Chapter the Thirty-third: Dissolution.

Aileen was dead before she had finished pulling the large kitchen table over to shield her from the spear that was thrust at her. The grinning cadaver, dressed incongruously in a tailored blue business suit, had come crashing through the large window next to the pantry door brandishing the broken shaft of a garden rake and immediately skewered her where she stood. Her shriek brought her husband running, then Jon, and then me short behind him.

The first group of the undead were piling into the room through the smashed window. Before thinking, Jon was over the top of the action. Always quick to react, he waded into the nearest monster with his fists flying.

Physically powerful as he was, There was nothing he could do to match the undead power of his foe. One swift overhead blow took him to his knees and then into direct unconsciousness. Not dead, but certainly down. Aiden saw the scene in the first glance. His wife was twisted in her rictus, heaped next to the overturned table. The gruesome horde were smashing everything in their eagerness to get across the room to us.

Before I could generate a command of my own, Aiden, his face bloated with rage, lifted his hands in front of him. His voice bellowed a shout which contained words that cracked and fizzled with their power. The ancient curses; passed down from generation to generation amongst the old Celtic families demonstrated their power now. I could feel the ancient mechanics of the land that Aiden and the generations of his family before him had tended. There was a deep-seated reservoir of potential and Aiden was invoking his own tap into it.

The words fell on the zombies like hammers, crushing skulls, removing limbs, stopping legs. Before they could reach halfway across the room, all the attackers were truly lifeless within moments.

I gaped at the effect and turned to Aiden to try to congratulate him. But Aiden was already across the room, his beloved wife cradled in his arms. By the time I jumped across to be with him, he too was dead. The release of power had been like a bee's sting, taking his own life force to kill the enemy.

I had no time to grieve for either of them. The next wave was coming through the yard towards the front of the house. Sara's angry shout roused me. I jumped up and pulled Jon's comatose body into the safety of the pantry where I laid him out as comfortably as possible, there was nothing he could help me with and it was better to have him out of the way. I protected his resting place and locked him in.

Our defences, beaten by the first small pack, now held well. I could deal with the waves as they approached, disabling where I could; slaughtering where necessary.

Eventually the lull we had anticipated, occurred and we took the route that we had planned, out to the East-side barn and into the vehicles for the rush to Erking Hill.

As I drove, bringing up the rear, a similar view was in my mirror as had been there the last time I had made that run. Dark, malignant figures, loped and ran and leaped after us. We all drove like maniacs.

At last the standing stones were around us, the ten of us; Me, Sara, Maggie, (I recognise that I find it difficult to decide which of the two to list first) Amy and Valerie, Susan, Jennifer and Karen, Jacqueline and Angela gathered at the circle at the Eastern end of the stone avenue atop the hill and waited.

The groups of beasts and other enemy creatures pooled into menacing ranks outside the stacked stones. There was an electric air of expectancy. Who would make the first move?

A high, keening ululation suddenly sounded from the back of the rank to my immediate left. In a sudden blinding flash of light, the whole group erupted as Iysla; her huntress figure, illuminated by her not insignificant power, carved a way through their midst. She leaped into the ring with us.

The spark had been struck and the attack started.

The stones resonated with a deep rumbling power as the unclean horde rushed in to meet us. The carnage was unpleasant and incredible. For each spell I threw at them, the stones formed them into three or four more. I was in the middle of a massive amplifier. Bodies lay in blackened heaps and the new attackers still clambered over them to get at us. I maintained a strong rearward defence and the pile of dark, dead, beasts in front of us grew steadily.

With a suddenness which was startling, the retreat was called and the blackness receded, dragging the remnants with them. The grounds around us seemed to scourge themselves; almost as if they were unwilling to allow the foulness to remain behind. We again were alone in the centre of the circle. The fury of the dark horde's attack now just an angry rattling, like the sound of cockroach carapaces scuttling in a nest.

Then we heard the noise of approaching power.

A vast crackling announcement. A rushing, hissing, screaming freight train noise that roared in from overhead and approached us from the Western end of the stone avenue. Shaw had finally come to meet me.

I stood to the front of the group. Sara and Maggie stood behind and then the other girls arranged behind them. I had the incongruous thought that we must look like a rack of ten pins at the end of an alley, Shaw the bowling ball.

"Oh God, Oh God." Jacqueline could be heard moaning in the rear rank. Sara gripped my left elbow in her right hand and I felt her fear. Iysla was behind, softly calling words of encouragement. I had to be ready for him, his evil had to be stopped.

Shaw dropped to his feet in a swirling blackness the full length of the avenue away from me, maybe a hundred or so metres. His malevolent form perhaps even accentuated by the carefully measured way he picked his way forward in the magic line of the stones. He alone of the dark side, had the power to withstand the benign presence of the monolyths. He moved as if walking carefully on stepping stones.

I got myself ready, calm and centred; I waited for his attack. If there was one thing about this magic stuff, the direct connection between my commands and the altering of physics was a draining process. I hoped my body was strong enough.

The great fireballs that spouted from his hands swept towards us and split to roar around both flanks. Our shields, practiced under Iysla's tuition over the past days, saw the fire slide off harmlessly. He continued to pump the gouts of flame at us with an almost casual action as her stepped closer.

His next attempt was more direct, a leaping jolt of pure malignant power came at me and I had to allow a shadow of myself take the blow. I watched with compassion as the figure of my own flesh allowed itself to draw the heat and slowly subside in the flame. Shaw's roar of triumph bellowed sickeningly and then strangled into a howl of incomprehension. As I had hoped, the manoeuvre was one he had not considered before. We stood our ground and then threw a bolt back at him, aiming to catch him unawares.

My hands called up dazzling ropes of power to restrain him and pierce his foul body. They shot towards him but simply curled around the place he had just vacated. Man, he was fast!

I countered with an immediate command to bring a chain over his feet so that I could hold him for the second blow to his heart. The blades of grass and the flower stems jumped to my bidding. They fell on his feet and fixed him like a swaying post to the ground whilst I started the build-up for the visceral thrust into his body.