The bulletin that had gone out from Hobart's Division announcing the escape of the anarchists had not gone unheard; but the alarm had come a little before eleven, and the patrols were dealing with the nightly round of fist-fights, drunken driving and theft which climaxed about that time. In addition there'd been a fatal stabbing on Seel Street, and a transvestite had been the cause of a near-riot in a pub on the Dock Road. Thus, by the time any serious attention had been paid to the alarm-call, the escapees were long gone; slipped through the Mersey Tunnel on their way to Shearman's house.

But on the opposite side of the river, just outside Birken-head, a vigilant patrolman by the name of Downey caught sight of them. Leaving his partner in a Chinese restaurant ordering Chop Suey and Peking Fried Duck, Downey gave chase. The radio alert warned that these miscreants were extremely dangerous, and that no attempt should be made to apprehend them single-handed. Patrolman Downey therefore kept a discreet distance, aided in this by a thorough knowledge of the area.

When the villains finally reached their destination, however, it became apparent that this was no ordinary pursuit. For one, when he reported his location to Division he was told that things there were in considerable disarray - could he hear a man sobbing in the background? - and that this matter would be dealt with by Inspector Hobart in person. He was to wait, and watch.

It was while he was waiting and watching that he had his second proof that something untoward was in the air.

It began with lights flickering in the second-storey windows of the house; then exploding into the outside world, taking wall and window with it.

He got out of his car and began to walk towards the house. His mind, used to filing reports, was already scrabbling for adjectives to describe what he was seeing, but he kept coming up empty-handed. The brilliance that spilled from the house did not resemble anything he had witnessed or dreamt of before.

He was not a superstitious man. He immediately sought a secular explanation for the things he saw, or almost saw, all around him; and seeking, found. He was viewing UFO activity; that was surely it. He'd read reports of similar events happening to perfectly ordinary Joes like himself. It was not God or lunacy he was facing, but a visitation from a neighbouring galaxy.

Content that he had some grasp on the situation, he hurried back to the car to put his report through to headquarters. He was stymied, however. There was white noise on all frequencies. No matter: he'd informed them of his location on first arriving. They'd come to his aid presently. In the meanwhile his task was to watch this landing like a hawk.

That task rapidly became more difficult, as the invaders began to bombard him with extraordinary illusions, designed, no doubt, to conceal their operations from human sight. The waves of force that had burst from the house threw the car on its side (or at least that's what his eyes informed him; he was not about to take it as Gospel); then vague forms began to roil about him. The tarmac beneath his feet seemed to sprout flowers; bestial forms were performing acrobatics above his head.

He saw several members of the public similarly ensnared by these projections. Some stared up at the sky, others were on their knees praying for sanity.

And it came, by and by. Knowing that these images were merely phantoms gave him strength to resist them. Over and over he told himself that what he was seeing was not real, and by degrees the visions bowed to his certainty, grew faint, and finally faded almost entirely.

He scrambled into the over-turned car and tried the radio again, though he had no idea if anybody was hearing it or not. Oddly, he wasn't that concerned. He'd beaten the delusions, and that conviction sweetened his vigil. Even if they came for him now - the monsters that had landed here tonight - he would not fear them. He would put out his own eyes rather than let them bewitch him afresh.

2.

'Any further word?'

'There's nothing, sir,' said Richardson. 'Only din.'

'Forget it then,' said Hobart. 'Just drive. We'll sniff them out if it takes us all fucking night.'

As they travelled, Hobart's thoughts returned to the scene he'd left behind him. His men reduced to babbling idiots, his cells defiled with shit and prayers. He had a score to settle with these forces of darkness.

Once upon a time he would not have cast himself so readily in the role of avenger. He'd been squeamish in admitting to any degree of personal involvement. But experience had made an honest man of him. Now - at least in the company of his men - he didn't pretend to be removed from the issues at hand, but confessed freely the heat in his belly.

After all, the business of pursuit and punishment was just a way to spit in the eye of one who had already spat on you. The Law, just another word for revenge.

IV.

ALLEGIANCES.

1.

It was eighty years, give or take half a decade, since the three sisters had trodden the earth of the Fugue. Eighty years of exile in the Kingdom of the Cuckoo, worshipped and reviled by turns, almost losing their sanity amongst the Adamaticals, but driven to endure countless mortifications by their hunger one day to have the Weaveworld in their avenging grasp.

Now they hung in the air above that rapturous earth - its touch so antithetical that walking upon it was a trial - and surveyed the Fugue from end to end.

'It smells too much alive,' said the Magdalene, lifting her head to the wind.

'Give us time,' Immacolata told her.

'What about Shadwell?' the Hag wanted to know. 'Where is he?'

'Out looking for his clients, probably,' the Incantatrix replied. 'We should find him. I don't like the thought of his wandering here unaccompanied. He's unpredictable.'

'Then what?'

'We let the inevitable happen,' said Immacolata, gently swinging round to take in every sacred yard of the place. 'We let the Cuckoos tear it apart.'

'What about the Sale?'

'There'll be no Sale. It's too late.'

'Shadwell's going to know you used him.'

'No more than he used me. Or would have liked to.'

A tremor passed through the Magdalene's uncertain substance.

'Wouldn't you like to give yourself to him once?' she enquired softly. 'Just once.'

'No. Never.'

'Then let me have him. I can use him. Imagine his children.'

Immacolata reached out and grasped her sister's fragile neck. 'You will never lay a hand on him,' she said. 'Not a finger.'

The wraith's face grew absurdly long, in a parody of remorse.

'I know,' she said. 'He's yours. Body and soul.'

The Hag laughed. The man's got no soul,' she said.

Immacolata released the Magdalene, filaments of her sister's matter decaying into sewer air between them.

'Oh, he has a soul,' she said, letting gravity claim her for the earth beneath. 'But I want no part of it.' Her feet touched the ground. 'When all this is over - when the Seerkind are in the Cuckoo's hands - I'll let him go his way. Unharmed.'

'And us?' said the Hag. 'What happens to us then? Will we be free?'

'That's what we agreed.'

'We can go into extinction?'

'If that's what you want.'