“I want a gun,” said Happy. “You never let me have a gun.”

“Damn right,” said Melody. “I am not having the words friendly fire on my death certificate.”

“Hush,” said JC, looking slowly around him. “It’s here . . . I can feel it, like the gaze of a blind god, smell it, like the dragon’s breath . . . the cold of the winter that never ends, the dark between the stars . . .”

“Nothing like imminent death to bring out the poet in you, JC,” said Happy. “How about composing something really lyrical that we can retreat to? Because I’d really like to get the hell out of here . . .”

“Too late! Too late . . .” JC glared about him, searching for an answer he could sense but not pin down. “Think! Something big, Something powerful . . . What did those primitive people dance and sacrifice to, what did they believe in and worship, strong enough to make the sun rise and the winter end? They weren’t ready for gods yet, nothing so civilised . . . But together, their massed minds and desperate need invoked a powerful Force from Outside . . . Created, or summoned, by the terrible brutal passion of their faith . . . A god with no name or singular nature; simply a Presence . . .”

“Could it be one of the Great Beasts?” said Melody. “The Hogge, or the Serpent?”

“No,” Happy said immediately. “I know them. What I’m feeling . . . is even older than they. More primitive. Just a force. A Presence. And since its worshippers had no language to name it, to define it and limit its powers . . . We can’t hope to control or dismiss it with any of the usual techniques or formulas. We don’t have anything we can use against it!”

The dark was all around them now. The supermarket was gone, and most of the car park. Only a circle of moonlight remained, stabbing down like a spotlight, picking them out. No stars shone in that dark night, no distinction left between earth and sky. Just the three of them left, the only living things in the night, huddling together for comfort and warmth, adrift in an endless dark sea. And it was cold, so cold . . .