Doctor Who_ Cats Cradle_ Witch Mark - Andrew Hunt [19]
Suddenly Ace came upon a track through the woods. It was wide enough for a car and was well trodden by a great many fresh footprints. Ace decided to follow the track away from the house she had seen, as this seemed to offer the least chance of detection. As she progressed the trees around her grew less dense and she began to notice piles of rubble lying half covered by weeds and grass. They were irregularly shaped, but Ace could pick out enough of a pattern to see that they corresponded to where buildings had once been. She wandered amongst them and found a well, seemingly intact. She was unable to resist dropping a stone in and was pleased to hear a satisfying splash when it hit the invisible water.
She returned to the path and carried on along it. It came to an end at a wide clearing. The trees which bordered the clearing stood a few feet beyond the boundaries of a circle of standing tones. Apart from two large stones on opposite sides of the circle, they were low lying and several of them were on their sides.
Ace was about to walk out into the centre of the circle when she heard a sound behind her - a metallic snap. She whirled around and found herself confronted by a tall, gaunt man wearing threadbare clothes and pointing a gun at her. She guessed by the way he held it that he would have no compunction against using it.
'What the bleedin' hell are you doing here?’ he asked her. The gun was aimed unwaveringly at her chest.
'Don't point that thing at me,' Ace told him.
'I'll point it where I bloody like.' His hands tightened their grip on the gun.
'You can't shoot me, you know.' Ace didn't have much respect for justice in Britain but in this case she sought its shelter. 'It's against the law.'
But then, without taking his eyes off her, he squeezed the trigger all the way.
2:
Strange Beasts
A brief flick of his eyes to one side was all the acknowledgement Old Davy gave to the coach which drew to a rapid halt in front of the mock-Tudor facade of the Black Swan. Every day it passed through the village, but it had never paused in its journey before. Like everything else, this was hardly unusual enough for Davy to divert his attention towards it.
Almost as soon as it had stopped it began to move again, revealing two teenagers standing by a pile of rucksacks and sleeping bags. One of them, tall and dark-haired, threw an empty can at the rear windscreen of the coach, missing by several yards.
'Hey, I hope your engine explodes,' he shouted belligerently at the accelerating coach.
'Cool it, David,' the other laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. He was shorter than David and wore a blue, padded raincoat.
'No I won't cool it, Jack,' David brushed him off. 'You jerk,’ he called to the absent driver, 'I hope you get tyre rot!'
‘Don't be stupid, there's no such thing,' his friend told him.
‘ No? Well there oughta be. Jeez, I hate this country.' He looked around himself. Three roads led out of the village. At the centre of the junction a small patch of grass sprouted a spreading oak tree whose leaves brushed against the black and white walls of the pub on one side, the red and yellow sign of a post office on another side and overhung a rainbow-filled garden on the third side. David put out his hand to feel the rain and looked up at the drab sky. 'It's so sunny all the time,' he said sourly. I bet they've never even heard of a malignant melanoma.'
Jack ignored his friend. After all, it had been David's idea to go for a quick wander around Wales before spending the rest of their vacation at home in America. He hefted his rucksack on to his back, the sleeping bag dangling by two short pieces of fraying string. 'Come on, we'd better get going.'
Where the heck are we, anyway?' David asked, shouldering his pack, 'Stupid driver, dumping us in the middle of nowhere.'
‘Well, we're somewhere between Oswestry and Portmeirion. Why