DEVLIN WAUGH

John Smith explains the cliffhanger episode that was quickly brushed aside:

I had intended Book 2 to run 12 episodes but had to cut it down to 9, so I had room for a more action-orientated Book 3

THE MISSING LINK

Meanwhile, knowing that Devlin and the others are on his tail, our shadowy supervillain makes his first move against them. He’s already been using sophisticated earthquake-generating technology to alter the planet’s energy grid; now he turns it on Devlin and his gang. He throws an earthquake at them from the other side of the world.

On Devlin’s tiny Samoan island the tide goes out. Suddenly, impossibly, like an in-drawn breath, laying bare the rocky sea bed. Then Devlin and the others hear a sound. A thundering splintering roar heading straight towards them…

(6) ‘HELL AND HIGH WATER’

It hits like a runaway train, forcing them to cling to the roof, the trees, whatever they can as the wave crashes over the island. But this is just the fore-shock. Devlin and the others race back into the house as the real tidal wave bears down on them in a falling wall of water…

And suddenly stops. The wave freezes in its tracks, water still boiling and churning at its peak but its vast musculature suspended in mid-air in a sight of Biblical wonder. Fish rain down and flip-flop on the lawns. Then there’s a funny –plinc!- and a glowing ball of energy blinks into existence in the shadow of the wave. This is an EscherSphere – a self-evolving endlessly-reconfiguring hole in spcetime – and it’s been sent by Mr Bliss, who’s been eavesdropping all along and finally decided to lend a hand. Devlin is loath to accept the help of his greatest nemesis but what else can they do? The others hustle a protesting Devlin into the EscherSphere just as the tidal wave collapses and they’re sent rushing down a waterflume wormhole like pinballs…

…to find themselves in the sudden heat and hysteria of Hawaii.

We establish the craziness going down here, the occult dynamos cranking out charge around the world, then our occultbusters call in a joint Vatican/Justice Department rescue team and split up into groups. Their objective: to prevent the Jack of Knives and his clonebrothers from detonating spirit bombs on the energy nodes along the Tropic of Cancer. Weird curse bombs made from feathers and broken mirrors and dogs’ heads studded with nails, they explode on the psychic plane, driving anyone near mad and activating the long-dormant astral engines over each Centre of Pestilence. And deep underground there are terrible voices. And there are faces in the Northern Lights. And the Earth tolls like a bell…"