"We're lost," Thelma complained.

Leon glared at her. "We are not..."

He watched as she whirled around, skirt and wings flaring, an angelic vision in white that stood out starkly against the gathering gloom. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to get my bearings." She stopped and wavered dizzily, narrowly avoiding teetering over. "Or not."

"This is all your fault," Leon decided, a little uncharitably since he'd made only a token protest about the idea of playing provider. It wasn't that he'd wanted to leave Ella, but his pride would never have let Thelma go it alone to try and speed her recovery. Ella hadn't protested much either, which was one hell of a turnaround: she was usually too stubborn to let him do anything that might have helped her.

He put the change down to the fact she'd almost died yesterday. Escaping death by the skin of your teeth – or in this case, the white hot point of a sacred knife – was a big deal for a human being who was going to die eventually anyway, let alone an anointed one with eternity ahead of them. Leon could tell the experience had changed her, but since they'd been too busy doing certain other things to talk about it, he wasn't sure exactly how, or what it might mean.

It didn't stop him hoping it might have something to do with him, though. If the End of Days had to begin, then the woman he loved more than anything else in the world actually returning those feelings would be the only good place for it to start.

"I mean, you were the one who dragged us out here in the first place..."

Thelma growled at him nonsensically.

"And now it's going dark, and we're completely lost."

"So you admit we're lost?"

He gritted his teeth. "Yes."

"Ha!"

"Why did we not have the sense to leave some kind of trail..?"

"It's a bit late to worry about that now," Thelma retorted.

"What are we going to do?"

She sighed and folded her arms. "We could try shouting Ella."

"We could be miles away by now. She'll never hear us."

"Then it looks like we're on our own, doesn't it?"

"I suppose that's something we're going to have to get used to," Leon said, resigned to it. He waited for Thelma to regain her balance, and then carried on walking, straining in the near-darkness for any recognition that they were retracing the path they'd taken.

"You mean after this, don't you?"

"When we get back out there, yeah."

Thelma was silent for a second. "Where are we going to go?"

"We'll think of something," Leon said. He was trying for positive, but the strain was starting to show, and it sounded false, even to him.

"Such as?"

"I know a few places."

"I'm looking for specifics, Leon."

He shrugged lightly. "Well, there's this tattoo place in town. That might be a good bet – everyone's probably got one already by now."

"It's not funny, Leon!"

"Actually," he said, thinking about it, "that's not such a bad idea."

His heart skipped as branches rustled behind him. In the velvety darkness it was easy to imagine there was something prowling behind every tree, waiting to attack them, and every sudden noise made it seem more likely. But when he turned around there was only Thelma, colliding with a trunk. She wagged a disapproving finger at it, righted herself, and skipped to catch up with him.

"Say what?"

"No, seriously. If Malachi's got the whole of Medenham under his spell, they're going to be on the lookout for anyone who isn't."

"So you want us to get tattoos so we fit in?"

"Not permanent ones..."

"What next? Wigs and funny hats?"

He looked over in her direction. "It's another option, isn't it?"

"I'm getting worried about you," Thelma said, sounding more grumpy than concerned.

"Oh yeah?"

"Let's put it this way: the world must be in some serious shit if you're coping with the end of it better than a ghost and an anointed one."

He laughed, but there was no humour in it. "What good is it going to do us if we start falling apart?"

"Just because you're a man doesn't mean you have to act like one," Thelma said archly.

"I'm not acting like anything—" He stopped and frowned, her earlier words suddenly sinking in. "Hang on, you said – what makes you think Ella's not coping with it?"

Thelma sighed. "Men."

"I might not be a lesbian, or a ghost, or an anointed one, but that doesn't mean you have to insult me every five seconds."

"Men have absolutely no intuition," Thelma concluded. "That is not an insult, that is scientific fact."

Leon thought back. "I know the book being blank knocked her for six..."

"It's more than that, Leon. You heard what she was saying about the Nephilim."

"She was upset. You're reading too much into it."

"You're not reading enough into it."

"I tell you what," Leon said, irked, "when we get back, we'll ask Ella, shall we?"

"Fine. But I'm telling you – she's more weirded out by this than she's letting on."

"Well, I suppose that's understandable. I mean, this is as new to her as it is to us." He stuck his hands in his pockets, considering it for the first time. "You don't think she's blaming herself for it, do you?"

"Maybe. I mean, it was her job to stop Malachi, and she didn't."

"Oh, say it like it is, won't you?"

"I always do," Thelma reminded him proudly.

"If you're going to play the blame game," Leon argued, "then you should be blaming us as well."

"Well, I know where I went wrong, but why you? I mean, if I hadn't gone and blabbed to Malachi, he would have knocked back that Scotch and you would have gutted him there and then."

"Would I?" He sighed, knowing it was something he would always wonder about. He'd proven totally incapable of administering the fatal blow to Alex, but then that was different. She was a friend – a victim. She hadn't deserved to die. Malachi, on the other hand, was an arrogant twat who'd stolen Ella away from him not because he really loved or valued her, but because he could. When he thought of it like that, Leon decided he might have found it easy to kill him.

But then it wasn't just Malachi's fault. He hadn't bewitched Ella until much later. She'd fancied him, and she'd wanted to be with him more than she'd wanted to be with Leon. If he tried to use their relationship as an excuse for murder then he might as well have gone and stuck the knife into Ella too, and miserable as the whole experience had made him, that really would have been insane – just the kind of insane thing he'd done when he'd been under Malachi's malign influence, in fact. Or so Ella and Thelma had said.

There were just so many variables, and so many things that bothered him about all of them. That he might really have been able to justify murdering Malachi on the grounds that he'd nicked his girlfriend. That he couldn't just have done it because Malachi was the future architect of the End of Days. What kind of selfish wanker needed an incentive to do something for the greater good, when the fact it was for the greater good should have been all he needed?

What bothered him most of all though was the knowledge that he probably would have wimped out right at the last minute, as he'd done with Alex – and yet he'd chopped off the head of his own best friend without a second thought. His memories of killing Tom were equally as hazy as the ones of torturing Ella, but he knew this much: he hadn't hesitated to do it.

It was one weird world when you had to behead your best mate to impress a girl. And the fact that he had – well, it might have been a measure of how much he loved Ella, but maybe it was a measure of something else, too. It didn't really matter whether he would have killed Malachi or not, because he'd proved perfectly capable of killing Tom. Leon wasn't sure he wanted to know how much more he might be capable of – but he had a horrible feeling that, sooner or later, he was going to find out. There was no way he could feel optimistic about that, whatever Thelma thought.

But he'd be damned if he wasn't going to try. It was either that or blub like a baby.

"Thelma," he began hesitantly.

"Yeah?"

"How do we know we're not blowing this out of all proportion?"

"Leon, we're lost. End of."

"The End of Days."

He caught a glimmer of a frown on her face. "How do you mean?"

"Well, we've been assuming we're going to go out there and find the whole world's gone to hell..."

"Steady on," Thelma said. "I don't think him upstairs is going to let them win that easily."

"So Malachi burned down the school. And I get that he's somehow started a war by doing it, but what I don't get is why anything's going to be any different. I mean, even in World War Two people were just carrying on as normal. Who's to say that's not what's happening now?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "You're not Leon Taylor. You're some kind of happy clappy pod person."

"Seriously. Why not?"

"Because this isn't World War Two. This is bigger than that. Like – biblical bigger."

He felt a last spark of positive thinking firmly extinguished. "Meaning it's automatically got to be raining fire and thunderbolts?"

"More like normal rain, just lots of it," Thelma said instantly, as if she'd thought about it before. "We should probably chop down a few trees and build an ark, just in case."

Leon frowned. "Yeah, right."

"This is not going to be pretty, Leon. It's pretty crappy already, in fact."

His eyes strayed ahead of him into the half-light. "So what do you think it's going to be like?"

"Honestly? I don't know."

"Then make an educated guess."

There was a long pause before she replied, as if she was gathering her thoughts. He wasn't sure if it meant she was censoring them for his benefit, or making sure she painted as gruesome a picture as possible.

"Jez was really keen on teaching all kinds of martial arts. I think he did that for a reason: to build an army. And I think Malachi's going to send that army out into the streets to corrupt people for him and kill them if they resist, while he hides behind closed doors getting off on it all."

"What about the other side?" Leon said slowly.

"Trying to repair all the damage. Probably by killing as many of Malachi's followers as they can and converting anyone who's left to the way of the Samurai."

"Huh?"

Thelma coughed. "Sorry. Got a bit carried away there. Way of the Lord. I meant the way of the Lord..."

"Why would they convert people?"

"That's what made Roxanne immune to him, remember?"

Leon nodded. "Right."

"Not forgetting all the other weirdness that'll be happening while they're busy battling it out. Thunderstorms, torrential rain, animals going crazy, random Nephilims popping out from behind every street corner...you know the sort of thing. Just your average every day apocalypse."

He stared at her, astounded by the detail. "You really have thought this through, haven't you?"

"What else did you think I was doing last night while you and Ella were snoozing? Which did make a nice change from the groping, by the way..."

"Do you think we're going to have to kill anyone?"

And there it was. But as soon as he said it he realised how lame it sounded. It was stupid to seek a reassurance he knew he wasn't going to get, just like it had been stupid to try to persuade himself that, when they eventually walked out of here, it wasn't going to be all death and destruction, chaos and carnage.

Because of course it was.

"I think we're all going to have to do things we don't like," Thelma said tentatively. "And that probably includes killing people, yes."

Leon nodded. "Great."

"Oh, Leon..."

"I guess I'll just have to get used to it, won't I?"

"You're still cut up about Tom."

It was a statement, not a question. Leon shot her a glare, annoyed as much by his own transparency as the unfortunate choice of words.

"And I understand that," Thelma said sympathetically, "really, I do. But if Malachi finds out we're trying to stop him being crowned king of the world, he's not going to give us a royal pardon. He'll just send his mob to slice and dice us."

"Meaning..?"

"That it's kill or be killed," she said, brutally honest as always.

"That makes us as bad as them," Leon argued.

"No, it doesn't, because the difference is that they're not going to worry about it afterwards. And if you want to survive this, Leon, you can't afford to worry about it, either. At least...not much."

He stared at her, and for the first time he understood something. He'd accused Ella of being heartless, but it was only now he realised she'd had to become that way to protect herself from the consequences of killing people day in, day out for five hundred years.

All the same, it wasn't something he wanted for himself. If this war was going to turn him into some kind of killer – well, that was how it would have to be. But he wasn't about to close off his heart to do it, desire to be Ella's equal or not. If feeling the pain meant he could still feel, then that was the way he wanted it to stay.

"It's them or us," Thelma insisted. "And I know who I'd rather see joining me on the other side."

"You're not on the other side," he pointed out.

"I will be if – when – we get the result we want. Dead Malachi equals disappearing Thelma. There's no getting around that."

"I suppose not."

She smiled sadly, looking haunted – which, for a ghost, was quite some feat – but then tried to disguise it with a carefree shrug. "I told you we'd all have to do things we didn't like. I guess that's going to be mine."

It was a subject that was just too serious, and one Leon wanted to think about almost as little as he wanted to think about cutting a bloody swathe through the streets of Medenham. So he grinned, trying to lighten the mood.

"Not planning on sabotaging us again, are you?"

"If stopping that curly haired bastard stomping his size nines all over the world means I have to disappear," Thelma said with grim determination, "then so be it."

"Just when I was getting used to having you around."

"Oh, I'll find some way of haunting you, don't you worry. And I'll be watching. All the time."

Leon shuddered. "God, I hope not."

"Just think," Thelma said gleefully. "You may never have sex again."

They strolled along in companionable silence for a while, trailing past tree after tree, the shadows hiding their wounds.

"I was just wondering," Leon said, eventually.

"About the haunting thing? Or about the killing thing?"

He paused. "If there was any hope."

"There's always hope. Malachi can take everything else away from us, but he can't..."

Leon waited for the rest, but it didn't come. Thelma's voice had faded into oblivion, as if a power cut had killed the TV right when someone was in the middle of a sentence. The silence of the woods was almost deafening. He stopped, confused, wondering for a second if Malachi had tripped and fallen on a knife or something.

"Thelma?" He glanced around him, but saw nothing except the spiky outlines of trees, looming menacingly out of the darkness. Suddenly the woods seemed nothing like the safe haven he'd thought them earlier. "Thelma, this is not a good time to be playing hide and seek!"

A twig snapped behind him. He spun around, but saw nothing. He stepped forward cautiously, his heart thumping in his chest. "Thelma?"

"I'm here," Thelma said from behind him, making him jump. He turned around again.

"For God's sake, Thelma!"

"What?"

"Where did you disappear to?"

Thelma beckoned him to follow her and pushed through some foliage dangling from between two trees. Leon pursued her, and as soon as he reached the other side realised what it was that had caught her eye. In the clearing in front of them was the unmistakeable sight of a building. Some kind of wooden shack, if his eyes weren't playing more tricks on him.

"Ta da!" Thelma said triumphantly. "Saw it out of the corner of my eye. It must be where the scouts hang out."

Leon rolled his eyes in frustration. "We didn't pass this earlier. We're just getting further and further away from where we started."

"Don't be so miserable. There's bound to be stuff in here we can use."

"Such as?"

"Survival gear. Camping supplies. Food, maybe."

She rubbed her hands together in glee and skipped off towards the hut as Leon followed reluctantly.

"You've never seen 'The Blair Witch Project', have you?" he said as she began to work on the padlock on the door with practised ease, using the edge of a branch as a lock pick.

"Of course I have." Thelma flashed him an evil grin as the lock snapped open and took hold of the door. "You don't seriously think we're going to find someone hanging in the corner in here, do you?"

"No," Leon said. It sounded less than convincing, even to him.

"Trust me. There's only one witch in these woods, and she's on our team."

Eyeing up the enormous silken cobwebs that were strung across the roof, Leon decided that witches were the least of their worries. He wasn't keen on marching straight into a dark enclosed space with God knows how many freaks of nature lurking inside to grab him, and so he hung back warily as Thelma prised careful fingers around the splintered doorframe.

The door swung open with a creak, sending what little daylight there was left lapping hungrily into the darkened interior of the cabin. Thelma looked at him expectantly.

"Oh no," he said with a smirk. "I'm acting like a man, remember? And you know what we men are supposed to say—" He held the door open for her and gestured for her to enter. "Ladies first."

Thelma muttered something uncomplimentary under her breath and stepped inside cautiously. Growing braver, she disappeared further inside and began hunting around like a woman possessed. After a while she jumped up, a wide smile on her face.

"Tins! I found tins!"

"Let's see," Leon said. Forgetting his fears, he stepped forward, clumsily colliding with the doorframe on his way in. The cabin rocked for a second – and then Thelma screamed as a voluminous shape floated down from the corner and enveloped her. As she wrestled with it, Leon grabbed a branch from the forest floor and dived over to beat it off. Only then did he realise that it wasn't exactly what it seemed.

"Thelma, stop – Thelma – it's just a blanket, Thelma!"

Thelma stopped struggling and pulled it off her, hurling it aside. "I thought it was a bloody Nephilim."

"So did I," he admitted, his heart still racing.

"Thank God for that," Thelma said, looking disgruntled. She scowled as Leon started to laugh, then snatched a tin cup off a shelf and threw it at him. He took it square in the chest, but it just made him laugh even harder.

"It's not FUNNY!"

"I know," he spluttered, "but – you were attacked by a blanket—"

Thelma regarded him stony faced for a second and then burst out laughing as well. It was a good sound; a good feeling. A day of built up tension melted away as their laughter rippled into the still air.

"Don't you think this is all a bit too convenient?" Leon asked, once he could finally keep a straight face again.

"I told you the scouts went camping in the summer." She looked around and sighed. "School's out now. They were probably planning to set off today."

"I wonder what happened to them."

Thelma smiled crookedly. "Got delayed by the end of the world?"

"Let's just collect some of this stuff and get going," Leon said, trying to shake off the feeling that he was stealing from the dead. It wasn't quite as dramatic as being attacked by a shadowy predator, but it tore at his heart just the same. They'd set out to find food – but every step they'd taken had brought them closer to something far more important.

It wasn't just about coming to terms with what had happened, although he thought that he finally had. Or about realising that things were never going to be the same, because he'd already accepted that. Their world had grown so small in the last twenty-four hours that all they'd begun to care about was how they felt, what they were going to do, how this war was going to affect them. They'd paid lip service to the rest, but until now it had just been words.

It wasn't just about them. And it had taken this crazy, eventless journey into nowhere to make them realise it.

Thelma forced her eyes away from the neat pile of tents in the corner and kicked the offending blanket towards him. "Wrap them up in that."

"At least you'll get something to eat now."

"It wasn't for me," Thelma said plaintively. "It was for Ella."

"We'll find our way back," Leon promised.

"It's afterwards that's worrying me. I mean, how can we fight the End of Days when we can't even go for a wander in the woods without getting lost?.."

She caught the twinkle in Leon's eye and started chuckling about it. He grinned back and tossed one of the tins over to her. She caught it smartly, tossed it around so she could see the label and then hugged it to her.

"Beans and sausages! Now I can die happy."

"You're already dead," Leon said, exasperated, but no sooner had he got the words out than the ground shook violently underneath him. He ducked and covered his head as camping equipment clattered off the shelves and bounced off him and onto the floor. Thelma screeched in protest as the cabin lurched, sending a shower of tent pegs raining down on her.

The rumbling continued for what seemed like an hour, and then, as suddenly as it had started, everything was still again.

Leon stood up gingerly, rubbing the back of his head. "What the hell was that?"

"Well," Thelma said as she clung onto a shelf cautiously, "you know what I was saying about unnatural things happening..."

"Yeah..."

He was thrown off his feet again by another tremor and landed with a thud on the floor.

"Bloody big earthquakes," Thelma barked over the rumbling, "are natural in California, not in England!"

"Better get out of here before the whole thing collapses on us," Leon yelled as the log walls squealed and scraped against the tremors. He rolled away just in time from a tent pole that was trying to impale him, grabbed his blanket-wrapped bundle and ran hell for leather out of the door, hearing Thelma's urgent footsteps following him.

"Jesus," Thelma groaned as the world continued to shake. She extended a hand towards a tree to steady herself but then snatched it back again with a shudder. "I feel seasick."

"Is this it? Is it starting?"

She stared around the woods as if she was seeing them for the first time. "More like...starting to sink in."

"Yeah," Leon said with a brief glance down to check the soil hadn't turned to quicksand when he wasn't paying attention. "Well, let's go and find Ella before that happens, shall we?"

As they went to walk away, a crashing sound behind them stopped them in their strides, making them both jump. Leon turned around and watched open-mouthed as the cabin collapsed in on itself like a house of cards, logs crashing to the ground in a cloud of dust and chippings. He looked across at Thelma, who was staring at the demolition job with fascination, apparently not concerned that they'd been standing in the cabin only seconds before.

"Cool," she said admiringly.

Leon silently wondered what else could go wrong today. Then, as if on cue, he felt something tap him on the shoulder. Something thin and bony. Almost like...a finger.

His eyes widened with panic, but, struggling to reign it in, he turned around slowly. If he had to die, and it had to be today of all days, the least he could do was stare it in the face first.

"Did you feel the earth move?" Ella asked saucily.

He broke into a wide smile, wondering for a second if he was hallucinating. But when he pulled her towards him and held her tightly, feeling her heart beating in time with his own, he knew it was real.

"What are you doing here?" Thelma gasped as she came over to them.

Ella handed her the volta and draped her arms around Leon's neck. "I got bored."

"We got lost," Thelma said as if it was a contest.

Ella turned serious again. "I was really worried about you."

"How did you find us?" Leon asked. He was a little bewildered by her sudden appearance, more so by how different she seemed. The last time he'd seen her she'd been lying listlessly against the tree trunk, weakened by the stab wound and despairing over the loss of the book. But now there was fire in her eyes again. She seemed full of energy and life, as if she'd been restored somehow.

"It's what I do, remember?"

Leon raised an eyebrow at her, waiting for more, for the secret ingredient to her success. Okay, so she tracked down her prey for a living. But his pride was more than a little wounded by the fact it had taken him and Thelma all day to get themselves lost and Ella less than half of that to find them. There had to be more to it than that.

"I followed your footsteps," she admitted.

He opened his mouth to grumble about the fact that, as far as he and Thelma's untrained eyes could see, they hadn't left any footsteps to follow in. But one of Ella's hands was wandering slowly down his back and by the time she slipped it underneath his t-shirt, he'd completely forgotten what it was he'd been about to say.

"At least you didn't sniff him out," Thelma said with obvious distaste.

"But you didn't get lost," Leon pressed.

"Actually...I did go a bit off course there for a while."

She bit her lip and looked up at him uncertainly. He stared into her eyes, knowing exactly what she meant without her having to say it.

"Yeah," he said, smoothing down a wisp of her hair. "So did we."