll be a no then," said Elf with a laugh. "Four years back Nick pulled his biggest scrounge yet, he got Donnie Munroe''s big crane, Donnie''s the scrappy over in Lochinver, running again after it blew its hydraulics and in return Donnie gave him the pick of anything he wanted out of the yard, well what should be laying up the back of the scrapyard but the big shunter from the old mine through that way that''d closed down a few years earlier."


    "I had a look at it and there wasn''t much wrong with it, it''d just been sitting a few years since the mine ran dry," said Nick. "Well I scrounged up some scrap track to sit it on and got Dad to give us a hand getting it back here, got everything running, the batteries were totally dead and the hydraulic reservoir has sprung a leak - it''s got a hydraulic transmission - then once it was moving under its own power I sold it to our friend Annie''s dad over in Stroncrubie, Annie was saying something about them needing something like that fast, that was when they were just pushing the standard gauge up to the new mines up the back of Ben Daor, anyway that and the money Grandpa left to us kids went on the boat and the equipment we were needing to work her and at this point she''s paid for herself at least ten times over."


    "What sort of stuff do you fish for?" Alice asked.


    "Crab for the main part, we also get lobster and the odd cray as a bycatch that''s worth a fair bit and we''re often enough getting a wee bit of skatan for the pot while we''re at it," Elf told her, and it would be a while before Alice realised she''d said ''Sgagdan'' or that this meant ''Herring''. "Oh, talking of letting Mum ken things, could you tell her she''ll no be able to get us on the radio until this afternoon, we''re starting the day up to Kylestrome then working our way south, we''ll be headed across the mouth of the loch to Eilen Shea probably just about midday, maybe as late as two if the Navy lot decide to be pestering us this morning, we''ve got a couple of single-enders down on the sunken flying boat right near to their base, good spot for lobster but they can get a bit jumpy about boats coming close in near to the bottom of their runway there when they''ve got anything big to be taking up."


    "Okay," Alice said with a nod.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    As per prediction the rest of the family weren''t up until after the trio were at sea and Ian was off on the road south, and Alice duly relaid her two messages, for which Caroline thanked her.


    She was next interrupted from her attempt to read and not dwell on having been blown up by Brigid, shortly after the younger two siblings and mother had eaten their breakfast, sitting down beside her and asking, "Want to come and visit Mackie? I feel like a walk."


    It didn''t take Alice twenty seconds to decide a distraction would be just the thing, so she marked her place - the page she hadn''t managed to finish reading for half an hour - and nodded.


    "That sounds nice," she said.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Mackie''s home address turned out to be the house jammed into the corner between the road that extended into the Macbane''s driveway, the road they''d come into the village on the day before, and the railway sheds, and the man himself was in the attached garden, fiddling with something down the side of one of the small wooden sheds that lined the west fence of the garden.


    "Morning," Brigid called over as Alice followed her through one of the garden''s three gates, causing a startled grunt.


    "Brigid," he said, and started to add something in Gaelic only to notice Alice and switch to his heavily-accented English almost mid-word. "Och, and Alice too, how''s yourselves?"


    "We''re having a walk and thought we''d drop in and say hello," said Brigid.


    "Aye, hang on a mo and myself''ll be putting the kettle on - Mum''s away down getting the shop opened up," he said, and resumed what he''d been doing - now she was closer and at the correct angle Alice could see that he was halfway through attaching a new plank to the bottom edge of the shed''s wall via the rather disconcerting process of pushing nails in with his thumb as if the wood was plasticine despite the fact it didn''t look anything even remotely close to that rotten. "Annie''ll be over any minute now - you''ve no been meeting Annie, have you Alice, herself''s a dear friend of myself and of Nick, her dad''s owning the railway, that''s her ute parked up by the railway''s sheds, she''s just," he pronounced it ''Chust'', "Having a wee look at something probably train-related and she''ll be down to the house once she''s finished. There," and apparently satisfied he shoved the packet of nails into his pocket and stood up. "That''ll be stopping any bloody pine-martens getting into the hens then."


    "I don''t want to be any bother," Alice said.


    "And yourself''s no bother at all," Mackie happily told her, waving it off as if the idea of Alice being any bother was ridiculous."Come away in and have a wee cup of tea, myself was just about to be putting the kettle on anyway."


    "Well that''s timing then," declared a cheery contralto voice with a completely unplaceable neither actually Scottish nor actually English accent, and glancing over in that direction - the top of the garden, right at the corner where it met road and the railway sheds - Alice found strutting - that or ''sauntering'' were the only words that really seemed adequate to the task - through the gate a very memorable young woman indeed.


    About five foot ten tall, she had a bit of a roundish face with a sharply-defined dimple on the left corner of her mouth, making her smile look oddly hamster-cheeked. Her hair - completely jet black - was in a rough approximation of an overgrown pixie cut kept back out her face with a black Alice band, and she had honey-coloured eyes with something odd about them, but it was the mixture of how she was dressed and the air she had about her that would make sure she was the centre of attention wherever she went; she was wearing a full-skirted wine-red dress, snug around the top and accentuating an astonishingly slender waist, with a high almost Edwardian-looking neckline and a palm-sized cutout showing skin right in the middle of her cleavage - of which she had a not inconsiderable amount - and several prominent grease stains, and she had a black leather gunbelt of all things slung at a jaunty angle round her hips complete with a holstered pistol and little pouches probably containing ammunition.


    "Annie," said Mackie with a nod. "This is Alice,"


    "As in Doctor Clayton''s other patient he had to take off in a tearing hurry to see yesterday, good to meet you at last," Annie declared, meeting them as they arrived at the back door. Now she was closer Alice realised what was odd about her eyes; they had very visible mechanical irises. "Nick at sea?"


    "Aye," said Brigid. "They were off before I was waking up again."


    "As usual, Miss No-A-Morning-Person," said Mackie with a snort.


    "I get up at silly o''clock in the morning when I have to get up at silly o''clock in the morning and not just because the way Dad does," Brigid snootily informed him, getting an amused snort out of him.


    "And so yourself is always saying," he said.


    "Don''t point out me repeating myself and I''ll no be pointing out you repeating yourself,"


    "Yourself''s doing that almost as often as Nick does," Mack said with the air of a conversation that has been had many times but continues to amuse all involved, then he added, "If you''re no putting that away myself''ll be extracting it for a closer look," when Brigid stuck her tongue out at him.


    Inside Mackie''s family home was very much in tune with the appearance of its resident - rustic, very ''rural'', and somewhat scruffy. It was laid out in a way Alice would eventually learn was pretty much normal for houses built in the early to mid 20th century in that part of the world; thick stone walls, slate roof, lath-and-plaster interior, two rooms down and two up. The back door through which they entered led via a tiny tin porch (in which Mackie left his wellies) directly into the kitchen-cum-living-room - this took up roughly half the ground floor, was an odd L-shape with kitchen facilities in the leg of the L that ran lengthwise from end wall to a little beyond half way along the house and a large farmhouse table surrounded by straght-backed wooden dining chairs in the larger front-to-back leg. A range identical to the one in the Macbanes kitchen was centred on the end wall of the building with its flue pipe hooked into the chimney - it had visibly been added over a blocked-up open fireplace - half the rest of the end wall was occupied by an overstuffed gun rack, the walls were encrusted in framed photographs of hairy men and women with a distinct familial resemblance to Mackie, a battered red leather sofa occupied most of the front wall under the window, and a similarly beat-up dresser utterly festooned in knick-knacks, crockery, and bottles of whisky occupied half the back wall; an ornate and beautifully-kept grandfather clock was jammed in between the dresser and the end wall of the house, looking rather out of place by being the only thing in the room that wasn''t battered.


    Mackie proceeded to demonstrate that the cooker was gas-powered by turning a knob on, getting a box of matches from the dresser, and lighting the hob from the other side of the kitchen leg of the L, before turning his attention to filling up the kettle.


    "So what''s yourself been up to then Annie?" he asked as he joined them at the table.


    "Stopping Dad making too much of a mess of putting the new bearings into 3124," she said with a laugh. "He''s got all the enthusiasm in the world but if a machine''s any bigger than a microprocessor he doesn''t know which end of it to start with and if it isn''t electrical he''s even more totally lost, I swear the railway runs despite Dad and not because of him, what''ll happen if anything big breaks down while I''m at the college I don''t know."If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    "Sir Joe''s got good folks working for him," Mackie said with a shrug. "Murdo-Alec and Murdo McMurdo''ll no be letting himself go far wrong, you ken that," and he caught Alice''s expression and grinned. "In a lot of ways it''s more Annie''s railway than it''s her dad''s railway, daft as himself is for the trains she''s ten times worse."


    "What can I say, I''m my parents'' daughter, Mum''s just as bad for pedigree sheep as Dad is for trains," Annie said with an unconcerned shrug. "Don''t go listening to Mackie too much, he''s just as bad as Dad, this great teuchter," and she angled a thumb at Mackie, "Fancies himself for Czar of all Russians and spaceman."


    Mackie kept grinning and said something Gaelic, which got Brigid to burst out laughing and Annie to snort and say, "Oh aye, well you''d know all about brush-chewing you numpty. Anyway," and she looked at Alice, "So how''s things back in the land of the living then, and while I''m at it just out of interest whereabouts are you from?" She paused, visibly realised the way everyone else in the room had gone dead quiet, and added, "Uh, sorry, I just, uh, you got torn up while you were travelling on our railway and that makes me feel responsible, you know,,"


    "I don''t know if I did," Alice finally said. "I''m pretty sure - as in unless everything I can remember is completely wrong - that I got smashed up before I was anywhere near that train everyone keeps talking about. It''s, um, it''s not something I''m really into talking about, you understand, but basically if the doctor said I looked more like I''d been blown up, well, that''s because," and she took a deep breath, "That''s because, I don''t know how I ended up in that train - I can''t properly remember anything from in between, just these disjointed bits and pieces, but I can definitely remember being caught in some sort of I think it must have been a terrorist bombing while I was walking to work."


    Annie gave her a long measured look, and then said, "That honestly makes more sense - apart from how in God''s name you ended up in the train, Doctor Clayton said something about digging a lot of shrapnel out of you and he swore one bit looked for all the world like half of a car''s front axle."


    "I don''t think I need to know much more about how smashed up I was, I already know far too much for comfort," Alice told her with a shiver.


    "Aye, I sympathise," Annie said with a frown. "God knows I didn''t enjoy Doctor Clayton explaining how he''d been rooting around in my skull, he''s got this Godawful habit of going into all the gruesome details at the drop of a hat. Don''t get me wrong, he''s an amazing cyberneticist and a master surgeon but he''s basically impossible to disgust, finds the insides of people fascinating, and doesn''t really seem to realise how weird seeing live footage of your own brain through a hole in your head is."


    "Something to do with, well, with your eyes, yeah?" Alice asked.


    "Aye," Annie said with a nod. "I was born blind - my retinas failed to form in the womb, right - I was ten when I got my first set of cybernetic eyes fitted, that was basically when Dad decided he was comfortable enough with the results of the clinical trials Doctor Clayton''s team had been running for two years at that point and gave him the go-ahead to, well, to open me up."


    "Myself," said Makie, "Was right there when herself was coming round from the anaesthetic, it''s a crying shame we didnae have a camera with us, the look on her face when she was opening her eyes and seeing for the first time..." and he smiled and shook his head.


    "Tell you a secret, I have pretty much that exact expression on my face every morning, it''s been eight years and the first thing that goes through my head whenever I wake up and open my eyes is pretty much ''Oh my God, I can see,'' I don''t think I''ll ever really be getting used to it - I mean for Christ sake will you no take a look at the world? It does my nut the way folks take their eyesight for granted, the number of people who''re no ever looking up from their bloody mobile..."


    "So you''re always saying," Brigid happily declared.


    "Don''t point out me repeating myself and I''ll no point out you repeating yourself," said Annie.


    "Were we no just having that conversation no five minutes ago?" Mackie said, and Brigid snorted and gave him a dour look, while Annie laughed.


    "Anyway," Annie said, "Talking about my eyes, there was a reason I was across and not just to meet Alice properly," and she took a deep breath. "I have an appointment tomorrow. Doctor Clayton says he''s satisfied with how my cyberbrain''s healed in. I''m getting my new eyes in tomorrow and I wanted to ask if you and Nick..."


    "Would be available for a wee bit of morale support, aye," said Mackie with a nod. "Well for my part there''s no a timetable for this week - Murdo-Ian''s already set down at the pub, myself am just getting a few wee bitties done around the house and that in between getting everything ready for the college. As far as Nick goes, he''s at sea today, we can see if we can be raising the Vigra on the radio,"


    "We won''t be able to until later," said Brigid. "They''re up towards Kylestrome at the moment, they''re crossing the mouth of the loch towards Eilen Shea probably about lunchtime - at this point they''re probably working south towards Lochinver with Sgurr Geal still between us and them."


    "We could go for a bit of a spree," said Mackie. "Just be grabbing the radio and driving up the coast until we''re seeing the boat then giving themselves a wee shout, it''s no like the radio''s plugging into the wall now, is it."


    "Aye, I''m up for it," said Annie with a shrug. "What about yourselves, Alice, Brigid? Fancy a bit of a spree?"


    Brigid looked at Alice.


    "Sure," Alice said. "Let''s go."


    So that was exactly what they did.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The vehicle that awaited them, once they''d finished their tea and Mackie had got the radio - a bulky grey plastic walkie-talkie sort of a thing - off of its charging stand, turned out to be the worst pile of junk Alice had so far since her awakening seen.


    It had at one time been a double-cab pickup painted, somewhere under the years of neglect, the same shade of mustard yellow as the local railway used for their locomotives; it was fitted out with road-rail gear in the form of little rail wheels attached to each end that could be lowered onto the track - of these it had two seemingly-independent sets - and a full rollcage with an attached mounting point of some sort on the top bar.


    Beyond that, it looked very much like it should have been scrapped years back. Every body panel including the roof was bent, the rear driver''s side door was blue and the least rusty, least bent, part of the entire bodyshell, it sat at a drunken angle - low on the left rear side - there was a large hole in the bonnet with two pieces of rusty metal pipe sticking up out of it, the driver''s door had a gate latch bolted to it instead of a doorhandle, the radiator grille was entirely missing as was the front bumper, the windscreen was cracked, and a numberplate hung at a funny angle from cable ties attached to the front subframe.


    Annie proceeded to persuade it to start by leaning into the cab, making sure it was out of gear and the handbrake was all the way on, then reaching through the bonnet''s huge rust hole and poking at something, causing the shitcan of a pickup to cough violently several times, spit a cloud of smoke and fire out of the two bits of rusty pipe sticking out of the bonnet (demonstrating them to be what it used for exhausts) with a shattering backfire, before choking and spluttering its way into life; Annie tugged at something in there a couple of times, causing the engine to gun, then as it settled into a rough and raucous and honestly kinda unhealthy-sounding tickover - it was hunting a little, the revs audibly rising and falling instead of holding steady, and occasionally it missed a beat then let off another tremendous backfire - she pulled her hand out of the engine and gave her apocalyptic chariot a satisfied mad grin.


    Mackie and Brigid piled in the back while Alice rather dubiously looped round and got in the front passenger side, finding the interior to be just as disreputable as the exterior - there were holes in the footwell big enough to put your foot through going all the way to road, the driver''s seat was completely missing any upholstery or stuffing, instead having an assortment of what looked like seat cushions off a sofa duct taped to it and a sheepskin slung over that, the steering wheel appeared to be attached by a single prominent bolt, the dashboard was entirely missing with the varied gauges and switches cable-tied to the exposed frame, there was no sign of a rear-view mirror and seatbelts were conspicuous by their absence, the headliner was entirely absent with nothing above your head but the battered metal of the cab roof, the ignition barrel was hanging from its cables, in between the holes the whole floor was littered in crisp packets, empty cartridge cases, and flattened beercans, and it wasn''t a whole lot less loud inside than out - it let off another whole string of massive backfires as Alice was working out how to persuade the door to close (you had to really slam it) and Annie said, "Oh come on," and gunned the engine a couple of times, finally persuading it that it should be firing on all cylinders.


    "Is there a particular reason," Alice started as Annie persuaded the wreck into motion, but she drifted off, not wanting to say the ''you drive such a piece of crap''.


    "I drive a pile of scrap iron?" Annie asked with a laugh. "It''s pretty much my project car, right? I''ve been gradually piecing it back together for a couple of years, I love this thing. It was one of the Sutherland Railway''s maintenance-of-way vehicles until it got caught in a flood down at Ullapool three years before I was born, that was about when the Sutherland really started to go skint, so this old thing spent the following twenty years sitting in the back of the locomotive shed in Stroncrubie - we used to play in it when the lads were across visiting me, it was pretty much our favourite den, right, then three years back when I started learning to drive we started wondering and had an actual look at it and it didn''t take us half an afternoon to get it to move under its own power, mostly because of Nick honestly, he''s got a magic touch with engines. Most of the electrics were stripped out and the driver''s seat and door were gone, Murdo McMurdo used it as a parts donor to keep the other one usable, but everything else was sound enough to run apart from the exhaust - there must have been water laying in there from the flood or something, it shited its whole exhaust pipe off when we got it to fire up, you should''ve seen Ewan Macrae''s face when the backbox went out the shed door like a cruise missile and missed him by about half an inch."


    "Aye, and it''s nothing to do with the number of computers in a more modern car or the amount of trouble you''ll have charging an electric up here," said Mackie with a snort as the shitcan pickup crested the rise from the rail yards onto the stretch of flat ground towards the tiny station.


    "That too," said Annie with a shrug; she glanced over and caught Alice''s expression. "Look, the nearest mains electricity is on the Black Isle, there''s a few community hyro-electric schemes up here like what Nick helped put together here in Inverallen and there''s places like Stroncrubie running on diesel generators but you''re no going to reliably charge an electric off a home-made waterwheel and you can''t exactly stick fifty ton of electricity on the back of a train."


    "Then there''s the way every current-production vehicle in the Home Islands if no the entire Empire has more onboard electronics than the bodies of everyone in this ute and aye myself''s kenning how much work yourself''s been having done, Alice. In cars, that''s including mobile phone functionality, basically the entire time the car''s connected to the manufacturer''s computer systems and even before we''re getting to the part about tracking, there''s, uh, been some incidents, most of them seem to go a bit wonky if they''re out of mobile connectivity for too long and, well, that means pretty much anywhere north of Loch Ness, the nearest mobile phone tower is south of Inverness. Between one thing and another hardly anyone in the north of Scotland drives anything actually built since about twenty years ago when the switchover to electrics and heavy computerisation was really getting going," Mackie said. "And then there''s the way a motor like this makes yourself look like a nutter."


    "That''s just a bonus," Annie said, then caught Alice''s expression. "What? I''ve done being the helpless damsel in distress and it was bloody awful and I''m not having with it again," and Alice''s expression must have given away how thoroughly she wasn''t getting it. "Look, my dad''s loaded and ten years back, a couple of months after we moved up here, this bunch of clever buggers from down south decided the thing to do was to kidnap me for ransom. They waited until I was alone in the house Mum and Dad were renting here in Inverallen, Mum and Dad were across in Stroncrubie talking to the geologist Dad got in to look at the new ore strike up the back of Ben Daor and I was in a strop and wouldn''t go, so these two twats kicked the door in, shot our housekeeper - he lived, thank Christ - stuffed me in the boot of their car, and got as far as halfway to Murdo McMurdo''s driveway before Mackie chucked a big rock off the bluff above the road through their windscreen, he was out shooting rabbits for the pot and saw what was happening. Well the car went into the ditch, the twat in the passenger side went through the windscreen and staved his skull in off the side of Morag Macrae''s house and the twat in the driver''s seat basically staked himself through the heart on the steering column."


    "So right about then Murdo McMurdo comes running down the road shitting hedgehogs, he was about to be throttling me but myself had gone straight round the back and was getting the boot open, himself was changing his tune right smart when he saw me getting the new landlord''s wee daughter out the back of that bloody car," Mackie said.


    "They proper started panicking before I managed to get through to them me being blind was normal and it probably didn''t help that was before Mackie learned English," Annie said. "I was pretty banged about, not just from the crash either, those two bastards had decided to reaffirm their masculinity by beating up a little blind eight-year-old girl, so anyway after I told them Mum and Dad were off out of the village they got me into Murdo''s van and took me over to the nearest thing to a doctor in the village, in other words Ian Macbane, he used to be a mountain rescue team paramedic down in Perthshire. So anyway in the aftermath of that mess Mum said something about me not having any friends where Mackie and Nick could hear it and they both hit the bloody roof, they basically assigned themselves the position and were round visiting every day for the rest of the time we were living there in Inverallen then after we moved through to Stroncrubie that autumn after the new mines opened up those two idiots started jumping goods trains to come over pretty much daily, and after six weeks of that and it becoming eminently clear they weren''t going to quit it Dad just told the locomotive crews to let the boys ride in their cabs so there was no an accident. Fast forwards a year and a half and I got my first set of working eyes in and to cut a long story short it wasn''t long before I was joining the boys riding goods trains all up and down the coast."


    "And finding out that ourselves had no been making up any of the wee stories we''d been telling herself," Mackie added as Annie hauled the wheel across to turn onto the level crossing - she brought the pickup almost to a halt, glanced in both directions, then hit the gas again.


    "Any rate about then I swore to myself I was never ever being some bastard''s helpless bloody victim ever again," Annie continued, ignoring Mackie''s comment. "There''s now six idiots in the ground, two in a prison hospital, and another five in one of the penal colonies on Mars, who decided a rich bloke''s pretty daughter obviously wasn''t going to know how to use this," and she indicated her pistol then hauled the wheel back across in the other direction to turn onto the road west out the village.


    "As if Murdo McMurdo and Calum Boyd were going to be letting the daughter of the man who was saving our railway wander around not knowing how to be looking after herself, myself am guessing some people are just born daft," Mackie said with a snort. "Let''s face it, there''s a reason Claire''s never on her own, nobody at the railway is wanting a repeat of May ''86."


    He then caught the expression on Annie''s face via the rear-view mirror, and added, "What?"


    "... You''re saying the two hardest bastards on the loch reckon I can look after myself,"


    "After the number of times yourself''s been proving it?"


    Annie said, "Huh," then after a bit of a thoughtful silence, by which time she had turned off of the road that curved north towards Kylestrome and they were passing under the railway bridge Alice had seen the previous day, she added, "Cool. Still going to tell people you and Nick are my bodyguards when we''re over to the college though."


    "Aye, any bonnie lassie whose dad is loaded is needing some big lumps of muscle to be looming at anything that''s needing to be loomed at," said Mackie with a sagely nod, at which point Annie put her foot down and the resulting racket from the engine rendered conversation functionally impossible, it was by a wide margin the loudest vehicle in which Alice had ever found herself.


    The road to Lochinver was even narrower, bendier, beat-up and bumpier than the road north, though that last might have been more down to the pickup''s knackered suspension and woefully decrepit seats - by the time they were turning north up the coast at Lochinver, having passed through half a dozen tiny villages on the way, Alice had definitely concluded that firstly her tailbone was not, in fact, cybernetic (or if it was she was going to have to give Dr Clayton a stern ticking off about cybernetic tailbones that can feel like they''ve been beat the shit out of) and secondly that she was going to do her level best to avoid lifts with Annie until something had been done about the total lack of ride quality or soundproofing. Ideally, she felt, she''d avoid ever riding in that pickup again without it first having been given a thorough seeing-to by a full team of highly-trained elite ninja motor mechanics.


    They''d rattled their way through another half a dozen tiny back-of-nowhere villages with Annie waving enthusiastically at other road users every two minutes, and Alice was beginning to wonder if there''s such a thing as cyborg piles, by the time Brigid pointed out the cab between the seats and yelled, only just audible from the shattering roar of the engine, "There''s our boat!" and a moment later Annie had skidded to a halt with a squeal of decaying brakes in the next passing place and they were all piling out with the radio in Mackie''s hand.


    "Vigra, Vigra, Vigra," Mackie said into it the very moment the engine had clattered into silence, "Are you on there Elf? Over."


    A couple of moments passed in refreshing peace and quiet and then Elf Macbane''s voice crackled out of the radio, "You''re coming out the windows Mackie, yourself''s out and about there? Over."


    "Annie''s across asking after Nick," Mackie replied. "Herself''s wanting his company across to Inverness the morrow. Over."


    There was a pause, then Nick''s staticky voice asked, "What''s happening? Over," and Mackie handed Annie the radio.


    "I''m getting my new eyes in. Over," she said, and there was another pause.


    "Aye, I''ll be about," Nick replied. "Murdo-Alec Maclennon''s already set to be covering for me while I''m in the college, we''ll see if himself''s available for the morrow and if not well Nat''s going to be earning a few quid. Over.


    "Thanks Nick, and you too Elf. Over," Annie said, and handed the radio back to Mackie.


    "Okay then, we''ll leave yourselves be. Mackie out," he said, and chucked the radio back into the pickup.


    "Well," he said, "Myself was telling you not to worry about it."


    "Get bent you old teuchter," said Annie.


    They spent half an hour wandering around the stretch of moor by the road with Mackie pointing out different random mountains and bits of island and saying which was what, then piled back into the pickup to rattle and bounce and roar all the way back to Inverallen - at Brigid''s pointed suggestion they stopped off in Lochinver for ice cream and spent another half an hour wandering around the combination harbour and railway station with Mackie once again playing tour guide, before Annie dropped the other three off in Inverallen and hit the road west out the village on her way home, and as they were walking back up the driveway towards the Macbane''s croft Alice shook her head and said, "Annie''s bloody welcome to that pile of crap - bloody hell, my ears are ringing and my arse feels like I''ve been sitting on a road drill."


    Brigid gave her a funny look, then snorted.


    "There''s a reason I got in the back," she said. "I don''t like to say anything in front of Annie, she loves that old wreck, but the back seats are twenty years newer than either of what passes for front seats, the back suspension''s not as bad as the front, it''s at that funny angle because the front axle''s bent and one of the shocks is seized up, and it''s not as loud in the back either. I always let Nick or Mackie get the front seat, they seem to have concrete for arses but I guess that''s not really that surprising since their bikes don''t have back suspension."


    "You know a lot more about how that sort of stuff works than I expected," Alice admitted.


    Brigid shrugged and said, "I spend a lot of time helping Nick."


    "I take it Nick''s a bit of a mechanic then?"


    "Aye," said Brigid with a nod.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Towards the end of the afternoon, Alice was once again pulled out of trying to avoid thinking about the explosion via her ongoing failed attempts to read Lewis Carroll, once again by Brigid, who this time transpired to have been sitting across the table watching her for a while when she eventually said, "You''ve been reading the same paragraph for a quarter of an hour," and then added, "Sorry," when she realised she''d made Alice jump.


    Alice turned her attention from the page in question, which was something involving a cake marked ''Eat me'', and said, "It''s alright, I was away in a cloud."


    Brigid gave her a long, measuring, entirely too adult, look and said, "Of shrapnel," and that left Alice staring blankly at her for nearly a minute.


    "... how did you know?" she eventually asked.


    "You''re not even nearly the first person I''ve seen having a flashback and there''s no way you''re going to be the last. It takes you about ten minutes of quiet, doesn''t it, then you''re back there seeing that bomb going off, aren''t you, it''s as clear as the nose on your face. It''s called shellshock and it''s entirely too common here in the north what with one thing and another. I''m not surprised you''ve got shellshock, anyone who''s been blown up even half as bad as you were has it."


    Alice continued staring at her while trying to digest that and then said, "I don''t think waking up and not recognising my hands helped either, or realising I''ve got the wrong face."


    "No, it wouldn''t have," Brigid said with a sigh; she frowned and then added, "Maybe it''d be a good idea if you kept busy for a while."


    "What, something like a campaign of attempted distraction?" Alice asked, putting the book down - she didn''t bother marking her place, she was pretty clear she wasn''t going to finish it any time soon and she remembered so little of what she''d already read she was most likely going to have to start from the beginning when she did pick it back up. "Actually, that sounds like a good idea... so, what is there to do around here?"


    Brigid thought about that for a moment, then glance at the clock.


    "Well, the pub opens in twenty minutes and Elf was on the radio while you were, uh, distracted," Brigid said. "She says they''ll be getting to the harbour in about - oh, probably about forty minutes - and it''s still a nice day, so we could go down to the pier, sit outside the pub, and wait to meet the others when they come on shore."


    "I don''t have any ID - at least I don''t think I do," Alice pointed out.


    Brigid smiled.


    "You''re still thinking in down south," she said.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    An unhurried walk from the Macbane croft down to Inverallen harbour - a distance of a little under a mile - took a little over twenty minutes.


    The first half of the walk was up the Macbanes long driveway, past Mackie''s house and the rail yards, and onwards along the road down from the station - this wound through the woods for a quarter of a mile or so and the whole way along had a set of absurdly wide very rusty railway tracks mostly straddling it. The woods were broken up by the occasional croft-house and/or barnyard on one side of the road or the other, and one patch about halfway along dipped into a bit of a hollow where it crossed a burn via a squat little stone arch bridge.


    At the end of the more or less level woodland section the woods suddenly split up, the absurdly wide railway tracks swung off to the left in amongst the trees, and via a small rise they came out of the trees and the land opened up and they found themselves at the top of a long, steep, more or less straight hill going all the way down to the harbour for the second half of the walk, giving an excellent view out over Inverallen Bay and the lion''s share of the village - the land formed a sort of bowl in three rough levels, surrounded on the side they''d come from by hills, to the left and ahead by mountains, and to the right by the waters of the bay. Crofthouses, small pastures, and little patches of cultivated land covered the whole bowl area, up as high as the skyline where the road wound out of the village to the east and down as far as sea.


    The bay itself was surrounded on one side by the bowl of the village and on both the others by mountains; there was a crack of green to the southeast between the bulk of rock looming up over the bay''s south side and the mountains to the east, and all round the bay just above the high tide were a long string of white-harled houses forming Inverallen''s village street. From her vantage point Alice could make out three different railway lines, one thoroughly overgrown zigzagging drunkenly down towards the harbour, one making a long sweeping descent towards the slash of green at the furthest corner of the bay, and the third climbing steadily above the road east out of Inverallen that she only knew was a railway because it had a train coming down it.


    There were two stone-built piers, one with a mound of crab pots on the widened far end of it, a scattering of small brightly-painted boats moored in the shelter of the piers, and a swathe of fishfarm cages sprawled out on the far side of the bay.


    The road down passed several more croft-houses and barnyards jutting off of it and looking almost like they sloped upwards due to being flat while the road was so steep - at the bottom of the descent it flattened out and ran along the top of a low sea wall with rocky beach below it, with a few woefully battered derelict fishing boats slowly decaying on it - there was a total of one building between the sea and the road right where the road flattened out, a solid-looking stone structure with a roof that went much further on the seaward side than on the landward side, and this Brigid said had once been the harbourmaster''s office.


    The harbour area had railway tracks - both the absurdly wide and narroer-than-normal kind - set into the road surface - the narrow stuff ran out onto both piers while the wide stuff went down a slipway, where two large hairy weatherbeaten-looking men were industriously strapping a small fishing boat to a six-wheeled skeletal wagon riding on those absurdly wide rails; a dilapidated little grey tractor was hooked up to the wagon. There were old boats and clapped-out road vehicles everywhere - a mishmash of vans one of which Alice recognised as having been parked on the Macbanes croft the previous day, an assortment of woebegone cars, a couple of horribly battered pickup trucks, one very dead bulldozer, two ratty old forklifts, and what had once been a Land-Rover but now appeared to be a pile of rust.


    The pub took the form of one of the white-harled stone-built houses along the waterfront, and was jammed in between a tin-and-tarpaper shack with fuel pumps out the front and another similar house the door of which was standing open and from which an elderly black-clad woman with hessian shopping bags in both hands was exiting. It had a tin roof, there were a load of very large and very ugly skulls looking like they came from a thing like a rhino''s larger and gnarlier cousin attached to the end wall, a strong whiff of dope smoke and the lively strains of Celtic folk-rock coming from the door, and rough-and-ready cobbled-together camp tables out the front; one of these was occupied by a pair of crusty old codgers in Trade Union hats and dungarees, both holding pints of almost absurdly dark beer and one smoking a cob pipe; they were nattering in Gaelic about something they both very clearly thought was hilarious, and as Brigid and Alice turned into the building the old lady with the shopping bags joined in the conversation with some sort of pithy remark that left both the old boys hooting with laughter and the one who wasn''t smoking slapping his knee.


    Inside was very much a traditional pub: age-stained wood panelling, overstuffed red leather seating, old maps and flintlock guns hanging on the walls, and a giant teak bar structure with several hand-pumped beer taps and a huge array of whiskies above and below a big mirror behind it along with a number of pieces of unfamiliar electronics; to Alice''s surprise there wasn''t a single bottle of wine visible in the entire place. There was a dartboard at one end of the room, and a jukebox - from which the music audible outside was belting - beside the door; the place wasn''t busy, half a dozen assorted customers (two of whom, a pair of young women, were sharing a very large spliff) all seated at the bar, and the landlord - a particularly large grey-haired man with a startling familial resemblance to Mackie - was chatting in Gaelic to a couple of customers; he immediately greeted Brigid in that same language as soon as he saw her coming in the door.


    "Small beer please, Adair, and Alice will have... what''d you like Alice? My shout," Brigid said, marching up to the bar like she owned the place.


    "I, um, usually drink white wine?" Alice admitted, having a peer at what was on display; that got a chuckle out of the elderly man she had stopped beside when she arrived at the bar.


    "You''ll no be finding a lot of that this far north," the old boy said, his Gaelic accent just as thick as Mackie''s.


    "Well as luck would have it I''ve this," the landlord said, unearthing a bottle from beneath the bar - this had one of those flip tops that clip down with a little wire latch. "Elderflower wine, would that be doing you? Or if you''re fancying a red I''ve elderberry back here and all... Tell you what, I''ll give you a wee taste," and he collected a whisky glass from above the bar, sloshed an overly generous sample of wine into it, and slid it across the bar to Alice before turning his attention to pouring a drink from one of the pumps for Brigid.


    "Vigra, Vigra, Vigra, are you on there Elf? Over," one of the pieces of electronics crackled, revealing itself to be the sort of radio one would more often find in a boat. Alice sipped at the wine, finding it to be very sweet and quite unlike anything she''d ever drank before, though not unpleasant.


    "Glass of this, please," she said with a nod.


    "Aye, you''re coming out the windows Keith, over," the radio said in Elf''s voice.


    "That''ll be one and six please," the landlord said to Brigid, who unearthed some unfamiliar coinage from somewhere and slid it across the bar to him.


    "Bonnie day for it, over."


    "Here''s two bob," Brigid said; the landlord took the money and gave her some change.


    "Aye, it''s like a sheet of glass. Are you earning a living there Keith? Over."


    "Let''s sit out the front, it''s too smokey in here for me," Brigid said to Alice as she accepted her change, giving the pair of girls with the spliff a dubious look, to which they replied with a lot of giggling and set the landlord rolling his eyes.


    "Nae a bad one Elf, that''s the bills well and paid, and yourselves? Over."


    "Aye, that''s the diesel paid for at least, not a bad day at all. Over," and that was as much of the radio chatter as they heard as they exited the pub and took up occupation of the table that had been empty.


    "What''s ''small beer''?" Alice asked, sipping her wine.


    "What, you don''t get that where you''re from? That blows," Brigid said with a frown. "It''s what you get if you brew several times with the same mash, oh, here, have a taste," and she slid her glass over to Alice, who gave it a try, finding that it tasted almost but not quite like bread.


    "Like it?"


    "Huh - interesting," Alice said, sliding the glass back to Brigid. "Think I''ll stick to wine though."


    "Go steady with that stuff," the old codger with the pipe advised, and paused to finish off his beer. "That''s no the sort of grape juice that they''re calling wine down south, it''s packing a wallop."


    "Aye," the other old codger agreed, puffing on his pipe. "I''ve seen a few weans puking over the sea wall after a glass too many of that."


    "Doesn''t taste that strong," Alice said, having another sip of her wine.


    "That it doesn''t, it''s sneaky stuff, it''ll be creeping up on you for a wee ambush if you''re giving it half a chance," the old boy with the pipe said.


    "How strong was wee Morag saying it was again Murdo?" the old boy without the pipe asked.


    "Och, I cannae mind," the old boy with the pipe said, shaking his head. "Maybe about twenty percent I think it was? It was a while back that I was last talking the brewing with herself,"


    "Oh aye, memory starting to go you old teuchter?" asked the old boy without the pipe.


    "Teuchter yourself Murdo, there''s nae a thing wrong with my bloody memory,"


    "Aye, you just cannae be bothered to be remembering unimportant wee details like what day of the week it is or," and with that both of them burst out laughing.


    "Aye, you just keep telling yourself that," the old boy with the pipe chortled. "So, are you having another round then man?"


    "Och, might as well, might as well," and the two of them heaved themselves to their feet and headed into the bar.


    "That''s Murdo London and Murdo Macrae," said Brigid. "They''re harmless. Well, unless you''re a herring, Murdo London basically runs on herring," She then pointed and added, "There''s the Vigra, they''re early," and looking up Alice found the fishing boat she''d earlier seen from the hillside north of Lochinver just emerging from behind the headland at the furthest corner of the bay.


    "Don''t bother standing up yet," Brigid added, causing Alice to stop and not head for the pier after all. "They have to put the day''s catch into the keepers before they''ll moor her."


    "What''s a keeper?" Alice asked.


    "It''s a creel with no eyes - oh, look," and she pointed at the stack of crab pots beside the top of the slipway. "See the sort of net funnel thing going into those? That''s the eye, crabs and lobsters and whatnot can find their way in through it but they can''t find the way back out through it because, well, basically shellfish aren''t very bright. A keeper is just one where there''s plain netting over that part of it, it''s pretty much an underwater cage for keeping crabs and lobsters alive in - they''ll live for hours out the water but not, you know, days and there''s only really enough being caught to fill one crab train a week."


    "What, an entire train just from here?"


    "Oh - no, basically every Wednesday night there''s a train works its way north from Mallaig dropping off a vivier wagon - basically that''s a special box van with big tanks of salt water and stuff to oxygenate it in - or two in each harbour, right, and once it gets to Duirnish there''s just the locomotive and one van left. So everyone loads the vans on Thursday, the price gets settled and everything gets weighed at the same time, and I think it''s about five Thursday afternoon the train heads back down to Mallaig picking up the loaded vans to go to the cannery down there. There''s other buyers of course, they bring vivier lorries up, but most people just sell to Annie''s dad because the railway''s right there on the pier and he gives a good price."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Like what you''re seeing? Well, if you subscribe to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/scottishfarmboybiker</a> you can read the fourth and final part of chapter 1 right now.

 Chapter 1 part the fourth

    By the time the crew of the Vigra got back on shore Alice was three glasses of wine down and starting to notice that the Murdos (who by then were on to arguing about whose turn it was to be pessimistic) had not even slightly been having her on about the strength of the stuff - she was already starting to feel a bit tipsy and generally not as stable on her feet as she was when sober.


    Brigid pointed out that her siblings were getting the boat moored when it was crossing the bay from where the keepers were apparently positioned not far from the fishfarm cages on the other side of the bay; she and Alice watched as someone (from the size of him and the fact that Elf was visible leaning out of the wheelhouse side window, it was presumably Nick) caught the mooring buoy with a boathook, pulled the rope up, and affixed it to something close to the Vigra''s bows; with that done he used the buoy rope to pull what Brigid called ''the tender'' (a rowing boat) in to the Vigra''s side; someone switched the Vigra''s engine off, then Elf and (presumably, going by the height) Neil came out of the wheelhouse and all three climbed down into the rowing boat, whereupon Brigid jumped up onto the table and started jumping up and down, yelling, and waving her arms around; Elf saw her and waved back as the person Alice was now certain was Neil rowed it over to where a couple of ropes ran down the beach a short distance to the east of the easternmost pier; Alice couldn''t get a great view of it from where they were sitting but after doing something at the front of the rowing boat someone started pulling on one of the pair of ropes, which Murdo London explained were what he called a ''running mooring'' - a loop of rope running through a shackle on a big sunken concrete block at the far end and round a post at the beach end; pull the side the boat isn''t attached to and the other goes out, taking the boat with it.


    Elf and Neil came walking up the waterfront as the rowing boat was still moving outwards, and Elf said, "Brigid; Alice. Fancy meeting you here."


    "We thought we''d come and meet you lot because it''s something to do," said Brigid, getting down off the table; in the background the rowing boat stopped moving and Nick appeared, scrambling up from the beach.


    "Oh aye, got bored?" Neil asked.


    "Well, no so much, but," Brigid said, and glanced at Alice.


    "But I could probably do with spending a lot of time being distracted from thinking too much about, well, about what happened," Alice said with a sigh, and that caused Elf to nod and sit down across the table from her.


    "Aye, that makes sense," she said, fishing around in her pocket - she came out with a roll of paper money of a styl very unfamiliar to Alice, peeled off a couple of notes, and handed them to Neil. "What''s yourselves having? You too, Murdo and Murdo."


    "I''ve been drinking elderflower wine," Alice said, indicating the nearly-finished third glass.


    "Small beer, please," said Brigid.


    "A pint of stout for myself, and the same for this great teuchter," said Murdo London. Neil nodded and headed into the pub.


    "How''s the fishing then Elf?" Murdo Macrae asked, ignoring Murdo London''s crack about teuchters.


    "It''s been a bloody good day," Elf told him. "We''ve finally managed to actually find the crays out near to Eilen na Uilbheast, it''ll be a bloody fine payoff this week," and Murdo Macrae smiled.


    "Aye, I was telling you it was worth looking for them out there," he said with a nod. "They''re buggers to be finding, but when you do..."


    "Eight of them out of one net, six out the other, and a wee one turned up in one of the parlours," Elf said, nodding back.


    "So how''s the crabs and the lobsters been treating yourselves then?" Murdo London asked.


    "Well enough, it''s been a good day all over," Elf said as Nick, who had been ambling along the shorefront, arrived and Neil came back out the pub with a couple of glasses, which he handed to Brigid and Alice before heading back in.


    "So," and Elf turned back to Alice, "Distractions, aye?"


    "What is there to do around here apart from, you know, coming down here and getting drunk?"


    "Well I''m going through to Inverness with Annie and Mackie on the morrow, you could come along for the spree," said Nick.


    "Could take a turn up to Duirnish or down to Mallaig on the train, or maybe come with us when we''re getting the shellfish shipped on Thursday?" Elf suggested. "Hell, if you were wanting you could come out on the boat for a day''s fishing at some point."


    "Isn''t there a band playing down in Ullapool on Friday?" Brigid asked.


    "Aye, that lot from Stornaway who''ve been all over the internet just lately, we could head down for that," Nick said. "And there''s surely other stuff we can work out to be doing."


    "I don''t think we need to be particularly regimented or anything," Alice said. "I just..."


    "It''s no any bother," Elf said. "We''ll make things up as we go along, aye?"


    "Yeah - sounds good."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The first thing Brigid said when Elf sat down at the breakfast table on the morning of Tuesday 27th was, "Alice has been having nightmares."


    She then looked at Alice, whom she had woken up from a nightmare in which she''d been walking towards that Godforsaken bomb aware of what was going to happen and unable to change anything, a couple of hours earlier, and added, "I know you didn''t want to make a fuss about it but that''s silly, if you don''t say anything nobody''s going to know to do anything."


    Alice set her spoon down with a click and a glare.


    "Yes. Every time I close my bloody eyes I''m right back there getting blown to bits again. What''s anyone going to do about that? It''s me dreaming,"


    "I think we should put a ban on her bed and you''re better at that stuff than I am," Neil told Nick.


    "... A you what?" asked Alice, the wind very effectively taken out of her sails.


    "You know, a ban - just a wee bit of edges being edges," Nick said with a frown, then added a slightly surprised, "You don''t have a clue what I''m talking about, do you? Okay basically edges and boundaries and that sort of thing have, well, have an effect on the world and if you know what you''re about you can be using that to do a lot of things. Oh, watch this," and he went and got a scrap of card and a biro off of the computer table, sat back down, and started making a whole series of little marks along the edge of the card with the pen.


    After a moment, the card vanished without a trace; Nick put the pen down and made as if to hand the card to Alice, who numbly extended a hand for it only to find she could feel it: it was currently invisible.


    She looked from the invisible bit of card to Nick and back a few times, and Nick took it back off of her, ran his finger along the edge, and scribbled at part of it with the biro; it abruptly reappeared.


    "Basically that," he said.


    AliceOS has unexpectedly closed.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The astonished silence that had engulfed the Macbane family when Alice got up and walked out the house with a totally lost expression on her face was eventually broken by Nick, who said, "Er,"


    "Hell was that about?" said an equally befuddled Ian, glancing around at the looks of confusion on the faces of his entire family.


    "I, er, don''t think she''s ever seen anything like that before?" Brigid suggested.


    "Okay, sure, how?" asked Elf. "That''s just impossible, this sort of stuff is everywhere," and she pointed at the once-again visible bit of card.


    "I think," said Neil, "We''re radically underestimating just how not like this wherever Alice is from is, I mean you couldn''t have got a more mindboggled expression showing a caveman a fusion rocket."


    "I think I''d better go and see if she''s okay," said Nick, rising to his feet; his father nodded.


    "I''m coming," Brigid told him, getting up too, and the two of them hurried out of the house.


    It didn''t take them moments to find Alice - she was in that same corner of the garden as she''d ended up in after Neil opened his trap and got an enormous mouthful of foot two days prior, though her stare out at the world was a whole lot blanker this time.


    "You going to be okay?" Nick asked.


    Alice didn''t react for long enough that he was about to ask again, and maybe try touching her shoulder to get her attention, but right before he moved she turned round and asked, in an utterly lost voice, "Where the hell am I?"


    "A very, very, very long way from home," Brigid told her.


    "Just how bloody deep is this bloody rabbit-hole anyway?" Alice added, and Nick and Brigid glanced at each other.


    "I don''t know," Nick told her. "I don''t know how far up it you started, or how far up it goes from here."


    "I want to go home," Alice said. "I want Mum, but I don''t know if she''d even recognise me, Lord knows I don''t even recognise myself. I''m standing here with the wrong face, the wrong body, science fiction arms, none of this makes sense and I''m, I''m half convinced the Red Queen is going to come running up yelling ''off with her head'' any moment."


    "Well if she does I''ll give her a good seeing-to," said Nick. He wasn''t sure if it''d help, but he''d already started thinking of the lost girl as a friend and not letting any clever bugger mess with you and yours was right at the very top of the Macbane family to-do list.


    "God, I''m a mess, aren''t I," said Alice, and she started rubbing at her face.


    "Who wouldn''t be, given the circumstances?" Brigid asked. "I can''t think of anyone who wouldn''t."


    "I''m still half-convinced I''ve totally lost my marbles and am laying somewhere in a hospital hallucinating all this," Alice told her.


    "I think if you''d lost it you wouldn''t be wondering if you''d lost it, I don''t think mad people even think once about their mad and never mind worrying about it," said Brigid.


    "Bit of a sweeping statement but I think you''ve got a point again," Nick told her.


    "Some sweeping statements," Brigid told him with a glare, "Get stated because they''re true."


    He couldn''t help it; he said, "So you keep saying whenever you''re making sweeping statements," and then he turned back to Alice and added, "So, are you going to be okay?"


    "I don''t know," she said. "I think... I think I''m just going to stand here and see if the world starts making sense again."


    "You''ve no finished your breakfast."


    "I''m not hungry any more."


    "Still wanting to come through to Inverness? We''ll be taking off in a couple of hours."


    "Ask me again in an hour or so, I can hardly think at the moment," Alice said, and so he did.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Two hours after the blowing of Alice''s mind and joined by Brigid, they did indeed walk up to the station - not by the road, instead having left the house by the front garden gate they walked up what Brigid called the cow path - a fenced concrete walkway between the southern side of the house''s surrounding garden and a patch of something halfway between marsh, muddy stream, and woodland, prominently featuring ducks - the fences opened out via a gate onto the stony gently-sloping mixture of field and sparse woodland Alice had found herself looking out over after leaving the house on both of the occasions she''d lost ability to handle everything, and a couple of hundred feet later came to a very home-made bridge - a couple of what looked like old railway sleepers with a rusty chunk of steel treadplate bolted to the top of them - crossing what was either a large stream or a small river, the far side of which was a patch of denser woods - almost entirely birch and rowan - followed shortly by the gate out of the croft and onto the moorland stretching out towards Lochinver and the pass over to Kylesku.


    Here they turned uphill, following a clearly-defined trodden footpath (which much to Alice''s relief proved hard enough her heels didn''t dig in) along the perimeter wall of the village - tumbledown drystone about four feet tall with a raggedy battered old fence strung along the top - for the hundred yards up to the railway. This was fenced, with a stile in the fence and a plank pedestrian crossing - a long line of mustard-yellow wagons were parked on one of two lengthy sidings stretching out beside the line itself to the west, while the station area was almost immediately to the right, and a pair of blue-and-yellow locomotives were sitting idling in another, shorter, siding the far side of the station. Nick and Brigid had no visible qualms whatsoever about crossing the tracks on foot, and Alice took that under advisement.


    Crossing the stile the other side of the tracks would have taken them straight out onto the widened stretch of road that served as a station car park - there were indeed three assorted motor vehicles, two battered old cars one of which didn''t have numberplates and a pile of rusted scrap metal in the rough shape of a van, parked there - however the Macbane siblings turned away from the stile, instead turning eastwards along the railway side of the fence and walking down to lean on the fence near the front of the line of wagons, where Mackie was leaning on a fence post to wait.


    "What''s the plan?" Alice asked, joining them.


    "That''s the morning ironstone empties for Stroncrubie," Nick told her, indicating the wagons. "The morning ore train should be here in a couple of minutes, right - that''s what the mainline locos over there," and he indicated the blue-and-yellow pair of locomotives, "Are waiting for. Whoever''s driving will pick this lot up to head back towards Stroncrubie, Annie''s going to meet us off the train in Duchally at the head of the loch."


    "What, are you seriously suggesting hitching a lift on a freight train?" Alice, to whom this sort of idea was not exactly everyday stuff, asked.


    "Well yeah, it''s no like we''re down south or anything, hopping on a goods train is nothing unusual up here," Nick said. "We get to ride in style - Annie''s dad owns the railway, he''s bloody minted, and after they moved over to Stroncrubie on the other side of the loch we, that''s myself and Mackie, we started stowing away on the ore trains to head over to visit her, we used to just climb into one of the empties - there''s enough of a curve and a slope to the track whoever''s in the signal box can''t see more than the leading third of the train when it''s parked up in the siding here. Well one thing led to another and after a while Sir Joe, that''s Annie''s dad, came to the conclusion we were going to be keeping getting ourselves onto the trains no matter what he was doing so he just had us start getting rides on the locomotive to be making sure we were no going to be ending up under a train."


    "Huh," said Alice.


    "There goes the Vigra," Brigid, utterly disinterested in this topic, said, pointing - turning to look Alice could see the smartly-painted green hull and cream deck and wheelhouse of the Macbane''s fishing boat, steaming out of the bay below them.


    "Vigra," Alice said. "I take it that''s a reference to something," She circumspectly avoided making the obvious comparison.


    "Aye," Nick said, "That was the name of Shetland Larssen''s boat back during the war."


    "I have to confess I haven''t a clue who he is."


    "He was one of the Shetland Bus skippers¡­ that doesn''t mean a lot to you either, does it. Well during the war after the Krauts invaded Norway there was a secret ferry set up between Shetland and Norway, using fishing boats to begin with but eventually they got hold of much faster boats of a type called ''submarine chasers''. Leif Larssen was one of the best skippers, possibly the best skipper, that they had - the original Vigra was his boat, she was named after an island no far from Alesund in Norway. We got to talking about what to be naming our boat, and decided there couldn''t be a much better name for a boat than the name of that man''s boat, he''s no a bad shoe-in for the title of the greatest fishing-boat skipper there ever was.


    "The train''s coming," said Brigid, pointing - sure enough, a huge mustard-yellow diesel locomotive of a kind matching the one Alice had seen at the workshops on Sunday was just emerging from the woods up the line to the east, quickly proving to be at the head of a line of wagons matching the empties they were standing near to.


    They stood and waited as it trundled closer, Brigid waving enthusiastically as it entered the station - the driver, a dark-haired woman an enormous smile, waved back and was greeted with a happy cry of, "It''s Kathy Maclennon!" from Brigid as the train swung slightly alarmingly across one set of points then another, aiming it into a second siding parallel to the one the empties were parked in.


    The locomotive rumbled past them with a single cheery Gaelic word yelled by the driver, the wagons - which were loaded to heaped with rust-streaked metallic rocks - following it in orderly manner, the whole long stream of them slowly clunking past before eventually coming to a halt with the hindmost wagon more or less parallel to the end empty.


    "See the points there?" Nick said.


    "What am I looking for?" Alice asked; the point blades moved over with a clunk.


    "When you''re crossing the track never, ever, put your foot between that part that moved and the rail near to it," Nick told her. "We once found a sheep that''d got its leg trapped that way - the poor bloody thing''s leg was just utterly crushed flat, then a train rolled over it. Not a good way to die."


    "¡­ I''ll bear that in mind," Alice said, deciding she was going to stay the hell off of railway tracks when she wasn''t with someone who knew about that sort of thing. From up the tracks near the head of the newly-arrived train, the black smoke blew up again with the distant roar of a diesel engine revving up, and not long after that the locomotive came growling along the track of the main line towards Lochinver and Kylesku; it growled past the points, and came to a halt; the points clattered across again, and a moment later the set nearer to where they were standing changed too, and the locomotive reversed itself again, backing down onto the head of the empties.


    It nudged up against them with a mechanical crash as the coupler - this big metal jaw sort of an affair - closed; a set of air brakes hissed to themselves, and the woman Brigid had called Kathy Maclennon exited the door front centre of the cab (revealing herself to be clad in a dark-coloured dress belted tight over a very small waist) and came scrambling down the footsteps with a big smile on her face, closely followed by a large hairy man in a dirty orange boiler suit and Trade Union hat.


    "Morning Kathy, morning Alec," Nick said.


    "Morning," Kathy declared as the man presumably named Alec went scrambling down the front of the locomotive and began producing rattling and clanking noises from down there in the process of connecting some sort of hose thing. "Yourselves''ll be looking for a ride to Stronecrubie then, aye?"


    "Only as far as Duchally today thanks," Nick told her. "We''re meeting Annie there and heading through to Inverness."


    "Oh aye, up to much?"


    "Aye, actually, Annie''s getting her new eyes in and was wanting a wee bit of moral support, I swear being left in the dark''s the only thing in the world herself''s the slightest bit feart of," said Mackie, and that got a laugh out of the driver.


    "Aye, Doctor Clayton was up and alloying my poor wee blind niece with carbon and now she''s made of steel," she said with a fond nod. "And who''s your friend?" and she nodded to Alice.


    "I''m Alice," said Alice


    "Och well, so yourself''s the lassie who was in Grace Mitchell''s kitchen through in Kylesku then aye?" Kathy asked with a nod as she directed them up the steps into the locomotive''s cab - the whole thing was even bigger close up than it''d seemed the previous day - having ushered the five of them into the cab, Kathy vanished back out the front and joined Alec down the front making clanking noises.


    "Does everyone know about me?" Alice asked.


    "Just about," Mackie said. "People like to talk, ken?"


    The cab area was just as spacious as it had seemed from track level - it had multiple lightly-worn comfortable-looking seats some with accompanying controls, several flatscreen monitors built into varied surfaces - actual flatscreens, not the ones with depth - and sets of controls facing in both directions. Everything had a new-but-used and scrupulously clean air with paint just starting to wear on the corners, treadplate flooring just starting to look scuffed, seats just starting to show they''d been used, and a general air of everything being scrupulously maintained.


    "Alright," Kathy declared, reappearing and heading for the set of seats pointing east up the line. "That''ll be that then," and Alec banged the cab door shut behind himself. "Take a seat."


    She settled herself at one side of that end''s set of controls, and Alec seated himself the other while their impromptu passengers found places to sit down; Kathy slotted a handle sort of an affair into part of the controls and gave a chain dangling from the ceiling a tug, causing the horn to sound; the horns (or a horn) from the pair of blue-and-yellow locomotives answered. They waited a few moments, then a bell rang somewhere in the locomotive''s controls - a happy-sounding ''Ding!'' - and Kathy declared, "Signal cleared, and away we go," nudged the handle over a notch, and pushed a lever forwards, causing the engine to gun up and the locomotive to ever so gradually begin to ease forwards under another towering plume of black smoke, and away they did indeed go.


    "Aye, and away we go," Alec agreed, then nodded to Alice as they eased past the pair of blue-and-yellow locomotives and Alice realised with a start just how stupidly huge the mustard-yellow monstrosity in fact was - she was looking down on the blue-and-yellow pair''s roofs. "So how was yourself ending up in that train? My cousin Wilma was just across the coach from where they were finding yourself, she got out with little more than cuts and bruises thank Christ, and she swears blind she cannae mind seeing yourself,"


    "I don''t know, actually," Alice said. "I was in London the last thing I clearly remember."


    "Och well, that''d be amnesia or something aye?" Kathy asked.


    "Or something, aye," Nick said with a nod. Kathy tut-tutted and shook her head; the locomotive rattled across a set of points, tracks (these ones with only two rails) heading away to the left and up-slope as they started to descend.


    "Off of the shared metals," Kathy declared.


    "Aye, off of the shared metals," Alec agreed.


    The line descended steadily down through the woods above the road - looking out the right side of the cab Alice could make out the road through gaps in the trees, soon followed by the sheds she''d seen the previous day - these were now a hive of activity - and not long after they''d passed the sheds another track - the junction accompanied by another signal - coming up from the sheds joined that they were on, heralded by another happy ''Ding!'' from the controls, right after which as they entered a sweeping left-hand curve they came out from between the trees and onto a bridge over a large stream with the road visible curving sharply away perhaps forty feet lower than the tracks.


    Coming off of the bridge the tracks plunged back into an even denser patch of trees for perhaps a hundred yards, at the end of which as the track turned to curve back the other way they rattled over another bridge, this one with the road beneath, the far side of which they emerged onto an open hillside perhaps two hundred feet above sea level and still heading steadily downhill, with the main part of the village spread out below them.


    The tracks slowly descended as they skirted round the edge of the village itself until, by the time they were halfway round and passing over a river that came out where the road on the waterfront started to curve towards the south side of the bay, they were directly across a fence from a line of sharply-sloped back gardens with the mountainside towering over them.


    In this place, the world had walls.


    The track began to curve to the left again, clattering over another set of points - again heralded by a happy ''Ding!'' from the controls - from which narrow-only tracks headed back towards the harbour, and aimed them into what had looked like a slash of green when Alice had first seen the village from the other side of the bay and was, it turned out, a wide slice of flat land not far above sea level, scattered with crofts, that stretched from the bay through between two of the mountains around the village to the shores of Loch Allen proper, with that whole side of the bay and its attendant mountain forming a headland - the track curved to cling to the cliffs along the side of the loch heading eastwards, passing through another tiny patch of woods and levelling out - Kathy poured on the power, the clatter of the engine raising to a heavy roar and the train beginning to pick up speed now the careful descent was done, and the tracks curved past another cluster of white houses, between another stand of trees, and right onto the very edge of the land, running along track that appeared to be laid along a wide ledge on sea cliffs - there was a footpath between the train and the cliff face to the left of the track, and on the right hand side the track was so close to the edge Alice couldn''t see the lineside from the cab windows, it was almost like the sea came right up to the train that side.


    A small blue-and-white fishing boat, small enough it could''ve fitted into one of the ore wagons, that Alice vaguely remembered seeing coming into the bay while she was chatting with the Macbane siblings at the pub the previous afternoon, was working so close you almost could''ve reached out the locomotive and shaken hands with a member of the boat''s two-person crew. As Alice watched, a crab pot came heaving out of the water to be neatly caught by a large bearded man in bright yellow oilskins and a grey wooly hat - he turned to plunk it onto a table sort of thing built on the boat''s deck, looked up, saw the train, grinned somewhere beneath his whiskers, and waved; his crewmate - a very short young woman likewise clad in yellow oilskins - looked up, and waved too.


    Alec waved back, and sounded the locomotive''s horn.


    The track clung to the cliffs for nearly two miles before the land above began to flatten out and another croft appeared, this time above the tracks on a bit of a bluff - a field sloped away and up from about level with the locomotive''s side windows to a small barnyard - greeted by the locomotive with another happy ''Ding!''; the track began to rise a little away from the sea, first wave-swept barnacle-encrusted boulders appearing between the line and the water, then a wide shingle beach with boats pulled up right to the edge of the tracks, and they emerged, their coming heralded by a double blast on the horn, between a pair of barns, coming out right beside another street of white-harled fishermen''s cottages and a red telephone box, the tracks laying between the road and the front doors of some of the houses, and a station consisting solely of a short wooden platform with a thing like a bus shelter and a signal on one end of it.


    The line kept on like that, curving ever so gently southwards as it went, passing one croft after another and another two tiny village stations, each one preceded by another ''Ding!'', the land on the far side of the loch getting more and more rugged and the land on the near side of the loch getting less and less rugged, for some twenty or so miles till at the very easternmost point of Loch Allen amongst land almost completely flat they entered the village of Duchally, heralded by the controls producing a solemn ''Bong!'' sound and Kathy beginning to ease the brakes on.


    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Duchally was surrounded by sprawling fields and crofts and was by a good margin the largest settlement Alice had yet seen since her awakening - it had a church, a fully-grown if single-sided village street complete with a few shops, a pub, and what was clearly a school, a couple of hundred houses, and an actual fuel station that wasn''t a tin shed - the railway was separated from the street by a tumbledown drystone wall - with the station, a fully-grown twin-track affair with an actual station building and a signal box and two brick-built platforms, about halfway through the village, directly across the road from the pub. A string of three coaches was waiting on the other track, and Annie was standing on the platform as the train hove itself to a halt - the solemn bell having bonged twice more as the cab came level with the start of the platform - and Kathy went to discuss something with the signalman, taking what she called ''the token'' - a circular piece of metal, with attached carry handle, about six inches across with ''INVERALLEN-DUCHALLY'' engraved in Victorian-looking block caps on each side, as Alice and Mackie and the pair of Macbanes disembarked from the locomotive.


    "Morning," said Annie Kelly. She was clad in much the same style as the previous day, complete with the palm-sized patch of exposed cleavage, though that said she was wearing a different colour dress - a deep olive green instead of wine red. "Good journey?"


    "Aye, just fine," Nick said with a nod as they headed out of the station to where Annie''s ute was doing its impression of a wreck in the station''s modest car park - modest as in about three to four times the size of the car park in Inverallen. The train they''d just disembarked sounded its horn behind them, roared, and began to pull away, and Alice realised how good the sound deadening in the cab had been.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Brigid had, it transpired, been dead on the money as concerned the ride quality in the back seats of Annie''s pickup: sitting in the back with Brigid jammed between her and Mackie she could actually hear herself think and the seat wasn''t threatening to concertina her spine each time they went over a bump in the road, though it was still rough, smelly, and loud.


    The drive to Inverness from Duchally wasn''t a short one either; half the distance was on single-track roads, narrow and winding and badly-maintained and generally slow. The land around the road gradually got less and less rugged as they headed east, mountains gradually giving way to rolling hills; conversely it slowly got more and more wooded until, when they got off the single-track at a tiny back of nowhere village called Inveran, they were completely surrounded by forests.


    At Bonar Bridge - a very rural town built round the bridge it was named for, full of vehicles that made Annie''s wreck look well-maintained, and heralded by a friendly sign declaring that dangerous drivers would be shot - they stopped for ice cream; back on the road it wasn''t long before they finally reached Scotland''s eastern shore and turned to heading mostly south where the road met and crossed via causeway a broad sea inlet that Mackie, who''d spent the entire journey cheerfully telling Alice what each place they passed was, called the Dornoch Firth.


    From there the surroundings steadily got more and more populated as they drove southwards - the empty wasteland of the west coast, which Brigid explained had been deforested to make charcoal with which to smelt iron early in the industrial revolution, had given way to dense woodlands in the centre of the country, which in turn gave way to swathes of farmland sprawled out between towns and villages. The road too steadily changed, becoming both broader, more and more battered, and more heavily trafficked - in all the miles of single-track between Duchally and Inveran they''d passed a grand total of a dozen other vehicles going the other way, by the time they''d hit Bonar Bridge they''d passed twice that, and from the Dornoch Firth there was a steady flow of traffic headed in both directions and steadily getting denser and denser and the overtaking steadily grew more and more insane - and the sight of abandoned and often stripped-out vehicles laying at the side of the road became more and more common.


    The road widened again, becoming a dual carriageway that actually appeared to be seeing some sort of maintenance, after crossing another causeway over another long sea inlet which Mackie called the Cromarty Firth, taking them onto what he explained was a big peninsula known for no apparent reason as the Black Isle, on the other side of which - a short and fast drive - the road crossed a long sea inlet via a very impressive suspension bridge - this Mackie named as the Kessock Bridge - that appeared to lead directly into Inverness itself - the Black Isle side was very rural and wooded and scattered with clusters of human inhabitation, the whole Inverness side was urbanised with what looked to be a half-built deep-water port for loading large cargo ships to the left of what Mackie said was the A9, the main road south, with the half-built port in turn surrounded by a mish-mash of mismatched industrial units and with a long strip of construction site extending east out of town - Mackie said that this was going to be a dedicated high-capacity rail link leading to what he called Dalcross Airfield a few miles to the east, though he did not elaborate on why exactly the hell you''d need a dedicated high-capacity rail link for an airfield.


    To the right of the road was the town itself, sprawling way, way back towards the hills that surrounded the town to the south, east, and west - there was urbanisation as far as the eye could see, with a massive almost triangular swathe of rail yards a few hundred yards from and below the road, and a sea of dilapidated crosses between industrial units and shanty-town more or less filling the area between road and rail yards.


    The dual carriageway climbed slowly to cross first three different sets of railway, one with overhead cables strung above it, then a large roundabout which onramps and offramp led to and from - this Annie drove straight past, only to take the next offramp, this one leading up to a crossroads junction at which she turned left onto a flyover back across the A9 and into Inverness proper - the land sloped sharply upwards on both sides of the A9here, climbing up to form a hillside to the east of the A9 and a plateau of sorts to the west. There was another big roundabout almost directly off the west end of the flyover, from which smaller roads spread out into the plateau area in amongst tightly-packed buildings, many of them tall. One of the legs of the roundabout headed back onto the northbound side of the A9.


    Annie crossed the roundabout onto the road that went straight ahead - this was the widest of the bunch with two lanes in each direction - then hung a right at the first intersection, taking them first through an unmanned military-looking checkpoint with its gates standing wide open and very little sign of it ever having been used, after which they passed a large billboard reading RAIGMORE HOSPITAL and came out into a sea of car park full of an eclectic mixture of battered old vehicles similar to what everyone seemed to drive back west and these hypermodern-looking affairs that wouldn''t have looked at all out of place on the streets of the London that Alice had been attending college in, with a whole line of them plugged into what had to be electric vehicle charging stations; perhaps a third of the vehicles were not battered old wrecks.


    "Right," Annie declared, swinging out of the pickup to reach through the hole in the bonnet and switch the engine off. "Let''s get this done," and both of the boys nodded and said nothing.


    At the reception Annie presented identification in the form of a passport, and they were immediately ushered off into the hospital by a receptionist who had been wearing a look of faint contempt until she scanned the passport and something that made her eyes visibly widen appeared on the screen in front of her, which Alice had been quite unable to see.


    The only aspect of the entire place that didn''t look downright futuristic was the people, all of whom were clad in that vaguely Edwardian-or-Victorian manner of apparel that had kept turning up everywhere Alice looked since the moment she woke up in Grace''s kitchen - there was something downright disconcerting about seeing a gentleman clad in shirt sleeves, tie, waistcoat and Trade Union hat coming the other way with a blue-grey plastic arm extending from one of those sleeves, and the spectacle of a young lady wearing a particularly vicious corset and a dress of overall similar character to that worn by Annie (if sporting somewhat more bare skin at the front and rather more lurid colours) walking along the corridor with a slightly glassy-eyed expression and a cable extending from her handbag and plugged into the back of her neck - the fact that the receptionist was just as wasp-waisted as Annie or the girl with the cable plugged into her neck probably didn''t help either, and nor did the ubiquitous patch of bare skin right in the middle of her cleavage or the rather unnecessary magnitude of heel on her shoes.


    The receptionist knocked at a door - white, absent a doorhandle, marked only with a four-digit number on a small brass plate - and said door promptly zipped open with a soft whoosh and the receptionist stuck her head in and said, "Miss Kelly to see you, Dr Clayton."


    "Ah, prompt as ever," said the unmistakable Ausralian-toned voice of the man himself, and Dr Clayton appeared at the door, looking momentarily startled when he saw Alice, but he brushed that expression off in an instant. "And mates, come on in."


    The interior of the room was just as hyperfuturistic as the rest of the hospital interior, and the doctor showed his patient to a seat rather reminiscent of the dentist''s chair of tomorrow with the deformed mutant descendent from hell of a set of skiing goggles hanging from a cable behind the seat - there were a pair of entirely non-futuristic office chairs sat one each side of it, in which Nick and Mackie immediately seated themselves.


    "Take a seat," the doctor advised Alice and Brigid, gesturing to a line of rather mundane compared to most of the rest of the room moulded plastic chairs sitting against the wall beside the door, then he turned his entire focus to his patient. "We''re looking at a much simpler procedure than last time you were through to town, everything is mechanical or electronic at this stage in affairs, though it will require me to switch off the connections to your visual centres."


    Annie nodded sharply and didn''t say a word to that, though the rest of her manner stayed exactly as laid-back as she''d been at the controls of the pickup or lounging around in Mackie''s family kitchen.


    "Ready to begin?" the doctor asked her, and got another sharp little nod; he nodded back, and presented Annie with the end of a cable matching the one Alice had plugged into her wrist a few days prior; this she plugged into a socket at the back of her neck.


    "Good, now the first thing to do is shut everything down," said the Doctor, and Annie gave him another sharp little nod.


    He turned to the hologram that the equipment stand behind Annie''s seat was projecting, and poked at it, and Alice abruptly realised the exact moment that ''everything'' shut down, Annie''s sight included, because that was when her hands snapped out, briefly fumbled, were grabbed by the boys sat each side of her, and clamped down tight, and that was when Alice clocked that the other young woman was absolutely terrified and utterly refusing to show it.


    "Hold your head still, Annie, you''re doing just fine," the doctor told her, voice gentle; he picked up the mutant hellbeast ski goggles (or maybe they were the decayed corpse of a crash helmet wearing nightvision gear?) up from where they were hanging down the back of the seat and carefully put it onto her head and spent a minute pretty much bolting it on with the grand finale of affixing it rigidly to the chair back. Annie, aside from the increasingly tight grip on the boys'' hands, took this with all the aplomb of a well-dressed and rather bored gentlewoman waiting for a bus.


    Alice watched, fascinated almost despite herself, as the doctor worked a number of controls on the hologram - the helmet produced a variety of humming and clicking sounds, at each of which Annie''s knuckles grew whiter though she did not otherwise so much as make one believe that she might have considered batting an eyelid, then he unfastened a latch on it and hinged the goggle section down, revealing a set of very wide-open unblinking eyelids with utterly empty, metal-lined, eye sockets beneath them making Alice realised with a jolt that Annie Kelly currently literally did not have eyes in her head yet appeared faintly bored anywhere but the knuckles and that made her clock what it was about Annie and trains; the Sutherland Railway lived on high-grade iron and hydrocarbons and what the hell else are you supposed to make steel out of anyway?


    The doctor went into that disturbing fixed empty cyborg skeleton stare with a couple of very small Allen keys of all things, carefully removing a small number of electronic components, gently talking them through what he was doing the whole time and repeatedly telling his patient that she was ''doing just fine'' throughout the whole process.


    Once the pieces of electronics were out, he started inserting and fastening into place a very different set, then disconnected the night-vision-goggles-from-hell part of the helmet, set it carefully down on a tray, and collected another; he checked something inside it, reattached it to the helmet, went through in there double-checking things, then touched another control on the hologram; the goggle section hinged itself up over the eyeless sockets, clicked a couple of times, then made a couple of humming and clicking noises.


    "Good, now to check it''s all correctly in place," the doctor said, sounding satisfied; he went over a whole series of diagnostic readouts, again repeatedly pausing to give Annie that same reassurance, before carefully removing the helmet, revealing her eyes were now almost impossibly blue and lacked the visible mechanical iris, though her eyelids were still rigidly wide open in a very unnatural and slightly creepy way.


    "That''s all in order, now to start everything back up," he said, and put action to words, touching another series of icons on the hologram - Annie blinked, her eyelids relaxed, her eyes flicked around, and she let out a slightly wobbly-sounding sigh and relaxed her grip on the boys'' hands.


    "There," the doctor said. "How does everything look?"


    "Got a mirror?" Annie asked, and you would never have known that a few moments prior she''d been all but frozen as rigid as a deer staring into oncoming headlights; the doctor immediately passed her a rather old-fashioned-looking hand mirror and she added, "Thanks," and started peering critically into her reflection.


    "Huh," she said, pulling one lower eyelid down. "That blue''s come out even brighter than it looked when we chose it - is my colour range better or something?" She glanced around, and then added, "Huh, aye, better colour range. Lots better, I never realised Brigid''s hair was so bright,"


    "As good as the real thing," the doctor said with a nod. "Seeing any pixellation? Blurriness? How''s your depth of field?"


    "I... can''t make out any pixellation at all, actually," she said. "That''s... huh. Aye, depth of field is miles better than the old set, and I''m going to have to be outside to say anything about focal range, or maybe, " and she peered very closely at the ball of her own left thumb.


    "Oh wow, I can see every ridge and furrow in my thumbprint," she said, her newly-fitted eyes lighting up with almost childlike delight.


    "There''s only four other people walking around with sets of these in their head anywhere so far and that''s counting Alice here," the doctor said, sounding very pleased with himself. "These are the state of the art, this stuff is beyond cutting edge - we might be actually selling these in maybe about two to five years - at the moment making them involves micromanipulator waldos and about six hundred hours skilled labour per eye, which as you can imagine does some pretty hair-raising things to the price tag involved. Like ''em?"


    "Aye," Annie said with a nod, her calm returning. "They''ll be just fine."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Well," said Annie as they walked back out the front of the hospital towards the pickup, the only sign of the entire ordeal the way she''d occasionally stop and stare at something (or someone) for a moment with that wonder flashing back into her eyes before shaking it off and resuming walking, "Where now?"


    "Rate my chances of getting into college," Alice said, and that got Annie''s attention.


    "You''ll need documentation," Annie said with a frown. "As far as actually getting in this year goes, that won''t be a problem - I''m a fabulously wealthy heiress, the name ''Miss Annabella Kelly'' tends to cause doors to abruptly pop open and civil servants to become amazingly helpful, and that makes the only real question there what you want to study. As for those documents, fortunately I know most of the cops - which I guess makes our next port of call pretty obvious, though you lot, Nick, Mackie, Brigid, should probably stay at the ute, they tend to get a bit excited about heavy mobs rolling in the door even when they''re accompanying people with bank accounts involving funny-money numbers."


    She paused, then added, "So... what do you want to study?"


    "Archaeology," Alice told her. "It''s been what I wanted to do with my life ever since I was little, and I''d just started in college before... well, all this."


    "Well, the college here in Inverness has an antiquities department, it was on the flyer with the syllabus, so that''s very do-able," Annie said as they arrived at the pickup; she unlocked the padlock that had been keeping the driver''s door shut, opened it, leaned in, and used the lock button on the front passenger door to unlock the rest of it then started in on her rocking the gear lever and giving the handbrake a firm pull.


    "Are you sure it''s okay to just walk into the cop-shop and go hi, I don''t have any documents?" Alice asked, after which the conversation had to pause while Annie persuaded the pickup to start.


    "Amnesia," Brigid said once the roar and backfires had settled to a thumping tickover and they were all in the pickup and ready to get going. "We already know you don''t remember being anywhere in the world, why bother saying you can remember a lot of being in another world?"


    "That''d work," Annie agreed. "It''s far from the first time someone''s walked in there with no idea who they are, and since you''re with me they won''t bat an eyelid. Trust me, it''ll be fine."


    Alice very nearly changed her mind about it being a good idea at that auspicious statement.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Things did, however and to Alice''s surprise, go just as smoothly as Annie had predicted; after having left the hospital car-parked, parked in another rather more fortified car-park, and left the boys and Brigid loitering in the pickup, whereupon they went round the front of the compound actually containing the police station, through an airlock sort of an affair studded with visible cameras, and into a disconcertingly familiar place.


    Alice had watched her share of TV police procedurals, and as a result the room where the public could wander into the police station was pretty much as was familiar to her. There was a bit of a waiting area consisting of a single bench, a heavy door presumably leading to the police station proper, the sole decoration on the wall was a large wood-framed clock, and a ''desk'' was built into the wall opposite the bench; this resembled the sort of thing found in ticket offices in railway stations, with a sheet of what was presumably bullet-proof glass separating the desk sergeant from the public.


    "Morning, Miss Kelly," said desk sergeant said the moment he saw Annie, rising to his feet. He had a mild home-counties English accent and looked every inch the traditional British ''bobbby'', save for wearing a peaked police cap instead of a custodian helmet. "Anything come up?"


    "Morning Higgins," Annie said. "Had a bit of an oddity turn up we could do with a little assistance with," and she angled a thumb over her shoulder at Alice.


    "Oh aye," and the ''aye'' sounded a mite peculiar in an English accent, "And what sort of an oddity would that be then?"


    "We found a cyborg with some memory problems," Annie told him. "And she hasn''t any documents to her name."


    "Cyborg?" the cop asked, and nodded to Alice. "How augmented are you, or is that a part of your memory problems?"


    "Eyes, basically my face, one arm from the elbow, other from the shoulder, both legs, probably some of in here," and Alice indicated her stomach, "At least that I know of."


    "I see and are you aware of your own name?" the cop asked, as if amnesiac cyborgs were the most ordinary everyday occurrence in the world.


    "Yessir, I''m Alice. Alice Liddell."


    "Quite down the rabbit-hole, are we?" Somehow, Alice managed to avoid gritting her teeth. "Well, you''re with this young tearaway and you look okay, I''ll have someone take you through to the office and Constable Joy will sort the relevant documents out. We''ll need to run an X-ray over you, get an actual picture of your level of augmentation to be certain nothing untoward has been implanted into you in the midst of your little memory outage, but that''s a formality for the main part. Don''t look so concerned, you''re certainly not in any trouble."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    In the end, the entire process was really quite dull and as per Higgins'' prediction Alice was not in any trouble.


    The cop they were ushered to - a pretty blonde woman with the most gorgeous soft Shetland accent who introduced herself as Constable Pamela Joy having greeted Annie by first name on sight - asked Alice what she knew of events; Alice told her roughly her recollections with a lot of names and what she thought was probably illegality edited out and no mention of remembering being exploded, and again didn''t breathe a word about the dog she could swear she remembered seeing; Pam Joy declared that Alice''s accent tallied with it, then having got the x-raying out of the way with nothing startling found (according to the cops; Alice did not, in fact, want or ask to see just how much electronics she had inside of her) they spent about half an hour filling out forms before being sent on their way with a sheaf of freshly-printed documents ranging from a birth certificate through a driving license (Alice protested that she couldn''t remember having passed her test, but on being told she could remember taking lessons once a week for four months Pam Joy immediately declared that plenty) to a copy of an official notice declaring that Alice''s education records had been destroyed through no fault of her own; this, Pam Joy explained, would see to it that should Alice decide to apply to any first-year college course in the Home Islands her application would be fast-tracked and she would be guaranteed an interview, and then they were heading back out of the station with a stuffed document envelope tucked under her arm, whereupon Annie smiled and said, "Told you so."


    "Ye Gods, that was even easier than you made it sound," said Alice with a sigh.


    "They get this sort of thing all the time when people are trying to get into college, half the population of Scotland lives basically off the record so they get two or three hundred undocumented teenagers coming down here every summer - normally they''re a bit more emphatic about it but like I said, it''s amazing how many civil servants get really helpful as soon as they hear any name connected to Dad''s company," Annie said as they rounded the last corner back to where the pickup was still parked with two young men and a preteen girl lounging around in it - Nick''s booted feet were sticking out of one of the rear cab windows and Brigid was sitting back-to-front on the steering wheel while Mackie seemingly hadn''t moved an inch from the front passenger seat.


    "Huh," Nick said, scrambling to get upright as the girls arrived, "Didn''t take as long as we were expecting, I take it from that folder everything went nice and simply?"


    "Aye, no problem at all, what''d I tell you?" Annie asked. "Well, let''s head down to the college and I can wave Dad''s name around, then get Alice the supplies she''ll need - no, don''t worry about money, I''ve got the ready - then... is there anything any of you three want to do while we''re in town?"


    "Nat asked me to pick some bits up from Scotty Johnson," said Nick. "We got a phone call on Saturday, the new barrel for Grandpa''s haggis gun finally turned up, we''re needing ammunition for that and .303 too, and I''m needing to pick up a couple of parts for the van, she''s losing oil and I''ve no got any gasket paper left."


    "Okay - college, town, Scotty''s, the garage, something to eat, home."


    "Let''s do the something to eat first, I''m starving," said Brigid.


    "Aye, that sounds about right, it''s coming on three and myself''s nae had anything to eat since half eight this morning," Mackie agreed.


    "Okay, food it is," said Annie, and she coaxed the pickup into motion.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The source of ''something to eat'' turned out to be a greasy spoon sort of restaurant named ''Ronnies'' just off the side of the railway station run by a smily balding white-haired old man (who turned out to be the titular Ronnie) who appeared to have an eidetic memory as he greeted each of his customers by name, got it right, and insisted on being introduced to the new face IE Alice, and the something to eat in question turned out to involve things like bacon, black pudding, sausages, eggs, and beans all washed down with piping hot slightly spicy sweet tea.


    With that out of the way they made a direct beeline for the college campus - just across a big road bridge over what Annie said was the railway headed north towards Kyle of Lochalsh, Cromarty, Wick, Thurso, and Lochinver - and as Annie had claimed the whole process of college application was streamlined beyond belief, a process Alice clearly remembered involving more paperwork than she''d had hot dinners being reduced to a five-minute interview with the man who was, it seemed, to be her head of school - the exact sort of person you''d expect to find teaching archaeology, this shortish tweed-clad and very English dark-haired chap with spectacles, receding hairline and a lot of smile lines, who introduced himself as Dr Jack Kensington in this faintly plummy toodle-pip sort of an accent - and two forms both of which concerned the receiving of a bursary, after which she was handed an induction pack straight out of Dr Kensington''s office printer and sent on her way - Annie then took her back into town for supplies and a backpack to stow them in, casually paying for everything without batting an eyelid and utterly disregarding the bank account that they''d started out the afternoon by opening for Alice - not that she had the associated card yet, of course.


    Then they went back along the same road as the college campus and a couple of blocks further down turned left into part of the run-down industrial estate cum shanty-town, and pulled up at a large drab building with a big signboard on the side facing the road reading S. JOHNSON & CO GUNSMITHS in red on a white background.


    Entering S. JOHNSON & CO GUNSMITHS, one passed through two sets of doors separated by a small square room with walls lined with varied framed awards of some sort, and straight into a room that from the size of it took up only a very small portion of the full site despite being quite large. Tall-ceilinged with large windows - these looked out over a sprawl of waste ground full of abandoned vehicles, piles of rubbish, and shacks, and bore stickers advertising bullet-proof glass produced, according to the stickers, by the Birmingham Small Arms Company Limited - the room was light, airy, and felt a bit cold.


    The main feature of the room was however guns.


    Lots, as it were, of guns.


    The three non-windowed walls were lined with pegboards, on which guns of every shape and size were displayed on pairs of hooks that plugged into the pegboard - one under the front, one under the back - with a discrete sign beside each bearing information about it. Several upright display cases full of pistols were rowed up along the centre of the room, interspersed with much larger weapons sitting on tripods or, in the case of the most obnoxiously huge of the lot - a small artillery piece - just sitting there on its wheels. All had price tags attached, in the case of the cannon with a very impressive number upon it, and there was a total dearth of mention of licensing procedures.


    There were in addition a series of carousel stands - the approximate sort Alice was more used to seeing loaded with greeting cards or whatnot - full of a dizzying variety of accessories dotted around the room, seemingly in any free space, and half a dozen assorted customers were browsing.


    At the east end of the room, fenced in by a long tall glass-fronted countertop stuffed to the brim with ammunition and high-tech gunsights, was a mixture of office space and workshop - here a small red-haired woman clad in absurdly baggy red-brown camouflage trousers and a very small tube top in grave danger of becoming a belt worn absurdly high - this represented the least clothing up top by a wide margin Alice had seen on anyone whatsoever since waking up in Grace''s kitchen - was minutely examining the components of a machine gun, while a lanky to the point of downright scrawny, and charmingly ugly, Latino-looking man with a quiff, a bandit moustache and a cheap suit ditched some sort of paperwork and came out into the showroom floor with a pleased cry.


    "Miss Kelly, Nick, Mackie, and little Brigid," he declared with every evidence of delight. He had the strongest Londonian accent Alice had heard in years quite at odds with his Italian-or-Spanish appearance. "And friend, we ain''t been introduced," and she found herself having her hand enthusiastically shaken by this hyperactive apparition. "I''m Scotty Johnson, don''t ask, me parents were berks."


    "This is Alice Liddell," Nick said, getting a startled noise out of the incongruously-named incongruously-accented man.


    "Wot, like the little bird wot went down the rabbit hole?" He caught Alice''s expression and wryly shook his head. "I take it I''m not the only one with berks for parents then, some kids do ''ave ''em eh luv? So, what can I do for you ladies and gents today then? Oh, yer bruvver''s new ''aggis-gun barrel''s in Nick, did Mags phone you?"


    "Aye," Nick said with a nod. "That she did, and we''re needing more .303 ball and Nat''s needing 2-pounder hollowpoints too,"


    "Busy month," Scotty, speaking while bustling back behind the counter and selecting a nondescript six-foot-long cardboard box, pronounced it ''Munf'', "For ''aggis then mate?"


    "Aye, we''ve had six bulls and no less than twelve cows in the last four weeks alone," Nick told him.


    "One of the bulls closed the railway north out of Inverallen again to boot," Annie added. "Nothing even remotely as bad as March thank Christ, Murdo McMurdo was driving over and saw it soon enough to get the trains stopped."


    "Bloody ''ell," Scotty said with a shake of his head. "I''d ''eard your area''s really been getting clouted since the bloody Wrecker but I didn''t clock it were that bad, ey Mags,"


    The redhead in the tiny tube-top looked up from her gun parts with an enquiring noise.


    "Remind me to get the lads down in Birmingham to get the next batch of 2-pounder ammo up ''ere ASAP," Scotty told her. "I want it on the next train norf."


    She made an agreeing noise, and went back to her gun parts.


    "Now then, ''ow much ammo are you needing today then mate?" Scotty asked Nik.


    "Four of the big tins of .303 ought to keep us going, but Nat''s needing six cases of the 2-pounder if you''ve got the stock," Nick told him. Scotty whistled between his teeth.


    "Mags," he said, heading for a door to a side room, "We''ll need to get onto the Brummies today, Nick''s taking two-thirds of what we''ve got left."


    The woman grunted yet again, put her gun parts down, and came ambling over to the counter. She started fiddling with a laptop the back of which faced them.


    "Will you lot be getting anything else today?" she asked, not looking up from it. For her part, she had one of those very generic home-counties English accents that''s utterly impossible to put a class or location to.


    "Nothing offhand here, no," Annie said.


    Nick glanced at his sister and Mackie; Mackie shook his head and Brigid shrugged. Everyone looked at Alice.


    "What, me?" she asked, and dismissed the idea with a wave. "No, I''m fine."


    She couldn''t imagine anything that''d cause her to get a gun.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Okay," said Annie as they were exiting S. JOHNSON & CO GUNSMITHS accompanied by Scotty with a pallet truck, "Where to next?"


    "I''m thinking that gasket paper. Oh, er, and Mum was giving me a shopping list," said Nick. "We''re needing feed for the hens, and a couple of bits out of the cash and carry, we''ve got a load of eggs Dad wants to pickle so we''re needing a couple of gallons of vinegar, and we''re totally out of beans."


    "Okay, so garage, Mackenna''s, the cash and carry, get out of here," and Annie punctuated that by sticking her hand through her wreck of a pickup''s bonnet and persuading it to start - it emitted a series of shattering backfires and a huge cloud of blue smoke before so doing.


    "Kinell," said Scotty, giving the smoke cloud a dubious look. "You sure that thing''s running orright luv?"


    "Aye, she''ll be fine," Annie cheerfully told him. "The engine''s basically mechanically sound, bar a little oil still getting into the fuel somewhere - it''s the electrics that need a complete rebuild. Here, the two-pounder ammo and that barrel can go in under the tarp here, you might as well just stick the tins of .303 in the footwell Nick."


    "Aye sure," Nick said, going to do exactly that with the smaller ammo boxes as Mackie helped Scotty load the rest of it into the back of the pickup.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Alice didn''t bother going into the remaining places - a farming suppliers by the name of J C MACKENNA & SONS and a food wholesalers operating under the title of WILLIE MURCHISON WHOLESALE - instead spending the time sitting in the back seats of the pickup and acquainting herself with her new laptop, and soon enough they were back in the pickup for the gruelling ride back to Duchally, where affairs took another hard right into the Twilight Zone when an unexpected sight met their eyes.


    Alice thought nothing of it to begin with - a large mustard-yellow diesel locomotive without any sign of a train was parked in one track of Duchally''s tiny station and one of the Sutherland''s mismatched multiple units in the other, but then Annie said, "What the hell, there''s not supposed to be any light engine movements today," and then everyone in the pickup almost simultaneously spotted the visibly shaken man sitting on the cab steps - the guy who''d been ''co-pilot'' or whatever that is in railways on the ride to Duchally that morning - and Annie didn''t even pause to kill her pickup''s engine as she headed thataway, taking the steps up to the platform two at a time with Alice hard behind her and Mackie and the duo of Macbanes not far behind them.


    "Alec, what''s happened, are you okay?"


    "I''m fine, I''m fine, Jesus Christ it''ll be a while before my heart stops racing, thank Christ your dad decided buckeyes were the way to be going with the new ore stock," the man on the cab steps declared, and Alice realised his hands were shaking. "Bull haggis, bloody huge one, two miles east of Inverallen bashing about on the hillside above the line back there, I cut the couplers about half a heartbeat before the brute turned the first wagon on its side, if we''d still been coupled we''d have been off for sure and with a bull haggis that size stomping around where''d we be?"


    "Bad spot for it," Kathy McLennan (who had been on the phone) said, walking back over. "The hunt team cannae get to it from the road, Murdo McMurdo''s talking about loading their guns onto the fishing boats in Inverallen but it''s going to be a while before they can get the boats round there."


    Annie spent a long moment in very visible very deep thought, then snapped her fingers.


    "Tell Murdo not to muck about with that," she said. "I''ve got the gear to be pintle-mounting a Vickers gun in the back of my ute. I''ll meet him in C¨´ldeireadhaon¨¤ite, get the ute turned to reverse down towards the haggis, and draw the beast up to the guns that way. Kathy, Alec, you two head for Stroncrubie and get the breakdown train and the PW gang, we''re going to need the big hook if we''re going to have an earthlies to get the line clear in time to avoid the ore getting backlogged."


    "Aye," the two train crew said with matching nods, and headed for their locomotive.


    "I''ll phone Dad since we''ve got the new barrel for the gun in the back," said Nick.


    "Aye, here, use my mobile," Annie told him, handing it over. "Hey Mackie, Alice, give us a hand getting the ute onto the rails."


    -/-/- End: Chapter 1 -/-/-

 Chapter 2 part the first

    Chapter 2 - Stranger to the Storm.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    Next - The arrival in and introductory first week of college heralds events beginning to hot up a little as another busload of strangeness decides to jump up and hit Alice in the ear.

 Chapter 2 part the second

    On Sunday, they took Nick''s van - half full of an utter melee of stuff packed into fishboxes, from guns to welding equipment to a full-sized household fridge and no worse for the wear for having had its engine so recently removed - round to Mackie''s place to get his stuff loaded up ready to head for Inverness in the morning, and found him watching something on a small black-and-white television; he made a wait-one gesture when Nick got his attention, and said, "Hold up, this is being interesting."


    On the screen, a very handsome woman who appeared to have a ramrod for a spine, clad in an absolutely spotless Royal Navy officer''s uniform, who appeared to be named Samantha Amundsen and to hold the military rank of Commander, was standing in what appeared to be a Nissen hut full of electronics and computer hardware and endeavouring to explain something calling itself a Deep Sky Magnetic Observatory - which appeared from context to be a very large magnetic telescope based around satellites orbiting a very long way from Earth indeed - to a wasp-waisted blonde reporterette by the name of Amanda Vought who was either the sort of bubblehead you have to suspect is slightly less intelligent than her own shoe or just played one on TV, and Mackie insistently watched the entire thing before getting his arse out of his chair and getting his stuff loaded into the van.


    With the van fully loaded with all Nick''s stuff, all Mackie''s stuff, and most of what little Alice so far owned in this world, they headed back to the Macbane croft for an afternoon spent watching Nick repeatedly remember something he wanted to take and stow it too in the van.


    Then at last Monday arrived, and Nick insisted on attaching a trailer to the van and loading his wreck of a motorbike into it along with several more heavier bits of crap, and as Brigid, who''d been hanging around and looking a bit downcast and was now holding the chicken Nick had removed from the van''s engine compartment, opened the gate for them Alice indicated the stereo, from which rollicking not-quite-rock music was belting, and asked, "Who''s this?"


    "They''re called Rock Stotation, there''s two members of the band including the lassie doing the singing are Nihonjin refugees'' bairns from Inverness and the rest of the band''s from all over the north of Scotland," Nick told her. "They''ve been putting on pub and village hall concerts all up and down the north for a couple of years now, and at this point they''ve put out two live albums that''re nothing more than spur-of-the-moment recordings of concerts - this one''s the first of the two, they recorded it in the Harbourmaster''s Arms through in Inverness this time last year, the other one''s from their Hogmanay concert up in Kirkwall in Orkney this New Year just past - the lead guitarist and the piper are both Kirkwall lads. Don''t ask me where the name comes from though, ''Rock Stotation'', I haven''t an earthlies."


    "Huh," said Alice, and listened a bit more as the van rattled along the driveway. "They''re pretty good... what was that with the chicken in the engine?"


    "Hmm? Oh, there''s a place on top of the left-hand wheelarch of a van like this where there''s enough space for a hen to sit," said Nick. "I guess the hens must like the warmth from the engine or something, they have nests in all our vans'' engines dug out of the sound-dampening foam in there - you''d think they''d panic and get wrapped round the prop shaft or something when you start the engine but I guess the roar and the vibrations must mesmerise them, or maybe our hens just like to go for a spree, they just sit there until you switch off. Most of our hens have had rides through to Inverness, we''ve had our own fresh eggs while visiting Dad''s parents down in Glasgow and Mum''s brother John down in Dundee and there''s a couple of our hens have made it as far afield as England, and we lost one in Muir of Ord once, it hopped out and wouldn''t get back in and we couldn''t catch the bloody thing."


    Alice slowly shook her head, and that was about that for conversation in the van for the short ride over to Mackie''s house.


    Mackie, for his part, added another four fishboxes full of God-alone-knows-what, half a dozen random cardboard boxes, two more desktop computers, and into the trailer another desperate wreck of a motorbike before, having bid his mother farewell in Russian, piling into the van and they got back on the road, headed east.


    Halfway along from Mackie''s place to the turning where you could either head down to the harbour or up the hill towards the road east, Nick with a cry of "Shit!" skidded the van to a halt in a passing place as, coming round the bend, they were confronted by half of a little grey Ferguson tractor - to the tune of the engine, back wheels, and a huge lump of rock strapped on hanging in midair where the front axle would more normally be - towing (and rigidly attached to the front of) a peculiarly-constructed and incredibly rusty railway wagon riding on the absurdly wide set of rails that bracketed that stretch of road, onto which was loaded a scruffy little green-and-white fishing boat, from this perspective looking to be roughly as tall as a house, the bottom of which had an overall coating of barnacles and seaweed.


    It had the word ''WALRUS'' painted in black across the front rim of the wheelhouse roof.


    "So Struan''s finally decided to get all the shite off the bottom of his bloody tub," said Nick; he slid the door open and shouted across, "Morning Jock,"


    "Morning Nick," said the very large and very hairy pipe-smoking man in Trade Union hat and grubby orange boiler suit who was driving the half-of-a-tractor as his conveyance trundled past; Nick took the van off the moment the wagon full of boat was out of the way, not bothering to close his door.


    The road east out of the village worked its way north along the western uphill edge of the area of ''terraces'' of flattish land above the harbour, climbing steeply most of the way and with a house almost directly onto the side of it every couple of hundred feet, passing under the railway directly before hanging a sharp right turn to aim back to the east, steadily getting steeper and more and more precipitous as it went until, as it came up to the brow of the hill, the ground was falling away at a better than forty-five degree angle below the road while the road was climbing at a rate of about one in six with more-or-less level household driveways looking like they were steeply sloped as they came off of it, and while this wasn''t the first time Alice had been along this stretch of road you got a sight better a view from the front seats of the van than the back of a minibus full of hairy Macbanes.


    Across the brow of the rise the land levelled out, the road passing between one last pair of houses (from which there must have been a fantastic view back out over the Atlantic Ocean) and over a cattle grid immediately followed by a level crossing - the tracks this crossed featured only the traditional two rails, sized to fit what Annie had called ''standard gauge'' when Alice had asked her about the Sutherland''s surfeit of rails on Tuesday after the haggis hunt - and out onto a barren windswept moor - a dirt track branched off to the left and gently uphill towards a cluster of barns and high fences, and the railway curved away across a bridge over what was presumably the river that came out down near the harbour, right where the river exited a broad expanse of freshwater loch, along the far side of which from the road the railway could be seen winding - road and rails were both barely three feet above the surface of the loch, and while from about halfway along the loch the road began climbing steadily uphill again, the rails stayed at a level until, at the head of the loch, they ran into a tunnel to the seaward side of the vast looming bulk of a mountain that Mackie identified as Ben Allen.


    As the road climbed along the moor towards the mountain, they crossed culvert after culvert, myriad burns emerging from the vast expanse of peat bogs between Inverallen and the mountains - these, Mackie said, were where the river that came out near the harbour came from, he said that the river was only actually a river below what he called ''the upper loch''.


    The road kept climbing, the land each side getting steeper and steeper, crossing small bridges now where it''d crossed culverts on the more level ground, now hundreds of feet above the surface of the loch, and by the time it reached Ben Allen proper - now clinging to the cliffs in as vertigo-inducing a way as the road Mackie had called stone-age heading north - they had climbed, Mackie cheerfully declared, to over a thousand feet above the surface of the upper loch, with most of that height being a sheer cliff face Mackie explained that the road had been blasted out of by the military in the 1940s with a view to using Inverallen''s overbuilt harbour, left over from shipping iron south by sea when the railway only went as far as a mine behind Ben Allen, for the war - he said that instead they''d built what eventually became the fleet space arm base at Kylestrome, and that during the Battle of Britain thousands of Canadian-built military vehicles had travelled south across the pass they were climbing - there were, Nick added, at least two dozen assorted wartime vehicles in the bottom of the loch having gone ''off the edge of the bloody world'' and would Mackie kindly shut up so as to be sure they didn''t join them, he (Mackie) was distracting the driver, you great teuchter.


    It was of no small relief when they came to the crest in the pass and the road turned sharply away from ''the edge of the bloody world'', instead winding between boggy lochens with the side of Ben Allen behind them on one side and boulder-strewn hillocks on the other, before taking a sharp turn back towards Loch Allen and emerging at the top of another incline just as insanely steep as the road up to the cattle grid at the top of the village - this heading downhill for a little under half a mile, at the bottom of which there was helpfully enough a hairpin turn with nothing between the bottom end of the slope in the road and a drop-off but very bent and totally inadequate-looking crash barriers, complete with ominous-looking skid marks pointing straight at them.


    The turn having been made without incident, they continued rapidly descending, until at the bottom they arrived at another level crossing, having gone all the way back down to the same level as the railway line - peering over Nick as they crossed the tracks, Alice could see that the railway ran into what was presumably the other end of the tunnel, through which she was startled to clearly see a nice clear tunnel-shaped blob of the blue-green of the ocean.


    "The ridge of Lann Fala between Ben Allen and An Bairdheas is only actually about four hundred feet wide back there where the tunnel is," Mackie said, seeing where she was peering.


    "Aye, four hundred feet wide with almost a thousand feet of rock above it," Nick said. "The top of the ridge is barely wide enough to walk along, there''s no mistake it''s called the ''bloody blade'' in the Gaelic, the number of people who''ve died from falling off of it over the years..." and he grimly shook his head.


    Across the railway the land opened out, a half-mile-wide strip of flatlands running for miles along the north shore of Loch Allen with a range of semi-cojoined mountains Mackie identified as Glas Beinn, Beinn Uidhe, and Mullach an Leathaid Riabhaich none of which Alice had the faintest idea how to spell from how he said, forming a wall of sorts to the north - across the strip of bright sunlit water Mackie called the narrows between Outer Loch Allen and Inner Loch Allen loomed Beinn an Furhein and Ben More Assynt, their flanks running almost straight down into the waters of the narrows with the rough country to the south sprawling out behind them; the loch itself turned sharply southwards from the narrows and the land to their north opened up, becoming almost flat as the road began to head downhill, and Mackie said there was nothing worth the title of mountain from there to Loch Shin and, beyond it, the Dornoch Firth - the railway failed to make the turn with the loch, instead disappearing off into the rolling hills to the east, only for the road to meet the other railway, the one they''d ridden to Duchally a week prior, a couple of miles later, right on the shore of the loch as they climbed downhill to meet the sea, and another couple of miles after tha they were entering Duchally.


    The drive had taken nearly twice the time the previous week''s train ride had, and having passed through Duchally they chanced to meet Annie''s pickup, likewise towing a trailer and likewise loaded up to the gunnels, right at the junction where the road from Inverallen and the north joined the road from Stronecrubie and, beyond it, Ullapool, and headed east towards Scotland''s furthest shore.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    It was, all be told, a beautiful day, and it only got more so as they travelled south and east. The occasional contrail excepted, the last cloud Alice saw that day had been west of Inverallen out over the mouth of the loch and was well out of sight by the time they were headed east out of Duchally - from there to Inverness there was nothing but blue from horizon to horizon, and they stopped momentarily in Bonar Bridge for Nick to shed his jacket and to buy choc-ices before getting back on the road and making non-stop for Inverness.


    The difference in atmosphere, the whole air and persona of the place, between Inverness and the crofting communities in which Alice had spent the previous week was even more striking now she''d almost started to get used to the remoteness of Inverallen - it looked, even more visibly now the town was crowded, almost like someone in the first decade of the twentieth century had done an excellent job of predicting the future of technological development while utterly failing to comprehend possibilities like fashion mores and sensibilities maybe not staying more or less the same for the duration.


    The college building - the same place they''d been when Annie more or less strongarmed the college into accepting Alice - was one of the most modern-looking buildings in town, a post-war high-rise concrete eyesore just across an urban dual carriageway from the back of the railway station and not a stone''s throw from JOHNSON & CO GUNSMITHS. It had a sprawl of car park taking up most of the space between it and the approximate line of where the road began to slope up to the bridge over the railway - there was a mixture of brick and concrete industrial units between there and where railway tracks went down into the harbour, all of them very run-down and covered in graffiti that managed to be oddly charming via being written in Gaelic.


    The cars in the car park were a weird melange. Many were heavily rusted and otherwise visibly damaged, though few to a quality matching Annie''s pile of scrap iron, and plenty of them were missing numberplates. Most of them looked downright antiquated - there were half a dozen vaguely modern-looking vehicles in the entire car park, with most of the rest looking like someone not having noticed the 70s had started and a few looking like they should''ve been on the set of some sort of Prohibition-era gangster movie.


    As for the crowds of students the four newly arrived from the west found themselves merging into as a unit, they left Alice feeling even more lost in time than the traffic. Sexual dimorphism in apparel seemed to be strictly enforced with hardly anything something that''d have looked particularly out of place sometime at the end of the Victorian era save that is from a dearth of hats, with Nick and Mackie about the only young men in the entire place not clad in a manner Alice would''ve called pushing suitable for a wedding or a funeral, and it came as quite some relief when, as they joined the queue to receive their digs assignment, the first female student neither corsetted nor clad in a dress with a cutout showing her cleavage appeared, joining the queue directly behind the four from the west: a solidly-built young woman with darkish skin and darker eyes, her head shaved aside from an inch-long bright-green mohawk, a black turtleneck pullover emblazoned with the words, FREE NIHON, in chunky bright red block caps that appeared to have been scrawled on with a paintbrush, and an immensely baggy set of red-brown camouflage cargo trousers. She had shitkicking boots, a studded leather belt with a holstered pistol one side and a kukri of all things the other, she had multiple ear piercings and a ring through her left nostril, she had a prominent scar on her right temple, she had a maniac grin on her face, and she was treating the weird looks varied people who, Alice felt, should probably know better kept giving her with the total contempt they deserved.


    Alice decided she liked her at first glance.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The college digs was situated in a converted stately home sort of a structure not far from the River Ness, close to the Ness Islands. The building had a multi-floored dormitory built as a truly unsightly extension on its southeastern end - this was a proper post-war eyesore of a building, just this big square grey concrete box festooned with rows of blank windows stuck on one end of what had once been quite a nice-looking structure - someone had, it appeared, noticed how visually appealing it wasn''t and planted a neat row of poplar trees between the concrete bit and the nearby road.


    All four of the Loch Allen students found themselves in two-person rooms on the top floor, with Nick and Mackie sharing a room - Annie found herself rooming with the punker girl, who introduced herself as Val Adamson, while Alice''s roommate - one ''Fiona Macleod'' going by the sheet the digs manager had - was, at that stage in the game, conspicuous by her absence.


    The room itself - at the northmost end of the dormitory''s fourth floor - was entirely as drab and unprepossessing as the building''s exterior. It was arranged in two halves with a draw curtain down the middle, terminating at the window. On each side was - all built into each other in a fixed unit - a bed, wardrobe, desk, and a couple of side cupboards, with the remaining side wall space taken up by a pair of flat-panel radiators at the door side of the room and an upright lockbox at the window end of the room; a pair of those cheap tubular-metal-frame-and-plastic chairs had been ''generously'' provided for seating. There were three power points each side, one on each taken up by an angle-poise desk light, and what was presumably a network cable strung to the desk - the assumption being confirmed by an official notice of connection usage policy. The window looked out on what looked to be a playing field, positioned between the line of poplar trees beside the wall and the college dorm building itself.


    Everything, curtain included, was either white (walls, ceiling, bedding) or beige with the sole spot of colour in the entire room the network cables, which were bright red - they were strung up the walls and along the ceiling to a junction box just above the door.


    Alice picked the side of the room away from the stairwell at that end of the building, and set to distributing her sparse possessions - several changes of clothing (all much the same as what Grace had given her, despite Annie''s urgings to ''not look like you''re at a funeral'') into the wardrobe, laptop and varied documents onto the desk, what little else there was in one of the side cupboards under the bed. Outside, Nick and Mackie were still humping things up the stairs to their dorm room at the far end of the row with a lot of swearing and sarcastic advice from Annie, who''d mucked in to help under the agreement that they''d help her with her nearly-as-copious stuff.


    About the only things they didn''t seem hell-bent on taking up there were their bikes and Nick''s gas welding equipment.


    Alice, ignoring them, decided to resume getting used to her new computer equipment and was rather surprised, emerging from the laptop when Annie stuck her head in the door with a spoken "Knock knock," to discover that it was two hours later.


    "We''re heading down to the pub," Annie continued. "Fancy coming along?"


    Alice was for a moment going to say no, but then she realised how stiff her back was getting from sitting on that terrible chair for two hours.


    "Oh, sure, might as well - I could do with a bit of a break," she said.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    It was, it occurred to Alice as they drove, the first time she''d actually been into the town part of Inverness itself as opposed to from one place to another on the outlaying industrial estates or just driving through.


    The look of the place was more or less as she''d been coming to expect - she spent a moment mentally composing an open letter or message in a bottle of some sort about it, ''Send help, I''m stuck in a twenty years ago that thinks its a hundred and twenty years ago despite doing cyberpunk'', before shaking that particular weird mood off.


    From the college digs it wasn''t far to where the road ran along the bank of the River Ness towards the harbour - this was the road they''d come up earlier that afternoon, but she''d had her nose in the college orientation package. The buildings along the other side of the road from the river were all Victorian-looking stone-built affairs, houses gradually giving way to shops and restaurants as they got further into the town proper. There were sparsely-spaced bridges over the river - a pedestrian suspension bridge, a low arch for cars, further down the road that passed the college crossed the river and beyond that the same went for the railway - and a row of tall very Victorian buildings across the water.


    Annie took the right into the town that extended across the low arch road bridge - this climbed sharply uphill in among more tall very Victorian town-house style structures, most of them with shop fronts on the ground floor - there was lines of car parking all along one side of the road, thoroughly full of a dizzying assortment of mismatched motor vehicles and homogenised people and to Alice''s considerable surprise had a set of tram tracks in it, and a moment and another turning later they spotted Nick, who''d rode down to the town on his motorbike, waving at them - it quickly transpired he''d been indicating to Annie that he''d found a space for her to park the pickup, right in front of a shop sign (the most Victorian-looking yet) reading GUNSMITHS, and after a moment of hilarity getting out of the way of a double-decker tram of all things Annie successfully got the pickup into the space Nick had indicated.


    "Nice one," she declared as they piled out of the vehicle, "Got a space right next to the pub, I wouldn''t have been expecting that,"


    "Aye, some numpty-boy was taking off in a tearing hurry when I was getting there," Nick told her with a nod.


    "Bloody hell," said Mackie, looking around him, "The town''s heaving,"


    (Alice was about to ask what he was on about - the place wasn''t really that crowded though it was a bit busier than Ullapool had been on Friday - then remembered he was a farmboy from some one-horse village up the arse end of nowhere who probably thought twenty people was a horde.)


    "Aye, it''s jumping tonight," Nick agreed with a nod. Farmboy. "I suppose there''s the entire college population thinking about the same thing as ourselves."


    "Well let''s hope we can get a bloody seat," said Annie, heading directly for the pub.


    Inside was a very traditional British pub - wood panelling, overstuffed red leather seating, open fire, fruit machine with a guy in a leather jacket feeding it coins, pool table replete with players, unoccupied dartboard, huge overbuilt polished wood bar with a line of tall stools in front each of which was occupied by some crusty old codger in a Trade Union hat, and the walls decorated with masses of horse brasses and stuffed animal head hunting trophies prominently including (directly above the centre of the bar) a fox that was, for whatever reason, wearing spectacles and had an unlit cigarette stub hanging from the corner of its mouth.


    There was a pall of smoke in the air, a strong smell of cannabis and cheap beer, and loud rock music playing on the jukebox.


    It was, truth be told, pretty crowded even by Alice''s standards, with most of the crowd teenagers and young adults. Most were clad as she was by now coming to expect, and everyone, without exception, was armed. There was scarcely a belt to be seen that hadn''t got a pistol holstered upon it, no matter how ridiculously narrow the waist it might be beneath.


    To her surprise they managed to find a table with relative ease - one of the ones near the pool table, conveniently one right by the window looking at where they''d parked, was in the course of clearing out as they arrived - and they set to and got drinking.


    An hour and three beers in and perhaps half an hour after dark, Nick rose to his feet declaring his intention to take his bike back up to the digs while he was still fit to drive - Mackie wandered out towards the street with him, the two of them laughing and joking, and Alice was just starting to wonder since when three beers in meant still fit to drive when Annie, looking out the window, shot to her feet with a cry of "Oh what the hell,"


    "What''s up?" Val asked as she and Alice looked where Annie was looking.


    Outside where they were parked, Mackie was on the ground curled up in a foetal position, Nick was staggering to his feet roaring like a madman, a bunch of ''greaser'' types - leather jackets, denim jeans, sunglasses at night, shitkicking boots, quiffs - were running past screaming blue murder, and of Nick''s bike there was no sign.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "Some twat just ran up, kicked Mackie in the nadgers, flattened Nick clean off his bike, and nicked the bloody bike!" Annie declared in the course of getting up and making a beeline for the door. Val hastened after her, and Alice, after a heartbeat''s thought, wasn''t far behind them.


    By the time they got out the pub, the situation had changed radically, and while Mackie was still on the ground making small whimpering noises, Nick had got into a shouting match with the gang of greaser-looking types.


    They were just in time to hear one of said greasers declaring, "Let''s cream him," directly after which the speaker pulled what appeared to be a sawn-off pool cue out of his jacket. His mates made assorted agreeing noises and started producing their own blunt instruments.


    Nick, who was standing right next to Annie''s pickup, wasn''t having that: he shoved his hand under the tarp and came out with a steel pinch bar - four feet long by a couple of inches thick with one end pointed and a cast-in metal ball at the other.


    This he effortlessly swung round into a two-handed grip, feet planted wide, point of the bar down at about a forty-five degree angle.


    "Calm the fuck down and back the fuck off before I have to fucking hurt you," he said.


    "What''s going on?" Annie asked Mackie. The greasers disregarded Nick''s advice - their apparent leader went in for the swing, and the pinch bar blurred - there was a meaty thud and the lead greaser''s pool cue went bouncing along the street - another string of smacks and thuds as Nick laid about himself with the pinch bar.


    Several people had come out of the pub behind the girls, and were watching with interest. Annie poked at Mackie with her foot, getting a stream of pained-sounding Gaelic in reply.


    "Well aye, I saw that much, what are these numpties playing at?"


    "Dunno," Mackie said.


    The lead greaser type pulled a gun - a big slab-sided self-loading pistol.


    Nick saw it coming - the pinch bar whirred round, blinding fast, and there was a horrible crunch as the ball end impacted the greaser''s skull.


    The pistol went skittering down the street as its owner went over with his sunglasses broken and his temple visibly caved in - and everything started happening very fast, so much so that it all kind of blurred together in Alice''s mind.


    One of the other greasers pulled a gun - a black T-shaped bit of metal;


    Annie''s revolver seemed to teleport into her hands and roared twice in close succession;


    The greaser with the T-shaped gun dropped it as the back of his skull flew off;


    The greaser whose skull Nick had just caved in came reeling back to his feet yelling "Don''t you know how much that stings you-!";


    Nick drove the pointed tip of the pinch bar into the centre of the dented-skulled man''s chest;


    The man with the dented skull burst like a sack of wet cement - and that seemed to be the signal for events to go back to normal speed: the remaining greasers took off running, the one with half the back of his head shot off included - Nick hurled the pinch bar, spinning - it caught one of the running greasers between the shoulder blades taking the target down, and Annie said, "The hell, I could swear I hit him!"


    "You hit him, myself was seeing it," Mackie declared. Everyone, inclusive, was staring at the guy who''d just turned into sludge. His clothing was intact - save for the hole the pinch bar had put in his shirt - but the rest of him had just completely disintegrated into a massive pile of some sort of slurry. "Half the back of his head''s off for Christ''s sake, you were definitely hitting him,"


    "Might be on PCP or something," Alice finally contributed, quite aware she was staring round-eyed at the mud puddle that used to be a man.


    "Well," Annie declared, slotting her revolver back into it''s holster, "Whichever way we''ll ken once he''s keeled over - pass us a bin liner out the back of the ute Mackie, I''m betting the coppers will be wanting a look at this thing," and she toed the black T-shaped metal thing.


    Mackie, who was by now back on his feet if walking funny, had a fish around in the back of the ute and came out with a plastic sack - this he wrapped round his hand before picking the offending article up.


    "Looks like a Glenmoray crackler but it''s nae home-made," he said. "What the hell, someone''s been filing at it? Myself am thinking they were efter the serial number?"


    "It''s a Yank gun, an Ingram, it''s what a Glenmoray crackler''s a direct copy of - rare as hell, there can''t be more than a dozen of those in the Home Islands," Annie told him, peering critically at it. "One of Dad''s friends from uni - Billy Conroy, he''s a gun collector down south - has one of these and I''ve got one of the others in my handbag, I''m betting this one''s been stolen, it''s no the sort of gun that''ll just turn up in some wanker''s jacket."


    "You''d better get that pistol too Mackie," Nick said, and turned and walked over to where the person - from the voice, either female or castrated - he''d hit with the thrown pinch bar was laying face down and screaming and swearing a lot.


    Alice followed him after a moment''s hesitation as he turned what was definitely a woman over with his foot.


    She was pretty in an indeterminately Eastern European sort of way, dressed the same as her mates - a motorbike jacket, jeans making her (counting Val) the second woman Alice had seen wearing trousers since arrival in Inverness, tank-top over a corsetted waist even tinier than Annie''s, and shitkicking boots. She had a studded belt with a death''s head buckle, her tank top appeared to be a men''s vest with a skull and crossbones drawn on the front with a black marker, her hair was up in pigtails, and she had a battered piece of heavy-looking chain round her neck.


    She also started laughing maniacally the moment Nick turned her over.


    "I know your face now, mortal," she told him. "I know your face."


    "Well it''s no going to be doing you much good with a broken back now, is it," he said with a shake of his head and turned and walked back towards the pickup, still shaking his head.


    "Let''s get out of here," he told Annie. "I''m no in the mood for more drinking."


    "Aye," Annie said with a nod, shoving her hand through the hole in the pickup''s bonnet and starting in on persuading it to start. "You''re no wrong."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Aye," Annie said, putting her own black T-shaped nasty-looking sub-machine gun back in her handbag. "That''s definitely the serial numbers that''ve been filed off of this thing," and she tapped the side of the greaser''s Ingram, which was now laying inside a large ziplock bag on the desk in Nick and Mackie''s dorm room. "I''m taking it down to the police station in the morning."


    They''d retired to the boys room for what seemed to be some sort of council of war the moment they''d arrived back at the dorms.


    "Are you sure involving the pigs is a good idea?" Val asked.


    "Well they''ll know it was myself shot that one arsehole the moment they find wherever my slugs went, it''s nae like we''re in the middle of a land war and it''s nae like it all went down the other side of the goods yard, " Annie said with a shrug. "Or, hell, after he''s keeling over if he''s nae crawled into a hole by then they''ll be finding rifling marks matching my gun on what''s left of his skull I''m betting. It won''t be a hard match to find, the big Colt''s in an American calibre, there''s only a couple of hundred guns that''ll chamber those rounds in the Home Islands and the last time someone mistook me for a get-rich-quick scheme was four weeks back at that big space-technology conference up at Culloden and tonight was the first time I''ve actually fired the big Colt since - they''ve got a slug on file from exactly three bullets ago. This thing here, you saw he was no wearing gloves, it''ll be covered in his fingerprints and I''m betting his DNA to boot and you can class that as proof I was needing to slot him."


    "You''d probably better be turning this thing in at the same time Annie," Nick said, indicating the pistol. "It''s full of hollowpoints, factory-made stuff, and those aren''t so easy to be getting, and someone''s had a go at its serials too¡­ I''ve got a bad feeling about this. Something tells me that lassie wasn''t joking when she was on about being after us, they''ll be back, I''d bet on it."


    "Aye, I get that sense too," Annie said with a sharp nod. "Particularly since I blew one of their mates'' brains out and you¡­ well."


    "Aye, but what''ll we be doing about it? For Christ sake the college is no allowing long arms on campus and we''re all knowing how bloody useless Nick is with a pistol and to be honest myself''s no much better," said Mackie.


    Nick snorted, reached under his bed, and dragged out a very large sword, in scabbard, with very distinctive slanted crossguard and unnecessarily large pommel.


    "Well for one thing I''m no thinking this qualifies under ''long arm''," he said.


    "Shit the bed, is that a proper bloody claymore like what William Wallace had?" Val declared, visibly impressed.


    "Well technically speaking it''s a spud bar that''s been hit with a hammer a lot," Nick said. "Took me two dozen tries to get the balance and temper something like right, I''ve got an entire fishbox full of vaguely sword-shaped scrap metal back on the croft, but it''ll do until I can find the time to get better at that sort of metalworking or maybe just bloody pay someone who knows what they''re about to do the work, welding is one thing but I''m no exactly a master-smith."


    "I think we''re all dancing around the point," Alice said. "What the hell was that with that guy turning into¡­ well, mud?" and that was enough to silence all four of the others.


    "I haven''t a bloody clue," Annie finally admitted.


    -/-/-/-/-


    On walking back into her dorm room Alice was very abruptly reminded that the person she was sharing with hadn''t previously appeared on finding that while they''d been down at the pub the mystery ''Fiona Macleod'' had in fact appeared, and half the room had undergone a dramatic transformation.


    The central curtain - which was now bundled up at the window end - had become something of a dividing line, with very little of the room''s beige remaining visible outside of Alice''s half - Fiona had, it seemed, come prepared.


    The walls and wardrobe were hidden by dark fabric wall-hangings and the floor covered in what appeared to be furs - there was no sign of the original bedclothes, these having been replaced by an enormous black quilt, and a very large desktop computer replete with tower case sat on floor occupied the desk. The shelves were entirely stuffed full of books and what appeared to be jewellery boxes, and a low coffee table had appeared in the middle of that half of the floor - a bulky black leather trenchcoat was hung from the curtain rail, and a black leather gunbelt replete with a pair of ornate pearl-gripped revolvers was laying on the coffee table.


    The cause of this transformation was approximately the most ''goth'' blonde Alice had ever seen in her life. The girl who had to be Fiona - rail thin wound down even narrower at the centre by corsetry even more pronounced than Annie Kelly went in for and entirely black-clad in a style loosely reminiscent of a Victorian doll - was seated at her computer and had just stopped typing and started turning round as Alice opened the door.


    "Aha, so the mysterious Alice Liddell has appeared at last then," she declared. She looked just as resoundingly ''goth'' from the front as she did from the back, she even had too much mascara, an overly chunky knobbly studded dog collar with a large ring dangling from the front, masses of silver jewelery, and her hair - of which she had a tremendous quantity and volume - was tied back in a set of elaborate tresses.


    She also had a similar accent to Mackie, and the easy smile didn''t really match the goth thing.


    "And you''d be the mysterious Fiona Macleod I spent most of the afternoon wondering where was," Alice said, going and flopping on her bed. Fiona let out a light laugh.


    "Aye, that I am," she said. "I take it you''re worn then."


    "Nothing wrong with me that about a month''s sleep wouldn''t fix," Alice lied.


    -/-/-/-/-


    "You''re knowing Alice Liddell from before the college," said an unexpected Stornaway-accented voice, speaking in the Gaelic, and Mackie, who had got up early as per his lifelong habit, turned round from what he''d been doing - lubing his motorbike''s chain - with a grunt.


    "Aye, no very well mind, myself had only known her a week," he said, figuring that the speaker -  a pretty dark-clad blonde girl with a lot of eye makeup and a dead giveaway that would have Nick and Annie thinking someone was a right lucky bastard - had to be Alice''s new roommate. "Why''s that?"


    "Not that myself''s wanting to be prying or anything, but herself was waking up with this choked-off sort of start of a shriek three times over the course of last night," the girl - who on a closer look seemed really rather frazzled somewhere under her ocean of mascara - said. "Herself''s up there wide awake right now huddled up in a wee ball, what in God''s name was happening to her?"


    "Well myself am not too clear on the details," Mackie told her with a sigh, "And myself am not much of a one for the gossiping, but¡­ herself was being blown up, bloody near to killed, in some sort of a bombing probably back in March. Herself''s got more of her metal than flesh."


    "Well myself was thinking it was shellshock myself was seeing," the girl said, grimly shaking her head. "That poor wee lassie. Och, don''t get worked up man, myself will no be letting on that yourself was spilling that one. Discretion, ken - och, ourselves have no been introduced, myself am Fiona Macleod, Alice there''s myself''s room-mate,"


    Mackie drew an agreeing inbreath.


    "Aye, myself was thinking as much," he said, then grunted in surprise as Nick came wondering out of the digs yawning to himself.


    Nick Macbane had never been an early riser - this was the earliest Mackie had seen him out of bed (sea days excluded) in months.


    "Morning," he said. "Yourself''s out of your pit early," and he watched the mental gearchange of Nick switching to the Gaelic in his head.


    "Aye, myself am thinking myself''ll be starting in on chasing up parts for a new bike," Nick said, ambling over to his van.


    "A new bike, what," Fiona started.


    "Aye, my Norton was being stolen last night, right out of under my bloody nose too," Nick told her with a bit of a grumble. "By now it''s most likely already in pieces, so that''d be that. Time to be building another bike."


    "So yourself''ll be headed for the scrappers then, aye?" said Mackie.


    "Aye," said Nick as he climbed into the van. "First things first, seeing about some sort of a wee engine."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    When Nick Macbane came humping a grease-encrusted engine up the stairs in the college digs, he was just in time to promptly get caught up on what was going on, as Annie chose that exact moment to exit the room being shared by Fiona and Alice, to be greeted by Mackie - who''d been leaning against the wall beside the door ready to tear anyone who tried to put their nose in a new one - with a simple, Gaelic-languaged, "How''s herself?"


    "Actually asleep," Annie told him in that same language. "The poor lass was sleep-deprived on top of everything else - ah, Nick, perfect timing, we''re needing some sort of ban put on Alice''s bed to help her sleep without being back in the middle of that bloody bombing every time she''s closing her eyes. Fiona there was giving her something that should stop her dreaming this once, but herself''s saying it''s no good to be taking that stuff all the time."


    "So she was having the meltdown we''d been half-expecting then," said Nick, shifting his engine to a more comfortable position. "I should''ve bloody put a ban on her bed like the one at home last night but I clean forgot,"


    "Aye," Annie said. "It was slipping my mind too."


    "When''ll yourself be wanting that ban put on herself''s bed then?" Nick asked.


    "Fiona will be letting you know once Alice is waking up, we can''t be going around behind her back - it wouldn''t be doing her head any good at all," Annie told him. "Any rate I''m going to head over to the police station with those guns, I''ll be seeing you later."


    He nodded, and went to take his engine to his room.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Morning, Miss Kelly," said Constable Jim Higgins, looking up from his newspaper. "Scored another notch on your gunbelt last night, I understand."


    "Aye," Annie said with a nod, and held up the poly bags holding the two guns she and Nick had retrieved from the scene. "That I did, has the body turned up yet?"


    "Not that I know of, at a guess he crawled into a hole in the no-go and died there, I expect he''s in a peat bog by now. That''ll be the assailants'' weapons then?" and he indicated the bag. "I''ll just let Constable Joy know you''re here then,"


    "No need, I''m right here," a cheerful Kirkwall-accented voice called from through the main part of the office, and the door into the station proper opened to reveal the smiling face of Constable Joy. "What have you got for us today?"


    "One rare-as-hell Yank machine pistol with the serial numbers filed at by an idiot, and a Yank self-loading pistol again with the serials filed at, and loaded with factory hollowpoints to boot, I expect that they''re stolen," Annie said, holding her bagged guns up again. Pam Joy frowned and accepted the bags.


    "Come on through, we''d better get a statement and see what Billy can rustle up concerning those guns," she said.


    "Well for one thing it''d be worth having a look for fingerprints and DNA on ''em," Annie told her. "We made sure to keep poly bags between us and the guns the whole time,"


    "And neither of the ''criminal masterminds'' in question were wearing any visible glove, yes," Pam said as the two of them headed through to the offices. "The surveillance unit got the entire affair on video, we''ve had a whole rash of unpleasantness in what''s supposed to be a safe part of town - stick-ups, four missing persons, several particularly nasty attacks, and one lassie was bitten last night for Pete''s sake¡­ Just one thing though - what in God''s name happened when your pal stabbed that one in the chest?"


    "I honestly haven''t an earthlies, the guy just¡­ disintegrated? I''ve been thinking it could be some sort of black-market nanotechnology or something? Maybe nicked military stuff? I''ve never heard of anything that does that but I can see how something that''d wipe a dead body out like that would be very popular with the likes of the SOE. They were definitely boosted, not any heavy stuff though - about what you''d expect some footie hooligan to manage to scrape together, maybe a bit above, call it ''lucky yob'' level."


    "I take it your friend''s boosted,"


    "Well technically speaking Nick and Mackie are my bodyguards, right,"


    "Say no more. Billy! Miss Kelly''s got a couple of guns for you to get a ganders at," and Billy Mandell - implausibly lanky and one of those people who can look perfectly presentable when leaving the house but will still be rumpled and in need of a shave by the time of arrival at the workplace - emerged from a desk positively encrusted in implements of destruction.


    "Oho," he declared the moment he had the bagged Ingram in his hands and had taken a close enough look at it to tell it was factory-made. "I''ll bet I know where this beauty was nicked from!"


    "Oh aye?" Annie said.


    "Yup, collector through in Montrose had seventy-six assorted rare or foreign guns stolen back in February, including guess what - he''d kept immaculate records of their ballistics and so far we''ve identified six killings this thing''s been used to commit. There should be ultraviolet identification marking on top of their receivers and inside their magazine wells, we''ll have a look once we''ve seen what we can get in the way of prints and DNA," He accepted the bagged pistol. "Aha, and I''ll bet this is one of the four Colt .45''s he''s missing too... Oh for Christ sake, what nitwit went at the serials with a file? They don''t even do things that dim on the telly any more!"


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Waking up the fourth time that first day in Inverness was almost as odd as waking up in Grace''s living room had been, and for the first few moments left Alice just as utterly lost as she''d been then, before everything came back to her in a rush.


    She sat up, and looked around, immediately drawing Fiona''s notice.


    "Morning," Fiona said.


    "Is it still morning¡­ I didn''t sleep right through to Wednesday did I. God, what a way to make for a first impression, flailing around like a total basket case,"


    "Och I wouldn''t be saying that much - you''re far from the first person I''ve ever been seeing having a flashback, my grandfather was gassed three times at the Somme and the number of folks I''ve kent who''ve been screwed up by the land wars there''s no a chance you''ll be the last." Fiona shook her head. "And honestly it hasn''t been morning for a while, it''s just after six in the afternoon, but don''t be getting too excited, we''re no due into anything official to do with the college until the morrow."


    "Four? The last thing I knew it must''ve been about,"


    "You slept for ten hours straight once the Kelly lass was getting you to actually go to sleep," Fiona said.


    "Thought it had to be about that," Alice admitted with a sigh. "You gave me something to help me sleep, didn''t you."


    "Aye, though it has to be said you can''t be depending on that stuff going forwards," Fiona told her. "How it works is by preventing you going into REM sleep - that''s the phase of sleep you dream in - and that is not good for you."


    "Worse than not being able to sleep?"


    "How does hallucinating at the drop of a hat sound? Besides, it''s unnecessary when we can readily prevent you actually having those nightmares. That stuff is the equivalent of a splint, it''s ''first aid'', so to speak. Now we need something equivalent to putting a cast on a limb to keep the break set while it heals," Fiona explained, rising to her feet. "Any rate it''s about dinner time. Let''s go."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Aye," Nick said. "We''ll just need to be putting the right sort of a ban on your bed again,"


    Alice drew in and let out a deep breath.


    "Okay," she said. "Just¡­ the hell is that stuff?" and that got a puzzled glance out of Fiona. "I mean, why? How?"


    "Just so we''re on the same page, we''re talking about common-or-garden warding, right?" Fiona asked, and Alice shrugged.


    "No idea," she said, "That stuff is all totally new to me, I''d never seen anything like it in my life before last week," and that got her a curious look out of Fiona.


    Nick fished a bit of card and a biro out of his pocket and repeated his trick of making the card vanish, and Fiona said, "Huh."


    "Huh what?" Nick asked.


    "Huh I''ve never seen someone write Ogham without a key," said Fiona. Nick, as he had the previous week while Alice was in the process of suffering a total system crash, ran his thumb along the rim of it, then scribbled at a specific part with the biro, causing it to reappear just as abruptly as it''d vanished.


    "How''d you do that?" Fiona, sounding slightly impressed, asked. "Not the vanishing part, I''m familiar with the principle, the making it reappear,"


    "Well the ban I put on it was ''you can''t see me''," Nick told her. "So I wrote the T in ''Can''t'' really hard so I could feel it with my thumb, then to make it reappear I scribbled the T out, making the ban ''You can see me''."


    "Huh - very interesting, I''d no realised that''d work," she said.


    "Okay, okay, okay, we''re getting distracted," said Alice. "How the hell does that happen?"


    "Well edges and boundaries and the likes are having an effect on the world," Nick told her with a shrug; Fiona gave him a considering look. "And if you know what you''re about - if you know how to write something into the edge - you can use it to change that part of the world. The Ogham script works well enough for that, I don''t know how or why, but I do know well enough to be doing this," and he made a whole load more marks along another side of the card then threw it on the table, above which it proceeded to float, and Alice''s brain nearly crashed again. "It''s nae all that strong, I mean you couldnae lift a car like that, and it works best when it''s messing with someone''s senses - it''s much easier to hide something with it than it is to do much else and the concealment''s no that strong, it''ll break down if enough folks are looking for it hard enough."


    "There''s thousand-plus-year-old inscriptions in Inverallen meant, if we''ve been translating them right, to turn Vikings away from the place," Mackie said.


    "Okay so what can it do? Is this seriously actual magic?"


    "Well I guess you could say that," Nick said with a frown. "I have to say I haven''t a clue how it works, but before you''re writing that," and he indicated the levitating card, "Off as magic, before you''re saying just because we don''t know how it works right now it can''t be known, you tell me exactly what''s going on inside those cybernetic eyes that you have in your skull."


    "And you''ve been using something like that to, to help me sleep," Alice finally said.


    "Aye and that was working too, wasn''t it."


    "Yeah... fuck, this is doing my head in - hey, Nick?"


    "What''s up?"


    "Do you think I''d be able to do that?" and Alice pointed at the bit of still-floating card.


    "I wouldn''t see why not," he said. "I''ve nae ever met anyone who couldn''t, though most folks don''t have it memorised the way I do - I can write you up a key if you like."


    "I''ll think about it," Alice said with a sigh.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The remainder of that first week was blessedly quiet with college affairs limited to induction and orientation, and it turned out that Fiona was one of the seven other first-year archaeology students. Aside from Fiona there was one other girl - named Keiko Megami, who for some unknown reason had the full-time company of a squirrel that appeared to be named ''Jock'' who appeared to like to ride around on top of her head, and she looked as Japanese as her name sounded but had a nigh-impenetrable Scots accent that Fiona said was something called Doric and specifically the variety that marked her as from Buckie and Alice didn''t like to ask how that had happened given everyone else acted as if visibly-Japanese girls running around with the thickest accent in Scotland was entirely normal - and five boys - identical twins from Fort William named Saul and Malcolm Chisholm and both of them jug-eared and ginger, a lanky dark-haired young Inverness native called Andy Macbride, a pudgy blond very-English-accented young man called Kenny Fauntleroy with a manner a bit like a large amiably stupid dog, and an unassuming farmboy from the Black Isle called Mike Mackenzie who everyone found themselves liking within minutes of having met him.


    As for the faculty, in addition to Dr Jack Kensington - who continued to leave a good impression outside of how very reserved he was - they found themselves introduced to almost as many tutors as there were students on the course. Teaching data analysis was one Kevin Murchison, a slender man with slicked-back hair and a fussy moustache who insisted that everyone address him as Mister Murchison, stress on the ''mister'' part. Archaeological theory was taught by a sharply-dressed fortysomething woman who put one in mind of a Victorian schoolmarm, whose name was Elisabeth Beckett.  Data collection was taught by Micheal ''Mikey'' Kirkbride, the shortest member of the faculty and the owner of an accent almost as impenetrable as Keiko''s and a permanent glum expression. Archaeological method was taught by a moustachioed and rather stern-looking chap called Neville Belrose, whose forbidding exterior with its faintly military air proved to conceal a remarkably genial fellow with a very silly sense of humour the instant he opened his mouth. The world archaeology tutor was a very tall and rather overweight gentleman with very little hair all of which was grey, named Archibald Chelmsleywood, known to all as Archie and possessed of a similar level of boundless energy and enthusiasm to your average five-year-old and generally the exact sort of person one would expect to hear use words such as ''spiffing''. And last but definitely not least, historic landscapes was taught by this completely adorable dumpy smiley very elderly (but not in the slightest bit frail) lady with a blue-rinse and a permanent air of someone''s beloved grandmother, usually called Mrs Pritchard though her given name was Josephine.


    Alice spent the week in a state as close to hibernation as she could get, and was finally pulled away from that by Val Adamson on the evening of Friday 6th just after sundown, when said luminary stuck her head into Alice and Fiona''s room and said, "We''re heading down the pub, coming?"


    "I guess," Alice said, "I might as well.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The boys had, it transpired, headed on down to the pub on foot without waiting for the girls, and that was what lead to Alice back in the front seat of Annie''s wretched mess of a pickup for a lift down to the town and giving faintly dubious looks to the battered old pump-action shotgun that was laying on the dashboard and had not, to her recollection, been there the previous times Annie had given her lifts, but the ride quickly got interrupted - just where the road met the side of the River Ness a body came flying out into the road in front of the pickup causing Annie to slam on the brakes with a loud curse.


    "Oh what the hell, hey, that''s Mackie!" she declared as the body - which was indeed Mackie Romanov - finished the fall by kickflipping back upright and charging back into the fray that was, it transpired, ongoing just in the mouth of a side-street: a veritable horde of the greaser types were attempting to mob Nick, who was preventing any mobbing by furiously flailing around with what appeared to be a roadsign - quite how he''d come to have a roadsign to wave around was another question. It appeared to still have a lump of concrete attached to one end.


    Annie went piling out of the idling pickup, taking the shotgun off the dashboard as she went; she hurled it in the general direction of the fight with a yell of  "Oi Mackie, catch!"


    Mackie grabbed the thrown shotgun out of the air, whirled round, and let it fly point blank into the nearest greaser''s upper chest. The blast dramatically lifted the unfortunate man clean off his feet in a manner Alice had been under the impression guns only did in silly action movies, and hurled him over the road, across the guardrail, and into the River Ness, and the entire dynamic of the fight abruptly changed.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Next - Settling on what to do about it turns into throwing Alice for another loop, and then the gang find out exactly what they''re dealing with and are not even momentarily impressed.

 Chapter 2 part the third

    "So what the hell was that about?" Annie asked as, the initial plan about going to the pub abandoned, they pulled into the digs car park.


    "Buggered if I ken," said Nick. Val was currently sandwiched between him and Mackie in the pickup''s back seats. "We were minding our own business when all of a sudden someone yells ''there they are, get them,'' and that mob bloody rushes us."


    "So what''ll we be doing about them?" Mackie asked as Annie parked the pickup. She didn''t answer that until they''d all piled out and she''d switched the engine off.


    "I''m no thinking there''s much we can be doing," she finally said. "We can no exactly be going out idiot hunting now, can we. I''m thinking we stick in a group, keep our long arms handy in my ute or Nick''s van, and any time those clowns want to start on us we make them wish they hadn''t."


    "Idiot hunting, now that sounds like no a bad plan," Fiona, who''d just been leaving the building as they arrived, declared. "I can think of a few idiots who could do with being hunted¡­ hey, were you lot no away down the pub about five minutes ago?"


    "Aye, but we ran into a bunch of idiots with other ideas," Nick told her. "That same lot from the other night, they jumped Mackie and myself just down where the road turns to run along the side of the river. They beat it the very moment any of us had a gun."


    "Myself am getting down to the bloody gun shop on the morrow and getting a shotgun myself can be keeping under a coat, fuck the whole thing the college is having with the long arms" Mackie declared.


    "Aye, you do that," Nick agreed, heading for his van. "Did we have they leatherworking tools in the box in the back of the van? I''ve got a machete with me but it''s no got a sheath or anything."


    "And why''ll you no be getting a shotgun and all?" Fiona asked him.


    "Nick with a shotgun would be a danger to anything but whatever he was firing it at," Annie said. "The man''s the worst shot in Scotland."


    "Oh get to fuck Annie, I''m no that bad,"


    "Oh yes you bloody well are," Mackie declared. "Nicodemus ''capable of missing a barn from inside the bloody barn'' Macbane,"


    "Shut your pie-hole you great teuchter. Anyway basically, I''m a bloody terrible shot," Nick told Fiona, climbing into the back of his van; he continued talking in between rooting around. "This bunch of numpties like to exaggerate how bad but at the end of the day I''m more likely to actually do something useful in a fight with a big knife."


    "Bad eyesight?" Fiona asked.


    "There''s nothing wrong with Nick''s eyes, it''s what''s behind them that''s the problem," said Mackie.


    "And it''s no for want of practise either, I''ve fired tens of thousands of rounds and never got any better," Nick grumbled, notably not contravening Mackie''s statement; he chose this moment to come out of the van with a fishbox full of clobber in tow.


    "Odd," said Fiona.


    "Story of my life," Nick agreed with a shrug.


    Alice refrained from comment. Nick thought odd was the story of his life? He should try living hers, odd had become the new normal roundabout when she''d woken up in Grace Mitchell''s living room.


    "So will you be doing anything about these idiots you''re talking about?" Fiona directly asked Annie, apparently having decided that the conversation about Nick''s utter absence of proficiency with firearms was complete.


    "Well can you think of anything we can be doing? Because apart from keeping our guns handy and sticking together I can''t," Annie told her.


    "Well that''s no a bad start," Fiona told her with a nod. "And if you''ll have me I''ll be joining in with that one, given that I''m rooming with one of your friends," and she nodded to Alice.


    "Aye and you''d be welcome," Annie said with a nod; she gave Nick a meaningful look. "That''ll be meaning we use my ute and your van, lads,"


    And that was why, the following morning, the whole gang of them went trooping off down to JOHNSON & CO GUNSMITHS only to find the place closed.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Shite, shite, shite, what the hell, when was Scotty ever no open of a Saturday?" said Mackie. He and Alice had ridden down with Nick, Alice in the van because it was so much more civilised than Annie''s monstrosity, and they were now loitering around in a group between and/or in the two vehicles outside the very closed gunsmiths.


    "It''s no the first time," Fiona told him. "Your man''s off to trade shows five or six weekends a year, and you ken what that Mags lassie''s like about being further than a stone''s throw from himself."


    "Eh, bear in mind we''re only normally seeing himself once every month or so," said Nick. Fiona made a startled sound, then laughed.


    "Och, look at me," she said. "Okay, aye, short version: he''s got the best pistol range in Inverness so anyone in the town who''s interested in competitive pistol shooting knows him like he was family."


    "You shoot competitively?" Annie asked, instantly interested. "I''ve thought of giving it a go but never really had an opportunity."


    "Aye," Fiona said with a pleased nod. "Quickraw shooting, it''s something that I felt that I had to be doing and it''s bloody good fun so I stuck at it and I''m nae bad, anyway like I was saying Mags sticks to himself like glue, I can''t say I''ve ever seen her much more than fifty feet away from that lad, she''s himself''s bodyguard."


    "Scotty Johnson needs a bodyguard¡­?" Annie asked.


    "I''m no knowing if ''needs'' is the word you''re looking for, but he certainly has one and I wouldn''t want to get on that lassie''s bad side if you ken what I''m saying," Fiona told her. "So long story short, any time he decides to bugger off somewhere she''s right behind him, and it''s no like he''s got anyone else working for him on this site."


    "Well I guess we''ll no be getting any shotguns till Monday then," said Nick, elbowing Mackie.


    "Actually it''s no like Scotty''s the only place near to Inverness you can be buying that sort of guns, he''s just the best place that''s doing the big stuff," Mackie said with a shrug. "There''s that place up by the flying field, Kingstons, that was where myself was getting the trench gun in the first place."


    "Well let''s go on up there then," said Annie.


    So they did.


    Ten minutes drive out to the east of Inverness proper, ''the flying field'' was apparently a funny name for a startlingly busy airport. It had two entire separate sets of runway, a sprawling sea of hangers, enormous queues of aircraft waiting to take off or land - the thunder of jet engines was shaking the air near-constantly, it was more on the order of what you''d expect to see somewhere like Gatwick or just generally serving a teeming metropolis than ''the flying field'' outside an arse-end-of-nowhere little north-of-Scotland town like Inverness had up till then given every impression of being. Virtually every aircraft coming and going was preposterously big to boot - massive great hunched-up beasts like a Jumbo Jet''s bigger uglier stubbier-winged cousin, and they all had these really weird-looking cockpit windows, sort of radial clusters of stripes of window running fore-aft around the top of the nose and utterly unlike any aircraft Alice had ever seen.


    It also had a swathe of railway yards and nondescript prefabricated concrete industrial units jammed between it and the sea; it was to one of these industrial units that they drove, and on the way Alice got the latest in a long line of surprises on finding fleets of heavy-duty trucks loaded with car-sized boulders carefully working their way from actually on the airport proper to the rail yards behind it then going back to the airport empty, which made so little sense she found herself staring in slack-jawed pop-eyed silence.


    "That''s asteroid ore," Mackie said, catching what she was gobsmackedly gawking at.


    "You what?"


    Nick and Mackie glanced over her at each other.


    "It''s asteroid ore," Mackie repeated. "This is the only place in the British Empire that it''s legal to be flying privately-owned spacecraft out of - see, after the Navy started selling off their first generation Eagles back in the mid-1970s it wasn''t all that long before some poor sod stuffed one into the side of a mountain somewhere or other in South America which is how they were finding out that when you smash a rocketry reactor you tend to get an awful lot of naked fusion reaction flashing out of the damaged reactor casing and there isn''t any great difference between that and a small atomic bomb going off. But by that time how very big a thing it all was had already been made clear, at that time they were landing something like ten thousand tons of ore down at Luton in England a week and my God the amount of money, so to cut a long story short not having somewhere for big businesses to fly out of in the Home Islands would have been political suicide. So since there''s not a soul in Westminster who has any more regard for the Highlands than for a wad of freshly-used bog roll, and since Inverness already had major rail links headed south..." and he shrugged.


    "Rocketry¡­ reactor¡­ fusion¡­ you what?"


    "I''m taking it that they''ve no got thermonuclear spaceflight where you''re from, then," said Nick as he parked the van outside one of the industrial units.


    "Thermonuclear¡­ what..."


    "That''d be a no then," Mackie said, climbing out of the van.


    "A no to what?" Annie asked; the pickup was already parked and she, Val, and Fiona were loitering around beside it.


    "Alice didn''t ken about fusion rocketry," Mackie told her with a shrug.


    "Oh," Annie shrugged it off as insignificant. She nodded to Alice, then turned to lead the gang of them into the industrial unit. "Mackie''ll wax lyrical at endless length if you''re giving him half a chance, he''s daft for space. It''s no as exciting as he''s thinking, it mostly consists of sitting around locked up in wee a tin can with no ''down'' and everyone''s rotten socks for weeks at a time with nothing to see and less to do, I should know, I''ve been to Mars - imagine being stuck in a bus for a couple of months and no even any scenery to be looking at or any actual driving to do since the computers are doing most of that, anyone who''s on about romance and adventure and great explorers is talking out of their arse. I suppose you could poke around on Mars or something, imagine being stuck in a space suit out in the dreariest driest most completely empty bit of Australia you can possibly imagine, except perishing bloody cold - it''ll be able to actually start being a world once the terraforming is completed but that won''t be in our lifetimes. Maybe it''s the future but it definitely is not today."


    "While Annie is a complete bloody dour old teuchter about the most important advancement in human history since¡­ since the invention of fire," Mackie declared.


    "Oh stop your harping on about it you pair of absolute numpties, we''re supposed to be shopping for a shotgun," said Nick.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The first thing Fiona said when the two of them were back in their dorm room and sitting down, Fiona at her coffee table and Alice on her bed, the thump of Mackie trying out his new shotgun intermittently audible from outside the building, was, "It''s no just an initial impression now, is it. You really are one hell of a long way from home."


    "The wrong face, science fiction cybernetic arms and legs and eyes, hologram computers that you plug into your brain, giant rhino monsters, guns bloody everywhere, clothes from before the first world war or something, Nick doing freaking magic with a biro like it''s nothing, ye Gods and little fishes, just when I think I''m starting to comprehend the sheer scale of it suddenly thermonuclear rockets," Alice said with a shake of her head. "I don''t know what to think¡­ My little brother would love it, total space geek."


    "¡­ Geek?" Fiona asked, coming and sitting down beside Alice instead. "What on Earth does ''geek'' mean?"


    "You know, a nerd," and that didn''t enlighten her. "You actually seriously don''t know what ''nerd'' or ''geek'' means, ye Gods,"


    "I can''t say I''ve ever been hearing either one of those words in my life,"


    "Does ''anorak'' make any sense? You know, like a trainspotter or something?" Alice asked, and Fiona snorted.


    "You mean those numpties standing at the bottom of railway platforms with a notebook, aye?"


    "Yeah, them. A nerd is like that but not necessarily over trains, and a geek and a nerd are pretty much the same thing."


    "And every time you think you''ve realised how far from home you are, you''re finding out that it''s even further than you''d thought, aye?"


    Alice nodded.


    "It''s like every time I think I''m starting to think I''ve figured out just how fucking deep the rabbit-hole is I realise what I thought was the light at the bottom is actually another freight train coming up, at this point it''s like I might as well be on a different planet."


    "Oh Alice, Alice, Alice, you are on a different planet," Fiona said with a sigh, and put an arm round Alice''s shoulders. "It''s the same situation as when you meet a complete stranger who looks like someone you know, but with worlds. You shouldn''t be taking anything at all for granted - when all is said and done you are as alien here as I would be in your world."


    "I think I can at least take ''down'' being ''down'' for granted,"


    "Yet only a few days ago you were going pop-eyed at a levitating bit of cardboard."


    "¡­ fuck," Alice muttered.


    Although she would in time come to regret it, and although she knew she probably should, she did not ask what else she was taking for granted that she should not - and not just because, as Fiona had said, it wasn''t like the other girl would know what was different about the world Alice remembered and the world around them either.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Coursework began in earnest on the Monday the ninth of September, and having something to focus on other than being impossibly lost and/or having been blown up appeared, in Alice''s opinion, to be exactly what she''d needed, just as Brigid had predicted.


    She and the group she was beginning to think of as her friends continued to travel together despite not having seen hide nor hair of the ''greaser'' gang in days - it was not, in fact, until they were exiting the pub - not the same place as they''d been before - just after eleven ostentatiously enough on the evening of Friday 13th that they found a mob of about thirty of them sitting around and on Nick''s van and Annie''s pickup all armed to the teeth - prominently including the girl who they''d last seen laying on the pavement with a broken neck, who was standing on Annie''s pickup''s cab roof with a large rifle in her hands.


    "About time you fuckfaces showed yourselves," she said.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    For the second time in a matter of weeks, Alice Liddell slowly began to realise she was, in fact, still unexpectedly alive - this time in the aftermath of a brief but intense salvo of gunfire - as the gang of greasers, or rather what was left of them, once again fled, everything having once again happened entirely too fast for Alice to follow.


    Fiona was standing there like a Western gunfighter, a smoking revolver in each hand, looking very pleased with herself. Three of the ''greasers'' had exploded into gallons of slurry much like the one Nick had stabbed with a pinch bar at the start of the previous week, and the girl one seemed to have had her neck broken again - her legs were still visible sticking up the back of Annie''s pickup''s cab while she swore the air blue. A glance around showed that both Nick and Val appeared to have moved a good fifty or sixty feet in the half a heartbeat the ''fight'' appeared to have taken, and both were covered in mud; Mackie and Annie had their guns out (in Annie''s case she''d appeared a T-shaped piece of black metal identical to the greaser''s stolen gun from the previous week from somewhere) and smoking.


    "I see," said Fiona. "Why don''t you ask the idiot in the back of your ute what her problem is?"


    "Y''know that''s not a bad idea," Annie agreed. "Let''s find somewhere quiet."


    -/-/-/--/-/-


    The somewhere quiet they arrived at in the end was the north end of the derelict airbase between the Kessock Bridge and Inverness proper, which turned out to be the end that was full of fly-tipped rubbish and derelict cars - the south end was full of shacks. Here they dragged the unfortunate greaser girl - whom Annie had hogtied with fencing wire - out of under the tarps in the pickup''s loadbed and dumped her on a pile of decaying mattresses, and Annie spent nearly a minute poking at her with the pinch bar and telling her to stop pretending to be asleep.


    "I think she''s proper dead," Nick said, squatting down to have a closer look; he started feeling at her throat. "Crap, she''s proper dead, the body''s cold and I can''t find a,"


    The greaser girl bit his arm.


    "Pulse? The fuck, hey, get the fuck off of me, oh what the hell!"


    Fiona shot the greaser girl in the crotch - the gunshot made her scream, and Nick yanked his arm away when she opened her mouth in the process. He was bleeding profusely.


    "Fuck me, what the hell," he declared, shedding his bike jacket into the back of the pickup.


    "Jesus man, she''s really got you one there," Mackie declared, fishing around down the back of the pickup''s driver''s seat; he emerged with a first aid kit. "Let me get a look at that,"


    "Yeccch, what the fuck have you been eating, you taste like a wet dog smells," the greaser complained, starting furiously wriggling. "Think that''s a big bite, I''ll fuck you up proper once - ugh - once I get, argh, fuck you, lemme go!"


    "Are we looking as daft as yourself?" Fiona asked, sounding curious.


    "No pulse, no body heat, what the hell is this crap?" Val complained.


    "Are you," Alice asked, the answer seeming quite obvious, "A vampire?" and that question silenced everyone bar the trussed-up greaser girl.


    "Holy crap I''m a vampire, I never would''ve noticed if you hadn''t pointed it out!" she snarled, the prominent fangs not doing anything to change what anyone was thinking. "What the hell gave it away, was it when I drank your smelly cunt mate?"


    Fiona shot her again.


    "Okay, sure, you''re a vampire. Now, how about you answer a few wee questions my friends have for you, or would you like me to keep shooting you in a very sensitive place?"


    "You can''t do this!"


    "Myself am thinking yourself''ll be finding we can," Mackie declared, withdrawing his nice new shorty shotgun from his coat; he made a presentation of working the pump, then casually aimed the barrel where Fiona''s bullets had gone.


    "You''re god-damn prey you fucknut, prey doesn''t win against predators!" and Fiona and all three of the Loch Allen kids all burst out laughing.


    "Well that''s one of the stupidest things I''ve been hearing in a while, have you no seen what a cow does when something bothers her wee calf?" said Nick with a shake of his head.


    "Do we seriously believe this crap?" Val asked.


    "Try finding her pulse," Nick said with a shrug. "She''s cold as a dead body and hasn''t a heartbeat."


    "What the fuck," Annie complained, "Since when the hell were vampires real? I''ve never heard of this sort of crap before, the hell?"


    "You''re gonna be hearing a lot more, Denny''s crew is gonna proper fuck you up," the vampire girl on the ground declared.


    "Denny? What in the fuck is a ''Denny'', it sounds like an American imitation chip shop," said Nick.


    "How about this," Fiona cut in. "How about you, dead girl, tell us where to be finding this Denny for a wee chat, and I don''t keep shooting you right in the twat."


    "Go fuck yourself," the vampire girl snapped, and Fiona shot her for the third time. "AAAGH! Stop it you shitcunt," and the pistol roared a fourth time, "Go to fuck, I''m not telling anyone," and a fifth bullet went, "A goddamn thing, oh God stop doing that," and bullet six fired.


    Fiona popped the revolver''s cylinder open - this didn''t go quite how Alice had expected, the barrel and cylinder folded forwards as a unit instead of just the cylinder coming out sideways, and the gun spat the six empty cases out - and started reloading it.


    "I''ve a lot of ammunition on me," she said. "I can keep this up until sunrise if you''re wanting."


    She closed the gun on the six freshly-loaded rounds, lowered the barrel to point at the vampiress''s very sensitive parts again, and thumbed the hammer back.


    "Nah, fuck this, we''ll just leave her up on the top of the old control tower with a rope to chew on and see if she feels more talkative this time tomorrow," Annie suddenly said, putting a hand on Fiona''s shoulder. This made the vampiress actually look frightened for the first time.


    "NO! You can''t leave me for sunrise, you just can''t!"


    "Well you''d better start talking then," Annie said with a shrug. "Cause if you''re no telling us what we want to hear it''s suntans for everyone. Now, who are you?"


    "¡­ my name''s Candice," the vampire said.


    "That''s sounding American too," Nick remarked.


    "Who are you working for?" Annie asked.


    "His name''s Denny, Denny the Priest."


    "And why are you working for some numpty with a name like whatever the Yanks are using for a chip shop?" Annie asked; Nick guffawed.


    "Well he vampired me, didn''t he?" said Candice in this sort of the-hell-do-you-think tone.


    "Oh aye, and where''d we be finding this bloke?" asked Annie.


    "You know where the road along the north side of the River Ness turns uphill towards Dalneigh? There''s that street turning right there that heads straight up towards Raigmore, look for the third house on the left, the one with a blue door and the body of one of those old lorry-mounted self-propelled pillboxes in the garden."


    "Oh aye, and how many of his mates are we going to be finding there?" Mackie asked.


    "I dunno do I, twenty? Maybe thirty?"


    "Sounds manageable. Let''s have a wee word with this twat," said Nick. "Knock on the bloody door and say we''re needing a chat."


    "Sounds like a plan, aye," Annie said with a nod. "Let''s go."


    "Eh, what about her?" Mackie asked, angling a thumb at the vampiress. "What, shove her back in the ute?"


    A sadistic smile appeared on Annie Kelly''s face, and she reached through the hole in her pickup''s bonnet to persuade the engine to start.


    "Nah," she said. "Let''s find out why the bitch is so feart of greeting the rising dawn," and Fiona started laughing.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The door of the named house did not, as it happened, open in reaction to Mackie knocking. Instead, someone pulled the letter flap up and peered through, eyeballing the group outside the door. Everyone bar Alice was armed - Nick had retrieved his sword from his van, and the rest of them had their guns handy.


    "Who in the fuck are you?" Whoever the someone was, they were presumably male if the gravelly smoke-roughened voice was anything to go by.


    "We''re needing a word with this Denny twat," Mackie declared.


    The voice the other side of the door said, "Fuck off, we don''t want fucking door-to-door salesmen, sorry, pimps and their sluts, in here you fucking fuck, go and fuck yourself,"


    "Myself was saying," and Mackie kicked the door. He kicked the door so hard it came clean off of its hinges, collected the owner of the voice on the way past, and collided with a horrible crunch with the door at the other side of the porch, "We''re needing a word with this Denny twat."


    He gave the porch inside door a matching kick, pancaking the owner of the voice between two doors in the house''s hallway. The insides of the place - what of it was visible from where Alice was standing - were utterly filthy, it visibly hadn''t been cleaned in years and there was a sea of trodden-in junk mail spewed all over the porch.


    "Denny," said Nick, striding in behind Mackie. "I''m still saying it''s sounding like an American imitation chip-shop." The door crunched beneath their feet.


    A veritable horde of the greaser types came boiling out of under the stairs brandishing a mixture of knives, a couple of swords, random blunt instruments, and two with guns - Mackie concentrated on that last, blowing the first one''s face off before hitting the second centre chest with a second shotgun blast half a heartbeat later, then Nick was crashing into the mob like a whirling dervish with the best part of four feet of semi-sharp steel.


    Val and Annie waded in behind the boys, Mackie''s shotgun and Annie''s revolver barking off near-continuous streams of gunfire with the only pauses being the two heartbeats it took either one of them to reload; Alice hesitantly followed them in as they stood at the bottom of the house''s stairs and utterly destroyed anything that attempted to charge them.


    The pile of doors bust apart just as Alice was walking over them - she caught a momentary glimpse of a cloud of wooden splinters before a snarling, fang-faced, psychotic-looking, six-foot-something greaser type had grabbed her by the throat and then Fiona was suddenly there out of absolutely nowhere with a long leaf-shaped knife in her hand - she slammed it into the centre of the vampire''s chest, and he went off like a firecracker in a sack of wet cement.


    "You alright?" she asked Alice.


    "I th-think so," Alice said.


    "Well that''ll be where they were coming up from, looks like this place is having a basement," said a very muddy Mackie, peering under the stairs.


    "Hold up, we''d better be checking the rest of the place," an even muddier Nick told him, heading for the stairs; he noticed Alice too was splattered in mud that used to be a vampire as he passed. "You alright?"


    "Yes, I will be," Alice told him, and he appeared to take it at face value, heading on up the stairs.


    Several crashes, bangs, a gunshot, and a couple of suddenly-cut-off screams later, he came trooping back down with even more mud on him and headed through to the living room; a moment later he came back through the kitchen nodding to himself.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    "Well if there''s anyone else in here they''re in this basement," he said.


    "Aye, let''s get on with it," Mackie agreed, and went stomping down the very steep jury-rigged-looking staircase that went down where there would more normally be a cupboard under the stairs.


    He started making to kick the door at the bottom in, then paused, visibly thinking very fast; he came stomping back up, went into the kitchen, bodily picked the (filthy, derelict-looking) washing machine up, ripped it out of the wall, and went and hurled it from still standing on the ground floor level down through the door at the bottom of the understair set of stairs with a cry of, "Knock knock, wankers!"


    It went crashing through the door before coming to halt with a massive crash and a flattened sort of a scream, and Mackie shrugged and went and had a peer through the door; the others followed him as he let out an impressed-sounding whistle and carried on, shotgun repeatedly barking.


    Inside was a much larger and much more open space than any of them had expected - it was visibly hand-dug and shored up with scrap timber and what looked to be old telegraph poles, but it was a good two storeys deep and had a footprint not all that much smaller than the house.


    There were also several dozen more of the vampires skulking around, one of whom appeared to have recently been pancaked by a washing machine and several of whom - most of whom Mackie had riddled with buckshot on the way in the door - had been holding firearms.


    "Oh damn that''s some fair old excavation," Annie shouted over the salvoes of gunfire.


    "Aye. GERONIMO!" Nick declared, and hurled himself off of the steps.


    "Och for fuck sake, he was just jumping right in," Mackie complained, and followed him. Mud and clothing abruptly containing nothing but mud went everywhere.


    "What the hell is going on here, I''m trying," a man in a stereotypical vicar outfit started, emerging from a side room as the splatter settled and the others came trooping down the stairs.


    "And you," Nick declared, running the unfortunate vicar-looking man down and pinning him to the ground with a Claymore through the stomach, "Will be this bastard with a name like an American imitation chip-shop then, won''t you."


    "Denny the Priest, I presume?" Annie clarified, sauntering over to join Nick while Mackie went and stuck his head into the side room. "Your mates have been bothering us, thought we''d pop over and tell you," but she cut off as Mackie started yelling furiously in Russian.


    There was a crash, and the furious young man came raging back out of the side room, half-carrying another young man who looked like he''d been hit by a bus, and Alice immediately recognised him as her coursemate Andy Macbride right about the same time the first aid training she''d received the previous year came back to her and she started moving.


    "The fuck is this," Mackie roared, reverting to English and very suddenly sounding very Russian indeed. "I''ve never seen a human being in a fucking dog cage before and that''s a fucking bite he''s bleeding from and what in the holy mother of fuck do you bastards think you''re doing!"


    "The bastard drank my damn blood," said Andy.


    "Nick," said Alice, arriving at Andy''s side. "Is there a first aid kit in your van?"


    "What? Oh, aye, that there is, Dad insists on it,"


    "Well someone get it right now." Alice told him. He caught her expression and instantly split it for the van.


    The vampire skewered to the floor started laughing and made to try to pull the sword out.


    "Oh you stupid bastard," he said as Fiona put her hand on the sword''s hilt and held it there, "You people are food. Fuck you, woman! I''ll bite your damn neck out for you,"


    "Vampires. Really vampires," Annie said, sounding a bit like she was the one who''d been beat half to death and shoved in a dog cage.


    "No shit Sherlock," the vampire skewered to the floor hooted. "What do I look like, the King of the Banana People?"


    "I''ve heard enough. Val - take the bastard''s head off. The dead should stay dead."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "You kent about that vampires stuff yourself," said Mackie Romanov the very moment the others were out of earshot, causing Fiona to turn round as she realised he''d followed her. They''d been almost silent for the entire ride back to the college digs - Andy had just been taken into Annie and Val''s room for them to finish patching him up, he''d taken quite a beating and had somewhat less blood in him than he should, and Fiona had immediately split from the group and headed for her room to clean her guns and change into something that wasn''t splattered with vampire sludge.


    Mackie Romanov was not by any means a small man: he stood over six foot six tall with a broad-shouldered barrel-chested frame to go with it. As a result of that and the way he usually stomped around most people - Fiona included - assumed at first glance he could not move quietly, but when he wanted to he could be very quiet indeed, and thus he''d successfully crept up behind her.


    Fiona was silent for several very tense moments, then finally nodded.


    "Aye, that I did," she said.


    "And you were guessing what ourselves were on about the moment Annie was starting talking about idiot hunting, weren''t you,"


    "¡­ Myself and a couple of friends were down at Gunnies when Nick was using that crowbar for a sword," Fiona admitted."We were seeing the entire thing."


    "Why the bloody hell were you no warning us then?" asked Mackie.


    "Aye and you''d absolutely have been believing myself then when I was saying ''well you''ve been fighting with a bunch of bloody vampires'' now, wouldnae you," Fiona said, her voice oozing sarcasm, and that gave him pause.


    "Okay, aye, I was no being fair," he said. "Christ. Vampires. What a fucking night¡­ Fiona, what are you yourself knowing about vampires?"


    "Well sunlight makes a vampire go up like a blowtorch but it''s no anything to do with ultraviolet light, they think people are food, that turning into dust thing you see in the penny dreadfuls is missing out the part that seventy percent of a human body is water and their clothes and the likes of shite in their pockets are certainly no collapsing along with them, and killing them is a matter of, taking their heads off good, burning good, putting something - anything, no just wood - clean through their heart good, bullets will knock them down but won''t keep them down unless you do something like blowing one''s head proper off or shoot them in the heart with so much bullet their heart basically goes away, at which point you''ve probably shot everything behind the vampire for a hundred feet too, and ignore any shite about silver. Given enough blood they''ll heal up good as new from anything that doesn''t mud them, you can hang one for weeks or bury it ''alive'' for a month and it''ll be just fine after. Oh, and they most certainly do have reflections and most certainly do show on cameras and the likes, forget all that shite the penny dreadfuls were telling you, the only particular giveaway is that they''re as warm as the corpses that they are. As far as being strong and fast goes, they''re about as strong and fast as an extremely fit person - something like an unaugmented squaddie or a street thug with cheap boosters. They''ve also got an excellent sense of smell, nearly as good as a bloodhound, and their eyes and ears are much more sensitive than a person - if you can be getting hold of flashbangs that''ll really be messing with a vampire. Did I mention they think people are food? That''s the most important part."


    "I think," Mackie said, "You should be telling the others all that," and that put a hesitant look on Fiona''s face.


    "Well I''m no sure about," she started, but he cut her off with a raised hand.


    "That was no a request," he said.


    "I am not," Fiona said, "Into being told what to do," and Mackie let out a short laugh.


    "Could''ve fooled me, I ken exactly what website you were getting the ''necklace'' off of, I ken you''re into that same maiden-protector shite as Nick and Annie, are you thinking I''m daft?" he asked.


    "... I find it rather hard to imagine Annabella Kelly playing meek and obedient for anyone or anything," Fiona said.


    "Well myself am no just finding it ''rather hard'' to be imagining Annie playing meek and obedient for anyone or anything, myself am finding it completely bloody impossible to imagine Annie playing meek and obedient for anyone or anything up to and including atom bombs, but on the other hand myself am kenning for a fact that herself''d have no objection to having a nice-looking lassie playing meek and obedient for her," Mackie said with a shrug.


    "What, she''s queer? I''d¡­ no been expecting to hear that,"


    "She''s had more girlfriends than me and Nick and both Nick''s brothers all put together," Mackie told her with a shrug. "So are you going to tell them what you were telling myself, or am I going to be frogmarching you in there and making you?"


    "I''m going, I''m going, and just so you know, dickhead, having been someone''s maiden doesn''t mean liking being jumped out at and ordered around at the drop of a hat by some great numpty of a half-Russian crofter I barely bloody know."


    Mackie shook his head. "Well in my defence it''s no like I''d ever had a reason to be discussing it with someone who''s actually into that shite from the end yourself''s interested in - it''s no my thing."


    "Shame, you''re no a bad-looking lad," Fiona said, and headed back to Annie and Val''s room leaving Mackie caught flatfooted by the less-than-subtle implication.


    "Och well," he finally said, shook it off, and followed her.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "So," said Nick Macbane, "What''ll we be doing?"


    The question was addressed to everyone currently in Annie and Val''s dorm room - which ran to Alice and Mackie, Andy, Fiona who had just finished repeating what she''d told Mackie, Annie and Val, and of course himself.


    Annie shook her head. "I''m thinking this is being a whole lot bigger than we are Nick, we should probably be having a word with the cops,"


    Val cut her off with a loud rude noise. "The pigs? The pigs? Come off it, that''s the worst idea I''ve heard in weeks,"


    "Aye," said Mackie, "Just picture how that conversation''d go," and he switched over to a remarkable approximation of a plummy English accent. "Hello, Sir Kelly? Constable Plod speaking, we''ve found your daughter and she would appear to have had an episode," and dropped back into his own accent, "Or if it wasnae one of the coppers you ken, it''d be something like, ''Craig Dunain? This is the cops, you''d probably better be checking how many of your nutters have done a bunk, we just found one wandering about in the street''."


    "Your average copper''s going to be thinking you''re off of your rocker if you''re on about vampires, I bloody know I''d have been looking at you like you were daft just this morning," Nick agreed. "And on top of that even if they didnae turn round and section you apparently Inverness - and probably everywhere else - is bloody heaving with vampires and they''re no exactly being all secretive about the whole being a bunch of bloody vampires thing and that makes me wonder if the fuzz are no intentionally turning a blind eye to this entire vampires thing."


    "Police corruption, right," Val said with a nod. "It''s not just common, it''s fucking normal,"


    "I wasnae finished," said Nick, "Now I''ve got nothing for or against that suspicion but until we know better I''m no thinking talking to any coppers about it is a plan."


    "Okay, aye, those are good points¡­ Shit, what the hell are we going to do?"


    "I don''t think we need to worry too much about sticking together when its light," said Alice.


    "Well you''ve already found out for certain that you''re no slouches at making the undead just plain old dead," said Andy.


    "What, are you suggesting we should be taking up vampire hunting for a hobby?" Alice asked.


    Andy gave her an odd look.


    "Alice," he said, "Those fucking things were going to drink me to death, I don''t just think it''d be a good idea to take up vampire hunting ''for a hobby'', I''m more or less completely certain it is the single most important thing any of us in this room are ever likely to do with ourselves, and aye, Annie, I do know exactly who your dad is."


    "He''s no wrong," said Fiona, who was sitting beside him.


    Annie looked at each of them in turn, starting with Andy and working her way round counterclockwise to finish with Fiona.


    "Okay," she said. "Aye. Well that''d be making the next question¡­ how?"


    "Shoot them then take their fucking heads off with a big knife while they''re laying around yelling a lot? It worked tonight," said Val, patting her kukri.


    "Well how are we going to be telling that we''re ventilating vampires and no those townies with the white face makeup?" Mackie asked.


    "Goths," said Val.


    "You what?"


    "Those ''townies with the white face makeup''. They''re goths."


    "Well they''re room temperature - the vampires, the vampires, no the goths! - so thermograph goggles or gunsights seem pretty obvious," Andy said. "Anyone know where to get that?"


    "Not a problem, my dad''s company makes those things for the military," Annie told him. "Andy, Alice, I''m no thinking you two are up for much fighting, you''re no exactly Mackie-strong."


    "Aye, those fuckers casually flattened me," Andy agreed. "What I can do is, you''ll be needing a headquarters to work out of for your vampire hunts, and I''m no thinking using your daily-runner vehicles is a good idea. My mum runs a pub down by the harbour and it''s where all the local hobbyists are drinking, you could be plotting another land war in our pub and everyone would be thinking it was part of a role-playing game. Not only that, we''ve got a back room we''re just using to store a few boxes of spare parts for the beer machines, we can easily convert that into an armoury - keep any firearms the cops ken you have separate from the ones that you''re using to riddle the undead with bullets - and there''s sheds and a wee bit of a yard out the back for vehicles."


    "I can drive," Alice said.


    "What''s the biggest vehicle you''ve been driving?" Nick asked her. "I''ve got a wee plan for, call it a bigger van."


    "A small car, the one my driving instructor used," Alice told him.


    "Okay, so I''ll be needing something with power steering and a synchronised gearbox then, aye," Nick said with a nod. "I''ll be off down to the scrappers to see what I can be digging up on the morrow, then - Dave Wade had a couple of smashed Albion Super Clyde tractor units in there last I kent and those are fitted with power steering and I should be able to piece together one working chassis out of the pair of them - the gearbox will be interesting, those things have crash boxes, but that''s besides the point."


    "Won''t that be costing a few quid?" Val asked.


    "Och, no, no, I do welding and cutting work on and off for Dave in exchange for parts off of the scrap heaps," Nick told her.


    "Other thing we''ll be needing is information," said Mackie, and everyone looked at Fiona.


    "Well," she said, "There is someone I could suggest."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "So what''s this ''Vrotch'' bloke''s story then and how do you ken him?" Nick asked as his van - into which the whole gang of them were crammed - rattled across the bridge over the River Ness on the road towards Muir of Ord.


    "I''ve kent him for a while," Fiona said. "I was in a maiden-protector relationship with a lady from the south called Catherine Noble, this was when I was seventeen, and let''s just say Vrotch took it on himself to make sure I wasn''t being coerced into that - short version, it happens far too bloody often - and after that he was just someone I kent. He found me the night Catherine was killed - that was how I knew about vampires - and very nearly brought me back from the dead, I had a hell of a lot less blood in me than I should''ve. Long story short there''s no an awful lot about the supernatural that Vrotch doesnae ken, and if there''s anyone who''ll be able to be identifying vampire nests?"


    "What kind of a name is ''Vrotch Vosk'' anyway?" asked Andy.


    "One someone very strange was making up for himself," said Fiona.


    "So what''s his story?" Nick pressed.


    "Well you can be asking him yourself, that''s where he''s biding," Fiona told him, pointing at the entrance to a run-down caravan park jammed in the quadrant of waste ground between South Kessock, the Caledonian Canal, and the tracks of the railway towards the west and the north. Nick grunted in surprise, and turned the van into the caravan park.


    There were a dozen battered residential caravans, many with rickety wooden lean-to porches, covered decks, and/or extensions, with twenty-odd assorted old cars and vans of every shape and size, everything from a rusted-out van up on blocks with its wheels missing to a giant battleship grey estate car sort of an affair over half the length of which was bonnet, in conditions ranging from beat-up to horribly mangled, parked between and around them along with two dozen dilapidated motorbikes, with the whole scene illuminated by strings of fairy lights along the caravans'' eaves, a fire burning in an old 40-gallon drum, and a single woebegone streetlight sitting at a drunken angle beside the gate - as for the gate it had very visibly been driven through at some point in time and had, instead of being repaired, been propped up out of the way on its gate posts and left.


    A group of people and muttley-dogs, all of them just as run-down and scruffy as their surroundings but looking utterly contented for all that, were clustered on deck chairs on and around one of the covered decks, drinking beer and passing joints and one of them playing a lively tune on an acoustic guitar - the guitar was, unlike everything else, beautifully kept and perfectly clean, its polish catching the light from the oil-drum brazier. They glanced up as the van entered the site, saw that it wasn''t the police, and went back to what they''d been doing, showing no further interest in the van as Fiona directed Nick towards the caravan right at the back, nearest to the canal and the railway.


    "That''s himself''s place," she said, and exited the van as soon as it was stopped with an air of some trepidation; she went and knocked at the door, adding, "Dinnae stand in front of the door," then stepped smartly back and to one side.


    There was a pause lasting about ten seconds during which the others had time to notice an oddity - unlike all the other caravans where you could see light through their curtains and the translucent panels of their doors, this one didn''t have any light at all showing through its windows - then there came a sound roughly like a stampeding elephant from inside the caravan, and the door exploded open on the receiving end of a careening tangle of gangly limbs and dreadlocks with a tenor-toned scream of, "SPULK A FURKING BLURT?!?"


    "Hello Vrotch," said Fiona, and the flailing of arms and legs abruptly ceased; now that he wasn''t whirling like a dervish it was possible to tell that the owner of limbs, hair, and scream was a very tall, almost comically skinny and knobbly-jointed, man clad in a raggy shirt and jeans with the knees out - his feet were bare - and his hair wasn''t dreadlocks after all, instead being this huge mass of impossibly curly frizzy black stuff, so much of it about all you could make out of his face was his nose and, somewhere between beard and moustache, his teeth.


    "Fiona," he said, in a much more normal and quite serious tone - he had one of those vaguely Midlands English accents that are pretty much impossible to put an actual location to. Several young women - some of whom it would be entirely fair to call girls, one of whom should probably be thought of as a little girl - appeared at the door behind Vrotch, mostly peering cautiously round the doorframe. "I thought it was entirely clear- hey," and his attention was abruptly distracted onto Annie, who he pointed at, "I know you, you were at Reg Bethnal''s funeral when you were little but you''re still recognisably the same person - hey," and he pointed at Mackie, "Same goes for you, and¡­ Bloke whose mum runs the Harbourmaster''s? What are you doing with, hang on, that''s a vampire bite?"


    "Reg Bethnal''s funeral? You were at Reg Bethnal''s funeral?" Annie asked.


    "Aye, I was thinking he was looking familiar from somewhere," said Nick.


    "Wait, you were there too?" Vrotch asked.


    "Aye," Nick said with a nod. "That I was - I was about half of the height and without the beard, and no wearing the bike jacket - it''s been nearly ten years."


    "Huh, weird¡­ Just out of interest what were you doing at Reg Bethnal''s funeral anyway?"


    "My dad''s Joe Kelly," Annie told him, and he snapped his fingers.


    "So of course he had his family at his partner''s funeral, gotcha, and you two are her mates so you were along for morale support, gotcha. So basically what''s with the vampire bite, bloke whose mum runs the Harbourmaster''s, and what in the name of Jesus and dead puppies are you doing hanging around with her?" and he pointed at Fiona.


    "Vrotch," Fiona started.


    "I wasn''t talking to you," Vrotch bluntly informed her. "You said some things that are very hard to unsay and did some things that only just didn''t become permanent and the only thing I''m interested in hearing out of your pie-hole is an apology and it''d better be a bloody spectacular one if you want it to stick. Bloke whose mum runs the Harbourmaster''s?"


    "Where do you seriously think I got a vampire bite?" Andy asked. "I nearly wound up a bloodsucker''s breakfast. And the name''s ''Andy'', not ''bloke whose mum runs the Harbourmaster''s''."


    "Give me a chance man, I''ve always been terrible at names. What''s happening."


    "Well we were finding Andy half-dead in the basement of a walking corpse calling himself ''Denny the Priest'' earlier this evening," said Annie. "We had a bit of a council of war just a few minutes ago, and basically it seems like nobody''s doing anything about this vampires business. So we decided to start, and she was saying you might be able to help us finding vampires."


    "Oh, right," Vrotch said. "Uh, look, something you should know about her," and he pointed at Fiona. "She''s involved in some really, really, really bad shit, she got mixed up in it deliberately, when I tried to warn her what she was getting involved in she said the sort of thing that doesn''t un-say very easily at all, there was a fight, some friends of mine got hurt, badly, and basically I guess what I''m saying is, like don''t take this personally but, so long as you''re friends with her," and again he pointed at Fiona, "I don''t want to have anything to do with you until she''s done some really exceptional un-saying. Sorry."


    He turned round and walked back into the caravan; one of the several girls, specifically the pretty blonde teenager-but-only-just whom Alice couldn''t help but notice had not blinked once throughout the entire conversation, stepped fully into the doorway.


    "You should leave," she said, and shut the door in their faces.


    "Well," said Fiona. "Fuck."


    "Okay," Annie said, "What the hell just happened?"


    "What happened," Fiona said, sounding like it was being dragged out of her, "Is that Vrotch turns out not to be anything like as forgiving as¡­ oh fuck sake, why does life have to be so bloody complicated? We''d better get out of here, I don''t think I''m going to be welcome in this corner of the world any time soon."


    "So I guess that''s that for getting himself to be telling us where to be finding any fucking vampires then," said Nick.


    "Aye, looks like it," Fiona said. "Fuck. Och, sorry I wasted your time."


    "What the hell did you do to him?" Val asked as they climbed back into the van.


    "That''s, well, that''s a very personal question but I guess I owe yourselves that much. Catherine Noble was¡­ she was everything to me, and I guess what I''m saying is I wanted revenge on the walking corpses that killed her, and particularly the one that was walking around wearing her face. Vrotch wasn''t going to help - he couldn''t fight his way out of a wet paper bag - so I, I may have found someone who would help, only that someone turned out to be one of Vrotch''s enemies, and when Vrotch tried to tell me I was making a mistake getting caught up with that one, and when all is said and done he wasn''t wrong, I said some, some pretty strong stuff, and, well, yeah, some punches got thrown and guns got brought into it, and, well, honestly that was my fault, and nobody got fatally shot but the operative there is ''fatally''. That was the year before last and this is the first time we''ve spoken since. I suppose he''s got a point - how the hell do you apologise for something like that? I won''t be having a chance of getting un-involved with herself any time soon."


    "Maybe we should head for our pub," said Andy. Fiona nodded, visibly grateful for the offer of a change of subject, and Nick fired the van - and as he turned it and drove back out the gates, Alice realised that the group round the guitar at one of the other caravans were putting guns away.


    "Well," said Annie Kelly, "Now that little expedition''s out of the way, new first things first until we¡­ hey Fiona, this ''enemy of'' that guy, would they maybe,"


    Fiona let out a dull laugh. "Not a chance, I''m afraid. Grandmother''s¡­ particular about who she will and will not associate with - your parents are both English, Nick''s parents are lowlanders, Mackie''s half-Russian,"


    "One-eighth." Mackie said.


    "What?"


    "Myself''s one-eighth Russian. My great-grandma was Russian, we''re no totally sure where Granda''s biological father was from but Nan reckoned he sounded like he was from Siberia and that''d be about all she''s ever been saying about that,"


    "That''s beside the point, you''re Russian enough to make no difference. Val, you''re part-Ghurka and part-English aren''t you? And last but not least Alice, you''re from London and anyone with ears can hear it. Not to put too fine a point on it, Grandmother would consider the whole lot of you enemies because of that."


    "Ah," said Nick. "One of them, aye," and Alice realised that nobody else in the vehicle was even surprised by what Fiona had just said.


    "So I guess we''re down to driving around with infra-red goggles looking for people wandering around being room-temperature," said Val. "Fuck, this isn''t going to be easy, is it."


    "What the hell ever is?" Andy asked, and Fiona let out a flat humourless bark of laughter.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The Harbourmaster''s, or to give it its full name The Harbourmaster''s Arms, turned out to be almost directly across the mouth of the river from Vrotch''s caravan park, in the old stone-built house between the bridge where the railway heading north crossed the river and the similar house on the corner of Shore Street and Innes Street. The doors were standing open to let in the warm summer night, and the strains of rock music could be heard from within; Andy headed straight in the door as soon as they''d piled out of the van, yelling, "Mum! Mum, that''s me back,"


    The place was swarming with an eclectic mixture of what would where Alice had come from be called geeks, goths, moshers, metalheads, rock kids, and for something completely different crusty old seamen; a wargame involving a lot of brightly-coloured toy soldiers was in progress on the pool table, there were at least three groups of roleplayers packed round booth tables, and there were a group round one table painting miniatures, while a line of weatherbeaten men with cob pipes and Merchant Navy hats occupied the bar stools - similar men were dotted round the pub in little groups, in one case making amused observations about the flow of the wargame at the pool table. The walls and ceiling were lined with an assortment of nautical memorabilia - old glass fishing floats, empty antique rum bottles, stuffed and mounted fish, paintings and photos of ships, a couple of brass ship''s bells, assorted cutlasses, another bizarre-looking flintlock pistol with the splayed barrels much like the one Alice had seen in Grace Mitchell''s living room - and a locked display case full of beautifully-painted model figures, forming the sort of contrast that you couldn''t help but smile at.


    "Andrew Malcolm Macbride!" the woman behind the bar - one of those very large (both in height and in girth) women with a voice that rattled the rafters, clad in a suitably-proportioned Edwardian-looking black dress and shawl - roared. "Where the hell have you - Andy, what''s happened, you look like you''ve been hit by a bus!"


    "We''d better talk about that somewhere quieter, Mum," Andy declared as he, followed by the others, arrived at the bar. "These are some friends of mine - saved my life in fact, we have stuff we really need to discuss and you really need to hear about."


    The woman, whom Alice was now mentally tagging ''Andy''s Mum'', frowned and turned to the line of old sailors.


    "Murdo," she said, adding another to Alice''s growing list of faces she though of as ''the Murdos''; she assigned him as Murdo Inverness, "Do us a favour and mind the bar - Andy, will you be wanting Dad to be hearing this?" and in response to that one of the old boys - a particularly weatherbeaten specimen even amongst the company at the bar, with an enormous hoary white beard and a sea-captain''s peaked hat - rose to his feet with a frown.


    "Grandpa, I hadn''t realised the Diamond was in port," Andy declared with a delighted smile, throwing his arms open to give the old boy a huge man-hug replete with lots of backslapping. "Ow ow ow, mind the shoulders, got bruises back there,"


    "Aye lad," the old man said, a similar smile beneath his beard, "We just put in only a few hours ago, I was straight over here as soon as we''d settled for the trip. So who''re these friends who were saving my favourite grandson''s life then?"


    "I''m your only grandson," Andy pointed out, in the tones of a conversation that''s been had many times before.


    "Well all that''s saying is it''s obvious who my favourite grandson''ll be," the old man said, quite unconcerned and making it very apparent that he''d just repeated his very favourite ''dad joke''. He turned to the others. "Evening lads and lasses, Captain Keith Thompson, the skipper of the Diamond, and this is my daughter, Mary Macbride - you already ken her lad. I gather that we''re owing yourselves a bit of a favour then,"


    "A pleasure," Annie said, exchanging handshakes with him. "I''m Annie Kelly. This is Val Adamson; Nick Macbane; Mackie Romanov; Fiona Macleod; and Alice Liddell."


    The Captain raised his eyebrows at that, while Andy''s mum stifled a bark of laughter.


    "Well now," said the Captain, "I must say I have to wonder if your parents liked Lewis Carrol too much, or had never heard of the man - whichever way they were no doing you any favours were they. Well, come on through to Mary''s back room, I understand that there''s an important conversation to be had."


    "Aye, you could say that," said Andy with a nod, directing the others through a door between the bar and the first seating booth. This led to a cramped roughly T-shaped passageway, with three doors (or doorways) off the head of the T - one dead ahead as you entered the bottom of the leg of the T, the other two of course off of the branches. The right-hand one led down a steep and strangely fittingly nautical-looking flight of steps to what was clearly the beer cellar, from the lay of the land it had the pub''s toilets above it while the other - to which Andy headed -  extended past a sharply-sloped set of steps going up then opened into a room behind the bar proper; this contained a mixture of, as Andy had said, a stack of cardboard boxes and what appeared to be spare (or retired) pub seating and tables, to which Andy''s mum showed everyone to sit.


    Once they were seated, Captain Thompson asked, "So what''s this about, then?"


    "Mum," Andy said, "You''ve been running a dockyard pub for twenty-seven years - Grandpa, you''ve worked at sea since before the second world war. Surely in that time you''ve seen some¡­ odd things," and his grandfather stilled and a shadow came over his eyes.


    "You could be saying that, Andy," he said, glancing at his daughter.


    "Andy¡­ what have you run into?" Andy''s mother asked.


    By way of an answer, Andy pulled his shirt collar to one side, revealing the bite mark - this Alice had, at Annie''s urgings, sprayed a pinkish substance - effectively a spray-on dressing - called ''syn-skin'' onto, leaving it looking almost like scars but too inflamed around it for that.


    Mary stifled a gasp and Captain Thompson drew in a hissing inbreath.


    "I''d no realised that the living dead had reached these shores," he said.


    "Dad, is that a¡­?"


    "Aye, Mary - what we''re looking at is a vampire bite," the Captain said. "I''ve had a very similar scar on my left shoulder since the autumn of 1944, a crewmate of mine was killed by a bloodsucker just after the end of the war in Europe - he managed to stagger back to the ship, told us what''d happened, but died the following day - he rose as a vampire himself, without any apparent memory of his life and speaking only the Polish, two days later and nearly killed four of us before the bosun stabbed the poor devil through the heart with a marlin spike... No, what most fail to realise is that the book that made Bram Stoker famous was based on a true story, told to the man himself by the poor soul who went down in the historic record as Renfield, if¡­ elaborated upon, as Stoker thought that he was listening to some creatively insane babbling."


    Fiona had been nodding along, and added, "Essentially from Stoker''s work you can disregard any religious imagery, the parts about gravedirt, and anything about returning to coffins,"


    "That and I suppose turning into foul mud when killed wasn''t dramatic enough for him," the Captain said. "So, vampires had Andy, then. How do yourselves come into it?"


    "The bunch of ticks who had him picked a fight with us," Val told him, causing him to snort at the ''ticks'' part, "And bit of more than they could chew in the process - my dad was a Ghurka and his mates made bloody sure I knew how to use his kukri after he was murdered, Annie''s some sort of wicked quick gunslinger, and Mackie and Nick and Fiona there are all boosted and Fiona''s nearly as fast a gun as Annie. We, uh, basically tortured where their hideout was out of one we managed to capture, paid them a visit planning on telling their boss to fuck himself, found out they weren''t of a mind to be told, and found Andy in the basement beat the shit out of and drank half to death."


    "And you?" the Captain asked Alice.


    "I was just bumbling along behind my friends," Alice said, abruptly realising that they were indeed her friends, "And getting my life saved by Fiona. I''m not exactly much of a fighter."


    "There''s no shame in that, lass," the Captain told her with a nod, and it was clear to all that he meant every word of it.


    "Anyway Annie was talking about intentionally going out trying to find vampires to, well, to mud - huh, that''s the first time I can think of using ''mud'' as a verb," Andy took up the flow. "And the first thing that crossed my mind is they''re going to need a home-base and the college digs aren''t suitable - oh, yeah, they''re all in the college, in fact Alice and Fiona are studying archaeology too - and I thought this," and he pointed at the floor, "Would be spot on."


    Everyone looked at Mary.


    "How many of your friends know about vampires?" she asked the Captain.


    "Everyone who was aboard Empire Bairn that night - you ken Malcolm Campbell and Billy Macleod, there''s another four men still alive though the bosun''s now biding on Mars. Four men from Fort William who had the bad luck to find a walking corpse in their cargo in ''43, and a Polish gentleman by the name of Pilecki and a dozen friends of his, who between them were helping us to get a little payback for what happened to poor Michael. I''d say there were fifteen men alive today who I ken are aware of this, though the youngest is in his seventies. That said, there''s not a sailor of more than a few years experience who wouldn''t believe it if you told him - many things happen at sea. Many things."


    "Like what?" Alice asked. "I know I wouldn''t believe it if,"


    "Lass," said the Captain, "You''re young - I''d warrant you''re not into your twenties yet, how old are you?"


    "Eighteen as of this April just past."


    "Aye," said the Captain with a nod. "Well by the time I was your age I''d been working at sea for four years aboard a ship haunted by a man who''d died during the building of her, there wasn''t a soul aboard who hadn''t seen our ghost within a week of first coming aboard her, and had already seen two sea-serpents and four ghost ships, nearly been eaten by a tree, and lost a shipmate to a vampire in Gdansk - I was six months older than you yourself the night that my ship was almost taken by the kraken. No, lass, there are very few things that I would not believe, and with time you''ll likely find that the same goes for a great many people of my sort of age."


    "You yourself kent about vampires and all," Fiona said, directly addressing Mary.


    "No, actually, I did not, but straight off of the top of my head I know for a fact six of my regulars are selkies and another starts lighting his fags by summoning a flame from his fingertip once he''s three sheets to the wind, I''ve seen four different kelpies in and around this end of the Firth, I used to ken an old lady from the northwest who I can tell you for absolute certain was a witch and a damned powerful one too, and I''ve seen wolf-men late in the evening up near to Mallaig a time or two. And just between you and me there comes a time when a body has to start wondering just what else that''s not supposed to happen does happen."


    "And vampires are no much of a stretch, aye," Fiona said with a nod.


    "How do you kill them?" Mary asked. "I keep a self-loading shotgun full of silver shillings under the bar, will that be doing the job?"


    "Guns only do it if you hit them with so much bullet their head falls off or their heart goes away, but on the other hand a shotgun blast to the nadgers will put a vampire flat on the floor long enough that it''s easy enough to be taking the bastard''s head off with a big knife while it''s still laying around and yelling a lot," Nick told her.


    "Stab through the heart, behead, suntan, or burn," Fiona said. "Any one of those will do the job, anything else will just keep it still for a while, you can hang a vampire by the neck for weeks and it''ll be on its feet and biting in a matter of minutes once you''re cutting it down. You can tell it''s a vampire because it looks human and no like a dead body either but it''s no got any body heat and is still walking about - Sea People are cold too but you''d bloody know one of those fish-lipped bastards at first glance, they really don''t look human for all that they''re arranged like us, and the varied other kinds of living dead all look dead - oh, by the way, the sort of zombie that''s dangerous just makes groaning and gurgling noises, if it looks dead and talks it''s a lich and they''re no any bother. Silver shillings instead of buckshot is no a bad idea at all - it''ll no do anything more to a vampire than the buck would but there''s a few things out there it''ll savage, straight off of the bat if you let a lich have it with that he''ll be needing his body rebuilt."


    "That''s it, I''m getting a thermographic security camera," said Mary with a shake of her head.


    "Aye, that''s no a bad idea, you''ll be wanting it fitted with a screen under the bar, aye?" said Annie.


    "That''d make sense, aye," Mary said with a nod. "Damn it, I didnae think I''d be shopping for security equipment again this soon,"


    "Darling daughter of absurdly rich owner of enormous high-tech manufacturing business with fingers in all of the pie?" Annie pointed out, indicating herself. "Don''t worry about it, I''ll be going up to Dad''s company depot over by the flying field tomorrow morning to chase up thermograph goggles, I''ll grab a closed-circuit thermo camera for you while I''m at it. Consider it a down payment on the use of your back room."


    -/- End: Chapter 2-/-


    Next - As chapter 3 begins, the gang''s chasing around with thermograph equipment leads to another just flat weird discovery - and Alice gets in way over her head...

 Chapter 3 part the first

    Chapter 3 - Space beyond Space.


    The following morning, Saturday 14th, an hour or two before she had any real desire to be awake on a weekend after having been up so late, Alice found herself once again enduring Annie''s pickup and this time wishing she hadn''t asked if she could accompany Annie up to the company depot over by the flying field.


    This proved to be one of the industrial units, albeit of a different design, it was a bigger building for a start, in the same row as the gun shop where they''d got Mackie a short shotgun a few days prior. The structure was two-height, with a low-laying set of offices along one side and a big warehouse section with a set of rolling doors you''d be able to back a truck through - there weren''t many signs of life, no vehicle movement, just a couple of guys visible in the offices at Annie''s father''s company''s building, sitting at desks with assorted security equipment and screens and a thing that looked like a halfway house between a suit of armour and a backhoe excavator; this thing got up when Annie and Alice were getting out of the pickup, and had opened the door by the time they''d walked over to it.


    "Miss Kelly," it said. "And friend, come on in, what''s up?


    "Morning Tony," Annie said. "This is Alice, don''t mind the never-met-a-walkertank-cyborg-before expression, she''s never met a walkertank cyborg before. Pick up your chin before you dunt it on the doorstep, Alice."


    "Sorry," Alice said, realising she''d been gawping in slack-jawed astonishment at the realisation that the pile of heavy machinery was in fact a person.


    "No big," the cyborg said, ushering them into the offices. His tread was heavy enough to shake the entire building. "Everyone does that the first time they meet someone like me, it''s just part and parcel of the lifestyle and anyway they call blokes like me ''walkertanks'' for a bloody good reason, a few double-takes and having to mind your footing is a small price to pay - and for that matter awing people is a hoot."


    "Anyway as far as what''s up goes, I find myself with a sudden unexpected need for thermograph equipment, there wouldn''t happen to be any in the warehouse would there?" Annie said.


    "Thermograph equipment? Well, I''d expect so, we ship them out often enough - hey Ed, what do we have in the way of thermograph equipment?"


    "Just got a load of that gear yesterday so we''ve got stock of goggles, closed-circuit TV gear, gunsights, and type-2 cybereye upgrades," one of the two not-a-massive-cyborg men in the office said, looking up from what he''d been doing - paperwork. "Oh, morning Miss Kelly,"


    "Morning gents, I need a dozen sets of thermograph goggles, enough equipment for a dual-camera closed-circuit installation, and call it four gunsights," Annie declared, causing Ed to rise to his feet with a nod.


    "Sure, just you explain to your dad why you''re walking out the door with a few thousand pounds worth of equipment this time," he said, and headed through to the main part of the warehouse, whistling tunelessly between his teeth. Tony shook the mass of sensor equipment and battleship plate he used for a head.


    "Wow, what crawled down his throat and died there," he said.


    "Eh, that''s mostly my fault, I nearly got Ed sacked a while back," Annie told him. "Dad was thinking ''very expensive pilfering'' until he noticed me with equipment he hadn''t known I had, that ''coincidentally'' matched stuff that''d ''gone missing'' from here - that was the year before you joined the company. Ed''s never let me live it down and when all is said and done I can''t really blame him."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Well," said Mary Macbride, "That''s not a small piece of machinery."


    The ''that'' in question, which Nick had just got off of a suitably impressive trailer attached to his van, ran to most of a three-axle Albion articulated lorry tractor unit. It had been involved in an overturn accident; the wrecked cab and damaged engine were, along with the gearbox, still in the scrappers, leaving a rolling chassis with fuel tanks but without engine, drivetrain, or bodywork of any sort.


    Sitting on top of it and held in place with ratchet straps were the cab from a very different lorry - an armoured Schammel military lorry - an engine taken from an agricultural tractor which had had again been ruined in an overturn accident, the gearbox out of a Thornycroft bus - this, unlike the original Albion crash box, would operate like a car''s gearbox - a load of random plate metal and angle iron, and some old van doors.


    "It''s going to be a bigger van," Nick told her with a shrug, eyeballing it. "The Albion''s a great van but it''s no ideal for the job at hand, for one thing it''s no armoured and we''re pretty much expecting to be shot at in whatever we end up using. That''s the cab off of one of the army''s armoured lorries they use for field logistics, it''s an older type, been gathering rust in the scrappers for years. I''ll be needing to get ballistic matting or spray foam - I''m thinking that Abotex stuff they use for armouring big cars for politicians and such, it''s nae all that cheap but I should be able to get hold of it - to sandwich between steel for the loadbed body, and I''ll be filling the tyres with that expanding insulation foam, but none of that''s a big deal."


    "Wouldn''t it be easier to just get an armoured car?" asked Andy. Nick laughed and shook his head.


    "Aye," he said, "It probably would, and cheaper too if I was paying money for it, but for one thing I got this for nowt and for another the cops keep a hell of a tight eye on those and it''s no exactly hard for the likes of you or I to get hold of information on who''s owning which armoured vehicle - unlike any of those this thing''ll be completely off of the book, no paper trail at all, and that''s the entire point of the exercise. Only way these vampires''ll be finding it is by physically following us, and we''ll no exactly be pulling in here while any old twat can see now, will we. Either way I''ll be a whole lot happier about having Alice sitting inside of fifteen ton of armour plate when we''re out and about, I''ve nae said anything, I''m nae good at phrasing that sort of stuff, but we made a bad call taking her into that bloody house last night - she wasnae joking when she was saying she''s nae much of a one for fighting, didnae really clock how bad she meant before that - and I ken the others are thinking along the same sort of lines."


    Andy nodded and glanced around the yard behind his mother''s pub. It was surrounded on two sides by buildings, on the third by a bridge abutment, and the fourth by an eight-foot-tall gate you couldn''t see through. The only way you''d get eyeballs on what was parked in there was from the air.


    "We''ll be needing to make sure nobody''s finding it with a drone," he said. "Tarps I''m thinking."


    "Aye, good call," Nick agreed. "We could tarp over the entire yard," and Captain Thompson nodded.


    "What''ll you be doing for weapons?" he asked. "I''ve a couple of old Sten guns on the ship you can be having the use of - you''ll no want to be getting caught with them though, they''re no legal."


    "That''ll be handy," said Nick with a nod. "We''ll see what else we can be turning up before saying one way or another, but I think we''ll be able to find a good use for those Stens - if you''re no minding having them in your back room," and he nodded to Mary.


    "That''ll no be a problem," she said, and batted her eyelashes. "Unregistered guns, whatever do you mean officer? Oh my, I knew I should get round to going through the rubbish the previous occupant left behind, and that''s if they''re actually turning up with a warrant out of the blue, if they turn up wanting a look around the way they always do I''ll make out that I think that they''re wanting to frame me for something to do with my late husband having died in a land war the way I always do and insist they come back with a letter from a judge, as usual, and by the time they''re getting one of those the guns''ll be parked up a forestry track with the still and the untaxed booze and dope in the back of that," and she pointed at a beat-up Bedford van that was in one of the sheds. "Again."


    The shattering roar of an unsilenced and overpowered engine announced the return of Annie and Alice; Andy went and opened the gate to let the wreck of a Holden in.


    "Got the gear?" Nick asked the moment Annie had piled out and killed the ute''s engine.


    "Aye, no problem," Annie declared, heading straight for the loadbed - she started hauling anonymous brown cardboard boxes out and rowing them up on the roof. "Mary, there''s your cameras, I got enough parts and screens to cover the yard and the porch at the same time - we might as well be seeing about getting those set up while Nick''s starting in on his wee welding project."


    "You want me to drive something that size," said Alice, giving the chassis a dubious look.


    "Och it''s no all that big and I''ll be fitting it to drive just like a car," said Nick, waving it off. "And don''t worry about the steering circle, I''ll set it up so she''ll all but turn on the spot - this thing''ll be ugly, perils of building it in a roaring hurry, but it''ll work. Anyway I''d better be getting up to the digs to be getting my tools."


    "Aye," said Annie with a nod. "See if you can be dragging Fiona and Val and Mackie down here while you''re at it, it''s high time those numpties were out of their beds."


    "Aye, aye," said Nick.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Needless to say the ''bigger van'' was not, in fact, ready in time for the inaugural attempt at a vampire hunt once the sun was down that evening - Nick had just got mounts sorted out for the new engine and gearbox.


    However, what was ready was three different sets of numberplates to fit his existing van he''d stolen out of the scrapyard while he was at it, and with one of those sets on the Albion and everyone geared up in combats (complete with Annie complaining bitterly about how much she hated trousers, she claimed that they ''crawled right up her arse'' which seemed a bit weird given she apparently liked the sort of knickers that vanish at the back) and ski masks, most of them with utility vests over the top with the pockets stuffed full of useful things like first-aid kits, ammunition, and a pocket full of big cable ties in case they had a reason to kidnap another vampire - Andy rode shotgun with a set of thermo goggles while Alice, drove - the entire assembly was rendered as close to anonymous as they could get with the passenger window being wound down and Andy craning his head out as he had quickly discovered that glass is opaque to thermographs, leading Nick to arrive at something else the Bigger Van was going to need; a way to see out of it with thermo without winding the window down and sticking your head out, and Annie immediately suggested another camera matching the ones at the pub.


    They all became very quiet when Andy identified the fifteenth vampire in as many minutes halfway through their slow drive through the town centre - then he spotted a group of them piling into a car, and as per Annie''s immediate instructions, Alice turned the van to follow.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Well," said a mud-encrusted Nick as he and the others climbed back into the van. "Well."


    "How bad?" Alice, who had stayed in the van with the engine running and a shotgun-toting Andy for company, asked. The others had just exited the building - a lonely farmhouse in the middle of nowhere halfway to Aviemore - and all were splattered in mud and looking rather subdued.


    "Well there''s five dead bodies in there, all dumped in a pit in the cellar with their heads off and half of them started to smell," Annie told her, ditching the Sten gun she''d been using. "And twenty-odd sets of muddy clothes that used to be vampires, and signs of I don''t know how many people dying in there. That place is a fucking charnel-house, I''ve half a mind to burn it."


    "Let''s set fire to that car and leave the house," said Mackie, pointing at the car they''d followed up. "With the door to the house standing open and no signs of life that ought to get attention onto the place - there''s a phone box just up the A9 there, we can phone in the fire from there, make sure it''s no missed."


    "Not a bad idea, aye. Let''s do it," Annie said, and they did.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The silence of the drive back down to the town was finally broken just as they were turning off of the A9 and heading into the town when out of the blue Andy - who was still wearing the thermograph goggles and craning his head out the window - jerked and said, "Jesus, that eejit''s taking his chances,"


    "You what mate," said Nick, who''d taken over driving duties.


    "That eejit who pegged it over the road just back there?"


    The others looked at each other. Nick said, "What eejit?" and Andy gave him a very odd look.


    "The one," he said, "You just nearly drove over?"


    "You''re seeing things," Alice, who was in the centre front seat, said.


    "There''s another one," Andy declared, pointing at nothing. "And another, and another, Jesus, where are these wankers coming from?"


    Alice picked up one of the spare sets of thermograph goggles, switched them on, scrambled half onto him to stick her head out too, had a look around, and said, "Okay, that''s weird."


    "What''s weird?" Annie asked. By way of an answer Alice passed her the goggles.


    She too spent a few moments peering critically out the open cab window, having to really crane her neck, at the strings of men and women visible only via thermograph who were coming out of the disused airbase to the north of the Longman Road and high-tailing it into the industrial estate, then started giving Nick directions.


    The old airbase was easily got onto - the gates were long gone and though the tarmac may have been raggedy and scattered with the occasional abandoned car the van was up to it - and they very quickly found themselves sitting in a van watching in infra-red as dozens of people invisible to visible-wavelength light poured out of the old control tower, from which a strange - and to Alice weirdly familiar - yellow glow could be seen.


    They sat there for some twenty minutes with no end in sight, then Nick started the van, turned it, and headed back towards the Harbourmaster''s without saying a word.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "That bad?" asked the Captain as Annie Kelly very heavily seated herself at the bar.


    "Aye," she said, "I figured it had to be pretty bad but, shit, I''d never thought it''d be anything like this. The whole town''s just heaving with ''em, we saw thirty-odd vampires just driving up from here out past the mart, then on the way back in we started seeing these people invisible to the naked eye, visible on thermal imaging, pouring out of the old airfield, dozens of ''em, too many to count - they''re coming out of the old control tower over there, they must''ve been packed like sardines in there."


    Alice glanced around, and noted that as per Andy''s claims none of the varied groups in the bar were taking any notice of what Annie was saying - admittedly the place had thinned out a good deal since they''d taken off, there were three remaining groups of gamers and half a dozen seamen - but still.


    Captain Thompson shook his head. "Well," he said, then repeated it. "Well."


    "Myself am starting to wonder if this is being a bit big for ourselves," said Mackie.


    "Only one way to find out," said Nick.


    "Let''s go and have a better look at that old control tower on the morrow," Annie said. "For now I''m thinking that we should be getting to our beds, it''s been a long bloody two days."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    By daylight, the old airbase was almost eerily deserted even by the standards of Inverness on a Sunday morning with no sign of the hordes of wraiths from the previous evening - you could easily hear the sounds of the town, church bells ringing, traffic on the suspension bridge over the Moray Firth, seagulls calls, the distant rattle of a diesel shunter over at the harbour, but from within the bounds of the airbase itself there wasn''t a whisper - there wasn''t a breath of wind that morning.


    Every building was still there though overgrown and tumbledown, the entire runway - tarmacced to boot - was still visible, it was like the RAF had simply packed up their tools and flown their planes out of there at the end of the war, leaving the airfield to the elements - over the top of that was at the south end a mess of shanties and over the rest of the site the results of half a century of fly-tipping: dozens of derelict cars in varying staged of decomposition, mounds of old tyres, deserted fridges and freezers, and as they arrived there they found a stack of rotting old pallets had been dumped that very morning beside the control tower.


    They pushed their goggles up and exchanged glances; Mackie racked his shotgun''s pump, and led the way into the control tower.


    "Well would you look at that," he said.


    "My God, what is that thing?" Annie, who''d been hard behind him, agreed - Alice stuck her head in and froze.


    There was an egg-shaped field of glow, there was no better term for it, the size of a small car hanging in the air a few inches above the detretius-covered floor of the control tower''s ground-level hallway, and the moment she got a look at it Alice knew exactly where that shade of yellow light was familiar from. She''d seen it at least twice during the half-awake half-dead time between the bomb blast and coming to in Grace''s living room.


    "Alice, are you okay?" Fiona''s voice penetrated the daze, and Alice by some monumental effort shook it off.


    "I''m okay," she said, "I''m okay, I just, I think¡­ that''s..."


    She stooped and collected a piece of detritus - a beer bottle - from the floor, and lobbed it into the field of glow.


    As she''d expected, it didn''t come out the other side.


    "Well now," said Fiona, "That''s very interesting."


    "Wait a moment," Nick said, and ducked back outside; the promised moment later he was back holding a plank freshly ripped off of one of the old pallets. He went and shoved the end of it into the yellow glow, shoved it further in until his hand was only a few inches from the glow, then pulled back - the plank came back out of whatever it was intact and not noticeably colder or anything.


    "I know what this is," Alice said. "I''ve seen it before, I''m sure of it... I can just about remember falling through one of these after the explosion, I think I know what''s the other side."


    "We''d better stick something like a camera, or a seagull on a rope or something, through before even thinking about having a look. Let''s face it, what happens if you''re wrong and Mars is the other end?" Mackie said, and after a moment Alice reluctantly nodded.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Well well well, would you look at that then," said Captain Keith Thompson, shaking his head and puffing on his pipe as he surveyed the glowing yellow portal thing. It was a few hours later but there was still plenty of daylight left, and the whole gang had come over armed to the teeth to get a better look at what Alice was convinced was a portal.


    "So what is it then?" Mackie asked him, and he laughed.


    "I haven''t an earlies lad, I''ve never seen anything like it before, nae even pictures. Well, let''s get that gull through it then," the Captain said.


    The seagull in question, captured by the use of a rudimentary snare and the part of Annie''s chip supper she didn''t want aboard the Captain''s ship, had been bundled up in a string bag then tied to a plank. It was glaring at everything around it in an impotent rage with its beady seagull eyes and intermittently going ''WARK WARK WARK'' at the top of its lungs.


    The plank also had a camera strapped to it, on the bottom underneath the gull - a cable was strung down the plank from the camera to Annie Kelly''s laptop, which she''d just finished setting up on the bonnet of her pickup.


    "Aye," Annie said. "I''m ready when you lot are."


    Mackie picked up the plank, complete with camera and enraged gull, and shoved the gull end through the portal, cutting the gull off mid-wark.


    He laid the plank down with the gull inside the portal, and the gang of them crowded round Annie''s laptop - the camera was showing what looked to be a very derelict shanty village, all made up of tumbledown tin shacks and abandoned cars and totally deserted. The angle wasn''t great; there wasn''t a lot could be seen.


    Mackie counted out a minute, then went and pulled the plank back through, once again catching the gull midway through a wark.


    "Well the gull doesnae look any more scunnered than it was when it went in there so myself am guessing it''s being safe enough through there - what''s the plan?" Mackie said, but Alice didn''t stick around to hear.


    Instead, ignoring Fiona''s cry of "No, don''t," she stuck her head through looking generally down then, on as she expected finding herself still looking at ground, stepped into the light.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Alice Lidell found herself in an impossible alien sky.


    The other side of the portal stood, similarly hanging in the air, at the centre of a patch of scrubland and shacks a few hundred yards across and surrounded by nothingness. The entire sky, all around in every direction - including, she found by wandering over to the edge of the patch of land and looking that way, down - was covered in floating islands, untold tens of thousands of them, far far too many to even begin to count, ranging in size from little patches much like the one upon which the portal stood to vast masses like flying continents. They were not oriented to any particular up, most of them were surrounded by odd fields of daylight, and in the far distance beyond them, so mind-blowingly vast it filled half the sky, was the biggest, most dazzling, most unspeakably spectacular, nebula Alice had ever even imagined in her entire life.


    "I knew it," she said.


    "Alice Lidell are you completely off your rocker what made you do anything even half that dangerous I''ve half a mind to wring your bloody neck for you!" and her reverie came to an abrupt end for the second time that day; she turned round, and was rather startled to find herself standing on a spur of ground a few inches wide and the apparent thickness of paper stretching out fifty odd feet from the edge of the patch of land, from the middle of which Fiona could be easily heard yelling.


    She was just about to freak out about the ephemeral ground she was apparently standing on when it obediently, seemingly in reaction to her lack of a desire to be standing on an earthen tightrope, widened, gained bulk, and generally transformed, in moments becoming a brick pier of sorts.


    "There she is, she''s no gone far - woah, there''s no any far to go," came a shout in Nick''s voice as he emerged from between the shacks, pointing in Alice''s direction. "Jesus, that pier doesn''t look very stable - Jesus Christ!" and his voice raised to a shout as the pier crumbled into nothingness as Alice stepped off of it.


    "That pier wasn''t there five minutes ago," Alice told him, heading back up towards the portal as Mackie and Val emerged from among the shacks - she found a visibly just as hopping mad as the seagull Fiona and an intrigued-looking Annie and Captain Thompson waiting for her


    "Damn," said Annie Kelly, surveying the sight. She repeated it several times, shaking her head the whole time. "What is this place?"


    "I''ve even less of a clue than I had about the ''portal''," said Captain Thompson. "Have to say that it''s a beautiful sight though."


    "Alice you idiot," Fiona declared. "We don''t know anything at all about this place and you just stepped right in!"


    "Oh shove it up your arse, for one thing we knew a seagull was still just as alive after coming out as it was before going in, we watched a grand total of nothing react to the seagull or the camera, it wasn''t hard to pull the seagull out, and I looked down when I stuck my head in to make sure the plank hadn''t been bridging a drop and watched my footing while I was at it," Alice told her. "I have had some sort of experience in highly technical subjects such as putting two and two together."


    "I''m thinking," said Mackie as they turned to troop back through the portal, "That we should be attempting to be seeing where all those mostly-invisible eejits are coming from."You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    "You what mate?" said Annie.


    "Those mostly-invisible eejits who''re coming out of here, we should be trying to be seeing where they''re coming from," Mackie repeated himself. "It''s obvious that they''re no all stacked in here now, isn''t it,"


    "Point, but how are we going to be sure we''re hiding properly?" Fiona asked. "It''s no like we''re sure they''re no just growing out of the fucking ground now, are we."


    "I''m thinking that''s what cameras are for," said Annie Kelly. "Tell you what I''ll go and be scrounging a couple of semi-autonomous drone cameras on the morrow, they''re about the size of a golf ball and they''re tan, they''re no hard to hide. We can just dump them in some out of the way places inside the portal there and be back for them Friday and then we''ll be seeing what they''re getting film of, won''t we."


    "Aye," said Mackie, "That''s sounding like no a bad plan."


    So that was exactly what they did.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Well," said Annie Kelly. "Well, well, well."


    On the Monday she''d taken off up to the Kelbeth warehouse and acquired the promised cameras, both the drones and extra thermal imaging hardware for the Bigger Van, which Nick was progressing on apace; it was now the evening of Tuesday 17th, two very quiet days post the discovery in the derelict control tower, and the gang of people who''d been through what Alice was still insistently calling a portal - minus Captain Thompson, he and his ship had left (fully-laden with 36,000 tons of asteroid iron) with the tide on the Monday, destination Gdansk in Poland - were clustered round her laptop in the back room at the Harbourmaster''s.


    As per Mackie''s expectation, the ''hordes of mostly-invisible eejits'' were indeed coming from somewhere and certainly not just popping out of the ground: maybe a quarter of an hour after the sun was down on the Inverness side of the portal (though it was still full daylight inside) a weirdly organic-shaped wooden flying ship with no visible method of propulsion or support had come up from below the patch of world on which the portal stood and began disgorging dozens of men and women of a dizzying range of ages and skin colours, not one of them with anything even vaguely memorable about them, all clad in the same faintly Edwardian manner Alice had come to realise passed for normal, all of whom queued up to troop through the portal and not one of whom even looked for any sort of spy let alone cameras.


    The ship returned eight times over the course of the night, and the last of the horde - easily three or four hundred in all though it was impossible to get a real count of them - entered the portal as on the other side the sky was beginning to lighten with the approach of dawn


    "Aye," said Fiona. "You have to wonder what the hell they''re up to."


    "Well how the hell would we go about finding out then?" Mackie asked her.


    "Now that," said Annie, "Is the million-pound question."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The archaeology students had a free period on Thursday afternoons, as a result of which Fiona and Andy were already sitting at the bar in the Harbourmaster''s when Annie and Val and the Loch Allen lads walked in to begin preparations for the evening''s scheduled vampire-hunting festivities - the engineering students got a free period on Thursday mornings, thus Nick''s cheerful greeting cry of "Good news all, the bigger van''s ready for a - hey, where''s Alice? I was wanting to give her a crack with it,"


    "I havnae seen her since the end of the last lecture - you seen her Andy?" Fiona asked.


    "Well yesterday she said she was finding somewhere quiet to sit for a while to get her head together after dealing with that eejit lecturer with the wee twat moustache, what''s-his-face," Andy started.


    "Murchison," said Fiona with a heavy sigh. "Miiii-i-ister Kevin bloody Murchison."


    "Aye, that ponce, and I''m guessing she''s off doing much the same today, Mr Belrose is a lovely bloke but his lectures are already heavy going," Andy concluded with an unconcerned shrug. "Don''t worry about it, she''ll be back in plenty of time before sundown."


    But she wasn''t. The sun crept below the horizon without a sign of the girl from another world at the pub, nor was she at the college campus itself, nor when they checked could they find hide nor hair of her at the digs.


    And that was when Fiona started to visibly panic.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    There was a grim silence in the back of the Bigger Van as Nick drove slowly back towards the Harbourmaster''s for the fifth time on the evening of Sunday 22nd of September - even beyond the tension from four days without finding hide nor hair of Alice Liddell, nobody really had the energy left to talk. They''d been going wild all week - it hadn''t taken much thought to figure out who had most likely taken Alice, Val and Andy had been going around in the Albion playing spotter while the others, Annie driving, dropped the hammer on each vampire hideout as they detected them.


    Thirty-seven vampire lairs later and they were still coming up empty-handed. Nick still hadn''t said anything about how convinced he was they were not going to find Alice alive, not at this point, though he was fairly sure the same thought had occurred to everyone else - in particular Fiona had earlier that evening said something flat and broken-sounding about getting revenge on the vampire wandering around wearing Alice''s face - but the search was one of those things one simply cannot give up, no matter how tired, no matter how long it''s been futile. So long as a slim chance existed that the girl from another world was still alive, they would keep looking.


    They were all very surprised to find someone waiting for them in the Harbourmaster''s, and none more so than Fiona, who took one look and said, "Vrotch!"


    The scraggly-haired oddball was sitting at the bar with a pint in one hand and a hand-rolled spliff in the other, looking entirely at home. The girl who had shut his caravan door in their faces during the abortive attempt to seek his help was sitting beside him, likewise holding a pint; there was an air of casual relaxation about both of them.


    "Like, hey, Fiona, Fiona''s mates - man, you all look bushed, what''s up?"


    "Vrotch, the hell are you doing here? You made it pretty clear," Fiona started, but Vrotch cut her off with a raised hand.


    "Your lot wrecked a vampire den called ''Smedley''s Place'' last night, well Jenny Devil was in there, I guess you never noticed her, she''s back at my digs looking like she''s been hit by a tram and with a lot less blood in her than there should be but it''s gonna be okay, right, so since now I''m even more pissed off at the vampires than I am at you this is me offering to help with this ''vampires'' thing and stuff despite, you know, things, right?"


    "You''ve got some bloody nerve mate," said Annie Kelly, who Nick could tell at a glance was more or less as exhausted as all the rest of them with the additional benefit of having gone from Zero to Bloody Furious the moment she saw Vrotch. "After the shite out of the you last time we saw you, coming swanning in here,"


    "Annie, no, calm down, I shot two of his friends and one of them had to have a heart transplant, he''s basically right to be that mad at me," Fiona interrupted her.


    "Oh shove it up your arse Fiona Macleod, I''m not in the mood for this shite," Annie declared. "Look you," and she wheeled to confront Vrotch, "One of our friends - Alice, remember her, pretty dark-haired lass in black? - has gone missing as of some time Thursday, at this point we''re basically assuming we''re going to find a dead body and hoping it''s no going to be walking around, and I do not need any shit out of you on top of it."


    "Have you tried scrying for her?" Vrotch asked.


    "You what mate," said Nick, while Annie buried her face in her hand and let out a strangulated angry noise that may or may not have been a half-stifled swear word.


    "Well it''d help if any of us bloody knew how to now, wouldn''t it," Fiona said.


    "Wow, Fiona, the stuff that woman actually taught you has holes you could drive a bus through, scrying is easy enough - okay so it''s also very possible to defend against, right, so if you''re actually trying to watch someone who knows their stuff it''s not very useful, but the rest of the time?" He shrugged, then turned back to Annie and Nick. "I can, like, see if I can find her. Think of it like a dog trying to smell someone, only with auras and you don''t have to chase around after them. Only thing is I gotta have access to something she owns, or even better some of her hair or toenail cuttings or something,"


    "You wouldn''t be getting many toenail cuttings, she''s got both legs cybernetic and about the same goes for her arms," Fiona said. "I''m her room-mate up at the college, hey Nick, chance of borrowing your van for a few minutes?"


    "Don''t tell me you''re taking this wanker," and Annie indicated Vrotch, "And his total bollocks actually seriously, what in the fuck."


    "Okay," said Mackie, "Myself am calling yourself''s bluff. Show us some magic."


    Vrotch raised a finger in a wait-one gesture, had a root around in his pocket, and came out with a biro, with which he started making strings of very closely-spaced little marks around the edge of a beermat, before once apparently satisfied with it throwing the beermat on the table; it proceeded to levitate in exactly the same manner as Nick''s bit of card had a couple of weeks prior.


    He smugly passed the biro completely under the floating mat, then stopped as he abruptly realised nobody looked impressed.


    "Give us a shot of your biro," Nick told him; Vrotch handed the pen over, and Nick repeated his performance with making a beermat go invisible, as ever making sure to write the ''T'' in the ''Can''t'' part of the Ogham ''You can''t see me'' hard enough to feel with his fingertip.


    He indicated the floating beermat with the blunt end of the biro and said, "Okay, so you know how to use some sort of form of a ban - so? I don''t recognise the exact sort of Writing you used there, it''s certainly not Ogham script, but that''s no magic - that''s just boundaries being boundaries, you can do stuff with boundaries of any sort from the edge of a beermat to a doorway or fence line or even I suppose the border of a country."


    With that, he again erased the T on the ''Can''t'', again causing the beermat to reappear, just like he had back home when he showed Alice what a ban is.


    "Wait, what did you just do there man? As you''ve seen I''m entirely familiar with boundary effect manipulation though I don''t recognise your encoding system offhand,"


    "Encoding system?" Nick asked. "It''s called the Ohham, it''s basically just a funny sort of an alphabet that''s convenient for going on edges. I wrote ''You can''t see me'' pressing extra hard when I got to the T in ''Can''t'' so I''d be able to feel it with my fingertip and then when I wanted it to appear again I scribbled the T out."


    "¡­ Huh," said Vrotch. "That''s - Ogham? As in what they used to use for inscriptions on rocks and stuff? That''s weird - how well does this work across language barriers, man?"


    "You have to be using different forms of it for the different languages," said Nick, fishing around in his pocket; he pulled out a battered ring-bound notepad and held it up. "I''ve nae got the Gaelic forms memorised the way I have the English, that and there''s a couple of other styles I''m pretty sure must be Pictish and something else I copied off of old stones round the place."


    Vrotch spent a long moment locked in thought.


    "Okay... listen, can I get a copy of the English and Gaelic keys? I assume someone very, very smart has basically created a sort of magical ''assembly language'' that maps onto written languages in very specific controlled ways - oh, do you know how that works, why a load of little marks make that," and he indicated the levitating beermat, "Happen?"


    He got a round of shrugs and Annie said, "Not a clue, so?"


    "Elf and Neil might have some idea," Nick said. "That''s my big sister and the elder of my little brothers - but getting answers out of those two is like getting milk out of a duck, Elf''s most likely to tell you off for asking silly questions she''s convinced everyone knows the answer to while Neil will just declare the fact you don''t know and he does proves you''re stupid."


    "Myself am knowing it''s working on basically anything myself has ever been seeing anyone trying it on, but myself am no thinking myself has ever worried about why," Mackie declared. "At a guess it''s always been seeming a bit like asking why the sea''s wet - that''s just what it does."


    "I take it this," and Vrotch again indicated the floating beermat, "Is a common piece of knowledge where you''re from?"


    "Aye, pretty much," Annie told him. "There aren''t that many folks who can write the Ogham from memory in any language the way Nick does, most of us need a reference sheet, but I''ve seen stuff in the Gaelic that''s basically meant to keep Viking raiders away from the loch - it must''ve been there a thousand years or more."


    "I don''t think there can be a single croft between Caithness and the Mull of Kintyre that doesn''t have something to help keeping wild haggii away from the house and barns," Nick said. "We''re deep in haggis country on Loch Allen, I don''t think there''s been longer than a week without a wild haggis going on the rampage in living memory."


    "It''s going back a sight further than just living memory," Mackie added. "The first ever haggis rampage was on the road westwards out of Duchally in 1810 when the factor of the Duke of Sutherland - a man by the name of Patrick Sellar - was being killed by a bull haggis,"


    "Mackie''s a bit of the local historian," said Nick


    "Okay," Vrotch said. "So basically how is pretty well known in your area, but not why, right?"


    "Pretty much, aye," said Annie.


    "Okay," Vrotch said yet again. "Well basically magical ''energy'', for want of a better word, is all around us, all the time - it flows into and through the Earth-Moon system from deep space, generally from the rough direction of the galactic core thus the seasonal variance in its flow, it''s got nothing to do with seasons and everything to do with the ''wake'', so to speak, from it flowing over the surface of the sun, it forms eddies and essentially pools round the surface of any solid matter. Edges and boundaries and the likes cause a spell-like ripple in the flow of magic - what we call the boundary effect - and by structuring the edge to sculpt the flow of magic then using an indentation shaped like this at the end of your line here you can force it to peel off and ''compile'', for want of a better word, into an active spell effect such as this levitation - at a guess what''s happening when you scribble the T out is you''re breaking the waveform up, letting the ''S'' in ''see'' start a new one, causing the completed spell to be ''see me'', and make no mistake man, that is a spell. Boundary effect manipulation is the single most basic possible form of spellcasting - and man, do me a favour and don''t go looking for more complex stuff."


    "Oh aye," said Nick, "And why''d that be?''


    "Because once you get to more complex forms of spellcasting, the easiest thing to do is set things on fire, and the easiest thing to do things to is your own brain," Fiona said, reminding everyone else that she was there.


    "There are hundreds of would-be mages die burning their own brains out every year," Vrotch said with a nod. "We''ve started working out how to tell when someone''s going to get that far and get them over the danger point, but it''s more miss than hit at the moment. It''s incredibly frustrating, we''re sure there''s got to be a reliable way to detect when it''s about to happen and intercede but these poor bastards just keep burning their own brains out before we can spot them."


    "Ah," said Nick, completely dismissing the idea of learning this stuff, spontaneous bonce combustion really not being his thing.


    "Yeah, pretty much man."


    "So how about showing ourselves an actual spell of the more complex form of spellcasting sort then?" Mackie asked. "Myself am still waiting to be seeing some actual magic."


    Vrotch nodded, and said something percussive in a weird alien-sounding language that gave one a feeling almost as if the entire world had been in a speeding car and the car had just run over a bump in the road, and he vanished with the only trace the smoke still rising from his spliff and the indentation of his backside in his seat.


    "So basically yeah," he said, his voice coming out of nowhere, "Magic. That was the spoken form of the spell you encoded onto that first beermat, powered by a human aura instead of a boundary effect ripple and compiled using my voice."


    Nick wordlessly handed his van''s keys to Fiona, who hastened out the door; Vrotch said something shorter and reappeared, and the old sailor who''d been sitting just along the bar carefully set his whisky down, nodded to Mary, and said, "That''ll be me for the night, Mary. Dinnae need to be getting any more pissed at this rate," and lumbered to his feet and trotted out.


    "You were saying you and some of your mates were working on figuring out how and why all that works," Annie finally broke the profound silence that had eclipsed their part of the bar. "How far through with it are you?"


    Vrotch shook his head. "Good question - ''how much is there left to know'', who''s going to be able to answer that about anything? We''re further along than anyone not us we know about - further along than say the Project Warlock lot for certain."


    "Warlock?" Annie asked.


    "Oh, you didn''t know about them? That''s the army''s wizards, they''re what started off with the people what did Gormhegast," Vrotch told her.


    "Gormhegast?" Andy asked "You mean Operation Gormhegast? What''s the atomic bombing of Germany got to do with magic?"


    Vrotch gave him a funny look and said, "Nah man, the world''s first atomic explosion was the Yanks'' Trinity test early in September 1946, like twenty-six months after Germany got turned into a really big colander - think about it, how would a Lancaster bomber survive dropping an atom bomb big enough to dig a hole half a mile across? Prop planes just don''t fly fast enough or high enough to get out of the area that would pretty much go away if you dropped an atom bomb that stupidhuge before it went off, and never mind fitting that much bomb into a Lancaster''s bomb-bay - atom bombs that big are like the size of a barn, man. One of ours has contacts, man. We''ve seen the Gormhegast apparatus - it''s just a really big spell capacitor, which does what it sounds like, you cast a spell into it then it holds it until you hit the release switch, anyway each bomber was fitted out with one of those that had a really, really, really huge disintegration spell pre-cast into it. Open the bomb-bay doors, push the button, and everything under the plane for half a mile around, bedrock included, absolutely anything solid, turns into extremely fine, like molecular fine, grey dust in the space of a heartbeat and man, that stuff burns like hell. Spread that over nearly two thousand bombers and you can kill an entire country in one night and lower the average global temperature by a couple of degrees for decades. That, man, is what Gormhegast was."


    "This ''scrying'' business isn''t going to mess with cybernetics, is it?" Annie checked. "Alice has as much of her meal and plastic as flesh and bone."


    "Nah," said Vrotch with a sigh, visibly having to stop himself adding ''man'', "That stuff you see in books or games or on the telly where ''technology'' takes shit-fits and breaks down if there''s ''magic'' around, ignore it, it''s a load of old bollocks - any technology that could not function in the presence of magic would not work anywhere in the universe because whatever magic actually is, and about that we''ve got several competing theories we still haven''t been able to rule out any of, where there is mass, even just as little mass as interstellar hydrogen, there is magic."


    "So what does ''scrying'' entail then, what can it be doing for us," Mackie said.


    "It''s a way of seeing things far away," Vrotch told him. "Now you''ll see a lot of people using all sorts of snazzy paraphanalia around scrying, like silver bowls and special brews and chants and shit, but in actual fact so long as you''ve got something to use to establish a connection to whoever you''re trying to scry on, what liquid and what it''s in and what you say over it really doesn''t matter - I''ve successfully scried on someone using a lavvie they''d left skidmarks in and my incantation was yelling ''I''m talking to God on the big white telephone'' into it, basically most of the pomp and ceremony and shit around magic is just there to make whoever''s doing the magic feel like they don''t have clinical micropenis."


    "So you''re saying we can use this to,"


    "To find your friend, yeah, basically that''s what scrying does. That and spying is what it''s for."


    Fiona chose that moment to come walking back in and Nick abruptly realised how long they''d spent sitting in silence staring at a freshly-reappeared hippy; she had a hairbrush half full of stuck-in hair in a polythene bag in her hand. This she dumped on the bar in front of Vrotch before handing Nick his van keys back; he distractedly shoved them in his pocket.


    "That''s the brush Alice has been using," Fiona said. "Any use?"


    "Was it bought new for her or?" Vrotch asked.


    "Y''know I don''t know, I''ve never used it if that''s what you''re asking,"


    "Aye, it''s just about brand new, I was buying it for her when we were through here getting her set up with everything she''d need for the college the end of last month," Annie said.


    "Choice," said Vrotch; he unbagged the brush, extracted a wad of hair, waved it around a bit, frowned, and said, "Uh, got a bowl of water or something anywhere?"


    "Aye, hang on, hang on," Mary said, finally demonstrating that she''d been paying attention the whole time; she had a root around under the bar, came out with a bowl of the sort one might serve salted peanuts in, filled it from the tap more normally used for swilling out glasses, and set it down on the bar in front of Vrotch.


    "Awesome, that''s perfect," Vrotch said. He dumped the wad of hair in it, passed his hand over the surface, waited for several seconds, and then said, "Okay, that''s weird," and fished the wad of hair out. "Um, can I get some new water?"


    "Aye, certainly," and Mary dumped it out, refilled it, and passed it back to him.


    He had a root around in his pockets, coming out with a roll of test tubes, each of which contained a bundle of hair; he dropped the contents of one of the tubes into the bowl, and passed his hand over it in the exact same manner.


    An image of the interior of the pub immediately appeared in the surface of the water, almost like you were looking in from above.


    "Okay, that''s really weird," said Vrotch, fishing the twist of hair out and popping it back in its test tube. "Another lot of fresh water please?" and the moment Mary had placed the refilled bowl in front of him a third time he collected the soggy bundle of Alice''s hair, dropped it into the bowl, passed his hand over it and¡­ nothing.


    "Huh." he said.


    "So much for your fucking scrying," Annie started.


    "No man, that should have found her anywhere in the universe, there is basically nowhere in the entire space-time continuum anything could hide from a scrying attempt, shit, if she was dead or vampired or something it would''ve shown us what was left of¡­ hey Fiona, where are you going?"


    "I''m betting she''s the other side of that portal," Fiona fired over her shoulder. "Come on, we''d better see about dragging her arse back through here so I can give her a piece of my bloody mind!"


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "I say again," said Vrotch. "Which portal?"


    Fiona stopped swearing and gave him a glare. They were now back in the old control tower for the first time since the previous Tuesday: of the glowing yellow portal that had stood in its centre the last time anyone there bar Vrotch had looked, there was no sign.


    "Well it was just short of ceiling height, about six to eight inches off of the floor, and wide enough that you couldn''t be stepping round it," said Nick. "Oh, and it was yellow. This bright yellow light, bright enough you could see it halfway across the old airfield when it was dark, not bright enough to see outside the building when it was light. You couldn''t see through it or make out a shape to it, and I think Val tripped over the edge of it at one point didn''t you Val?"


    "Yeah, I found the bottom edge," Val confirmed.


    "Yellow, huh?" Vrotch mused, fishing a pair of rose-tinted sunglasses out of his pocket; he put them on and had a look around. "Actually yeah, there''s plenty of trace resonance here but I really don''t recognise what mode the portal was operating in. Yellow and a new mode, that''s interesting, I''ve seen purple portals and blue portals and snot green portals and one portal that was sorta sky-blue pink, but never a yellow portal... Huh. Actually this is really very very interesting¡­ say, do you cats mind if I bring in some, uh, outside expertise?"


    Nick and Annie and Mackie glanced at each other, then Nick said, "Like what?"


    "I thought I''d see if Fat Bloke and McBangBang could help, Fat Bloke actually knows how to open portals directly between one place in Midgard and another, and the only one out of the nine worlds McBangBang hasn''t actually visited is Muspelheim. You''re going to need expert advice here and man, those dudes are the experts."


    "Do it," said Annie Kelly.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    On Monday afternoon not long after classes let out, they met up at the scene of the missing portal, finding Vrotch''s car - a crappy old Vauxhall that looked like it''d been crashed more than once - and a very clean Jag, both parked outside the old control tower. Nick parked the Bigger Van - which he was using because the Albion''s starter motor had crapped itself that morning - between the pair of cars and Annie''s pickup - in which she had just drawn up - and they all piled out.


    Inside, they found Vrotch and two other men - one of whom absolutely positively had to be Fat Bloke, he had a gut to him and would''ve been perfectly at home at any hard rock gig anywhere, ever, while the other was a tall, ramrod-straight-backed and powerfully-built, dark-haired man clad in the splendid uniform of a Commander in the Royal Navy who, to Nick Macbane''s educated eye, looked familiar from somewhere.


    The man who had to be Fat Bloke was, as they walked in the doorway, saying in a distinctly Londonian accent, "¡­ yeah, no, it''s absolutely gotta be unspace."


    "Okay so the devil is unspace?" the Navy officer asked in Default Officer English. "Can''t say I''m familiar with the term,"


    "Basically you know the deep wot darkness was on the face of? It''s that," said Fat Bloke. "Fraid that''s about all I know about it though, my info''s third-hand from a dude who disappeared unscryably a while back and I haven''t been able to summon his ghost either."


    "You what mate?" Annie asked.


    "Ah, there you are," Vrotch said. "Dudes and dudettes, these two are Fat Bloke," and he pointed at the fat bloke, "And McBangBang, who turns out to be a G.I.R.L and not a girl,"


    "You what mate," Annie repeated herself.


    "Guy In Real Life, I use a female avatar online," McBangBang said with a shrug. "And these clowns took that to mean I was female."


    "Shove it you knobber. Dudes, these dudes are Nick, Annie, Val, Mackie, Fiona, and Andy," said Vrotch.


    "I thought you said you were bad at names?" Val asked.


    "Yeah well that was before I was taking any notice. Anyway their mate Alice is somewhere not inside the universe, I mean not any of the nine worlds, right, and that probably means this portal has something to do with it, right?"


    "Yeah, unspace would fit," Fat Bloke said.


    "Unspace? Wasn''t Brigid on about Grace Mitchell there having said something about that?" said Mackie, and Nick snapped his fingers as he realised what Mackie meant.


    "Aye, that she did - oh, what was it, she was saying Grace was saying Alice had to have been somewhere Grace was calling ''unspace''," he said.


    "Grace Mitchell," said Fat Bloke, "Who in the fuck is Grace Mitchell?"


    "Grace Mitchell? A Kylestrome resident, in that house that looks like it''s been continuously half-rebuilt for the last several millennia, directly beside the standing stones just along the road along the north shore of the loch?" the Navy officer asked, and Nick realised where he was familiar from, he''d been in civvies in the Unapool pub the previous New Year.


    "Aye, that''s the one, why, do you ken her?" Mackie asked.


    "Well yes, everyone who''s spent more than a week at RNAS Kylestrome knows precisely whom Grace Mitchell might be. Remarkable woman. Bloody irritating, but a remarkable woman regardless," and that definitely confirmed him knowing Grace to Nick''s mind.


    "And you are?" Mackie asked.


    "Commander Michael Compton, Fleet Space Arm - though if you''ve been speaking to this reprobate," and he indicated Vrotch, "You''ll most likely know me by my net name: McBangBang, at your service. If you want my credentials, I''m in charge of Fleet Space Arm information security, effective speaking it''s my job to make sure nobody hacks a warship and if I were ever to make an absolute bloody dogs breakfast of it thus allowing anyone bar the Hamster to do so, to make sure it''d never happen again."


    "Who the hell," asked Andy, "Is the Hamster?"


    "The Munching Hamster, man," said Vrotch. "Basically the finest mind alive today, the Hamster''s the fucking goddess of the Net, man. I''m absolutely certain she''s a she for all sorts of reasons, I''m almost certain she''s at least half ethnic Nihonjin, just for starters she uses ''we'' when she''s talking about Nihonjin, I know she speaks flawless Nihongo, she''s full of enough Nihon separatism she''ll most likely be ''killed resisting arrest'' if the TLA ever work out who she is, I''m about fifty percent sure she''s from Tokyo because of the number of times she''s offhandedly referenced stuff that turns out to be in Tokyo, and I think she''s probably a cop''s teenage kid - thus my sneaking suspicion she''s half-white - because she still makes references to once she''s into her twenties and she knows way more about Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department internal politics than anyone that young who isn''t either a Tokyo copper or related to a Tokyo copper is realistically going to and I don''t think TMPD hire a lot of Nihonjin or teenagers, but beyond the bits I''ve managed to piece together from knowing her for the last three years? Nobody knows who the Hamster is apart from the Hamster, man."


    "So what''s the prognosis?" Annie asked, indicating where the portal used to be.


    "I''m about seventy percent certain it''s got to be - have been - a portal into unspace," said Fat Bloke.


    "Unspace?" Annie asked. "What in the fuck is unspace?"


    "You know that whole, ''In the beginning, all was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep,'' thing? It''s that," said Fat Bloke.


    "You what mate?"


    "The deep, the one darkness was on the face of? Unspace is the deep, it''s the void that was without form, the potential for creation to occur. Basically it''s where the universe came from when the big bang went bang - it''s what''s outside the universe, surrounding it and underpinning it. That''s what unspace is. In a very real sense, it is what came before the nine worlds, and continues to exist outside them. The important part, the part that''s where that portal almost certainly came from, is that anyone and anything with enough will can - as long as they can somehow reach unspace - act as a tiny Creator and cause a miniature Creation to occur. It''s where a lot of extremely powerful magic users, anyone who can do magic and has the force of will necessary and gets sick of the ant-farm power-game that''s going on out here instead of being barmy enough to enjoy it, end up going, they basically find a nice quiet corner of unspace where nobody''s going to bother them and pull the portal in behind themselves."


    "Okay," said Nick, filing aside the repeated references to ''nine worlds'' to be contemplated over beer later on. "So how do we get there?"


    "Now that," Fat Bloke told him, "Is the thousand million pound question, ain''t it? I don''t know, but you''re bloody right we intend to find out."


    "I propose," said McBangBang, "That we three, and you, young lady," and he nodded his head to Fiona, "Should probably put our heads together and see what shakes loose. Now, we shall require paper, pencils, Sane Dave''s laptop, and a substantial quantity of Earl Grey."


    "You sure about involving her?" Vrotch asked, pointing at Fiona. "We both know who she''s,"


    "Actually working for, quite, why exactly do you think I desire her input? Oh for Pete''s sake Dave, whatever one may think of Isobel Mackenzie as a person one has to admit that the woman teaches her tools exceedingly well."


    The name ''Isobel Mackenzie'' was familiar from somewhere too, though Nick couldn''t put his finger on where, and as to why Vrotch wasn''t arguing about Fiona''s level of knowledge less than twenty-four hours after making sarcastic remarks about her not knowing how to ''scry'', that was another question.


    "I just don''t like the idea of her - Mackenzie, not Fiona - learning to access this ''unspace''."


    "That ship," said Fat Bloke, "Sailed before anyone in this room was born."


    "Can''t be," Vrotch said, giving him a funny look. "I know what that woman''s like, if she had access to that sort of power,"


    Fat Bloke let out a bark of laughter.


    "Well she packed in investigating it right sharp when it turned out she is not one of the about two thousand people alive today actually strong-willed enough to enforce their desires on unspace. That sort of capacity for willpower ain''t exactly everyday stuff, right, and deep down inside, just like every other bully ever, Isobel Mackenzie is and always will be a massive coward."


    "Ouch," said Mackie.


    Nick Macbane reserved comment, instead remembering the pier that he''d seen crumble into nothingness as Alice stepped off of it, and more to the point her distracted statement that it hadn''t been there five minutes earlier.


    He had the strangest feeling that Fat Bloke''s ''about two thousand'' had gone up by one when Alice Liddell walked into their lives and he knew for dead certain that until they knew exactly what was going on with Fiona, and with Vrotch, and with Fat Bloke and McBangBang, and more to the point which if any of the four they could actually trust with that sort of thing given how very big a deal all four seemed to think this ''unspace'' business was, the only person not born in Inverallen with any need to know whatsoever was called Annabella Kelly - particularly as he now fully believed that the girl from another world was still alive.

 Chapter 3 part the second

    "The name ''Isobel Mackenzie''," said Nick Macbane, "Is familiar from somewhere, I''ve been racking my brains but I can''t think where... I was no wanting to be saying anything in front of Fiona, mind, I mean I''m no sure I like this Vrotch bloke''s attitude there but everything they''ve been intimating, Fiona included, is making it sound like whoever this Isobel Mackenzie is she''s no good news at all,"


    The girls having gone together back to the pub in Annie''s ute, he and Mackie and Andy were riding over in his van.


    "Aye, it does ring a bell doesnae it," Andy agreed with a frown, "Though I''m buggered if I ken where from - I mean I ken three Isobels and more Mackenzies than I''ve had hot dinners but no any Isobel Mackenzies, but the name''s still familiar from somewhere."


    "Are you thinking a politician or someone who was being in the news a while ago?" Mackie asked. "Because it''s sounding familiar to myself and all."


    "Good, it''s no just myself then," Nick said with a nod. "I''m thinking we''re wanting to keep it under our shirts so far as Fiona''s concerned, but we should be asking about, folks like your grandpa the next time he''s in port, Andy, and maybe the other old boys who''re regulars at your mum''s place?"


    "Myself''ll be asking Mum the next time we''re back in the village, and myself am thinking yourself should be asking your parents too Nick," Mackie said.


    "Aye, that''s no a bad idea at all," Nick agreed. "We''ll see."


    "So are we planning on having a go after any vampires the night then?" Andy changed the subject.


    "Fuck no, I don''t know about yourself but I''m sorely in need of a bit of a break," said Nick. "The last week''s been utterly bloody exhausting, Annie was saying something about getting caught up on sleep before one of us gets too tired and makes some sort of horrible mistake."


    He was quite unaware of exactly who - or perhaps that should be what - was watching them as he pulled the Bigger Van back into the yard behind the Harbourmaster''s.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    When the group of students arrived at the Harbourmaster''s the following evening - Tuesday the twenty-fourth - they found Vrotch, Fat Bloke, and McBangBang all clustered round a table utterly covered in papers in one of the corner booths and arguing in low voices, and a rather bored-looking Vicky nursing a pint at the bar.


    "Getting anywhere?" Annie asked, arriving beside the booth occupied by the trio of alleged wizards.


    "To certain decimal places of somewhere, yes," said McBangBang, who was wearing civvies this time but maintained the Proper Officer English, "At this moment in time we have three proposed methodologies, though quite how useful any of the three will prove¡­ Ah, Fiona, perhaps it would be best if you were to take a look at our numbers."


    "Aye, will do," Fiona said, seating herself beside Fat Bloke; Vrotch handed her a sheaf of papers and she started quickly reading over them. She immediately grew a frown. "Sacrifice-driven? Isn''t that a bit rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul?"


    "Nope," said Fat Bloke. "See sacrifice is all to do with life force, right, and what determines that isn''t brain-power, it''s body mass. So basically there''s nothing you can do with one of those skinny teenage girls every idiot seems to jump straight for whenever someone says ''life sacrifice'' that you can''t do ten times better with a cow." He caught the expression this had put on Fiona''s face. "I shit ye not and the whole ''virgins'' thing has nothing to do with magic and everything to do with small penises."


    "¡­ Huh," said Fiona, and Nick was about to ask why she had an expression like she''d just been hit in the face with a lump of week-old bait when there was a crash and the pub porch burst into flames, immediately followed by several somebodies opening up on the front of the building with what sounded like rimfire Sten guns, the sort that was license-exempt throughout most of the British Empire and thus was everywhere - the sole window went in and people started screaming - a girl came running into the bar with her clothes on fire, only for Fat Bloke to go hurtling across the room like an eighteen-stone human cruise missile, knock the burning girl flat, and bodily roll her over - she came back upright in a daze but no longer on fire as her overweight saviour produced an obnoxiously long-barreled revolver and started returning fire through the burning doorway, his shots sounding more like an old rifle.


    The cool, deadpan calm, clear, commanding voice of Commander Michael Compton, Royal Navy, cut through the chaos.


    "Sane Dave, get that fire suppressed - Fat Bloke, you''re on bullet-denial duty. Fiona, Vicky, ensure the rear entrance is clear to begin an orderly evacuation. Macbane, Romanov, Kelly, you''re with me. Arm yourselves and let''s give these buggers a good seeing-to,"


    He was not, however, one of the exactly four people alive from whom Mackie Romanov would take an order: the pool table went clean through the solitary small window from bar to street, bodily hurled by a bloody furious part-Russian from Sutherland who happened to have been born with the strength of a monster, taking a good-sized portion of wall along with it, and Mackie went roaring like a maniac out of the newly-formed aperture, his trench gun booming - Nick was hard behind his lifelong best friend the whole way.


    Behind them Annie Kelly waited exactly long enough to ask "Do we look like we''re fucking Naval ratings?" before following the lads with her seldom-seen machine pistol in hand and its stock extended.


    The bunch waiting in the street for them Nick instantly pegged as vampires, they were wearing gang colours matching the lot from one of the places they''d busted up the previous Saturday and had the look of pumped-up arrogance down pat. They also looked somewhat taken aback by the pool table as it impacted one of their vehicles - a beat-up Sunbeam two-seater with a visibly drilled lock - with enough force to flip the car over and reduce the pool table, which perhaps fortunately hadn''t had any wargames in progress atop it yet, to fragments.


    As the Inverallen lads came storming out of the hole utterly disregarding the fact that they were still being shot at Mackie made certain neither of the attackers other vehicles - a Bedford van that''d seen better days and a Holden ute that managed to be even more dead than Annie''s motor, both of which had skidded to a halt when the Sunbeam blocked the road in the process of being turned over by a flying pool table - were going anywhere via the simple expedient of applying shotgun blasts to their front offside tyres, with rounds #3 and #4 going through the windscreens, then Annie started raking bullets along the side of the Bedford and across onto the Holden.


    Arriving alongside the flipped Sunbeam, Nick made sure the pair of vampires still in its seats weren''t going anywhere, pulled the now muddy-bladed Claymore back, and went for the Bedford. Fire erupted from the loadbed of the Holden - Annie had caught one of the vampires in the back of the thing right in the crotch as he was winding up to bung another petrol bomb, and he''d dropped it; he went up like a dod of petrol slung on a bonfire right along with his mates.


    The boys arrived at the Bedford more or less together - Mackie took the driver''s head the rest of the way off with a shotgun blast with the gun muzzle jammed against the bastard''s Adams apple, mud everywhere, then tore the side door clean out of its fixings revealing half a dozen expressions of frozen fang-faced terror on half a dozen frozen fang-faced ticks.


    (He hurled the door at the Holden, embedding it in windscreen, driver, and front-seat passenger, but Nick didn''t register that until later.)


    Nick waded into the van, carved the first tick in half from crotch to chin - the poor bastard had the grave misfortune not to mud from this treatment - and took two heads off before the remaining three vampires had time to react. Mackie''s shotgun - shatteringly loud in the confines of the back of the van - removed the next one''s head from the face of the Earth, Nick got the Claymore free from where he''d embedded it in the side of the van in time to carve the top half of the second-to-last one''s head off, and another deafening gunshot wiped the final one away - whereupon, save for the crackle and pop of cooking-off bullets from the burning Holden and the swearing from the direction of the pub as Vrotch did a passable job of getting that fire suppressed, everything went kinda quiet.


    "Shit the bed," said Nick, looking down at the bisected vampire in all the mud on the van''s floor. "I guess I must''ve missed this wanker''s heart."


    "Aye, that you must," Mackie agreed. "Will we be putting it out of its misery?"


    "Nah," Nick said. "Let''s drain a deer into it and ask it a few questions, then maybe if we''re no liking the answers we''ll be giving the fucker a wee suntan."


    "Oh Lord that''s grotesque," Annie cheerfully declared, arriving beside the van. "Look at that, there''s one bollock attached to each half of him, right up the nadger line there Nick,"


    "That poor bastard''s double Hitler," said Mackie.


    "Shut it you great teuchter, let''s get this split-scroted wanker indoors and nailed to the floor so it doesn''t get any," Nick started, then noticed there was blood all over and coming out of Mackie''s right arm and changed track mid-sentence, "Jesus Christ Mackie, you''ve been shot!"


    Mackie blinked, looked down at himself, and said, in a tone of faint surprise, "I have? Oh aye, that I have - I was no noticing it until you were saying."


    He started critically examining his new bullet hole, and added, "It''s no too deep, it must''ve just skimmed my arm when ourselves were coming out of the pub, but it''s bleeding like fuckery, myself had probably better be getting up to the hospital. You be dealing with that," he instructed, pointing at the vampire. "Annie, chances of a lift?"


    "Aye, come on you great eejit, get in the ute," Annie declared, half towing him towards where her ute was parked. Nick rolled his eyes and picked the semi-bisected vampire up by the scruff of the neck, and headed for where the Bigger Van was parked.


    "And where are you going?" an irate-looking McBangBang asked, emerging from the no longer burning pub.


    "Taking this wanker somewhere that''s no about to be heaving with the police along with the Bigger Van of course you absolute wassock, we''re in the harbour, no the no-go," Nick told him with a sigh. "I''d prefer nae to have to rebuild that bloody thing, armoured cabs are no so easy to be getting hold of, and the cops''d impound it soon as look at it if it was still sitting here when they were getting down."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    When Annie and Mackie got back down from the hospital, Mackie''s bullet wound now neatly bandaged and no longer pissing blood post the application of some high-tech medical equipment, they found the police had arrived in the interim.


    There were about a dozen cops standing around, most of them toting automatic rifles and most of whom Annie immediately recognised - there were half a dozen police Saracen armoured carriers parked three each side of the scene of the shoot-out and entirely blocking the street from both sides, and of Nick Macbane there was no sign.


    Annie parked her ute under the bridge, baled out, and went sauntering over to the police line with Mackie trailing along behind her; one of the cops started moving to intercept then recognised her.


    "No entry ma''am, I''m sorry but- oh for God''s sake, Miss Kelly, and your friend''s got what looks very like a gunshot injury, don''t tell me we''ll be taking statements from you," he said with a sigh.


    "Evening Constable Hiller, and your ballistics boys will find my machine pistol matches the Parabellum bullets that''re in those vehicles so there''s no sense beating about the bush," she said.


    "How''d I know it¡­ Listen, any idea what the hell happened to the perps? There''s an awful lot of muddy shot-up clothing but," the cop asked, ushuring them in through between the trio of armoured carriers at that end of the scene.


    "Is Constable Joy around? It''s the same thing as that little uproar outside Gunnies a few weeks ago," Annie told him.


    "Crud," the copper said. "I''d heard about that - do you think this was more of the same crowd?"


    "Aye, it''s got to be - they petrol-bombed the front door so Mackie here hied the pool table through the nearest window," Annie said.


    "I take it you''re boosted?" the cop asked Mackie.


    "Well he is technically my bodyguard," Annie said with a shrug.


    "Ah, say no more."


    "Any rate the pool table found that Sunbeam and turned it over, and we hied ourselves out after it - that must''ve been when Mackie walked into a bullet - the ones in the Sunbeam weren''t going anywhere so Mackie made sure the other vehicles were staying around, blew their front wheels out with his trench gun, and I gave them a spraying from my machine pistol. Then the lads made sure they weren''t going to be a threat any more, basically you saw what happened when they were dealt with, and I took Mackie off up to the hospital after we realised he was bleeding."


    "Nick, that''d be the ''madman with a sword'' assorted persons have mentioned?"


    "Aye, that''s no a bad description of him," Annie said with a laugh.


    "I see, any idea where he''s off to?"


    "Not a clue but he tends to crash out pretty badly after the adrenaline wears off, he probably went to find somewhere quiet to kip," Annie easily lied.


    "Hrm¡­ So, do you suppose that lot," and the cop angled a thumb at the still-smouldering Holden, "Were looking for you and your companions?"


    "This is the third big dust-up we''ve had with them in what, four weeks," Annie said with a shrug. "It''d be foolish not to assume they''re after me, particularly given I''m well aware Dad would pay an awful lot of money for my safe return if I was taken."


    "So DCI Stoker''s hunch doesn''t pan out," the cop said with a sigh, shaking his head. "Hey Booker, let Stoker know it''s Miss Kelly who machine-pistolled those vehicles,"


    "Miss Kelly''s here?" one of the other cops asked, craning his head. "Oh yes, Miss Kelly''s here. Evening Miss Kelly," and with that he made a beeline for where, over by the burning Holden, McBangBang was visible having a heated argument with a serious-looking moustachioed gentleman in a greatcoat and Trilby hat.


    "God, what a bloody night," the cop continued with a sigh and a scrub at his face. "I thought getting out of bloody Belfast meant I''d seen my last pub petrol-bombing, at least there weren''t all that many injuries."


    "How''s the lassie who was burned?" Mackie asked.


    "In an ambulance the last I saw, with the other half-dozen injuries - excepting you of course. We shipped them off up to Raigmore right smart. Nothing critical thank Christ, if you lot hadn''t been there it''d have been a bloodbath."


    "Like as not, aye," Annie said with a frown.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "So," Nick asked the rather more compus mentas vampire - now nailed to the floor in Mary Macbride''s pub back room but no longer bisected and now thoroughly drenched in the liquid contents of a red deer they''d driven out of town and ''acquired'' courtesy of Mackie and a Lee-Enfield - the moment the vampire stopped yelling, "Fancy telling us who you''re working for and where to be finding them or will I be cutting your dick in half too this time?"


    Almost exactly twenty-four hours had passed since the attack, the place was no longer crawling in cops, they''d got Mackie''s hole in the front of the pub mostly patched up, there was a wargame in progress on the folding table that''d at least temporarily replaced the pool table, and now they were ready and - accompanied by Vrotch and his mates - set to go and discuss the affair with whoever was responsible for setting a bunch of vampires to shoot the place up.


    The vampire gave him a slitty-eyed look. Having expected this, he picked up the piece of machinery he called ''the rip-snorter'' - a large petrol-powered circular saw - fired it up, revved it a couple of times, pulled the blade guard right the way back, and started slowly lowering it towards the once-again yelling vampire''s groin with the blade spinning.


    The vampire was screaming promises to answer whatever they wanted to ask even before the saw had actually touched it; Nick grinned, released the blade guard, idled the saw, and set it - still ticking over and gradually filling the room with its exhaust pipe - down on the floor between the vampire''s feet.


    "So exactly which stupid bastard," said Fat Bloke, "Decided it was a good idea to throw petrol bombs at a pub containing three mages, one of them a Navy officer to boot, a superweapon, and this bunch of bloody mental-cases?" and he indicated Nick and his friends.


    "You what mate?" the vampire asked.


    "He''s asking who you work for, idiot," said the girl who''d accompanied Vrotch every time so far Nick had seen them - if he''d got the right idea her name was ''Vicky'' or something.


    "Ivor," the vampire said. "Ivor Dracula,"


    "Dracula, bollocks," said Nick, picking the saw back up and giving it a rev.


    "No, no, honest, honest that''s his name, least that''s what he sez his name is and ain''t nobody argues with him!" the vampire gabbled.


    "Oh aye and where''ll he be biding then?" Annie asked.


    "Ain''t far from here, he''s got one of the warehouse units at the north end of the harbour facing onto the firth, the one right at the eastern end of the row nearest to the water, innit. Uh, I think he''s got a bolt-hole like, just over the road from the mart somewhere - I dunno exactly where though, I swear I dunno - and a couple of sheds facing right onto the north side of the goods yard like, opposite Johnson''s, right, you skip two buildings east from Johnson''s and cross the road right by the petrol station and you''ve got the next two sheds are both his, he''s got a tunnel from ''em to the warehouse like."


    "And how was he finding ourselves?" asked Mackie.


    "Weren''t hard were it, half of us are up and down this street every night and onea the lads saw that armoured lorry of yours pulling in the back," said the vampire.


    "So quite how many followers does this ''Ivor Dracula'' have?" McBangBang asked. He''d turned up dressed for trouble earlier that evening - gone was the naval officer''s blacks, in their place he was wearing battledress complete with the well-loaded webbing and helmet.


    "Like about two hundred, I ain''t never counted?" the vampire tried.


    "And what exactly did he think he''d be achieving, sending you over here to be starting an arse-kicking competition with a hedgehog?" Fiona asked.


    "Well he had this pub over the other side of the river, didn''t he, place this geezer called Smedley run for him like," the vampire started.


    "And we burned it to the ground, och well, there you go," Annie declared with a nod. "Come on, we might as well be finishing the job,"


    "Hold on, just getting something from out the back," said Nick, and headed straight for where he''d built the Bigger Van - there he collected from the still-present tool trailer his petrol-engined hammer drill, followed by one of the assorted pieces of rusting junk that''d been leaning against the bridge abutment: a gigantic ancient masonry drill bit, rusted all to shit and nearly four feet long.


    He put it into the chuck of the drill and toted the completed horror show back into Mary Macbride''s back room.


    "Andy," he said. "Do us all a wee favour? If this wanker''s no trying to send us into a trap we''ll be back in a couple of hours - call it," and he checked his watch, "Half past ten, and when we get back we''ll be giving him," and he pointed at the vampire, "A clean finishing-off, I wouldn''t say being mudded by a Claymore taking your head off is any too bad a way to go... If we''re no back by eleven o''clock, run this drill right up this wanker''s arse and keep shoving it up there again and again until the bastard muds."


    He gave the now visibly even more terrified vampire a vicious grin.


    "Will you be changing any of your story, laddie?" he asked.


    "No, no I swear everything I said is proper honest!" the vampire declared.


    "Good boy," Annie said, collecting one of Keith Thompson''s Sten guns, which had spent the previous night in the back of the Bigger Van up a forestry track up the back of Loch Ness right alongside the then-bisected vampire and the rest of the varied illegal clobber like untaxed pot that''d been in the pub. "Come on - let''s go and give this ''Ivor Dracula'' a good twatting."


    She gave the trio of wizards a contemptuous look.


    "You lot coming?"


    "Count me out, man, I''m useless in a fight," Vrotch said with a laugh. "I just completely panic and flail around like a twerp. Vicky''s well hard, she''s all the fighter I ain''t. Fat Bloke, McBangBang, you two are both better at fighting than I am,"


    "Yes well, I did after all do quite well in close-quarters training and I''d expect the training in dealing with cyborgs would map quite well onto dealing with walking corpses," said McBangBang. "If you ladies and gentlemen will have me, I shall see if I can be of any assistance."


    "Sorting out a bunch of bastards who figured it was a great idea to set fire to the porch on a pub full of teenage kids?" Fat Bloke asked. "Sounds like a lark, mate, I''m in."


    "Alright," said Annie. "Let''s go kick the crap out some diddums bloodsuckers."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Annie having completely mortified the naval officer by disrobing right in front of him to change into her combats (moaning about how much she loathed trousers the whole time, as usual) in her usual hilariously shameless manner, they split up into two groups. McBangBang, Vicky, and Val headed over to the warehouse on foot, while Fat Bloke, Nick, Mackie, and Annie piled into the Bigger Van and made a direct beeline for the pair of industrial units the captured vampire had claimed were connected to the warehouse by a tunnel; Nick drove the Bigger Van straight through the left-hand unit''s front door and they piled out yelling like maniacs, to be met by a distinct lack of any signs of life or, for that matter, unlife.


    The unit looked to be where the vehicles used in the petrol bombing of the Harbourmaster''s had come from - the walls separating the two units had been knocked out, there were half a dozen more assorted vehicles parked around - three beat-up Sunbeam straight-eights, one of which was an estate, an Albion panel van that''d seen better days, a rotten old Morris van and another Holden utility that looked like it''d been the wrong way up a few times - in the space enough to fit the three vehicles now shot up and/or burned out and sitting in an impound yard there was a nice clear oil patch as found under all Bedford vans of that generation that''d spent at least a night parked in one place.


    "This''ll be where they were making the petrol bombs," said Mackie, indicating a workbench near the back.


    "Oh aye, you reckon?" Annie, who was investigating the nearest vehicle, asked.


    "Aye - oily cloths and cable ties, and from the way it''s smelling that''ll be a puddle of freshly-spilt petrol dripping down the back, eejits were nae using a funnel," Mackie said.


    "Aye? Well. Anyone seeing a sign of this tunnel entrance then?" Annie asked.


    "It''s right over here," Fat Bloke, who had headed along the front of the structure towards what had been the other industrial unit, said. "Get a load of this, they barely even tried to hide it."


    Heading that way hard beside the others, Nick found that the lardy mage was peering down a roughly-cut hole in the building''s concrete floor, out of which was sticking the topmost few inches of a ladder. There had been a vague pretence made at it being concealed; there was a wall-mounted fire hose between it and the other unit''s front door and a couple of old fuel drums were dumped nearby.


    "Well that''s pretty clear now isn''t it," said Nick. Grinning, Mackie turned on the torch he''d duct taped to the pump on his trench gun and shone it down the hole - it went down a good fifteen to twenty feet, had a dingy muddy floor, and ''pit prop'' style timbers - they were the right size to be old railway sleepers - were visible from where the tunnel headed off in the general direction of the harbour.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    "Aye," said Mackie, starting to scramble down the ladder. "That it is."


    Nick followed him, Annie wasn''t far behind, and Fat Bloke shrugged and took up the rear.


    At the bottom the ''pit props'' proved to be what looked like groups of old railway sleepers bolted together, soaked in old engine oil as rudimentary creosote, and set on concrete blocks in an attempt to stop the ankle-deep mud rotting them out - the ceiling was even lower than Grace Mitchell''s front door, you could hear dripping to the surprise of absolutely nobody given that they had to be below the high tide mark, and the only source of light in the entire tunnel was Mackie''s torch.


    It curved a bit on the way towards the warehouse, making it impossible to see down the entire length.


    "This," said Fat Bloke, "Looks about half as safe as a fucking Reliant Robin."


    "What are you thinking, just cave it in or something?" Mackie asked, dubiously surveying the tunnel''s props.


    "I''m thinking collapse it and flood it," Fat Bloke told him. "Then go and meet the others."


    "Aye, I''m thinking that''s a good plan," Annie agreed. "Anyone got any explosives? How are we going to cave this in without dropping the ceiling on ourselves?"


    "We''re not needing to be caving it in," Mackie said. "We''re just needing to be pulling that ladder up then be sticking that fire hose all the way down it, well, just be using enough of the hose to be getting a wee bit too high to be jumping up and grabbing, and be turning that on - the water jet should be washing shite out down there and that''ll be bringing it down."


    "Huh, that''d work too," said Fat Bloke.


    "Aye, sounds like a plan, let''s do it," Annie agreed, and they all went trooping back up the ladder this time with Nick leading and Mackie taking up the rear.


    It was work of moments to haul the ladder up and out, and little longer to string the first ten feet of fire hose down the hole, then Nick went and got the Bigger Van backed out of the hole in the door and turned and, the van being out the way and the others in it, Mackie turned the hose on and came piling out the building and into the passenger seat.


    "That''ll do," he said, and Nick trod on the throttle.


    It wasn''t a long drive down to the harbour - turn left onto Longman Road then right onto Shore Street and follow the road round past the Harbourmaster''s - to nobody''s surprise the others had already gone in, the main warehouse door was a smoking hole, and almost continuous gunfire could be heard and muzzle flashes seen from within. Someone went cannonball jumping out of a top-floor window as they pulled up - the jumper landed face-first in the middle of the street, staggered to her feet, reeled round drunkenly just long enough for everyone in the vehicle who wasn''t Fat Bloke to recognise her as the vampiress apparently named Candice, the one they''d thought they''d given a suntan, before she saw the Bigger Van and ran into an alley as if all the hounds of Hell were hot on her heels, screaming blue murder the whole way.


    Mackie and Annie and Nick shared looks, shrugged in unison, and went piling out of the Bigger Van and into the warehouse, with Fat Bloke following along behind.


    There was a shot-up and smouldering forklift parked just inside, with a slightly shook-up looking Val crouching in a position to keep it between her and the rest of the warehouse. The warehouse was lined with ceiling-height racks of the sort you''d stack pallets on - it was full of gunsmoke and lit by strobing muzzle flashes from multiple sources, the near-continuous gunfire interrupted by the occasional blood-curdling scream.


    "Shit the bed, what''s happening?" Annie shouted at Val.


    "Fucking stay back, there''s half a dozen fucking machine guns up in the racks," Val shouted back. "I dunno where that Vicky or fucking Captain Toff are, they went deeper in,"


    A screaming vampire accompanied by a water-cooled Vickers machine gun - old enough it was loaded with a canvas ammo belt in the place of the more familiar disintegrating links - came sailing down from the pallet racks above the door and hit concrete with an audible splat. He was closely followed by Vicky, dropping on him in a floor-shaking elbow slam - she took his head off with a Fairbairn-Sykes knife, mudding him, then seemed to notice the others and sprang to her feet with a happy cry and there was no way in hell it was a coincidence that this took her out of the way of an arriving hail of machine-gun fire a heartbeat ahead of the first round in.


    "Alright lads, welcome to the party!" she declared the moment whoever was firing let off, and with that she charged back into the cloud of smoke, shit, and bullets - two seconds later the gunfire stopped with a horrible scream that abruptly cut off.


    "Fucking hell," said Annie Kelly.


    Nick glanced at Mackie. Mackie shrugged, and headed into the warehouse; Nick followed him, Claymore bared.


    They found McBangBang thoughtfully examining a large armoured door set into a partition wall splitting one half of the warehouse from the other. Vicky emerged from the cloud of smoke and dust, covered in mud and looking enormously pleased with hereself.


    "All clear through this half," she said. "So what''ll we do about this?" and she indicated the door.


    Nick poked at the door, then nodded.


    "This is just steel from the look of it," he said. "I''ve got a grinding disc for the rip-snorter that should go through it no bother."


    "Might as well give it a go, aye," Mackie said with a nod, and Nick hurried back out to the Bigger Van - it didn''t take minutes to swap blades in the big saw, and he was back in the warehouse with the metal-cutting disk in the thing right sharp, this time with Annie and Val bracketing him.


    "I have to say I''m concerned that they''ll have more heavy weapons set up inside there," Annie said as he was getting his goggles on.


    "Only one way to find out. Stand back, this thing spits tiny bits of white-hot metal when it''s cutting and that''d really be making a mess out of someone''s eyes," Nick said, and pulled the saw''s ripcord.


    The door put up more resistance than he''d expected - the grinding disc, which he''d got for cutting the plate steel for the loadbed of the Bigger Van, had enough life left in it for the job but wasn''t going to last much longer afterwards, whoever had put the thing together had stumped up for half-inch steel plate, they really hadn''t been mucking about - but in the end the result was pretty much inevitable. He started at the top left, worked his way down, across the bottom, then up the right side and finally across the top, keeping it all angled so, as the last bit went, the entire centre of the door dropped the breadth of the cutting disk, hung there for a moment, then fell inwards with a rafter-rattling crash.


    Nick, who had stepped smartly back and to one side, was very surprised at the marked absence of any hails of bullets.


    "Well," said Mackie as Nick dumped the saw and recovered the sword. "We might as well,"


    "Hold on a mo," Vicky said, holding up a brace of hand grenades that a moment of looking closer demonstrated to be flashbangs. She hooked her index fingers through the pins, pulled her hands apart removing both pins in the process, yelled, "Knock knock, fuckfaces!", and hurled both grenades through the doorway, immediately jamming her fingers in her ears - the others didn''t need advised to follow suit.


    The double-bang was about enough to lift you off your feet and left Nick''s ears ringing even through having had his fingers in them - Vicky was through the hole in the door the instant her grenades had gone off, and this time Nick and Mackie were hard behind her.


    As per Nick''s expectation a mob of vampires had been laying in wait to jump them, one bunch each side of the door, and had got the benefit of the full flash and bang works. Nick went straight into the bunch to the left while Vicky piled into the bunch to the right and Mackie''s trench gun started barking, seeming quiet after the flashbangs.


    The fight, what of a fight it was, was over in moments and it didn''t take Val, Vicky and Nick much longer to finish off the ones Mackie, McBangBang and Annie had shot, and then they started having a look around.


    The warehouse half was set up as this mix of a throne room and a nightclub, with the warehouse''s offices serving as a private area behind the throne. Finding the tunnel entrance didn''t take long, all the doors between the throne room and it were standing open, it was off one of the offices and hooked up to a mains-powered pumping mechanism - this Nick wasted no time in turning off and, one sledgehammer later, making sure stayed turned off. They pulled the ladder up for good measure, and not long after that they started hearing swearing down below.


    "Surprise, dickhead!" Vicky shouted down. "Having fun yet?"


    "Fuck you whoever the fuck you are, you''re gonna lower that ladder right now or I''m gonna find you and fuck you up," someone in the depths shouted back. Vicky shrugged, pulled a Mills bomb out of her coat, popped the pin out, and held it out over the shaft with the fly-handle held down.


    "Got a present for ya - catch!" she declared, and dropped it.


    The ground jumped, and a crack appeared in the back wall of the office as the tunnel down below them collapsed.


    "Come on," she said. "I know where we can get a load of cement powder for nowt, let''s go and dump a couple of dozen pallets of the stuff down each end of that tunnel."


    "Oh for fuck sake," said Nick, recognising a jacket among the slew of mud on the floor.


    "What?" said Mackie. Nick picked the muddy jacket up and showed it to him; he blinked and said, "Huh, that''s looking familiar from somewhere,"


    "Aye and it should," Nick said. "That''s the coat that the bastard who stole my bike was wearing."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    They concluded the evening''s festivities by getting Vicky''s concrete down the shaft - they left the fire hose running - then retired to the digs for a well-earned rest.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "This," said Annie, sounding a bit shook up, "Is even bigger than I was thinking."


    The end of Thursday 26th''s lectures having arrived, they''d retired to the Harbourmaster''s - Fiona and the Wizards Three were ensconced in their booth up to their noses in paper and the rest of the gang had taken up residence in another booth with a bundle of documents Vrotch had finally remembered to give Annie: specifically, his list of known vampire hideouts. This they were now going through, ticking off those few - for few it was in relation to the whole - that they''d already visited.


    The list was nearly seven hundred addresses long, from all up and down the north of Scotland, everywhere from Perth at the other end of the A9 up to a couple in Orkney, with over two hundred in Inverness alone, and Vrotch had emphatically stated that it wasn''t exhaustive.


    "It''s a fucking plague," said Val.


    "This is too big for us," said Mackie.


    "Come off it you great teuchter," Annie declared. "We''ve already manage to do for thirty-seven lairs full of these idiots in a little over a fortnight, too big for us bollocks!"


    "Annie''s no wrong," said Nick. "Too big for us? The fuck happened to the hardest bastard on Loch Allen then Mackie?"


    "Himself was walking into a bullet night afore last, and may have been thinking very hard about it ever since," Mackie said, pointing meaningfully at where he''d been shot Tuesday night. "This vampires stuff, we''re fighting a war. No ''sort of like'', no ''almost'', actually fighting a war, and when all is said and done we''re no the bloody Commandos, we''re crofter''s bairns with a few guns and the devil''s own luck. Myself am having this sense it''s only a matter of time before one of us is getting a sight worse than winged. We''ve been lucky so far. What happens when we''re running out of luck?"


    They lapsed into a grim silence that was broken by Fiona - pale and drawn and the mascara utterly failing to hide that she hadn''t been sleeping - coming over to their table.


    "We''re ready to give it a go," she said.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "The long and the short of it," said Vrotch with a sigh, "Is that we don''t actually know how to open one of these Immaterium portals. What we have is a good idea of how to open a few other kinds of portal, which gives us some basic know-how, some idea of shortcuts such as the fact that it is always, always, always easier to reopen a portal than it is to open one that''s never been there before, and some approaches to try."


    "Thus our presence back here, I see," Annie said with a nod, thoughtfully contemplating the derelict control tower.


    "Exactly. That said until we''ve tried, we''re running on conjecture here: this is going to be trial and error stuff, and I do not realistically expect to get one up and running tonight," Vrotch said, and she nodded again.


    "So what are you trying first?"


    "Broadbase working to reignite a dormant portal," Vrotch said. "If the portal was not removed, instead just deactivated, and there''s not a great chance of that, it should simply reopen it. From there, we''re going to start the complicated stuff."


    A ''broadbase working to reignite a dormant portal'' swiftly proved to involve the quartet of magic users standing around the spot the portal had been and chanting at it in that same weird language Vrotch had used during his demonstration of ''actual magic''; throughout the chant a vague greenish glow developed around them, slowly contracting like the growth of a bubble in reverse, getting brighter as it went; the perimeter of it came through the walls about a minute in and continued to shrink inwards, getting brighter and brighter before, at the conclusion of the chant, vanishing with a pop. McBangBang immediately turned to his laptop, set up on top of the aluminium flight case he''d brought his equipment in and linked by cables to a couple of dozen guddles of electronics inside half a dozen tupperware tubs spaced around the scene of the portal; he shook his head.


    "Not an inky hiccup," he declared. "We still just have the traces from the past portal, there was no fluctuation to speak of at any point during our relight attempt."


    "Great success," said Fat Bloke with a nod. "Are we gonna give it another go?"


    "Nah, no point," said Vrotch. "Didn''t work try one, won''t work try twun or try thrun."


    "Okay, aye, sure it didn''t work, what now?" Annie asked.


    "Well we haven''t got any sheep so we can''t try any sacrifice-driven stuff, but there is a couple of things we can try right now," Fat Bloke told her. "Pass us the chalk and let me get a look at those portal traces, McBangBang, I wanna try a variant on a Bifrost call-down."


    "A Bifrost call-down, that''s never going to work," Fiona scoffed.


    "If there''s something you know about Immaterium portals that makes you certain of that how about sharing it," Fat Bloke immediately rebuked her, and went and started making a bunch of complex calculations on a slide rule of all things - this was the first time Nick had ever actually seen someone using one in real life - and scrawling notes on a scrap of paper while peering at the display of McBangBang''s laptop. "Basically nobody, not even Heimdall, actually knows how Bifrost works - if anyone ever knew they''re a long time dead, right - but I can tell you one thing for certain, calling a Bifrost portal down entails sending a ''request'', for want of a better word, to a semi-intelligent construct at the Asgardr end - and given our knowledge of unspace that means we can send something similar there in case there''s anything listening."


    "Okay, yeah, we might as well give it a try with those patterns," Vrotch said and, Fiona muttering and grumbling, they proceeded to draw all over the floor in chalk then stand around chanting again: even less happened this time.


    "Told you," said Fiona.


    "No, you guessed. It turns out to have been a good guess, but it wasn''t an actual prediction," Vrotch pointed out. "And don''t start in on that ''I get good hunches'' shite you''re so keen on, I could name any number of times people I know who ''get good hunches'' who''ve had a hunch something wasn''t going to work and it worked."


    "There''s a couple of other combinations I want to try of basically that, then we''re going to have to start looking for stuff to sacrifice," Fat Bloke said, and resumed playing with his slide rule, and the entire process repeated over with Fiona getting more and more miffed each time.


    Finally, Fat Bloke shrugged and stowed his slide rule and said, "Okay, I''m out. Ideas we could try now anyone?"


    "Nah, my simplest idea is going to involve killing sheep," Vrotch said with a shrug.


    "I suppose we might as well pack it up for the night," Fiona said with a forlorn sigh, and they started collecting the sea of notes they''d spread round the floor of the old control tower during the prior festivities.


    They were about halfway through the clear-up when McBangBang, on squatting down to start disassembling his electronics and presumably stow it all back in the aluminium flight case his laptop was currently perched upon, frowned and said, "Hello, what''s this?"


    "What''s what?" Vrotch asked, looking up from where he''d been scrubbing out chalk marks with his shoe.


    "I''m picking up dimensional activity, old sock," said McBangBang with a frown. "Not from this location, mind - I can give you a direction though I''d have to triangulate to get a location - but from the strength of the readings it can''t be further than about five miles."


    "Let me see," said Fat Bloke, hurrying over; the two of them spent several moments peering fixedly at the screen and then he added, "Huh."


    "I''m not familiar with that amplitude," McBangBang said. "Ideas, anyone?"


    "Well we know that Isobel Mackenzie is no exactly the only mage in the area, though that said the timing is interesting," said Vrotch.


    "Can''t say that means anything to me," Fiona said, having a peer over McBangBang''s shoulder.


    "Yes well, I did after all have to invent a system of computerised visualisation of dimensional activity signals out of whole cloth, so to speak," McBangBang said with a shrug. "The colour represents the frequency, the line the wattage."


    "I see," Fiona said. "Huh - oh, aye, I get it... Aye, that is odd, isn''t it."


    "Can''t say I''ve ever seen anything like it," McBangBang said with a shrug. "Though with the low wattage it''d be lost in background clutter from as much as fifteen, twenty miles away I''d say.


    "That''s it, it''s gone," said Vrotch.


    "Well, that was interesting. Shame we weren''t able to triangulate it," said Fat Bloke.


    "Maybe we should set up sensors in several fixed locations," Vrotch said. "I can definitely have a setup like this running permanently at my place."


    "Good idea, let''s plan that out later, a nice cup of tea seems the best plan for the moment," McBangBang said with a sigh, and closed the laptop.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "I''m not sure," said Annie Kelly as they trooped back into the digs, "Whether that was enlightening, weird, weirdly enlightening, or enlighteningly weird."


    "Myself would be using the term ''hilariously inconclusive''," Mackie said. "Myself am still no sure this ''Vrotch'' bugger''s no leading ourselves up the garden path."


    "Well if you kent Vrotch better you wouldnae worry too much about that," said Fiona. "I can''t say I''ve ever heard a lie out of himself, the man''s got a knee-jerk reaction to folks being dishonest as a result of which he react to folks asking questions about stuff he wants or needs kept private, or things he''s been told in confidence, by flat out saying he won''t be answering that."


    "I didn''t realise you knew him well enough to say that," said Val.


    Fiona snorted.


    "I spent three months living on his settee just after Catherine was killed," she said, turning off the stairs onto their floor. "I know him pretty bloody-"


    And that was when Fiona stopped dead in her tracks, verbally and physically, so abruptly that Val had to stop just as abruptly to avoid walking into her, which proved abrupt enough Annie stepped on Val''s heels in the process of stopping, and would have got her heels in turn stepped on by Mackie if they hadn''t been high, instead nearly getting her feet kicked out of under her, and Nick proceeded to step on Mackie''s heels, and after a few moments flailing around to avoid ending up in a heap in the floor they all realised that Fiona was rooted to the spot and staring blankly at her dorm room door.


    The why took several moments for the others to start comprehending: specifically, there was light coming out of under it.


    Fiona, with a very deliberate air, withdrew her key from wherever she''d hidden it in her bodice, and used it to slowly and just as deliberately unlock the door.


    She stared at it for several seconds then kicked it open with her guns out and immediately proved them as drop-safe as any firearm ever is when she once again stopped dead in her tracks and went swaying back like she was about to drop in a dead faint and her arms went slack beside her and the revolvers went rattling across the floor.


    Nick started pushing past her, hand on the hilt of his Claymore, only to stop and relax as he saw who was sitting on one of the beds and giving him, or maybe Fiona, a startled look.


    "Well now," he said. "You were having us all a wee bittie,"


    "Alice Liddell you''d better have a bloody good explanation where the Hell you''ve been you absolute bitch, by Christ I thought you''d been killed!" Fiona screamed, then hurled herself at Alice in what could only be described as a ballistic hug that ended with an even more visibly startled Alice knocked completely flat on the bed with Fiona on top of her, face buried in her jersey and bawling her eyes out, all of which caused Alice to emit a sound that sounded very much like, "!"


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Oh for Christ sake you bunch of blithering idiots," Alice declared nearly ten minutes into (And having utterly run out of patience for) Fiona''s rant about how dangerous ''messing about in unknown dimensions'' was and Annie''s lecture about how dangerous ''running off by yourself'' was and Val''s sarcastic remarks about ''trying to get yourself killed'', pushing Fiona off. "Don''t you realise what that place represents?" and that silenced the others - all bar Nick, who had spent the interim leaning on the doorframe with a thoughtful look on his face and letting the girls get it out of their system.


    "You''re thinking it''s that ''Unspace'' placie Brigid said Grace was mentioning," he said. "And that makes it and more importantly kenning what makes it tick your best crack at getting home, doesnae it."


    "Exactly," Alice confirmed with a nod; she turned back to Fiona. "Look¡­ Fiona, I''m not just a complete stranger here, I''m an alien. This is not my world, I don''t belong here and quite frankly it scares the living shit out of me - vampires and wizards and atomic-propelled spaceships ye Gods - it''s not anything to do with you lot, in fact you''re about the only real saving graces in all this, but regardless of all that what do you think it''s like having your friends, your family, everyone and everything you''ve ever know in another universe? I''m still half-convinced I''m really just some girl from here who went crazy, it doesn''t matter how dangerous that place may or may not be, until I''m absolutely one hundred percent convinced it''s not my ticket home I''ll be investigating it no matter what you or anyone else have to say about the matter."


    "She''s no wrong, Fiona," said Mackie Romanov. "And anyway for Christ sake, we''ve been starting a private war with the living dead and you''re wanting to be on about dangerous?"


    "No, you don''t understand," Fiona declared, shooting to her feet. "It''s no just that, it''s - don''t you remember what Vrotch said about how dangerous learning magic is?"


    "Alice wasn''t there for that conversation," Nick pointed out.


    "Oh Christ, that she wasnae - look, Alice, the thing is, the thing is that manipulating the Immaterium is very directly a form of actual spellcasting complete with the need to actually draw the power we call magic through yourself - and basically the easiest thing to do with magic is set fire to things and the easiest thing to do magic to is your own brain, maybe one in a hundred would-be mages doesn''t do for themselves with a zero-range fireball in the middle of their own frontal lobes and I''m absolutely bloody terrified if you actually get that far in the learning this stuff thing,"


    "It''s a bit late to be worried about that," said a completely unexpected North London accented voice, and everyone whirled round to find an equally unexpected fat bearded bespectacled man in a beat-up check shirt and jeans standing on the threshold of the room.


    "¡­ what? Wait, what the hell, Fat Bloke, what are you doing here," Fiona started.


    "I had one of my hunches, about her," the man said with a shrug, indicating Alice. "That unexpected transdimensional activity McBangBang''s contraptions sensed when we were packing up, something about that seemed familiar and I got this feeling it was our missing girl doing something about being missing from the other end and I didn''t want to say anything because what if I was wrong but I was right! Hello, you''d be the famous Alice who managed to get lost in the Immaterium - we haven''t been introduced, I''m Fat Bloke, basically Fiona talked to Vrotch, I think you''d met him in passing hadn''t you? Anyway Vrotch doesn''t know a buggering thing about the Immaterium or portal physics, so he got onto me and McBangBang - who surprised me by turning out not to be a girl in meatspace - because unlike Vrotch we''ve actually got some practical experience with portals and so on. Any rate Fiona, it''s entirely a moot point at this point - she''s got more magic running through her than you do by a wide margin."


    "¡­ What makes you say that?" asked an instantly both worried and in fact rather frightened Fiona.


    "My glasses are magic, simple bit of boundary effect manipulation," Fat Bloke said with another shrug. "Honestly though I don''t think we need to be too concerned, I''ll bet you opened a portal earlier this evening while we were dicking around on that old airbase, right Alice? That means she''s already actively spellcasting, Fiona, she can''t not be actively spellcasting if she''s managed to open a portal."


    "You''re saying," said Alice, "I''m some kind of freaking wizard,"


    "Well not so much, you''re some kind of freaking mage," Fat Bloke told her, then caught her expression. "Okay basically there are three known kinds of magic user, right? Wizards, witches, and mages. Respectively, passive, semi-passive, and active, users of magic. A wizard uses enchanted artefacts such as Mackie here''s shotgun; they may be able to make enchanted artefacts using boundary effect manipulation and the likes, but they don''t actually draw any magical power themselves, thus, passive use of magic, so no, basically your mates are the wizards. A mage is someone who actually directly draws and manipulates magical energy, active use of magic, like I do, like Vrotch does, like you did when you got out of the Immaterium. Well, and there''s a possible fourth type that theoretically could exist that actually produces magic out of buggering nowhere but we''ve never even heard rumours of one in real life."


    "What about a witch?" Alice asked.


    "Well, a witch gets their magic from someone else," Fat Bloke told her, and she couldn''t help but notice that he glanced at Fiona. "They''re, uh, basically they''re someone''s living magical tool. They don''t actively gather it but they do actively use it, meaning unlike us mages they don''t need to worry too much about head explosions."


    "I see," Alice said. "So I''m a mage. Great. What''s that mean?"


    "That means amongst other things basically at this moment in time it''s probably really best if we make sure you learn enough you won''t be accidentally killing yourself," Fat Bloke told her. "Which is what it sounds like: this is an open offer of teaching, right? It''s really best if you get taught instead of learning everything through trial and error the way we did - there''s all too much of the error part usually turns out to be fatal."


    "I see," said Alice.


    "Anyway, there''s also the question of however you got out,"


    "I worked out how to get a portal to open, yes," Alice told him. "It''s¡­ shit, how do you explain¡­ basically uh, imagine you''re in the Immaterium, right, you can make unspace do stuff by wanting it to do that stuff hard enough, right?"


    "Right, the whole shaping it by force of will," Fat Bloke said with a nod.


    "I got to thinking about something Nick said a few weeks back - you remember that conversation the day after I had my meltdown Nick? That whole thing with there being power to thresholds and boundaries and edges and so on? Basically how it works is you establish a threshold - by the way Nick, I can actively feel that power you were talking about, it''s not so much that they have power as power sort of ripples, for want of a better word, along them - then you, uh, you add more power, I mean a lot more power, like a seriously absolute crapload of power, and, basically, turn the threshold inside out? I''m not describing it very well, but that''s about the best term for it I can find."


    Fat Bloke raised a finger, opened his mouth, frowned, closed his mouth, and lowered his finger.


    "I''d like to see that," he said.


    "I haven''t tried opening one from this side yet," Alice told him; he nodded.


    "How hard would it be to turn a threshold inside out in realspace?" he asked. "I''ll bet it wouldn''t be as easy as from the Immaterium side."


    "Um, I''m really not sure but it shouldn''t be too difficult, I mean you don''t physically turn the threshold inside out, you do it with the ripple of power," Alice told him.


    He spent several moments frowning, and then said, "Huh - this is really very interesting stuff. Hey, is your portal, the one you opened to get out, still there?"


    "Yeah, it''s in the basement bit of the house where we found Andy, I wasn''t going to exactly close it when I don''t know for sure if I can open it again from here was I?"


    "Cool¡­ Okay, so anyway I need to phone Vrotch and McBangBang, let them know what''s happening, then can we go and have a look?"


    "Well, I don''t see why not," Alice said.


    "I''ve got a suggestion, Alice," said Annie Kelly.


    "Oh yeah, like what?" Alice asked.


    "Can you move your portal?" Annie asked.


    "Yeah, it''s easy enough - you can get the two ends to move about separately from each other, it''s not too complicated," Alice said.


    "Can you change what size it is?" Annie asked.


    "Easily enough, yes," Alice said.


    "All of that from either end?" Annie asked.


    "Yes, it doesn''t make any real difference," Alice said. "I can feel it in the back of my mind right now."


    "Then you can hide it inside a light bulb," Annie said. "Maybe a fridge light or something, nobody''s going to be looking for a weird glowing thing inside something that they''re expecting to be lit anyway."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Well," said Nick Macbane as he stood just inside Alice''s portal and admired the view, "You''ve been a busy lass then, haven''t you."


    The portal came out into a large flat square clear sort of area, all paved and surrounded by crenelations - there were pointy-roofed castle turrets at the corners and a random small stubby round tower sort of an affair stuck up near to one side. Several more towers in that same pointy-roofed style stuck up here and there alongside.


    "Well it sort of started as somewhere to stand on after that island vanished when the portal closed, which became the roof, it started right about where we''re standing, then, uh, kind of grew, well, grew downwards from there," Alice told him. "I''m probably going to take it apart and start over at some point, there''s so much of it I did stupidly because there wasn''t a plan that it''d be easier to start from the very beginning, and anyway I''ve pretty well scratched the whole giant fairytale princess castle itch at this point."


    Annie snorted but didn''t say anything.


    "So you can literally just think hard at it and stuff, well, happens, right?" said Fat Bloke, who was minutely examining the rim of the portal. He''d phoned both his fellow mages on his mobile while they were walking over to the abandoned house the portal''s realspace end currently sat in the basement of.


    "I suppose that''s as good a way of phrasing it as anything. Watch," Alice told him, and spent a moment concentrating very hard, carefully envisaging every detail of what she wanted, and a moment later a rocking chair matching how she remembered her grandmother''s one was sitting on the castle rooftop.


    "Huh, that''s really very interesting - the ambient magic sort of pulsed around you when you did that, and I don''t mean the same way it pulses when someone casts a more conventional spell or the way it pulses when someone uses an enchanted object or, for that matter, the boundary effect ripple, or maybe, hang on," and Fat Bloke said something weird and percussive-sounding - the whole world jolted and a ball of fire went roaring off of his fingers and away into the void.


    "Huh, now that is cool," he continued. "The pulse from spellcasting propagates far, far more swiftly here than it does in meatspace - uh, basically in meatspace it propagates at lightspeed - of course I''ve got nothing but conjecture about what we''re actually seeing, but my guess is magic interacts with whatever this stuff you thought into existence is - unmatter? - in a very different way to how it interacts with matter or things like spiritstuff¡­ Anyway, that offer of training, how about it?"


    "I don''t know," Alice said with a sigh. "Let me sleep on it, my head is up my arse at the moment."


    -/-/-/-/-/-

 Chapter 3 part the third

    When they got down to the Harbourmaster''s on the evening of Friday 27th, the day having been spent inventing lies to cover for Alice''s week and a half of missed college, they once again found Vrotch, Fat Bloke and McBangBang waiting for them, this time accompanied by a very small and very young-looking very-red-haired teenage girl all three men appeared at a glance to be slightly in awe of.


    "Excellent, there you lot are," Fat Bloke declared, springing to his feet in a way that seemed a tad physics-denying for a man of his sheer mass. "We were wondering if - oh, where''s me manners, Alice, you haven''t been introduced - Alice, these are some friends and peers of mine, this is Vrotch, this is McBangBang, and this is, in fact, the one and only Munching Hamster," and from his expression he visibly expected a reaction very other than the one that got out of Alice, who had never before heard of any capital-H hamsters munching or otherwise.


    "The hacker?" Val asked, audibly very surprised indeed. "Wait," and she pointed at the littler redhead, "You''re who released the TLA''s list of assassinated Nihon separatist leaders?"


    "Yup and I''d do it again in a heartbeat," the capital-H Hamster declared - on looking closer she had a distinctively Asian, probably Japanese, look to her despite her hair being the reddest hair Alice had ever seen in her entire life - not the muddy orange most people mean when they say ''red hair'', actually red-red, the fire engine sort Alice would have instantly assumed dye if the girl''s eyebrows hadn''t matched. She was clad in a long dark skirt, heeled boots, a webbing belt with attached American-style police badge and holstered handgun, a tight white top (with prominent keyhole) that from the narrowness round the middle had to be over the top of a particularly dramatic piece of corsetry, and a very elderly flying jacket with a Japanese rising sun flag painted on the back.


    "This is Val Adamson," Fat Bloke continued, "Annie Kelly and yes she''s related, she''s his daughter, Nick Macbane, Fiona Macleod, and Mackie Romanov - and as you''ve probably figured out this is Alice Liddell."


    "Excellent, now we''re all introduced and we can get down to business," the Hamster declared; she turned to Alice. "I thought I''d better come in person - Fat Bloke told me a few very interesting things about the Immaterium yesterday and your name came up a lot, and on top of this," and she removed a slip of paper with what looked very like an Ogham key on it, "I decided I needed to talk to you people, face-to-face. There''s some things it''d be extremely useful to have a personal look at, if you''re willing."


    "What sort of things?" Alice asked.


    "Okay well basically I - with some help from my friends - have over the last few years been engaged in what''s most likely the first actual scientific study of magic. How it functions, what its limitations and capabilities are, all with an eye to eventually working out what it is - it''s probably the single most important piece of research anyone''s engaged in since, oh, since our distant ancestors learned to control fire. How Fat Bloke described magical pulses propagating in the Immaterium may with close examination allow us to ascertain exactly how magic interacts with matter, and the ramifications of that..." The Hamster shook her head. "I can''t tell you the ramifications, at this point I simply do not know but it seems most likely to be extremely significant, possibly as much so as to call game-changing," and there was a round of nodding from her companions. "And then there''s this," and she again indicated the slip of paper. "What we''re looking at is essentially self-compiling magical code mapped directly to the English language, causing any coherent sentence written in it to activate the boundary effect - I don''t know if any of you realise how significant a challenge this must have been to actually design, and hearing about it being done with multiple languages over a span of at least a millennium?" She shook her head. "It''s a bit like finding a fusion rocket made using medieval tools and materials, and the fact that the languages involved include modern English has a lot of implications."


    She turned to Nick.


    "Where did you learn this?"


    "It''s common knowledge where I''m from," he said with a shrug. "You have to be phrasing things right to get it to work, but I cannae think of much of anyone who doesn''t have a copy of that - I got mine from my parents, who were given theirs by a neighbour - Mackie''s father - and he''s been dead a while now so we''ll no be asking him where he was getting it."


    "How much do you actually know?" Fiona asked, and that got a laugh out of the Hamster.


    "Don''t ask me any questions and I won''t tell you any lies," she said. "I''m sorry but out of all the people in the world today we might possibly want to chance getting access to our data Isobel Mackenzie''s about three names from the very last on the list. Let me put it this way: we''d trust the goddamn SOE with this stuff an aeon before we''d trust anyone who''s even half as closely mired in her shit as you''ve got yourself."


    "Who the hell," said Nick in the tones of someone who''s been dwelling on something for a while, "Is this Isobel Mackenzie person you wankers keep banging on about anyway?"


    "She''s a mage from Dingwall," said Vrotch.


    "A ''mage from Dingwall'' my foot," said the Hamster. "She''s one of the dozen most powerful magic-users known to exist today - I''d put her at place four on that particular list, topped by Te Ariki, Beltran Cortez, and Sheng. She''s about four to five hundred years old and used to be at place three until Project Warlock happened, and yes that is including before Baba Yaga got herself killed, and let me tell you she did not get there by being nice. That woman believes she''s still fighting the Jacobite Rebellion and anyone whose first language is anything other than Scots Gaelic," and she pronounced it ''Gay-Lick'', immediately getting herself derailed by an irate Mackie Romanov.


    "It''s the Gaelic," he said, pronouncing it ''Gal-ick'', "You numpty."


    "Whatever," the Hamster snapped. "That''s not important,"


    "Aye and neither is the fact where you''re from is no called Japan?" Mackie snapped right back - they had a brief glaring contest then the Hamster shook it off with a laugh.


    "Okay, that''s fair enough," she said. "What was I saying? Ah yes, Isobel Mackenzie believes anyone whose first language is anything other than The Gaelic, note pronunciation, is English, and that includes anyone with the ''bad taste'' to be multilingual, and therefore directly an enemy. She''s personally, directly, responsible for the existence of wild haggi and from the expression on your face you''re starting to get a picture of her body count. That is who Isobel Mackenzie is."


    "In my defence," Fiona said, "I didn''t know any of that when I got myself involved with herself, all I knew was that someone I loved had been killed by vampires, that Vrotch was not going to be doing anything about it, and that herself said that she would."


    "I did try to warn you," said Vrotch.


    "And I ignored you, yes. I buggered up. I buggered up really badly and I wish to God I could take it back, but we''ve all got a pretty good picture of how workable that is," and all four mages grimly nodded their agreement to Fiona''s statement.


    "How bad?" Alice had to ask.


    "I''m one of her witches," Fiona sadly told her. "The bond involved is permanent, and the only ways of breaking it I''ve ever so much as heard a whisper of a rumour of would kill me."


    "And nothing I know disagrees with that summation," said the Hamster, again with a round of nodding from the boys.


    "Honestly the only way I know of to do it is to just flat-out kill the witch," said Vrotch. "Well, or kill the mage at the other end of the bond, and let''s just say Mackenzie''s not exactly easy to off. And yes, I''ve been looking, since before I met Fiona in fact - there is nothing whatsoever non-grotesque about turning people into tools. If there''s a way..." He shrugged.


    "Not the sort of thing our Sane Dave''s ever just stood back and watched," said the Hamster with a nod. "But the long and the short of it is that if there''s a way none of us know it."


    "So the long and the short of it is that I''d better go," Fiona said, rising to her feet.


    "We''d probably better go along with yourself," Mackie said with a nod. "Nick, Annie, Val,"


    "One other thing though," said the Hamster, and the others paused; Nick looked back over his shoulder at her.


    "Don''t go shouting about this stuff," she told him, and Mackie and Annie and Val too, and when it came down to it she was telling Alice as well. "People who do tend to have things happen to them."


    "What''s that supposed tae mean?" Mackie growled.


    "It means that empires don''t tend to like us proles knowing a private individual can be a nation-scale actor," the Hamster told him. "People like any of us four here, or Isobel Mackenzie, or like Alice here will be in a few years time assuming she lives that long, can with a bit of work and a lot of total amorality ramp themselves up to the point they can cause destruction on a similar level to an atomic bomb and that''s even before we come to how trivially easy it is for a cybermancer to co-opt any computerised system up to and including the one the Russians have in place controlling their ''nuclear deterrent''. Look, basically any powerful nation, ever, especially ''powers'', well there''s basically only ever been one that we know for sure did not have some very powerful mage backing them, and that one ended up being blown off the map one soggy summer night in 1944 using high-end magical weapons. When all is said and done we are a threat to those puppetmasters: we have the best possible chance of beating them at their own game and becoming replacement puppetmasters in our own right, and that right there is the one thing they cannot and will not tolerate."


    "That''s why the big secret then, isn''t it," said Nick.


    "People who try to shine light in the dark places, or admit publicly to not being entirely ''normal'', or just talk too loudly about it, tend to have ''horrible accidents'' - or just flat-out disappear," said Fat Bloke with a nod. "And that''s including people with a lot more influence than Joe Kelly''s daughter."


    "Figures," said Val with a groan.


    "That''s a large part of why what we''re doing is so important," the Hamster said. "How far has the development of humanity, cultural and technological, been impeded by those idiotic puppetmasters bumping off forwards-thinkers? What potential has been lost by the deliberate avoidance of development of a safe way to teach magic? It''s got to exist: we are living proof that it is possible to learn magic without blowing your own brains out. What could our species possibly have become if those manipulators weren''t keeping us down? They content themselves with their petty games when they could long since have brought humanity to apotheosis, for people who''ve rendered themselves immortal they''re astonishingly short-sighted," and her fellow mages had nodded along to all that.


    "So yourself''s hell-bent on changing the world," Mackie said.


    "It needs changed," the Hamster told him, and he nodded.


    "Right," said the Hamster. She turned to Alice. "Let''s go and have a look at this portal of yours."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "So," said Alice as they walked down into the enormous basement of the abandoned house where her portal currently lurked, shrunk to the size of a pinprick and hiding behind the light bulb in the centre of the ceiling - they''d ridden up there in an uncomfortable silence in McBangBang''s car. "Was all that spiel about powers serious or just an excuse to ditch Fiona?"


    "Deadly serious, I''m afraid," said the Hamster as Alice brought the portal down and expanded it. "The not shouting about it or waving it about in public part goes for you too, mind - that''s a great way to wind up pressganged by the British Empire or just vanishing without a trace."


    "Or for a pretty girl like you, Alice, getting ''Recruited''," and you could just about hear the air quotes in Fat Bloke''s voice, "By Beltran sodding Cortez."


    The Hamster made a retching noise; McBangBang mimed sticking his fingers down his throat.


    "Beltran Cortez?" Alice asked as the portal reached its target size, at one and the same time vaguely wondering if she was ever going to get used to the idea of being pretty. "Who in the fuck is Beltran Cortez?"


    "What I said about puppetmasters? He''s the one backing the British Empire," said the Hamster.


    "If you hear references to ''Cortez the Raven'', ''the Devil of Cortez'', or ''the White Raven'', that''s who they mean," Vrotch agreed. "We don''t actually know how old he is, but the first credible reference to him is from the fifteenth century and the only mage more powerful than him in the world today is Sheng in Imperial China. He established ''the establishment'', he''s the patriarch of ''the patriarchy'', he is the president of ''the old boys club'', the Royals are just figureheads, the real power in this empire is most probably sitting and looking smug in the smoking room at the Lexbridge Shooting Society clubhouse in Lexbridge in Shropshire right this moment... What Mackenzie did to Fiona, he''s able to do to low-end mages like you - forcibly, and the mage doesn''t even know their own name afterwards. So yeah, not being ''recruited'' by Beltran Cortez, generally the sort of thing worth striving for."


    "I see," Alice said, and made an ushering gesture towards her portal.


    "Ah yes, the matter at hand," McBangBang agreed, and stuck his head through it; he withdrew his head with a thoughtful look and said, "I say, has anyone tried hitting the perimeter of the portal with an object such as, oh, a pole...? Not a Polish gentleman, a piece of wood, stop cackling Fat Bloke."


    "I have a Jimmy bar," Vicky helpfully offered, producing a short wrecking bar from inside her coat.


    "Excellent, that will suffice, give it here!" McBangBang declared, and proceeded to swing it at the edge of the portal with all his might. It bounced off with a dull clunk and enough force to jump out of his hands, drawing a startled "Great Scott!" out of him; Vicky caught it out of the air a hair''s breadth before it would have clocked the Hamster in the ear.


    "Jesus wept, watch what you''re doing with that thing," said luminary complained.


    "Bloody hell, I''d expected it to cut the bar!" McBangBang declared.


    "It''s blunt, and about an inch thick," Alice, who''d performed a slightly less energetic version of the same experiment on the original portal in the control tower, told him. "It''s a really confusing shape, it''s curved and I would say it was the shape of an inner tube off a really big bike tyre if the curve didn''t seem to continue perfectly on the other side of a portal - have a look round the other side of this half of it when I do this," and she stuck her arm through, reached around at an angle that should have had her jamming her hand into her ear, and waved her fingers out of the other side of this half of the portal.


    "Neat, it''s a four-dimensional torus!" the Hamster declared, delighted by the effect.


    "That," said Vrotch, giving the portal perimeter a squeeze, "Is downright trippy, my hand thinks it''s in a position where my thumb should have to be sticking through my fingers."


    "If you don''t mind I''ll set up some LIDAR measuring equipment later on and get a topographic map of the portal structure itself," McBangBang said to Alice. "All of the portals I''ve examined prior to this have been sharp on the submolecular scale - they will cut through warship-quality structural alloy as easily as a hot knife through butter."


    "Be my guest," Alice said with a nod. "That said we''ve been talking about locating my portal somewhere a bit more secure,"


    "You''re welcome to move it to my caravan park," Vrotch told her. "I''ve got an old van up on blocks down there, it hasn''t run since before the Iron Curtain fell but it''s still structurally sound and the door locks work, I''ve been using it as a toolshed."


    "Actually I was thinking about the yard behind the Harbourmasters - how hard would it be to get hold of a shipping container and drag it down there?"


    "Simplicity itself," McBangBang told her. "The sheer volume of materials being landed at Dalcross has its ramifications, such as containers being fabricated in situ at an asteroid then sold off for their scrap value by the assorted materials brokers on site and as far as dragging the thing around is concerned I believe that Mr Macbane''s father may be capable of assisting you in that matter if, that is, Mr Macbane himself is not able."


    "Good," Alice said with a nod. "One of those would give room for the portal and a small laboratory for examining it, and the yard behind the Harbourmasters is fairly private and only going to get more so as we finish roofing over it."


    "I''ll cover the costs for containers," the Hamster said. "I can think of good uses for three or four of them down there, especially if we sit them tight together and get doorways cut between them."


    "Should be room, and I happen to know a Macbane who''s a dab hand with a welder," Alice said with a nod.


    "Excellent, we have a plan," the Hamster agreed. "Now, let''s get a look inside this thing, shall we?"


    Alice nodded, and led the way.


    The scene within was quite unlike it had been when she''d first showed it to Fat Bloke and her friends; she''d gone ahead and disappeared the badly-done fairytale castle that morning and the portal now stood at the centre of a patch of very sparse woodland perhaps two hundred yards across, with the only other feature a small roughly circular area of flat, hard, ground with wine-red carpet instead of grass, directly in front of and ten feet from the portal, on which sat a very fancy (not to mention suitably enormous) three-piece leather settee suite around a coffee table, the sheer incongruity of which drew a delighted laugh from the Hamster.


    "Bloody hell, big old change," said Fat Bloke.


    "Well the castle was amusing and all but there weren''t so many things I could think of to do with a couple of hundred big empty rooms," Alice told him, sprawling herself on the sofa. "So I took it apart and started over - this ground used to be the castle roof, which was all that was left when I finished disappearing it. I''m not sure what else I''m going to do with it."


    "Would there be any possibility of getting the use of a space as a laboratory?" McBangBang asked.


    "What? Oh, sure," Alice said with a nod. "Would a container do the job?"


    "That would be more than," McBangBang started; the container Alice was thinking of came into being hanging a couple of feet up in the air off through Alice''s woods a little, and dropped to the ground with a ringing clang. "... sufficient. Great Scott, that was quite a sight!"


    Fat Bloke went straight over to the container to examine it.


    "I think," said the Hamster, settling herself on an armchair, "We should probably work on finding the exact limitations of your ability to create. Vrotch told me about these invisible people you and your friends spotted exiting that other portal - tell me, do you have any idea if you can make something like them?"


    Alice opened her mouth, sat there with it open for a long moment, and then closed it.


    "I honestly haven''t a clue, I''ve never tried," she admitted. "... Do you think I can?"


    "I don''t see why not," the Hamster said.


    "... huh. I don''t think I''d better start with actually a person. How about, oh, a kitten?"


    "Don''t ask me, you''re the one the Immaterium listens to every passing whim of," the Hamster said with a shrug.


    "Right. A kitten. Kittens! Kitten," Alice mused, cupping her hands.


    The newly-extant kitten looked up at her out of them, and mewed.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "You alright?" Fiona asked, about five minutes into Alice''s laying flopped on her back on top of her bedcovers in their dorm room and staring blankly at the ceiling while the kitten explored in that particular mad wide-eyed kitteny way.


    "Don''t mind me," Alice told her. "Just being in a mild state of kitten-related shock."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    On the morning of Saturday 28th Alice was awoken several hours earlier than she''d ever intended to be awake, to a rather grey and miserable-looking morning, by a shattering roar. Naturally, she nearly hit the roof; the kitten ended up catapulted halfway across the room, catching onto the curtain dividing her side from Fiona''s side and hanging there by its claws swinging and mewing piteously.


    The roar resolved itself from just sound into definitely an engine, and oriented itself to apparently coming from up the hall on their floor.


    Someone started gunning it, making it even bloody louder.


    "What the bloody hell," said Fiona, emerging from behind the curtain. She stuck her head out into the hall while Alice was still scrambling into skirt and pullover.


    In a position approximating decent Alice went and joined her, finding that there were a lot of people pushing into the hall, some of them half-dressed, and the roar was coming from behind what was at that point the sole closed door in the entire hallway: specifically, the room shared by Nick and Mackie.


    "Oh for Christ sake Nicodemus Bloody Macbane," Annie Kelly declared, and went and pounded on the door with all her might. The roar settled to a thumping tickover, and a moment later a maniacally grinning Nick came and opened the door, letting out a bunch of blue smoke and a stink of exhaust pipe.


    "Morning Annie!" he declared.


    "Shut that bloody thing off you bloody idiot, what the bloody hell are you doing?" Annie complained.


    "Oh, sure," Nick said, and went and shut the engine off, allowing blessed silence to fill the dorms.


    "Nick you absolute numpty," Annie continued, "What in God''s name were you doing?"


    "That''s the engine for my new bike," Nick said, angling his thumb into the exhaust smokey room; an entertained-looking Mackie was hanging half out the window. "Just unexpectedly got her fired up first try, next step''s sorting out a frame."


    "It''s no that you great teuchter, it''s twenty to seven in the morning on what''s suppose to be our lay-in day and you''re running a bloody motorbike engine that I note hasn''t got a bloody silencer inside the dorms, you wassock, are you trying to get yourself kicked out? Idiot," Annie declared.


    Nick opened and shut his mouth a few times, then said, "I honestly thought I was just going to see if it''d turn over, I never expected it to fire first try."


    "Then why''d you rev the bloody thing? Of course you revved the bloody thing you idiot, for Christ sake keep the engine testing outdoors and in the bloody afternoon will you man," Annie said with a sigh. The digs manager (a small and rather stout man whose name Alice could not for the life of her remember) chose that moment to arrive.


    "What in God''s name was that racket?" he complained.


    "An idiot who didn''t expect a freshly-repaired motorbike engine to start," Annie told her with a sigh.


    "Oh come on Annie, it''s no like seeing if an engine''s wanting to turn over in my bedroom''s anything unusual," Nick complained.


    "Oh for God''s sake Nick, everything your entire bloody family does is bloody unusual, may I remind you most families have to worry about their kids bringing home puppies and kittens and you brought home the landlord''s daughter? Running engines in your bedroom is really bloody unusual and not just because it''ll fill the entire place with exhaust pipe."


    "Miss Kelly is quite correct, you know," the digs manager agreed, post looking at them even more strangely about the ''brought home the landlord''s daughter'' part. "I''m going to have to insist that you keep your engine-running out of my building, young man, I wouldn''t think the environmental health people would stand for it."


    "Aye, sure," said Nick with a nod. "I''ll be working on welding up a frame next,"


    "And you can keep your welding outdoors too," the digs manager declared.


    "Aye, that was the plan, using gas welding equipment in an enclosed environment is a really bloody terrible idea even before we get to the vapours that''ll come off of a lot of metals," Nick told him with a nod. "Acetylene is heavier than air, if a cylinder of the stuff takes a leak it''ll pool on the floor and one spark later you''re sitting in front of the Pearly Gates going ''what in the fuck just happened?''. That''s why I''ve got the cylinders under sheets in a gas cage on a trailer, at home I don''t even keep them in the barn."


    "Yes. Well. Good," said the digs manager, obviously at a bit of a loss as to how to deal with people not having a yes-teacher reaction. "Oh, just run any work you intend to do in here past me first in future."


    "Aye, will do," Nick said with another nod. He then snorted and glanced over his shoulder at the engine and pall of smoke. "Have to admit I''m a wee bittie surprised she started so quickly and sweetly, I thought I was going to have to rebuild her wiring loom before she''d even turn over and never mind firing, she''d been sitting out in all the weather for a while but I just had to hook her up to a battery and give her a bit of clean petrol and she''s raring to go. That''s why I''ll be building a frame first - an engine this eager deserves a bike that''ll let her stretch her wings out and she was in a hardtail, nae the fast special she should be hitched to."


    "And with that wee lecture from Mr Nicodemus ''Pistonhead numpty'' Macbane out of the way," said Annie with a roll of her eyes that merely succeeded in widening Nick''s mad grin - as soon as the door had opened and the thunder from the engine hit her like a brick wall Annie''s cybernetic eyes had taken on the exact same gleam as Nick''s, and it had really kicked into gear when she''d heard he hadn''t expected it to start.


    It was no wonder the two of them were such close friends, Alice decided. They were both just as bad as each other and the whole thing had been a bit rich coming from Miss Annabella ''Reaches under the bonnet to get her totally unsilenced rotting piece of crap daily runner to start and seems to think that''s normal'' Kelly.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "No you are not," said an outraged Alice Liddel, "Cutting my bloody kitten up!"


    It was now just after midday and they''d spent most of that grey and soggy morning post Nick''s motorcycle-related public alarm clock emplacing three containers - brought down one by one on a trailer behind Nick''s van and lifted off it and into place with screw jacks and winches and a lot of swearing and near-disasters - in a line side by side and hard up against each other in the yard behind the Harbourmaster''s, and Alice had just got done with moving her portal into the middle one while Nick got stuck into the left-hand one''s guts with the ripsnorter and a new grinding disc.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    "I didn''t mean cut it up, there''s more than one way to see inside something," the Hamster assured her. "I can get hold of an ultrasound scanner - same stuff they use to take baby''s first photo - straight off the bat and a magnetic resonance imager should be do-able, I have a set of plans to build one out of old cellphone parts, and either or better yet both will allow us to build up a three-dimensional map of the insides of your kitten, then we can compare to a real kitten - a friend''s cat had kittens not that long ago, I''m sure she''d be fine with one going on an adventure. Finding out how much your kitten resembles a real kitten on the insides is going to go a good way to finding the practical limitations of your ability to create - using your container as a reference point, my bet is that your creations follow your knowledge of the real thing, meaning that your kitten is most likely a kitten-shaped blob of unmatter ''programmed'', for want of a better word, to act like a kitten. Tell me, what went through your head while you were making that container yesterday?"


    "Big metal box about yay size, with double doors at one end," Alice admitted.


    "And that was exactly what you got, yes. Have a good look at this container''s details, how the hinges and door closing mechanism work, which part is made out of what, the shapes that make up the sides and top, and those little hollow corner things used to stack them, then go and compare your container."


    Alice did.


    They were similar only in rough size. The real container had corrugation in the sides and back end, its top and sides were made out of multiple pieces of steel each, and it had a wood floor; hers was all made out of what looked and felt like a single piece of entirely smooth metal. The real thing was covered in rough lines that had to be welds and parts round the door closers and hinges that were bolted together; hers was one piece. The real thing had these little hollow corner things, hers did not. The hinges were nothing alike, and neither were the doors - hers was built like a household door and door latch all made out of seamless metal, the real thing was nothing like it.


    She took it further and compared the sizes; hers was wider, lower, and shorter, and by the time she gave Nick his tape measure back it didn''t take a single word to convey what she was now thinking to the Hamster, who took one look at her and said, "I''ll go and get that ultrasound scanner."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Alice? Are you in- Okay," said Annie Kelly as she saw the scene inside the left-hand container half an hour later and perhaps ten minutes after it had finally stopped raining, "Why are you two idiots running one of those thingies for looking at a baby foetus before it''s born over a kitten?"


    "This," said the Hamster, "Is not a kitten."


    "You what?"


    "It''s a glob of ''unmatter'', for want of a better word," the Hamster said. "It has no internal organs, no skeleton, no muscles - it''s shaped very much like a kitten on the outside, but on the inside it doesn''t even have a complete throat and never mind lungs or a stomach. What this is, is an Immaterial construct shaped like a kitten, powered by magic, and ''programmed'', for want of a better word, to act like a kitten. Whereas this," and she handed Alice her ''kitten'' back and went and got the kitten she''d brought out of the basket it''d been sitting in, "I can guarantee is an entirely ordinary kitten as its mummy is a friend''s cat. Watch the difference."


    They did, and Alice said, "Well," several times while Annie slowly shook her head in wonder.


    "I would very much like to get hold of one of those invisible people you were on about and have a look inside them with this," the Hamster told her.


    "Alice," said Annie, "Do you think you can make people like those?"


    "If I dared to I probably could," Alice told her.


    "Right!" and the Hamster clapped her hands. "I think that''s probably enough of that for today, we''ll let McBangBang get her - sorry, his - laboratory equipment set up then get back to it. Let''s talk about safely controlling magic; come on, leave your not-actually-kitten in unspace for now if you want to keep it, it''s almost certainly an active spell effect and what we''re going to do next is going to leave you briefly without anything like enough available magic to support one of those - talking of which we''d better be somewhere out of the way for this, it''s not known for being very subtle," and with that she rose to her feet and headed for the front of the pub.


    Having stowed the not-a-kitten in a hurriedly-created fenced off kitten-escape-proof patch of ground the far side of her portal Alice followed her, and was led out to an elderly brown car parked just across the road opposite the front of the bar; the Hamster unlocked it, letting Alice climb into the passenger side (carefully avoiding the puddle big enough you''d half expect ducks to move in that was currently occupying most of that side of the road) as she got into the driver''s seat and got it started.


    "Ugh, I hate stick-shifts, particularly on the wrong side of the car," she grumbled.


    "I take it this isn''t your car?"


    "Nah, I drive an Oldsmobile with an automatic transmission and, I note, the steering wheel on the right side of the damn vehicle," the Hamster said, poking at a satnav that was set up on the car''s dashboard. "There we go. This thing belongs to Sane Dave - Vrotch, that is," and after some fumbling and swearing and grinding of gears she got the car moving.


    "I''d been meaning to ask, why do you lot keep calling him ''Sane Dave''?" Alice asked.


    "Same reason he calls me the Munching Hamster, we know each other by our net names," the Hamster said with a shrug.


    They drove almost due south out of Inverness, down past the college digs and along the south shore of Loch Ness, then turned into the hills on a single-track road and finally, after passing a set of crossroads in the absolute middle of nowhere, the Hamster turned onto and drove a hundred yards up a muddy forestry track.


    "There should be a clearing about fifty yards thataway," she said, pointing into the sparse scrub and neat rows of young trees. "We''re going there."


    "Okay," said Alice, slightly dubious at the prospect - however the ground proved a good deal harder than she''d expected, hard enough the heels they were both wearing didn''t sink into the earth.


    They found a picnic table dumped in the centre of the clearing with a tarp draped over it, which drew an amused snort out of the Hamster.


    "Very clever, Fat Bloke, very clever," she said, dragging the tarp off. "Take a seat; it''s time we began."


    Alice did so.


    "Close your eyes," the Hamster continued. "Feel the world around you - you should be able to feel a presence of sorts, flowing over you and around you and through you, almost but not quite like warmth, ebbing and flowing, almost in waves - can you feel that?"


    "... Yes," Alice eventually concluded. "Yes, I think, yes I can, in fact I... think I''ve been feeling for," and she shied away from the realisation that she''d been feeling it since the exact moment that she was blown up.


    "That," said the Hamster, "Is the power we call magic - it flows across the surface of the world, flowing along the boundary between land and sky, Earth and Air. Now, you should be finding that as its waves pass through you, and flow over the boundary between yourself and the world outside you, it leaves a little of itself behind - can you feel that?"


    "I... think I can?" Alice mused, concentrating on the flows that she could feel around her - and that was when she registered something else, something that threw her and her eyes snapped open; she stared down at the expertly-constructed plastic and metal, built perfectly to simulate living skin, of her hands.


    "The... boundary, between ''me'' and ''not me''," she said, "It, it includes my hands."


    "Of course; why wouldn''t it?" the Hamster asked, puzzled, and Alice realised the other girl had no idea how much of her wasn''t flesh and blood.


    She slowly, deliberately, pulled her jersey off and laid it down on the table, and spent a moment running her fingers over the seams where metal and high-tech plastics met scarred skin.


    " Alice Liddel, what in the name of all that''s holy happened to you?" the Hamster asked, voice gentle.


    "I died and survived the experience," Alice told her, and in a sense finally admitted to herself. "My arms... didn''t, and neither did my legs. I don''t, didn''t, actually look like this - I had grey eyes and my face, I was honestly rather plain and my hair was never anything like this nice. I wasn''t ugly, but until I came round in Grace Mitchell''s living room nobody ever would''ve called me pretty... It''s still a bit eerie looking into a mirror and seeing this face looking back. But that''s not the important part - my hands are high-tech plastics and 3d-printed parts over a light aluminium frame and the magic, it''s flowing over them as if they were really my hands."


    The Hamster reached out, and took hold of Alice''s cybernetic hand.


    "Alice," she said, "This is your hand. It''s beautifully made; someone went to a great deal of effort to get your hand exactly right for you, if someone was to purchase something like this hand of yours I''m holding from a private cyberneticist it''d set them back hundreds of thousands of dollars... Tell me, when I do this," and she reached out and gently ran her fingertips down Alice''s upper arm, from her shoulder to her elbow, "Can you tell without looking when my finger crosses the ''divide'' between flesh and cybernetics?"


    "... No, no, I, honestly I can''t."


    "And isn''t that all you need to know?"


    Alice flexed her fingers - she could see the muscles in her forearm moving.


    "It really is perfect, isn''t it?" the Hamster said. "You''ve even got goosebumps, put your jumper back on you silly baggage and let''s get on with learning magic."


    "I suppose when it comes down to it I''d been stuck on this loop of ''this isn''t me''," Alice said with a sigh, doing what she was told; it may have stopped raining but there was still a chill in the air.


    "Not unusual for severe injury patients, or so I''m told," the Hamster said with a sad smile and a shake of her head. "Now, shut your eyes again, and feel for where the magic flowing through you, your wonderful precision-engineered arms included, is leaving a little bit of itself behind and Alice, I want you to give me your most solemn promise that when you find it you won''t try to make it leave more of itself behind."


    "... I take it doing that kills a lot of people."


    "Yes," said the Hamster, voice soft and filled with sorrow, and then she shook it off. "Never you mind that, Alice, can you feel the magic in your soul?"


    They sat there for a long time - Alice would never be able to say how long - before she finally realised that yes, she could, and oh God was the temptation to reach for more so strong.


    "I... think I see why it kills so many people," she said. "It''s like it wants to be pulled in,"


    "It doesn''t want anything at all, Alice, it''s a flame - it''s just there, and it warms your soul and it feel wonderful and enticing until you get too close and then it''ll burn you to a cinder in a heartbeat," and there was that sorrow again and Alice had to wonder exactly who this very young woman had lost that way, and when. "Now, I want you to raise your arm, cup your hand, and point your palm at the sky - keep your eyes shut, now - and push it all, every last scrap, down your arm and out through your hand and up."


    Alice did.


    The roar was so loud it was more felt than heard, and the light so bright Alice could see it through her eyelids, even with her head bowed to face the table. It went on and on and on, a tremendous, staggering, river of just sheer power, beautiful, lethal, the Hamster was just so right to compare it to a flame - on and on, the seconds even longer than the bombing had been, and then it was over.


    "... what in God''s name," Alice whispered, "Was that?"


    "Look up," said the Hamster.


    Alice did, and she was confronted with a patch of clear blue sky surrounded by the sullen grey of the clouds that had blanketed Inverness all morning.


    "We''ll check online later, but from the duration and amplitude I''d guess that to have reached the edge of Earth''s atmosphere," the Hamster told her, rising to her feet. "That was about as much power as a week''s worth of output from a small aviation fusion reactor - it was unfocused and basically just light, but there was enough of it to cast shadows in daylight and that lasted for two minutes eleven seconds straight. Come on - we''d better get out of here, people are going to come looking real soon."


    "I think," Alice rather shakily said as she followed the Hamster back towards the car, "I can feel it... pooling. In me. Again."


    "Try firing it at the sky again - you don''t need to bother closing your eyes this time," the Hamster said, and Alice did so; she got what looked for all the words like a white cod-scifi ''blaster bolt''.


    "Alice, I want you to promise me something; if you ever get towards the unsafe levels of magic that presence you can feel will start feeling like pressure. If you ever feel that, ever, I want you to promise me you''ll just drop everything and get rid of it. This is life-and-death, Alice; the presence turning into pressure is the only warning you get before your head explodes... You must have been pretty close, I''d say you''d been trickle-feeding it for several months without letting any go at all."


    "Okay," Alice said. It was about the only sensible answer to that.


    "Magic, well, it''d be easy to say it ''wants'' to be used, but it''s more realistic to say that it has to be used or it will run out of control and that will kill you. The amount you can handle will gradually increase as time goes by, but it will never, ever, ever do so quickly enough to keep up with the pace you collect it without even trying, and that pace increases too," the Hamster said as they arrived back at the car. "Think of it as a pressure vessel; if the pressure grows too high¡­"


    "Bang," Alice said as they climbed into the car.


    "Exactly." The Hamster once again juggled the car into gear, and proceeded to very messily reverse it down onto the road, get it turned and, with yet more gear grinding and cursing at the steering wheel for being on the wrong side, get it heading back down towards Loch Ness and the town beyond.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The first thing out of Fat Bloke''s mouth once Alice and her friends were no longer in earshot as the group of mages made their way over to Vrotch''s car was, "How bad?"


    The Hamster shook her head. "Well it was getting pretty damn dangerous, we''re going to need to move faster next time - I''d say she wasn''t more than a few days from disaster. I timed the initial release; two minutes eleven seconds.¡±


    ¡°Ouch," said McBangBang.


    "We''re going to have to work harder on detecting young mages before they go ''pop''. That girl hadn''t hit the danger point from passive collection, but if she¡¯d noticed her power and started actively drawing?¡± The Hamster, who had gone round the passenger side of the car, shook her head as she scooted the keys across the roof to Vrotch. ¡°On the bright side, she''s a strong one... Gahh, still feels wrong getting in this side and not driving."


    "Yeah, I was going to say, two minutes eleven initial release?" Vrotch said. The others having seated themselves, he fired the car and got it moving with a great deal more ease than the Hamster had.


    "No joke, you all saw when she let it loose. That girl is going to be very very big news in a few years time, boys. We''re all going to have to put assets into making sure people like Mackenzie or Cortez don''t get their claws into her ¨C and I don''t mean getting her conscripted, McBangBang, Te Ariki is a sight better than the likes of Beltran Cortez but we all know better than to trust him with something like this. If she becomes someone''s attack dog, we''re all for it ¨C she could very easily be made into the next Baba Yaga."


    "Oh, you won''t hear a word of argument from me, I assure you," McBangBang promised with an airy wave of his hand. "Mum''s the word, loose lips sink ships and all that rot, I may respect the Brigadier but I most certainly do not like the Brigadier and I quite surely would not trust the Brigadier with a young lady''s future, he has the most unfortunate habit of using people up and throwing them away."


    "Not unusual in his line of work," said Fat Bloke.


    "Oh I know that, I''ve spent long enough rubbing elbows with military intelligence, but that doesn''t mean that I have to like it," McBangBang told him with a shrug.


    "So how are we going to keep Mackenzie away from her given, you know, she''s rooming with one of Mackenzie''s witches?" Fat Bloke asked.


    "Don''t worry about that, man, I''ve got it covered," said Vrotch with a smirk.


    "Okay, certainly, how?" McBangBang asked.


    "Ways and means, man, ways and means ¨C let''s just say there''s a reason I''ve got away with spending most of the last decade being a thorn in Mackenzie''s side from practically right on her doorstep, and it''s not her liking my style or anything."


    "Don''t keep us in suspense," said the Hamster.


    Vrotch gave her a smug side-on look.


    "Tectonic plates show the boundary effect," he said.


    "You fucking what mate," said Fat Bloke.


    "We''re directly on top of a faultline," Vrotch told him. "It''s more or less inactive but it''s still a faultline and it runs from Fort William all the way up Loch Ness, right through the middle of Inverness, not so coincidentally directly under my caravan park, up the Moray Firth, and out into the North Sea. And I checked, and it turns out that it''s got a boundary effect ripple to match. It''s an even more potent boundary than the Irish Wall or even the Canadian border, by a couple of orders of magnitude. So not being the sort to look gift horses in the mouth and having spotted it right after Fiona got herself witched, I used it to power a warding, constructed specifically to protect me and mine from Isobel Mackenzie. And," and he looked especially smug, "As of their accepting my help with their vampire hunts, Alice and her friends count. I checked."


    "Do you suppose that about the boundary effect goes for every faultline on Earth?" McBangBang mused.


    "It does, but they''re all one single vast network of boundary," Vrotch told him.


    "That''ll be why the effect is as powerful as you''re intimating," the Hamster said. "It''s not just the fault along Loch Ness driving your warding ¨C it''s the entire planet, isn''t it."


    Vrotch nodded.


    "I can''t act with impunity," he told her. "The catch is the warding stops her escalating ¨C she can retaliate at the same level as I act. That''s why I''ve kept it to annoying pranks and denial of assets, if for example I tried to have her slotted she''d be free to drop a dozen bull haggi in my porch. She found out about it the hard way, I rigged her garden gate to hit her in the ear with a bucket worth of sloppy porridge every time she walk through it, she tried to make my caravan park fall into the sea, the working backfired and blew her to Bermuda. She tried two dozen different ways of wiping me out before she got the idea. The last one oh so nearly got her, it teleported her into low orbit."


    "Mate, she works out how you''re doing it you are so fucking dead," said Fat Bloke.


    Vrotch let out a maniacal cackle, "It''s self-protecting, man, it''d treat someone trying to mess with it as her trying to kill me ¨C she''ll find out if she ever works out how I''m doing it."


    "Blew her to Bermuda?" the Hamster asked.


    "Yup. Loud bang and she''s flat on her arse in a ditch in Bermuda... I put a shitload of work into that ward and it turns out to be complex enough and smart enough to cross the construct line and start behaving in ways I hadn''t entirely expected. Basically, it has a sense of humour."


    ¡°We¡¯d better start cooking up a few simple spells to teach Alice,¡± said Fat Bloke.


    ¡°Yeah,¡± said the Hamster. ¡°We better had.¡±


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "I take it," said Annie as Alice walked out the back of the Harbourmasters, "That funny bright light was you."


    "Light?" Alice asked, then clocked what Annie had to be on about. "Oh, light, yes. That was me and if you want to come into my portal there''s going to be another big flash in there in a moment.


    "Oh aye," said Nick, scrambling to his feet - he''d been taking a smoke break in between tackling the container alterations with his gas welding gear, "Let''s get a look at it then," and the rest of those present - Fiona, Andy, and Mackie - made varied agreeing noises and got to their feet too.


    "I don''t suggest looking straight at it, this isn''t going to be so big but that first one was bright enough I could see it through my eyelids and the Hamster said it was casting shadows in daylight," Alice told him. She paused in the mouth of the centre container and had a glance around, noting that the planned modifications were more or less done ¨C Nick had cut away most of the wall in between the containers and had made a start on actually welding them together and sealing the gap. A quick check showed that you couldn''t see it from the outside, they still looked like three separate containers.


    "Shaping up," Alice said.


    "Aye, I''ll be needing to be taking paint to it later, keep the rust off of it, and we''d probably better be building a roof over them, but this sort of alterations aren''t exactly complicated if you''re no caring whether it''s looking pretty," Nick said with a nod. "And besides, I was starting to go potty getting a jig set up for building that bike frame."


    "A you what?" Alice asked.


    "A jig is something to be making sure everything''s lined up properly before you start cutting and bending the parts for whatever you''re trying to build," Nick explained as they headed through the portal, the revamped far side of which the others had seen that morning after Alice moved it out of the derelict vampire lair. "Once I get this one right it''ll sit round that engine I was getting running this morning with a dowel where the swingarm pivot needs to go, a bit of scrap plastic pipe where the top of the rear shock needs to go, and a bit of dowel where the headstock needs to go, so then I can slip pieces of the right sort of tubing for my bearings onto or into them then weld everything up safe in the knowledge that I''m no building a bike with wonky suspension. I have to admit I''m no entirely up on the best ways to do it, this''ll be the first time I''ve actually built a frame for a bike instead of finding a wreck and reconditioning it and it turns out that it''s a bit of a bastard of a job ¨C bloody fascinating stuff though and it''s going to be dead satisfying when it''s done."


    "I see," said Alice, who didn''t know a good bit of the terminology Nick had just used but got the general idea and honestly didn''t care. "Anyway, you''d probably better look the other way, this is going to be bright."


    Nick apparently decided to play macho idiot and didn''t take her advice.


    It took nearly twenty minutes for him to stop swearing.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "That," said Annie Kelly, "Was even more bloody impressive close up."


    They were now sitting on Alice''s sofas and Nick had finally lapsed into silence as his eyesight recovered from the dazzling he''d got himself by looking straight at what Alice was doing when she let fly into the depths of unspace.


    Fiona nodded her agreement ¨C she''s seriously surprised Alice by having been struck speechless, and still had a look of slightly dazed awe on her face.


    "Aye," she said. "That was quite bloody something.¡±


    ¡°Now,¡± Alice said, ¡°I¡¯ve got to draw just a little bit and keep it at that level.¡±


    ¡°Okay, sure,¡± said Annie. ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°Because¡­ oh, imagine it like, oh, like steam in a boiler,¡± Fiona said. ¡°If there¡¯s too much steam in there and it can¡¯t let any off...¡±


    ¡°Bang. I see,¡± said Annie with a nod.


    ¡°Generally, bang in the form of the mage¡¯s brain going on fire, but aye, bang,¡± said Fiona. ¡°And a mage, any mage, is always going to have some ¡®pressure¡¯ - so it¡¯s critically important to learn how to judge how much you¡¯ve got so you can safely release excess. Because if you don¡¯t, bang.¡±


    ¡°Like the pressure gauge and safety valve on that boiler, aye,¡± said Annie with another nod.


    ¡°More like, oh, imagine a boiler with a pressure gauge that doesn¡¯t come with markings, an easy-to-miss flag that pops up as the boiler passes the safe pressure limit, the only safety valve is manually-operated, and it never stops gaining pressure,¡± Fiona told her.


    Annie thought about that for a moment and then said, "Jesus."


    ¡°And I¡¯m stuck with that in my brain for the rest of my life,¡± Alice, who didn¡¯t know a great deal about boilers but got the picture, said with a sigh. ¡°Lovely.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ll be just fine,¡± said Nick.


    ¡°There¡¯s no way of knowing that for sure, Nick,¡± Fiona said, drawing an enormous snort out of him.


    ¡°Aye right,¡± he said. ¡°Ken that Vrotch was saying about people who get good hunches the other night?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re saying you get good hunches,¡± said Fiona.


    ¡°No. I¡¯m saying I don¡¯t often get a hunch but I¡¯ve never been wrong,¡± Nick told her. ¡°And I¡¯ve got a hunch that she,¡± and he angled a thumb Alice¡¯s way, ¡°Is going to be very very good at this stuff, and no just because she¡¯s looking the part either. She¡¯s smart, she¡¯s fast, she¡¯s no daft at all, and just as importantly you never have to tell her anything twice.¡±


    ¡°Looking the part?¡± Alice asked.


    ¡°Well aye, you¡¯re dark-haired, pale-skinned, really pretty, and you dress like a seventy-year-old widow,¡± Nick told her. ¡°You''re always wearing the sort of clothes you¡¯d be expecting an old lady who bides alone with a cat and a spinning wheel to be wearing and no a pretty lassie, and now you¡¯ve even got a wee puzzock, you''ve even got the right sort of air of ¡®I used to run with the SOE, what¡¯ve you got¡¯, backed up by the way you''ve no got a gun visible on you making it look like you''ve got to be hiding something, all that you¡¯re missing is the pointy hat.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re saying I look like, well, basically like a witch.¡±


    ¡°¡­ Well not in so many words,¡± said Nick.


    ¡°Aye, he¡¯s saying that you look like a witch, and Alice, he¡¯s no wrong,¡± said Fiona. "You look like a teenage spey-wife, honestly if anyone in the dorms was hearing you had mysterious powers they''d be saying ''well it bloody would be her now, wouldn''t it'', I''m pretty sure half of our course are thinking you are one anyway."


    "Well so be it," Alice decided. "If I look like a witch and everyone''s going to assume I''m a witch I might as well learn to back it up, and not just because it''s good for my chances of not having a head explosion either. Gonna do the time, might as well do the crime."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Okay," said the Hamster. "Now, I want you to try releasing just a little bit of power in that way."


    It was now Sunday morning, and after a quiet evening in contemplation of the latest curveball life had thrown her and a night of fitful sleep and weird dreams - not nightmares, the sort that leave you vaguely scratching your head over what the hell that was about when you wake up - Alice was back in unspace with the Hamster, Fat Bloke, and a fascinated Annie.


    Alice did; as little a bit as she could. She was rewarded by a spark jumping off of her hand into the depths of unspace with a pop, and the small wellspring of power she''d been keeping diminished sharply.


    "Try doing the same but pointing your finger, get it to flow down your finger and go in the direction that you''re pointing," said Fat Bloke, and Alice did so, pausing only to draw some more power.


    "How accurate can you get it? Maybe make a couple of targets - say, dartboards, you know how those are made, right? Tightly-wound paper held together with steel wire - across the far side of your patch of unspace and try firing it at them," the Hamster suggested.


    "Okay," said Alice, and she did exactly that, making two dartboards appear hovering in the air fifty or sixty feet away. "God I feel ridiculous, like a kid playing cowboys pointing their finger - ''Bang! Bang! You''re dead!" and she launched a spark of power at a dartboard with each ''bang''.


    "Maybe, but go and have a look at what that did to a dartboard," Fat Bloke told her, angling a thumb.


    Alice did.


    There was a finger-thick hole punched dead centre in each dartboard.


    "And that," said the Hamster, "Is the simplest possible actual spell. It''s got any number of names - ''spark'', ''mage bolt'', ''magic bullet'', and so on and so forth and so ad infinitum. Call it what you like, it does the same thing and is the big reason any mage classes as armed even when butt-naked. The only real gotcha in it comes when you''re casting at a moving target - down here near to sea level in Earth''s atmosphere magic travels at about four hundred miles per hour projected like this, so you''ve got to cast at where your target''s going to be when the spell gets there, and it''s just as worth remembering what''s behind your target when you cast as it is when you fire a gun. Effectively, your cowboy impression is very appropriate."


    "Let''s go back out to the Harbourmaster''s yard and try it on concrete blocks," said Fat Bloke.


    Alice gave him a measuring look, then nodded and rose to her feet.


    "How well do you think it''d work on a vampire?" she asked.


    "As well as it did on that dartboard," the Hamster told her as they walked back through Alice''s portal, "Though that said as spells go it''s not a very efficient one - you''ll notice how sharply it drained your reserves - that said at very close range it will thoroughly over-penetrate a human body, undead or otherwise, at six foot it''ll punch a hole in a quarter-inch steel plate, and for vampires you''ve still got the ''heart or blow head off'' problem, finger-thick holes aren''t so good at beheading. And, using magic directly to inflict damage like that is quite power-intensive, bear in mind that what you''re using here is a leveraging of what''s usually an emergency way to vent off excess power before it can kill you. It''s typically much more efficient to use magic to, for example, excite something''s molecules until it bursts into flames or just melts. The primary reason to learn this first is it is extremely simple and easy to do and can be used to burn off a lot of power very quickly in a slightly less visible manner than blowing a miles-high plume of light into the sky, just do an impression of a cowboy gunfighter and you''re dry as a bone in moments - the secondary is that it''s a good first step in learning to properly direct magic."


    "Okay, so, concrete block," Alice said, looking around the yard for one of those. "Concrete block, where to find a concrete block,"


    "Preferably a concrete block nobody''s going to miss," Fat Bloke said as Nick, who was marking up some sheet steel, opened his mouth; Nick closed his mouth again with a puzzled frown.


    "What for?" he asked.


    "Alice is going to explode it with her brain," Annie told him.


    "Okay, this I''ve got to be seeing," he said, and he indicated the pile of rubbish up against the bridge abutment. "There''s some old bricks in there, that do?"


    "Sure, that''ll do just fine," the Hamster said with a nod, and he and she headed over and had a root around, coming out with a couple of bricks that Nick lobbed into the centre of the yard.


    "Okay," the Hamster said as she and Nick arrived back beside Alice, "Let ''er rip."


    Alice pointed at the nearer brick and let the power go - and one bright flash later there was a loud bang and the brick burst into a cloud of dust and fragments.


    "Mental!" Nick declared, delighted. Alice punctuated by blowing the other brick to bits, then blowing imaginary smoke off her finger.


    "Interesting," said Annie. "You can do that essentially at will?"


    "As long as I''ve got the reserves of power for it, yes," Alice told her. "Hang on, I''m going to try something," and she ducked back through her portal, released what little power she had left, and ducked back out. "Okay, I just dumped everything, now I''m going to find out how long it takes to drip-feed enough power to do that point and shoot thing. Anyone got a stopwatch?"


    "Right here," said Fat Bloke, producing his mobile - it wasn''t until later that Alice would realise and be surprised by the way that what the world she found herself in called mobile phones no longer gave her a double take.


    "Okay, so start it when I say ''now'', then stop it when I fire," Alice told him, to which he nodded along.


    "Ready when you are," he told her.


    "Now," she said, stopping trying to keep the power out, and let it fly the moment she thought there was enough, splattering mud around at the far end of the yard.


    "Almost dead on five seconds," said Fat Bloke.


    "One zap every five seconds, huh?" Annie mused.


    "Let''s double-check, actually I think do that three times and get an average," Alice said, and they did exactly that.


    "Okay," Fat Bloke concluded at the end of the third try. "We''ve got five point one seconds the first time, five point four seconds the second, and five point three seconds the third. I think we can rule most of the variance out for me being fumble-fingered with my mobile - how are you on power, Alice?"


    "Bone dry, look," Alice said, and tried to release anything left at the rubbish heap - she got a brief soft pulse of light stretching about a foot from her hand.


    "Yes, pretty much completely empty indeed," the Hamster agreed. "Okay! I say you keep at that for a while, then once it feels completely natural email me and we''ll look into some more complex spellcasting, okay?"


    "Sounds okay to me," Alice, who felt no need to rush about this, agreed.


    "Good. In that case I''d better get on, and I''ll see you in... well, when I see you."


    "There was something else I think I''d better ask about," Alice told her.


    "Shoot," she said.


    "I noticed something last night after I took the not-a-kitten back out of unspace," she said. "It feels like it puts a bit of a drain on my magic when it''s this side of the portal."


    The Hamster frowned.


    "I''d call that confirmation that it is functionally an active spell effect, meaning that while we don''t know for sure it would most likely dissipate if you run out of juice. Now, if that''s everything I really need to get moving."


    "Just one thing before you take off," said Annie.


    "What''s that?"


    Annie indicated the badge on the Hamster''s belt.


    "I looked you up," she said. "I really wouldn''t have expected to see the loudest Nihon separatist of them all wearing one of those, given how the cops over there treat anyone who doesn''t pretend to think the American annexation of Nihon is the best thing ever," and that completely silenced everyone in the yard.


    ¡°I have a dear friend,¡± the Hamster eventually said, ¡°Who when she was fourteen tried to walk through Akibahara wearing a jacket with ¡®Free Nihon¡¯ written upon the back. She was beaten, arrested, then six weeks without a word later she was thrown out the back of a speeding paddy-wagon naked in the bad part of Shinjuku, where a bosuzuko gang - biker kids, they''ve since become very good friends of ours - found her, realised she was still alive, and called an ambulance. She would''ve died if they hadn''t found her... You know, some things are worth having some fat creepy gropey sleaze-bag for a boss, such as getting to dispatch the fuckers you know did that to your friend to an incident right opposite where you know her dad¡¯s hanging with his Yakuza buddies drinking sake and polishing their guns, as far as I know the bodies are in barrels full of concrete on the bottom of the South China Sea. And besides, you''re not the only one who''d never have expected to see the Munching Hamster wearing one of these ¨C the last place the TLA are going to look for someone who advocates killing cops even a tenth as often as I do is behind ''the thin blue line'', even if it''s effectively as a glorified secretary, and that''s why I joined the force the very first chance I got. Anyway, I have places to be and things to do; I''ll see you lot later.¡±


    They watched her go in silence as she headed in through the Harbourmaster''s back door and through into the pub proper.


    ¡°Is it really that bad?¡± Alice asked as soon as she was sure the Hamster was thoroughly out of earshot.


    ¡°Is what really how bad?¡± Fat Bloke asked.


    ¡°What the Hamster said,¡±


    Fat Bloke gave her a grim smile.


    "There is no such thing as a ''goodie'' in international politics, only differing degrees of baddie," he said. "I''m sorry, but the fact of the matter is that you become a world power by being even more of a ruthless amoral bastard than all the other ruthless amoral bastards - and that goes for the British Empire too, bad as Washington is Westminster makes them look like some sort of long-lost third flowerpot man."


    That was when a very shaken-looking Mary Macbride came hurrying out of the back door of the pub and said, "There''s just been a murder in the toilets."


    -/- End: Chapter 3-/-

 Chapter 4 part the first

    The dead man - a burly dark-haired fellow clad in a cheap suit - was face-down in the urinal with his dick out and a small round hole punched in the back of his head, and Fat Bloke broke the silence by saying, "Can''t have been a heavy calibre and I think it must''ve been a low-velocity bullet, looks like it went in and bounced around inside his skull instead of coming back out."


    "Has tae be pretty fresh, he''s still warm," Fiona said. "Very dead, but he must''ve been shot in the last twenty minutes from how warm he is," and she turned the body over.


    "His name''s Gillen Innes," said Mary, who was rather pale. "He''s in here a couple of times a week, he''s always been polite enough but I''d nae buy a second-hand car from him if you get my drift, and bloody right it''s recent, he walked in here under his own steam not ten minutes ago."


    "Who else was in the loo?" Annie asked her.


    "Murdo was taking a shite when it happened, he''s half deaf and he says he didnae hear anything, he found Gillen when he came out of the cubicle, I think it must have been that blonde man in the greatcoat who left just ahead of your Nihonjin friend, I''ve never seen that one before," said Mary, abruptly realising it as she spoke.


    "I think this must''ve been a hit, this Gillen lad must''ve got mixed up in something he shouldnae have, it''s nae like guns quiet enough we''d nae have heard it from the yard are exactly thick on the ground," and she caught Alice''s expression. "Dinna tell me you believe that shite you''ll see in films with someone screwing a wee bittie of pipe onto a gun and it making this silly wee zap noise, a gun with a suppressor on it is nae quiet, it''s just less loud than a gun normally is."


    "Is there anything real that could''ve done this then, I mean I guess apart from enchanted stuff?" Alice asked.


    "Aye, that there is," said Mackie with a frown. "But they''re nae exactly thick on the ground - the only one myself''s knowing of is SOE stuff, this weird-looking bolt-action pistol with most of the pistol built-in suppressor, and it''s about as easy to be getting your hands on as hen''s teeth."


    "Enchanting a gun to be quiet enough Mary wouldn''t have heard it from the bar isn''t easy either," Fat Bloke said. "I mean it''s possible, basically by diverting the sound to somewhere else, but you''re only likely to see it done as an active spell effect - it''d take a shit of a lot of work and expertise to do it as an enchantment, Sane Dave could probably do it and Dr Mayhem could definitely do it, but yeah, it''s not exactly kiddie stuff and in all honesty it''s not really worth the bother when you could just pop a hole in someone''s head with direct magic."


    "Let''s get a look at that security camera," said Nick; Mary nodded and they all went trooping through to the bar to do exactly that.


    The dead man had been drinking at the bar when the group of them had gone through to the back room; the blond man Mary had mentioned - tall and lanky with several days worth of stubble and scruffy-but-short hair, and clad in beat-up camouflage trousers held up by a belt with a death''s head buckle, combat boots, and a check shirt along with the grey greatcoat Mary had said about - had entered the pub, glanced around, and on seeing Gillen Innes headed directly to the bar and ordered a small whisky, and Mary said that he''d had a clipped Received Pronunciation English accent entirely at odds with his appearance; when Gillen had gone to the toilet he quickly finished his drink and went straight in there.


    The blond man spent less than a minute in the toilet, and on coming back out had immediately left the pub; a check of the exterior camera showed he''d turned left out the door and headed round the corner in the direction of the town centre.


    "What do you want to do?" Annie asked Mary.


    Mary took a deep breath, then sighed.


    "You lot get all the illegal bits out of here, then I''ll phone the cops," she said. "Gillen was a crook but he didnae deserve being shot in the back of the head like this."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Gillen Innes, huh?" said Vrotch, who was sitting on the steps to his caravan passing a joint with Vicky.


    "Aye, that''s who Mary was saying it was,"


    "Well she was wrong about him not deserving it, he started pimping hookers out about three months back," said Vrotch with a sigh. "And honestly he was the sort of bloke who actually deserved a bullet in the brain, he, uh, basically his whores are mostly well, a bit young if you get my drift. In all honesty I think that''s probably what got him bumped off, the big dog in that line of work up here really doesn''t like pimps who use girls who''re still kids, basically the biggest crime-lord in the north is an ordinary decent criminal. Dude''s mostly in gun-running, it''s where he got big start in crime and basically it''s his main front business, but he does drugs and whorehouses and dud money too."


    "Oh aye, anyone I''d ken?" asked Nick.


    "Yeah man, everyone in the north knows Scotty Johnson," said Vrotch with a shrug.


    "Wait," said Annie, "What. Scotty Johnson? As in the Scotty Johnson, Johnson and Co Gunsmiths Scotty Johnson? He''s a crime-lord? I... didn''t expect to hear that."


    "Yeah, he keeps it pretty quiet because of course he keeps it pretty quiet but why do you think everything west of the Longman Road is so safe and everything the other side of the Longman Road nearly as safe? The entire no-go is basically his, every underground workshop and drug factory in Inverness pays him protection money and it''s his dudes who enforce the rules north of the line of the railway. That''s why there''s not all that much vampire activity north of the railway too, basically anyone who tries to mug someone over that way tends to end up in the bottom of a peat bog and any vampire that tries to bite someone on Scotty''s ground ends up chained to a roof to greet the rising dawn and, um, basically nonces who try it up there tend to wind up the same way as the Brahan Seer, you know, shoved in a barrel of tar and set on fire. He, uh, doesn''t have any sense of humour about people starting stuff on his lawn. The cops know it too, basically they just leave him to it because his dudes can walk down a street in the worst part of town without getting a Strathcarron toothpick in the ear," Vrotch paused, frowned, took a huge drag of his joint, and added in a huge cloud of cannabis smoke, "Don''t tell anyone about that though, the Innes gang down in Fort William wouldn''t see eye to eye with it."


    "We are, um, safe to splatter vampires in the no-go?" Alice asked.


    "Yeah," and as usual Vrotch visibly had to stop himself calling her ''man'', "I checked after you dudes bailed Jenny Devil out and Scotty called it pest control."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Half an hour later and they were on their way to clean out the next vampire lair on Vrotch''s list, this one at a house in a suburb on the edge of Inverness called Dores right on the north end of Loch Ness, during the approach to which Alice saw, sitting at a mooring on the loch, something she''d never seen before, and she pointed.


    "Is that a flying boat?"


    "Aye, looks like one - pretty big one too," said Annie, who was sitting left-seat up the front tonight.


    "Huh," Alice said. "Never seen one of those before." It had a barge alongside it with a pair of full-sized tanker trucks onboard, and there were people up on the top of the wings.


    "You havenae?" asked Andy, surprised. "They''re nae exactly unusual or anything though that''s bigger and has more guns on it than most of the ones you see about - Grandpa''s house is just across the other side of the loch there," and he pointed, "And I''m always seeing the flying boats coming and going from the anchorage here whenever I''m across to visit Granny. Most of them only have the two engines, there''s only a couple of the four-engined ones I''ve ever seen on the loch and that one''s new, dinnae think I''ve seen it before. Looks almost like a Sandringham, both the big ones I''ve seen on the loch were Sandringhams, but the engines are different and so''s the nose and a Sandringham doesnae have all those guns."


    "They''re pretty common, least the two-engined type is, flying between the Outer Isles, lot of drug-sellers and gun-runners use them, and they''re really really common places like lake country in southeast Africa or the Caribbean or whatnot," said Nick.


    "That anchorage," said Fiona, "Is where Scotty Johnson''s overseas gun sales leave Scotland, I''m pretty sure it''s where most of his drugs leave Scotland, and I know for absolute certain several planeloads of Eastern European prostitutes have landed there."


    Andy said, "Oh."


    By the time they''d cleaned out the latest vampire lair, the big flying boat was away from its mooring and starting its takeoff run along the loch; Alice took the time to watch it go, and then turned the Bigger Van to drive back towards Vrotch''s caravan park since the Harbourmaster''s was still a crime scene.


    Fiona got a phone call shortly after they got back to the digs, was on the phone for less than a minute, and then hurried out of the digs looking worried; she told Alice not to wait up for her on her way out but did not elaborate on where she was going.


    It would not be the last time she did that, nor would it be the last time she came back the next morning looking wiped out and generally stressed and refused to explain where she''d been.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    On Monday 30th of September 1996, a date that henceforth would live in infamy in the mind of a certain Miss Liddell, Alice set to the mad scramble of catching up on the week she''d missed due to her inadvertent unspace time-out - not the greatest challenge given how early in the course she was, but a lot of sweet-talking tutors was involved and she ran into a brick wall when it came to one specific module; data analysis.


    MISTER Murchison spent the span of Alice''s excuse (in a word, illness) steadily getting smugger and smugger, before finally replying with what had to be the smarmiest smile she''d ever seen in her entire life.


    "Yes well," he said, and there was something decidedly oily about his voice, "As it happens I''ve heard all the excuses you''ve been peddalling for spending the last week lazing around and I don''t believe any of them - as such, I won''t be accepting any of your late work, it would not do to encourage bad little girls to slack off. However, I could be persuaded to accept work, but there''d be a price for it."


    Utterly unable to believe what she was hearing Alice said, "What."


    Murchison apparently took that as a request for clarification. He undid his fly and exposed himself.


    Alice would, years later, describe what went through her mind in that moment as like something had exploded inside her head, leaving behind the purest rage she''d ever felt.


    "Do you seriously think you can get away with that, you sick bastard?" she asked, collecting the papers she''d been attempting to turn in.


    "Of course I do, you stupid little girl, and for your insolence you can be sure I won''t be accepting any more of your work without you getting down on your knees and doing me a little service," and he indicated his crotch.


    "I''ll have the bloody cops on you," Alice told him, and spun on her heel.


    "And who do you suppose will be believed, a known amnesiac teenage girl with a questionable attendance record or a respected educator? Go right ahead, little girl, run to the police and find yourself arrested for bearing false witness. Or alternatively you could be a good girl and do what your betters tell you."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Well was yourself seeing that then Nick?" said an impressed-sounding Mackie as the dust from the door-slam settled. The two of them had just been walking down towards the front of the building in preparation to go up to the chip shop for their lunch when Alice exploded out of a lecture hall they were passing.


    (Another passing student, a boy from Benbecula who was studying electronics, crossed himself and did everything in his power not to attract the attention of the furious teenage spey-wife. Wise lad.)


    "If you''re meaning the Alice-sized ball of uncontrollable rage that was just storming past ourselves having tried to take that door off of its hinges on the way out, aye," said Nick with a nod. "Bloody hell! I''d swear she was about ready to back her bloody witch look up by blowing the roof off of the college, I''ve seen a body angrier but no by much."


    Another door thundered shut just round the corner from them in the rough area of the office of the man who acted as head of school for, amongst others, the antiquities department.


    "What just happened? I saw Alice heading out of the data analysis lecture hall like she was about to go and unleash the apocalypse," said Fiona as she walked up the hall to join the boys.


    "Well I don''t know now, do I," Nick told her. "She''s gone into whatsisface, oh, shit, Jack something? Yourselves head of school, that lad, his office."


    "Well whatever''s going on that was the coursework for the Data Analysis lectures she missed that she had in her hand," said Andy. "I don''t think Miiiiiister Murchison let her turn it in."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Dr Jack Kensington took one look at Alice''s expression when she stormed into his office, and rather mildly asked, "Is there some sort of problem, Miss Liddell?"


    "I want Kevin Bloody Murchison fucking fired," said Alice, and a small frown appeared on Kensington''s face.


    "I see, and why would you wish to see the newest member of this faculty become a former member of this faculty?" he asked, tone still neutral.


    "The son-of-a-bitch just told me he won''t be accepting any of my work unless it comes with a fucking blowjob," Alice told him, and he abruptly lost the air of mildness.


    He spent a moment visibly locked in deep thought, then straightened his tie and said, in a soft and very calm voice, "I see."


    "So what are you going to do about it?" Alice growled.


    "Frankly? I don''t know. While I believe you - over the term thus far I have increasingly found myself feeling that there is something I do not like about the man though I had not previously put my finger on quite what - at the end of the day Kevin Murchison is... connected. A matter of this nature will require, when dealing with persons with backers of the sort he has, that we handle it with a great deal of, shall we say, care."


    "So you''re just letting him get away with this shit," and Alice whirled so fast the heel of her boot tore a hole in Dr Kensington''s office carpet; the door thundered shut behind her again.


    Jack Kensington drew a deep breath, adjusted his tie again, and murmured, "... That was not even remotely close to what I was about to propose,"


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Fiona, I need your help," said Alice Liddell, diverting from going to sit on her bed and instead seating herself at Fiona''s tea-table, which had gained a second chair in the time since just that morning. Fiona raised an elegant eyebrow and started serving Alice a cup of tea and Alice noted her room-mate had already got exactly how she liked the stuff perfectly memorised.


    "Oh aye, and with what?"


    "You know that bastard Murchison?" Alice said, and Fiona paused and carefully set her teakettle down - she popped a single lump of sugar into the cup she''d just poured and carefully passed cup and saucer to Alice.


    "So he decided he''d be trying his luck with yourself as well," she said, and Alice stilled.


    "As well?"


    Fiona nodded.


    "I... may have become so caught up in searching for you last week that I didn''t turn up for any lectures either," she said. "There''s a bottle of the strongest mouthwash I could find anywhere in Inverness on the top of my wardrobe if you''re wanting rid of the taste."


    "What do you mean if... Fiona, you''re not telling me you,"


    "We won''t be having data analysis next year," Fiona said with a shake of her head. "About all we can be doing from our position is grit our teeth and get on with it. I know it''s shit, but until there''s a land war..."


    "You''re just going to give the son-of-a-bitch what he wants."


    "The fact of the matter," said Fiona Macleod, and Alice would later note that her left eye had twitched as she spoke, "Is that we are women living in a men''s world; at the end of the day the only thing we''re worth a damn to anyone for is our looks, and that''s why it''s a good thing we look so damn good," and she tried to encircle Alice''s waist with her hands, but Alice Liddell had hit her limit and she threw Fiona off, leaving the slightly taller girl flat on the floor with a look of utter shock on her face.


    "Fuck," she very clearly and calmly enunciated, "That."


    Fiona just lay there, shock fading into a look Alice was too furious to even try to read, and then asked, her voice breathless and sounding as if she might faint, "What are you going to do?"


    "I am going," said Alice, "To change this fucking zoo."


    She spun on her heel, the heel in question putting a divot in the lino, and stormed out.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Alice''s next port of call was Annie''s room; this was locked and banging on the door got no answer, so she went heading down the common room, still in a rage and looking for Annie.


    The Kelly heiress was however not present; the usual cast of students were loitering around, a mixture of pimply young men mostly either horsing around or trying to chat up a mixture of pimply young women, one of whom, a particularly wasp-waisted blonde with a laugh like a donkey on crack and the most irritatingly snobby upper-crust accent on Earth, whom Alice fortunately didn''t know any closer than to clearly understand she was A, utterly up herself, B, claimed to be named ''Lucinda'', and C, overpronounced absolutely everything, she was capable of pronouncing ''oh'' with four syllables, was loudly and snootily talking smack about about the exact person Alice was looking for; she was just haughtily declaring her heartfelt belief that Annie Kelly of all people would fold like a gambler with a hand full of crud the moment her ''betters'' were so much as to look sternly at her because obviously someone with a daddy that rich on new money hadn''t ever had any problems.


    Fucking Murchison, fucking Fiona, and now this toff bitch talking crap about the only young woman Alice knew for dead certain would never need to worry about this shit?


    Her head snapped round and she fixed the snotty little cow with a flat stare that, from the outside, could probably have stopped a charging bull haggis dead in its tracks due mostly to an as-yet unnoticed developing fault with her cybernetic eyes causing the micromovement controllers to cut out until voluntary movement right as Alice Liddell went prompt critical.


    "If you''d seen what I''ve seen," she bit out, quite unaware that the only person in the audience who knew what she meant was a struggling-not-to-smirk Nick Macbane who had just realised what was about to happen, "Did you know she was born blind? Birth defect, her retinas failed to form in the womb. Then when she was only eight years old her parents moved to the absolute back of fucking nowhere, then one day some clever buggers decided they were going to get rich by beating up and kidnapping this little eight-year-old blind girl, well they didn''t factor for Mackie Romanov, did they - the only person who got out of that car alive was the little girl in the boot. Two years later the doctors gave her a general anaesthetic, cut her face open, and when she woke up she was seeing for the very first time through eyes with these little visible mechanical camera irises in the middle, I''ve seen it, and that''s why Annabella Kelly is made of steel, you absolute blithering idiot."


    Lucinda, who had spent this rant steadily deflating, didn''t even remember to overpronounce the very small, "... oh," that escaped from her.


    "I trust," Alice said, having won the struggle to calm down and failing to notice the now seemingly-in-great-pain Nick up the back, "We''ve heard the last of that bollocks?" and Lucinda''s gormless expression lasted just exactly long enough that Alice was spinning on her heel, leaving the latest divot in the floor, by the time Lucinda''s head started frantically nodding.


    Alice caught the tail end of the motion and had just enough presence of mind to say, "Good," and got out of there before she went and decked the stupid bitch, her heel-cracking stride brisk enough and utterly bloody furious enough she was out of earshot by the time that Nick turned round and found Dr Jack Kensington standing right behind him looking where Alice had gone with a faint but detectable calculating look on his slender face, and the thought of what was going to happen the very moment Kensington learned about the way that arsehole with the wee twat moustache hadn''t been accepting Alice''s coursework made him have to flee to the toilets to give it up and laugh his fool head off.


    He had no idea whatsoever that particular ship was already well underway, or what exactly Murchison''s refusal to accept Alice''s coursework had entailed - or for that matter that Jack had been looking for Alice with a proposed course of action.


    Jack Kensington, for his part, knew (or perhaps that should be thought he knew) exactly what he''d just heard.


    He proceeded at once to somewhere private, removed his mobile from his pocket, dialled, waited as it rang through and was answered by a chirpy young female voice telling him that he was through to the British Museum Department of Special Circumstances and how could she help him, and said, "Hello, Amelia - it''s Jack Kensington up in Inverness. Is Doctor Portendorfer in the office? I''ve just discovered that I have a student he will want to know about immediately," and one she had said that Dr Portendorfer was indeed in and that she would transfer Jack''s call to him momentarily, and he had thanked her, the very next words out of his mouth were, "Wilf, one of my students appears to have the Sight in its postcognitive form."


    Alice Liddell had just become a strong candidate for the status of most valuable antiquities student in Scotland.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Alice was still fizzing that evening when she decided, since the sun was still up (if just creeping past the horizon) to walk back down to the Harbourmaster''s to see whether the cops had finished as she hoped she''d get the chance to take it out on some vampires, she had a large heavy armoured van suitable for running the undead down and that and a bit of making the undead go splat with her finger felt like just the ticket to her educated opinion, she wasn''t sure where they were going to be meeting up, and it was a shorter walk than heading over to Vrotch''s place.


    She had just crossed Portland Place and was waiting for the traffic to clear enough for her to cross Shore Street to the pub when she happened to notice, and spend a moment watching, a freight train crossing the bridge above the Harbourmaster''s, and that was when she saw something she had not been expecting; the train had a pair of white-clad passengers.


    As Alice watched, the pair jumped off the wagon they''d been standing on, down onto the lineside embankment just behind and to the east of the pub, and Alice glanced left and right, saw a break in the traffic, and darted across Shore Street; she quickly found the two, who obviously weren''t aware they were being watched, emerging from between number 58 and number 56 on Inness Street; they started walking normally the very moment their feet were on pavement and Alice quickened up her place to go and get a better look.


    She got close enough for that at the corner where Innes Street met the Railway Terraces while the two were waiting to cross the Longman Road; the two were so close in looks they just had to be twins - with the main visible difference the length of their hair, one had hair just below her shoulders and the other had hair so long she probably often sat on it. They were clad in matching white dresses, their waists were dramatically corsetted (Mackie would have been able to make a circle with his hands round either girl''s middle) both were wearing brown leather dog collars, and the short one was wearing a lead of all things, the handle of which the long-haired one was holding.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    Keeping far enough back to follow them without it looking like she was following them, Alice kept on them as they turned from the Railway Terraces into the back entrance of the station, where they went straight into the ticket office; Alice pretended to look at timetables while keeping an eye on them and wondering about how little notice anyone was taking of that lead, mostly it seemed to provoke slight eye-rolling, and got a closer look as they came out of the office.


    Up close, they looked like they were probably Middle Eastern, with dusky skin, jet-black hair, and finely-formed features - but the part that really gave Alice pause was their eyes.


    The shorter-haired girl was arresting enough; she had almost honey-coloured, verging on yellow, eyes - a shade that didn''t seem quite right in a human face and was startlingly reminiscent of Grace Mitchell - but it was the long-haired girl whose gaze really gave pause; she had total heterochromia. Her left eye was the same yellow as the short-haired girl''s eyes, her right was a really striking bright blue and to top all that both of them had a haunted, hunted, edge to their gaze almost but not quite like a thousand-yard stare.


    Alice followed them towards the platform end of the station, where they turned onto platform four where, according to the departures board, the evening train for Glasgow was standing to wait for the train from Aberdeen so people getting off of one could get onto the other.


    The two girls in white quickly boarded the Glasgow train, and Alice went and sat herself down on a bench where she could see whether the pair left, and acted as if she were waiting for someone to get off of the Aberdeen train; a few minutes passed and the Aberdeen train arrived, a flood of people got off of that and got onto the Glasgow train, and as (a couple of minutes later) the guard blew his whistle and the Glasgow train pulled out, Alice got a good look at the pair of girls she''d been following, confirming that they were indeed on the train - and then she started wondering why she''d been buggering about like that.


    She shook her head and headed back out of the front of the station to walk back down to the Harbourmaster''s before anyone started wondering where she was if they were open, and that was when Alice saw that a pair of twin girls identical to the pair she''d just finished following were queuing at the tram stop in front of the railway station. The only visible difference between this two and the two who were now on the train to Glasgow was that the one wearing a lead was the long-haired one this time.


    Alice positioned herself so she could hear them as they waited; a few minutes of peace and quiet and the two not saying anything later a tram arrived, and the pair boarded, requesting tickets to the spaceport.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    When Alice did get to the Harbourmaster''s she found herself annoyed again; it was in fact still closed with POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape across the doors and a couple of police vehicles parked across the road from the pub, so first she went all the way back up to the digs to see if the others were about, only it turned out that Nick had pulled an all-nighter working on his new bike, Fiona was not currently on Alice''s list of people she had any inclination to engage with, and for whatever varied reasons nobody else felt like going out to splatter some walking corpses, so instead of stewing, she sneaked through the back gate into the Harbourmaster''s yard and headed through her portal for a bit of a dick about.


    This she commenced by constructing herself what amounted to a firing range a hundred yards off through the trees in her little patch of land floating in the void, in which to practise her ''magic bullets'' - it took a bit of experimentation to figure out what would and would not have holes blown through it, with the eventual solution being to use a big mound of earth (which she had to carefully concentrate on being earth instead of a solid lump of something that looked like a mound of earth) for a backstop, and she''d just finished it and started investigating the insides of her not-a-kitten, trying to work out how to give it a digestive tract, when she was surprised by Fat Bloke saying, "Knock knock," from her portal.


    "Come in - oh, Fat Bloke, hadn''t expected to see you, what''s up?" Alice asked, gesturing him in the direction of a sofa. The not-a-kitten mewed a greeting.


    "I thought I''d check out how you were getting on," he said, sitting down on the indicated sofa.


    "Not sure what I should say to that," Alice told him. "I''ve been practising that ''magic bullet'' trick constantly, basically every time I can get somewhere private where I won''t leave random holes in things - talking of which how far does it go before it dissipates? I haven''t quite dared to just let it off into the air, I don''t want to risk poking holes in any satellites."


    "Don''t worry too much about that," Fat Bloke said with a laugh. "It starts to attenuate immediately, by the time it''s a couple of miles away from you if it hit someone it''d feel like being poked with a stick, and it attenuates out enough to be lost in the thaumatic background by about ten, fifteen, miles. So just don''t shoot it off if you can see or hear any aeroplanes. There''s spells you could use to hit things in low orbit, but a mage bolt isn''t one of them."


    "Good, that''s a weight off my mind," Alice declared; she drew a bit of magic, pointed up, and added, "Bang," getting another chuckle out of him.


    "Clown," he said with a smile to show he was ribbing her.


    "My finger the deadly weapon, what a weird idea that is," Alice said with a nod. "It''s going to take a while to get used to it."


    "Yeah, it really messes with your head at first doesn''t it," he agreed. "I used to get these bad dreams about just cooking off like, oh, like bullets in a fire, back when I was about at your level of learning, took a while for the woman who taught me to get me over that hump. How''s the getting used to keeping track of how full your reserves are going?"


    "Eh, I can''t say I''ve got very far with that," Alice admitted. "I can tell when I''ve drawn just enough for one magic bullet, more or less - I mess that up about one time in five - but knowing when I''ve got enough for two, that''s another question."


    "Yeah, there really is only one way to learn it - practise, practise, practise," Fat Bloke agreed. "Talking of which, the others are planning to come over in a bit with another friend of ours, I know him as Kitty Katty, he''s a Yank but a good bloke anyway, we figured we should have a look for any marked ''elemental'' tendencies you might have at the soonest opportunity if that''s okay with you? Anyway while we''re waiting for that lot to make an appearance I have some sensor equipment with me, stuff for recording dimensional resonance and ambient thaumatic flow, I wanted to ask if it was okay to set it up in here, it''s why I decided to come over early."


    "Certainly, and I wouldn''t mind a talk over how it works," Alice said, putting her not-a-kitten aside for now.


    "Oh, that''s nothing complicated," Fat Bloke said, rising to his feet; she followed him back to the portal. "Basically it''s possible to enchant metal to expand and contract in reaction to how much magic is flowing over the surface of it instead of heat, what we call thaumaturgist''s steel, right, or to do the same in reaction to dimensional resonance. Then you just use that to make a bimetal component - one piece of thaumaurgist''s steel bolted rigidly to a matching piece of normal steel in an environment with a known level of background magic," and as he was speaking they arrived at a tatty old Bedford saloon car that was parked just inside the Harbourmaster''s yard gates, "So the whole assembly flexes in reaction to magic. Then you attach one end of that rigidly to a support frame, and attach a pen rigidly to the other end, with an assembly to make a long roll of paper pass underneath it, turning at a fixed rate - so the pen draws a line on the paper in reaction to how much magic the entire device is exposed to. We call that a thaumometer, our friend Doctor Mayhem - you haven''t met him, bit of an oldschool mad scientist - he invented it, it''s based on how old barometers work."


    With that, he opened the car''s boot and lifted a rather nice-looking brass-and-polished-wood piece of antique-looking machinery out.


    "I made this out of an old barometer in fact, because look at it, ain''t it snazzy," he said. "The dimensional resonator works just the same with a different bimetal component and I mounted both of them in the same casing - they''re the blue and red lines on the paper here," and he pointed. "Blue for the thaumometer, red for the dimensional resonator. The paper moves at a rate of an inch an hour under the two needles. Now let''s see what it does when we take it into unspace... ooh, look at that, the dimensional resonance is going up as I carry it towards your portal, that''s really cool!"


    "The thaumometer part looks pretty stable," Alice said as he paused just outside her portal.


    "It crept up a little as I approached the yard here - see how it''d pushed up from where the line was a few minutes ago? That all happened in the last couple of minutes of my drive. Nothing unexpected, you''re spending a lot of time here and an active spellcaster like you just being in a place tends to push the background up a little, as does the presence of a portal."


    "Let me guess, that''s a part of how you find young mages before they have a head explosion," Alice guessed.


    "That and word of mouth are about the only approaches we''ve got so far," Fat Bloke confirmed with a nod. "The Flimflam Man - another of our friends, Vietnamese bloke, bit of a smart alec but his heart''s in the right place - is working on something a bit more applicable but there''s any number of government-related problems... Now let''s advance the roll a little - like this," and he turned an adjustment knob on the side of the machine, pulling a little paper past under the pens, "Then see what happens when we take this thing into unspace."


    He stepped through the portal, Alice hard beside him.


    "Check it out, they both shot way up!" he declared, delighted.


    "Neat," Alice said with a nod. She made a table appear for him to put the machine on, and the dimensional resonator pen jumped again then dropped back to where it had been after they stepped through the portal.


    "Huh, that''s cool - does it do that any time you do stuff in here?" Fat Bloke asked.


    "We can find out," Alice said with a shrug - after a moment of thought she made a brick appear in her hand, causing the pen to jump again, made the brick as hard and heavy as foam rubber, causing a second jump, then buzzed her foam brick at Fat Bloke''s head, getting a startled yelp out of him followed by laughter when he realised what she''d done.


    She grinned at him; he picked her ''brick'' up and went to chuck it back at her, only for her to make it stop existing before it could leave his hand, getting another startled noise out of him and another jump out of the needle.


    "So it reacts to me creating things, such as a brick, altering them, such as turning a freshly-created brick into a joke not-a-brick, and uncreating things, not-a-bricks included," she said. "I say we perform a series of experiments at five-minute intervals, to give the drum time to turn new paper under the pen nibs, repeating what I just did in steps. Then see if the readings change when I create, alter, and uncreate smaller and larger things, and the same goes for pseudo-living things."


    "That sounds like a good preliminary plan," said Fat Bloke with a nod. "Oh, and add to our planned series of experiments tying it to a long rope and throwing it off of the edge of your patch of ground into the far blue - well, actually nebula-colour - distant yonder."


    "I can create an animate barometer-carrying thing, like a clockwork robot bird thing with a space and straps for the barometer housing in its back, have it fly a few miles away at say about four miles per hour then turn round and fly back," Alice suggested. "Use that to test how it reacts to creating, altering, and uncreating pseudo-living things."


    "Hello, anyone home?" came the voice of the Munching Hamster.


    "Over here," Alice called over to her, and she came sauntering through the trees, accompanied by Annie Kelly and a slightly scrawny-looking fortysomething man with buzzcut hair and a prominent lantern jaw, who was clad in a shirt and slacks.


    "Evening," said the Hamster with a smile. "Alice, this is a mutual friend; Kitty Katty, and as I trust Fat Bloke already told you it''s time that we taught you a little more advanced spellcasting than a simple mage bolt."


    "First up we''re going to check if you have any particular affinities," said Kitty Katty. "That''ll tell us where to go from here - it wouldn''t do to have you attempting to learn to throw a fireball if you have an affinity to hydromancy now, would it."


    "Then once we''ve checked that and you''ve practised with a handful of simple spells - tricks like this," and Fat Bloke snapped his fingers in a way that ended with his thumb pointing skywards and a tiny flame like a cigarette lighter sprouted from the tip of it, "We can move on to working out what sort of spell foci is going to work best for you."


    "Okay," said Alice, "So how do we go about checking if I have any particular affinities?"


    "That''s easy, we teach - or attempt to teach - you a series of simple spells for the different affinities - actually that''s another part of why I''m here, between the three of us we represent the full set," said Kitty Katty, "Oh yeah, it''s entirely normal to have multiple affinities and you can even develop more down the line so long as you don''t specialise too tightly on one method of working - any way that''s how we find out if there''s any that you find particularly easy, or of course particularly hard."


    "As far as what the possible affinities are, if you''re thinking ''classical elements'' that''s a start but you''re not thinking widely enough," the Hamster took over. "Earth, air, fire, water, void, light, metal, wood, spirit, mind - that all stems from primitive understandings of magic, fed through several iterations of deliberate obfuscation and fairy-stories of course. The reality is more along the lines of ''thermal energy'' or ''pressure'', a so-called pyromancer can most likely freeze something solid just as easily as they can throw a fireball."


    "The typical nine aren''t the total extent of it either," Fat Bloke added. "You''ve got kineticists, think impossible martial artist or say Fiona. There''s what we call biomancers, and they''re pretty illustrative of how thoroughly off the penny dreadfuls'' portrayals reality is - magic of life may good on paper but realistically speaking you''re just as likely to find a life mage sewing man-eating monstrosities together out of orphans as you are to find some sweetness-and-light healer type, and a death mage is as likely to spend all their time arguing with the departed shades of varied relatives and dead celebrities as they are to be setting walking corpses on people. Bear in mind that Baba Yaga of all people had a life-magic affinity so marked she was all but incapable of using anything but biomancy, yet her name still makes most of the population of Eastern Europe cringe to this day despite the fact she got her head blown off by a Bolshevik marksman nearly seventy years back."


    "And beyond that we have the issue with ''affinities'' being nothing more than a way of pigeonholing something that is in reality a whole lot more complex than any extant description we''ve ever been able to find - even our own model is strictly limited by the fact that it has nothing whatsoever to do with the magic and everything to do with the person handling it," said the Hamster. "They''re a shorthand description at the end of the day, and like all such shorthands and simplified versions they are only useful up until a certain point and you should never be afraid to attempt something outside the box because some idiot told you that your affinities mean that you can''t do it. Anyway, we may as well start at the beginning - fire."


    "This is as simple a piece of fire magic as you could want," Fat Bloke took up, and again snapped his fingers. "Just concentrate the tiniest smidge of magic into your fingertip, about half as much as you''d use for the finger-gun trick, and use some sort of mnemonic like snapping or flicking your fingers to turn it into a flame,"


    Alice started trying exactly that - to begin with she snapped her fingers, then tried flicking them in varied other ways.


    "It helps if you picture you''re lighting a cigarette lighter," said Kitty Katty, and Alice did so without result.


    "Okay so I think we can conclusively state that you''re not a pyromancer - let''s try hydromancy next," said the Hamster, and she unearthed several sheets of photocopier paper from her handbag; she laid one down on the table, held her hand up with her fingers spread and continued, "Note that my hand is dry - presto!" and pressed her hand down on the sheet of paper; when she lifted her hand there was a wet handprint there.


    Alice tried it, and got as much of a result as she had with the attempt to summon a flame. The pattern continued with attempts to get a small gust of wind, to produce an electrical spark, to make a blade of grass curl round her fingers, and so on and so forth - the three magi suggested one little spell after another, and time and time again Alice got nothing.


    Finally, with the attempt to give herself a spot having failed (ruling out life magic) Fat Bloke gave Alice a long measured look, and said, "Alice... just out of interest, what''s the closest you''ve ever come to dying?"


    "Jesus Christ, Fat Bloke!" Kitty Katty complained. "That''s not the sort of question you should be asking just out of nowhere like that!"


    "No, I think he''s onto something," said Annie, speaking up for the first time since she''d entered the portal with the Hamster and Kitty Katty. "Isn''t he, Alice."


    "I got blown up a few months ago," Alice said, voice low.


    "Define blown up," said Kitty Katty, a sudden note of understanding in his voice. "No, no need - you really aren''t a fan of talking about it, are you? Who would be?"


    "I''m pretty sure it was a terrorist bomb," Alice told him. "I... there is a lot more of me that''s metal and plastic than I''m comfortable thinking about, and before I got blown up my face didn''t even look like this and you''re bloody right I''m not all that into talking about it, I can still see the bit of car flying towards my face every time I close my eyes."


    "Massive reconstructive cybersurgery," Annie added. "She didn''t have any arms or legs the first time I saw her, and thank God her face was covered in bandages, she can''t have looked any too good if the components I saw our doctor getting together is anything to go by."


    "I see," said the Hamster. "Insensitive as his phrasing of it may have been, that is indeed significant at this point, and I have to apologise for overlooking what you said when you told me about how heavily you''d been reconstructed - it is not at all unusual for someone who has come extremely close to dying to develop enough of an affinity for death magic that they''ll struggle to even start learning anything else."


    "How do we test that?" Alice asked with a suppressed sigh.


    "How else? We have you attempt to reanimate an insect," the Hamster told her. "Now, where are we going to find a dead bug that''s not too fried?"


    "I''ll see what I can find in the yard, the pub''s still locked up tight but the cops buggered off as I was coming up the road," said Fat Bloke.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The first thing out of Kitty Katty''s mouth the moment he and his fellow cybermanecers were solidly out of the girl in question''s earshot was, "So why''s that chick totally pissed about something?"


    "You what mate," said Fat Bloke.


    "That Alice chick, she''s so angry she''s just about frothing at the mouth over something - I don''t think it''s anything any of us have done but she''s furious and distracted."


    Fat Bloke and the Hamster exchanged looks, and Fat Bloke shrugged.


    "Don''t ask me, I''m bloody hopeless at reading people," he said.


    "Can''t say I''d clocked on either," said the Hamster. "Well. I think we''d better see if we can find out what''s wrong."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Alice Liddell, Necromancer," said Alice for about the five thousandth time. She was laying on her bed in the dorm while Fiona, who did not appear to have moved more than a few feet since Alice lost her temper a few hours previously, sat at her tea-table and sipped at a cup of tea.


    "So yourself''s keeping saying, aye," said Fiona.


    "Necromaner. Neck-roe-mancer. Necromancer, fuck me. Fucking necromancer. Fuck my hat, I''m a necrofuckingmancer. Am I supposed to get zombies or something? Alice Liddell, Necromancer. Fucking what? Were I Mengele in a past life or something? Fuck me, Alice Liddell, Necromancer."


    "Alice," said Fiona, setting her cup down sharply enough to spill it and rising to her feet, "Yourself''s stuck on repeat."


    "Alice Liddell, Necro-OW!" and Alice changed track mid-word due to Fiona hitting her in the ear. "What the hell was that for?"


    "Well sometimes when your stereo''s stuck in a loop it starts working properly again if you''re clouting it, so myself was thinking maybe it''d be working the same on numpties," Fiona told her, hands on hips and oddly reminiscent of a schoolmarm, "Now, are we done with the repeating ourselves ad nauseum then?"


    "Oh fuck off Fiona, get back to me when you''ve had to find out your future involves a whole lot of zombies," Alice declared, sitting bolt upright and returning the glare with change. "Jesus, what the fuck, on top of everything else I did NOT need to be a natural bloody evil overlord!"


    Fiona very slowly shook her head, went back to her tea table, discovered her spilt cup, and started preparing a replacement.


    "Alice, dinnae be daft," she said. "The most famous death mage ever was a policeman, it turns out that some dead men are downright bloody eager to be telling tales... Now are we going to be stopping dwelling on the penny-dreadful shite version of what a necromancer''s all about? Jesus, you''re an archaeology student, I''d have thought the idea of being able to reliably get ''hunches'' would have you excited, no panicking like an absolute daftie."


    "You what?" said Alice.


    "The word itself, ''necromancy'', comes from an ancient Greek phrase meaning ''divination by the dead'', " Fiona said with a shrug. "Aye, you''re capable of creating walking corpses, but since when was being physically capable of something the same as actually doing it? Don''t try that argument with someone who carries a brace of pistols wherever she goes, you great numpty, it''s no going to work," and she punctuated that by removing the teabag from her cup of tea and taking a sip.


    Alice gave her a slitty-eyed look, drew a deep breath, and declared, "Necromancer!"


    Fiona threw the teabag at her.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The Harbourmaster''s was closed for several days, as a result of which the group of them went to find somewhere else to hang out the following Saturday evening - October fifth - and this ended up being a bar called the Ironworks, on the north side of the road just to the east of where Chapel Street became Academy Street, apparently so named because that was what the building used to be or something, and it turned out to firstly be the primary venue for rock concerts in Inverness and secondly the favourite hangout of a wide variety of students including the crowd Lucinda, the snob Alice had given a thorough dressing-down in the common room, hung around with, and dear Lucinda, whom Alice had noticed giving her and Annie weird looks.


    However it was also the favourite hangout of a lot of other students, including the rest of the archaeology students in Alice''s year, who enthusiastically greeted them on sight.


    "Alice! Fiona! Andy!" Keiko happily declared as she saw who was coming, then continued to say something, and after a bit of thought Alice figured out she''d probably been asking where they''d spent the last month vanishing off to.


    "Mum''s pub," Andy more or less confirmed the guess, giving Alice hope that it was actually possible for an Englishwoman to learn to understand Keiko''s Buckie accent. "You ken my mum runs a pub, where''d you think I''d be hanging out?"


    "Okay sure," said Mike Mackenzie, "If you''re hell-bent on hanging around with crusty old sailors and all of the toy soldier anoraks what brings you dafties up to the real world the night then?"


    "Well there was a murder in the bloody toilets on Tuesday evening," Andy told him, and that got the attention of everyone around him. He continued, "And the fuzz still haven''t let Mum re-open, probably because Dad was killed in a land war."


    "It''s no that, I heard one of the Fort William Innesse boys was shot dead in the Harbourmaster''s toilets Tuesday," said Saul Chisholm. "The fuzz are going to need to go over that one with a fine-tooth comb if they''re no wanting a gang war with the Harbourmaster''s being right on the edge of Longman Org ground."


    Alice soon lost interest as the conversation went into speculation about why a crook from Fort William had been bumped off ''right on the Longman Org''s back door'' and by whom, and Alice wasn''t the only one to quickly lose interest; within about twenty minutes she found herself sitting with Fiona, Keiko, Annie, the one other girl (aside from Annie and Val) on the mechanical engineering course whose name turned out to be Trish Stoker and who did not make a good first impression of herself as she had on being introduced given Alice a really weird look and then studiously refused to look at her again, and a couple of other girls whose names Alice had not yet taped who''d also quite lost interest in wild conspiracy theories about what government branch might want to take advantage of which gangland rivalry, making small talk mostly on topics that were almost but not quite as annoying, such as clothes, and this led to one of the girls Alice hadn''t quite got the name of yet asking Fiona where she''d got her blouse.


    And that was when Fiona smiled and said, "I made it."


    "You did?" the girl asked, clearly surprised. "Holy crap, I wouldn''t have guessed - you''re really good, I thought that had to be professional made!"


    "It''s hard to find clothes in a style I like that show off my waistline," Fiona told her with a pleased little smile. "There just aren''t that many places you can get clothes in my style if you''re down to sixteen inches, and the places you can cost a bloody fortune."


    "Sixteen," said Annie with an annoyed sigh, hitting a topic that got even further up Alice''s nose than the conspiracy stuff. "Bloody hell, Fiona, you lucky bitch, that slim build of yours - I inherited Dad''s build, I had an absolute bitch of a time getting my waist down to eighteen."


    "What the hell is with this insanely-tight-corsets thing anyway?" Alice asked.


    "Come off it Alice, looking really damn good is always worth it," said Annie.


    "Torturing yourself? Fuck that, tightening these blasted things past the point that actually fits you is just plain nuts," Alice declared,


    "Alright for some, what the hell bloody size is your middle anyway?"


    Keiko said something that sounded very annoyed indeed. Annie gave Alice a faintly irritated look, then shouted across to Nick, "Hey Nick, got a tape measure on you?"


    "Sure," Nick shouted back, and a moment later a carpenter''s tape measure came flying down the table; Annie caught it and turned back to Alice.


    "That belt you''re wearing oh-so-provocatively round the narrowest point on you, cough up, this thing isn''t flexible enough to wrap round that tiny bloody waist of yours," she said.


    "What?"


    "Give. Me. Your. Belt."


    "What, oh, bloody alright," Alice sighed, and pulled it off, admitting to herself that she did in fact rather like the dramatic look of the belt. Annie took the tape measure to where her wearing it had put a mark on it.


    "Seventeen inches," she said. "Bloody hell, Alice, you don''t tighten up your corset?"


    Alice paused, looked from one annoyed girl to another, and then said, "Shutting up now," and took the belt back off Annie, who lobbed the tape measure back along the table to Nick.


    Fiona let out a sigh and shook her head.


    "For Christ sakes Alice, you''ve got a seventeen-inch waist and I know perfectly well you don''t pull your bloody corset in at all, don''t you have any idea how insufferable you starting on about the stupidity of lassies like me who have to lace ourselves up tighter than a drum skin to manage a figure like yours is anyway? No wonder Keiko''s looking like she wants to clout you, you''re coming across as a smug self-satisfied upper-class bitch telling us proles we shouldn''t be putting on airs."


    Alice didn''t say anything for nearly a minute, and what eventually came out was, "... Oh."


    "Just let it bloody rest," said Fiona. "Preferably before someone''s trying to make you eat your own teeth, and I''m thinking yourself''s owing some apologies."


    "I''m guessing Doctor Clayton rebuilt you a good deal narrower than you were before the bombing," Annie said.


    "Yeah, he must have, though I hadn''t clocked how much," Alice said with a sigh. "God knows why."


    "Are you absolutely mental?" Fiona asked, throwing her hands up. "Don''t you know what every other lassie in this entire bloody town - apart from Val and she''s, well, Val - would give for a waist that small? Ye Gods, Alice."


    "There''s that bloody rabbit hole again," Alice said with a groan, and tipped forwards until her forehead hit the table with a thump.


    Annie sighed and stood up.


    "Come on, Alice," she said. "I''ll run you back to the digs."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The first thing Keiko said once Alice and Annie were gone was, "So what''s her problem anyway, what the hell was that shite about rabbit holes?"


    "Alice is an amnesiac," Fiona told her, and the rest of the group of girls too. "Some form of retrograde amnesia, probably something to do with whatever injured her so badly over half of her is cybernetic, she doesn''t remember a damn thing right from before the last week of August - well, okay, she''s got a full set of memories but the world she remembers is like some sort of really weird twisted carnival-mirror version and about the only real shared common point is Alice in Wonderland, I don''t even know if her name''s actually Alice Liddell or if she just latched onto the one thing she could actually clearly remember."


    Keiko said, "Ah."


    "You should''ve seen her face when Romanov casually mentioned atomic rocketry," Fiona continued. "You could''ve knocked her down with a feather, that night while she was basically in the middle of a breakdown about it she said something about how every time she thinks she''s seen the bottom of the rabbit hole it turns out to be, quote ''another freight train coming up'' unquote. No, I didnae expect the next sticking point to be underwear, though I probably should''ve guessed it was going to come up, I realised she doesn''t tighten her laces at all some point the first week in the digs - but anyway, that''s what''s with Alice. I thought she''d got shellshock too on top of it but I''m starting to wonder if she hasn''t after all."


    "She''s certainly got the fixed stare for it," said Trish.


    "I don''t know, it only sometimes turns up though it''s been getting more common the last while," "In the end, it''s almost like she''s an alien. Things we take for granted are totally new to her, and I doubt this''ll be the last thing she runs face-first into like that."


    "Well," said Keiko with a sigh and a shake of her head, "It''s probably a good thing I dinnae think she can understand a word out of my mouth then."


    "Aye," said Trish. "You did get pretty descriptive there."


    "We dinnae believe in mincing words in Buckie," said Keiko with a shrug.


    "Nah, you believe in mangling them with an accent thicker than concrete in Buckie," said Trish; Keiko stuck her tongue out at Trish, and Fiona deemed her damage control successful.

 Chapter 4 part the second

    Alice made sure the following day to apologise for firing her mouth off to each of the girls who''d been present at the table in the Ironworks that night and she was slightly surprised how readily someone as fiery as Keiko gave every impression of accepting the apology, or at least the ready smile on the Japanese-looking girl with the incredibly thick accent appeared to be acceptance, and it resulted in a lengthy and rather muddled chat by the end of which she was pretty sure she was starting to make out maybe about one in ten word Keiko said and had definitely had it confirmed that the squirrel was indeed named Jock, that it was a male squirrel, that Keiko had found him abandoned as a baby and hand-reared him, and that he got what Keiko called ''worked up'' if he was away from her thus his constantly riding around perched on her head or shoulders; either way, Keiko proceeded to thereafter act in a manner one would expect a friend to, and Alice decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth and treated the indecipherable girl as a friend in return.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The evening of the first Sunday in October saw the Harbourmaster''s back open and the whole vampire-hunting gang back in there and much to Alice''s disgust the first words out of Fiona''s mouth as soon as they''d sat down were, "So it''s turning out that our Alice is a natural necromancer," and that got surprised noises out of Val and Mary and Keith Thompson, whose ship had arrived in Inverness the previous evening, and the boys.


    Nick immediately asked Alice, "So do you think you can control a vampire? Wait, is there going to be any zombling going on?" and he stuck his arms out with his hands dangling limply and added, "Braaaains," while putting on a hilarious derp face.


    "Shut it you plonker," Alice sighed, glaring at Fiona, who paled slightly.


    "Alice," said Annie, "I think your eyes are developing a fault, when you glared at Fiona there all the micromovements that make them look natural just completely stopped - we''d probably better get on to Doctor Clayton about that."


    "They are?" and Alice blinked a few times and consciously rotated her eyes left and right. "Better?"


    "Jesus Christ Alice, that stare could knock a bull haggis flat on it''s arse," Fiona said, then asked Annie, "Do you think this Clayton bloke could give her a switch sort of thing so she can stare like that on purpose? I think a death-glare like that is worth keeping."


    "Dunno but I don''t see any technical reason why not and anyway we can find out," said Annie, then added, "If you want, Alice."


    "Well there''s no harm in asking," Alice said with a sigh. "And no, Nick, I''m not planning any zombies unless there''s a way to zombie without murder, graverobbing, brain-eating, or stink."


    "Hey Mum," said Andy, "Is there nae still that rat skeleton down the back of the big freezer in the beer cellar?"


    "Was Alice nae just saying nae stench," said Mackie.


    "It''s nae that bad you great woosie, it stopped stinking last year," said Andy with a shrug. "I''m thinking we can pull it out and Alice can have a go with it."


    "Oh, you''re not going to stop bothering me until we try," Alice said with a sigh, getting up, whereupon the whole lot of them minus Mary and Keith Thompson went trooping down to the beer cellar and post Mackie having wrangled the freezer in question out of the way, they fished the long-time-dead rodent out of the mess of dust and cobwebs and bits of rubbish down there.


    "Wow, that''s been there a while," said Val as Mackie was lifting the freezer back in.


    Alice carefully sniffed at the skeletal rodent, and said, "Huh, you''re right, doesn''t smell of much more than general dirt."


    "Aye, it''s been down there since I was wee," Andy said. "Want to give it a try animating it then?"


    Alice considered that, and decided to go with the sheer silliness of animating a dead rat; she collected it and dumped it on top of the freezer.


    "I dub thee Sir Rattythorpe Wigglesworth Rattington, Ratty for short. Arise, Sir Rattythorpe Wiggglesworth Rattington," she declared, extended the feel of her magic into it the way Fat Bloke had showed her with a dead wasp the previous week, and twisted.


    The skeleton shivered a bit, and Alice carefully pushed a little more magic into it, making sure it encompassed the entire dead rat and more to the point the space around and between the corpse that would have contained rat when it was a live rat, and willed it to move, almost like moving a string puppet without the need for strings, and it did - it twitched its skeletal limbs, shuddered, wobbled, and then she got the right amount of magic into the right parts of it and moving in the right way and got it to sit up.


    Getting it to scuttle around took a bit of practise, but soon Alice was making the rat skeleton move in a pretty natural (aside from the skeleton part) way - she made it run around, mime sniffing at things, stand up on its hind legs, and mime cleaning its whiskers and it all seemed startlingly easy.


    Then she made it jump onto her hand, and sit there peering about, and that was when she realised she could feel a small presence in the knot of magic inside the rat skeleton, about which there was a very particular something which was, on the one hand, strangely comforting, and on the other made her wonder, if one got this feeling from an undead rat, would the same from something larger make it way too easy to get carried away with it all?


    "I think," she suddenly decided, resolving to strategically avoid finding out, "I''m keeping him. Let''s go and mud some vampires."


    That was when Mary stuck her head into the basement and said, "Ah, there you are - Fiona, there''s two lassies I dinnae ken looking for you."


    The ''two lassies'' proved to be a pair of young women, one ginger and vaguely familiar from somewhere and the other with mud-brown hair and not familiar from anywhere, similarly dressed to Fiona and both looking impatient; the ginger one immediately said, in a Skye accent, "Ah, there you are - your phone''s nae working, come on, it''s happened again."


    Fiona frowned and said, "Well, that''s nae good."


    Glancing back she added, "Dinnae wait up for me, I''ll most likely be a while," before hastening out of the pub with the other two black-clad girls.


    Nick and Mackie and Annie shared a round of meaningful looks, and then Nick turned to Alice and said, "Hey Alice, did anyone teach you to scry?"


    Alice said, "To what?"


    "That was something Vrotch was showing ourselves while you were stuck in unspace," said Mackie. "How to be looking at someone from a ways away,"


    "Okay no, Nick, I don''t know how to do that without cameras or a telescope or whatnot, and even if I did no I wouldn''t bloody spy on a friend."


    Nick frowned, but nodded anyway.


    "I''m getting a wee bittie worried about Fiona," he told her. "But aye, it wouldnae really be right to be shoving our noses in like that."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    They were just pulling out of the Harbourmaster''s back yard in the Bigger Van when Alice, on looking to the left to check it was clear before she turned to drive over to Vrotch''s, saw a pair of very familiar dark-haired white-dressed young women just exiting the gate between numbers 56 and 58 Innes Street, and she said, "Oh what the, there''s another pair of them."


    "You what mate?" said Nick, and she pointed.


    "See those two girls over there?" she said, turning left up Innes Street instead of towards Vrotch''s. "That''s the third pair identical to them I''ve seen in the last week and this set are right where I saw the first one."


    "So you''re seeing the same set of twins over and over," Annie started, sounding like she wasn''t sure what Alice was on about.


    "No, it''s three different sets of twins - the first pair I saw jumping off of a freight train onto the embankment just back there at sunset on Monday, so I followed them because of course I followed them, made sure I got a better look at them while they were waiting around on the platform, and they got on the train to Glasgow - the passenger train, that is, and got on as in went and bought tickets and yes I did see them physically sitting in a compartment as the train left, don''t ask why, I really needed distractions Monday night - and just after that train had left I came out of the front of the railway station and a pair of girls who looked exactly like them, I mean exactly like them down to the long-haired one having odd eyes, were getting on the tram up to the spaceport."


    "Odd eyes?" Nick asked. Alice halted the Bigger Van beside the road ahead of where the two under discussion were now walking along the pavement.


    "Yeah, the one with the short hair has these sort of amber-yellow eyes, and the long-haired one has one eye like that and her other eye''s blue, I mean really blue, even bluer than Fiona''s eyes,"


    "Weird," said Annie, and pulled her mobile out of her webbing - she had a poke at it and then said, "Well whoever they are they just got off a fish train from Mallaig. What time Monday night did you say you were seeing the other set?"


    "At sunset so, uh, when was sunset? About half past seven?"


    "Aye," said Mackie. "The sun''s setting just about dead on half past seven at this time of year."


    "Yeah, so right about half seven," Alice said. Annie had another poke at her phone.


    "Eastbound goods, was it?" she asked.


    "Yes, it was a whole string of these sort of stubby flat wagons with one of those armed brake vans at the back," Alice told her.


    "Okay, so that will have been... empties from a Fleet Space Arm reaction mass train coming back from the bogie exchange yards with the Sutherland in Mallaig," Annie said. "Everything else eastbound through that bit of track between seven and eight Monday evening was passenger workings, trains from Kyle of Lochalsh, from Fort William, and from Lochinver."


    "Huh," said Alice. "So to cut a long story short, Mallaig again. Interesting."


    "I think maybe we should grab another camera from your dad''s depot up at the spaceport and set it up on the abutment where it''ll see anyone coming down off of the embankment," Nick told Annie, who frowned and then nodded.


    "Okay," she said. "We can do that tomorrow, or... want to follow that two?"


    "Nah, no point farming for trouble, let''s just go give some vampires a good seeing to."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The target for the night was a stone''s throw from the hospital and police headquarters meaning they had to get in and out fast; this they did successfully, though there were already blue lights flashing at the cop-shop as Alice threw the Bigger Van onto the top of Old Perth Road, leading to a talk about how to go about escaping the cops if they went after them at any point, to which Nick said they could easily just put it in the Caledonian Canal and clear out via ''one of Alice''s wee portals'' though he hastened to add that he''d prefer not to as it''d mean building another one, and Alice made a note that she really should get on with working out how to open portals from the Earth side.


    Monday after having once again ascertained that Murchison was still a monumental sexist limp-dicked fuck Alice proceeded to try out the Bigger Van as a bulldozer to entertaining commentary from Nick, then Tuesday the eighth of October arrived and that evening, not long after they''d seen Keith Thompson off with the Diamond once again fully laden with iron, just as they were chasing down a stray vampire who appeared to have been holing up in a derelict box van in the goods yards all hell broke loose.


    Alice and Andy were sitting in the Bigger Van between two of the sheds that lined the southern edge of Harbour Road and as a result the north side of the rail yards, not far from Longman Road, waiting for the others to get back from rubbing out that one vampire so they could go and deal with the next nest on their list, when they heard a massive explosion from the direction of the east end of the goods yard - after a moment''s thought Alice nudged the Bigger Van forwards a bit and they realised they could see a huge fire lighting up that entire end of the yard, coming from the south-eastern corner of the no-go.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Nick and Fiona were hastening across the yard in search of their target vampire - Val and Annie were holding down the fort on the tick''s lair in cae it came back while they were looking for it - when they spotted something out of place; a slim figure, much too small to be their target, hurrying westwards along the side of the line of empty fish vans that were parked in the goods yard.


    They''d just got close enough to see that the figure was firstly female and secondly had something bundled up in her arms when the explosion lit off - whatever went up it wasn''t small, and it immediately flashed whatever had just exploded into fire, a massive petrol fireball blowing skywards and lighting the entire yard up - the figure dropped her bundle, which produced a chain-like clatter, and spun round to face back the way she''d come, revealing a couple of oddities - there were a couple of protrusions on the sides of her head, silhouetted nicely by the fire, and she appeared to have a tail.


    She froze for a moment and then started splitting it back the way she''d come, towards the source of the explosion, and right then who should step out of between two of the fish vans but just the tick they were looking for; the vampire, who obviously hadn''t noticed Nick or Fiona, clotheslined the running girl, laying her flat between the tracks; the vampire was just saying something hackneyed about what have we here when Nick arrived, Claymore first, and took his head clean off.


    "You okay?" he asked the girl on the ground, and was surprised to find a very wide set of cat-like slitted green eyes looking back up out of an otherwise human face with one hell of a scar down across her right eye and cheek. The train the other side of them - mixed goods - jolted into motion with a grunt from the locomotive about a hundred yards away east up the track.


    The sudden unexpected cat-girl tried to say something but all that came out was a slight weezing sound; she looked frustrated and scrambled to her feet, grabbed whatever she''d dropped - it really was a chain, and it was attached to what appeared to be a steel collar round her neck - and went running like hell towards the west end of the goods yard; Nick glanced at Fiona and the two of them took off after her.


    She kept her dead sprint right out onto the side of Longman Road, whereupon she stopped dead in her tracks, so suddenly Nick nearly ran into her, but he stopped too when he saw what she''d seen.


    Apparently someone else had concluded that Scotty Johnson had been involved in the killing of Gillen Innes or something: Johnson & Co Gunsmiths was bathed in pulsing blue lights.


    The cat-girl cast wildly around then must have seen something about the gradually-picking-up-speed goods train; it took Nick a moment to realise what, but then he spotted Scotty''s right-hand-woman Mags running along beside the brake van with Scotty himself slung like a bag of potatoes over her shoulder and a pair of burly men carrying big briefcases running behind her; the red-haired woman caught the brake van, handed Scotty up to the guard while in the same motion getting herself onto the brake van''s steps, then the two burly men took it in turn to throw their briefcases to her, each of which she handed up into the brake van before hauling herself up; that done she caught the hand of one of the two men as he put on a burst of speed, effortlessly hauled him aboard, and repeated the performance with the other, and a moment later the train started to pick up speed.


    The cat-girl stumbled to a halt and spent a moment casting wildly about, and her eyes lighted on Nick Macbane.


    She bundled her chain into one arm, took a hold of his sleeve, tried and failed to say something again, then started tugging at his sleeve trying to get him to come somewhere, and he decided to keep following her, letting her latch onto and lead him by his left hand; Fiona trailed along behind them as they hurried east along the yards towards the fire, and Nick realised he could hear gunfire from up there.


    "What''s happening?" Fiona asked.


    "Fucked if I ken," said Nick. "Whatever it is, it''s in and around one of the old industrial units down that way,"


    "I think that''s the illegal bar Scotty''s got set up along that end of the no-go," Fiona said, and right about then they got close enough to get a good look at the scene and all three of them skidded to a halt, the cat-girl included.


    "Jesus," said Nick.


    The derelict industrial unit he vaguely remembered seeing people who looked like pub patrons going in and out of was well afire, and so was a tanker wagon that had been standing nearby. There was half a burning police Saracen laying upside down about thirty feet from the blazing illegal pub, but it wasn''t that, or the circle of other police vehicles, some of them on fire, or the cops cowering behind railway vehicles and fixtures, that really grabbed one''s notice. Oh no; that was the scruffy-haired and lanky unshaven blond man in the shabby grey greatcoat, beat-up check shirt, combat boots and battledress trousers held up with a death''s head buckle who was standing in front of the inferno that had been an illegal bar, a police-issue self-loading shotgun in his left hand and a handful of flame in his right, and a hell of a grin on his face; he also looked very familiar - he was for definite the man Nick had seen on Mary Macbride''s security cameras coming out of the Harbourmaster''s toilets right after Gillen Innes was killed.


    He threw his handful of flame at one of the police vehicles and it brewed up just like that - suddenly the entire vehicle was on fire, ammunition cooking off inside - a burning man hurled himself out of the driver''s hatch and was blown away with the shotgun by the grinning maniac.


    "Fucking rozzers!" the man yelled, proving to have a distinctively Londonian accent very much unlike the Received Pronunciation English that Mary had described. "Fucking ''ave it fuck-for-brains, and ''ave some of this!" and he threw another fireball at another vehicle, which went up in a roaring fifty-foot-tall pillar of fire.


    Then he noticed the frozen-to-the-spot cat-girl, and Nick; by this time Fiona had got into cover behind the line of fish vans


    The man gave Nick an unreadable look then grinned like a maniac, said, "Fuck it," just clearly enough for Nick to catch, and pointed at the cat-girl, and Nick glanced at her - he saw the entire thing as any semblance of life faded out of her eyes, and suddenly she was running headon for the inferno that used to be a tanker wagon and Nick realised what was happening only just in time.


    He hurled himself forwards, his hand reaching like a goalie after a ball that''d cost his team the World Cup, and just, oh so just, managed to get a grip on the chain trailing from the cat-girl''s collar and yank, hard, before she could actually throw herself into the fire.


    It took a lot more strength than he''d ever have expected to reel her in, and she started clawing at him, her eyes wide and unseeing and fighting to get towards the flames the whole time; he ended up having to actually use some of the very large cable ties he''d been carrying from the first real vampire hunt but never previously used, first on her wrists (and although it wasn''t too hard for him to overpower her and wrestle her arms behind her back and pin them there with one hand she was a hell of a lot stronger than she looked) and then her ankles too when she turned out firstly to have bare feet and secondly to have claws on both ends, and the whole time the blond fire-hurling maniac with the shotgun was just standing there watching him with this look of maniacal satisfaction on his face.


    Nick picked the suddenly-unresisting and stiff as a board cat-girl up and slung her over his left shoulder, recovered his sword, and looked up, just in time to see the madman scoop some sort of rocket launcher - not a Strathcarron toothpick, this was actual military stuff - up off the ground and casually back into the fire.


    Nick decided it was high time he was somewhere else.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Okay, the hell''s happening?" Alice asked as soon as the Bigger Van''s side door was closed; she threw it into reverse and backed up, deciding as she did so that she''d better head down to the northeast corner of this half of the no-go, ram the fence at the west end of Seafield Road, get across the Longman Road that way, cross the A9, then loop round the waterfront past the land reclamation site and get back to the safety of the Harbourmaster''s that way. Meanwhile exactly what the hell was going on and why Nick had returned carrying a scar-faced but nevertheless very pretty black-haired fair-skinned catgirl with very wide green cat eyes, clad in an excruciatingly tight corset with a piece of chain wrapped round it at the narrowest point and fastened with a chunky padlock, a tiny hybrid of tube-top and off-the-shoulder crop-top with a lot of cutouts in it showing a lot of skin, the shortest skirt Alice had seen anywhere since awakening in Grace Mitchell''s kitchen, it was in danger of becoming a belt, and a rather medieval-looking collar and chain, with her wrists and ankles bound with the big cable ties they''d been packing in case they needed to tie up any vampires, was something she found herself rather wanting an explanation for.


    "I''m no sure, I think the fuzz decided to bust Scotty and bit off more than they could chew, there''s three police Saracens going up like a bomb down near that illegal pub at the other end of the goods yard and I counted a dozen dead cops, that place is well the hell on fire too, I saw Scotty and Mags and a couple of big lads jumping a goods train I think was headed towards Aberdeen, and Jesus Christ you should''ve bloody seen what brewed those bloody cop Saracens up!" and Alice completed her reverse turn as Nick was speaking, so she started putting her exit strategy into action.


    "That was a pyromancer," said Fiona, "And from the way that bloody Saracen fireballed I''d say he was a pretty bloody powerful one too."


    "It''s nae that Fiona, I''m starting to wonder if there was a gun in Mary''s toilet when that Innes lad was killed, that was the same bloke," Nick said.


    "Well according to Constable Joy they found a .32 bullet and some very small fragments of rubber from the silencer on one of those stupid-quiet SOE pistols inside his head so there was definitely a gun involved and at this point the going theory is the SOE were playing funny buggers," said Annie.


    "You sure that was the same bloke Nick? That didnae sound anything like toff-speak to me," Fiona said.


    "Aye I''m sure, I''d know him anywhere and I''m nae thinking it''s a coincidence that was the same accent as Scotty Johnson - and anyway name an accent more people can mimic than Upper-Class Twit," said Nick.


    "Point."


    "So what''s with the, er, freshly-caught catgirl?" Alice asked, and was momentarily surprised by the fact that catgirls existed and that Nick had for some reason decided to catch one who appeared to have already been wearing a chain didn''t surprise her, was she actually getting immured to the constant weirdness?


    "I don''t know but she doesnae seem to be able to talk, got any ideas Fiona?" Nick asked.


    "No I don''t, in all honesty," Fiona said.


    "She ran into that tick we were looking for," Nick continued, again talking to Alice. "She was looking for something, I think it must''ve been Scotty because she was headed that way and she stopped dead in her tracks when we saw the blue lights going up by his shop, then she must''ve spotted him and Mags going to hitch a lift on that train cause she fair lit it after him, well we followed her and she was just standing there half-panicked when she must''ve figured she wasn''t going to catch up before the train was out the yards and away, then she grabs at my sleeve and starts tugging at it like a bairn trying to get someone to come on, so we kept on following her. Looks like whatever she wanted it was in that illegal pub cause she just stopped dead in her tracks soon as we saw what was going on back there, she was stood there looking more and more panicky when that fireball-flinging maniac points at her and snaps his fingers and, well, honestly she tried to run into that burning tank wagon, I only just managed to grab her chain in time before she''d have been headlong into the fire, she''s a sight stronger than she looks and she went pretty wild there, got some beauties of scratches on my arms and my shirt''s pretty torn up - funny thing though, it was like she wasnae seeing anything until I''d got her wrists and ankles cable-tied."


    "I think," said Annie, "We''d better go and see what Vrotch thinks."


    "Plan," said Alice, mentally altering the western end of her chosen route.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The initial reaction of Vrotch, who was very visibly stoned, was a simple, "Huh."


    "Huh what?" Nick, who had his arms full of catgirl, asked. The catgirl reserved comment, though that said you could really see she was on high alert - her entire body was tense, in fact she looked like she was scared absolutely shitless.


    "Huh I''ve never seen anything like her," Vrotch told him, and then he stood up off of his caravan steps and said, "I think you''d all better come in, I don''t know what she is or what happened with the running into a fire thing you were on about, man, but I''m not the expert on different sorts of people."Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    "Okay, so who''s the expert then?" Val asked.


    "The Hamster''s the expert," said Vrotch with a shrug, and Nick, who was the first up the threshold, paused there.


    "Sure you''re okay with us coming in? You''ve been pretty clear on the staying out of your space thing from the word go, and let''s face it, you are pretty stoned tonight."


    "Nah man, it''s cool, I''ve started liking you dudes, apart from Fiona of course and she already knows what''s in here," said Vrotch, so they trooped into the caravan. There was something off about the interior but Alice didn''t worry about that, instead thinking that realistically it was pretty much how she probably should have expected it to be - lined with psychadelic-coloured cloth wallhangings and a mish-mash of mismatched beat-up sofas, populated by a couple of dozen women and girls of a wide range of ages and wider range of denominations some of whom appeared to be high, and featuring several low tables full of ashtrays, crisp packets, and empty drinks cans. The end wall being entirely jammed full of computer equipment, however, was not quite what she''d expected.


    Then Vrotch made her realise she really was getting immured to constant strange by sticking his head into a monitor and asking, "Hamster? You online?"


    There was a pause, and he climbed all the way into the monitor and vanished.


    "Well," said Annie. "That happened."


    Vrotch stuck his head back out of the monitor and said, "Make yourselves at home dudes, I just gotta go find the Hamster," then disappeared again.


    Annie tilted her head and said, "Huh - it happened again."


    Mackie cautiously poked at the monitor - it was a flatplane hologram - and said, "Feels pretty solid to myself."


    "Sit your arse down you great teuchter, we can be asking Vrotch what''s with the climbing into screens later," Nick said with a sigh, sitting down with the catgirl, who was stubbornly refusing to shake like a leaf despite visibly being scared halfway out of her wits.


    "So who''re you?" the girl he''d sat down beside - a diminutive blonde who couldn''t have been older than about fourteen - asked, addressing the catgirl. She had an immense wild mane of hair with a lot of thin tresses woven into it with rainbow-hued thread, an incredibly ratty grey-blue men''s vest with an anarchy logo crudely scrawled on the front making for the closest thing to a T-shirt Alice had seen since waking up at Grace''s, battered and vastly oversized denim jeans, a thick velvet choker necklace that appeared to be made out of a band of stretchy fabric pushed through a shiny metal ring and had a chunky inverted cross suspended from said ring, beat-up hiking boots, and the ubiquitous corset.


    The catgirl gave her a frightened look and let out a small soft wheezing sound, followed by a series of painful-sounding coughs, and Nick started gently patting her back.


    "At this point we''ve basically ascertained she cannae talk," he said.


    "Oh right," said the girl. "Well. Awkward."


    "So who''s yourself?" Mackie asked her.


    "Me? Oh, I''m Jenny Devil," the girl said with an unconcerned shrug.


    "What, the one who nearly got drank to death at that Smedley''s Place place?" Mackie asked.


    "Meh, ain''t all that many pubs in this town that''ll sell me, we''re not that far north that most of ''em don''t start on about ID if they think the pigs might be watching and most of the places that don''t get a bit wild," Jenny said with another unconcerned shrug. "Sides, it didn''t actually kill me, did it? Well, it was a bit, yeah, kinda close, I was bleeding pretty badly by the time I got back here and it was getting kinda hard to stand up, and I mean Dr Mayhem says I''m not supposed to get pissed for a while cause he says I still ain''t really got enough blood in me but meh, what does he know."


    "Sight more than you do, he''s a doctor in the medical sense," said Vicky.


    "Meh, it''s just a little drink, what''s the worst that could happen."


    "Fuck sake Jenny, doesn''t matter how many times you undersell it, you nearly died," Vicky said with a sigh, and Alice clocked that this was not the first time they''d had this conversation.


    Vrotch chose that moment to come scrambling back out of his monitor, followed by the Hamster, who looked curious; Vrotch was just saying, "... I don''t think she''s a nekomata."


    Annie muttered something about ''it'' having happened a third time.


    "I was wondering about whether she''s half-nekomata actually," said the Hamster, then she saw the catgirl and frowned and said, "Oh. No. Can''t be, she''s got a tail - nekomata hybrids only get the ears."


    She sauntered over to Nick and had a good long look at the catgirl, who gave her a downright fearful look by way of an answer, realised she was now surrounded, and froze, visibly unable to decide which direction to flinch in; Vrotch looked a bit pained and started rolling a joint.


    "Hello, I''m the Munching Hamster," said the Hamster; she then added, "You do understand English, don''t you?" and got a hesitant, very frightened, nod. "Can''t talk? I take it it''s got something to do with that big cut."


    The catgirl hurriedly shook her head, and opened her mouth, and sat there with her mouth as wide open as possible and giving the Hamster a very tense look around the very open mouth, inside of which something was very missing: her tongue ended in a patch of hideously burned flesh at the back of her throat.


    "... Someone burned your tongue out," the Hamster said, sounding downright thrown. The catgirl shut her mouth, quickly nodded, and looked at her feet; Nick started muttering something about shoving his welding torch in someone''s gob and seeing how they liked it when he got his hands on the bastards.


    "Can you read?" the Hamster asked, and the catgirl gave another quick little shake of her head. "Looks like we''re down to yes-no questions then, this is going to make finding out what your name is a bit awkward, we can''t just keep calling you ''hey you''."


    "Any idea what her story is?" Nick asked.


    "Not a clue," said the Hamster. "Tell me about her."


    She listened and nodded along and uh-huhed while Nick repeated the explanation he''d given Alice almost word for word, looking thoughtful all through, and then said, "I see. Well, she''s clearly nothing to do with nekomata - when they shapeshift to human form the only catlike part that sticks around is the ears, and besides, she''s only got one tail, I''ve never even heard of a nekomata without at least two tails or a hybrid with any tails at all... I don''t think she has anything to do with those jaguar-people from Argentina sort of a way either, do you?" and the catgirl, whom she''d asked that part, just continued looking frightened.


    "Completely the wrong build," the Hamster continued, "You''re impossibly skinny by their standards and your facial structure isn''t anything like a jaguar-person, and anyway the biggest jaguar-person in the world today is nearly four feet across the shoulders but not quite five feet tall. Anyway that basically covers every catlike form of human I know of."


    "Do we think she''s human?" Val asked, and the Hamster gave her a sharp look.


    "Think about this," she said. "You''ll hear a lot of bibble-babble with, you know, Svarthalfar, Alfar, Vanir, Jotnar, Trollkin, Oni, Nekomata, Jaguar-People, Sea People, so-called ''Pygmies'', shapeshifters, any person that''s ''different'' and born that way, about them being ''non-humans''. The undead is one thing and there''s a grey area around constructs, you know, golems and so on, but all of these different ''born that way'' people, they can all - with a tiny number of exceptions - crossbreed with a ''normal human'' one hundred percent perfectly, with actually less trouble than something like breeding two very different breeds of dog, producing offspring who can then reproduce just as reliably as their parents ¨C and that''s a long way up the list of strongest indicators that two visually different creatures are in fact members of the same species unless, for no apparent goddamn reason, unless you''re applying it to people. I fail to see how some fat gaijin dickwad gets off declaring someone that''s at most removed part of a subspecies if they''re even that far ''not part of homo sapiens sapiens'', especially since, you know, where does it stop? It is far, far too easy to allay ''not human'' into ''not people'' and we know exactly where that leads, just ask an Australian aborigine. It is hands down the worst possible sort of news anyone, anywhere, ever, can run into. At the end of the day the whole thing is directly personal to me; I''m Nihonjin which makes me a third-class citizen in my own country. Realistically speaking as of the Pacific War a glorified secretary in a police station is the nearest it''s functionally possible for any ethnic Nihonjin to get to any sort of political influence - the gaijin have the mother of all glass ceilings in place, if you look Asian where I am is as far as you can go. You can''t get your name onto a ballot, you''ve got maybe a one in a hundred chance of actually being allowed to vote and when you do you''re presented with a series of gaijin men, you can''t buy a share in a business, you''ll never be promoted in any job, you''ll never get into university, travel outside Nihon and you''ll start seeing ''No dogs or Japs'' signs on shop doors, make like you''re not super happy about it and the TLA will make you disappear, you''re a ''Jap'', a ''Nip'', it''s your fault people with the same skin colour as you bombed Pearl Harbour, suck it up and obey your white betters," and she shrugged. "I''ll never get my head round why they think it''s fooling anyone when they pretend to be surprised that every time they bump off a Nihon separatist another three of us start thinking it''d be a great idea to get the gaijin the hell out of our goddamn country and that entire ''being the fifty-first state of America'' thing can go hang, I get better than most Nihonjin because my hair isn''t black - if you''re wondering no, I don''t dye it - but so long as the Stars and Stripes are flying over Tokyo I will never be a full citizen: you''re damn right I take civil rights very personally and friend, I do not make exceptions because someone''s a bit short or has odd ears."


    Val shook her head.


    "You don''t need to preach to me," she said, and tapped the scar on her brow. "I''m half-Nepalese, my dad was a Ghurka, my kukri was his, he fought in three wars for the Empire and how''d they thank him when he was demobbed and started asking for the vote? He was murdered by the pigs in British Nepal for being involved in the electoral reform movement, they skidded to a halt, hosed him down with a Bren gun, then motored off, we know it was the pigs because one of my uncles - they''re not like biological uncles, they''re my uncles because they were dad''s squad - threw his kukri at and hit one of their front tyres and rolled the bastards'' car, then when Mum tried to get some justice or just some sort of an actual investigation this plainclothes cop knocked on her door, when she answered it he asked for her name and when she gave him it, he gunned her down on the spot with a machine pistol. I screamed the house down, what do you want, I was four - well he shut me up by kicking me in the head so hard I was in a coma for eight weeks. Came about that far," and she held her finger and thumb about half an inch apart, "From buggering off to join Mum and Dad early, but it''s gonna take more than that for the bastards to get rid of me."


    "That''ll be why you''re in Scotland, isn''t it," said Annie.


    Val nodded.


    "My uncles don''t know if I''m on a list of ''loose ends'' to be disposed of so they changed my name - just my family name, it''s Mum''s maiden name - and sent me to live with my aunt Mabel, she lives in Nairn with Uncle Jeff - he''s local, they met the same way Mum and Dad did, in the Falklands during the war - Mum and Aunt Mabel were twin sisters, right, and they went into army nursing together, Dad was with the Ghurka Rifles, Uncle Jeff was with the Black Watch. In all honesty I''m probably in a lot less danger here in Scotland than I would be back home, all in all, specially since two of my uncles came across with me and made bloody sure I know how to shoot and I know how to use this," and she patted her kukri''s sheath.


    "What a fucking world we live in," said the Hamster with a sigh and a shake of her head.


    "At the end of the day, I guess we''re all just wondering when the hell we''ll be free of empires," said Nick.


    "I''ve a feeling it''ll be a long time - one falls, another rises," the Hamster told him, rising to her feet. "Keep me posted if you work anything out about her that might shed any light," and she nodded to the catgirl.


    "Will do," said Nick with a nod.


    "Anyway, I''ve gotta rush - I''m due on shift in," and the Hamster glanced at her watch, "Twenty-eight minutes, no rest for the wicked, I''ll catch you guys later," and with that she ducked back into one of the monitors and vanished.


    "Hmm, so I didn''t hallucinate that the first time," Val muttered. Nick ignored that in favour at looking at the still-visibly-very-afraid catgirl in his lap.


    "So," he said. "What are we supposed to call you?" and she started slightly, her expression turning more worried; she opened her mouth, showing her lack of a tongue again, and made the nearest approximation of a sound she could, which came out as a faint wheeze; he sighed and carried on, "Don''t suppose you''d like any ''cat'' sort of names?" to which the change in expression made it immediately clear she was not a fan of this idea, though she didn''t otherwise react to it and did not cease to look afraid, and he nodded, thought a moment, and said, "I guess I''m just going to have to call you Silent, if that''s okay with you, I mean?"


    The catgirl, who was starting to look faintly puzzled in among the fear in her eyes, shrugged a bit.


    "I think," said Vrotch, lighting his joint, "That''s the nearest to a real answer on that you''re going to get out of her for a while, she''s scared shitless. Not surprised, that big burn in her mouth and that huge cut down her face are all very recent - that cut has had syn-skin put onto it," and Alice immediately realised he was right, she''d used the exact same stuff the varied times they''d found banged-up victims in vampire dens and/or Nick got overly stuck in and/or Val started yelling something about ''ayaho Ghorkali'' yet again; Vrotch carried on with a, "I know that stuff anywhere, from how red it all is that can''t be more than a day or two old and, well, I''ve seen an injury like this before, this dude I know had an accident with a chainsaw, deep gash in his arm after a blade broke. It looked just like this after it had syn-skin got on it," and he ran his finger down the catgirl''s injury, almost but not quite touching it; she flinched away from him.


    "Some sicko took a chainsaw to you, didn''t they," he said to her, and just how kind he managed to sound when he said that really threw Alice; after a moment just staring at him, the catgirl gave him another of those hesitant little nods.


    "Looks like there''s a bit been ripped out of the bone of her brow ridge, her cheekbone, her jawbone, and I think it got into her collar bone," Vrotch continued, then went back from telling Nick to talking to the catgirl, the tone of his voice changing again. "That''s not even nearly all they did to you, is it."


    Everyone caught the way that statement made her shrink, and he sat back with a sad, tired, bitter, "I knew it."


    "What''s been done to her, Vrotch?" Nick asked.


    "You don''t want to know, man," Vrotch said; he took a huge drag of his joint. "Look, it''s like this. I''ve got what''s called an uncontrolled mage-gift, man, I can feel other people''s emotions when I''m not stoned, and..." and he shook his head. "Trust me man, you don''t want to know, someone did a thorough job of brutalising her, real recent man, then right before you dudes came here something just ripped her entire world away like that, and I''m pretty sure someone''s been messing with her head very recently, some sort of really sick mind-magic - psychomancy is bad shit, man - I... let''s not go into it," and he took another deep drag of the joint, and said, "It''s bad."


    They sat there in silence for a few moments with everyone looking at the catgirl, who just kept on looking frightened, before Vrotch earnestly told her, "It''s over now, you know. You''ll be okay with Nick, he''s a good dude," and the look of pure disbelief he got was heartbreaking.


    "I think she''s about where I was right after you pulled my half-frozen arse out that train, Vrotch," Jenny suddenly said, then spoke directly to the catgirl. "You''ve never actually met a good man in your entire life before, have you."


    Nick muttered a soft, very quiet, heartfelt, "Fuck."


    "These dudes," Vrotch told the catgirl, "Are good people - even Fiona is at the end of the day," and that visibly surprised Fiona. "I know it seems completely impossible right now, I know, but you''re going to realise it soon enough. Just... take care of her okay Nick? She needs it like she needs air."


    "I will," Nick said, his voice soft. "I will," and they lapsed back into silence, Vrotch quietly smoking his spliff and the catgirl warily trying to watch everyone at the same time.


    "What was that climbing into your monitor, is that some sort of portal or something?" Annie, who had been sitting on that question since right after they arrived, eventually asked.


    "Or something," and once again Vrotch visibly had to stop himself calling her ''man''. "Basically you know the Internet?"


    "What about it?"


    "Well, basically it''s a place and if you know what you''re doing you can use places in Midgard where image data enters and leaves it - basically cameras and displays - to get in and out. No, seriously. It''s like there''s a tenth one of the Nine Worlds. The part we don''t know is how it became a place, there''s nothing we''ve been able to find intrinsic about information technology that should have that effect in any way we''ve been able to work out, and we''re pretty clear it wasn''t deliberately made to happen, but basically it did happen and the result is very useful."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "That was what was bothering me about Vrotch''s caravan," said Alice as they were walking back towards the digs, having changed vehicles at the Harbourmaster''s.


    "Hmm?" said Nick, whom she was wandering along beside having ridden up to the digs in his van. He was carrying the catgirl now dubbed ''Silent'' again; Mackie, the other side of Alice from Nick, was carrying a huge bundle of blankets and sheepskins Nick intended to make a pile of for Silent to lay on.


    "Inside it is too big to fit in it," Alice told him.


    Fiona, who having travelled up with Annie while they were still digging blankets out of Mary Macbride''s loft was loitering in the digs door, let out a quiet laugh that startled the catgirl.


    "Non-eucelidian geometry in a mage''s hideout? Big surprise," she said; she then winced when Alice gave her a capital-L Look and added, "Bloody hell, Alice, you''ve got to get that eye glitch fixed."


    "When it''s so good at rocking you back on your heels?"


    "What if your eyes just completely jam like that?"


    "Okay, okay, will see about getting it sorted tomorrow," Alice said, and that was when Fiona''s phone rang.


    She answered it, and after a couple of terse words turned and headed for the road, looking worried.


    "You okay?" Nick asked.


    "I will be. Just... don''t bother waiting up for me, it''s going to be a long fucking night."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    As per promise Alice broached the topic of her glitching eyes during breakfast on the morning of Wednesday 9th; Annie immediately got her mobile out and messaged Dr Clayton right there at the table, and within five minutes Alice had an appointment at the hospital Thursday night.


    "Scratched up again Nick?" Annie asked as Nick, looking frustrated and worried and with streaks of fresh syn-skin all over his forearms, came slouching over to their table with a tray of breakfast.


    "Aye, that poor wee lassie''s still scared shitless and her claws are really bloody sharp," he said with a glum nod as he sat himself down. "Can''t leave those bloody cable ties on her and can''t not have ''em on her, she''s still just going wild every chance she gets and she''s stronger than she looks but she''s no strong enough to fight off vampires, we''re going to have to figure something else out. I''d wanted to get rid of that bloody collar but it''s starting to look like we''re going to need to leave it where it is."


    "I can get something that won''t hurt her wrists," said Fiona, who had reappeared at about four that morning and looked it.


    "What, something like that?" and Mackie casually flicked the ring on the front of her choker.


    "Kinky," said Val.


    "I''ll just be making something before we''re heading down to the college," said Nick. "There''s enough crap in the back of the van, it''ll no be hard."


    "I think," said Fiona, "Someone who''s got some idea of what is and isnae safe had better have a look at whatever you cobble together to make sure it''s no going to mess her wrists up."


    "And that someone''s you?"


    "Aye."


    "Okay, how would you know that sort of thing?" Alice asked her.


    "Oh for Christ sakes Alice, you''re feeling especially observant today," Fiona said with a shake of her head.


    Alice looked around her friend''s faces, and concluded that she''d gone and missed something they thought was blindingly obvious again.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Fat Bloke came wandering into the Harbourmaster''s shortly after they''d headed down there post dinner - the catgirl was sill in Nick and Mackie''s dorm room, her existing chain now looped round and padlocked to the sturdiest part of the fixtures - Nick and Mackie had made sure to budge all the varied weapons and tools out of reach of her - and this wooden handcuff sort of thing - basically just a couple of bits of plank checked carefully for lack of splinters, with a pair of matching half-circle cutouts in one long edge of each, a hinge positioned so the cutouts became two circular holes big enough for her wrists but too small for her hands, and a hasp which a little padlock went through closing the other end from the hinge and making it look almost like her hands had somehow been thrust through a plank.


    She had, when they headed for college, been cautiously examining this contraption. There was no longer a chain round her corsetted middle; Nick said that he''d cut it off with his bolt cutters the previous evening and that this and his not doing anything more than that to her had left her laying on the pile of blankets and looking completely bewildered, which he said was an improvement on looking like she thought he was about to rip her head off though on the other hand it did make him want to find whoever left her in such a state and rip their heads off.


    All that, however, Alice endeavoured to put out of her mind for the time being: freshly-caught catgirls was the sort of thing that should be worried about at your leisure, and Fat Bloke turning up meant it was time for magic lessons again, something she was coming to very much enjoy regardless of her misgivings concerning the entire necromancer thing.


    "Evening, Alice," the overweight mage said, coming ambling across the bar."Up for a bit more fun?"


    "Let''s go," she said, getting up. "What''s on the cards today then?


    "I figured I might as well teach you how to scry and chat with dead people," said Fat Bloke and that, in the latter case with the aid of a ghost by the name of Billy Fischig he knew, was exactly what he proceeded to do. Both were remarkably simple processes; for the former a scrap of hair was plenty enough and for the latter you did not, it turned out, need to know the departed shade''s name or who they were or what their story was, only where they (or what was left of them) had been, at which Alice concluded that Fiona''s comments on necromancy and archaeology had been exactly on point. It was even, Fat Bloke explained, just as easy to reinforce the summon and give the spirit the ability to interact with the physical world further than being visible and speaking - this he demonstrated with Billy''s help - though both took pains to warn Alice that if you were going to do this it was very very important to make absolutely certain the spirit in question was on your side as while it is very easy to summon a shade, and to dismiss one you have not given form, once they have form dismissal becomes harder if the shade is not willing and they are all but immune to injury - bad shit, as he put it, tends to happens if you make a shade who has it in for you solid.


    With the lesson done with they moved on to unspace, with Fat Bloke doing more of his research - testing a variety of magical effects and tools none of which Alice knew what were - while Alice, who was also drifting back and forth between fiddling with the insides of the not-a-kitten and trying to work out how to make her rat skeleton do things on its own instead of just being a puppet, described the previous night''s strangeness, which she''d been wanting to get the input of another mage on since it had all happened; Fat Bloke spent the entire thing nodding, hmm-ing, and asking the odd question before eventually arriving at a preliminary conclusion.


    "There''s something on the edge of my mind that I''ve heard of but I can''t quite put my finger on what it is. I''ll need to get Nick and Fiona''s accounts, and to have a look at this cat-girl," he said, then suddenly pointed and asked, "Hey, is that fox yours?"


    "Fox? What fox?" she asked, peering where he was pointing.


    "It legged it as soon as I pointed, there was a fox off a bit through the trees there peering at us."


    "No, I haven''t created any foxes," Alice said with a frown.


    "Oh dear. Alice, that means something knows we''re here, and more importantly knows that someone''s created a small patch of ground here."


    "... Crud," said Alice, thinking very fast. "What do we need to do?"


    "Some sort of guardian would be a good idea, I think it''s time for you to try making something that moves about that isn''t a mock kitten," Fat Bloke said with a frown.


    Alice thought about making the not-a-kitten into a gigantic ferocious guard cat for a moment, then dismissed it. Not only was she now rather fond of the not-a-kitten, having hands and being able to talk would be useful traits for a guardian.


    "Okay, so what sort of guardian would work?"


    "You''ve already got a cats theme going on," said Fat Bloke, pointing at the not-a-kitten.


    "Yeah, I did briefly think a giant ferocious guard cat but hands are useful, and as that poor catgirl''s been demonstrating so is being able to talk."


    "Well why not see about half-and-half? Just make a big tough cat-girl," Fat Bloke said, and the idea seemed as good as any so Alice decided to go with it.


    She said, "Okay, catgirl," and flexed her will and a catgirl, visually quite similar to the one Nick had found though minus the scars and in possession of a tongue, appeared standing in the middle of the patch of carpet and looking alertly around. She was clad in a plain white T-shirt and jeans.


    "Hmm," Alice continued, getting up and getting a better look at the newly-arisen catgirl.


    "She doesn''t look very ferocious," said Fat Bloke.


    "I''ll have you know I''m entirely capable of ferociousness, thankyou very much," the newly-extant catgirl primly informed him, then flexed her fingers, showing off her very sharp nails, and added, "I scratch."


    "Yeah, but in one way he''s right, you''re the guardian for my part of unspace and it''ll be useful if you look like something people don''t want mad at them," Alice told her. "Maybe if you look more tigery," and the catgirl''s hair colour and the general shape of her face changed while her muscles bulked out and her claws got a whole lot more impressive; she looked down at herself, flexed her now burly right arm, and grinned, showing off a very pointy spiky sharp-looking set of dentistry. "Hmm, better, but I think you should be a bit taller, maybe about six foot two," and the catgirl immediately grew.


    "A strange-shaped vest and workman''s trousers isn''t very guard-y either," said Fat Bloke.


    "True, hmm, some sort of body armour maybe?" and a military-looking flak vest came into being on the catgirl. "No, that''s not quite right, it''s not bad just as armour but it isn''t visually impressive, is it," and the flak vest went through a whole string of random transformations until Alice settled on a general shape she liked - quite ''fitted'' and clearly showing the shape of the lithe, toned, densely-muscled body underneath it. "That''s better, but it''s still not quite right - hmm, how about some shoulderpads, leather, and maybe studs?" and it sprouted big shoulder pads like you''d expect to see on an American football player, turned into scuffed black leather, and started sprouting studs. "No, I think it''s still not quite right, maybe something like this?" and the whole thing changed, the shoulder pads going away and the torso section taking on aspects of corsetry (which Alice had to admit she liked the look of regardless of her intense disapproval of over-tightening the things) and sprouting green fabric in a blouse-like structure and something halfway between a loincloth and a skirt with incredibly split sides. "That''s better."


    "The trousers are a bit of a misfit now," said Fat Bloke, and Alice nodded and the trousers went away without any fuss.


    "I think you need some sort of facial markings, like that dark fur tigers have round their eyes," Alice told the catgirl, and the catgirl''s skin sprouted fine black fur round her eyes in a very tigery shape; Alice nodded and added, "Better. Now, some sort of boots," and combat boots appeared on the catgirl''s feet, "That''s not quite right, maybe they should go further up your legs," and the boots grew up the catgirl''s shins, "Hmm, still not quite right, let''s make them go up even further," and they did, growing to halfway up her thighs. "Oh, I like that - let''s add some padding, kneepads, those sort of ribbed armoury sort of bits you get on motorbike trousers, maybe some studs too, that''s better," and the catgirl raised one leg until it was sticking up at a forty-five degree angle, her tail (which came out of a sleeve sort of thing in the middle of the back of her not-quite-a-skirt) sticking straight out the other way to help her balance and looking pleasingly natural and fluid while it was at it.


    "Maybe open-toed?" the catgirl suggested. "I have claws on both ends, after all."


    "Hmm, good idea," and suddenly they were. "That''s better, but we''re still not quite there yet, I think there needs to be straps and things, maybe spiky bracers," and a set of spike-encrusted gauntlet wristbands appeared on the catgirl''s forearms while a variety of straps, belts, crossbelts and so forth appeared and shifted around for a few moments before settling in a layout Alice liked - two belts round her hips, crossbelts crossing between her breasts and joining together behind her back, and a chunky studded choker, all with brightly-polished metal fittings and buckles and studs. "And I think you should be visibly armed - I know what, let''s have crossbow death rays built into your bracers," and those sprouted too, went through several variations, and settled on a mixture of brass, steel, and wood looking like a cross between a crossbow and a hairdryer ray gun.


    "Crossbow death rays?" Fat Bloke asked.


    "Blast that target," Alice told the catgirl, pointing.


    The catgirl said a cheerful, "Okay!" and raised her arm - there was a flat loud roar, and a bolt of blue-white energy connected the gadget on her arm to one of the dartboards left over from Alice shooting magic bullets - there was the thunderclap of an explosion and the dartboard more or less ceased to exist.


    "Groovy," said Fat Bloke, who was getting very into all this.


    "I think," Alice said, "A nice hat would make a good finishing touch," and with that a hat - a matching green to the catgirl''s not-quite-dress, broad-brimmed and slightly floppy with a low crown - appeared, then sprouted a peacock feather.


    "Perfect," she said. "Now you just need a name - what to call a... steampunk post-apocalyptic airship pirate catgirl? Hmm."


    "A name would probably be useful," the catgirl agreed with a nod.


    "I''m not great at thinking of names," Alice finally admitted. "I still call my not-a-kitten the not-a-kitten, and I went and named my rat skeleton '' Sir Rattythorpe Wigglesworth Rattington'' for pity''s sake, don''t judge, I was in a weird mood," and Fat Bloke, who had not heard Ratty''s full name before, let out a huge snort of laughter.


    "That''s a bit of a mouthful," the catgirl said with a frown. "I think it''d probably be useful if my name, whatever it is, is easy to shout in a hurry."


    "Shiva," Alice finally decided, because of the tiger connection and the general theme of it, and Fat Bloke, who was still grinning, let out a surprised noise, so she added, "What?"


    "When you named her Shiva, the thaumometer spiked even harder than it did when you first created her," he said. "Interesting."


    "Aye," said a very unexpected Nick Macbane, who had apparently entered the portal while they were distracted. "It''s funny - Elf always says that there''s a power in names, but this''d be the first time I''ve ever seen anything to support that."


    "Nick? When did you get here?" Alice asked.


    "Right when you were deciding a flak jacket wasnae right," said Nick with a shrug. "Did you no notice me?"


    "Obviously," said Alice with a sigh. "What can I say, I was distracted and having fun. Anyway," and she turned back to the newly-dubbed Shiva, "I made you to defend my land here," and Alice gestured around them. "I want you to be careful about it - most of the people with access to the yard through the far side of the portal are friends. If anyone you don''t know comes in through the portal there, tell them in no uncertain terms to clear out and not to come back without me - don''t say who I am though. If they push it, bodily chuck them back through the portal. If you catch anything coming from the depths of unspace that shouldn''t be here, see it off - tell it to clear out and be scary as while you''re at it, then chuck it off my land, then take potshots across its bows, and it that doesn''t work you have my permission to zap the ever-living shit out of it or, you know, introduce it to the fact that you''re a big strong tiger-woman, I''m sure you can think of all sorts of ways to hand out any necessary twattings. Oh, and if that fox comes back do your best to capture it, I want a word with it. I''ll introduce you to everyone who''s allowed in here when I get the chance - to begin with this is my friend Nick Macbane, this is my teacher I suppose you could call him, Fat Bloke, and of course I''m Alice Liddell."


    "Pleased to meet you," said Shiva with a smile and a flamboyant bow, then she whirled around, her arm snapping up, with a cry of "And who the hell are you?"


    Mackie Romanov had just stepped through the portal.


    -/-/-/-/-/-

 Chapter 4 part the third

    "Six-foot-two tiger-woman road-warrior in a cavalier hat," said a rather frazzle Fiona Macleod, slowly shaking her head and trying to ignore the way the group''s attention was making Shiva preen.


    "With crossbow death rays on her gauntlets," Nick reminded her.


    "With crossbow death rays on her gauntlets, because of course the tiger-woman road-warrior has crossbow death rays on her gauntlets, Alice, why in the name of Jesus and dead puppies did your mind go straight to ''tiger-woman road warrior''?"


    "Well, actually it didn''t, it went from thinking about making my not-a-kitten into a guardian to hands being useful, and Fat Bloke suggested a ''big tough cat-girl'', and after last night I seem to have catgirls on the brain, and she basically developed from there," Alice said. The topic of conversation, to whom Alice had just concluded introducing everyone with the right to be nosing around unaccompanied inside her portal, looked smug. "Tiger because that''s obviously a big cat suited to the ''guard'' part, then she had to be armoured because of course she had to be armoured, then the outfit just sort of grew from there into something that looks cool, then crossbow death rays on her gauntlets because obviously she has to have crossbow death rays on her gauntlets, and finally a nice hat, it just wouldn''t be proper if she didn''t have a nice hat. One step at a time, all very logical."


    "Your mind is a very scary place, Alice Liddell," said Fiona with another slow shake of her head.


    "Well if I''m going to be on the receiving end of wonderland jokes for the rest of my life I might as well have something better than a grinning moggy, and airship pirate catgirls are definitely cooler than Cheshire cats," Alice said with a shrug.


    "Hey Alice, talking of Lewis Carrol wouldn''t it be worth seeing if you can disguise your portal as a looking-glass?" Annie suggested. "Just to fuck with people, you know?"


    Alice gave her a very stern look, and said, "I don''t want to encourage the sort of idiot who thinks I haven''t heard all the bloody Wonderland jokes ten thousand times before... oh for pity''s sake Annabella bloody Kelly, talking about fucking with people?"


    Nick solemnly declared, "Braaaaaaains. What? It''s new material."


    "Har de har har har, farmboy."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Huh," said Fat Bloke, curiously looking down at the little catgirl whom Nick had given the monicker of ''Silent'', who was giving him a cautious look in return. "Stronger than she looks, you say? This is really starting to tickle at something I heard about somewhere."


    "Gie us an arm-wrestle, I can show you how much strength it took me to hold her down," said Nick, who was sitting at his desk; Fat Bloke, still looking very thoughtful, nodded and came over.


    "Okay," he concluded, once Nick had easily pushed his knuckles to the table. "Jesus, she''s a sight stronger than I am, I know I''m a fat bastard but I''m not exactly a wimp. This... what the hell am I remembering, what the hell am I remembering, oh... Huh. Nick, there''s something I''m going to have to look into with Sane Dave - Vrotch - and the Hamster if that''s okay?"


    "Oh aye, like what?"


    "I''ve got a couple of mates down in South America, anyway one of these blokes is a bush pilot, flies an old Yank propeller plane - he does a lot of cross-border stuff, charter flights mostly, anyway apparently a while back he got talking with these blokes down in Argentina who were just back from the Falklands," and they all saw the way Silent''s head snapped round to focus on him, "And they told him one hell of a story, apparently their unit had been on Mount Pleasant when the Commandos hit it, he said they were doing fine and holding their ground until this fucking giant black cat-thing that walked upright like a man and was swinging a full-sized machine gun round like it was a toy came up the bloody mountain just absolutely slaughtering everything in its path. These blokes reckoned they''d seen it tear a full-grown man''s arms off like you or I breaking a fucking wishbone, they called it something that pretty much means ''Devil Cat'', they said there were at least three, maybe four, of those things and trying to take them on was like trying to fight off an avalanche with a water pistol, they just rolled up the mountain and damn near routed three regiments."


    "You think that entire ''Empire super-soldier program'' thing is real?" Nick asked.


    "I don''t know, but it''s about the only lead we''ve got," Fat Bloke said, and he turned to Silent and asked her, "What do you think, am I onto something?"


    She stared at him for nearly a minute before giving one tiny nod.


    "Is that what you are?" Nick asked her, and she quickly shook her head. "Okay, are you related to what these Argie blokes saw, as in family?" and she nodded. "Well, that''ll be why when I headed down that way at lunch there was a bunch of military vehicles parked round that burned-out wreck of an illegal pub then."


    "There was?" Fat Bloke asked. "Better stay well away from the place for a while, mate."


    "Don''t tell Neil," Alice told Nick.


    Nick gave her a funny look and said, "Huh?"


    "Remember when he was going on about how he worked out I''m... uh, not from around here? That whole rant about ''really stupid conspiracy theories''? One of those was this ''empire super-soldier program'' thing. We don''t breathe a word of this until we know for sure and can prove it," Alice explained, and Nick burst out laughing.


    "Aye," he said once he''d finished cackling. "There''s a fucking plan!"


    "Okay, what am I missing?" Fat Bloke asked.


    "Well basically one of my brothers, Neil, is full of himself," Nick told him. "He''s a smug little bugger, right up his own arse and convinced to hell and back he knows everything and anyone who doesn''t is stupid and he''s always on about it, and even disregarding the way it''s the sort of lesson he''s really needing his face when he finds out he''s repeatedly been declaring that only an idiot is going to believe something that turns out to be very real is going to be absolutely priceless."


    "I see," said Fat Bloke, who clearly didn''t. "Anyway, I''m gonna skedaddle - I need to get Sane Dave and the Hamster to help with this one, they''re, uh, rather better at getting into military databases than I am, so I''ll see you all later. Just, yeah, just don''t get noticed by the army."


    "Aye, I''m staying well away from that place for a while," said Nick with a nod, and then, after a moment of thought, added, "One thing I am for definite doing soon as I can though."


    "Yeah, what''s that?"


    Nick gave Silent a side-on look, and said, "Learning sign language."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The first thing the Munching Hamster said once Fat Bloke had finished explaining the rumour he''d heard was, "Interesting, and I know at least one place I can check."


    "Oh yeah, what''s that?" Vrotch asked. The three of them, and Vicky, were lounging around in the foyer of Vrotch''s sanctum - the part that looked like the inside of a caravan - with the majority of the cast of young women who constantly seemed to surround Vrotch having been shooed out; Vicky, of course, had refused to go. Wasn''t like Vrotch could look out for himself if trouble came knocking.


    "I know a guy who was on Mount Pleasant when the Brits came up," the Hamster told him. "His name''s Werner Stutz, yes he''s white but he''s okay, he lives over in Shinhama, he''s married to a friend. I''ll see what he thinks later but for now we might as well go and have a poke around in the MoW''s servers and see what shakes loose."


    "Sounds like a plan, what are we waiting for?" asked Fat Bloke, and the three cybermancers immediately put action to words, ducking into one of the big monitors Vrotch kept handy for that exact job - in Fat Bloke''s case his weight made this very funny to watch, and the Munching Hamster rippled and visually changed on her way through, becoming a bright red and exaggeratedly female stylised cartoon hamster clad only in a tight white vest with FREE NIHON written across the boob region and a little spinning chomping hamster logo encircled with the words ''Yet Still The Hamster Munches'' rotating like a wheel in between her tits - this overall look was her avatar, both what she chose to look like where they now were and the image she presented for herself as the world''s number one most wanted hacker. Word down the line was that the TLA - the American''s primary military intelligence agency - would be willing to pay a seven-figure number for information leading to her apprehension; Vrotch wished them lots and lots of hilariously epic failure in their quest to rid themselves of his dearest friend.


    The space beyond, a visual representation of the architecture of the servers his primary systems were hidden in was, unlike his sanctum space, not made so people walking in the portal didn''t realise they''d stepped out of meatspace and into a reality that was an expression of the flows of data through the information technology of the human race, and it was the sort of sight that never failed to give you pause - all around them sprawled a towering city of the information stored on those servers, with data packets expressing as these sort of hovering driverless lorry type things that zipped every which what where along thin silver road surfaces representing the connections, software and hardware alike, through which the traffic of the ordinary operation of the data centre in which Vrotch had hidden his kingdom.


    This, in a very real sense, was Vrotch Vosk''s home ground. Out there in meatspace, he was a skinny, physically weak, knobbly-jointed and very unfit man with absolutely no capacity to fight; in here, he was a god.


    It took but a moment to create a packet of data - just a few kilobytes of junk data generated using Perlin noise and the first eight bytes from a sample of Big Ben chiming as the seed number - as a vehicle for them to travel aboard, and to send it through a dizzying array of connections and hosts and proxy servers to obfuscate where it had come from into oblivion - all the software tools to do it were readily at hand, there was a very good reason he''d chosen a data centre belonging to the TLA in which to squirrel away the few trillion bits of easily-missed data he used as a home, that way if the Ministry of War did manage to trace them well, they''d know exactly who to glare at for the ordinary day-to-day cyberwarfare op and they''d totally disregard any cries of ''wasn''t me'' now, wouldn''t they?


    It was not an unusual choice for a cybermancer, in so much as there was such a thing as a normal cybermancer; to his knowledge Vrotch was one of exactly twelve people who had ever actually seen the incredible plane of existence some unknown process had caused to spring up and connect itself to and become an expression of (and means to get at and influence) every last byte of data in the solar system.


    The one down side of that was the way this resulted in nothing looking like it really should look. There weren''t any giant cyberspace fortresses, the military servers they were heading from and to didn''t look or feel even remotely military, everything was just these vast information-cities with completely empty featureless space between them; if you weren''t paying careful attention and keeping sharp track of which IP addresses you were passing through it was very, very easy indeed to get hopelessly lost, Vrotch wouldn''t have been surprised to learn that more people than the lucky dozen had found the place only to get utterly lost and die there but he''d never seen any evidence to support that theory.


    Their arrival at the data-city representing the Ministry of War was uneventful, at least as uneventful as travel through a realm like this could be - it involved a satellite bounce or two which was always a spectacle, you could almost pick out the shape of Earth''s continents just from the locations of the data-cities and the umpteen ever-shifting connections into space made for a visually arresting sight - and actually getting into the Ministry of War was a snap, they just used a backdoor that had been put in by Vrotch''s mentor, Reg Bethnal, deliberately designed to be usable only by a cybermancer; he had, after all, been the only cybermancer anywhere ever when he created it.


    Then the real work began.


    The Ministry of War had a preposterously enormous crapload of classified data with no way to search it if you didn''t know exactly which specific keywords and serial numbers you were looking for, of which there was no digital reference list, and that meant the only way to find anything in there was the hard way. They at least stored related information together; if, for example, one wished to get the lowdown on Operation Gormhegast and the Gormhegast apparatus it would all be in the same place, presumably because someone high up in their cybersecurity department was better at being tidy than at being secure, the way they relied so heavily on that one stop point followed by security by obscurity was bloody infuriating, what a bunch of bloody amateurs. One of Vrotch''s fellow cybermancers, McBangBang, who a few weeks prior had very much surprised him by not being the five-foot red-robed girl with cat ears and a lot of extra cybernetic limbs s/he looked like in cyberspace, was trying to get them off of their backsides and properly secure and in all honesty Vrotch wished her/him well even though this made it a lot easier to find full lowdowns once you actually found the subject you were looking for, it was just embarrassing how bad their internal security was. It was almost like someone of influence wanted their biggest secrets spilled, ridiculous as that idea was.


    Ergo, they were going around looking for very large folders that had been updated recently, which meant wandering down long rows of data receptacles checking last-updated times, and the three of them had been doing that for about half an hour perceived time - which meant about a second in meatspace - pulling the odd one out for a quick look at what was in it then shoving it back when it turned out to be logistical minutae from bloody Pluto Fleet Station or some other such crap Vrotch couldn''t work out why was being treated as an enormous carefully-guarded secret, when the Hamster shouted across, "Hey, Sane Dave, Fat Bloke, come and have a look at this."


    Vrotch hastened that way, and found her sitting cross-legged on the floor between two rows of data receptacles one aisle across from him with one pulled out and its contents poured all over the floor; she was reading a document with an intrigued look on her hamster face.


    "Found it?" he asked.


    "No, it''s nothing to do with what we were looking for, but you''re going to want to take a look at what I have found," she said, and picked up one of the spilt documents and handed it to him.


    It was a video file - he played it, and discovered it was recordings from some sort of magnetic telescope - hadn''t there been something on the news about the Navy setting up some giant new magnetic telescope a few months back? - but what it showed was definitely neither the scientific research the news report he''d seen had been all about or the recordings of the movements of other nations'' spacecraft he''d expected that thing to really be about as soon as he''d heard of it, because duh, a rocketry fusion reactor involves a bunch of really big really powerful magnets of the sort you can clearly image from a couple of AU away with a system cobbled together from parts taken out of old mobile phones, of course it was for watching other people''s spacecraft.


    However, what he was looking at most definitely was not the magnetic silhouette of a fusion-powered spacecraft; instead it was this weird thing shaped almost like a flowerbud, made out of giant curved magnetic segments, and he was just about to ask what he was looking at when the image suddenly snowed out.


    It cleared up a little, then snowed out again, and repeat. He timed the snow-outs - they were happening at just over one a second.


    "What am I looking at?"


    "Something the Royal Navy spotted falling insystem beyond the orbit of Neptune with that giant magnetic telescope they''ve got set up for spying on the Russians and the gaijin," the Hamster said. "They''ve pretty much worked out it''s an Orion-drive vehicle - you''ve heard of those, haven''t you?"


    "Like the one the Yanks ran for a couple of years before they stole our fusion reactor designs?" Vrotch checked, and she nodded. "Huh, that''s... actually yeah, that''s very interesting, so who''s actually got an atomic pulse propulsion vehicle running now? I thought everyone who''s got the ability to build an atom bomb has had fusion rocketry since the late seventies?"


    "They do," the Hamster said, and looked up from what she was reading. "That''s the initial magnetic footage their Deep Sky Magnetic Observatory team picked up of it at the end of August - it appeared out of absolutely buttfuck nowhere in a big flash, there''s Longsight footage of it appearing over there," and she pointed at another file.


    "Hamster," said Vrotch, "Am I seriously looking at an honest-to-god magnetic-imaging video of a freaking alien spaceship?"


    The Hamster said, "The Navy thinks so, yeah. It''s on a trajectory for a Venus intercept - they''ve been transferring every warship they have out there since the middle of last month."


    Fat Bloke came scrambling over the line of data receptacles, having caught that last exchange.


    He had a look around, then said, "I think we''d better get the others together."


    They looked at each other, then they made copies of the files, put the originals all back in the receptacle, closed it, and left the Ministry of War''s servers immediately with the sudden unexpected cat-girl completely forgotten about, in the case of Vrotch and Fat Bloke quite unaware of the red-robed G.I.R.L. who had been watching them from above.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Thursday afternoon Annie gave Alice a run up to the hospital for her appointment; the problem with her eyes turned out to as they''d been hoping be a software glitch as opposed to anything mechanical meaning to her great relief her face did not need to be partially disassembled, and it didn''t take much effort to get Dr Clayton to add that little metal switch to the software Alice''s brain was already running (and wasn''t that a scary thought) although to Annie''s immense disappointment her own eyes were not able to have that little mental switch added to their functionality; the glitch had in fact been with the controls for Alice''s eyelids, and while to Alice''s slight shock hers were cybernetic, Annie''s eyelids were fully natural.


    Probably a good thing too, Alice privately admitted to herself as they were driving back down to the town and she was practising turning the death-glare on and off in the mirror on the pickup''s sunvisor, Annie was plenty enough of an unstoppable force without it.


    (She took great delight in throwing the glare at Kevin Murchison at the first available opportunity - passing him in a hall Friday morning - and to her brief but extreme satisfaction he flinched. The fact that Fiona got a front-row seat served merely to make it even more satisfying.)


    On that note Fiona had, since the night of the explosions and fire at the goods yard, been gone more and more - she hadn''t spent more than one night in a row actually in the digs and was visibly starting to fray around the edges, and Alice was starting to get quite worried about her.


    The cops had lost most of their frenzy by Saturday though there was still a lot of military about the east end of the goods yard and no-go, and there was no mistaking the growing air of tension in the whole town; Alice mentioned it Saturday night while they were driving around on the west side of the River Ness with Nick looking for vampires to do terrible things to, and he nodded.


    "Aye," he said. "That there is - Scotty Johnson is someone basically everyone knows and pretty much everyone who knows him likes him, if he is a crook he''s an honest one, he never rips his customers off, he''s polite, he''s friendly, he''s respectful, he acts like every customer is just as important as every other customer, he runs - was running at this point, I guess - hands down the best gun shop north of Glasgow, I''d say near to half the ''bought'' as opposed to ''made'' guns in the north came from Scotty and that means with him being knocked out of business there are a hell of a lot of very nervous people in the north of Scotland at the moment. This stinks of another land war, aye, everyone is indeed on edge."


    "I''ve heard that term, land war, a few times. Nick - just the hell is going on in Scotland? What is a land war?"


    Nick didn''t reply for long enough she was about to elbow him, but he chose that moment to finally answer her.


    "I cannae say it''s a surprise they''re no teaching you about that one in their schools down south," he said. "Alice, what you have to realise is that most of Scotland has effectively been in a state of armed rebellion for over two centuries - closer to two and a half come to think of it."


    "... What."


    "It started out with the Jacobite rising, the Bold ''45, that was back in 1745," Nick told her. "Well, actually it''d been going on for a good thirty years by then. After that... well, the government didn''t take too kindly to the Highlanders rising up and trying to overthrow their Dutch kings now, did they. I guess it''s not entirely fair to shout ''the English! The English!'' over and over for all that some dafties who should really ken better are doing that all of the time - at about that sort of a time the old Clan chiefs, the lairds and landlords, were increasingly living down in Edinburgh and looking at their clansmen as a burden... It really got going down in Kintyre in the latter half of the eighteenth century, basically one of the lairds decided he was going to get better money by using ''his'' land to farm sheep than by collecting rent from families that''d been biding there since stone axes were still modern. It... got messy, very quickly. He sent gangs of armed men, evicted the entire population of a village and had anyone who tried to resist or just bloody get all their belongings out shot. Then when he sent men to another village a bit further north, they found hundreds of armed crofters waiting for them. Two of the baliffs escaped alive, a dozen were lynched that night, and most of the rest of them shot or beaten to death."


    "Oh," said Alice.


    "After that..." Nick shook his head again. "They never stopped trying to evict villages, and the attempts got bloodier and bloodier. There was a raging gun battle not far from Stornaway in 1810 - realistically that was the first actual land war. It spread, hundreds of baliffs and revenue men were hanged, shot, some poor bastards were even burned at the stake and there''s at least a couple of cases where men were buried alive, thrown off of cliffs, or thrown into the sea with old millstones tied to their legs, and after that it never really went away. The government made an attempt to shut it all down in 1884 but there was some sort of big mess in the Sudan going on then something kicked off in China, most of the men and equipment they''d been going to send north had to be sent out there instead, then one thing after another and basically there was just one war after another and Scotland was just sitting there not doing anything and by the time they had the time to turn their attention north at the end of the first world war things had pretty much broken down to the point it is today, apart from a handful of military bases, mostly navy or RAF, there''s basically no government presence north of the line of Loch Ness and south of here to the border is tenuous at best. Today, on paper at least, ninety-eight percent of land in Scotland is owned by just fifty people, only two of which actually live in Scotland - Annie''s dad''s one of them - and less than a dozen of them have ever actually come north of the border - and over a third of the country''s population are living under eviction notices that were served to their great-grandparents. I can still clearly remember the look on Annie''s dad''s face when he learned that courtesy of the land he bought along with the railway he had over twenty thousand tenants living under century-an-a-half-old eviction notices, I''ve never seen a man look so ashamed before or since, and even old Ali Beag Macleod was willing to be seen with tears in his eyes when Sir Joe had those notices rescinded."


    "Oh," said Alice.


    "I don''t know why it''s never truly ended, or why the government puts up with it," Nick told her. "I don''t know why the shooting always peters out just before it can actually get anywhere either, and I don''t know why Scotland has been kept the only part of the Empire where there is no law about security of tenancy on the books. All I can tell you for certain is that we are living in the last lawless land in western Europe - here in Inverness is the very northernmost point any government law enforcement happens at all in this country and it''s tenuous, that''s why they drive around in those bloody tanks and that''s why the no-go is called the no-go, it''s because any cop who drives in there is going to be blown up with a roadside bomb or pelted with home-made rocket launchers or if he gets out of his tank he''ll be shot - come to think of it that''s most likely why the vampires have had as much success up here as they have, there''s nae many cops will even think to look if someone disappears and there''s a hell of a lot of folks up here the government doesnae have any documents about at all. North of here there''s not one cop or coast guard between here and Norway in one direction, the Faroes the other, what happens in the way of law enforcement north of here is always done by the militias and mostly consists of troublemakers getting beaten up or if they''ve pushed it too far kneecapped with a shotgun or just hanged. There''s been actual ceasefires but they always end with the landlords trying to take advantage of them - the last successful evictions took place while a lot of men were away fighting in the second world war. Most of us are standing by to fight for our homes and our neighbours homes, nobody with a lick of sense wants it to happen but we all know it''ll happen anyway, and at the end of the day all of us are wondering when in the name of Christ we''re finally going to be left in peace."Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    He paused, and glanced across the cab at her.


    "Alice," he said, "There''s something I''ve been thinking, have thought for a while in all honesty. I know you''re nae comfortable around guns, Brigid was pointing it out to me and once I''d seen it it was pretty clear to see, but at the end of the day you need to learn to shoot," and he must have caught her expression - it still wasn''t an idea she was at all keen on - as he added, "Nae pressure, Alice. Whenever you''re ready there''s an open offer to help you learn - I''m a bloody awful shot but I know the mechanics of it well enough. Just... in all honesty I''ve a strong sense you''re going to need to know how sooner or later."


    Alice thought about that, and decided to take it in the vein it was patently intended.


    "I''ll think about it," she said. "Just remember though, this," and she raised her left hand, the index finger pointed, "Is always loaded."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    At that exact moment, the last of the eleven living cybermancers was just arriving on Vrotch''s home server, specifically McBangBang, in his red-robed cat-eared extra-robotic-limbed twelve-year-old girl guise. Kitty Katty - an American naval cybersecurity specialist who had made the leap two years prior, currently in his guise of a rather Tex Avery-looking cartoon cat - had been the first to join Vrotch, the Munching Hamster and Fat Bloke post the Hamster calling the meeting a couple of hours prior; second to arrive had been Hawkeye, a Russian hacker who online looked like a triangular pyramid with an eye on each face; third to come was the Flimflam Man (a Vietnamese chap dressed as your traditional pointy-hatted fantasy wizard with the addition of a trademark Viet Cong sub-machine gun with ''Magic Wand'' written upon it, on a sling) and fourth was Dr Mayhem - splendidly Australian and quite mad, and a brilliant cybersurgeon who had made the leap to cybermancy from there; fifth to arrive was Mr Long, an Imperial Chinese national who took the appearance of a traditional Chinese dragon; sixth was Hammergirl, another Brit, who looked like a friendly roly-poly kids comic woman with a friendly roly-poly kids comic hammer drawn upon her pullover; seventh came Sutekh, whose background Vrotch did not know but he appropriately enough looked a great deal like the Egyptian god of the same name, in hieroglyphic style; and last was McBangBang with a big smile on his/her currently-female-looking face.


    "Sorry I''m late old sock," s/he said. "Had something I couldn''t get away from, what''s all the fuss?"


    "McBangBang, there you are," Vrotch said. "Kitty Katty was just confirming that his lot have been tracking this thing too," and he indicated one of windows that was floating open over the construct of a tabletop that was hanging in a nice open patch of localspace.


    "You''re Limey Fleet Space Arm," Kitty Katty said, gesturing at it, "What''ve you heard about this thing?"


    McBangBang came over for a closer look, as usual tucking his/her hands into his/her sleeves in a manner rather like the stereotypical Mandarin and using some of the mess of robotic arms with their plier-like hands that extended from the backs of his/her shoulders in his/her avatar to manipulate the varied files they had open, and played the indicated file - a video of a rather attractive red-haired woman clad as a Royal Navy officer briefing some politicians and the Queen of Britain on the object Vrotch, Fat Bloke and the Hamster had recently learned of.


    "Well I recognise Captain Amundsen," said McBangBang with a frown, and Vrotch realised exactly where the woman had looked familiar from when he saw that news report, she looked a lot like Scotty Johnson''s right-hand woman and the fact Mags'' surname was Amundsen didn''t strike him as any sort of a coincidence. "She''s been promoted since this video, superlative officer, she''s tapped for command of one of the Dreadnaught-class battlecruisers we''re currently close to completing ¨C but the rest, this is the first I''ve heard of it... It explains a few things, no wonder Whitehall green-lit such a significant ramping up in our heavy assets and sent everything and the kitchen sink transferring for Venus last month. Where''d you get hold of this?"


    The Hamster snorted and said, "Don''t give me that, I saw you see me and Dave and Fat Bloke nosing around in the Ministry of War the other day. There''s oodles of stuff on this, the people in charge at your day job have been falling over themselves over it since the same day this Amundsen woman''s team spotted it and honestly I''m surprised they haven''t briefed you."


    They listened to the rest of the briefing from the illustrious apparently-now-Captain Amundsen, who was referred to by the rank of Commander throughout, and then Hammergirl said, "I wonder if the outsider has a datasphere?"


    "That''s a thought," said the Hamster. "We should be able to piggyback the M.o.W''s tracking - who''s up for going for a closer look?"


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Riding a data packet several light minutes in real-world distance takes quite a long perceived time; unless you''re in a construct deliberately clocked to match real time like Vrotch''s sanctum your perceptions speed up in cyberspace, enough so that you can track the movement of individual data packets, but that leaves long trips seeming even longer - and the trip out to the object Hammergirl, whom Vrotch was vaguely wondering why hadn''t been nearly as surprised as she should be, had dubbed ''the outsider'' was a bloody long wait, taking as it did several real-world minutes, but they got there in the end and when they did they were met with possibly the strangest sight any of them had ever seen in the information realm. It really didn''t match what Vrotch was used to seeing - the whole thing was just utterly mismatched, the end aligned with where they knew the engines were was this weird and rather small techno-organic blob with what looked almost but not quite like some sort of strange carnival mirror version of a normal datasphere then floating behind it, and behind and totally separate from that was this truly gigantic pale pink crystal sort of thing both utterly unlike either and just as utterly unlike anything else Vrotch had ever seen in cyberspace before.


    "Any of you motherfuckers ever seen anything like this before?" asked the Flimflam Man.


    "No, nothing," said the Munching Hamster, "Not even on McBangBang''s home server."


    "I must say I resemble that remark... Any thoughts on what in the devil causes it to look quite like that, chaps and chapettes?"


    "Well for one thing I doubt it has anything to do with the code base our space aliens are using," said Vrotch, "We''ve all seen how little mere differing code bases and exact architecture do to alter the cyberrealm appearance of a system''s infosphere."


    "It seems obvious enough that we''re looking at a fundamental difference in machine architecture ¨C totally different tech base, one has to question whether they even use transistors. It could potentially be an organic computer?" Hawkeye suggested in its faintly Russian drawl.


    "I don''t think that''s it Hawk, Kelbeth are working on living computers using cloned brain tissue and their dataspheres don''t look anything even remotely like this," said Sutekh, poking at the techno-organic blob thins with its staff. "They''re just as different from your generic system''s infosphere, but not in this way ¨C they''re all sort of shroomy."


    "Really? Remind me to have a look at that some time, sounds intriguing," said the Hamster.


    "Oh it is rather," Sutekh said with a nod.


    "You know," said McBangBang, "I can''t shake the feeling I''ve seen something a bit like this before, but I''m dashed if I can think where."


    "Yeah, you''re right ¨C it does look sort of familiar, doesn''t it?" Kitty Katty mused.


    "It does, doesn''t it?" said Fat Bloke.


    Dr Mayhem nodded and said, "My thought exactly."


    "Which logically leads," said Mr Long, "To the question, where have you four been that the rest of us have not?"


    "It''s a big Net," the Hamster said with a sigh. "I''m sure there''s plenty of places."


    "Well to start off with we''re going to have to work out how to get into this thing," Vrotch said, rapping his knuckles on the edge of the alien datasphere. "Look at that ¨C hard incompatibility, no surprise there but until we come up with some sort of translator we''re not getting anywhere close to into it."


    "And to do that we''re going to need to make sense of what makes this so different to our own datasphere, right," said Fat Bloke. "This smells of catch-22 to me."


    Kitty Katty laughed and shook his head. "Nah, we''ve got eleven of the finest minds in the world right here. Between the whole lot of us I don''t expect there''s much of anything we can''t figure out."


    "Truth," Fat Bloke admitted.


    Vrotch glanced around the group, and then let out a breath.


    "Okay," he said. "Whichever way we''ve got a lot to do - let''s get on with it."


    He and Fat Bloke and the Hamster had all long since completely forgotten about Nick and the tongueless catgirl.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    There were two weeks left before the October break, and Alice split them between college, playing with magic, very carefully not ripping MIIIiiiiIiiiiIIIster Kevin Bloody Murchison''s spleen out because she wasn''t sure how to get away with it yet, fiddling with things in unspace, putting off thinking about Nick''s offer as the idea still made her jumpy, vaguely wondering where Fat Bloke and the Hamster had got to, trying to catch that fox - the little bastard was as slippery as an eel and just wouldn''t stay gone - and going out finding vampire lairs the military weren''t anywhere near and splattering the ticks - the part about military stopped being a concern by the end of the second-to-last week before they''d be off back to Inverallen when the military personnel that''d been camped out round the burned-out illegal pub packed up and got on the road south.


    At the same time the problem with Fiona abruptly went away; after the night they found Silent she''d stopped coming back to the digs every third night, the morning after which she was always visibly overtired but swore blind she couldn''t say what was up, then that same morning the army cleared out she came back looking just as tired as ever but rather relieved, sat herself down at the breakfast table beside Alice, and said, "Well thank Christ that''s through with."


    "What''s through with?" asked Alice.


    "Well I can''t really be saying much about it," Fiona surprised her by saying in a low voice, "But to cut a long story short, Grandmother had myself and two others maintaining a watch on one of the coppers who was getting smashed up in that illegal pub, one John Griffths - nasty piece of work, normally I''d just stand back grinning and watch whatever happened to the bastard but Grandmother is thinking he''ll be useful to her yet. Any rate just last night someone was skulking their way into his ward at the hospital and trying to inject him with I don''t know what, and went to shoot me when I was saying he shouldnae be doing that - I''d been using a wee misdirection so I wasn''t being noticed - well one way or another Griffths is off to a police safehouse and Grandmother''s cancelled our wee watch on him."


    Alice blinked, and then said, "Huh... thanks, Fiona. I... thanks."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The others weren''t there yet when Alice got to the Harbourmaster''s that afternoon - not surprising, the engineering and computer science courses both had later lectures than the archaeology students on a Wednesday - so having let Mary know to tell the others where they were Alice and Fiona headed directly through Alice''s portal to get her experiments with opening the things from the Earth side planned in peace and quiet, and immediately found a rather irate tiger-woman coming stomping back through the trees covered in dust with her hair in a mess.


    "Shiva," Alice said. "You look... kinda like you''ve been dragged through a bush backwards, what''s up?"


    "That bloody fox again, boss," said Shiva, who sounded just as frustrated as she looked "It just about wrapped me round a tree this time, it''s getting even bloody slipperier and the cunning little sod just keeps on coming back for another round, I really don''t think I''m going to be able to catch it on my own like this."


    Alice said, "Hrm," while thinking very fast, then added, "This place isn''t the most conductive to catching things in, is it. I''d been thinking I might as well do something a bit more with it and I guess there''s no time like the present.


    "It''d be very much appreciated, thanks boss," said Shiva with a sigh, sitting herself down on one of Alice''s sofas. "Bleh! I got a branch right in my mouth."


    Alice nodded, and started focusing.


    She began by making most of what was around them go away - down to just the patch of carpet with sofas, and the pseudo-container she''d made for Fat Bloke; she turned that into a room with wood-panelled walls, added walls and a ceiling around the patch of carpet, then stretched a hallway between the two and up to the portal, around which she made another room with similar decor to the existing ones.


    Then she started filling in more rooms - first changing the hallway so it ran along the side of the three rooms instead of between them, then tacking a room onto each end as she decided that yes, steampunk pirate airship was definitely the right way to go; the one at the far end from the portal room became the airship''s bridge (or whatever it''s called on an airship) and the one at the other became a sort of nautical grand staircase style room with stairs going both up and down - from the one extending down she added another corridor, then rooms along each side of them until the whole thing was roughly boat-shaped.


    She then headed up onto the top of the whole thing and started imagining a gasbag with rigid airship internal structure inside it on top, decided she''d made that too small, and remade it much bigger; she''d just got done putting in a zigzagging staircase going up to a sort of crow''s nest on top and gone back to the original area to start thinking of what to turn rooms into when Nick came through her portal, and once he''d got done laughing his fool head off about the airship he finally managed to communicate that they were going to go vampire hunting.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Hey, there''s another set of those twins," said Andy as the Bigger Van rattled through Culloden. "The one with the long hair''s wearing the lead this time."


    "Again," said Alice. "That''s, what, the twentieth set?"


    "Must be closer to thirty by now," said Nick. "I don''t know about you lot but I''ve pretty much seen at least one set of them every day since I was starting to keep an eye out, always busy getting out of town and the only change which one''s on a lead."


    "Think we ought to be grabbing a pair of them and asking a few wee questions?" Fiona asked.


    "Nah, they''re nae bothering anyone," Annie decided, and Fiona shrugged and reserved comment, and that was about that as far as conversation went in the Bigger Van save for planning what they were going to do to vampires in Nairn until they were in Nairn and doing things to vampires.


    The nest in question was a bit outside the town, set up on a pig farm; there were about fifteen bloodsuckers in all and a particularly horrible piece of machinery set up in the barn - this appeared to be a home-made device for draining the blood from a living human being, and there was no sign of bodies but plenty of signs that a lot of people had been drained then chopped up and fed to the pigs, and after about the third cop-related joke out of Val, Nick told her it wasn''t funny.


    It didn''t take much thought to realise that what had been going on at the farm was the collecting and selling of large quantities of human blood; there was a fridge full of nearly two hundred blood bags, half a pallet of unused empties, a stack of ledgers full of transactions measured in pints with each pint costing half a shilling, several large suitcases stuffed full of money, and a password-protected laptop computer.


    "Damn it," said Mackie, surveying the laptop. "Wish myself kent how to get into this thing."


    "Isn''t Vrotch some sort of computer wizard?" asked Val. "Bet he could get right into it."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Nick! Oh crap I''m sorry man, I clean forgot about your cat-girl because of this stuff we found when we were looking for something about her, man, it''s fascinating, sorry man," said Vrotch as soon as Vicky showed the gang of them into his caravan, where he had been busying himself tucking a bunch of paperwork into a big manilla folder.


    "Oh aye, what were you finding then?" Nick asked, sitting himself down along with the rest of the little team of vampire hunters.


    "Well basically the Ministry of War filing system is bloody awful, man, we were going through it looking for recently updated stuff because we guessed that the file on anything to do with super-soldiers would probably have been updated with whatever happened at that pub of Scotty''s, right, and basically the Hamster found this," and he tapped at one of the several computer mice on his desk, causing a piece of video to appear on a monitor - it started with a blank starscape, then there was a bright flash and suddenly there was a spacecraft there.


    "Myself am no recognising that one, is that one of those things the Yanks were playing with in the early seventies that got about by setting off atom bombs on themselves?" Mackie asked. "What''s with that big petals sort of a thing off the far end from the pusher plate of it?"


    "We think so, yeah," said Vrotch. "And we don''t know, because get this: what you''re looking at is the first Longsight footage of an actual honest-to-God alien spaceship."


    There was a pause, during which the image suddenly started flashing completely white about once a second with the bit Mackie had called a pusher plate visibly bouncing back between flashes, and then Mackie said, "Yourself''s shitting myself."


    "No shit man, it appeared out of fucknowhere in a great big flash outside Neptune orbit, did a braking burn to the tune of about two hundred miles per second cause it was on its way through the solar system like a cat with its arse on fire, and is now falling insystem towards a predicted Venus encounter early next year."


    "Okay, I see why you were getting a bit distracted," said Nick, his voice somewhat higher-pitched than usual. Welcome to the rabbit-hole, Macbane.


    "Yeah man, it''s the sort of thing that makes a dude sit up and take notice, isn''t it - don''t go gabbing about it, man, we nicked most of this stuff off the Ministry of War''s secure servers and they get a bit excited about that sort of thing. It''ll be a moot point soon enough, in about a month it''s projected to pass in front of the trajectory of vehicles transferring from Earth towards Mars and the asteroid belt and which asteroid miner doesn''t have a stonking great magnetic imager on his boat because iron, duh, but basically just don''t let on you know about it early."


    "That," said Annie, who looked even more like she didn''t know quite what to think than she had when realising they were dealing with vampires, "Is probably the best idea."


    "So what brings you dudes here tonight anyway, I notice an absence of kitties?" said Vrotch.


    "Oh, aye," and Annie held up the laptop she was carrying. "Well we found this in the vampire den we hit tonight, place through by Nairn that seems to have been being used to sell blood out of people they were killing, they had this big draining machine sort of thing, nasty stuff. They had a big pile of ledgers but there wasnae anything but names in there, we''re hoping there''s more than that on this but it''s passworded and since you''re basically a computer wizard,"


    "Nuff said," said Vrotch, accepting the laptop. "Just don''t use ''wizard'' round the Munching Hamster, basically what you dudes do with stuff like Mackie''s nifty shotgun is you''re wizards, wizards make and use magical tools instead of casting spells, right, the Hamster gets kinda hung up on that sort of stuff even when it''s like semantics."


    "Oh, sure," said Annie as Vrotch booted the laptop; he spent a moment staring at the login screen then stuck his head and one arm in through it, spent a moment rooting around in there, came back out, and scribbled something down on a scrap of paper.


    "There''s the log-in, easy as, have fun," he said, then added, "I''ll make sure I remember to have a better look for stuff about your cat-girl, Nick man. Just lemme know if you find anything."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The laptop, when they started going through it Thursday evening at the Harbourmaster''s, proved to be a veritable goldmine of information; it was full of names, addresses, tastes, notes on which vampire did what, and what amounted to the blackmail material about other walking corpses collected by a walking corpse - and one of the most prominent names on the list was identified as an information broker.


    Thus it didn''t take them five minutes to decide where they were going tonight: a fortified ''haggis-proof'' farmhouse-cum-stately-home not far from Muir of Ord, and as soon as they saw the name ''Ruilick Hall'' they immediately had enough to get an idea of what they were dealing with off of the Internet.


    "... Huh, it''s supposed to have been built in the 1890s," Annie said, peering at one of the top search results. "Bloke who built it went west on the wrong end of a bull haggis in 1903 it says here, and... huh. So the last listed owner is his wife, who seems to have been on the go and not looking old enough... rather a long time after the place was built."


    "I guess we''ve worked out who our vampire is then," said Andy,


    "Was," said Andy.


    "Aye, was. Okay, let''s go and put what''s left of her in the ground then," said Nick.


    "The place is a bloody fortress Nick, have a look at this," said Annie. "Proper haggis-proof building and I think it''s meant to be crofter-proof as well, it might as well be a pillbox. Well, guess we''ll be finding out if it''s Mackie ''re-railed a locomotive with his bare hands'' Romanov-proof."


    "It wasnae that big a bloody locomotive," said Mackie.


    "No, it wasnae that big, only nine tons," said Annie with a snort; she caught Alice''s expression and added, "Aye, that''s about the look I had on my face when this great lump just grabbed the bloody Fowler''s front buffer beam and lifted. That was when I was starting to realise that all the mad wee stories they''d been telling me when I was blind were nae a bunch of old shite after all."


    "What I''m thinking is we rip that strainer out of the fence there and Mackie hies at the door with it, just ram the bloody thing into the door end-on until it goes crunch," said Nick, indicating the hall''s perimeter fence on one of the photos on the historic building website they were looking at. "You ken, like a wee battering ram, if this bloody tick''s got a wee castle we may as well be getting into it like you''re getting into a castle."


    "You''re bloody having us on," said Andy.


    Annie, Mackie, and Nick shared a round of mad grins.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    There was a massive bang and cracking noise, and the entire courtyard doorway to Ruilick Hall shook, and Andy slowly shook his head.


    "Okay," he said. "Mebbe you were nae having me on."


    "Aye," said Mackie, backing off for another go and blithely ignoring the yelling now audible from inside the semi-fortified building; he backed off as far as the arrangement of the entryway let him, lowered the overgrown fence post to about the same height as his first go, charged, and arrived with the post pointy-end first with another massive crunch.


    "Nae quite yet," he said, backing off.


    "Another couple of whacks ought to be doing it," said Fiona.


    Mackie charged again. This time the door visibly buckled a bit and something went bang from inside it.


    "That post''s starting to splinter," said Annie.


    "Nae bother, we''ll just be pulling another one out if this one gives up first," said Mackie, and charged for a fourth time. This time, the pointy end of the post went clean through the door, folding one of its planks in half as it went; he let out a cry of "Jesus!" and ducked to one side as a machine gun opened up on the far side of the very damaged door.


    "Pass myself the bloody Vickers out the Bigger Van, myself''ll be giving these wankers machine gun," he declared, and Nick and Val went running back to the Bigger Van and came back with said gun and a box of ammunition to match in tow, Nick toting the gun and Val toting the ammo.


    "Mind the bloody water jacket, it''s nae bullet-proof," said Nick.


    "Och, it''ll be fine, pass us the thermo gogs there Andy," said Mackie; Andy pulled them off and lobbed them over to him, and waited until whoever was inside either let off or stopped to reload then pulled the battered overgrown fence post out and ducked back again; the machine gun opened up again, this time with the occasional bullet coming out of the hole left by the fence post.


    Mackie spent the next wait putting the thermograph goggles on and loading his very large gun, then popped its muzzle into the hole left by the post and held down until the belt ran dry.


    No answering gunfire returned, so he dumped the machine gun, grabbed his trench gun from where he''d leant it against the wall, reached through the hole, pulled at something, took a couple of deep breaths, then kicked the no-longer-barred doors open and went sprinting in with shotgun barking and Nick Macbane and Fiona Macleod hard behind him.


    There was a lot of crashing, banging, splattering noises, blood-curdling screams, gunshots, and general mayhem, then it all went quiet in there and Alice had a cautious peek through, finding the two boys wandering around the large courtyard beyond the recently-knocked-in doors big enough the Bigger Van could fit through and apparently checking there wasn''t any vampires hiding among the assorted vehicles parked in the lean-to sheds that lined the courtyard.


    "Huh - no many signs of life, or of unlife either," Annie continued, and no sooner were the words out of her mouth than half a dozen yelling, sword-waving, idiots came pouring out of the main door to what looked to be the house part of the building, and immediately got themselves lit up with a salvo of gunfire - one proved to have some sense, waited for Val and Andy to be reloading and then came roaring out the door, which he slammed behind himself. He was clad in a long dark coat, wearing sunglasses at night, and had a katana of all things in his hands - he took one look and went at Nick, whirling his sword at roughly chest-height.


    Nick, not being anyone''s fool, blocked - the katana met the claymore with a sound vaguely reminiscent of a car crash, and much to the unfortunate vampire''s extremely visible surprise the impact left the katana very bent indeed.


    "Well that was predictable," said Nick, and hacked the vampire''s head off on the backswing.


    "Cheap knock-off?" Annie asked, poking at the mangled katana with her foot.


    "Nah, one of those probably would''ve busted in half, that wasnae a bad bit of steel before that eejit decided to smash it edge-on into a slightly sharpened pinch bar with all his walking-corpse might. What a bloody shame," said Nick with a shake of his head.


    "Knock knock, wankers!" Mackie roared, and kicked open the door to the house proper (a markedly less massive construction than the structure''s exterior doors) ducking back as a machine gun roared into life somewhere within; he hung back until the gunner stopped to reload then hurled a double handful of smoke grenades in, waited until the gunner dried out the next belt, then went in the door in dead silence save for the bark of his shotgun, Nick and Fiona hard behind him.


    "We may as well be taking the Bigger Van into the courtyard," said Annie.


    "Why''d I nae think of that?" Andy grumbled as the four still standing outside headed back to it with the Vickers gun in tow.


    By the time they''d driven in (and ascertained that yes, the Bigger Van''s turning circle was indeed tight enough to get round the sharp dog-leg at the housewards end of the driveway into the alcove sort of affair on one side of which the main gates were) there was a great deal of noise coming out of the kicked-in door, so Alice parked the Bigger Van with its rear third blocking the doorway and she and Andy stayed in it with the doors and roof hatch closed and the gearbox in reverse so she could back it into a position where nothing could get into the Bigger Van or out of the main gate, while Annie and Val went and joined Nick and Mackie inside, increasing the velocity and volume of mayhem.


    "I dinnae like just sitting out here and waiting," said Andy.


    "Me neither, but what can we do - it''s not like we''ve got superpowers the way Mackie has," Alice told him, and he let out a most indecorous snort.


    "Remind me which of the pair of us is a cyborg who''s learning actual honest-to-God magic."


    Alice thought about that for a bit, and finally said, "Oh."


    She thought about it a bit longer, and added, "I don''t care what you say, I''m not starting running around in brightly-coloured pyjamas and a silly little opera mask."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    After about twenty minutes Annie Kelly came ambling back out of Ruilick Hall and over to the Bigger Van, and Alice opened her window.


    "Sup?" she said.


    "All clear, but there''s a shitload of stuff we''re taking and the owner of the place to be asking a few wee questions, we could use the extra hands," and Alice pulled the Bigger Van forwards and piled out and into the building.


    The foyer within was distinctly Victorian-country-house with a grand double stairway leading up to a balcony round the top - a brass-infested and likewise Victorian-looking machine gun was mounted at the point where the two curved sides of stairway met at their shared top, and there was mud up the ceiling above the gun and a pair of muddy trousers hanging from the chandelier, while Nick was standing beside the gun and laughing at something.


    This something was swearing at him in a very posh very English woman''s voice, and on arriving at the top of the stairs Alice had to laugh: a woman recognisable from the portrait photograph on the website Annie had found, down to being clad in very Victorian clothing to match her very Victorian house and her very Victorian machine gun, was laying flat on the floor and staked to it by Nick''s claymore, which was embedded in her and the floor up to its hilt.


    "Aye," said Fiona, raising her thermograph goggles. "Walking corpse, I''d say she''s been dead since the end of the nineteenth century."


    "The more of this vampires shite we see the more fucked up it gets," Annie said with a shake of her head. "Alrightie dead girl, want to tell us where your everything is and get a nice quick mudding or are we going to torture you then give you a wee suntan for breakfast?"


    "Who the devil do you think you are?" the vampiress on the floor declared in the tone of one who has not truly registered their position.


    Annie shot her in the foot, waited for the renewed screaming and swearing to subside, and then said, "I think I''m someone who can''t abide anything that thinks people are food. Now, are you going to make me ask you again? I can keep this up all night."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    In the end, they drove away from Ruilick better off by several computers and a suitcase full of money, with Nick driving one of the vans that had been parked in the courtyard and the dozen assorted people they''d found in an honest-to-God dungeon in the basement in the back of it, leaving the former owner of the hall nailed to the roof and still yelling.


    They dropped the victims (and computers) off with Vrotch and headed back to the digs.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Next up - A visit to Orkney, a stormy week back in Inverallen, and the final couple of very unexpected encounters as chapter 5 begins - and a variety of issues start looking for places to come home and roost.

 Chapter 5: Land Wars.

    -/-/-/-/-/-


    On the Friday morning Nick decided to ride his as-yet skeletal motorcycle down to the college despite its lacking lots of significant things such as any more seat than a pillow duct taped to the top of the frame, exhaust pipes, lights, mudguards, front brake, speedometer, actual clutch lever instead of a pair of mole grips clamped to the end of the clutch cable, numberplate, etc etc etc.


    This left Alice to pilot the Albon (with the trailer hooked up to it and Silent, still wearing her wrist plank but with the chain replaced by a common-or-garden lead, camped out in the back while Fiona rode shotgun) while Annie brought her trailer full of stuff like Nick and Mackie''s fridge behind her pickup - Mackie joined Nick on the bikes for the morning - and to Alice''s surprise the Albion proved much harder to drive than the Bigger Van mostly, Nick said when she asked, because it didn''t have power steering.


    From there with the morning''s lectures done with they loaded the bikes onto the big trailer and hit the road headed north with Alice now driving the Bigger Van (which they''d loaded with all Fiona''s stuff and Alice''s portal) and Nick the Albion with Mackie riding shotgun, and as they drove Alice started noticing something odd; the drivers of oncoming traffic were taking great pains to avoid looking at her, to the point that as they were leaving Dingwall having dropped Fiona and her stuff off one gentleman nearly put his car into the ditch.


    They stuck on the main road north past where, a few weeks prior, they''d turned onto it near Tain, winding their way north along Scotland''s east coast - beyond Tain Alice started seeing increasing numbers of armoured and or armed vehicle without numberplates on, the occupants of which grinned and enthusiastically waved at her - the terrain flattened out more and more as they headed further and further towards mainland Britain''s northernmost point, and they eventually arrived in Scrabster not far from (and realistically more or less part of) Thurso with most of an hour to spare before the day''s last ferry trip to Kirkwall would start taking on vehicles - the ferry hadn''t yet arrived at the terminal, so they parked the vehicles in the queue, Annie bought tickets, and they ducked into a nearby shop to get something to drink.


    The ferry - a big enough vessel it was only fair to call it a ship, Alice later learned it was originally designed to land tanks on a beach while being shot at and had been through three different sets of hands on three different continents after having seen (and been built for) military use in the American invasion of Japan, with the upper decks (in which passengers were required to ride while at sea) a post-war addition - arrived and they boarded; they left the crew strapping the Bigger Van down (and not one member of the ferry''s crew had looked directly at Alice in the course of getting the Bigger Van situated) and headed up to the saloon deck with their laptops in tow, briefly leaving Nick to discuss his ''hazardous cargo'' (IE his gas welding gear''s oxygen and acetylene tanks) with the crew; he rejoined them right as the ferry was backing off of the dock.


    They''d all grabbed jackets when leaving their vehicles, and stuck them on and went out on deck to admire the view - it was clear if overcast with a stiff breeze making for perishing bloody cold. The ferry was busy with most of Inverness College''s population of Orkney natives onboard in addition to usual traffic, but the trip passed without incident and soon enough they were walking into a chip shop in Kirkwall, in the tight narrow stone-paved section close to the cathedral that the town used for a high street, to get a bite to eat.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Having spent the night camped out in Alice''s corner of unspace (this was somewhat less onerous that it might sound; Alice simply turned four of the until-then empty rooms in her ersatz airship into bedrooms even while explaining to a highly amused Nick, who had asked, that the reason her bit of unspace was now an airship flying above clouds was because since her guardian had turned out to be a post-apocalyptic steampunk airship pirate catgirl she should really have a pirate airship to live aboard and besides, she unaashamedly explained, airships made her happy) with the vehicles parked in a random layby not far from Kirkwall, they spent Saturday morning doing the touristy bit, checking out the sights around Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar, with the highlight of it a walk into the chambered tomb called Maes Howe, and then Alice having plucked up the courage they went and knocked on the low door of the lonely blackhouse, rounded-ended and low-laying with a thatch roof and central chimney, that stood on the spur of land between two freshwater lochs that was the Ness of Brodgar.


    After a moment the door was answered by a little old man who walked with a bit of a stoop but even still had to duck under the old building''s doorsill - the door was on the low side of five feet high. He had wispy white hair and a splendid beard that made him look rather like Santa, and was clad in corduroy trousers and a check shirt.


    Looking surprised he said, "Well hello there, and what bring you lads and lasses to my door today?" in a perfect Orcadian accent that only a couple of months ago Alice would have been unable to distinguish from the (when you know it very different) Gaelic accent the Loch Allen trio spoke in.


    "Hello," Annie, who''d been unofficially elected spokeswoman for the affair, said. "I''m awfully sorry to bother you, but my friend here," and she indicated Alice, "Is studying archaeology, and she says that there''s something funny about the shape of the land here."


    "Archaeology, aye?" the old man said with a nod. "Well Orkney''s nae a bad place to be looking at that, it''d be hard to dig up a square yard of Orkney without finding something an archaeologist would be liking a wee look at. Och, but where''s my manners, my name''s Malcolm Laing,"


    "Annie Kelly," Annie said, accepting the handshake. "This is Nick Macbane; Mackie Romanov; and Alice Liddell."


    "Well," said old Malcolm with a nod, having shaken hands with everyone, "I suppose you''d better come in for a cup of tea and you," and he nodded to Alice, "Can tell me what''s odd about the shape of my croft - mind your heads there, now."


    As with Grace''s house the extremely low front door led into a much roomier interior than it felt like it should; even Mackie could stand fully upright once they were inside. The interior was separated out by multiple partitions that looked to have been made using salvaged wood, shared the same sloping floors and dearth of straight lines as Grace''s house, and just like the morning Alice had come round the air was heavy with the earthy smell of peat smoke.


    Malcolm ushered them left through the cramped porch and into what he used for a living room - like the whole house this was small and dark and completely lacked windows. It was lined with wood panels that looked to have at one time been the sides of packing cases, themselves covered in a mixture of guns on hooks and framed black-and-white photographs of lighthouses, lifeboats, weatherbeaten seamen, and a series of photographs of what it was quickly possible to discern was Malcolm''s family as the man in them all got older and more recognisably him, and illuminated by a single smoky oil lamp and the peats burning in the fireplace. One end of the room was taken up with a dining table and a couple of overstuffed bookshelves - the oil lamp sat on this dining table - with a couple of attendant straight-backed wooden chairs, the other was full of a half-circle of overstuffed old red leather sofas, the sort you''d expect to find in a country pub, round the fire with a low table between them; the kitchen was a sort of leg off of the living room with a small solid-fuel stove and a slightly beat-up old tin sink that appeared to be fed from a pair of old 40-gallon drums hung from the rafters. There was no sign of anything electrical in the entire living room and quite how water got up to the drums was not apparent.


    The old man sat them down, put the kettle on, got out a tin of biscuits, and once the kettle had boiled and everyone was holding a cup of tea and he''d refrained from bustling about, sat down to hear what Alice had to say.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    It quickly became clear that there was not, in fact, anything whatsoever odd about the shape of Malcolm Laing''s croft and in Annie Kelly''s educated opinion it was downright painful listening to Alice trying to articulate why she was interested in that particular spur of land without coming out and saying ''I''m from another universe and there''s something here where I''m from.''


    However, the stumbling and total failure to articulate had an effect totally contrary to what most would expect; as Alice continued tripping over herself and failing to adequately express anything of meaning the old man''s expression became more and more thoughtful and, in all honesty, interested, before finally, once they''d finished their tea, he said, "Well," and he nodded to Nick and Mackie. "I''ve spades to hand, and these two young lads look like they''ve strong backs. Let''s go out into the field and have a wee bit of a dig about, and we''ll see what we can see."


    The boys having been armed with spades from the non-house half of the house - if one were to turn right immediately on coming in the door one would find oneself in an unlined almost barn-like area containing a couple of cattle stalls, a sheep pen, a stack of bales of hay, a larger stack of peats, a wild array of tools, and an old outboard motor hanging from the rafters - Annie and the old man followed Alice and the boys out onto the field - there really wasn''t anything that stood out about it, it just looked like a flat-topped spur of land jammed between two lochs including in the aerial photos Alice had pulled up on her laptop while failing to explain herself - but all that changed as soon as the boys started digging, observed with a detached air by a pair of small very hairy black cows.


    The shallow trench the boys dug, right up the centre of the field westwards starting a few feet from the fence line and a stone''s throw from Malcolm Laing''s front door, quickly hit paydirt: Nick''s spade hit rock under barely a foot of Orcadian soil perhaps ten feet from the fence, and as he and Mackie turned back the turf it quickly became clear that Alice was dead on the money.


    The wall they''d hit was thick, extraordinarily so - about twelve feet of stone in all, and as Mackie followed it down on its eastwards side it proved to be much taller than anything Annie had expected to see, finally hitting bottom a good three feet down, and old Malcolm said, "Well," and fished a clay pipe and a leather pouch of tobacco out of his coat.


    He and Annie stood and watched, Malcolm smoking his pipe and Annie thinking very fast, as Alice and the boys kept going, exposing more and more stonework to the air - they had exposed a patch of wall perhaps ten feet long when Annie said, "That''s not a blackhouse, is it."


    "No," Malcolm said, puffing on his pipe. He gave Annie a measuring look out of the corner of his eyes. "Or at least I cannae say that I''ve ever seen walls that thick on a blackhouse, even a broch hasn''t walls nearly that thick - I couldna say what that was and I can''t think of even old stories of there being buildings there, and my family had been biding here for a long time when the earliest records began."


    Annie nodded. From what Alice had said, it was no wonder there weren''t even old stories about buildings there; this was the first time those stones had seen daylight in over four thousand years.


    "She''s got the sight, hasn''t she," Malcolm said. Though phrased as a question, it was said as a statement.


    "Hmm?" Annie asked, jerked out of her thoughts.


    "Your friend there," the old man said, pointing at Alice with the stem of his pipe. "She''s got the sight, hasn''t she."


    "... You know I can''t say that I know, but it does fit, doesn''t it," Annie said, realising it as she spoke, and come to think of it with the entire necromancy thing even if she didn''t she had something that''d work as a pretty good stand-in for it; they lapsed back into silence, Malcolm puffing away on his pipe and Annie considering the girl from another world.


    "Well," Malcolm eventually said, and began carefully tapping his pipe out, "Perhaps I should be getting onto the telephone and giving the museum in Kirkwall a wee call."


    "This isn''t going to get you evicted, is it?" Annie asked.


    "Thanyou for your concern, lass, but I''m one of the fortunate few," Malcolm told her with a dry chuckle and a shake of his head. "My grandfather lived to see me putting the tile deeds to the croft on what was at that time his kitchen table - buying my forefathers'' land left me all but penniless even with how well paid we were in the Merchant Navy, but it was worth every last shilling, and I have my own peat, my own mutton, my own eggs, my own milk, my own tatties, I even have my own tobacco growing in the greenhouse behind the house and by Christ lass will you look at that view right outside my own front door, I have everything that I could ask for right here - the only thing I''ve wanted for since my wife passed away was a little company," and to Annie''s mind if the ruin was anything like what Alice claimed it was he would soon have no shortage of that. "No, lass, when all is said and done you''re speaking to the wealthiest old crofter in the north, for all that the bankers wouldn''t be telling you that."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    A little over an hour later, a spotlessly clean blue Morris estate car pulled up beside the vans on old Malcolm''s driveway and disgorged a gentleman who looked precisely like one would expect a professor of archaeology to look; tweed, spectacles, bald top, sideburns - and he paused and developed a very thoughtful look the moment he laid eyes on the formerly-buried stonework.


    "Oh I say," he declared in a very English and in all honesty rather plummy accent, and resumed moving, hastening over to the fence. "Mr Laing? That''s quite the intriguing find you have there, old sock, Mr Phillips rather undersold it."


    "Och, it''s no my find," the old man said with a smile, letting the younger man through the gate. "Miss Liddell here," and he indicated Alice, "Has found it, for all that it happens to be on my land."


    "Ah yes, the lady of the hour, Mr Phillips said something about that," and the man from the museum offered Alice a handshake, which she accepted. "Doctor Adrian Smythe,"


    "I''m Alice Liddell," Alice told him. "This is Annie Kelly; Nick Macbane; and Mackie Romanov."


    "My pleasure. Now, I have a ground-penetrating radar system in the car, let''s see what else there is to be seen down there."


    This equipment proved to be four units; a three-wheeled contraption with a handle, vaguely reminiscent of an upright vacuum cleaner, and a laptop connected to the third and fourth parts, a pair of Tupperware tubs full of electronics, by a cable. These, Dr Smythe explained, were wirelessly networked; as the ground-penetrating radar itself was rolled along, what it ''saw'' was displayed on the laptop screen, with the antenna in the laptop and those in the two tubs stretched out at the ends of their five-yard-long cables allowing the whole setup to know exactly where the wheeled unit was in relation to the laptop at any given moment.


    Mackie volunteered to push the radar unit, and the rest of them crowded round the laptop as he traipsed back and forth across the field - and as he went, Dr Smythe''s air of vaguely detached interest started to give way to suppressed excitement.


    "Good lord," he finally said, "The scale of this..."


    "I take it that it''s quite something then, aye?" Malcolm asked.


    "Oh rather! It''s starting to look very much like much of this peninsula is in and of itself a mound of ancient ruins and rubbish dumps, and let me tell you nothing gets a fellow in my line of work rubbing his hands together like some long-dead someone''s rubbish," said Smythe with evident satisfaction. "Being entirely certain would require a rather more comprehensive geosurvey, most likely followed by a number of exploratory digs, but if what we''re seeing is anything like it seems? I''ve never seen anything like it, Miss Liddell, you would appear to have found quite a way to commence your career as an antiquarian! What in the world tipped you off to it?"


    "I had a hunch," Alice said.


    "A hunch?" said Smythe, startled.


    "Yeah, there''s just - something, about the land here," and Alice made a vague gesture.


    "Well I must say if this is the quality of your hunches I''d appreciate a little heads-up whenever you get a feeling there''s ''something about'' a piece of land," Smythe told her with a smile. "As it stands, I have a sense everyone here is soon to become quite famous within the archaeological community."


    "This is that big a deal?" Annie asked, clearly surprised.


    "This," said Smythe, "Would appear to be at least as extensive as Skara Brae if not more so, and that wall, my God! I''ve never seen a structure so massive anywhere in Orkney, we shall have to undertake a full-scale geological survey of this entire spur of land - with your permission of course, Mr Laing - in fact I expect that doing so shall shoot right to the top of our plans for the coming months the very moment my colleagues get a look at the data we''ve so far collected, I shall be up to my eyeballs seeing if I might put a date to what you so far have uncovered no later than tonight. If we''re looking at what I suspect we''re looking at..." and as he shook his head his facade collapsed completely and just how very excited he was became clear.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The Bigger Van''s engine finally clattered into silence, and Alice let out a sigh, fished the keys out, and climbed out and down into the Macbane''s barnyard, ignoring the inquiring bleats of Pestface the sheep.


    They''d caught the last ferry to the mainland on Saturday night but the boys were dog tired and Alice hadn''t been far behind them - enough so she''d been getting wary about how safe she''d be to drive - so while Annie had pushed on and, according to the phone call Nick had made when they got up, got home at around half past midnight, Nick, Mackie and Alice, along with Nick''s catgirl, had spent the night sleeping in Alice''s corner of unspace again, then they''d got on the road and headed for home, arriving at the croft at a little after lunchtime, where they found themselves met by Elf and an annoyed Brigid, who was just making to complain bitterly about whatever had annoyed her when Nick, who''d swung out the van first, reached back in and helped Silent down.


    Brigid opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, earning her a searching look from the catgirl, and eventually arrived at, "Why''s her hands through a plank?"


    "She scratches," said Nick.


    "Nick," Elf declared, stomping over and making to snatch Silent''s lead out of his hand, "That''s unnecessary and cruel, and- FUCK ME!" and she very abruptly reversed course as, as he had warned, the catgirl scratched.


    This ripped the sleeve of Elf''s jersey open nearly from elbow to wrist and left three deep gouges in the back of her arm, about which she swore loudly and at great length.


    Alice rolled her eyes and got the first aid kit out of the Bigger Van''s door pocket.


    "He bloody well warned you," she told Elf.


    "Scratches isn''t a strong enough word for it, bloody hell," said Elf, admiring the neatly-spaced set of three bloody gashes, each a foot long. "Jesus, Nick! She part-wildcat or something?"


    "Or something," said Nick with a nod, pulling the catgirl out of behind him where she''d withdrawn to immediately after lashing out at Elf; he judiciously shortened the amount of lead he was allowing her. "Look, as far as we can work out she''s been through some pretty ugly stuff and she''s only just started not cowering when people walk in the room, don''t bloody grab at her like that. She does a really thorough job of scratching when something freaks her out."


    "So I see. Fuck!" and Elf swore again in reaction to the syn-skin Alice had just sprayed onto the gouges in her arm. "Fuck I hate that stuff, stings like nobody''s business."


    "Well you shouldn''t go trying to grab the traumatised catgirl then, should you," Alice said.


    "Probably the best idea, aye," Elf said with a sigh. "Okay, so how in the hell did you lot come back from college with a traumatised pet catgirl with insanely sharp claws and an, um, giant incredibly rusty armoured lorry van thing?"


    "We started hunting vampires for a hobby and one thing led to another," Nick told her.


    The resulting expression was an absolute picture, and Nick''s satisfaction at actually managing to catch his elder sister flat-footed for the first time in his life was palpable.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Nick Macbane had a lot on his mind as he walked downstairs.


    Having got Mackie and that of his stuff that he expected to use during the break home, his own stuff that he expected to use during the break dug out of the van, and Silent situated in his bedroom, he had a couple of things to discuss in private with his elder sister, who was still in the kitchen/living room, sat in front of the Rayburn with a book, and conveniently enough nobody else was about; their parents and Nat and Neil were out getting the sheep in off the hill in preparation for the gale that was due in a couple of days, Brigid was pestering Alice, and this was his chance to run a few things past his elder and much more knowledgeable (even if getting said knowledge out of her tended to be like getting milk out of a duck) sister.


    "Couple of things have come up I want your input on," he said as soon as he''d entered the kitchen and ascertained that she was still there.


    Elf made a hang-on noise, continued reading for several long moments, then marked her place and set her book down.


    "Okay," she said. "Like what?"


    "Well, first off there''s Alice," he said.


    Elf frowned. "What''s wrong with her? No, what''s new and wrong with her?"


    "You mean apart from this entire ''unspace'' thing about which I don''t even know where to begin," Nick started, then sharply shook his head. "She seemed to have really found her balance again in the aftermath of that, maybe even because of that, this whole thing with her learning actual honest-to-god magic," and he would treasure the look of surprise he got for a long time, "Has done her some real good even despite how badly that entire learning how close she''d come to exploding her own head shook her up, any rate she''s found her balance again and I''m nae sure she''d still need that ban on her bed, then we''re back to the college the next Monday and she takes an absolute punk, I can only think of a couple of times I''ve seen anything like it and one of them was Grace when the Navy tried to throw Big Murdo off of his land, she was absolutely livid and she''s been angry since and she''s still not right and I haven''t a clue what it''s about."


    "I see," Elf said with a frown. "Okay, I''ll see if I can find out what''s going on there."


    "Thanks sis."


    "What was the other thing?"


    Nick spent a moment thinking how to phrase that, and then said, "I need to know how to unbind a witch," and that really got his sister''s attention.


    "Nick, what the hell have you got yourself into?"


    "Ever heard of a woman called Isobel Mackenzie? A friend of ours - Alice''s roommate at the college in fact - turns out to be one of her witches,"


    "Oh Nick, Mackenzie''s really bad news, you should stay away from anything to do with her,"


    "Fiona''s a friend, Elf. We need to get her un-involved with Mackenzie and the sooner the better."


    "I... don''t have any good news about that," Elf told him. "The only way of unbinding a witch I know of is, well, basically you kill the witch. That or you kill the witch''s master, and a hell of a lot of people have tried and failed to kill Isobel Mackenzie over the years."


    "I''d heard as much," said Nick with a grim nod, "But I had to be checking."


    "... You''re not going to actually kill this girl are you, Nick?"


    "Don''t be daft, of course I''m bloody not - and no just because Fiona''s a friend either."


    "I thought so," said Elf with a grim nod of her own. "But I had to be checking... Any rate, far as Alice goes I think we should be keeping her busy still."


    "Aye, I think that''d be the best plan," said Nick. "Guess it''ll be a full week of gallivanting then and I''ll no be getting much sea time in after all,"


    "Well for one thing none of us''ll be getting much sea time with the gale due to hit us the day after tomorrow and I don''t think we''ll be doing a lot of gallivanting either," said Elf. "I''m wanting to take an early start tomorrow, get as many of the creels out of the water as we can, just got the north shore of the loch left to lift - it''s supposed to be a bloody wild one, we''re forecast for gusts off the top of the bloody Beaufort scale Tuesday night and by the sound of things even the gulls will be staying at home until Thursday, maybe even Friday."


    "Guess we may as well see if Alice is fancying a day on the boat the morrow then," said Nick. "And I guess we''ll just play it by ear the rest of the week."You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    "Aye, that was what I was thinking," said Elf with a nod.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The Vigra put to sea at the crack of dawn on Monday 28th with more people in her roomy wheelhouse than normal. All five of the Macbane siblings were aboard instead of the usual three, and so was Alice Liddell.


    The Vigra was one of the loch''s largest crab boats, right at the upper limit of what was reasonable to use to work creels - the Macbanes used her for a mix of inshore stuff (though they couldn''t get in nearly as tight as the smaller boats like the Walrus or the Chalice) and deep-water lobster. They began the day working along the loch''s northern shore, westwards from Inverallen bay towards Lochinver, with the plan being to cross the mouth of the loch to the cluster of islands centred on Eilen Shea and Eilen na Uilbheast to empty and load onboard fleets of creels round the outer side of the islands before carrying on to the southern shore of the loch, but all that fell by the wayside three fleets of creels (and a couple of dozen brown crabs and one lobster) in, as they were setting up to catch the leading buoy of the fourth fleet of creels - Alice was down on the foredecks watching Nick line up to snag the buoy with a boathook and considering how surprised she''d been to learn that a live lobster is a lovely dark blue, when Elf, up in the wheelhouse, suddenly banged the engine wide open and hauled the helm across, peeling the boat off away from the shore and the buoy.


    "What the," said Nick.


    He and Neil glanced at each other as the boat surged forwards, then hurried for the wheelhouse; Alice came out from behind the stack of fishboxes where she''d been keeping out of the way, and followed the boys through the deck shelter.


    "What''s going on?" she asked.


    "I don''t know," and Nick went scrambling up the steps to the bridge. "Elf? Hey, Elf, are you okay?"


    "Aye, but someone isnae," Elf replied - everything became a lot quieter as the door closed behind Alice, shutting out a part of the engine''s roar. "The Walrus just put out a call on guard, Struan Flint''s saying he''s found a cabin cruiser hard aground in the narrows between Eilen Shea and Eilen na Uilbheast, there''s no any sign of the crew and the liferaft is gone and with that gale bearing down on us..." and she shook her head. "If there''s anyone still alive from her crew they''re needing found right now."


    Her siblings nodded and said nothing.


    "Is this normal?" Alice asked.


    "Is what normal?"


    "You doing search-and-rescue stuff."


    "Doesn''t happen often," Elf told her. "But everyone who works at sea knows very well that they could be the ones being searched for the next time, so I guess that''s an aye, when there''s a distress call sent out everyone mucking in to help is normal."


    "The nearest Coast Guard station''s in bloody Cumberland," said Nick. "The Navy may have a SAR whirly at the fleet space arm base but they don''t respond to anything non-military unless they''re in the air and see it happening - there''s a volunteer lifeboat in Stornaway but that''s the best part of two hours away and if there''s someone in the water they don''t have two hours. Not in the Minch, not in October, not with a gale coming in."


    "I just hope whoever was aboard that boat isn''t ''not there'' because they walked into the minefield on Eilen na Uilbheast, where''d Struan say that she was aground? Oh, and has anyone checked at the lighthouse on Eilen Shea yet?" Neil asked.


    "Struan said she was grounded on Eilen Shea, at the eastern side of the narrows, hard in one of those wee gullies on the island''s south shore there, hard enough in it must''ve been the top of the tide when she went in there," Elf told him. "And the Boy Douglas was working creels in and around the Devil''s Pavement when Struan put the call out, I''ll bet the lighthouse was the first place that Callum McCallum was thinking to look."


    "Minefield on - how''d you say it?" Alice asked.


    "Eilen na Uilbheast," Nick carefully enunciated, "It''s the smaller of the two biggest islands in the wee group of islands in the mouth of Loch Allen, it was used as a bio-weapons test site back during the war and it''s still fenced off and there''s minefield warning signs up and we''ve seen the odd seal exploding, even the kelpies stay the hell away from it."


    "The army used to go in with helicopters every few weeks but I can''t say I''ve seen one in about five or six years now," said Elf, "Not since one of them tried to fly in during a land war and got blown out the sky by some numpty with a haggis gun, it''s still on the bottom of the inner loch, though that said there''s still signs of life there, everyone''s seen smoke rising though how they''re getting in and out is anyone''s guess. They probably use submarines, the water off the south side of the island is easily deep enough for it. Who cares, we just stay the hell off of it, the rumour is that it was an anthrax test site and you don''t want to be having any of that. Eilen Shea is fine though, a lot of the folks from Lochinver graze their sheep back there - the narrows only ever get shallow enough to wade across up to your chest and sheep won''t try that."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    They kept going until Elf declared the Vigra low on fuel, hours after the lifeboat - a hypermodern orange-and-blue affair with RNLI markings, it was one of the most startlingly familiar sights Alice had seen since the morning she came round in Grace''s living room - had arrived. They weren''t the first boat to bow out - that had been a crew from Ullapool one loch south - and Elf predicted that the last boats would keep at it until the gale got too close to stay out, and that the lifeboat crew would most likely stay at it right through the storm.


    By that time they''d been working their way east along the south shore of Loch Allen, and they steamed back across the loch in silence that was finally broken as they were passing the islet in the mouth of Inverallen Bay, by Nick saying "Hey, I think I just saw something moving on Sgien Dubh."


    "Bollocks, you been at the whacky baccy again bruv?" Neil instantly asked.


    "Up yours Neil, there it is again - look! Something dark against the rock to the south side of the island and it''s definitely moving," Nick declared, pointing, and Alice joined in with peering at the tiny rocky islet he was pointing at.


    It was no more than about fifteen feet across, stood less than six feet above the high tide mark, and would be swept by the waves of the storm that was due that night - Alice had seen smaller islands in the course of the day, but not by all that much. From the look of it, it had to be the tip of a sea mount of sorts.


    "Where?" said Elf.


    "It''s stopped... There! There!" and this time everyone in the wheelhouse clearly saw whatever it was - something dark and about the side of someone''s head and shoulders, moving against the grey of the rocks, and Elf immediately backed off the throttle and started bringing the helm about.


    "We''d better be getting a better look," she said with a nod.


    As they closed the actual shape of the island became visible; whatever the something was, it was half tucked down into a bit of a crevice more or less dead centre of the island.


    Elf eased the Vigra in closer and closer, gingerly feeling her way in - the water around the islet was too shallow for a vessel as large as the Vigra to get right alongside the tiny spot of dry land.


    They had come to an almost complete standstill perhaps thirty feet from the islet with a scant few feet of water between the Vigra''s keel and rock by the time they saw the something move again - whatever it was, it raised its head, peered around, then slumped back down again.


    "That looks almost like a cat," said Brigid.


    "Come off it, what sort of a cat''s that size? It''s got to be as big as a tup," said Neil. "Hey Nick, were are you going?"


    "Down the bows," Nick shouted back up the steps; the engine rumble got louder for a moment, then quieted again as the wheelhouse door slammed, and they watched Nick appear out of the deck shelter and hurry along to the boat''s very foremost point. He stood and peered over the front at the islet for several long moments, then hastened back to the wheelhouse.


    "Brigid''s right that it looks like a cat," he declared the very moment he was back in the wheelhouse. "It''s some sort of a big cat with black fur - I can''t tell for sure, we''re too far off, but if it''s as big as a tup that''d be the biggest bloody tup I''ve ever seen. We''d better get the wee boat off the mooring, it''s just sitting there and it''s having trouble lifting its head, I''m no bloody leaving the poor beast there."


    "Agreed," said Elf with a nod, and she began carefully easing the Vigra back into the safety of deeper water.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    It did not take long at all to collect ''the wee boat'' - a red plastic thing with an outboard motor on the back - and return to the islet at the mouth of the bay with it towed behind the Vigra; as soon as they were standing off the islet Nick and Neil went scrambling down the rope ladder to the wee boat, and the outboard snarled into life with a couple of pulls at the ripcord.


    "Come on, Alice, give us a hand," Nick shouted up, and she immediately hastened down the rope ladder, swearing the whole way and for the umpteenth time reminding herself she should really get some sort of footwear that didn''t have several inches of lift at the back.


    "What do you want me to do?" she asked, arranging herself on a thwart.


    "Well we don''t know if it''ll take two of us to get this big cat into the boat," said Nick, which seemed reasonable enough, "So if you''ll keep the wee boat from drifting off on us..."


    "Oh, sure, no problem," Alice said, assigning it to the same mental place as piloting the Bigger Van on vampire hunting expeditions as Nick twisted the outboard''s throttle grip, sending the boat roaring away from the Vigra towards the islet - and in moments Alice was sitting at the bows holding onto a rock while Nick and Neil went scrambling across, Nick toting along a coil of rope.


    "It''s no just one animal, there''s two of them!" Nick declared. "The panther and... I think that''s a wolf, and oh lord they''ve no got much life in them, come on!"


    The panther lifted its head a little, just enough that Alice could see it from the boat, opened mismatched eyes - one blue, the other yellow, the animal appeared to have total heterochromia - and produced the most half-hearted growl you could possibly imagine, before its head flopped back down; Nick completely disregarded the growl, instead going scrambling into the crevice - it was only a couple of feet deep - with the coil of rope in tow, keeping up a running commentary the whole way, "Easy there, easy, we''ll get you out of there - Christ the poor thing''s half frozen - Neil, tell Elf to get the stove roaring, they''ve got to be hypothermic," and Neil pulled a handheld radio out of his jacket and did exactly that.


    The panther produced another attempt at a growl as Nick got a hold of one of its forelegs - it really didn''t have much left in it, making an attempt to struggle as he tied all four of its legs together, but between how very strong Nick was and how very strong the panther currently wasn''t it did not meet a whole lot of success; he lifted it out of the crevice and laid it down on the flatter part of the islet, then turned his attention to similarly tying the wolf. Neil attempted to lift the panther, and gave up with a grunt.


    "Bloody hell, how strong have you got Nick?"


    "Stronger than you, no as strong as Mackie," said Nick, coming upright with his arms full of utterly limp wolf. He laid it down beside the panther, and scrambled back up out of the crevice. "Get the wolf over to the wee boat bro, I''ll get the panther."


    "Aye," Neil agreed, puffing and blowing as he hefted the wolf onto his shoulders. It came to rest with its head hanging slack down his left side and its tail down his right; it was clearly visible that this was about as heavy as Neil could possibly carry.


    Nick picked the panther up with a lot less effort, making what were presumably supposed to be reassuring noises, and the brothers heaved the pair of animals over to where Alice was waiting with the boat, keeping a firm grip on the rock.


    The boys joined her as soon as the wolf and panther were in a heap in the centre of the boat with Nick fussing over them - while Nick minded their furry castaways Neil pulled at the ripcord and the outboard snarled back into life, and he backed the boat off and hastened for where the Vigra were standing off.


    They found Elf waiting with a sling sort of affair - it appeared to be a tarpaulin - hanging from the hoist, while at a guess Nat and/or Brigid minded keeping the Vigra in place. Nick and Neil between them heaved the two animals into the tarp one at a time, starting with the wolf then once it was aboard getting the panther into the sling as soon as Elf had it back down - the poor panther didn''t even have enough energy left to growl by that point, the only sign of life being it watching them and its shallow breathing.


    Nick and Neil rode the hoist up, and were hurrying for the wheelhouse carrying the two animals almost the very moment that Elf had set the tarp sling down on the Vigra''s foredecks - Elf detached the tarp, lowered the hoist, and gave Alice shouted directions to attach it to the little boat.


    Alice stepped from it onto the Vigra''s foredecks as soon as Elf had set it down on top of the tarp; Elf started making the little boast fast there as Alice hastened over to the wheelhouse.


    Nick was saying, "... know if the poor wolfie''s made it," as Alice scrambled up into the bridge.


    "Neither do I but we all know hypothermia means it''s no dead until it''s warmed up and dead," said Neil. The two of them and Nat were crowded around the wheelhouse stove, in front of which the wolf and a much more lively panther were bundled up in blankets - Brigid was minding the helm. "Hold up, I''m feeling a pulse - the wolf''s definitely alive bro."


    "Well thank Christ for that," said Nick with a sigh, stroking the ruff of fur at the back of the wolf''s head. "What the hell they were doing on Sgien Dubh I don''t know,"


    "It''s not like big cats and that turning up is really all that unusual," said Neil with a shrug. "People go aww, that''s a pretty kitty, then it grows up into thirty stone of solid muscle,"


    "It''s no quite that big you numpty, it''s no a tiger, it''s closer to eighteen stone,"


    "Well that''s still a couple of hundredweight and change you eejit,"


    "Oh get bent you great teuchter, that''s besides the point, will you look at them man, they''re beautiful creatures! Who the hell would be stranding the poor bloody things on a tiny wee wave-swept rock to bloody die, I''ll be giving the bastard a good seeing-to if I ever find out who it was!" and Nick''s voice rose to a furious shout as he spoke.


    Neil nodded.


    "Aye, and myself bro, and myself," he said.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Well," said Ian Macbane, contemplating the pair of animals that were now sitting in blanket-stuffed cardboard boxes in front of the Rayburn in his living room.


    "Well what, Dad?" asked Nick. They''d radioed ahead and got his parents to heat the blankets up in the oven, to get the two animals livened the rest of the way up - the wolf had still been limp when they got home, but had now perked up and was cautiously looking around.


    "Well what''ll we be doing with them?" said Ian.


    "I''m keeping them," said Nick.


    "Are you sure that''s a good idea?" his father immediately asked.


    "Look at ''em Dad," said Nick, gesturing at the two animals. "Totally unafraid, at most the jaguar''s just a wee bittie irritated," they had successfully identified the panther as a melanistic jaguar courtesy of the Internet, "They''re visibly used to being around humans - I''ll bet they were reared in captivity, even if we could get to whichever part of South America jaguars come from I''ll bet this beauty," and he stroked the panther''s head, getting what sounded like a faux-irate noise out of it, "Wouldnae be cut out to survive in the wild - even if there''s no any problems with them getting shot for hanging round too close to people it doesn''t often go well releasing captive-reared animals like these two, they just don''t have the skills to survive in the wild."


    "They''re very powerful animals," his father said.


    "As far as being very powerful goes I''m no slouch myself Dad," said Nick.


    "Well, so long as you''re making sure there''s no any bother with them getting into the sheep," said Ian with a nod.


    "Don''t worry about that Dad, I''ll be keeping them on a chain," Nick said with a nod of his own.


    "Heaven sakes," Caroline said with a shake of her head. "Most mothers have to worry about their children bringing home puppies and kittens, but oh no, not my children, my children top bringing home a quiet wee cat-girl by bringing home wolves and panthers," and Alice was certain there was a note of pride in her voice when she said it.


    -/-/-/-/-/-/-


    On Monday night roundabout midnight the gale came in, and by the time Alice got up on Tuesday morning it was proving as per Elf''s prediction to be one hell of a storm - driving rain ripping past parallel to the ground, roaring past the eaves and making the whole house shake every time a gust hit.


    The Macbane clan, Alice, Silent, and the wolf and panther waited out the storm in the house, in the case of the wolf and the panther tethered to the Rayburn with a chain and collars that Nick had made out of old belts the previous evening, and nobody left the building unless strictly necessary - Alice stayed indoors the whole time but the sheer power of the wind was clear to see as she watched Nick and Ian fight it to get to the barns to feed the livestock, they were struggling to keep on their feet on the way out and with the storm still building they had to crawl partway back up the path from the garden gate, and poor Silent spent the entire time Nick was out of the house visibly fretting then wouldn''t get off his lap for half an hour each time he got back - the first time she did this came as quite a surprise.


    By midafternoon Tuesday the power was out - Nick and Ian braved the storm again, only to come blowing back in through the porch ten minutes later shaking their heads.


    "The river''s burst it''s bloody banks and flooded the generator," Nick said as soon as they''d got the door closed and shut the storm out again. "And a tree''s gone down and taken the cables with it, we''ll nae be getting it up and running again till the gale''s blown itself out, even once the river goes back down it''ll take stripping the generator and drying it out even before we can get the cables back together."


    "Well, better get this lit then," said Carol, heading for the odd-looking light above the cooker, about which Alice had vaguely wondered a couple of times; she collected the box of matches off of their shelf beside the cooker, fiddled with something on the light, lit a match, and poked it at the light, which lit with a pop, demonstrating itself to be an actual honest-to-God gas light.


    Elf, who had been setting up candles at strategic points around the living room, got stuck in to lighting those too, and they all stayed in the candle-and-gas-lit cosy and warm and friendly environs of the living room, listening to the wind howling past the house and rattling the rafters and the sheets of rain hammering against the windows, until after midnight before heading to bed as a unit.


    The gale stuck at it all day Wednesday and didn''t start to peter out until well into Thursday morning, late enough that Elf decided against attempting to go to sea that day - having spent the lion''s share of Wednesday in unspace adding furnishings to rooms and moving the odd wall, and adding on engine pods and the background drone of aero-engines, Alice spent most of Thursday helping Nick, Ian and Brigid get the family''s home-made hydro-electric equipment dried out and running again, followed by a play-around with some of the guns they''d taken from Ruilick, in the process getting Alice actually thinking about Nick''s offer for the first time that week - Nick and Mackie had really wanted a crack with the Victorian-looking machine gun, which was apparently something calling itself a Maxim gun - and it was during this episode of sitting around and taking potshots at a raggy old worn-out tarpaulin with a target painted on it strung up between a couple of trees that Nick, at Nat''s urgings, gave Silent a go with one of the varied revolvers, discovering in the process that recoil appeared to have absolutely no effect on her, and that got him interested.


    He and Nat went and dug out every handgun they could find between the three fishboxes of guns they''d stolen at Ruilick and Nat''s comically extensive gun collection, and got the little catgirl to shoot them; they steadily got bigger and bigger, and it was after she''d scored a bullseye with the biggest pistol of the lot - this huge lump of faintly baroque-looking metal that Nat called a Mars pistol - despite her hands still being through the plank that Nick got a funny look in his eye and shared it with his brother.


    "Y''know, I''ve got a Number 4 rifle with a bent barrel laying around the barn," said Nat.


    "Let''s saw it off," said Nick, and they both split it for the barns in a state of high excitement.


    They were back about ten minutes later (Alice and Brigid and Silent spent the interim sitting around and in Alice and Brigid''s cases jawing about nothing much, listened to with apparent interest by the catgirl) with a bolt-action rifle with most of the stock and barrel cut off, and some ammunition - powerful .303 British rounds - to match; Nat loaded it up and handed it to Silent with an enthusiastic, "Have a crack with this. Careful though, it''ll kick like a cow."


    The two boys watched with great glee as Silent gave this contraption a very dubious look, did a very visible mental what-the-hell, took aim, and fired.


    The roar was incredibly loud - the gun barrel jumped and spat a long flame, and a hole appeared in the tarp about six inches up and left from the bullseye.


    "Holy crap," said Nat, delighted. "Give it another go," and he went and worked the insanely powerful ''pistol'' bolt and slotted in another round.


    Silent gave him a funny look, then steeled herself; the gun roared and spat fire again, jumping less this time as she''d tightened her grip, and another hole appeared down and right from the bullseye


    "Wow," said Nat.


    "I''m going to put a foresight on that," said Nick, affectionately patting the little catgirl''s head. "Very, very cool indeed."


    Silent gave him a pleased look.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    That evening Alice got her introduction to two very different things, both of them equally memorable.


    The first was a result of the gale having taken the heavy cloud cover that''d been blanketing most of the north of Scotland for a couple of weeks with it, and consisted largely of her finding out just how much difference there is in the night sky somewhere with a lot of light pollution such as where she grew up or the area round Inverness in the east, and somewhere with a mountain range between you and the nearest streetlight and the only manmade light visible after the neighbours have gone to bed a lighthouse twenty-odd miles away across open water; accompanying Brigid out to feed the cows just after dark that evening was like looking up into an astronomical photograph, and for the first time in her life she really understood where the term ''Milky Way'' had come from - there was a visible smear of unimaginable millions upon millions of stars all but blending together in a broad smear from horizon to horizon - and five days past the full moon, the moon was so bright you''d almost think you could read by it.


    The second, the leading edge of which interrupted the impromptu spot of stargazing that resulted from the first, was Halloween as celebrated in that part of the world - this did not come in the ''trick or treat'' form familiar from back home, instead it took the form of what the locals referred to as ''guising'' - the bit with kids dressing up was as expected, but they were expected to give a poem or a song to earn their treats and the costumes were mostly home-made rather than the shop-bought sort Alice was more familiar with.


    On Friday she finally got the uninterrupted day at sea she''d fancied since she''d first heard that the Macbanes owned and worked a fishing boat.


    The day passed without any repeat of the unexpected search and rescue, with the only reference to such a chat on the radio during which they learned that the abandoned boat''s liferaft had turned up wrapped round and half under a boulder in Inverallen bay, found by a crofter who''d been out beachcombing in the aftermath of the gale, and that there hadn''t been a sign of any bodies, at least not yet. The day was spent working the way from one fleet of ''creels'' - as the Macbane siblings insistently called what Alice was fairly sure she''d previously heard referred to as a ''crab pot'' - to the next along the north shore of Loch Allen, stopping regularly to untangle ropes and write off the odd part of a fleet that had got thrown up onto the shore or was utterly jammed down on the bottom in amongst whatever the sea had shifted around down there, or to fend off the occasional kelpie with a jab from the pointy end of a boat-hook and a cry of ''piss off, you old nag'' - in the process Alice learned that kelpies, although looking very much like a very handsome jet-black horse save for a faintly fishy aspect to their eyes, make a very unhorselike sound uncannily like ''Blarg!'' when poked with a boat-hook - and she found herself being introduced to the numerous odd sea-creatures one finds in a creel, from an octopus to the bizarre ugly spiky blob that is a scorpion fish, and even the occasional sea urchin; the realisation that a kelpie, which she was pretty sure hadn''t been a real thing where she came from, wasn''t even close to the weirdest sea-creature she saw that day would later cause Alice some very strange musings.


    At the last fleet before they turned across the loch to work what they had around Eilen Shea and Eilen na Uilbheast, they got a conger eel - a thing like an animate inner tube from a car tyre which Elf took great glee in explaining to Alice would bite a chunk out of you an hour after you''d cut it''s head off - and out near the islands they had a chance encounter with a basking shark, soon followed with the amusing show of Nick having a chat with a seal - ''Arp Arp Arp to you too too!'' - and the next half an hour devolved into a conversation about why kelpies don''t eat seals; for one thing, Elf reckoned, seals are better swimmers than kelpies, and for another thing kelpies are smart enough, she said, to know that pissing off the selkies really isn''t a good idea.


    It was a long and full day, and when Elf shut the Vigra''s engine off at the end of it the silence was just as jarring as the silence when Annie switched her pickup''s engine off.Friday evening and into the early hours of Saturday morning was spent at a ceilidh in Lochinver - a particularly wild affair propelled by a rotating cast of increasingly drunk musicians, there was a lot of alcohol and curious substances going around and more than a few couples disappearing here and there for obvious purposes, and Alice was conscious of a lot of people leaving to drive home obviously drunk and/or otherwise off of their faces over the course of the night though she did not hear about anything worse than several vehicles getting put in the ditch, in one case with the driver later being found snoring away passed-out drunk behind the wheel of his stalled and thoroughly ditched van, the front axle of which Nick ended up making a quick buck repairing that weekend - all in the festivities resulted in everyone sleeping in on Saturday for hangover-related reasons, with the last Macbane sibling to emerge being Nick, who''d been absolutely ratarsed and didn''t crawl out of his pit till about four in the afternoon, not all that long before they''d planned to drive south to Ullapool for another pub gig, which once again took place in a hotel overlooking the harbour.


    This was a rather more sedate do than the Friday night festivities, though again the potent combination of very cheap very strong booze and curious substances turned up, and this time on the way home they passed a pickup upside down in the ditch that Alice had seen weaving all over the road when it was leaving the pub car park - the driver was staggering down the road towards Stronecrubie without any visible blood on him, swearing his head off and making insulting gestures at traffic, so they let him get on with it with Alice privately thinking that the main reason they weren''t joining him was the fact she''d insisted on driving as she was the least drunk member of their party - if Nick had driven as he''d wanted to there was no way he''d have avoided putting the van in the ditch, he was hammered again.


    Finally on Sunday they packed their gear into the vans, the boys loaded their bikes onto the trailer, and they headed back towards Inverness, a quiet and restful week over with.


    The quiet and restfulness came to a very abrupt close not far before they''d be getting off of the single-track when, rounding a corner, Nick (who was leading in the Albion) suddenly jammed on his brakes so hard the trailer nearly jacknifed, swerved violently all over the road at the same time, forced Alice to emergency brake the Bigger Van to avoid going into the back of the trailer full of motorbikes, and skidded to a halt as a very tall feminine figure with incredibly long hair went sprawling on the verge where she had just stepped out of the bushes and straight into the Albion''s left-hand front bumper.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    It didn''t take one look for Alice to realise that the woman who''d stepped out right in front of Nick''s van was very visibly not human. Not your basic human, she reminded herself, bearing in mind the Hamster''s little rant on the topic.


    She was, in fact, the latest sudden unexpected catgirl - only this one couldn''t be shorter than six foot six with the sort of build you''d expect from a cage-fighter. She had very fair skin, sandy brown hair matched by the fur on her ears and tail, an impressive set of tits, and the whole lower half of her face protruded into a sort of muzzle structure like a tiger with very visible powerful jaw muscles to match. She was dressed in a white tank-top (probably actually what''s technically termed a vest) and camouflaged battledress trousers, with a corset rather less practical than the rest of her outfit underneath, a tool belt, and combat boots - she had a red plastic tag in her right ear, a set of military-style dogtags round her neck, and wire-rimmed spectacles with oddly-positioned arms to adapt them to how much higher her ears sat on her skull, and her hair, of which she had a truly awe-inspiring amount, was tied up in a high ponytail the tip of which would, with her upright, come down past her knees.


    Aside from being thoroughly unconscious she seemed no worse for the wear for having been hit by a 40mph van, though the same could not be said for the van; the entire left front wing was stove in with parts of it jamming the wheel, the headlight that side was completely smashed to bits, and the bumper was thoroughly bent.


    "Jesus, the bloody engine mounting lugs on the frame are bent this side, she hit the bloody van like a ton of bricks," said Nick, who was checking what needed done to get the Albion moving again. "Get the bloody cutting torch round here Mackie, I''m going to have to cut part of the front wing off to get this wheel off and the spare tyre on. How''s our hedgehog impersonator look there Alice?"


    "Not a mark on her though I can''t think how, I can''t find any sign of anything broken, her pulse and breathing are normal and the same goes from her eye response," Alice said.


    "Tough lassie," said Annie.


    "Very, but it does make sense, her muscles feel like they''re made out of solid metal even with her totally limp like this, I can''t push her bicep in at all," Alice said, demonstrating by poking at an arm, and then noticed the way Nick''s catgirl, still sitting in the van, was looking at the unconscious cat-Amazon who was laying on the side of the road; she was peering at her with a half-hopeful, half-dreading, look on her face.


    "Hey Silent," she said. "You know her?"


    Silent nodded.


    "Let''s get a look at these dog-tags," said Annie; she squatted down and had a peer. "Hmm. They''re copies of each other, not quite laid out like the military ones I''ve seen, they''ve got the serial number looking about right but there''s just the word ''Sprocket'' where there''d normally be a name and there''s a barcode on the reverse side of each."


    "Maybe her name''s Sprocket," Alice pointed out, this seeming entirely logical; she turned to Silent and added, "Is it? Her name, I mean, is it Sprocket?"


    Silent nodded.


    "She''s no your mother is she?" Nick asked, emerging from where he''d been getting set up to cut part of the van''s very bent front wing off, and Silent immediately started shaking her head. "Some other relative?" and she paused for a moment then hesitantly nodded. "Sister?" and she shook her head.


    "Aunt?" Annie suggested.


    Silent nodded again.


    Nick looked from one to the other, and then said, "Huh."


    -/-/-/-/-/-

 Chapter 5 part the second.

    The cat-Amazon finally came round about an hour and a half later, by which time they were in the digs and everyone was crowded into Alice and Fiona''s room with said cat-Amazon - about whom they were getting quite worried, head injuries being head injuries - laying on the same blankets that had served as a bed for Silent the first few days.


    Fiona was just saying something about ignoring the bollocks they show on the telly, if someone who''s been knocked out doesn''t come round in a few minutes they''re probably not going to, when the cat-Amazon apparently named Sprocket went from unconscious to sitting bolt upright without any apparent intermediate state, and sat there blinking and looking rather startled.


    "About time you woke up," said Annie. "I take it you''re okay then, what were you doing jumping out in front of a van up the arse end of Dornoch direction like that,"


    The cat-Amazon didn''t answer her, instead looking down at herself, slowly raising her hands, and giving them an astonished stare.


    "Oh wow," she said. "I don''t know the back of my own hand."


    She glanced around, blinked a couple of times, and then continued, sounding a bit lost, "Uh, where am I? Who are you? Um, actually for that matter who am I? Do you, uh, do you know what my name is? I, uh, I can''t seem to remember anything."


    There was a long and rather startled silence as the yes-the-fact-she''s-still-unconscious-is-worrying shoe finished dropping, and finally Nick gave voice to his frustrations, loudly declaring, "Of all the, fucking amnesia."


    The cat-Amazon started to look rather worried.


    "Um, seriously, I don''t know who I am to the point I don''t actually recognise my own hands, and um, does anyone know who I am, please?" and she sounded twice as lost as Alice had that morning in Grace Mitchell''s living room.


    "Amnesia, bloody typical," Nick muttered. "Right when we think we might be on to something, suddenly actual god-damned amnesia,"


    "This is what we get for using it as an excuse over and over," said Fiona with a sigh, glancing at Alice; she then had the decency to realise what she''s said and blush.


    "Well apparently yourself''s named Sprocket and apparently you''re Silent here''s aunt," said Mackie. He then unconcernedly noted, "Ow," as Silent kicked him in the shin.


    "If you slap my catgirl I''ll duff you up," said Nick, causing Silent to add a very dubious look to the kick she''d just given Mackie.


    "Well it''s a moot point since myself was nae going to be slapping her anyway," Mackie said with one of his laid-back farmboy shrugs.


    "Recognise these?" Alice asked, holding up the dogtags then taking them close enough for the cat-Amazon to read; she looked very surprised.


    "Huh. No, but actually the name ''Sprocket'' sounds right but I don''t know why - um, does anyone know what I am? I, uh, I don''t think cat-thingies are normal... are we?" and this time she asked Silent, who just looked worried.


    "Nae idea," said Nick, echoed by everyone bar Silent, who nodded and kept looking worried.


    "You... know who I am?" Sprocket asked her.


    Nick rested a hand on Silent''s shoulder, and said, "When I find out who burned my catgirl''s tongue out I am going to make them very dead."


    "Probably via anal Claymore implant," said Val.


    "I think strapping the ''face towards enemy'' side of a Claymore to someone''s nadgers then setting it off would work better than shoving it up their arse."


    "Um, it''s a big sword," said Nick.


    "Oh," said Sprocket. "Um, there is a sort of directional mine that''s called a Claymore isn''t there? Because when you said Claymore my brain went ''goes bang thataway''."


    "Aye," said Nick. "That there are, Yank things, but they''re a right bastard to be getting hold of."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Twenty minutes later they pulled into Vrotch''s caravan park, where the ambience was as per usual, and piled out of the van and Annie''s pickup - they didn''t have the Bigger Van handy, they''d dropped it off at the Harbourmaster''s on the way to the digs.


    Alice knocked on the door to Vrotch''s caravan and stepped to one side to allow the gangly-limbed mage to make his usual energetic exit, this time with a scream of "Fuck the Jesus beam?!?"


    He as usual skidded to a stop as soon as he realised who it was, and spent a few moments peering critically at the group.


    "Oh yeah, it''s that day, you''re back in town," he said, then nodded to Nick, who had Silent, the wolf and the panther all on leads, and added, "Wow Nick, you''ve found some awse pets when I wasn''t looking, and..." and he turned to Alice, "YIKE! Big kitty-lady thingy!"


    "Um... hi?" said Sprocket.


    "What''s with you dudes and cat-peoples?" Vrotch asked, regaining what passed for equilibrium.


    "It is starting to become a bit of a theme, isn''t it," said Alice


    "Not contented with brewing her own, now she''s joining Nick in the finding-strays club," Fiona added; Alice stuck her tongue out at her.


    "This one''s why we''re here," said Annie, indicating Sprocket.


    "Okay, I guess you''d better come in," Vrotch said with a thoughtful nod, and turned back into his caravan; they trooped inside behind him and got themselves settled, and Alice and Sprocket explained what little they knew about her


    This ran to that they had quite literally run into her on the way through from Loch Allen not far from the end of the single-track, that she was why the front of the Albion was now very bent as apparently a 40mph van would lose a fight with her, that her name was for some reason ''Sprocket'' and that this was on her dogtags, which she handed to Vrotch, that she was apparently Silent''s aunt, and that she appeared to actually have the complete retrograde amnesia they''d spent months claiming Alice had, and Sprocket summed it all up with, "And that''s about all we know about me. For my part I can''t remember anything whatsoever about who or what I am or where I''m from or probably-important stuff like that."


    "Okay, I guess I''ll see if I can find anything based on this barcode then have a look for anything the Ministry of War have on the army serial number looking bit on this, we copied their entire database onto the Hamster''s server last week - hey, is it the same barcode as that one on that eartag thingy?"


    "I don''t know, why don''t we check?" Alice said.


    It was, and Vrotch spent a couple of minutes fiddling with his computer, and said, "Not poodle."


    "What''ve you found?" Nick asked.


    "Hang on, man, I''m still looking," said Vrotch, continuing messing with his computer; after a couple of minutes he said, "Huh."


    "What''ve you found?" Nick repeated himself.


    "Not a lot, man. I''ve got a not poodle, a name, a place, and a photograph," said Vrotch. "The not poodle - specifically teriyaki - is what came up when I ran a straight search on that barcode number so don''t scan her ear down the shop or you''ll be charge half a shilling for it. As far as what the Ministry of War have it seems a lot like almost everything they has is stored on dead trees, I''ve got the name ''Project Elaan'', something called, er, ''Eye-lan Nar Oily-by-east'' and I don''t think that''s how it''s pronounced but I bet it doesn''t rhyme with ''yeast'', and a hilarious amount of ''redacted'', and then there''s this photograph," and he opened an image file - specifically a scanned-in paper document with everything but the page header and what had been a taped-on photograph blacked out - and pointed at the photo.


    It was very grainy, black-and-white, and showed four grinning catpeople, one of whom looked a lot like Sprocket; all had their hair buzzcut short, all but the Sprocket lookalike had fur - dark in the case of the other, much taller, female - and all were wearing full battledress; in the picture the one who was either Sprocket or looked almost exactly like her wasn''t wearing spectacles and had an eyepatch over her left eye, and someone had scrawled ''Killed in action'' with a black marker over each one of them.


    Silent immediately tugged at Nick''s sleeve, pointed at the picture, and made one of her tiny wheezing attempts at a noise; Nick blinked, and asked, "You know them?" and she nodded.


    "All of them?" Alice asked, and got another nod. "That''s Sprocket here with the eyepatch, isn''t it?" and that led to more nodding, "I take it the rest of them are just as non-dead as Sprocket then?" more nodding, "Er, are the rest of them related to you too?" yet more nodding, "Another aunt and some uncles?" and Silent paused, frowned, then first nodded then shook her head and wheezed at Alice and looked a bit frustrated.


    "Is one of them one of your parents?" Fiona guessed; she nodded.


    "Mother?" Nick asked; she firmly shook her head, so he said, "So one of those two lads is your father, then?" and she nodded. He pointed at the taller and narrower one and asked, "Him?" and she shook her head, so he pointed at the shorter and wider one and asked, "Him?" and she nodded then made a very clear yuck face in between her very visible increasing frustration at games of twenty questions.


    "So I take it he''s Sprocket''s brother then?" Annie asked, and Silent nodded again.


    "Huh," said Sprocket. "I''m someone''s aunt? I feel old."


    "Well that''s about all there is actually stored electronically," said Vrotch. "The name ''Project Elaan'' turns up on a few conspiracy-theory websites, real tinfoil-hat stuff - there''s a bloke here claiming it''s some sort of IRA thingy about remote-controlling people and his idea of proof is everyone who''s really started digging for information on it has got caught in an IRA train bombing. Stinks of false flags to me. Not sure about this eye-lan thingy though, is that Gaelic?''


    "Aye it¡¯s Gaelic," said Nick, having had a peer, "It¡¯s pronounced Eilen na Uilebheist," and how exactly you''d arrive at that pronunciation from the spelling she could see on Vrotch''s monitor Alice didn''t know, "It¡¯s about two hours fast steam west from Inverallen bay, it¡¯s right off the south end of Eilen Shea, in fact it''s possible to walk from one island to the other at low tide if you''ve got chest waders or don''t mind getting your everything wet and the narrows between the two are absolutely sodding full of rocks that''ll rip the bottom of a boat open like that, for all that it''s heaving with crab the only bugger who''ll dare fish in there is Struan Flint and he''s a bloody chancer. There''s an inlet on Eilen na Uilbheist''s east shore that''s great for lobster, there''s a wrecked steamer down there but you''ve got to be dead careful shooting creels near to it or you''ll be finding the rock that put it down there. Oh, and we''ve got tangle nets down for crays on the northwest corner of the island."


    Vrotch said, "Huh."


    "There''s land-mine warnings up on Eilen na Uilbheist too," said Mackie, "And ourselves have all been seeing the odd seal exploding. The army used to be going in there with a big helicopter every couple of weeks when we were bairns and they''re still in and out of there though myself couldna say how, ourselves have all been seeing smoke rising, but that''s about all that''s ever been happening on Eilen na Uilbheist since the army took it for some sort of testing, bio-weapons the story was, and rumour has it that it was a follow-on anthrax test site for Gruinard Island, back in the 1960s myself am thinking that it was but long story short you''re nae wanting any part of that, ourselves are just staying the hell off of it."


    "Y''know," said Nick, "Getting across to Eilen na Uilbheist from Eilen Shea should be dead easy and as for land mines I can be making something that''ll deal with land mines."


    "What? Why?"


    "Aye, I mean I''m certainly impressed with Sprocket''s ability to take a hit, I ran into her at dead on forty and all that was happening is she was getting knocked about a bit and the van was in a bit of a state, it basically crashed on her, bent one of the frame rails and I had to knock that and the engine mounting lugs straight and give them a bit of reinforcing that side when I was putting the replacement front wing and bumper on, and thinking about it nobody''s ever actually officially said what bio-weapons were tested on Eilen na Uilbheast and I''m thinking what if ''bio-weapon'' means ''soldier who can be getting crashed on by a van and laugh it off''? That sounds all sorts of bio-weapony to me and then we''ve got what yourself was saying after we were finding Silent about mind magic, Vrotch - well that fireball-hurling bastard was looking straight at me and he snapped his fingers right before Silent bolted at that fire, there''s nae so many vans banging about the north that belong to someone who kens what Eilen na Uilbheist is and kens someone who can be getting information out of a computer the way you can, Vrotch. I think I ken who our mind-mage is, and I''m certain he''s wanting us to be poking around on Eilen na Uilbheist, and I''m thinking he has a very good reason for it."


    Vrotch thought about that for a long moment and then said, "Point."


    "So have yourselves been finding anything more about that space aliens headed for Venus?" Mackie, who had quite lost interest in the current topic, asked.


    "Yeah man, it''s well weird," said Vrotch. "We managed to get into it last week and the Flimflam Man found a copy of their wiring diagrams and it''s just plain weird. There''s a chunk of it is almost vehemently primitive, really computers is a bit strong a word, they¡¯re electromechanical stuff we could have built during World War 2 if we''d been able to get the components reliable enough, and that seems almost like it''s been grafted on top of a load of more modern stuff or maybe the other way round, I don''t know. We don''t even have guesses what''s going on with the magnetics of that big thing we''re fairly sure has to be their payload - at the ranges so far involved nobody''s been in a position to get a magnetic silhouette sharp enough to say any better than that it looks like a flowerbud, except the Russians and according to what their top bod had on his laptop last week the GRU haven''t digitised what they''ve got because they know someone''s been getting into their military servers. But check this out," and he pulled up a screenfull of what looked to be official documents. "This is the Navy''s heavy vehicle''s orders, they''ve got a no-first-shot order in place, see? So basically even the Navy''s top bods don''t have a clue whether it''s baddies or not."


    "They could be looking for slaves, or to harvest some tasty humans I guess," said Val.


    "Well if it''s the former they''re daft," said Vrotch, "We''re more trouble than we''re worth, and if it''s the latter I''ll be obliged to make sure we give them the shits - I mean, not that it''s actually likely, right, basically the odds of our entire biosphere not being violently poisonous to anything alien and vice versa is just laughably low, like it''s millions to one against us and them not having violent allergic reactions to each other''s basic building-block proteins - believe me man, contact with actual space aliens is going to involve lots of environment suits and clean-rooms and decontamination to avoid anyone gett ock."


    "Maybe biospheres are valuable?" Sprocket asked. "It might be a stretch but am I right we''ve only ever found one planetary body - this one - with any form of life on it, aren''t I?"


    "You mean apart from stuff like extinct Martian bacteria?" Vrotch asked. "If it''s higher life you''re after there''s plenty of weird fish under the ice on one of Saturn''s moons but the Ministry of Space classified it on the spot and banned landing there as soon as they clocked that it shares more genetics with us than the least-related known living thing on Earth ¨C meaning that sometime, somehow, it got there from here. Are you thinking ancient spacemen? Because I''m thinking ancient spacemen, which tallies with the ruins, wreckage and human remains that''ve turned up on the moon, Mercury, Mars, three of Jupiter''s moons, two of Saturn''s moons, three of Neptune''s moons, one of Uranus''s moons, two dozen Kuiper belt objects, and fifty-seven asteroids," and that set off a long stunned dead silence as for the first time in a long time Alice found herself one of the least surprised people in the room.


    "How," Val eventually asked, "Do you hide something on that scale?"


    "By making people think the tinfoil hat brigade made it up," Vrotch told her with a shrug, "And they didn''t have to work too hard at it - who makes a spacecraft out of wood anyway? That''s the part that really fascinates me, most of the wreckage that''s been found out there is wooden. The most advanced metals they''ve found are a funny sort of bronze, there''s nothing ceramic fancier than a stoneware pot, and there isn''t any plastics involved at all."


    "Aye," said Mackie, "That really is weird."


    "Yeah man, but bear in mind I work literal magic with my computer, Alice can make the figments of her imagination get up and start imagining things themselves, and Nick can make things invisible by writing on them - Fat Bloke reckons whoever left that wreckage was using magic nearly as advanced as ours and that''s just unheard of, even the Royal Navy are far behind me and my mates - I mean if anyone tells you anything, anything at all, about ancient tomes of mystic knowledge or whathaveyou they''re talking out their arse, there''s no such thing. Well, there might be, but it''d be about as much use as a medieval medical manuscript and man, the main thing those are good for is fucking people up... There''s a few artefacts kicking around, but let me make one thing clear man, all of them could easily be bettered using what I and more importantly the Munching Hamster know, what me and my mates do makes them look about as advanced as a fucking stone circle."


    "Stone circle? What''s that about?" Alice asked.


    "Didn''t you know? A stone circle - well, actually, the circular ditch bit, the standing stones are just there to help you get yourself properly lined up to use the thing - is a primitive form of spell focus. Compared to this," and he indicated the ring he''d got on his right index finger, "It''s a bit like comparing a stone axe to a chainsaw. I mean it works, you can cast stuff with it and I guess it''s better than nothing, but if you''ve got access to anything as recent as stuff the Romans made and you insist on still using a bloody henge you''re wasting time for no gain, if you''ve got access to modern gear like what the Ministry of War give their rent-a-mages the stone circle would take you ten times the effort for results half as good, if you can get your mitts on a modern focus you''d have to be barking to fart around with a stone circle. Well, not quite, there''s the history value part - I''ve actually been to Orkney and fired up the Ring of Brodgar, that was the first thing I did after the Hamster clocked what stone circles are, I mostly did it to check on her theory, I mean it''s really cool when you think about it, it''s like four something thousand years old and still works as perfectly as it did the day they finished it, but at the end of the day it was exhausting to run, took both hands and feet to keep control of, and the results weren''t a patch on what I can pretty much effortlessly get out of my computer, I mean I''m not harshing on those dudes, it''s actually really impressive that they managed to get a working focus together without any sort of metals or access to jade, but it''s what it looks like."


    "A priceless ancient relic," said Nick, much to the approval of Alice.


    "Exactly," Vrotch pleased Alice by agreeing. "Compare to this ring. This ring is a Royal Navy spell focus, the exact same sort they''ve been issuing since they got Project Warlock - that''s the lot behind the Gormhegast protocols - properly going back in about 1940. The Ring of Brodgar is a priceless ancient relic, emphasis on ''relic''. This ring is a completely replaceable day-to-day-use tool. Anyway to cut a long story short whoever left those wooden wrecks scattered round this star system had to be using enchantment on the sort of complexity level the Hamster only just figured out how to reproduce a couple of years ago, I''m glad to say before we heard about them, and the really irritating thing is we haven''t been able to check it out, the Project Warlock boys, including the team the Navy have investigating the ancient wrecks, use the most irritating form of security: they don''t store any of their info on computers. It''s a pain in the arse, I''d love to get my mitts on their data. McBangBang managed to get a look-see at one of the wrecks late last year though... Hey, an important question springs to mind, and that''s how magically advanced these space aliens are."


    "Another great big unknown, I take it," said Mackie.


    Vrotch nodded. "At this point what we don''t know about them apart from their computers being weird pretty much runs to ''everything'' including how they appeared out of nowhere in a big flash. Course like Val was saying the really important part at this point is their motives, crossing the vast gulf between stars has to be a serious operation no matter how they did it and I''ll bet it cost a few bob too - so, why?"


    "What I was thinking is basically life actually, you know, starting seems to be a pretty rare thing - I am right about that aren''t I?" Sprocket asked.


    "''There''s only two bodies in the solar system that we can conclusively say it ever happened on - here and Mars and the stuff on Mars stopped happening millions of years ago," said Vrotch. "That''s not a very high percentage when you think about it."


    "So maybe the space aliens want to do science at us?"


    "That''s as good a guess as any. One way or another we''re going to find out early next year, and when all is said and done I¡¯m going to be all of the readies if it turns into a fight. Anyway, there''s something I want to check now - whether Sprocket actually lost her memory when you crashed your van on her."


    "You reckon someone''s messed with her head," said Nick, suddenly very angry.


    "I don''t know but I can find out, man," said Vrotch, and turned back to Sprocket. "Basically I''m a psychomancer - that''s mind-magic, right - and unlike all too many psychomancers I try to put minds back together instead of finding more and more ways to break them, and while I was saying that I just had a peer inside your head and I''ve got a mixture of bad and maybe not bad news."


    "Okay, let''s hear it," said Sprocket, visibly filing that away under ''people who can look inside heads exist''.


    "It wasn''t being hit by Nick''s van that made you lose your memory," Vrotch told her. "Your memories were gone about a month ago, can''t tell when exactly, and you''d pretty much been running on autopilot. You were basically programmed to hide in the woods somewhere up the back of Dornoch until today then home in on Nick''s van like, today, and when you found it you pretty much jumped out in front of it and did a, well, another reset I guess? Not really that, you seem to have spent the last few weeks in a dream state. You still have all your skills and whatnot, that''s why you know things like how to talk and walk, and there''s still some emotional stuff tie up with them so you''re still going to like doing whatever sort of stuff you used to like doing, but apart from that as far as I can work out you''re pretty much a blank slate."


    "Vrotch," said Nick.


    "Yeah man?"


    "Can you no have a wee peer inside of Silent''s head and find out what her name really is?"


    Vrotch paused for a long moment, and then shook his head.


    "Psychomancy, man," he said, "Is bad shit."


    He took a long drag from his spliff, noticed that they were waiting for him to continue, and did so.


    "It''s magic, man. Minds are really really easily changed and magic makes that giant armoured scrap-metal van you dudes ride around in look proper subtle, psychomancy is just the same as any sort of magic: the only easy thing to do is break shit. Wipe someone''s mind? Kiddy stuff. Program someone the way Sprocket''s been programmed? Almost as easy. Look at anything deeper than surface emotions without destroying everything around it? About as easy as fixing a delicate Swiss watch with a ten-pound sledgehammer, thoughts aren''t even vaguely close to the surface, man, you''re not ''reading'' memories, you''re ripping them out and wrecking everything around them, if I went in deep enough to find her name or anything like that we''d know her name and she probably wouldn''t even know what names are any more... Basically I could go in and find Silent''s name for you man, but I won''t and not just because you dudes are my mates either."


    "Yourself was finding that out the hard way," Mackie abruptly guessed.


    Vrotch nodded once.


    "Yeah man. Basically my first spell was psychomantic - it was my point of access to magic and what happened with it is something I''m never going to forgive myself for, let''s not go into that. I got lucky in the end, Reg found me going to bits and days away from my head going pop and taught me how to use my existing computer skills to do things that didn''t involve destroying someone''s mind. Now I really gotta go dudes, and not just because this shit''s getting heavy, the Flimflam Man has been making a copy of the space alien''s weird-as-shit computers and we''re going to start poking at the software side of it uh, basically now."Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    By the time the little vampire hunting team he was starting to consider friends (apart of course from Fiona) were driving back towards the digs, Vrotch was back entering the infosphere where a certain something very, very impressive orchestrated by the Flimflam Man was ongoing.


    "I take it," he began his contribution to the conversation that had been ongoing when he got there, "We still don''t know how to get into the big crystal thing then?" and his fellow cybermancers - all of whom were in attendance, for once he was the last to get to a meet - turned round to acknowledge his arrival.


    "I don''t even know where to start with that thing, it''s like they''ve got three different totally mismatched sets of machine architecture," and the Flimflam Man indicated the carbon-copy of the alien spacecraft''s infosphere, which was hovering in the middle of the dataspace and looking just as strange as the real thing if minus the big crystal thing, "If it was any weirder I''d say their tech base was downright scizophrenic. As far as that crystal thing goes, well, at this point we still haven''t even got a start on figuring out what''s going on in there but I can tell you it''s totally unconnected to the rest of the vehicle, which at least actually runs on technology we have a direct parallel of even if half of it is hilariously antiquated."


    Vrotch nodded, gazing up at the datasphere in front of him and said, "You have to admit what our space aliens are doing is seriously bloody impressive."


    "Impressive hell, that engine section is almost like finding a fusion rocket built using leftover parts of canvas biplane," said the Flimflam Man.


    "I take it the copy''s the size of a barn, yeah man?"


    "Not so much, the actually semi-sense-making half runs to an array of twenty separate minitowers. The engine section end though, that is big. Sixty-five ton of mechanical gubbins, more relays and vacuum tubes than you can shake a stick at, and a couple of hundred miles of wire, it''s nuts. And it''s taking a staff of thirty to keep it running ¨C that''s mostly because the components I could get just aren''t as good as this thing needs them to be, we''re lucky to get five minutes uptime without popping any valves. I built silly amounts of redundancy into the system, that''s the only reason we''ve been able to keep it up for more than half an hour at a stint - in all honesty I''d say these space aliens'' backwards retro parts of their hardware are just flat-out better than our equivalent stuff ever got."


    "That must''ve set you back some serious beans," said Vrotch.


    "Oh yeah, getting this together on such short notice took a stink of a lot of cash... Not a big deal, Ted Kennedy had the ready."


    "Ted Kennedy, what, as in the President they impeached because of that mess in the Malvinas, sorry, Falklands?" Kitty Katty asked.


    "Yup, that''s the one. He''ll be proper furious when he finds his Swiss bank account he thinks nobody knows about down by the nine and a half thousand million it took me to do this but by then I''ll be over the hills and far away ¨C besides the people on the ground in St Petersburg think I''m an ex-KGB sort by the name of Vladimir Putin... uh, you''re going to be okay with that, right Hawk?"


    Hawkeye snorted indelicately and said, "I was MVD, I hate the KGB even more than Katty does."


    "This could lead to a highly entertaining pissing match," said the Munching Hamster.


    "Hope so, quality spectator sports are hard to find and Teddy-boy versus Vladdy-poos is going to be absolutely hilarious," said the Flimflam Man. "Right, anyway let''s get stuck in and really get our heads round what makes this thing tick," and so they split up into pairs and trooped into the recreation of the alien''s datasphere, in Vrotch''s case teamed with the Hamster.


    For her part, the Hamster demonstrated her usual perceptiveness by asking, the very moment they were out of earshot of the others, "Dave... you okay?"


    "I''ll be fine, had a pretty heavy conversation - remember my story about what happened with Becky? That came up. I''ll be okay, just a bit rattled, that''s all."


    The Hamster, who knew very well how over his attempt to actually mind-read his fianc¨¦e Vrotch was never going to be and how much of an understatement ''rattled'' always was whenever he ended up talking about it even in a roundabout way, changed the subject.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Nick Macbane woke up at about two in the morning of Monday fourth due to an unfamiliar warm soft presence in his bed.


    He peered around, wondering what was going on and what was against his side for a while, then finally identified it via the dark-haired head with the catlike ears that was pressed up against his arm, and the peacefully sleeping little face beneath it; Silent appeared to have crawled into his bed and cuddled up beside him during the night.


    He decided to think about it in the morning, and went back to sleep.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "I am given to understand," said Dr Jack Kensington, "That you''ve had a rather eventful Halloween, Miss Liddell."


    Alice, who had just sat down for her lunch on Monday with Keiko and Andy in the college cafeti¨¨re when her head of school approached their table, gave him a baffled look and said, "What?"


    "Something about a very interesting discovery in Orkney? I have three very excited gentlemen from the Royal Museum of Scotland and one almost as excited gentleman from the British Museum in my office with a proposal that you, and of course a chaperone, wouldn''t do to have a young lady gallivanting with a bunch of strange men archaeologists or otherwise without a companion, accompany them to the Northern Isles next week to perform a comprehensive geosurvey at the site you dropped in Kirkwall Museum''s lap the weekend before last; naturally I shall see to it that you receive extra credit towards your coursework should you so fit to accept their offer."


    "I... what?" Alice asked.


    "Our colleagues from Kirkwall spent most of the last week wherever the weather permitted running around with ground-penetrating radar up there and it''s turning into the most significant antiquarian find in the north of Scotland in decades," Dr Kensington declared with obvious and startlingly boyish glee making for the first break in his reserve Alice had ever seen. "I could not more strongly advise you to leap upon this opportunity with both feet, let''s see a certain person succeed in his attempts to sabotage your education when you''re on first-name terms with British Museum personnel, anyway I''m frightfully sorry to interrupt your afternoon repast but we''d probably better pop over to my office so you can speak to them in person."


    "I suppose," said Alice, rising to her feet, "That we better had," and she gave her plate (filled with fried things) a what-am-I-going-to-do-with-this look.


    "You''re welcome to bring your lunch, of course," Dr Kensington said, and she made a grateful noise and picked it up.


    She was aware of Nick and Annie arriving at the table behind her, and of Nick asking Fiona "Where''s Alice off to?" and of Fiona starting to tell him, but then they were out of earshot.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The four men waiting in Dr Kensington''s office all immediately leapt to their feet the moment Alice entered the room, and the visually youngest of the bunch - an almost exaggeratedly burly man with a strong suntan and sun-bleached hair who looked faintly ridiculous jammed into a tweed suit - let out a delighted cry of "Aha, the lady of the hour!" in a mild lowland Scots accented voice. He stuck out his hand, which Alice shook, and continued, "Dr Percy Fremantle, at your service; my colleagues here are Dr Samuel Chaucer and Dr Jeremy Douglas, and of course this is our esteemed colleague from the British Museum, Dr Wilfred Portendorfer."


    "I''m Alice Liddell," Alice confirmed, and waited for a Lewis Carrol joke.


    "Liddell? That''s quite the unusual surname in this day and age, I don''t believe there can be many Liddells at all left in the world today - oh, forgive me do, a part of my early studies was on the subject of rare English surnames and I must confess to remaining intrigued by the topic," and that expectation was totally scuppered by Dr Portendorfer, a tall, elderly, very thin and rather distinguished-looking fellow with a pronounced stoop, a walking stick, what was either a tactical vest or a hunting-shooting-fishing utility vest but either way was stuffed absolutely chock full of small hand tools and random-looking electronic contraptions and was slung over a carefully-tailored suit, and profuse quantities of white hair that stuck up and made him look faintly like a hunchbacked Einstein.


    "Oh don''t badger the young lady, Wilf," Dr Chaucer declared, concluding the several seconds of awkward silence. He was another elderly chap, this time with a ramrod-straight back and vaguely military bearing - he too was wearing a utility vest stuffed full of tools. "Forgive the old codger, he''s rather getting on, his mind tends to wander,"


    "Oh up yours Sam you rotter, you''re still just as five years older than me as you were last time you started putting on airs," Dr Portendorfer sniffed.


    Dr Douglas, one of the largest men Alice had ever met, he was even larger than Mackie and was almost as brown as Dr Fremantle, had been slowly shaking his head from the moment Dr Chaucer opened his mouth and this was enough to get a sudden bellow of laughter out of him; Drs Portendorfer and Chaucer gave him good-natured piqued looks then lost it and started chuckling too.


    "At any rate I suppose we should be getting down to business," said Dr Portendorfer, shaking it off. "I am the British Museum''s resident specialist on antiquities in the north of Scotland mostly due to being one of the few members of staff with the mental bandwidth to operate up here without making a terrible ninny of himself and getting himself shot; Dr Chaucer specialises in electronic means of geosurvey while Dr Fremantle and Dr Douglas''s areas of expertise are in the realms of more manual forms of archaeological exploration,"


    "We won''t be doing a lot of digging next week, mind," Dr Douglas took over, proving to have the faintest trace of a Western Isles accent, "Mid-November in Orkney would be a good time to get any digging washed out - we''ll be drilling core samples, weather permitting, to allow us to precisely date the site."


    "As to the question of a chaperone - wouldn''t do to have a young lady running around with strange men like Wilf," Dr Chaucer started.


    "Watch it, you," Dr Portendorfer warned, clearly amused,


    "Dr Kensington suggested a member of his faculty, one Mrs Josephine Pritchard, if she would suit?" Dr Chaucer continued, ignoring Dr Portendorfer.


    "Mrs Pritchard did in fact suggest herself," said Dr Kensington.


    "She''ll be fine," Alice said with a nod, not saying that this was because she was confident in her own ability to blast anyone who got a bit too friendly clean across the room with her finger rather than anything to do with the defensive capacity of an inoffensive elderly lady.


    "I take it that means you do indeed wish to accompany us to Orkney," said Dr Portendorfer.


    "I wouldn''t have come here if I wasn''t going to," Alice told him, and that got a chuckle out of the old boy.


    "Excellent, then it''s decided," said Dr Kensington.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "What''s that expression about?" asked Nick as Alice came and sat back down at the lunch table opposite where Annie was now sitting where Alice had been before.


    "I''m going to Orkney next week with three people from the Royal Museum of Scotland, one from the British Museum, and Mrs Pritchard," Alice told her, and that got a sudden unexpected standing ovation from Nick and Mackie and Fiona.


    "You what mate?" Andy had not been up to date on what they''d been up to the beginning of the previous week, and that put them into an explanation of what was going on - leaving out the parts about how Alice knew where to look once again, and she got this sinking feeling as she realised how many people were listening in, and what exact conclusion they were coming to.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The very moment Alice Liddell was out of earshot Dr Portendorfer drew a deep sigh, turned to Dr Kensington, and said, "Well Jack, you were quite right to call me."


    "So she''s one of those students right enough," Dr Kensington started, looking as happy as he ever allowed himself to, only for Dr Portendorfer to raise a hand.


    "In addition to which the last man by the name of Liddell was killed in the trenches in 1919 and the last woman of that name died of a bad case of age in the 1960s," said Dr Portendorfer. "Between the extinct surname and the reference that it contains - ''Miss Alice Liddell'', the young lady who allegedly went through the looking-glass - all in all her handlers might as well have dubbed their invented woman ''Miss Susan Donym''."


    Dr Douglas snorted.


    "So she''s not who she says she is," said Dr Chaucer.


    "She''s absolutely a plant, and of course the most pertinent question becomes whether she knows it," said Dr Portendorfer with a shake of his head. "Well, alongside whose plant she is, of course."


    "Well the SOE''s the most obvious," Dr Douglas started, only for Dr Portendorfer to shake his head again.


    "Her talent is almost entirely untrained," he said. "I have been butting heads on and off with the Special Operations Executive since the end of the war in Europe and I have never known them to miss that particular trick; no, she is almost certainly not one of theirs."


    "Mrs Pritchard concurs, she is quite convinced Miss Liddell is not a product of Baker Street," said Dr Kensington with a nod.


    "So, proposals as to whose she is," said Dr Fremantle.


    "Certainly no Lexbridge for one thing," said Dr Douglas. "Given she''s a young lady and she gives every impression of being capable of saying boo to all of the geese."


    "Could be the Yanks, they''ve been trying to get someone close to the Kellies for years," said Dr Chaucer.


    "Young lady positively dripping in hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of beyond-cutting-edge cybernetics attends college alongside staggeringly wealthy heiress to the largest manufacturers of advanced cybernetics in the Empire, doesn''t take mental gymnastics to think of the potential for her being a private effort on the part of the Kellies," said Dr Kensington.


    "If that were the case I should expect her to be in Miss Kelly''s course," Dr Douglas pointed out.


    "Aha, but you did not sit in an office and listen to Miss Kelly deciding that Miss ''Liddell'' was to study antiquities," said Dr Kensington.


    "You don''t suppose that Miss Kelly has some causative connection to this discovery in the Northern Isles do you?" Dr Fremantle asked with a frown.


    "Potentially, her family are certainly heavily involved in our mystery lady''s being here - as in at this institution - and the list of concerns able to fabricate Miss Liddell''s cybernetics is not a long one even if one is to include the likes of Station IX or whatever the Yanks'' TLA use for engineering these days," said Dr Chaucer.


    "I don''t believe so, if Miss Kelly had been instrumental to the discovery we would know it, she has the approximate subtlety of an atomic bomb," said Dr Kensington. "I believe any causative factor she may have had would be encouraging Miss Liddell to follow up on her instinct."


    "Instincts," said Dr Chaucer with a snort.


    "Yes well, I am told psychometry expresses itself in quite an instinctive manner," said Dr Kensington. "A few weeks ago - the afternoon upon which I informed Wilf of her - I was witness to a rather impressive display of postcognition on Miss Liddell''s part, and it was quite clear to see she had little idea how she was doing it."


    "Either way, Kelbeth Industries involving itself in affairs of the prosaic kind? I hope not, we could do very well without finding ourselves pig-in-the-middle for a business concern on that scale starting something with the Lexbridge Shooting Society and the time until one of old Beltran Cortez''s little catspaws is drawn to our barely-trained young sorceress is strictly finite," said Dr Douglas, only for Dr Portendorfer to shake his head.


    "That horse bolted some years ago, and for what little it''s worth it wasn''t started by Kelbeth," the old man declared. "You''re aware of the circumstances of Dr Reginald Bethnal''s death? He was bumped off by one Mr Nigel Berkeley,"


    "As in the Lexbridge chief axeman, I see," said Dr Douglas with a sigh. "Oh there''ll be hell to pay once whatever Sir Kelly''s planning in the way of retribution comes to fruition."


    "My thought exactly, yes," Dr Portendorfer agreed with a nod.


    "Not helped by the fact that Baker Street recently decided to shove their oar in up here, came a hair''s breadth from igniting a mob war and have most likely sewn the seeds of another land war," Dr Kensington said.


    "They have? I was not aware of that," said Dr Portendorfer.


    "A few weeks ago a member of the crime family largely in control of what passes for a criminal underworld from Oban through Fort William towards the Inner Hebrides, the Innes gang, was bumped off on the edge of the territory of what I can only call the most powerful crime cartel in the north, the Longman Org, a stone''s throw from here - we are as it happens currently seated in what is usually regarded as Longman Org territory," Dr Kensington told him. "I dread to think how far out of hand it would have got if the police hadn''t identified the weapon used as a Welrod and the Innes gang''s private doctor hadn''t confirmed it - then the next thing we know the local police special response unit, who quite definitely have ties both to Lexbridge and to the SOE, attempted to bust the leadership of the Longman Org and set the entire north of Scotland onto a hair trigger."


    "I see," said Dr Portendorfer.


    "Anyway it occurs to me," said Dr Kensington, "That Miss Liddell may very well be Kelbeth''s primary approach to retribution for Dr Bethnal''s murder."


    "Perhaps. Either way we shall most likely gain a little insight into Miss Liddell in the coming week," said Dr Douglas with a sigh.


    "And I should expect us to gain insight into Miss Liddell''s backers no later than whenever the coming land war kicks off," said Dr Kensington. "We need merely watch Mister Kevin Murchison and see how and when he dies."


    "Murchison? Why does that name sound familiar?" asked Dr Chaucer.


    "I believe he was a graduate student alongside you. Tall fellow, dark hair, this dreadful little moustache, can''t keep his hands to himself around the young ladies."


    "Ah, that Murchison, yes, I remember the fellow - what''s he gone and done this time?"


    "It transpires that he has taken up affiliation to the Lexbridge Shooting Society, he has the ring, I only found out post his having taken up his duties here, and now he''s taken to extorting favours out of his female students," said Dr Kensington with a shrug.


    "My God, in Scotland? Is he mad or an idiot?" Dr Fremantle burst out.


    Dr Kensington said, "I can but suppose he believes his affiliation to Lexbridge makes him untouchable."


    "Mad and an idiot, then," said Dr Fremantle; Dr Kensington frowned for a moment and then nodded.


    "And allow me to guess, he has set his sights on the eponymous Miss Liddell," said Dr Portendorfer. "Even before one comes to the matter of allowing such reprehensible behaviour to continue at the best of times, that damned fool risks bringing our entire line of work into disrepute in Scotland. With the several lifetimes worth of stunning prehistoric monuments simply crying for some semblance of archaeological exploration here in the north we cannot for any reason have a sex-crazed idiot''s genitalia endanger our access to those sites, and when all is said and done the Scots have a well-regarded absence of patience where concerns an Englishman bothering their young ladies; I would consider it a personal favour if you were to see to it that whichever of Miss Liddell''s associates you feel most appropriate hear of it at an opportune moment."


    "Associates," said Dr Kensington with a frown. "Hmm... yes, I believe I have just the ones, are you aware of two of this fine institution''s other students? A Mr Mikhail Romanov and I assure you the name is no coincidence, we all know precisely how his forefathers behaved when angered, and a young fellow by the name of Nicodemus Macbane, who counts an extensive range of active separatists on one side of his family and Glasgow street hoodlums on the other?"


    "Nicodemus?" said Dr Portendorfer.


    "Yes well, I have it on good authority that his parents are a little odd where concerns names," said Dr Kensington with a shrug.


    "I was under the impression that those two were the bodyguards of one Miss Annabella Kelly," said Dr Chaucer.


    "I have had the unique pleasure of their acquaintance. Mr Romanov''s family connection and Mr Macbane''s odd name aside, they are farmer''s boys, from the back of absolutely bloody nowhere in the northwest," said Jack. "I propose to alert them to circumstances during the later stages of the coming land war and allow events to... play out, to their natural conclusion, in as expedient a fashion as possible."


    "Yes, that seems eminently sensible, in fact I would consider it a personal favour if you were to drop a quiet word in these two fine young gentlemen''s ears, Jack," Dr Portendorfer said with a nod.


    "Consider it done," said Dr Kensington, allowing himself a small but rather vicious smile.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "So," said Nick Macbane as he seated himself at the usual table in the Harbourmaster''s that evening, "Mine flail."


    "I take it you''ve already got some sort of a plan for this mine flail in mind?" said Fiona.


    "Aye, that I have, basically I know where there''s a couple of old bulldozers, one''s got a broken chassis and the other''s got a blown engine and I''m thinking that I should be able to take the pair of them and make them into one working bulldozer, then rebuild the arms on it."


    "Oh aye, like where?" asked Andy.


    "Well Euan Macrae down near to Stronecrubie has one with a broken frame sitting in the back of his barn, I had a look at it for him and the engine runs and the hydraulics and gearbox are good but the whole frame''s twisted and half the suspension is just absolutely fucked, he ran it into a gulley, and there''s one that''s the same make and model - old Yank-built thing, the army flogged them off for pennies back in the seventies - sitting in the scrappies at Lochinver with nothing wrong with it that a new engine, a gearbox that hasnae been full of water for a couple of years, and new hoses on the hydraulics, wouldnae sort out," said Nick.


    "It''ll be a bit of work fabricating the thing," Annie said, "Why don''t we propose a mine flail for this project in the college?"


    "Project?" Mackie, who was unlike Annie and Val not sharing a course with Nick, "What project?"


    "The tutors on the engineering course basically have the students set up to get into groups of four and want us to design and build something," Annie told him, and Fiona too. "We''re already supposed to be working with us three and Trish Stoker, you ken her don''t you?"


    "Only in passing," he admitted. "The nice-looking lassie who''s awful weird about Alice, aye?"


    "Aye, that''s her, and she''s nae just a pretty face, she kens what she''s at with a machine," and that was high praise for anyone regardless of gender coming from the eldest Macbane brother, whose casual competence with old machinery meant he didn''t think much of most people''s mechanical proficiency. "Aye, it''ll nae be bad at all to have herself on board with this build, let''s run it past her the morn."


    "Okay, sounds like a plan," Annie said with a nod, then added, "So, are we thinking on going and scaring the shite out of a few diddums bloodsuckers tonight then?"


    "Aye, I dinnae see why not - anyone seen Alice?" said Nick.


    "She''s out the back in one of her containers farting about with something, I didn''t ask," Val told him.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Alice was, as it happened, finally getting around to that experiment with opening a portal from the Earth side, and was rapidly coming to the conclusion that there was something she was missing and that she should probably speak to the Hamster, Fat Bloke and McBangBang about this.


    "Up to much?" asked Nick as he stuck his head in and found an annoyed-looking Alice glaring at a bit of empty container, alerting her to his presence in the process.


    "Nothing that can''t wait, it''s not working how I thought it would," she said. She''d tried doing exactly what she''d done when she escaped from unspace that time and the magical field had, instead of inverting itself into a portal, done little more than disintegrate with the weirdest-looking ripple of light and a sizzling noise, and every alternate approach she''d been able to think of had that same result.


    "Well fancy blowing off a bit of steam? We''re getting set up to be going and giving a few vampires a bit of a seeing-to."


    "Might as well," said Alice. "It''s not like I''m bloody getting anywhere here."


    "Oh aye, what are you stuck on?" Nick asked as they exited the container.


    "Trying to actually work out how to open a bloody portal from the Earth end," she admitted; his stride broke a little at that.


    "Aye? Huh, thought you were already long since doing that," he said.


    "I hadn''t ever actually tried before today. Just never actually got onto it, and it''s turning out to be rather more complicated than I thought - I must be missing something but I''m not sure what it is, it''s not nearly as intuitive as actually creating stuff on the other side," she said as they entered the pub and turned into the back room, where she paused for a moment; Silent was sitting on one of the old sofas, there was no sign of her wrist plank though she was on the other hand wearing a lead clipped to her collar, the sawn-off Lee-Enfield was in a leather drop-leg holster at her side with what looked very like a pouch stuffed with stripper clips of .303 the other, and she had the wolf and the panther on their leads.


    "We taking her with us?" Alice asked Nick, slightly surprised.


    "Aye, I was getting to thinking about the way she shot with that thing and the way she opened Elf''s arm up, so I welded a wee fore-sight blade onto it and got it zeroed and made up a holster for it and here we are," he said, sitting down beside the little catgirl and affectionately resting a hand on top of her head; a smile immediately appeared on her face and she pressed herself up against the side of him, making it instantly very visible to all that the fondness went in both directions.


    "Okay - well, why not," Alice said with a nod, vaguely wondering how Sprocket might do hunting vampires; after a moment she put it out of her mind, the poor thing really didn''t need the excitement not twenty-four hours after waking up with no memories. "Let''s get mobile."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    At that very moment in time, a very clean near-new Land-Rover was turning off the main north-south road past the front of RNAS Kylestrome and down onto the road through Kylestrome itself.


    It carried on right through the village and past where the road onto the bridge onto the island turned off, then turned up Grace Mitchell''s mess of a driveway, splattering the first signs of mud up itself; when it pulled into Grace''s barnyard she herself was waiting for it, and she greeted the driver - Dr Jeremy Douglas - with a smile.


    "Well, welcome home then lad," she said; they shared an embrace, and then he fished a photograph out of his briefcase.


    "This the Alice who was turning up in that wrecked train on your doorstep right enough then Mum?" he checked, showing it to her.


    "Aye," she said with a nod. "Have you been able to learn anything of interest about her then?"


    "She''s got my colleagues all in a tizzy Mum," Jeremy said. "They''re half convince she''s either ''a private enterprise on the part of the Kellies'' or an American plant, Dr Portenorfer clocked onto her being gifted just like that."


    "So you''re saying that Elf was right, she has the gift?"


    "Yes," he said. "I don''t know exactly what form of it she has but she definitely has some way of learning things about the ancient past - Dr Chaucer thinks she has the sight but I''m not sure, there''s none of the signs you taught me about. And... Mum, what you were saying Elf Macbane was saying about, well I''ve found out what it''s all about."


    "Well don''t keep me in suspense then," Grace said.


    "There''s a man at the college, one of the tutors, likes to extort sexual favours out of his female students," Jeremy told her, quite aware he was signing Kevin Murchison''s death warrant.


    "Well we''ll see about that," said Grace Mitchell, her face like thunder.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Ready?" asked Mackie Romanov, punctuating it by pumping the trench gun.


    "Aye, ready," said Nick Macbane, his Claymore in one hand and the panther''s lead in the other.


    They both glanced at the shorter figure standing between them with the sawn-off Lee-Enfield in her left hand and her right, which was also holding the wolf''s lead, resting on its bolt; Silent had spent the ride over to their current location, Westhill behind Culloden, fiddling with it and trying out different ways to hold it and had then swapped the satchel of cartridges to her right hip behind the holster, and Nick was already planning a new holster to go on her left leg.


    She nodded, and they both caught the wild glee on what was visible of her face under her thermo goggles.


    "Knock knock, ticks!" Mackie yelled, and drove the heel of his boot into the lock on the door of the house they had just sat back and watched a couple of vampires, dragging a suspiciously-room-temperature tramp who was doing a suspiciously bad job of resisting, let themselves into. It splintered like matchwood and the three of them went crashing in, the wolf and the panther hard at their heels.


    As per their guess the living dead had been waiting for them with an assortment of knives, axes, and bludgeons - the door led into a hallway with a staircase open to it on the left, a small kitchen dead ahead, and a living room to the right and the whole place was lousy with vampires. Mackie went straight down the hall slamfiring the trench gun - working the pump as fast as he could with the trigger held down - and turning that whole side of the house into a whirlwind of buckshot while Nick, along with the panther, exploded into the living room and Silent went up the stairs in three close-spaced jumps the wolf was hard pressed to keep up with; a screaming vampire went head-first down the stairs, landing with the unmistakable sound of splintering bone, the panther hit the undead tramp like a ton of bricks, Nick''s sword went through three different would-be ambushers, and the sawn-off Lee-Enfield roared half a dozen times in close succession, and then it was all over bar lopping off undead heads and wiping the muck off themselves before Annie and Fiona and Val had even had time to get through the hall.


    "They''re starting to think," said Nick.


    "Seems likely we''re radically increasing the average intelligence of vampires round these parts by splattering all the stupid ones," said Fiona.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The remainder of that first week back was, aside from every lecturer bar Kevin D Murchison taking Alice to one side and enthusiastically recommending that she hie herself off up to Orkney with the man from the British Museum post haste, blessedly quiet; Alice spent most of her free time continuing to bang her head on the portal problem in between putting the finishing touches to the airshipification of her corner of unspace and vaguely contemplating the idea that it could use more people around than just Shiva. The others were pretty busy that week too, Nick for example spent seemingly every spare moment the rest of the week racing around the northwest in the Albion with a big trailer hooked to it, swapping parts for other parts until, on Thursday afternoon, he triumphantly returned to the college engineering faculty with the second old bulldozer (the one with a blown engine) on the trailer, having brought the one with a broken chassis and mangled suspension back on Wednesday.


    On Friday evening, however, the peace evaporated when they convened to the pub in preparation to resume their vampire-hunting activities for the weekend, quite unaware of the watchers sitting on a boat a couple of hundred feet away - with the result that a petrol bomb came flying into the Harbourmaster''s front porch not five minutes after Alice Liddell had sat down in their usual booth, closely followed by a wall of gunfire rattling like the hailstorm from hell off the four layers of quarter-inch steel plate Nick and Annie and Val had between them spent half their free time over the course of October lining the pub''s exterior wall with.


    Two seconds later the automated fire suppression equipment, provided and installed by Annie at her father''s expense, in the porch activated, and moments behind that Mary McBride threw the switch in between the two joysticks below the panel for her security cameras, the one rather imaginatively marked ''Fuck Everything'', and two sets of twin remote-controlled water-cooled machine guns, each loaded with a two thousand round drum of .303 tracer and fitted with armoured security cameras to allow them to be aimed from the safety of the bar, installed by Val who claimed they''d fallen off the back of a lorry, popped out of their concealed mounts each side of the front door - one disguised as a water butt, the other as a rubbish bin - and roared into life as Mary rammed her thumbs down on both triggers with a cry of "Magic, I''ve been wanting to try these for weeks!"


    -/-/-/-/-/-

 Chapter 5 part the third.

    "Well that was suitably hilarious," said Fiona Macleod, surveying the burning mess that had become of the four Bedford pickups that had came roaring round the corner and found out how much preparing for another driveby had been done since the first go-around; their first port of call once they were no longer under attack had involved removing anything and everything illegal from the premises, which this time meant five minutes slinging things through Alice''s portal before driving the Bigger Van through and parking it in her ''airship''s'' for-the-job-enlarged portal room then hiding the portal in a light bulb Nick had drilled a convenient hole in, and they were now standing around surveying the aftermath while waiting for the inevitable law enforcement response.


    "What? I''m barely hearing you," said Alice, rooting around in her ear with the tip of her pinky. The amount of gunfire going in both directions (along with the sound of lead flattening against steel plate) had been roughly as quiet as leaning against the bass bins at a particularly loud rock concert, with the result that the ears of everyone who''d been in the pub when what was now a splatter of mud opened fire were still ringing.


    "Aye, fucking hell that was loud," Mary agreed, looking enormously pleased with herself. "Haha! That learned those wee bastards,"


    "Oh for the love of Christ, is this going to become a habit?"


    "I don''t know," said Annie with a shrug. "You''d have to be asking that lot," and she pointed firmly at the smouldering wreckage, getting a groan out of the freshly-arrived cop who''d spoken.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "This is getting beyond the pale," was the first thing out of Andy Macbride''s mouth when they sat down for an impromptu council of war a couple of hours and a cleanup and the departure of some irate coppers later.


    "Aye, though I''m not hundred percent on how we''re going to see them off any more thoroughly," his mother agreed.


    "We''re going to need to find where they''re based out of and get rid of whoever''s calling the shots," said Annie with a frown.


    "Easier said than done," said Vrotch, who they''d phoned after the shooting stopped - he''d come right over as soon as the police were gone. "For one thing the surveillance network in Inverness is godawful and constantly being sabotaged because land wars, and for another any vampire that makes it past the first century or so is not going to be the sort of idiot you''ve been wholesale wiping out. I''ve been able to pick out ''gang colours'', basically, and whoever that lot were," and he angled his thumb at where the wrecked pickups had been pushed out of the road and were awaiting transport to a scrapyard, "I''ve picked them up on camera multiple times but haven''t a clue where they''re operating out of."


    "Maybe," Alice said, "We should be looking into our own surveillance setup."


    "Actually that''s not a bad idea," Annie said, scratching her chin.


    "Okay," said Fiona, "How?"


    "Drones," said Alice.


    "What?"


    "Drones, you know, remotely-piloted vehicles. Hey Nick, how hard do you think it''d be to build pretty much a miniature airship with a bunch of cameras and stuff for Vrotch to remote-control it? No, I''m not just suggesting it because I like airships, though I do like airships, airships make me happy, I''m suggesting it because it''d have a much better battery life than something that stayed up by propellers."


    "Piss easy," said Nick, "We could use mostly scrapyard parts even though we''re going to want to get one of your mates, Vrotch, to get the electronics down in London or pinch them or something so when one inevitably gets fucked it doesn''t immediately get traced back to us from the serials and that because if we do this these things are not going to be exactly legal."


    "Easy enough to be putting a simple ban or two on these things to help keep unwanted eyes away from them," said Fiona. "That and something to help stopping the wind getting behind the things and thrashing them to bits."


    "How big are we talking? And I think the word you''re looking for is ''aerostat''," said Vrotch.


    "Aero-what?" Nick asked.


    "Aerostat, that''s what the technical term for what you''re describing is, I think."


    "Oh right, anyway how big is going to depend how heavy the power and electronics end up being. Going to need to put a big old battery into it if we''re going to have the loiter time, uh, and I think we''ll be needing somewhere to be operating them from."


    "My caravan park should fit the bill, if they''re not too giant we can just put up a big shed or something," Vrotch told Nick, who nodded. "Anyway once you''ve worked out what electronics you''re going to need for these, these mini-Zeppelins, let me know and I''ll see what shakes loose."


    "That''ll be the big kicker, we''re going to be needing stuff like thermal imagers and light-amplification gear if it''s going to be any use for finding the living dead," said Val.


    "No problem," said Vrotch with a shrug. "Give me a few days and I can even get the sort of magnetic resonance imagers they use in mining space-suits too."


    "You can? Hey, how detailed are those things anyway?"


    "They''re supposed to be being pretty good," Mackie said. "Ourselves might as well be getting a hold of one while yourselves are getting this wee airship designed and find out how good it is, being able to be spotting guns on the undead when they''re thinking that they''ve been hiding them sounds like a fantastic idea to myself."


    "Aye, I wouldn''t be arguing with that," Annie agreed with a nod.


    "Okay," Vrotch said. "Tell you what, I''ll just pick up some of any sensors I can get a source for and we''ll test them out, how''s that grab you?"


    "Awesome, thanks," said Nick. "So that''s ourselves with a plan for an eye in the sky, what else will we be doing?"


    "Set up a bunch of sensors at the ends of this street," said Annie. "We can use Vrotch''s test samples."


    "Plan, aye. Well, we''ve got a..." and Nick suddenly drifted off and his head rotated to look at Silent, who was minding the wolf and the panther and looking quite content.


    "Huh," he said.


    "Huh what?" Annie asked.


    "It just occurred to me we should be having a wee look at Eilen na Uilbheast as soon as we can and I''m thinking these aerostat jobbies will be the business for that," he said. "See what we can be finding before we''re going blundering into what could just be an anthrax test site."


    "Okay," said Mackie, "Now myself am a lot happier about this whole mine flail plan."


    -/-/-/-/-/


    On Saturday afternoon, Vrotch turned up at the Harbourmaster''s with Vicky, who was toting an aluminium flight case nearly as big as she was as if it weighed nothing; it proved to contain a mess of beyond-cutting-edge sensor equipment that Vrotch smugly declared had fallen off the back of a lorry in San Fransisco, and this they spent half the afternoon playing with, as a result of which between them they spotted no less than six identical sets of those twin girls they''d been seeing since the end of September all jumping off of different goods trains, each and every one of which Annie identified as having come from Fort William direction - and they saw another three sets of them in the course of their Saturday night vampire hunt too.


    Sunday they spent installing sensor gear up and down the side of the harbour, spotting another seven pairs of those girls in the process and finally leading Fiona to say that they should probably think about looking into that, only for the others to shout her down again - whoever those lassies were and wherever they were coming from, Annie said and the boys heartily agreed with, they weren''t bothering anyone. They would, she declared, say hello if any of these pairs of lassies came into the Harbourmaster''s, but apart from that? The entire vampires thing was happening because the buggers couldn''t tell the difference between people and food, and as far as Annie saw it, she said, being weirdly identical wasn''t doing anyone any harm.


    Then, of course, Monday came around and Alice found herself with an overnight bag in hand and standing on the platform in Inverness waiting for the train to Thurso.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Dr Portendorfer was waiting for them when they got off the train - it had been a pleasant journey on the whole, and had quickly turned into one long discussion of the ancient past of the landscapes they were rolling through - this little back-end-of-nowhere village had first seen mention in the works of Claudius Ptolemy in the second century AD while a dig a few years past had turned up signs that it''d already been inhabited for two thousand years when Ptolemy began thinking about cartography, that river there was the site of a neolithic industry making stone axes, the famous outlaw Rob Roy had escaped from a manhunt in these woods here, and all in the same engaging and-isn''t-it-nice-to-know way that made Mrs Pritchard''s lectures such a treasure - but all that was spoiled when they got off the train to an air of tension; there were a lot of grim-faced armed men and women on the street in Thurso, as many aboard the ferry, and there wasn''t a smile to be seen once they got off the boat in Kirkwall - not that any of it was directed at them, mind, but even then it wasn''t much fun to be walking across the town to the museum through the middle of while Dr Portendorfer wrangled his vehicle - a 40-foot articulated lorry with a comprehensive laboratory built into the trailer - through the cramped and busy streets; an awful lot of armed and numperplateless vehicles were out and about and Alice quickly picked up on and joined in with not looking at them so she wouldn''t be able to describe the people aboard them - all in, it was a relief to get into the museum, and from there aboard a minibus out to the site of the planned survey.


    The plan was to undertake two different kinds of electronic survey - the only equipment actually in the possession of the museum team at Kirkwall, ground-penetrating radar, available to them as a local man had built and given them the equipment, was less than ideal in the soil conditions found at the Ness of Brodgar and in fact in most parts of Orkney - it generally performed better in even, sandy, soils - though it''d provided enough of a data set to actually get the other equipment loaded into Dr Portendorfer''s lorry for the trip north.


    The first step of all was to mark the area of the survey out into a regular grid using long pieces of string, spaced carefully in a chessboard-like pattern using tools that''d be instantly familiar to anyone who''d ever done an architectural survey; each of the one-foot squares thus marked out was assigned a number to be used to keep track of all the data they were about to generate. This took all the rest of Monday and most of Tuesday too.


    On Monday night Alice finally got to hear what had the islands on a hair trigger - the proprietors of the hostel that they stayed at explained that a small army of heavily-armed hired men had arrived aboard a freighter a few days earlier with armoured vehicles in tow, with orders to see to the eviction of four families from a small village north of Kirkwall called Harray, whose on-paper owner, a high-placed member of the government, apparently wanted to build a golf course on ''his'' land. A siege was ongoing in Harray as they spoke, and their hostess voiced the opinion that an outbreak of shooting wasn''t further away than the following week.


    Began on Tuesday at one end of the site while they were still getting the grid set up at the other was what''s called an electrical resistance survey, which involved inserting metal probes into the ground to test the local electrical resistance of the soil - somewhere there was a hidden stone structure, for example, would increase the electrical resistance of the soil, while an old rubbish dump''s traces of organic matter would increase the conductivity of the soil, though of course ''reading'' the results was a skill in and of itself. This had once been a laborious process involving inserting sets of electrodes into the ground by hand, but was rendered rather less so by the so-called wheeled array, a little trolley sort of an affair with four spiky wheels that the varied undergraduated accompanying the four archaeologists from down south took it in turns to trundle up and down the field, going over each grid-square at closely-spaced intervals, which even still took the best part of three days to get the entire site done - in several locations where he deemed the readings ''interesting'' Dr Portendorfer insistently went over at much finer spacings with a set of hand-inserted electrodes, blithely ignoring the joshing that this got him from his fellow scientists.


    The second set of equipment was brought into action as soon as the wheeled array had began being trundled back and forth; this was a device called a magnetometer, used to measure the strength of the magnetic field at any given point on the grid, with a full magnetic map of the site generated by carting the thing back and forth across the peninsula in much the same way as any of the other equipment. An awful lot of things we don''t normally think of as being magnetic, Dr Portendorfer explained to an interested Malcolm Laing, are in fact magnetic; a magnetometer will react very strongly of course to iron and steel, but also to things such as brick, or more importantly to a site of this age burned soil and certain types of rock, and hearing that Malcolm predicted and was proven correct that a specific location near the corner of the field would come up as a ''hot spot''; it, he explained, was where he routinely burned off the flammable rubbish that inevitably builds up upon a croft, as had his grandfather and his grandfather''s grandfather and so on for generations.


    (Malcolm, over the course of the week, had several long conversations with Mrs Pritchard on the history of the Ness as he remembered it and had been told it by his paternal grandparents, amounting to an extensive oral history of that particular small region of Orkney; the two of them really rather hit it off.)


    Together with the results of the ground-penetrating radar that Kirkwall Museum had used, by Thursday evening they had enough data to build up an elaborate picture of what might lay under the soil of the Ness of Brodgar, and that got everyone crowded into Dr Portendorfer''s lab lorry round a monitor to decide where the last days of their visit would, should the weather remain clear, be spent actually making holes in the ground - they were not, Dr Douglas hastened to add, actually going to dig a trench, there wasn''t enough time or the likelihood of continued dry weather available to them during this visit, what they''d be doing was drilling holes in the ground and examining what the drill brought up, with the overall results of that and the electronic examinations so far done going together to allow them to plan where to actually start excavating when they brought a fully-blown team of archaeologists north the following summer.


    "There would appear to be enough here," said Dr Portendorfer, "To keep a small army of archaeologists busy for quite a few years, I do believe this is something rather special."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    On Saturday morning the air in Kirkwall had gone from ''simmer'' to ''steam'' - guns had gone from slings to hands, and land-rights banners and the accompanying ''red beastie'' flags were flying - the latter, Mrs Pritchard explained, was the royal standard of Scotland, a rampant red lion on a yellow background with a knotwork-cornered red border, and had through one thing and another mostly it being made illegal to fly become the de-facto colours of Scots separatism.


    The air on the ferry wasn''t much better; several heavily-armed numberplateless vehicles joined Dr Chaucer''s minibus in the vehicle hold (Dr Portendorfer and his lorry were on Orkney for another week, along with Drs Douglas and Fremantle; Dr Chaucer was accompanying the majority of the undergraduates back to Edinburgh) and just about everyone was armed to the teeth and waiting with an air of anticipation - and they were about half an hour out of Kirkwall when Alice, having excused herself to go to the toilet, stepped back out of the lavatory and straight into a gun barrel.


    The owner of the gun - a stone-faced man with close-cropped hair, clad in a drab grey suit, gave her a dead-eyed look and said, "Stay quiet and do what you''re told and you''ll stay healthy," in a faint East Midlands accent and Alice was just about to splatter him across the corridor via the very direct application of magic when an abrupt interruption presented itself.


    The half-second burst of fully-automatic gunfire was both completely unexpected and absolutely deafening in the confines of the corridor, and as the goon went down like a puppet with its strings cut Alice realised he had half a dozen bullet holes in one side of his face and half the other side of his head pretty much torn off - and then Mrs Pritchard of all people appeared; the adorable little old lady had a smoking ''Glenmoray crackler'', a home-made T-shaped sub-machine gun, in her hand and her entire manner, her bearing and her expression, had changed so radically that it took Alice a moment to recognise her, and not only because the person who she had up till this exact moment taken to be utterly harmless had about as much of a reaction to having just gunned a man down as most would have to putting the bins out.


    Two old men in Trade Union hats were coming up the corridor behind her - both were holding similar compact sub-machine guns, one of them with a wooden shoulder stock.


    "There''s not any more of the wankers is there, boys?" Mrs Pritchard asked, and two more old crofters appeared, one holding a Sten gun and the other a self-loading rifle, along with Dr Chaucer, who''d acquired a pump-action shotgun from somewhere.


    "Willie threw one of them over the side and the other two are down in the car hold with their throats open from ear to ear," the man with the Sten said.


    "And good riddance to bad rubbish, what are Baker Street calling training these days," said Mrs Pritchard with a sniff. "Are you okay there, dear?" she asked Alice.


    "I''m okay, I''m okay," Alice told her, and the old lady transformed back from a killing machine into the utterly inoffensive dumpy figure she''d seemed before.


    "Well that''s good then - I don''t believe you have a gun, you''d better take that," and she indicated the one the dead goon had dropped on his way to the floor. "If you gentlemen would throw that," and she poked the corpse with her foot, "Over the side?"


    "Aye, I''ll be getting that," the man with a rifle said. "Ian, Andy, Doc, you''d better be getting up to the bridge - there''ll be a warm welcome for us onshore like as not and we''d better be ready for it, there''s a good chance we''ll be having to beach the ferry."


    Alice carefully picked the gun up, and gave it a dubious look - it was similar but slightly different to one of the guns Nick and Brigid and Nat had persuaded her to have a go with that first week after she woke up.


    "Never handled a Welgun before, dear?" Mrs Pritchard asked.


    "Once, back in August which was about the first time I''ve ever actually held a gun, and it was a bit different to this," Alice told her. "I know you point that end at what you want to make not live any more and pull the trigger."


    Mrs Pritchard sniffed and shook her head.


    "The bolt is connected to that sleeve - pull it back and release it like you would with a self-loading pistol to cock it," she said. "That''s the magazine release, this is a mark-4 Welgun so it uses Sterling magazines, the magazine holds thirty-four rounds. That''s the safety catch - it''s set to safe at the moment, rotate the catch forwards to set it to fire - it does not have a semi-automatic setting. This one has what''s called ghost-ring sights, peep through the little hole there, line this little pointed thing inside the foresight ring here up so it appears at the centre of the hole, then place your target on top of the pin and keep your bursts short, just tap the trigger so it doesn''t climb out of control. And for the love of Christ don''t point it at anything you''re not willing to kill - always, always, always know where your weapon is pointed. Now, let''s accompany these gentlemen up to the bridge and see about hijacking us a ferry."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The ferry''s skipper''s reaction to what amounted to a small armed mob barging into his wheelhouse was not quite what Alice expected; he took one look and asked, in a Shetland accent, "Harray?"


    "Aye, that''s the start of it," said the old crofter whom Alice had gathered was named Ian. "With a wee side-show about some southern nancies trying to kidnap this bonnie lassie," and he angled a thumb at Alice, "On our bloody ferry."


    "So what''s the plan," the skipper asked, "If you''re wondering I''ve got visual on the ship they''ve got the Harray families aboard and our tanks are full to the brim, range is nae a problem lads."


    "Do we ken where the bastards are taking them?" one of the men who''d joined them on the way up to the bridge asked.


    "Couldnae say, that coaster may not look like much but you could easily fit the fuel aboard her to make Australia and her design''s oceanworthy," the skipper said. "That said there''s a good chance he''s planning on transferring them to another boat at sea, or there being an ''accident''," and that got growls out of most of the men.


    "Are we fast enough to be catching up with him?" one of the old crofters asked.


    "Aye, that we are - it''ll take us most of the day, he''s headed south at full steam and we''re only a wee bit faster than he is, but that we are."


    "Well," said Willie, "There''s three haggis guns and fifty-odd Strathcarron toothpicks aboard - we''ll see about getting them up onto your foredecks and see about giving him a warning shot through his fucking wheelhouse when we catch up with him," and that got dark laughs out of the men. "Then we''re just steaming for land, we put into the nearest port we can and it doesnae matter where."


    "Inverness?" Alice ask/suggested.


    "It''d depend how far south we''re catching up with that coaster, but that''s nae a bad plan," said Willie with a nod.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "It''s all kicking off," were the first words out of Andy Macbride''s mouth, yelled, when he came barging into the Harbourmaster''s on Saturday a little after lunch - the place was well crowded with the usual mixture of hobbyists, seamen, and his friends'' small vampire hunting team.


    "You what mate?" said the nearest person to his shout - one of the hobbyists, a lanky skinny six-something lad with a lot of spots, a faint dusting of what might one day become beard, a pronounced wall-eye, and the most unfortunate buzzcut in Scotland, his scalp appeared to be covered in little scars making him look vaguely like an inverted plum duff.


    "Hey Mum, turn the radio on," Andy said. "Get it tuned to RFS, they''re broadcasting!"


    RFS - Radio Free Scotland - was a pirate station run from onboard varied trawlers, broadcasting at 252 kilohertz. It was the primary news source for Scots separatism and the very fact it was broadcasting was a sign that something was in the process of going on; Mary immediately turned to the radio, turned the jukebox right down, and turned the radio right up.


    "-fight on the Thurso ferry," the presenter - a man with a strong Gaelic-influence accent, known only as the Mad Count, was saying, his was one of three voices with unknown owners who broadcast on that frequency. "It remains unclear to ourselves exactly what''s happening onboard, but I''m seeing that she''s diverted from her course and is steaming for the North Sea, and from the fact she''s currently about four miles behind the coaster that''s got the Harray families aboard I''m not thinking that''s a coincidence - more news as we get it. This is the Mad Count, and we''re Radio Free Scotland," and with that music - one of the many underground bands they had ''wee arrangements'' with - kicked in.


    "The Thurso ferry?" Nick said, and glanced at the clock. "Shit, isn''t Alice supposed to be coming back to the mainland about now?" and that riveted the attention of every student in the room onto him - the intense dark-clad English girl had left a lasting impression on a lot of people, albeit one with its fair share of negatives.


    Annie frowned, pulled her mobile out of her pocket, and dialled; she thumbed it onto speakerphone while it rang through, then when it was answered by a slightly harried-sounding Alice with the rumble of a ship''s engines in the background she immediately asked, "Alice, are you okay, we just heard something on the radio about a fight on the Thurso ferry?"


    "Yes, I''m okay and so''s everyone with me but there was, yeah, there was a bit of shooting and, um, there''s some thugs gone over the side with holes in them after they, well, basically they were trying to kidnap me," Alice declared, and everyone in the pub heard Keiko Megami flat-out growl; Jock scuttled down onto her shoulder and started chittering at her. "We''re, we''re using the ferry to chase some sort of freighter - apparently there''s four families who''ve been evicted from crofts somewhere called Harray in the thing''s hold and the plan is to heave the freighter to and get them off, something about firing a warning shot through the wheelhouse with a haggis gun. Tell Vrotch and the Hamster and Fat Bloke and Fiona I may, um, I may have to go loud."


    "Alice, be safe, okay?" said Annie.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    "I''ll be fine, there''s a lot of good people here. Just don''t get into too much trouble before I get back, I''ll be back in town probably tonight."


    "Okay, Alice, I''ll see you tonight then, just be safe," Annie told her.


    "I will," Alice said, and after hesitating for a few moments Annie hung the phone up and turned to face the silent crowd.


    One of the old seamen rose to his feet.


    "Hamish, Craig," he said, "Get the Resolution''s engines warmed up, I''ll get Malcolm Mackintosh to bring his bloody big gun down. We''re steaming north, catch this damned freighter in a pincer between ourselves and the ferry. You lads and lasses," and he swept a very serious look around the pub, "We''ll be relying on yourselves to raise so much hell the southerners are too busy to go chasing after a wee ferry and a trawler. Let''s get this land war rolling."


    "Tell Malcolm to be rounding up every bloody gun he can be finding and the bigger the better, Adair," one of the other seamen said. "There''ll be plenty more than just the one boat steaming north by the time the hour''s out."


    The lad who''d asked Andy he what the fuck said, "What''d she mean, go loud?"


    "It''s Alice Liddell, the pretty one who dresses like a widowed granny and has that wee black puzzock," another student, this one from Kyle of Lochalsh and studying welding, said. "What''d you think herself''s meaning ''go loud'' you ninny?"


    "The English spey-wife lassie," said one of the art students. "Oh I wouldnae mind seeing herself going loud, it''d be a sight!"


    "Our Alice going loud casts shadows in daylight," said Nick, "Hey Mackie, get the Vickers set up on the hip-ring on the Bigger Van, I''m away up to the digs to pick up my wolf and my panther and Silent - it''s time we were getting onto the street and starting an absolute shitstorm."


    "Wait," said the lad who''d asked Andy he what the fuck. "You mean you''ve really got a wolf and a panther? I thought that was part of a roleplaying game!"


    "Some bastard who''s a dead man the moment I found out who he was decided they were getting too big to be keeping and stranded them on this tiny wee wave-swept islet off the mouth of Inverallen Bay just before Halloween right as that gale was on the way in," Nick told him. "I decided I was keeping them immediately, they''re beautiful creatures and they''re as tame as that sort of an animal ever gets, I kent they''d been raised amongst humans before we''d finished warming them back up from the hypothermia and trying to release a captive-reared animal like that into the wild doesnae often go well."


    "How much," asked the welding student who''d asked what anyone thought Alice going loud meant, "Of the stuff you buggers have been on about wasnae part of a game?"


    "I dinnae roleplay," Nick told her, and left while she was still frozen to the spot with her eyes wide.


    "... that stuff about vampires," the welding student said.


    Andy caught her gaze, and pulled the collar of his shirt to one side; he watched her eyes widen even further as she saw his bite scars, smiled grimly, and let it go.


    "Why''d yourselves no warn everyone?" the art student who''d called Alice a spey-wife asked.


    "Would yourselves have been believing ourselves then?" Mackie asked him.


    "Aye, fair point."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The sun was on the horizon when the coaster''s dash south came to a close not far off Tain - her skipper turned east when the trawlers out of Inverness caught his attention, only to find himself boxed in by a couple of deep-water lobster boats out of Wick whose skippers had been keeping ''Strathcarron toothpicks'' - home-made rocket launchers - aboard for special occasions.


    The coaster''s skipper replied to the orders, bellowed by loudhailer, to heave to and surrender by ordering his men to open fire; this was all the excuse the angry men and women aboard the ferry and the varied fishing boats needed to reduce the coaster''s bridge structure to a smoking ruin with heavy weapons fire, and they kept pelting the ship with rifle and machine gun until one of the Inverness trawlers came alongside and disgorged the threatened boarders - two dozen angry fishermen and haggis-hunters armed with sub-machine guns and self-loading shotguns.


    The resulting firefight was a brief but bloody affair; two of the hired guns aboard the coaster attempted to use the Harray families as human shields only to discover the weapons (mostly knives and things that might be used as garottes such as bootlaces) they''d managed to secrete about themselves, and by last light the former prisoners were aboard the ferry now steaming for Inverness with the coaster well on fire and sinking by the stern behind them.


    It was close to midnight when the ferry passed under the Kessock Bridge, by which time reports over the radio were saying the entirety of Scotland was on the street in force but beyond the events on and around the coaster actual shooting had yet to start - there was an air of mixed tension and excitement in Inverness Harbour - cavalcades of armed and farmer-armoured vehicles were doing circuits of the town centre prominently featuring the Bigger Van, the Harbourmaster''s had become a sort of nucleus cum command centre for it all, and more and more people were pouring into town from outlaying communities as the night wore on - it was very visible all it''d take is one idiot pulling a trigger, and that idiot pulled that trigger at roughly four in the morning by which time Alice Liddell was fast asleep in the Harbourmaster''s little-used top floor.


    The first actual shots fired were up near to Raigmore, not far from the fortress they called the police headquarters - a gang of kids, mostly in their mid teens and including half a dozen livestreamers, had been coming onto the bridge over the A9 at the bottom of the Culloden road any time a police vehicle passed underneath, alerted by friends with ''burner'' phones further up the road in both directions, and throwing bricks, rocks, and other debris; a police armoured carrier came up from the direction of Raigmore and parked on the bridge a little after half past three, and was approached from both directions just before four o''clock; the protestors began pelting it with loose objects.


    It never became clear who actually fired first - one theory was that a vehicle turning onto the A9 below backfired, but whatever the source of the bang captured by all sixteen cameras filming the reaction was immediate - the police gunner and several someones amongst the woods on the hillside opposite Raigmore both opened fire almost simultaneously, with the carrier''s mounted .303-calibre machine gun in the cops'' case and with multiple ''Strathcarron toothpicks'' in the case of whoever was on the edge of the treeline.


    A dozen teenagers died on the bridge in as many seconds, one of the livestreamers amongst their number; most of them were killed by the carrier''s machine gun, but two would later be found to have been killed by shrapnel from the rockets; the livestreamer''s camera outlived her and continued broadcasting. Of the six rockets fired in the initial salvo one hit the side of the bridge, two went into the embankment to the north of the bridge, two hit buildings further over than their target, and the sixth actually managed to hit the carrier, taking one of its centre wheels off - about par for the course given the dismal accuracy of the improvised weapons.


    The carrier immediately began reversing off the bridge and the crowd fled east towards the Culloden side of the road while the police gunner started firing in the general direction of the treeline the rockets had launched from. He was answered by another salvo of rockets with similar effect to the first - two managed to hit the carrier this time, one taking a chunk out of the vehicle''s frontal armour and the other damaging, jamming, and knocking off-centre the carrier''s steering - the vehicle slewed sharply towards the north side of the bridge, struck the guardrail, scraped along it for nearly thirty feet, then overburdened it and broke through close to the end of the bridge; its rear end dropped six feet to the embankment, leaving the damaged carrier thoroughly ditched in a precarious nose-up position.


    The crowd almost immediately turned back onto the bridge, heading towards what was now a crash site with some moving to attempt to aid the varied injured or dead laying on the bridge, while the rocketeers ceased fire and faded; within three minutes the crowd were milling around directly above the stranded carrier, many of them hurling loose objects taken from the damaged parts of the bridge, and by the time a quick reaction force - six armoured cars, three armed with light howitzers and three with machine guns - exited the police headquarters four minutes after the carrier was immobilised the first petrol bomb had just been thrown and the attention of a haggis-hunting team, who had been driving towards Inverness from the south on the A9, had been drawn; they turned up towards Culloden and arrayed their gun vehicles on the road uphill towards Culloden Moor, their big guns aimed back towards the damaged carrier just in time to commence firing on the police QRF vehicles; the crowd that had been on the bridge went over the side in both directions, fleeing north and south along the side of the A9; here the dead livestreamer''s broadcast finally ended as one of the police vehicles ran over her camera.


    An eight-minute exchange of fire followed - the police vehicles were by far heavier armoured, the haggis-hunters by far heavier armed - ending with the remaining hunters pulling back towards Culloden leaving four burning vehicles behind; on the police side, another two armoured cars had been disabled - one''s turret jammed, the other its engine knocked out; the cops retrieved their comrades from the stranded carrier, the immobilised armoured car was hooked up to be towed by another vehicle, and they retreated back to their headquarters where they bunkered down to wait it out as of roughly quarter to five.


    By this time nearly a hundred people had already been injured and thirty-seven were dead or dying.


    The crowd didn''t take long to reform, beginning with another livestreamer coming out of where he''d been hiding under the bridge and heading straight for the stranded carrier - he urged others to join him, live online, and they were quickly followed by a couple of local residents driving out onto the bridge in an effort to assist the dozens of injured people laying thereon. The first ''souvenir'' - the mounted machine gun - was taken from the shot-up carrier at around ten past five in the morning, and separatist militia vehicles prominently including the Bigger Van were driving up and down the road past Raigmore Hospital no later than twenty past five, by which time more and more people were removing objects and components from the carrier; just after first light at about ten to six Nick Macbane set the wreck on fire.


    Not half an hour later he and Mackie were back down the other end of the town in the Bigger Van, parked in the forecourt of the fuel station across the Longman Road from that section of the college, and had just finished refilling the vehicle''s tanks when who should come hurrying across the road but a rather harried-looking Dr Jack Kensington.


    "I say," he declared. "I find myself lacking a serviceable motor vehicle, my car appears to have had its wheels stolen and it isn''t precisely safe having my accent out on the town today, a lift wouldn''t be out of the question would it?"


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    When Mister Kevin D Murchison heard a knock at his door, the only real heed he paid it was to get his Webley - it had been a gift from a friend, Sir Adrian Blenheim-Parker-McMudd - out of his desk drawer and load it, largely as he was fairly well-versed in the particulars of being a man who appreciates the finer things in life during a land war.


    He did not, needless to say, answer the door, and when a minute passed in silence he started to relax - then the knocking repeated.


    Mister Murchison shook his head. Idiots. Like he was going to answer that when he could hear machine-gun fire from the other side of the firth. The entire town was going up - yobboes were out on the street in force, most probably with an eye to shooting people for having taken what they deserved.


    The next knock shook the entire building, and concluded with a nasty splintering noise.


    He seized up the Webley and hastened to his front hallway.


    There were no signs of damage - of course there were no signs of damage, the house had been engineered to stop a charging bull haggis, there was no way in hell anything that might knock was going to-


    The lock went sailing up the hall as the door thundered open and left a dent in the wall, and a slender dark-skinned and ash-white-haired black-clad woman of utterly indeterminable age, she could have been anywhere between fifteen and fifty, and she had one, horribly yellow, eye, was stood there lowering her leg from where she''d just kicked an armoured door''s lock clean off and she said, "Kevin D Murchison," and there was something uniquely, indefinably, terrifying about her voice, and Kevin D Murchison realised that his hands were shaking so badly he didn''t know he could get his finger onto the trigger.


    "Keep- Keep away!"


    "I would have words with you, Kevin D Murchison," and she stepped across the threshold, and the door boomed shut behind her, the lock impossibly rocketing back down the hall and into its place, and the Webley fell to the floor with a clatter as Kevin lost his grip on it, numb with terror.


    "It seems, Kevin D Murchison, that you have been playing the fool with Clan - oh, but where are my manners? You may call me the Callieach," and Kevin dropped to his knees with a thump, but the siege was not done yet.


    "My second to youngest son tells me that my young ward - Miss Alice Liddell - has found herself subjected to an unseemly display over the past few weeks, Kevin D Murchison, nasty little bugger whose daddy taught him that there were no consequences to misdeeds, nasty little bugger who has found the consequences of a gentleman making an indecent advance upon a young lady."


    Kevin couldn''t breathe, he couldn''t speak, he couldn''t look away - a horrible noise like a death rattle escaped from him.


    "Ah, you wish to say that you are sorry, Kevin D Murchion? That you would very much like to make restitutions, Kevin D Murchison?" she asked, and he found he was able to frantically nod his head.


    "Excellent, Kevin D Murchison," she bit out, "Then die."


    Kevin D Murchison''s heart chose that very moment to burst, and as his vision dimmed and his life fled him, the last thing he saw was her pleased little smile as she turned away and the last thing he heard, the very last sensation to burn itself into his mind, was the white-haired woman''s voice, hissing in a tone almost like a spitting cat, "Thankyou, Kevin D Murchison."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    It wasn''t until they were driving through Culloden that Dr Jack Kensington finally broke the silence that had encompassed the interior of the Bigger Van after he''d finished giving the boys directions to near his home in Balloch just east of Culloden, and he did so by saying, "I say, I am correct that you gentlemen consider Miss Alice Liddell a friend, am I not?"


    "Aye, that ourselves are," Mackie said with a nod. "Why would that be then?"


    Kensington gave him a side-on look - he was in the Bigger Van''s door seat, Mackie in the centre seat keeping a hold on the wolf and the panther, and Nick was driving.


    "Are you aware," said Kensington, "Of the... issues, she has been having with a certain member of the faculty? A Mr Kevin D Murchison, whose address of residence would seem to be on the piece of paper I just accidentally dropped into the footwell."


    "Aye," said Mackie, his voice slowly going down in tone and Nick noted with glee the way his accent was beginning to change, always a sign of his oldest friend getting angry, "Ourselves well ken that wee Sassenach bastard''s been refusing to accept Alice''s coursework, but if yourself''s thinking we''ll be cleaning up your messes for you..."


    "What if I told you that Murchison uses that exact methodology to extort sexual favours from female students?"


    "And you haven''t dealt with it because?" and with each word Mackie was sounding less and less Gaelic as his other native accent crept in.


    "He''s connected," Kensington said, "Some sort of high-level connection to some sort of very politically powerful gun club down south," and even Nick could hear he wasn''t saying everything, which in itself said something given the pit of black rage he was sitting beside.


    "You ken," said Mackie, "I''m not entirely Scottish," and his head glacially rotated until he was staring straight at Kensington, who still looked quite at ease, "I''m part Russian."


    Then he demonstrated that he hadn''t quite hit the roof yet, by pulling out one of the old horseshoes he carted around for his party trick. He tapped it on the steel plate the Bigger Van used for a dashboard to get a nice clear clank to show it was metal, bent it straight with his bare hands, and he handed the freshly-straightened horseshoe to a suddenly very alert Dr Jack Kensington who had, it seemed, abruptly realised just what he was sitting beside, and then Mackie put the finishing touch by saying, sounding like he''d grown up in the worst part of Moscow, "And we all know what happens if you fuck with a Russian."


    "Ask Miss Fiona Macleod about Murchison," said Kensington, still sounding calm though no longer even remotely casual.


    "We will be," Mackie told him as Nick drew the van to a halt outside Murchison''s address of residence; they sat and watched the deadly-calm Englishman exit, then Mackie leant over and swung the door shut and Nick put the pedal to the metal.


    Kensington watched the van go for a long moment, blew out a slightly shaky sigh, recollected his composure, spent a moment turning the battered piece of metal over in his hands, then slipped it into his shirt pocket, dusted off his sleeves, and muttered, "Jesus Christ, Miss Kelly''s sodding bodyguards, Jack, bloody hell."


    He looked back in the direction the ramshackle armoured carrier had gone, and added a heartfelt and very satisfied, "Godspeed, young men."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "What''re we doing?" Nick finally asked as the Bigger Van trundled down towards the town.


    Mackie snarled and said something vile-sounding in Russian, the only part of which Nick knew was something that he understood roughly translated as ''bitch'', then lapsed back into angry muttering and grumbling before finally asking, "What the bloody hell do you think ourselves will be doing? Here''s that wee note himself was ''accidentally dropping'',"


    "Aye but are we believing himself?" Nick asked.


    "Well it''s making sense, it''s making far too much sense, myself''s been seeing a bottle of mouthwash in Fiona''s bag for a while," Mackie declared. "But we''d better be checking to be on the safe side, myself am no sure if myself''s trusting Kensington there."


    "So that means we''d better be finding Fiona, aye," said Nick.


    "And if Kensington''s telling ourselves the truth..."


    "If that''s the case, well I don''t know about yourself but I''m preferring our Fiona without the roof of her mouth scrubbed raw," said Nick Macbane, and that was the sum total conversation in the cab of the Bigger Van until they had pulled up outside the pub.


    Fiona was right where they expected to find her - the Harbourmaster''s, waiting for Alice (who was sacked out on a camp bed in one of the disused upstairs rooms post her entirely too exciting ferry trip) to wake up; when the boys walked in she was sitting alone in one of the booths and writing in a notebook.


    "Lads," she said as they seated themselves each side of her.


    "A wee bird''s been telling us that Kevin Murchison bugger has been bothering Alice," said Nick, making a very relevant gesture, and that very visibly wasn''t what she''d been expecting to hear.


    She looked from one of them to the other, and something about her expression told a whole story.


    "It''s no just Alice, is it," said Nick, and she didn''t reply, but the change of her expression was enough of an answer, and Mackie''s accent flipped like that as he finally hit the fucking stratosphere.


    "We''ll see about that," he declared, and Nick rose to head back to the Bigger Van, his own anger not all that far behind the white-hot tower of laser-tight focused rage that was the unearthly strong crofter''s lad descended from the last Tsar of Russia.


    Whoever Murchison thought he was, he was stone cold dead the exact heartbeat that he laid a finger on a lass that way in Scotland and Nick and Mackie would only be the ones who put the zombie in the ground because they''d been the first people to hear about it and for some totally inexplicable reason that had Nick a tad concerned she hadn''t or wouldn''t get it done herself.


    (Couldn''t didn''t even enter the equation. You could see Fiona Macleod of Stornaway could at first glance, apparently unless you were a certain dead body with, as Andy had dubbed it, a wee twat moustache.)


    He was going, he concluded, to have a chat with this Isobel Mackenzie person and the sooner the better; it wasn''t just Kevin D Murchison who was needing a good seeing-to.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Alice arrived in the bar just as Nick and Mackie were rampaging out of the door with a very thoughtful-looking Fiona watching them go.


    "What was that about?" she asked.


    Fiona gave her a look, then glanced at where the boys had gone as the Bigger Van''s engine snarled back into life; they listened as it peeled off from the kerb with a scream of spinning tyres and a throaty bellow from the engine as Nick put the pedal to the metal, if you knew what you were about you could launch the mechanical Frankenstein''s monster in any gear and if you did it at the top of the box oh what a show it''d put on.


    "Just a wee bit of cleaning," Fiona said, and for some reason whatever that meant she found it really very satisfying indeed.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Mackie," said Nick as he hurled the Bigger Van round the roundabout from Shore Street onto the Longman Road, "If we''re going to kill the bastard there''s a few things we''ll be needing to pick up - plastic sheeting to keep the bits off of the floor, bin liners, old clothes we don''t mind burning, jerrycans of water to get ourselves cleaned off, and something to change into once we''re done getting rid of the evidence,"


    "No we willnae," said Mackie. "The bastard''s going to be committing suicide by jumping off of the Kessock Bridge."


    "There''s a thought," said Nick with a nod. "I''m recognising the street there, that''ll be one of those haggis-proofed houses at the east end of North Kessock, how''re we getting the door open?" The address Jack Kensington had ''accidentally dropped'' was for a house in Craigton just through North Kessock on the far side of the firth, almost under the northern end of the bridge - this along with Smithton and Balloch outside Culloden functioned as Inverness''s ''nob hill'' suburbs, you had to be pretty well off to afford to live in any of the three.


    "Well," said Mackie with a grim smile, "It''s nae like all that many haggis-proof houses are entirely crofter-proof now, is it."


    Nick nodded, and they lapsed into silence for the rest of the drive.


    Both of them were very surprised indeed, on piling out of the Bigger Van, to find the house''s front door standing open - they exchanged glances then headed for the door, and Mackie stuck his head and his shotgun in then immediately declared "Oh you are fucking having me on, myself was wanting to be killing the wee bastard!"


    He stomped into the porch and swung a kick at the dead man who was laying flat on his face with his arse up in the air, a look of complete terror frozen onto him and not a mark anywhere on him, halfway through the door between porch and front hall.


    "Key''s in the inside of the lock," Nick said. "Doesnae look like he fired that either," and he pointed at the Webley that was laying on the floor in the middle of the porch. "Jesus, will you look at his fucking expression, hey and what''s that smell?"


    "Myself am thinking he was shiteing himself on the way over," Mackie said with a frown.


    "Fuck this," Nick said. "Let''s get the hell out of here, this is giving me the heebie-jeebies, we''ll be wanting to get Vrotch to have a wee sniff around if you''re getting my drift."


    "Yourself''s thinking maybe Alice...?"


    "No, nae Alice, I ken she was fast asleep in Mary Macbride''s back room all last night and that was herself just off the boat back from Orkney but how many people does she ken who''d most likely be able to be doing that?" Nick asked as they scrambled back into the Bigger Van.


    "Should ourselves really be questioning it Nick?" Mackie asked. "Strikes myself someone was doing our Alice and our Fiona a wee favour there."


    "Aye, but I''m wanting to be certain it was Alice and Fiona being done a wee favour and no anything that''ll be catching or owt."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Nick, Mackie, there you are! Don''t use the Bigger Van until the shooting stops, there''s a rumour going round that," Mary Macbride started the moment the boys came walking back into the Harbourmaster''s, only to be cut off by the unmistakable sound of a missile screaming across the harbour followed by a massive bang, and the two Loch Allen lads seemingly rotated on the spot until they were looking back the way they''d come.


    There was a thoughtful silence, which Mary eventually ended by continuing, in a very calm and even voice almost like that of an announcer apologising for a commuter train being late due to the wrong type of leaves, "... The Air Force are going around blowing up separatist armoured vehicles."


    Mackie and Nick exchanged glances, and Mackie eventually ventured, "Myself''s thinking we can be calling that rumour confirmed?"


    "Aye," said Nick, and then his face fell and he slapped his forehead. "Oh for fuck sake, now I''m going to have to be building another of those bloody things!"


    Not twenty minutes later and post the hasty application of a fire extinguisher Mary was spreading the world that a separatist armoured vehicle had been blown up by the Air Force right outside a crowded pub regardless of the total lack of evidence of an aircraft, and the boys were taking the Albion over to Vrotch''s to chase after a few answers about Murchison.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Well that wasn''t anyone I know," said Vrotch, scratching his head. "I''m not sure who it was, a fear spell strong enough to cause a heart attack isn''t exactly kiddy stuff but it definitely wasn''t anyone I know, the magical signature''s all wrong. Don''t think it was Mackenzie either, she couldn''t psychomance her way out of a wet paper bag and thank fuck for that, and I''m pretty familiar with her magical signature too."


    He spent a moment poking at the dead tutor with his toe.


    "All I can say for sure is he must''ve really pissed off someone really powerful somehow. You say this bloke had been pestering Alice, yeah?"


    "Aye," said Nick with a nod. "That was the story we were hearing, and Fiona was confirming it."


    "Huh," said Vrotch with a nod. He finally stopped poking his foot at the dead man. "Well at a guess when we find out who brought Alice here we''ll find out who killed this wanker then."


    "What''s that supposed to mean, who brought Alice here?" Mackie asked.


    Vrotch shared glances with Vicky, then sighed and shook his head.


    "Look man," he said, "Being pulled out of the universe doesn''t happen by mistake. It takes an absolute shitload of magic, being very deliberately directed, to do something like that."


    "Well what about wild magic or," Mackie started.


    ¡°Nah man, lemme make one thing clear, magic isn''t, well, magic. There''s nothing ''mystical'' about it, magic doesn''t have opinions, magic doesn''t go ''Shall I frappe this bloke or shall I sit down in front of the telly with a crate of Pennants and watch Docklanders'', magic is as capable of decision-making as any other force of nature ¨C which is to say, not at all.¡±


    ¡°A force of nature, huh?¡± Nick mused.


    "Yeah man ¨C like how a cyclone doesn''t decide a bloody thing, it just smashes things that it blows into,¡± Vrotch said, nodding. ¡°I guess actually it''s more like gravity, really. If nobody''s doing stuff with it, it just sort of sits there and is. Trust me man, if you ever run into any sort of magical ''force'' that seems capable of any sort of decision-making or self-motivation whatsoever, either it''s what we in the business call a construct, basically meaning an artificial intelligence ¨C and let me make it very clear that means it''s been made by someone, somewhere, somewhen ¨C or it is being controlled by someone. Potentially a bit of both given constructs are generally made as very advanced magical tools, and I''m saying generally as in I''ve never even heard any rumours above the level of ''silly urban legend'' of one that wasn''t and we haven''t found anything that''d give grounds to believe it''s possible either. Well, that or it flat out isn¡¯t magic ¨C like, say, spirit entities, a spirit may be able to use magic but they¡¯re as much a part of it as we are ¨C which is to say, only by it being an underpinning law of the universe much like, oh, like quantums or something. Magic has rules, it is both repeatable and predictable, it is absolutely a part of, of ''physics'', of ''nature'', if you ever want to complete any sort of grand unified theory of everything or whathaveyou you are going to need to include magic, and the only thing stopping us fully automating the use of it is we don''t know how to get a machine to gather a reserve of magical power yet - we can do all of the rest of the process, we can literally build machines that use our personal reserves to cast set spells at the push of a button - mark my word, man, it will happen and it will happen in our lifetime. It''s not some sort of grand mysterious pseudoreligious thingummy no matter how various quack witchdoctors and cult leaders may yak on, and get this straight, they do that because they''re getting rich off people thinking that - it''s an emergent technology one massive kick up the establishment''s arse away from mass roll-out, we just use that word, magic, because it''s short and convenient and as good a name for it as any and seriously man, think about what using it looks like, what else are we supposed to call it?"


    "So you''re saying Alice had to have been deliberately brought here," said Nick.


    "Yeah man, basically that''s the only explanation that makes any sense and the fact she''s a near-ideal Immaterialist and a death mage and how, well, how resilient she is, mentally, you know, doesn''t strike me as any sort of coincidence either, in fact I have to say I have to think they''re both part of why she''s here, you know, why her - whatever she''s here for, someone chose her very carefully. Interdimensional portals aren''t something that just happens, there are some kinds of portal that can happen as a side effect of enormous amounts of magic being put in the same place but they''re always between places in the same layer of the same universe. Don''t tell her, she''s got enough on her plate anyway and I''ve definitely ruled out anything having messed with her head beyond, you know, a series of major shocks and she''s tough enough mentally that she''s damn near brushed that all off at this point, but we''ve been working with the assumption she''s basically someone''s secret weapon. Anyway I... hang on," and Vrotch suddenly changed track mid-word; he fished a plastic bag out of his pocket, turned it inside out onto his hand, and used it to pick up the revolver that was laying on the floor.


    "Hoooo boy," he said, peering at the fancy inlay on the grips. "Not good."


    "What''s nae good?" Mackie asked.


    "See that?" and Vrotch indicated the symbol at the centre of the inlay - a stylised upper-case L surrounded by a wreath sort of affair. "That''s something that''s never good to see, let''s have a better look at this dude," and he had a root around down the front of the dead tutor''s shirt, coming out with a gold ring bearing the same symbol as the inlaid grips, currently serving as a pendant on a necklace chain.


    Vrotch said, "Fuck," to it.


    "What are we looking at?" Nick asked.


    "A Lexbridge Shooting Society signet ring," said Vrotch. "These things only ever get handed out to Fellows of the Lexbridge Shooting Society, read the dogsbodies, yes-men, political tools, and private killers for none other than Beltran Cortez - you''ve heard that name haven''t you man? - and when those dudes get dead it tends to get all sorts of attention. Any idea where Alice is right now? And the same goes for Fiona, I guess."


    "They were both over the Harbourmaster''s last I kent," said Nick.


    "Can I get a lift over, man?" asked Vrotch. "They need to be on the look-out, they''re both young, pretty, female, magic users, and Fiona even comes predisposed to like being told what to do."


    -/-/-/-/-/-

 Chapter 6: Balancing Point.

    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "That Murchison dude''s dead, looks like a psychomancer killed him," said Vrotch, sitting down across the table from Alice - who had been woken up by the bang when the Bigger Van stopped that missile - and Fiona.


    "In that case there''s a psychomancer I owe a good turn," said Fiona; she paused, frowned, and added, "Vrotch, why does a dead sick degenerate have you worried?"


    "Because Nick asked me to have a look at the body and make sure whatever killed the dude isn''t catching, and I noticed he had the Lexbridge seal on the grips of his pistol, so I checked and he died with a Lexbridge signet ring on a necklace," said Vrotch.


    Fiona paused for a long moment, and then said, "No wonder the bastard thought he could do anything and no wonder Kensington called the bastard connected. Fuck, and that makes at least the second Lexbridge Fellow killed in Inverness in a matter of weeks,"


    Vrotch flatly said, "What."


    "I''m not really supposed to talk about it," Fiona told him, lowering her voice, "But after that thing with a pyromancer going bananas in the no-go Grandmother had myself and her other witches, Morag and Mairi, watching one of the coppers who was injured there - a man named John Griffths, who''s got a lot of enemies, and she figured he''d make a good tool since she''s, well, she''s got something to be holding over him that could have him a one-way ticket to Mars like that," and she snapped her fingers. "Anyway a man sneaked in to inject him with something a week ago today, I never saw what it was but he was nae hospital staff or a copper so I dropped the glamour I was wearing and told him nae to do that - he went for a gun, I, well, I smeared him up the wall by direct application of magic and I noticed a guess what on his ring finger after he''d gone splat."


    "Well," said Vrotch. "Fuck."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "So, are you believing what Vrotch was saying?" Mackie asked as the two of them walked out of the pub on their way to actually assess the damage the Bigger Van had taken.


    "Aye, I think so," said Nick with a frown. "It''s making entirely too much sense."


    "Aye and myself''ll be having a wee word with this whatever brought herself here when we''re catching up with it," Mackie muttered, and Nick instantly caught the meaning of ''a wee word'' being ''spoken'' using full-contact sign language; Mikhail Romanov had no sense of humour whatsoever about things that played funny buggers with his friends and appeared not to make an exception for the game of funny buggers being why he''d met that friend in the first place.


    "Aye," he said, and then added "Shite, what a mess," as they walked up to the heavily-damaged Bigger Van.


    From the look of things the missile had struck the Bigger Van''s hottest part: where the exhaust system stuck out from under the loadbed. Both back axles were totally done for, it didn''t have any back wheels that side any more and both half-shafts were mangled that end as were the axles, spall or something had ignited its fuel - they''d been fast enough to get out the pub and put it out that it hadn''t burned out - but on closer examination the entire chassis was twisted and the armour Nick had built that side was just as utterly done. The lining had worked, no fragments had actually got inside the vehicle, which was heartening, but in the end he was going to have to jack the cab, engine bay, and gearbox up and put a new truck chassis underneath then build an entirely new loadbed onto it even if the blast hadn''t flashed up the exhaust and thrashed the engine - it wouldn''t be a surprise if the blowback had cracked the block and/or done terrible things to the heads via the exhaust ports - and this time he was going to see to it that the fuel tank was just as armoured as the cab and loadbed and see about getting the exhaust somewhere anything going for it would hit armour plate.


    "How''s it look?" Mackie asked


    "Look at the way it went straight up the exhaust pipe, we''ll have tae check it didnae flash up there and fuck up the engine, I''m thinking it was some sort of heat-seeker. I''m going to be able to salvage the cab and engine bay, and hopefully the engine and gearbox, but we''ll be running an entire new chassis under it and building an entire new loadbed. Bugger, I really wasnae needing all the extra work, nae with everything else we''ve got on... Gie us a hand, let''s get this bloody thing dragged round the back yard."


    That was when Alice came walking over to them, and said, "I need to learn to use this," patting the Welgun she''d picked up from somewhere during her Orkney trip, which she''d been carrying on a sling since she got back, and that got a surprised grunt out of Mackie.


    "Myself was thinking yourself was no comfortable around guns," he said.


    "I''m not, I didn''t grow up around them the way you lot did, these things are designed for making things dead and they''re really good at it and that makes me all sorts of jumpy, but for one thing my finger is a weapon just as loaded as this thing only it doesn''t reload nearly so fast and to cut a long story short the character I got this off tried to kidnap me on the ferry, I don''t expect him to be the last time someone tries something funny with all this Lexbridge crap and whatnot, and I''m with Annie: I''ve been a helpless victim once, I was a helpless getting blown to bits by a sodding car bomb in the street victim, it was bloody awful and I''m not having with it again, and if that means me carting this thing around and knowing how to use it is a good idea?" and she shrugged.


    Mackie nodded.


    "Aye," he said with a sagely nod and a smile. "Myself will be glad to be helping," and you didn''t need to be a committed Mackieologist to hear that he really would; he had, Nick knew, been wanting to see Alice learning to properly defend herself since before they''d headed for college.


    It was, after all, always the best idea for a good-looking lass to know that.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    For something described as a war it was - at least in Inverness - really a rather sedate affair.


    The cops spent the whole time bunkered down in the blockhouse they called a police station; the protestors made multiple attempts to shoot up said fortified cop-shop, pelting it with everything from petrol bombs to home-made mortars to haggis guns, all to little or no effect. Four assorted bodies - Alice (who spent the whole thing hiding from it in the Harbourmaster''s) never got the story behind any of them - turned up hanged from streetlights over the first couple of days. Several shops - all outlets of businesses based in England - were shot up and looted, and a couple of building were burned. Other than that, the entire affair consisted mostly of driving round in circles, waving banners, and dumping belt after belt of .303 at the cop shop; as for the rumours about the air force the boys had fed, the Bigger Van was the only vehicle hit by a missile during the entire affair.


    You could quickly and visibly see things starting to peter out - the numbers of people involved started to thin by Tuesday, and the last actual shots were fired on the afternoon of Thursday 21st of November; by that evening the handful of hanged bodies had been cut down, police vehicles were back on patrol, and aside from the shot-up and/or looted businesses everyone went back to their lives as if nothing had happened.


    However, that Thursday afternoon unlike the rest of the student body Fiona missed her lecture; Alice found her, looking very worried, waiting for her outside the Harbourmaster''s.


    "Alice, we''re needing a quick word in private," she said. "Can we have it the far side of your portal?"


    "What? Oh, sure," Alice said, and Fiona popped to her feet and hastened through to the cojoined containers.


    "I take it this has something to do with this Lexbridge business," she continues as soon as they were exiting the portal on the unspace side; she made to head for her study but Fiona apparently couldn''t be bothered, instead leaning against the dooframe right there in the portal chamber.


    "Aye, it has," Fiona said. "We''ve been watching a Lexbridge operative fresh in town since two days after Murchison ate it - we''re pretty sure he''s prioritising killing Griffths over finding who killed Murchison and Derwent, that''s the name of the man I splattered, he''s basically just working his way down a list of police safehouses, we''re expecting him to hit the right one tonight so we''ll be waiting at it for him. He''ll probably demand my head - Grandmother has a play planned, I can''t say what but - anyway I want to warn you about the man from Lexbridge, his name''s Nigel Berkeley, skinny bald bastard with a face like he''s permanently smelling a really bad shite, suit and tie, he''s got a blonde woman with him I''m fairly certain is a kineticist mage - that''s the full on mage version of the sort of witch I am - I don''t know her name but they''re really bloody dangerous, be bloody careful and, and warn Vrotch."


    "I will," said Alice with a nod. "Fiona... are you going to be okay?"


    Fiona glanced around, looking a bit nervous, then suddenly fished a pendant out of down her blouse - a small green stone teardrop-shaped thing attached to a plain silver chain; this she took off and handed it to Alice.


    "I don''t know," she said. "I''m, honestly I''m scared, Alice. My hairbrush, it''s sitting on my bedside table - you have been taught to scry, haven''t you? I... I have to go."


    Alice stared after her for a long moment, then decided what that had meant.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Fiona just flat-out asked me to get Vrotch and scry on her, like now," said Alice Liddell, raising the attention of the rest of their friends, who had turned up shortly after Alice got there.


    "Aye, about Fiona, any idea why she just took off out of here like she was- wait, what?" said Nick.


    "Fiona," Alice repeated, "Just flat-out asked me to get Vrotch and scry on her. Now. Immediately. Stop bloody staring at me and come on, you bunch of slack-jawed gummocks," and that got an amused snort out of Mackie, who was already in the course of rising to his feet having, unlike Nick, actually listened the first time.


    "I thought you said you were nae going to spy on your friends," said Nick, alone in remaining seated.


    "Different story when they ask me to," Alice told him; he thought about that and then nodded, and finally got up.


    "Talking of which I think we should be making up a wee kit of wee bottles with bits of our hair in, and figuring out circumstances for Alice to be having a wee scry on us, and I''m thinking one for Vrotch too," said Annie; she nodded to Alice. "We are after all fighting a private sodding war, who knows which of us will be bloody glad the cavalry can have a wee look to see if we''re okay first."


    "Point, aye," said Nick as they arrived at the vehicles - his Albion and Annie''s pickup.


    "We need to get Fiona''s hairbrush, it''s on her bedside table at the digs," Alice said.


    "Okay, how about us two swing up past the digs to grab it, you go get Vrotch, Annie, and meet us back here," said Nick. "And we can grab Silent and Sprocket while we''re about it, just in case we''re really needing the cavalry."


    "Aye - let''s go," said Annie with a nod, and she punctuated that by reaching into her pickup''s engine to persuade it to start.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    When Alice and Nick arrived back at the Harbourmaster''s not twenty minutes later, they found Annie had, accompanied as per request by Vrotch, who was in turn accompanied by Vicky and Jenny Devil, beat them to it - and that Mary already had a bowl set up for Alice to scry using in the form of the one that usually sat on the bar full of salted peanuts.


    "Okay," Vrotch said to Alice with a nod as she and Nick arrived in the back room along with a mob formed of two catgirls, a wolf, and a melanistic jaguar, "Let''s see how well you remember Fat Bloke''s lesson, yeah?"


    Alice nodded, and held up and brandished Fiona''s hairbrush, which she''d shoved in a poly bag.


    "Voila, one hairbrush still with a bunch of distinctively not mine due to being blonde and too long hairs stuck in it because Fiona constantly forgets to clean the bloody thing," she said, dumping it on the table beside the bowl. "And while I''m at it, right before she took off she gave me this," and she dumped the necklace on the table too.


    Vrotch picked it up, peered quizzically at it, and said, "Well it''s definitely enchanted but I don''t- oh. Huh. Well, that''s obviously why she gave you it, actually I''ve seen this sort of enchantment like half a dozen times in fact I''m wearing something exactly the same right now, it''s made to make someone hard to scry."


    Alice said, "Huh."


    "Let''s get scrying," said Vrotch, and Alice nodded and got a hair off the brush.


    Having tucked the hair-filled brush away again she wadded the hair up and carefully plopped it into the bowl of water, took a deep breath, said, "Moment of truth," and pulsed magic into the water focused on and around Fiona''s hair the way Fat Bloke had shown her that time.


    There was a faint popping noise and the surface of the water shimmered, then abruptly became a crystal-clear image of Fiona, walking down a street that Alice recognised as being in Kinmylies on the far side of the Caledonian Canal and not far from Craig Dunain mental hospital, if only due to having cleaned out a vampire nest right on that street the week after they got back from the October break, and Fiona was walking alongside the two other similarly-dressed young women who''d collected her from the Harbourmaster''s that one time along with an unfamiliar white-haired black-clad elderly woman with one of those faces that seem to have a look of contempt permanently etched into them by wrinkles.


    "Well, well, well," said Vrotch. "The hag queen herself."


    "You know them?" Annie asked.


    "In a sense - I don''t know where the redhead and the brunette are from, the redhead''s called Mairi and the brunette''s called Morag, I know that much, and like Fiona they''re witches and you''ve probably already guessed whose witches they are and who Madam Sneersy there is: that''s the one and only Isobel Mackenzie."


    "What is her story anyway?" Alice asked.


    "I don''t know much of it - I don''t know how she came to survive learning magic but I can tell you she was married to the bloke who was the Earl of Seaforth about three and a half centuries ago, self-made immortal and that inevitably means nastiness," said Vrotch.


    "Shut up, something''s happening," said Annie; the old woman had began speaking in Gaelic, clearly giving the three young women orders and pointing around as she did so; Alice caught Fiona''s name right before Fiona surprised her with a totally impossible hundred-foot-long standing jump at the end of which she alighted gently on the topmost point of a telegraph pole.


    "She doesn''t normally sound squeaky like that, scrying distorts voices," said Vrotch.


    It took a moment of fiddling with the focus of magic in the bowl, but Alice got the view looking over Fiona''s shoulder, facing the way the blonde witch was looking, quickly enough to keep up with what was happening - Fiona glanced around, letting them clearly see where each of the other two witches were - likewise standing upon high things, the redhead a streetlight and the brunette another telegraph pole, and then down at the ground where the notorious Isobel Mackenzie was calmly walking down the road, before Fiona started walking along the overhead cable with all the effort one would expect from her strolling down Shore Street.


    Then the whole bowl went dark save for a lit-up spot of street at the centre, right where Fiona was looking, just as a black Bugatti two-seater with tinted windows and headlights that had abruptly gone out along with the streetlights coasted to a halt in the spot of light; it took Alice a moment to realise that every streetlight in the area had save for the one above the car gone out at one go,


    "Plot thickens," said Nick; a bald-headed man in a sharply-creased suit with a suspicious bulge under the armpit (the sight of whom made both Vrotch and Vicky stiffen) got out of the car''s driver''s seat just as something from roundabout where Fiona was made a thrumming noise, and right after that something in the darkness made a sound that made Annie, Nick, and Mackie all go rigid; it was clearly a very large animal grunting, and sounded almost but not quite exactly like, ''Gronk.''


    "Fuuuck me," said Annie.


    The bald man demonstrated what the bulge under his armpit was by removing a large pistol - which Alice was slightly surprised to recognise, it was the type of hand-cannon that was A, called a ''Mars pistol'' and B, had got Nick and Nat thinking about sawing off a Lee-Enfield when it hadn''t made Silent bat an eyelid - and aimed it in the direction the sound had come from, and then as the source of the sound emerged from the darkness he slowly lowered the pistol and said, just loud enough to be heard via scrying, "Interesting."


    It was a bull haggis. Not only that - it was an even bigger bull haggis than the one that had overturned a freight train a couple of miles south down the line from Inverallen the previous August. And, to the very visible horror of Nick, Mackie, and Annie, it had the woman Vrotch called Isobel Mackenzie standing on its head.


    "Put that away before you get yourself hurt, lad," the old woman ordered. "It won''t be doing you any good; you will find that my pet has an urge to trample you to a paste and I am all that is preventing it from so doing."


    "I suppose," said the bald man, "I have completed the first element of my primary mission."


    "Before we continue," said Isobel Mackenzie, "I should bid you welcome to Alba, man from the south. You may call me the Cailliach," and that got a loud disgusted noise out of Vrotch, nearly drowning out the woman continuing, "By what name should we call you?"


    "Cal ack bollocks, you''ve got both eyes and aren''t nearly so scary," Vrotch muttered, getting an odd look from Nick.


    "I," the bald man grandly declared, "Am Nigel Berkeley, Fellow of the Lexbridge Shooting Society. I presume I am speaking to one of the persons responsible for the regular summoning of the beasts known as ''wild haggis'', correct? My colleagues and I have undertaken quite some effort to locate you and your colleagues."


    "And for what," asked Isobel Mackenzie, "Have you been searching for us?"


    "You are aware of the experiences of Lexbridge where concerns the summoning of chickenlizards, and the experiences of the youdoun where concerns the summoning of tyrannosauri, correct?" asked Nigel Berkeley.


    Mackenzie smiled thinly and said, "Ah; you wish to know if our working has run away from us. We learned well from our experiences with the small black bears that now plague an t-Eilean Fada; appearances of the ''haggi'' remain fully under my control and so shall continue to be."


    Nick instantly visibly went from ''simmer'' to ''boil'', and Mackie Romanov''s knuckles began to creak. Annie quietly said, "She''s going to die, and I''m going to be there."


    "And what might your objective in their summoning be?" asked Berkeley.


    "Perhaps we should make this an exchange, rather than yourself constantly taking all that you wish and giving nothing," said Mackenzie. "Why do you seek after the man known as John Griffths?"


    "That," Berkeley snootily declared, "Is an internal affair of the Lexbridge Shooting Society and not a subject I am at liberty to discuss. Regardless, when I ask a question I expect an answer," and he was very visibly very unimpressed when that made Mackenzie burst out laughing.


    "Do you truly believe you are in control here, little man?"


    Berkeley barked, "Maria!" and a very loud (if rendered tinny by the scrying bowl) roar cut the night; a massive hole appeared in the top of Macknzie''s haggis''s head and the animal went down like a puppet with its strings cut - the muzzle flash, coming from the top of streetlight nearest to the animal, clearly lit up a blonde woman who looked almost exactly like Vicky and was holding the absurdly enormous gun it had come from. An ejected shell casing went clanging onto the tarmac below.


    "Frankly?" said Berkeley. Fiona abruptly moved, leaping towards the street where the shell casing had landed, and that thrumming sound happened again as she landed on something well off of the ground.


    "Hand-firing a haggis gun; you have an impressive pet," said Mackenzie with a nod and a grim little smile as she alghted from her collapsing steed; she snapped her fingers and three streetlights, the one Fiona was now standing under included, came back on.


    The other two had the redhead and the brunette standing under them - both standing on the heads of bull haggi, and a slight change of angle of scry revealed that Fiona too was standing on the head of a very alive bull haggis.


    "And would your servant be able to shoot all three before one was to crush you?" Mackenzie asked.


    Berkeley said something in a strange percussive-sounding language and sprang into the air; Mackenzie copied him half a heartbeat behind.


    He straightened his tie while standing on nothing, and said, "Perhaps we should take this to some form of neutral ground."


    "Perhaps," said Mackenzie, "We should."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Neutral ground turned out to mean the cathedral, on the western bank of the River Ness a stone''s throw from Eden Court and currently at the corner where traffic was being diverted around the leading edge of construction of the tramway extension; Alice didn''t see what happened to the trio of haggi, Fiona and the other two girls just ditched the animals and didn''t look back, but the lack of any sounds of rampaging or further gronks told a story of its own.


    The two parlaying groups arrived separately; Nigel Berkeley and his blonde ''pet'', who was clad in an elegant white dress with a low-cut neckline and a very narrow waist indeed and looked even more like Vicky now she was in the light, were waiting when Fiona arrived hot on the heels of Mackenzie; the two from Lexbridge were standing to the left of the altar as one entered the cathedral, and Mackenzie, flanked by Fiona and the brunette and the redhead, took up position to the left of the altar.


    "So," said Mackenzie. "Shall we begin with the matter of Griffths?"


    "Yes, that we most likely should. Griffths is - was - an operative, a catspaw if you like, for Lexbridge however he betrayed us some weeks past, attacking and denying us the actions of a direct member of the White Raven''s family at the commencement of our search for you. As he is also entirely too fond of little girls the White Raven has seen fit to have his less palatable deeds revealed to his erstwhile colleagues, a task that I saw to earlier this evening; as he is a product of one of the sources from which Perfect Warrior was derived he is quite physically potent and must be strategically and specifically damaged before he awakens from the coma he was put into by the White Raven''s descendent."


    "I see," said Mackenzie. "So, you''ve spilt his dirty little secrets to the law, then? In that case I suppose I have no further use for him; I shall wash my hands of him. In return, you and yours shall keep strictly out of affairs north of the line of Loch Ness and the Moray Firth; these lands are mine and I do not believe it will go well for either of us should we fight for them."Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    "That will depend on our disposing of the parties responsible for the deaths of not one, but two, Fellows of this Society," said Berkeley. "A Mr Kevin Murchison, and a Mr Roger Derwent."


    "Indeed?" said Mackenzie with a frown. "I was unaware any of your Fellows had been killed?"


    "Liar liar bum''s on fire," said Alice.


    "Quite," said Berkeley. "Naturally, the White Raven requires their killers'' heads, and has commanded that there be no peace until they are avenged. Mr Murchison appears to have been subjected to a massively powerful fear spell during the recent ''land war'' unpleasantness, and Mr Derwent was slaughtered attempting to administer justice to Griffths at the," and he hadn''t finished saying whatever he''d been going to say before Fiona was running.


    Annie shot upright and stuffed a phone into Vrotch''s hand.


    "Keep filming the scrying bowl on that," she said. "And phone Alice''s phone, talk us onto Fiona," and she turned to her friends. "Come on."


    "No need for that, it''s stable until you touch the surface," said Alice, picking the bowl up and taking the phone from Vrotch - she hastened to follow the others out to the van.


    Vrotch watched them go, then turned to Vicky.


    "So the bastard who killed Reg wants Fiona dead," he said.


    Vicky nodded once. Outside, Nick''s van spluttered into life and pulled away with a great deal of tyre-squealing haste.


    "And so Fiona''s got some very good friends," said Vrotch.


    "Maybe we should think about whether the bitch deserves friends after all," said Vicky, and then she was sprinting out the pub with no impression of having gone through the entire process of standing up on her way from sitting down to splitting it like an Olympic sprinter after Nick''s rusty old van.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "I''m no seeing them," said Nick, peering around as the van rattled past the front of the railway station on Academy Street. "Are you sure we''re going the," and how he''d been going to conclude that would remain unknown for right at that moment Fiona came flying headlong out of the mouth of Queensgate - she touched down on and for a moment seemed to run along the side of the tram that Nick had just overtaken, kicked off and launched herself across to land on a windowsill on the third floor the other side of Academy Street, then very obviously saw the van, for the next thing she did - midway through leaping back onto the tramway''s overhead power cable - was shuck her gunbelt off, bundle it up, and hurl it underarm so it flew through Nick''s open driver''s window and landed in the Albion''s front passenger footwell, so instead he said, "Jesus!" before finishing with a yell of, "Christ!" as one of Fiona''s pursuers - Alice didn''t catch which, but would later hear from Nick, who''d seen it in his wing mirror, that it had been the redhead apparently named Morag - threw a lightning bolt at her, which missed by a mile, instead hitting and setting fire to the building right at the end of Academy Street where it split into Inglis Street and Hamilton Street.


    He then added a cry of, "Fuck!" as Val, who was riding centre seat up the front, flung herself right across his lap, knocking his hands off the van''s steering wheel, on her way to crane herself and one of Keith Thompson''s old Sten guns halfway out Nick''s door''s window and dump the magazine in the direction the lightning bolt had come from, and Alice, who was in the front left seat, looked up from the scrying bowl and at the passenger side wing mirror just in time to see one of Fiona''s two pursuers utterly lose her footing, faceplant in front of the tram Fiona had kicked off of, and vanish under it, and much to her later intense satisfaction she caught it on Annie''s mobile phone camera too.


    "Gerroff!" Nick continued, pulling his arms out of under his sudden unexpected lapful of punk - he grabbed the wheel with one hand and used it to swerve to avoid what would have been a very abrupt meeting with a Morris Marina, which went on to completely lose control and hit the tram, while using the other to pull Val back out of his lap. "You trying to make me crash?"


    "Well I got her didn''t I?" said Val, her usual totally unapologetic self. The other of Fiona''s pursuers made the jump and sprinted off towards Inglis Street where Fiona had just gone, throwing a fireball and setting a bank on the far side of the High Street on fire as she went. "Put your bloody foot down, the other one''s still going,"


    Nick did so, even while continuing to complain, "Don''t bloody jump on my arms when I''m driving you absolute numpty - where''s Fiona going now Alice?"


    "Straight up Eastgate towards Millburn Road, still on the tramway overhead," Alice said, returning her attention and that of Annie''s phone''s camera to the scrying bowl, and Nick nodded and hung a hard left at the end of Inglis Street, the van fishtailing wildly as he swerved between a Reliant Robin van (which promptly turned on its side) and a Commer minibus going in the other direction.


    He hit the horn, and held it down.


    "We oughtta get a siren on the Bigger Van when we fix it," he shouted, really having to yell to be heard over the bellow of the engine, the horn, and the wind blasting in the open windows, which only got worse when Mackie hauled the side door open and hung himself half out of it with his hands full of the Vickers gun he''d grabbed out of the loadbed of Annie''s pickup on the way out the pub and Sprocket holding onto his webbing with one hand and the back of Nick''s seat with the other. "Jesus, will you wankers just get out the way, can you no see we''re having a chase here!" and he took another violent swerve, taking the Albion off the road where the tramlines diverged past the old railway locomotive shed the tramway used as a car barn and the ride quality became twice as bad as it started running on sleepers.


    Mackie shouted "Gotcha!" and the machine gun roared into life, one long raking burst - Alice saw the girl who''d been chasing Fiona and hurling fireballs at her faceplant the trackbed right in front of them right before there was a jolt as the Albion went straight over her; Nick let out a yell of delight then hauled the wheel across again, sending the van careening down the embankment and onto the east end of Harbour Road right where it was about to run underneath the railway line leading towards Aberdeen; a moment later Mackie was passing the now-steaming machine gun back to Annie.


    "Kettle''s on," he said. "Woo! Bloody hell, I hope Fiona''s okay."


    "Same but we''d better be offski, that wasnae quiet," said Nick, hanging a right onto the Millburn Road to head back into town.


    "Better nae turn up towards Raigmore, the fuzz''ll be down any moment," said Mackie.


    "I''m going to turn onto Victoria Road, they''ll be headed straight for the town centre," Nick told him, and put action to words, hurling the Albion into a side-road that headed steeply uphill and round a corner in between two lines of trees - they were just getting far enough round that the railway yards were going out of sight when something with blue lights shot past back there, on the Millburn Road, and Nick added a pleased, "Bye!"


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    The drive back down to the Harbourmaster''s was a much more sedate affair, as it seemed was the rest of Fiona''s journey; she had seen Nick run the apparently-named Mairi down and immediately got off of the tramway overhead cable and stopped running, instead walking along the side of the A9 until the junction with Sir Walter Scott Drive where she headed back into town, but to the increasing bafflement of everyone in the van she proceeded to make a direct beeline for the police headquarters, where she walked inside and greeted the desk sergeant with a calm, "Evening. I understand you''ll be looking into the death of a man named Roger Derwent, who turned up splattered up the side of a hospital ward containing a copper by the name of John Griffths who I understand you''ve just discovered has been a very naughty boy. I killed Derwent - maybe you''d better be arresting me."


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    It seemed that Fiona''s comment had contained enough to get her taken seriously by the cops - there was a certain level of detail it takes, Alice knew, to get the cops to take a random turning up and claiming involvement in a case seriously and somewhere between the ''splattered up the side of a hospital ward'', the names involved, and/or the comment about Griffths being ''a very naughty boy'' Fiona had succeeded in making that mark; by the time they were back in the Harbourmaster''s back room she was in an interview room, sitting at a table, handcuffed with the cuffs fed through a little metal loop in the table-top - and whatever the cops were doing, it left the group on the far end of the scrying time to assemble themselves for a fully-blown council of war (from which Vrotch, Jenny and Vicky were absent by dint of having left right after the others did) by the time a series of serious-faced cops came trooping into Fiona''s interview room and seated themselves at the table opposite the completely calm-faced blonde witch.


    "Is that everyone here now?" Fiona asked.


    "It is indeed," said one of the cops, a rather distinguished-looking balding fellow with grey hair and spectacles and something oddly familiar about his face despite the fact Alice was quite certain she''d never seen him before, whose Public School Boy English sounded even more ridiculous via the reediness scrying seemed to impart on noises.


    Fiona nodded and said, "Good," and she paused for a moment then carried on, "My name is Fiona Macleod and I am what many would be referring to as a witch," and she snapped her fingers, causing a flash of fire to appear above her hand. "I am ¨C was ¨C a part of what you would be calling a coven from an t-Eilean Fada, we meet up the back of Ste¨°rnabhagh at a place I can show to you if you wish. Back in October, Grandmother ¨C the leader of the coven, I have never learned her actual name,"


    "Your nose grew when you said that," said Nick, not that she heard it.


    "Was sending me to make sure no harm befell John Griffths," and unlike earlier this time someone in the Harbourmaster''s back room, namely Alice, noticed the way Silent flinched at that name, "As she felt we would be using him as a pawn, and in so doing I killed a man who approached him when neither a police officer nor a hospital worker as he drew a gun when I warned him not to inject his syringe into the Griffths lad."


    The distinguished-looking cop with the grey hair and spectacles frowned, and said, "Apropos of nothing, the usual penalty for murder is to be hanged by the neck until dead."


    A grim little smile appeared on Fiona''s face; she nodded. "Aye, and that would be a better way to go that the alternative that I find before me; I have no desire at all to find out what it is like inside a wicker man."


    Nick started muttering about having ''a word'' with this Isobel bloody Mackenzie when he caught up with her. One of the cops - a serious-looking man clad in a greatcoat, who on closer inspection looked both even more oddly familiar from somewhere and remarkably like the balding cop - frowned, making his face even more familiar though Alice really couldn''t put her finger on where from, and said, "Why exactly do you have that to fear?"


    "It transpires that the man I killed was a Fellow of the Lexbridge Shooting Society, powerful warlocks from the south; they are perhaps the most dangerous ¨C not to mention influential ¨C group of men in the British Empire, as we learned when one of their operatives - a man called Nigel Berkeley, and I can see that the name means something to yourself - had a wee bit of a stand-off with us earlier tonight. Under the same basis that make Lexbridge the most dangerous men in the British Empire I would call Grandmother and her lackies the most dangerous women in the British Empire. If the two groups were to fight, it is anyone''s guess who would come off worse; they could really hurt each other, it is a war nobody with sense on either side would want, and what I did in that hospital room came very close to starting that war."


    The cop in the greatcoat said, "I see."


    "The last time Grandmother decided that a member of the coven, my aunt Eithrig, was to die, a wicker man was made," said Fiona.


    "That was another lie," said Annie, "She''s got a tell, her left eye twitches a bit when she lies." and this Alice, remembering the way Fiona''s eye had twitched when she was talking about MIIiIiiiiIster Murchison on a certain day of infamy, found very interesting in a very confusing and unsettling sort of a way.


    "Why did you kill the man?" the distinguished-looking cop with the grey hair and spectacles asked.


    "A working fit to stop bullets is entirely possible, I myself have done it before, however it takes several minutes to perform and I had not cast one before taking up guard over Griffths. The man from Lexbridge had drawn a gun and was bringing it to bear on me."


    "Is there any particular reason you didn''t attempt to restrain or disarm the man?" the cop in the greatcoat asked.


    "I didnae feel there was time, he wasnae slow on the draw," Fiona said.


    "That," said the distinguished-looking cop with the grey hair and Eton accent, "Is a moot point; we identified the contents of that syringe two days ago. Four drachms of sulphur mustard, the killing was a clear-cut case of self-defence and the defence of others; the law does not differentiate according to what weapon was used by whom in such situations," and Fiona had spent that entire statement with a deepening frown on her face.


    "If I''m released from police custody, I''ll be burned to death within a couple of days," she said.


    "Will you fuck," Nick and Alice chorused, not that she could hear them, despite the fact that both had noted her eye twitch again.


    "We shall see what we can do," the distinguished-looking cop with the grey hair said, rising to his feet, and this served as a cue for the rest of the cops to exit the room and for Nick to turn to Annie.


    "So who was who there?" he asked.


    "That," said Annie, "Was the chief of the Highland Constabulary, I don''t know his name offhand. The bloke in the long coat I''ve only met a handful of times, his name''s Stoker, Malcolm I think it is, he''s one of their top detectives - the woman who was standing beside him is his partner, I only know her as Jones. The other two are regular beat cops, Hiller and Booker, they were probably there to look big and intimidating since they''re good at it."


    "What do yourselves reckon about what Fiona was saying?" Mackie asked.


    "I reckon we need to get Fiona the hell away from this ''Grandmother'' person," said Alice.


    "Isobel Mackenzie," said Nick.


    "What do you think about how Fiona wasn''t telling that name to the pigs?" asked Val


    "Not a clue but I do ken I don''t like it," said Nick.


    "Myself am starting to think she''s why Fiona was nae splattering that bastard with the wee twat moustache up a wall," said Mackie with a grim nod. "Oh, myself''ll be having a bloody word with that woman when myself am catching her."


    Nick nodded, and said, "Aye," and with that they lapsed into a brief thoughtful silence which Mackie chose to break.


    "Hey Annie, yourself think this Stoker lad might be related to that Trish Stoker lassie who''s on yourself''s course?"


    Annie frowned.


    "Could be," she said. "Trish hasn''t said anything about her dad being a cop but that mainly proves she''s no daft, and thinking about it their eyes are a similar enough shape it could be a familial resemblance, I don''t know."


    "Aye but you could be saying the same about the chief there, hell, it''s almost looking to myself that himself might be related to this Stoker lad," Mackie pointed out.


    "I couldn''t help but notice," said Alice, "That somebody flinched the very moment Fiona said ''John Griffths''," and she pointed at Silent, who was still paying close attention.


    Nick went and sat down beside her - she was sitting on a spare pub bench and looking quickly from one to another of them.


    "You know this Griffths bloke, don''t you," he said, and got a rapid nod, and her expression had clued the others in before he had time to continue, "And not for anything good, either. I''m betting he was involved in attacking you, wasn''t he."


    She nodded again.


    "Did the bastard do all this to you?" Nick asked, running a finger down her scar, and got another nod and she opened her mouth and pointed at the stub of her tongue too. "Good thing he''s nae got Fiona keeping an eye on him any more then, I''m going to find the bastard and make sure he swings on a fucking rope the very next time there''s a land war."


    "Any idea how to switch this thing off?" Val asked, pointing at the bowl, in which Fiona was still visible sitting at the table with the vague manner of someone waiting for a bus. "Think we''ve seen enough for tonight."


    "Oh, that''s easy," Alice said, and touched the surface of the water with her hand, disrupting the pool of magic; the image dissipated with a plop, and she took a moment to fish the floating blob of hair out. "Done."


    They sat round in silence for a bit, save for Nick muttering darkly and stroking the top of Silent''s head, before Annie eventually asked, "So what''ll we be doing with Fiona''s stuff? What''ll we be doing if the cops chuck her out?"


    "I''m thinking we keep a sharp eye on her using that," and Val pointed firmly at the bowl, "And when the pigs kick her out we grab her and get her through one of Alice''s wee portals, fast."


    "Good plan," said Annie with a nod. "What about her stuff?"


    "We can get it stowed at the Harbourmaster''s in the morning," said Nick. "Talking of the morrow I''m wanting a word with Vrotch about what we were just learning about haggi - but nae tonight, I''m about bushed."


    However, the following morning came with unexpected news of its own.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    "Great," said Mackie Romanov, who was sitting in the left front seat of the Albion. "Kicked out of the digs for having ''illegal immigrants'' in our rooms."


    "Sorry," said Nick, who was sitting in the Albion''s driver''s seat. Alice, in the centre seat, refrained from comment, as did the quartet - wolf, panther, Silent, and Sprocket - jammed in the back in between the mass of all their stuff and all Fiona''s stuff too; it was just forty-eight minutes and one mad scramble since they''d been bluntly informed that they had one (1) hour to get themselves and their belongings out of the digs before the police would be called to arrest the lot of them


    "It''s just the, you ken, specificness that''s doing myself''s head in. Pets are okay, but no if they''re either quote, ''illegal immigrants'', unquote, large exotic predators, or sheep. What in the fuck?"


    "Sorry."


    "And what''s making them so convinced catgirls are illegal immigrants God knows, for Christ sakes Sprocket''s sounding like she''s from Arbroath."


    "They probably didn''t know what else to call us," said Sprocket.


    "See? That''s an Arbroath accent if ever myself''s been hearing one."


    "The part that really unsettles me," Alice said, "Is that they defined illegal immigrants as ''pets''."


    "Come to think of it, aye, that is really fucked up. So... where''s ourselves going to, well, live?"


    "I know where there''s a house naebody''s using," said Nick.


    "Oh aye?" said Mackie "Where?"


    "Ruilick up the back of Muir of Ord," said Nick.


    "This is smelling of bad plan, myself can be smelling bad plan from a mile away," Mackie muttered.


    "Shut up you big fanny," said Nick with a snort, "Where the hell else are we going to go? Camp behind the Harbourmaster''s? Above the bloody Harbourmaster''s? Fuck that, sleep is nae a luxury. Take up permanent residence in Alice''s wee airship placie? Aye right, how long''d it take for someone to figure out we were proper vanishing every night? Crash over with Vrotch? Tempting but with all that really nice pot he has I''d never be getting a bloody thing done."


    "How about," Alice said with a sigh, "You both stop yakking and we get mobile?"


    Nick said, "You heard the lady," and threw the van into gear.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Ruilick Hall was quiet and still and the doors they''d left open were still standing open, complete with the hole and the strainer fence post Mackie had used to make it still laying right where he''d dumped it; even still they entered with caution, but half an hour later and they''d concluded there hadn''t been any real need for it, the place was deserted.


    That made the next things on the agenda obvious enough; move in and mend the doors, and once they''d got their stuff unloaded from the van and trailer (catgirls included) Nick took off to hit the scrappers in search of materials as he intended to make sure nobody else would be battering through what was now, he declared, their bloody front door with a bloody fence post; two loads of large amounts of rusted ironmongery later he showed up in the company of a man driving a low-loader with the thrashed Bigger Van on the back of it, and he made another two trips to bring back a certain pair of old bulldozers along with the parts they''d got together to turn into a remote-piloted lighter-than-air sensor platform, which Nick was insistently calling a ''miniature Zeppelin'' or ''mini-Zep'' for short.


    With the move out the way they headed back into town for the scheduled meet-up at the Harbourmaster''s to discuss how to proceed, which Alice mostly sat out in favour of keeping banging her head on the portal problem, with which she''d got no further; the eventual decision of the meeting on the other hand was one she agreed with, the others had concluded that they''d better leave off hunting vampires until they had the Bigger Van fixed, so they grabbed some stuff they didn''t want left at the Harbourmaster''s and piled back into the Albion and split it back to Ruilick while the others headed back to the digs.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Arriving at the college in the Albion on Monday post a weekend spent getting themselves properly situated they were met by a worried-looking Andy, who''d been waiting for them - and the first thing out of his mouth was, "You ought to stop using this van for a while Nick, there was one just like it blown up by a bomb buried in the road on Shore Street this morning and Mum got a vampire with what looked very like a remote detonator on one of the new cameras setting the bloody thing off."


    "Shit!" said Nick, who had just exited the van with the wolf and the panther, whose names had over the previous week became simply ''Wolf'' and ''Panther'' respectively, on leads. "Jesus, aye, good thing I''ve got my new bike running, bloody hell," and as the gang of them went trooping into the college Alice couldn''t keep the slight smile off of her face as she noticed the reactions their fellow students were having to what was walking down the hall.


    Nick was distracted from muttering about there being a different van at Ruilick that didn''t look to be in too bad shape by a sudden cry in Keiko''s distinctive Buckie accent, which Alice mused to herself she wouldn''t have been able to make out a word of just a couple of months prior, of "What the bloody hell,"


    "Morning Nick," Annie said with a sigh, brushing past her. "What''s with rubbing everyone''s noses in what you''ve got in the way of pets?"


    "Well since they were seeing fit to kick us out of the digs because of Wolf and Panther and Silent despite there being nothing in the rules or the laws against me having them I figured what the fuck," Nick said with a shrug.


    "Isn''t that, um, a bit dangerous?" a random punker boy ¨C Alice was pretty sure his name was Bruce, that he was studying geology, and he was definitely a close friend of Keiko''s ¨C asked.


    "Nah, not even slightly," Nick told him.


    "But that''s, well, basically that''s a wolf, not a wolf-looking dog, an actual proper wolf, and that''s definitely a black panther,"


    "The term that you''re looking for is ''melanistic jaguar'', you numpty, and anyway I''m bigger than my girls and I''m hairier than my girls and I''m scarier than my girls so that makes me the boss."


    "Kinky fucker," said Val. "Good thing Fiona wasn''t here to hear that, her knickers would be fit to stick to the wall," and Nick blithely ignored her.


    "Anyway," Alice said. "Leaving the Albion at home and using your bike is going to leave me in urgent need of a lift, the Bigger Van isn''t in anything remotely approximating a driveable condition, we''re not in walking distance of the college any more, we''re not in reasonable, not Sutherland farmboy reasonable, actual reasonable, walking distance of public transport either, and I am not getting on the back of either of those piles of decomposing scrap iron you two call motorbikes, ever, Annie''s ute is enough like riding across a sheet of corrugated iron as it is and my arse isn''t cybernetic enough to not get a bruised tailbone."


    "Pick any of the cars that''re parked up at the house and I''ll be getting it running nicely for you no bother," said Nick with a shrug. "That''s a driving license you''ve got in your handbag too, we can even faff about getting it re-registered if you can be arsed."


    "Okay," Alice said. "I''ll take you up on that."


    And that was why, eight hours later and well after dark, she took a walk round the Ruilick Hall courtyard going from one car to another, seeing which ones would start and which she might consider being so much as seen dead at the wheel of - and it wasn''t until she had a look at the hulking dark grey shape lurking behind a pair of rusty old agricultural tractors that she actually found something she liked.


    The car was very dirty and had clearly been sitting there for a while, but oh what a car it was - it was longer than Nick''s Albion van with over half its length being made up out of engine bay, the whole thing looked 1950s with curvaceous wings, swooping bodyshell, white-wall tyres, a wood-and leather interior, chrome everywhere, tailfins, and the word SUNBEAM in chrome letters across the bonnet above the snarling bared-teeth grin of the radiator grille: in all it looked just as massively pissed off at the entire world as Alice not infrequently found herself feeling.


    She tried the door, and it opened much more easily than she''d expected - the keys were in the ignition, and she gave it a try.


    The engine hidden under that vast expanse of bonnet cranked a couple of times, coughed twice, then let off a thunderous backfire and just came to life, and oh what a sound it made; it snarled, rising to a flat-out roar when she stuck a leg in and pressed the throttle; it coughed halfway through but kept revving, and when she let off it emitted another thunderclap from the exhaust.


    Nick and Mackie appeared from between the tractors, and skidded to a halt; Alice grinned at them, and gave whatever big old engine was lurking in there another coughing, backfiring, gun.


    "I," she said, "Want this one."


    Nick spent a moment walking around the old car, peering underneath it and occasionally frowning or grunting or tapping at the panelling with a knuckle, then he nodded.


    "She''s nae in bad shape either," he said. "Lucky it''s dry in here - these old Sunbeams rust to hell and gone if they''re anywhere wet and you havenae done a wee bit of work on them - she''ll need a bit of welding up under the boot and the doorsills but her frame''s looking okay and her body and engine mounts are in good shape. Switch her off, I''ll get those old shitheaps," and he indicated a whole line of Morris Marinas at which the Sunbeam appeared to be baring its teeth, "Pulled out the way and we''ll see if this old lady feels like turning her wheels."


    "Looking like our Alice is having a funny sense for cars as well as for ancient ruins," said Mackie with a chuckle. "What a brute, that thing must be about forty years old, Sunbeam havnae been building them like this since before the Anglo-American split."


    "Aye but these turn into bloody good cars soon as you do something about the rusting, lick of anti-fouling paint up underneath and drill drain holes in the right places and they''ll last just about for bloody ever," said Nick. "Uncle John has two of them, he gied me a shot of one while we were down there last March, they''re absolute rocketships - these were the first post-war British rich man''s cars that you didnae hire someone to drive for you," and he nodded to Alice. "Want me to retrofit her with power steering while I''m at it? It''s easy enough to graft on a Leyland van front axle, the mounts are almost close enough to make it a drop-fit."


    "Please," Alice said with a nod.


    It wasn''t all that simple, of course; getting what amounts to a barn find rolling never is, even if someone has taken enough care of it that the engine is still running and it hasn''t rusted to hell and gone, but it very visibly hadn''t moved in years; there was muck almost up to the bellypan, all four tyres were flat and had perished, and the fuel was pretty stale - the engine ran much, much better once they''d drained it off and put new petrol and a new set of spark plugs in, though it didn''t lose it''s feral note, it just stopped pausing to cough and/or backfire every time you looked at it twice.


    This, Nick explained, was what happened when a very wealthy gentleman with something of a taste for fast cars took a long hard look at what the British automotive industry were producing in the mid-1950s and decided that they were all a little too polite.


    Nick took off for town in a blue Commer van that wasn''t in too much of a state to pick up some parts with which to actually get the old Sunbeam to turn a wheel for what had to be the first time in years, and all in all they were not even momentarily prepared for the bad news that arrived at first light in the morning.


    -/-/-/-/-/-


    Unbeknown to any of the students, one of the cars that had been trundling past the college when Annie Kelly turned out to head for the digs had not, in fact, been full of commuters; instead it had, the end of the college day being something that happens after dark in that part of the world in November, been piloted by a walking corpse.


    The vampire had due to his orders - they thought they already had the white Albion and didn''t realise they''d missed it until he reported back - followed the other vehicle members of the gang he was a member of had identified as belonging to the people who''d given his kind so much grief in the northeast; Annie Kelly''s wreck of a Holden.


    He''d followed it all the way up to the college digs keeping three or four cars back, and had cruised past slowly enough to confirm someone with the same distinctive hairdo - a short green Mohawk - as one of the vampire hunters, exiting the vehicle - and that was why at about two in the morning four assorted midsize vans full of vampires skidded to a halt out the front of the college digs, the occupants hauled out a wild assortment of any and every fully-automatic weapon they''d been able to find on short notice, and they started hosing the front of the building down with gunfire.


    The students were, however, armed to the teeth and still pumped up from the recent land war: the first return fire came from the upper floor not ten seconds after the vampire gang opened up, and while it was sporadic for nearly a minute, by the end of that minute the population of the digs - over a thousand students were in residence and the lightest-armed of the whole lot, Lucinda, had a rimfire Sten gun and several hundred rounds of ammunition in her room - were very enthusiastically if not all that accurately returning an enormous volume of fire.


    The gun battle lasted a total of seven minutes and twelve seconds during which eight vampires were mudded by the sheer quantity of lead going the other way and fifty-seven students on the ground floor died, and two dozen heavily-armed students prominently including Annie Kelly and Val Adamson took off to follow the vampires when they bugged out - only when they found what they were looking for all two dozen immediately realised that they couldn''t take it, not tonight - and that was why Annie and Val turned up at Ruilick at first light looking shook up and pissed off with a heavily-laden pickup and trailer.


    -/-/-/-/-/-