The Exiled by William Meikle Page A

flicker above them, smelled motor oil.
    “No!” John shouted, and leapt forward.
    Galloway brought up the stone axe and swung—a blow that would have caved in John’s head if it had hit.
    Ferguson shouted, a single word.
    Everything went dark for the space of a heartbeat. Alan looked up to see John standing on the far side of the lockup from them, pounding the wall in frustration with his good hand.
    “Take us back. Right fucking now,” he shouted.
    Ferguson scuffed the diagram on the floor with his feet, erasing almost a quarter of it before turning away and heading for the box of Scotch. John almost ran across the floor. Alan knew that look only too well—his brother was spoiling for a fight. He stepped into John’s path just before he reached the old man.
    “No, John. You saw. Either the Swan gets us, or Galloway does. You’re in no shape to fight either, never mind both. We need a better plan than this.”
    “We don’t need him anyway,” John said. “I got through just fine on my own the last time.”
    He moved back and stood in the center of what remained of the circle.
    “Come on, you bastard. Come and get me. I’m right here.”
    Nothing happened.
    Alan put a hand on his brother’s good shoulder.
    “Come on, John. The old man knows more about this than we do.”
    John turned. The anger had drained—slightly.
    “Does he? Does he really? Tell us, Mr. Ferguson—how many times is it now you’ve run away from the Black Bird?”
    Ferguson was already making serious inroads into the first of the whisky bottles. John went over and took it from him. The old man wailed like a baby deprived of a comforter and reached for the bottle. John kept it just out of his arm’s length.
    “Not until you tell us. How did we get through without all this nonsense the last time?”
    “How the fuck should I know?”
    Alan realized this was a stock reply from the old man—they’d been making the assumption that Ferguson was some kind of guru. Now he saw him for what he was—an old drunk who had stumbled on something he didn’t understand, and was too afraid to look any further. It had only been the promise of whisky that had got him this far.
    “If you know anything, now is the time to tell us. Otherwise that whisky all leaves here with us,” Alan said.
    The old man made another snatch for the bottle but John kept it well out of his reach.
    “Not until you tell us,” Alan said.
    “I don’t know anything,” Ferguson wailed.
    “Then there’s nothing left to say. Come on, John, let’s go.”
    “Wait. There might be something. Back when Mary was in prison on Loch Leven—she was known as the Swan Queen, did you know that? Anyway, back then, the Masons—”
    “Not the fucking Masonic crap again. Change the record—that one’s stuck.”
    “No, listen—the… the Royal Guard, if you prefer, reported visions and haunts all around the loch. It only happened to one or two of them, but the reports are consistent. They said they went somewhere else—the realm of the Cobbe. If you want to pass over, you need to find a thin spot—and I believe there’s at least one near that loch.”
    Alan tried to remember if he had told the old man about his own crossing over, and realized he hadn’t.
    “He might be onto something there,” he said to John.
    “Maybe. But that doesn’t explain what happened at the farmhouse.”
    “That could have been all down to Galloway?”
    “We won’t know until we see for ourselves.”
    All this time Ferguson had been grasping for the whisky bottle and John had kept it just beyond his reach.
    “Okay, old man—I suppose you’ve earned a drink. But we might be back to ask more questions, so try to stay at least a wee bit sober, eh?”
    That didn’t seem likely given the rate the level dropped when Ferguson got the bottle back. Alan retrieved the photocopied pages from on top of the cabinet and folded them before putting them in his jacket pocket. They left the old man in the lockup