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still with his hands tethered with wire and with a rope dangling around his neck, scrambled around the dirt floor, his eyes wide with fear, more than the fear he'd felt when he was about to be strung up and killed.
    The magnificent beings went further inward, closing the circle, their expressions became dark and foreboding and their eyes revealing the intensity of their emotions. As their concentration mounted, their wings began to unwrap themselves, as if they had a life of their own. The silver and white wings became half-erect, dragging on the ground behind them.
    The circle became tighter and the people in the centre kept screaming as they foretold their own deaths. The Angels stepped nearer, until suddenly their wings opened in magnificent splendour, stretching outwards and upwards, shining silver, reflecting the light of the blue moon with fine feathers fluttering in the breeze.
    Their span was vast, maybe twelve feet or more and as they kept moving inward, the seven pairs of wings touched. At that point, as they moved in, the wings became wrapped around the Angel next to them, looking as if they were seven brothers in a rugby scrum. The screaming inside the circle of feathers became piercing and terrifying and just as the intensity of their anguish increased, it stopped, just like that, as if the people inside no longer existed.
    The Angels lifted their wings and their heads became erect once more. Their eyes, once closed, opened, revealing a sedated look on their faces as if they had just fed, while tears of sorrow filled their eyes, and a frown appeared on their brow holding an expression of desolation.
    They stepped backwards.
    And revealed the void.
    Upon the floor lay twelve cones of dust.
    The Watchers moved outward like Greek dancers, their movements connected and fluid. In unison they kneeled down, pulled in their tight stomachs so that their chests protruded, and blew air from their lungs like the force of a small hurricane, scattering the ashes of the twelve cones over the floor of the clearing and into the air, like whirling dervishes.
    The people who were once inside the void were gone, sent back to the earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Chapter 4
    Southwest England
     
    Balancing on the tips of her toe s , straining her neck to see over the top,Mia Lake stood on th e bottom railing of the six-foot metal fence. It wasn’t easy. She was only five-feet-six and she was wearing crocks. Beyond the fence, around the perimeter of the site, a stretch of wild grass and newly established trees almost blocked her view from the road outside, but there was no mistaking what was going on; the oil company Chelron was about to start up their rig.
    It had taken them three years to get the necessary planning but last week, to the detriment of the local people, permission had been granted for them to start drilling. The ruling was unprecedented for the energy sector in the Southwest and the petitioners had gone crazy with fury, saying that the government’s bold move was yet another slap in the face for the British people. A demonstration the day before had caused riots in the town of Devizes, Wiltshire. Several arrests had been made with eleven casualties, one a pregnant woman.
    Still peering over the fence, Mia heard a car pull up along the side of the road. She stepped down and kicked off her shoes, abandoning them on the grass verge. She wore a dark grey tunic adorned with a blue sequined logo; ‘I’m Watching.’
    “Hey, Mia,” her friend called.
    She waved back as Suzi alighted from a vehicle packed with kids cruising the night. She walked towards them. “What are they doing here?” she said bitterly when she saw the boys.
    Suzi laughed. “I asked them to drop me off, but they thought they’d stay to see a bit of the action.”
    Mia grabbed her friend’s arm and pulled her towards the fence. The boys were whistling and whooping at a passing car filled with girls. “I told you this was a secret! Have you