He shrieked.

And with the cry, the yard disappeared, and he was travelling again on Venus Mountain, only this time the landscape beneath him was not earth and rock, but flesh and bone. It was his own body he was flying over, his substance become a world, and it was burning up, burning to extinction. His shriek was the land's shriek, and it rose and rose as he and it were utterly consumed.

Too much!

He woke suddenly to find himself curled up in the middle of the bed, a knot of dreamt agony. He was sweating so much surely the fire would have been extinguished.

But no. It burned on in his mind's eye for minutes afterwards, still bright.

2.

It was more than a nightmare, he knew; it had the potency of a vision. Alter that first visit there was a blank night, then it came again, and again the night after. The particulars were altered somewhat (a different street, a different prayer) but it was in essence the same warning; or prophecy.

There was a gap of several days before the fourth dream, and this time Geraldine was with him. Though she made every attempt to wake him - he was howling, she said - he could not be roused until the dream was over. Only then did he open his eyes to find her sobbing with panic.

'I thought you were dying,' she said, and he half believed she was right; that his heart would not bear many more of these terrors before it burst.

It was not just his death the vision promised, however; it was that of the people on Venus Mountain, who seemed to occupy his very substance. A catastrophe was coming, that would lay waste those few Seerkind who had survived; who were, in their way, as intimate to him as his own flesh. That was what the dream told.

He lived through November in fear of sleep, and what it would bring. The nights were growing longer, the portions of light shrinking. It was as if the year itself was sliding into sleep, and in the mind of the night that would follow the substance of his dream was taking shape. A week into December, with the nightmare coming almost as soon as he closed his eyes, he knew he had to speak to Suzanna. Find her, and tell her what he was seeing.

But how? Her letter to him had been quite clear: she would contact him when it was safe to do so. He had no address for her; nor a telephone number.

In desperation, he turned to the only source of intelligence he had on the whereabouts of miracles. He found Virgil Gluck's card, and rang the number on it. There was no reply.

IV.

THE SHRINE OF THE MORTALITIES.

1.

The day after Apolline's visit - with polar conditions moving down across the country, and the temperature dropping hourly - Suzanna went out to look at the sites on the list. The first of them proved a disappointment: the house she'd come to see, and those adjacent to it, were in the process of being demolished. As she studied her map, to be certain she'd come to the correct address, one of the workmen left a fire of roof-timbers he was tending and sauntered across to her.

There's nothing to see,' he said. There was a look of distaste on his face which she couldn't fathom.

'Is this where number seventy-two stood?' she asked. 'You don't look the type,' he replied. 'I'm sorry, I don't - '

'To come looking.'

She shook her head. He seemed to see that he'd made an error of some kind, and his expression mellowed. 'You didn't come to see the murder house?' he said.

'Murder house?'

'This is where that bastard did his three kiddies in. There've been people here all week, picking up bricks -'

'I didn't know.'

She vaguely remembered the grim headlines, however: an apparently sane man - and loving father - had murdered his children while they slept; then killed himself.

'My mistake,' said the fire-watcher. 'Couldn't believe some of these people, wanting souvenirs. It's unnatural.'

He frowned at her, then turned away and headed back to his duties.

Unnatural. That was the way Violet Pumphrey had condemned Mimi's house in Rue Street; Suzanna had never forgotten it. 'Some houses,' she'd said, 'they're not quite natural.' She'd been right. Perhaps the children who'd died here had been victims of that same unfocused fear; their killer moved either to preserve them forever from the forces he felt at work in his little sphere, or else wash his own fear away in their blood. Whichever, unless she could read auguries in smoke or rubble, there was no sense in lingering.

2.

The second site, which was in the centre of the city, was neither house nor rubble, but a church, its dedicatees Saints Philomena and Callixtus, two names she was not at all familiar with. Minor martyrs, presumably. It was a charmless building of red brick and stone dressing, hedged in on every side by new office developments, the small accompanying graveyard littered and forsaken. In its way it looked as unpromising as the ruins that had been the murderer's house.

But before she even stepped over the threshold the menstruum told her that this was one of the charged places. Inside, that instinct was confirmed: she was delivered from a cold, bland street into a haven for mysteries. She didn't need to be a believer to find the candlelight and smell of incense persuasive; nor to be touched by the image of Madonna and Christ-child. Whether their story was history or myth was academic; the Fugue had taught her that. All that mattered was how loudly the image spoke, and today she found in it a hope for birth and transcendence her heart needed.

There were half a dozen people sitting in the pews, either praying or simply letting their pulses slow a little. Out of respect for their meditations she walked as quietly as the stone underfoot would allow down one of the side-aisles to the altar. As she approached the chancel rail her sense that there was power here intensified. She felt self-conscious as though somebody had their eyes on her. She looked round. None of the worshippers was looking her way. But as she turned back towards the altar, the floor beneath her feet grew insubstantial, then vanished entirely, and she was left standing on the air, staring down into the labyrinthine bowels of St Philomena's. There were catacombs laid out below; the power was sourced there.

The vision lasted two or three seconds only before it flickered out, leaving her hanging onto the rail until the vertigo it had brought with it passed. Then she looked about her for a door that would offer her access to the crypt.

There was only one likely option that she could see, off to the left of the altar. She climbed the steps, and was crossing to the door when it opened and a priest stepped through.

'Can I help you?' he wanted to know, offering up a wafer-thin smile.

'I want to see the crypt,' she said.

The smile snapped. 'There isn't one,' he replied.

'But I've seen it,' she told him, pressed to bluntness by the fact that the menstruum had risen in her as she'd crossed beneath Christ's gaze, unnerving her with its eagerness.

'Well, you can't go down. The crypt's sealed.'

'I have to,' she told him.

The heat of her insistence brought a stare of something like recognition from him. When he spoke again his voice was an anxious whisper.

'I've got no authority,' he said.

'I have,' she answered, the response coming not from her head, but from her belly.

'Couldn't you wait?' he murmured. The words were his last appeal, for when she chose not to reply he stood aside, and allowed her to walk past him into the room beyond.

'You want me to show you?' he said, his voice now barely audible.

'Yes.'