Blasted Past: Part Twenty-Three

The Green Man parked his car in the centre of Aberystwyth. Walking up to the bridge that led to Trefechan, they passed the rear of the towering, and now derelict, Tabernacle Chapel. Sparrowhawk looked up at it with curiosity.

"I'm sure it used to be open," she observed.

"It closed in 2004," the Green Man told her. "When you were attacked outside the front, it was a working chapel."

"Did I leave any bloodstains?" she giggled as she asked the question. "I mean, can you still see...?"

"That isn't an appropriate question." The Green Man sighed. "As I recall, you were never this odd before...."

"I hadn't been in a coma for the best part of a decade," Sparrowhawk shook her head. "What 're we looking for?"

"We're looking for information about where the Grey Tabby's lair is," the Green Man addressed her, Sir Richard and Ms. Madison. "He'll have to have built some sort of infernal machine to do what he's threatened. That means that deserted chapels or country houses would be the most obvious places. But he have his orders here in Trefechan."

"Maybe they know in the pub?" Sparrowhawk looked over the road to a building with a stucco front.

"Lassie," Sir Richard sighed wearily, "that isn't a pub, it's a notorious sink of iniquity. A bloke got a knife stuck in him there. It isn't the sort of place nice girls go to."

"News for you, daddy," the masked girl leaned on his shoulder. "I'm not a nice girl - I'm Sparrowhawk."

"You're also my daughter," Sir Richard smiled. "Now," he turned back to the Green Man, "what would the Grey Tabby need if he was to have a lair here?"

"He would need one safe and secure, something that could weather anything. A nuclear bunker, for example."

"I thought so," the Squire smiled impishly. "And there's a secret nuclear bunker located on Pen Dinas." He pointed to the towering hillfort.