brush it away, but she couldn’t. Her hand wouldn’t move either. She rolled her eyes as far as she could, trying to see her arm. It was wrapped in wire — her whole body was bound in a barbed-wire exoskeleton, and it was paralysed.
She was paralysed.
‘Parva?’ Mr Bradley said uncertainly. ‘Parva, can you hear me?’
Pen couldn’t speak or make any sort of sign, but before she could follow that thought she felt her arm rise, dragged upwards by the wire around it. Her finger extended into a point — and suddenly the wires around her lips yanked them open and something lashed into her mouth. Pain stabbed through her tongue as the wire seized it.
Droplets of blood hit the floor of her mouth.
‘ Where is he? ’ The voice that came from her throat was grotesque, twisted, as if it was being squeezed out of her chest.
Mr Bradley looked ready to faint, but he straightened. ‘W-w-where’s who?’ he stammered.
‘ Where is he? ’ The wire jerked Pen’s hand.
Mr Bradley looked after the pointing finger, and so did she. Lying on the concrete were the photos that’d spilled from his pocket. Pen was pointing straight at the picture of the skinny bare-chested boy Beth had sketched.
‘I–I don’t know where he is, Parva. You know I don’t. We don’t know who he is. We don’t know where Beth-’
He was right: she did know that. It was the thing coiled around her that didn’t. The tendrils lashed out of her mouth and resealed it, leaving her tongue swollen in their wake.
To Pen’s utter terror, her feet began to move. The wires pulled and their barbs chided and her right foot stepped forward, and then her left. After a moment, her arms began to swing too, as though the creature that gripped her had needed a few steps to get the hang of it. The last thing she saw, before it turned her around, was Beth’s dad, reaching out to her.
But she’d already gone. The wires were moving her legs far faster than she ever could. As she began to pant for breath they relaxed their grip on her lungs and finally, as she ran out on the path past the tower blocks, she could scream.
Paul Bradley ran after her, as fast as he could, but his leg was still bleeding and he couldn’t keep up. He stumbled to a halt, hands on his knees, panting. Too fat and too slow, old man, he cursed himself.
Warmth touched his back for an instant, then the glass woman burst past him, her feet ringing off the tarmac as she pursued Pen. He glimpsed her face, fixed in a snarl of agony. She was holding shards of the shattered bodies in her hands.
‘Wait!’ he gasped, ‘take me, help me- I have to-’
But she didn’t look back. He crumpled onto the ground as he watched her, the only light, disappearing into the distance.
Another one. It was a chill, venomous needle of a thought, but it was true. You lost another one.
He scrambled around in the darkness, groping for the fallen photos. He strained his eyes to make out the shapes in the photos, tracing a finger around the sketch of the boy with the spear.
Then he staggered towards the lit-up estates in the distance. A new wilderness had unfolded around him. There was a new logic. He didn’t know what was real, what was alive. He didn’t know the rules.
Where is he? The rasp the metal thing had forced from Parva’s throat grated through his mind. Where is he?
Certainty crystallised in him. All the people out there driving cars, tossing burgers, having sex, watching late-night TV: they all faded into irrelevance.
Beth was not in that city. She was with this boy’s city. With him.
CHAPTER 18
Steel yourself, Petris. Or, given the circumstances, should that be stone yourself? No, definitely steel. Stoning would be completely different. And painful. And tough to accomplish single-handed.
Of course, Petris reflected, if any of his flock caught him at what he was about to do, there would be no shortage of volunteers to chuck the first rock.
He was standing in a children’s playground in the middle of Victoria Park: a typically decayed seat of London infancy, with heavily graffiti’d slides, a climbing frame and four carved horses wobbling on rusty springs, grinning like they’d had too much ketamine.
He began to shiver, which, he told himself, was because the autumn chill had seeped into his punishment skin and definitely not because he was afraid.
After all, what did he have to be scared of? He was encased in granite armour two inches thick. His grip could tear steel-plate. He’d led warrior priests against scaffolding monsters and crushed them with his bare hands. What did he have to fear?
Well, a treacherous inner voice supplied, there’re the two thousand other bronze and stone-clad soldiers who can also tear steel. Let’s not dwell on what bits of you they might crush with their bare hands if they catch you, shall we?
Petris swigged down a pint of sewerspirit, wincing as the fermenting faecal taste filled his mouth. It was vile, but it was the strongest drink he could brew and the warmth of it was already drizzling into his muscles, its fug washing over his brain. He relaxed.
Cromwell had stumbled in on him as he’d been setting up the distilling apparatus. The bronze Roundhead had eyed the booze in the belljar and asked, ‘What’s the occasion, old man?’
Petris had given an unconvincing laugh. ‘Oh, I’m celebrating, you know: finally telling that jumped-up street- rat to swivel on his own railing.’
Cromwell had laughed himself, and even made the effort to tip his bronze helm to his high priest. Behind his stone mask Petris’ eyes had tracked the tip of Cromwell’s sword as he’d left the room.
What do I have to be afraid of?
As if in answer, one of the swings started to move back and forth. Cr-eak, cr-eak. It was difficult to see, but the space above the swing’s seat looked more solid than it had a few seconds ago. A vague human shape had appeared on it, black against the darkness, and now it kicked its legs and rocked the swing like a child. Slim fingers gripped the chains and viscous liquid oozed from under the fingernails and down the metal. A strong acrid smell pierced Petris’ nostrils.
Cr-eak, Cr-eak. Cr- The oil spread to the swing’s hinges and they stopped squeaking.
The black figure continued to swish back and forth, the silence now broken only by the drip-drip of the oil off his bare feet.
His teeth wanted to chatter but Petris grimly swigged from his belljar, swamping any circumstantial evidence of his fear in seventy-six per cent proof alcohol.
The swing came to a stop. ‘Petrisss.’ The name came on a hiss of chemical breath. Viscous liquids were drawn into threads between the dark figure’s lips as they parted.
‘Johnny. Always a pleasure.’
‘Iss that why you asssked my attendance?’ The sibilants ghosted on the air. ‘ Pleassure? You are notoriousss for itss purssuit — ssstrange then if our pressence iss ssuch a pleasure, how sseldom you sseek it out. One might ssuspect we of the sssynod… unssettle you.’
‘Oh, you always unsettle me, Johnny.’ Petris’ good humour was cinder-brittle.
‘I ssee.’ The black figure sighed. ‘Sspecify the sservice you would ssolicit, stonesskin,’ Johnny Naphtha said, inspecting his black fingernails where they held the swing. ‘And hassten — I hate to hurry you, but my pressence here isn’t helping the health of the herbsss, you undersstand.’ He pointed over Petris’ shoulder, and even in the dark, the priest could see the nearest tree sagging as the poisons dripping from Johnny Naphtha’s feet leached into the soil.
Petris gazed at that richness of death like a parched man at water fountain. ‘Who said I was looking for
