Thicker Than Water

‘Mark,’ he said again. ‘This is Matthew, your -’ he choked on the word but he got it out ‘- your father. Please stop this. Please let these people—’

He didn’t even get to finish the sentence. A wind from nowhere ripped the breath from his mouth. It hit us full-on, sending Coldwood and me slip-sliding backwards on the treacherous footing of broken glass and powdered brick. Juliet leaned into it and kept her footing.

A second later, we realised that the dust and débris on the walkway hadn’t stirred. This was a wind that had no quarrel with matter: just with us.

‘Mark—’ Matt yelled, and the darkness swallowed the sound so that, standing a scant few feet away from him, I could barely hear it.

I heard an answering bellow, though, equally muted but many-throated. It came from the windows above, where the pale blobs of faces could now be seen looking down at us.

Okay. That probably wasn’t good. Juliet was staring at Matt. I touched her shoulder and, as she turned towards me, pointed up. She nodded. She was aware of the watchers already: she didn’t need to see them to know they were there.

Matt was still speaking, speaking continuously now, but the words were torn up and scattered by the void-wind so they never reached me. Seeing Juliet walk past Matt to guard the further end of the walkway, I turned with Gary beside me to watch the nearer end.

They came on us from both sides at once, with the terrifying, utterly focused madness of the possessed. There were a couple of dozen of them, and I realised with a shock that I actually knew some of the ones at our end: they were the gang that Bic’s older brother belonged to. They had jagged shards of glass in their hands, and blood coursed down over their wrists unheeded as they ran at us. Gary faced them with his bare fists, but I had my whistle out and I blew the first skirling notes of the wound-demon’s exorcism in their faces like pepper spray. They slowed and faltered, which saved Gary from being julienned in the first couple of seconds. After that, even though they moved like sleepwalkers, he was fighting for his life. The narrowness of the walkway worked in our favour, but there were so many of them: and a single lucky thrust might be all it took. Coldwood ducked and punched, spun and kicked, used every dirty trick they teach in cop school. I dropped the whistle and joined him, humming the exorcism tune between dry lips as I fought.

For a packed and frantic minute I held my own: then an actual knife rather than a glass one, thrown through a gap between the nearest attackers, caught me in the left shoulder, close to the throat. It must have been wickedly sharp: the thick cloth of my paletot would have kept a dull blade from penetrating too deep. Or perhaps the demon’s magic worked like a blessing on knives and caltrops. In any case it went in hilt-deep, and I screamed with the shock and the pain.

I threw another punch, right-handed, but being aÓed,the southpaw I threw it without any real conviction. The plukey teenager I was facing took it squarely on the chin and then rushed me, his clutching fingers closing around my throat as he raised his jagged-edged shank to plunge it into my face.

Someone hit him from behind, making him sprawl on top of me. I got a handful of his hair, levered his head up away from me and slammed my forehead into the bridge of his nose, giving him something else to think about. He jerked and went limp and I rolled him - with an awkward, one-handed heave - to the side.

I barely glimpsed my rescuer as he jumped right over me and charged on towards Matt. I saw him dive on a guy who’d got past our little Horatio-at-the-bridge last stand and was about to slit Matt’s throat from behind. Further away, Juliet dipped and pirouetted in an elaborate ballet of carnage, inert and damaged bodies flying and falling away from her as her hands and feet wove their skein of graceful violence.

Then I returned my attention to the last few stragglers who were still trying to gut Coldwood. A half-brick to the back of the neck discouraged two of them, even in my weaker hand, and Gary took out the last man with his knee and his elbow.

We stared at each other, panting, taking a full three seconds to register the lull. It wouldn’t last. The demon had hurled the nearest tools it could find at us. It had a thousand more lying ready to hand, and it wouldn’t take more than a moment to hurl them into the breach. It could empty the whole estate on our heads. And then what? Even if we survived, what would we do when the damned thing started to look further afield?

Juliet walked towards us, heedless of the bodies that she stepped on. She was staring at the newcomer, who was facing Matt head-on as Matt came slowly upright. They seemed unable to look away from each other.