"Do you have another idea?" I asked Blackbird.

"Maybe I could use the knife, burn it out," she said. "And burn the building down with it? With all these books and paper? The fire would almost certainly spread and if you miss a speck, just a tiny mote, then it's all for nothing. At least my way we get all of it in one go. "

"It's her, Niall. She's going to feel it as if she were here. And you can't reach all of her, only the parts she left behind. She'll know you were here and she will hate you with a vengeance."

"You forget, I was in that glade with her. I stood there helpless, with my teeth chattering, while she helped herself. She thought she was being clever, leaving traces of herself, but now the tables are turned. So she'll know it was me? Good, I want her to."

Claire interrupted us. "Will you two stop talking in riddles? What's going on?"

"We need to be outside," Blackbird told her, guiding her by the shoulder out into the corridor.

"What's he going to do?" She looked back, trying to figure out what was about to happen.

"You have to trust us. I don't know what you've been told or what's in those journals of yours, but you have to trust us."

"What's the matter? What's he doing in there?"

Blackbird pulled the double doors closed behind her leaving me alone in the infected room. Even through the door I could hear Claire's persistent questions and Blackbird's rea.s.surances. I let it fade into the background.

When I fought Fenlock, I had used my talent unconsciously. Panic and instinct had brought it on and given me the break I needed, but then I had used it. It had sung its hungry song in my veins and I had listened and been seduced by it, consuming Fenlock utterly until only dust remained. I had felt sick afterwards, repulsed by what I had done and felt sure I would never use it like that again.

Now, though, I had a different reason. Now I had a chance to strike back, to make my presence felt and show my hunters I had teeth.

I closed my eyes and reached inward. The temperature dropped and all the little noises that acc.u.mulate unnoticed into the background died, leaving a potent hush. I opened my eyes and found the room swimming in moonlight. The dappled light rippled over the debris, making it insubstantial and bringing a faint sense of vertigo.

A noise filtering through the door distracted me for a moment. It was Claire. She was insisting there was something wrong, that the lights were behaving like they did with the strange phone calls. I heard her telling Blackbird they had returned and that I would need her help.

The door handle rattled behind me. I heard Blackbird's voice.

"He's fine, Claire. Come away from the door. "

"It's them, I tell you. They've returned. "

"No. It's Niall. He's doing this."

"Niall? How is Niall doing it?!" The rattling became more urgent. "We've got to stop him. He's one of them, isn't he? He's from the Seventh Court. He tricked us. He tricked me into giving him the key. Now he can get the nail. You have to stop him."

"No, Claire. Let him be."

The rattling intensified, but then halted suddenly, followed by a crumpled thump. Blackbird had dealt with the problem in her own way. I turned my attention back to the room.

When Fenlock attacked me, I hadn't needed to call gallowfyre. My defence had been instinctive and once it had him I couldn't let go. This was different. The room was filled with dappled light but the gallowfyre wasn't active. It was merely there, an outward expression of my connection to the void. There was no enemy trying to throttle me or shake my teeth loose. Somehow I had to bend it to my will and make it do my bidding. I pictured it in my head, rolling through the room, consuming everything. It swam uncertainly. Stretching out my hand, I expected it to stream forth. It remained the same.

I concentrated on making it flood out, like a river or a stream. Nothing happened.

My hands fell back to my sides. So much for my ability to handle this. I had claimed I knew what to do, convinced that my instincts would come to my aid. Blackbird had said I had to convince myself it was true, that I had to know and trust my instincts. Well I did know, but it wasn't enough. It needed something else. I was almost on the point of turning back to the door behind me and asking Blackbird for some helpful hints when it came to me.

Trying to wield gallowfyre like a sword or a club wasn't working. I been thinking of it as a weapon with which I could strike out. I was wrong. It wasn't a weapon. It was part of me.

Closing my eyes, I felt the cool dim light as it swam around me. I told myself it responded to me because it was me. I looked inwards, following the dappled light to its source deep inside, feeling it become stronger, harsher, burning like a molten core within me. In the centre of that core was nothing.

I had found the opening.

In my mind's eye it was both absence and presence, a duality at the centre of my being. It was a hole within me left gaping to the void, opening out into endless nothing and allowing endless nothing back in. I smiled inwardly, understanding it was a mirror and a gateway. I carried it with me. It would allow me to reach into the void anytime I wanted to. At the same time, it allowed the void to reach into me. Now I understood. I opened the gateway.

It rolled into me like a seething flood. I heard my own sharp breath and felt my spine arch as it hit me, flooding down my nerves with icy power. My muscles went rigid, my eyes shot open. My nerves shrieked as the floodgates opened and it boiled out of me, a swirling nimbus of ravenous shadows. The flickering moonlight showed the shadows of tentacles, unseen except for the darkness they cast in the light of the gallowfyre, they licked the walls and swept across the surfaces. The tiny motes left hiding there were consumed almost incidentally as the flood of dark power swept through the debris, the darkspore sparking tiny flares in the roiling darkness as it was consumed. In those flares, I heard the echoes of distant screams as they boiled away. It made me smile.

The void sang though me, its dark harmonies humming through my veins, the heavy ba.s.s of hunger rumbling around like echoes of thunder. It rolled like a restless flood around the room, searching for anything to fill that gaping emptiness. I held my breath. For one terrible second I thought it would turn back on me so I would end up like Fenlock, a withered husk. It calmed, though, pooling around me, sending curious tendrils into the debris, searching for morsels like a curious medusa.

"Niall! Niall, can you hear me? You might want to do something."

I turned to the door behind me. It had found the crack under the door and was coiling into the crevice. Panic filled me and, in response, it wriggled back and wound around me, curling around my legs protectively. I found myself unwilling to pull it back within me. It was connected with me in a way that was profound. I knew I should send it back to the dark well within me but part of me wanted to unleash it and let it feed itself. For the first time, I understood. This was what the Untainted wanted; to unleash their power on the world and let it sing its hungry song. This was what they were fighting for; the right to be true to themselves. The thought sobered me and I steeled myself, turning the coils inwards, calling the darkness to slip back into the well where it sank back into the core. My gaze turned inwards for a moment, marvelling at the thing within me. It was tiny yet filled with endless emptiness, a minute black sun shining inside me.

Blackbird had said in the room above the abandoned tube station, "We stand between life and power," not as a statement of belief but as an acknowledgement of fact. Here it was. This core of power was in me now, as much part of me as my heart or my mind. It would be there for as long as I lived and finally, when I died, it would turn on me and consume me. Strangely, there was peace in that.

Blackbird started when I opened the door. She was standing close as if she'd been listening for something, but not so close as to touch the door. "Are you well?" she asked. "I'm fine."

She must have heard the uncertainty in my voice because she arched an eyebrow at me.

"I'm good. Just a little s.p.a.ced," I rea.s.sured her.

She smiled. "The first time is like that. It's like opening a door in your heart."

"Or a well in your soul. "

"Did you succeed?"

"I touched everything. If there were a trace left, I would know it." I looked down at the slumped form at Blackbird's feet. Claire's eyes were open, but she wasn't seeing me. "Is she going to be all right?"

"Get me a chair, would you? She'll be better if she's upright."

I turned back into the office and found an upturned chair which I placed against the wall. Blackbird dragged Claire inside and pushed the door closed with her feet. Between us we manhandled Claire into the chair. I went to retrieve her handbag from the floor outside where it had fallen before anyone noticed what was going on, though I could feel Blackbird's influence around us, turning curious eyes away.

When I re-entered, Claire was sat forward with her face in her hands. "Never," she said, "never do that again."

Blackbird stood out of arms reach. "You left me no choice. If you had broken into the room when Niall was calling gallowfyre then you would be dead. "

"I should be dead." She looked up at me. "Gallowfyre. That's in the journals. Only the Seventh Court have gallowfyre, isn't that right? "

"Apparently," I admitted.

"I don't understand. If you're from the Seventh Court, why are you here?"

"He's not from the Seventh Court, though how that can happen, neither of us knows right now."

"So what does that make you?" she asked me.

"I wish I knew, Claire."

"Do you have the nail?"

"Not yet."

"I don't suppose there's anything I can do to prevent you taking it, though, is there? You have my key already. "

"You need us to have the nail, Claire," said Blackbird. "I know you have doubts but we are your only hope."

"Hope of what?" she asked.

"Of preserving the world you live in. Of keeping the Seventh Court from entering your world whenever they wish and using it as they will."