She got to her feet and started towards his din. Her eyes were not yet accustomed to the gloom after the brightness of the blizzard, and the further from the edge of the forest she ventured, the darker it became, but the rage in Whitney's voice spurred her on, careless of what lay in her path. The trumpets had fallen silent. Perhaps the angels had heard his rants, she thought, and would not float their harmonies on tainted air, or perhaps they were simply watching to see what human rage was like.

"You knew!" Whitney was yelling. "You brought us into Hell!" Maeve could see him now, moving between the trees, calling after his quarry into the shadows.

"O'Connell? O'Connell! You'll burn in a lake of fire for this. Burn and burn and-"

He stopped; swung round, his eyes finding Maeve with terrible speed. Before she could retreat, he yelled: "I see you! Come out, you little bitch!"

Maeve had no choice. He had her in the sights of his rifle. And now, as she approached him between the trees, she saw that he was not alone. Sheldon Sturgis and Pottruck were just a few yards from him. Sturgis was crouched against a tree, terrified of something in the branches above him, where his rifle was pointed. Pottruck was watching Whitney's antics with a bemused expression on his oafish face.

"O'Connell?" Whitney yelled. "I got your little girl here." He adjusted his aim, squinting for accuracy. "I got her right between the eyes if I pull the trigger. An' I'm going to do it. Hear me, O'Connell?"

"Don't shoot," Sturgis said. "You'll bring it back."

"It'll come anyway," Whitney said. "O'Connell sent it to fetch our souls."

"Oh Jesus Christ in Heaven-" Sturgis sobbed. "Stand right there," Whitney said to Maeve. "And you call to your Daddy and you tell him to keep his demon away from us or I'll kill you."

"He hasn't-hasn't got any demons," Maeve said. She didn't want Whitney to know that she was afraid, but she couldn't help herself. Tears came anyway.

"You just tell him," Whitney said, "you just call." He pushed the rifle in Maeve's direction, so that it was a foot from her face. "If you don't I'll kill you. You're the Devil's child's what you are. Ain't no crime killing muck like you. Go on. Call him."

"Papa?"

"Louder!"

"Papa?"

There was no reply from the shadows. "He doesn't hear me.

"I hear you, child," said her father. She looked towards his voice and there he was, coming towards her out of the murk.

"Drop your rifle!" Pottruck yelled to him. Even as he did, the trumpets began again, louder than ever. The music clutched at Maeve's heart with such force she started to gasp for breath.

"What's wrong?" she heard her father say, and glanced back in his direction to see him start towards her.

"Stay where you are!" Whitney yelled, but her father kept running. There was no second warning. Whitney simply fired, not once but twice. One bullet struck him in the shoulder, the other in the stomach. He stumbled on towards her, but before he could take two strides, his legs gave out beneath him, and he fell down.

"Papa!" she yelled, and would have gone to him, but then the trumpets began another volley, and as their music rose up in her, bursts of white light blotted out the world, and she dropped to the ground in a swoon.

"I hear it coming-"

"Shut up, Sturgis."

"It is! It's coming again. Whitney! What do we do?"

Sturgis's shrill shouts pricked Maeve awake. She opened her eyes to see her father lying where he had fallen. He was still moving, she saw, his hands clutching rhythmically at his belly, his legs twitching.

"Whitney!" Sturgis was screaming. "It's coming back."

She could not see him from where she lay, but she could hear the thrashing of the branches, as though the wind had suddenly risen.

Whitney was praying.

"Our Lord, who art in Heaven-,, Maeve moved her head a little, in the hope of glimpsing the trio without drawing attention to herself. Whitney was on his knees, Sturgis was cowering against the tree, and Pottruck was staring up into the canopy waving wildly: "Come on, you fucking shit! Come on!"

Certain she was forgotten, Maeve got to her feet cautiously, reaching out to grab hold of the nearest tree trunk for support. She looked back to her father, who had raised his head a couple of inches off the ground and was staring at Pottruck as he fired up into the thrashing branches.

Sturgis yelled, "Christ, no!," Whitney started to rise from his kneel, and in that same moment, a form that Maeve's bewildered eyes could not quite distinguish from the branches-it had their sweep and their darkness swooped upon Pottruck.

Whatever it was, it was no angel. There were no feathers here. There was no gold or scarlet or blue. The beast was naked, of that she was reasonably certain, and its flesh gleamed. That was all she had time to grasp before it picked Pottruck up and carried him off, up into the canopy.

He screamed and screamed, and Maeve, though she hated the man with a passion, wished he might be saved from his torment, if only to stop his din. She covered her ears but his cries found their way between her fingers, mounting in volume as a terrible rain fell from the branches. First came the rifle, then blood, pattering down. Then one of Pottruck's arms, followed by a piece of flesh she could not distinguish; and another. And still he screamed, though the patter of the blood had become a downpour, and the snaking part of his innards dropped from the tree in a glistening loop.

Suddenly, Sturgis was rising from his hiding place, and began to fire into the tree. Perhaps he put Pottruck from his misery, perhaps the beast simply took out the man's throat. Whichever, the terrible sound ceased, and a moment later Pottruck's body, so mangled it looked barely human, fell from the branches and lay steaming on the ground.

The canopy stilled. Sturgis backed away into the shadows, stifling his sobs. Maeve froze, praying that Whitney would go with him. But he did not. Instead he started towards her father.

"See what you did, calling the Evil One?" he said.

"I-didn't-call anybody," Han-non gasped.

"You tell it to go back to the pit, O'Connell. You tell it!"

Maeve looked back in Sturgis's direction. The man had fled. But her gaze fell on Pottruck's rifle, which lay beneath the dripping branches a yard from his corpse.

"You repent," Whitney was saying to Harmon. "You send that devil back where it came from, or I'm going to blow off your hands, then your pecker, till you're begging to repent."

With Sturgis gone and Whitney's back turned, Maeve didn't need much caution. Eyes cast up towards the branches, where she was certain the beasts still squatted, she started towards the rifle. She could see no sign of the creature-the mesh of branches was too thick-but she could feel its gaze on her.

"Please... " she whispered to it, the syllables too soft to attract Whitney's attention, "don't hurt... me."

The squatter made no move. Not a twig shook; not a needle fell.

She glanced down at the ground. Pottruck's body lay sprawled in front of her, a nonsense now. She'd seen corpses before. Dead in Irish ditches, dead in Liverpool gutters, dead along the trail to the promised land. This one was bloodier than most, but it didn't move her. She stepped over it and stooped to pick up the rifle.

As she did so she heard the thing above her expel a sighing breath. She froze, heart thumping, waiting for the claws to come and pluck her up. But no. Just another sigh, almost sorrowful. She knew it wasn't wise to linger here a moment longer than she needed, but she couldn't keep her curiosity in check. She rose with the rifle, and looked back up into the knot of branches. As she did so a drop of blood hit her cheek, and a second fell between her parted lips. It was not Pottruck's blood, she knew that the moment it hit her tongue. The drop was not salty, but sweet, like honey, and though she knew it was coming from the beast