I moved towards the second door. The smell strengthened.
Pushing the door to this room open I could see it had been furnished with a large double bed against the far wall. On the bed were two things — my eyes flickered between them. Standing on the bed was the huge black cat I encountered in the corridors under Porton Down, its black fur rippling in the orange-tinted light coming through the heavy drapes. At least I assumed it was the same one — there couldn't be two like that, surely? Lying on the sheets beneath it with her throat ripped out was a woman, her blood soaked into the sheets. Her dead eyes stared at the wall, uncaring, unknowing. It stared down at her and I could hear its soft pant timed with the ripples in its fur.
Its head turned in one liquid movement and it caught me in its gaze, the gold flecks in its amber eyes catching the dim light. I held that gaze for too long; it launched at me, twisting in the air and I fell back, pulling the door closed after me. The cat hit the door and clawed a section out with an easy sweep that cracked the door back against the wall, booming through the building and leaving the door sagging from the bottom hinge. That gave me a moment to stagger around and back up the stairs before it slid round the door. It rippled to the bottom of the stairs and mounted the first steps, its hind legs bunching for a leap.
I edged backwards up the steps keeping my eyes on it, brandishing the bright blade. It ignored the steel and readied for a spring, but then paused, looking back through the doorway to the bedroom. It licked its lips and sniffed again at the air. It was waiting for something — listening perhaps.
Then it sprang, flinging itself at me with easy speed, claws braced wide, teeth bared for the kill. I tripped backward on the step, went down and lifted the sword-point in defence. I felt the blade jar in my hand, heard a scream that sliced its way into my brain, felt the blade ripped from my hand as the weight of the creature bore down on me. Its warm fur smothered my squeal of terror, its heavy scent enveloped me. I was beneath those lethal claws, utterly at its mercy.
Then slowly light emerged. Heat radiated out through the fur, veins were outlined before my eyes. The shape twisted in front of me, a man-shaped cat, a cat-shaped man, it lifted its head and called again — a weaker wail against the dark. And then it turned to ashes and dissolved on top of me, leaving me coated in dry dust.
I had killed it. A lucky hit, I must have pierced its heart. That's the thought that came to me until I tracked back through those last vital seconds. It had me at its mercy. I'd gone down. It could have eaten me alive if it wanted to. It had waited until I was ready.
I lay sprawled on the stairs in stunned silence for long moments while I tried to understand what had just occurred. It made no sense. My hand sought and found the hilt of my sword and the reassuring weight brought me back to my senses just as the police started breaking in the door.
'Police! We're coming in!'
I sheathed the blade and pushed myself up, shedding clouds of fine ash from my clothes and slipping quickly back upstairs, heading for my exit through the open window in the back room. I went for the window and heard a tiny sound. I stopped. I could hear the commotion as the door to the flat finally gave way and the police entered below. They banged and shouted their way in. It would not take them long to find the body.
Even so, I knelt down and looked under the bed. From beneath it a pair of wide round eyes stared back.
'Hello.' It was all I could think of to say.
The eyes blinked.
'What's your name?' I asked softly, acutely aware of the banging and thumping coming from downstairs.
'Lucy,' she said in a small voice. 'Has it gone?'
'Lucy, any moment now a lot of men are going to come in here and turn the place upside down looking for someone. Are you going to be OK?' What a stupid question.
'If you came back upstairs,' she said carefully, 'then it must have gone. Is it safe to come out?'
I wasn't sure whether it was or not. What would the police do with a small girl who was hiding under her bed? Would they look after her? The image of the woman downstairs came back to me and I realised that Lucy didn't know what had happened down there, or perhaps she did. Perhaps that was why she was under the bed.
'Best stay there, I think. Someone will come and find you in a few minutes, but stay there for now. Let them run around.'
It came to me that I had left it too late, that the thumping sound coming up the second set of stairs was wearing size twelve boots. Making it out of the window and clean away was going to be difficult with fifteen stone of policeman romping in behind me. Instead I settled back into a corner by the dresser, strengthening the glamour around me, cloaking myself in a deep sense of unimportance and the ordinary.
A red-faced police officer burst into the room, staring wildly about. He glanced at the bed, and at the window. He didn't glance at me. A colleague came in behind him.
'Check the room, I'll check the window.'
While they searched the room, I concentrated on extending the pool of stillness that included me out to the wide-eyed girl under the bed. She watched me, her eyes growing wider still as the men yanked open doors, leaned out the windows, looked behind doors, searching everywhere except under the bed or in the corner.
'He's gone out onto the roof. Call it in. Tell them to watch at the back. They may be able to see him from the houses behind. He'll have to come down somewhere.'
The burly officer that had come in first spoke rapidly into his lapel radio, explaining the situation. The other pulled down the window and closed the catch.
'Seal off the bedroom downstairs until you're relieved. Don't let anyone in there, understand?'
'Yes, sir.'
The two officers hurried back out, followed shortly by the noise of them thumping back downstairs. Outside the hubbub rose and fell like wind in the trees, but in the bedroom there was a deepening silence.
Eventually Lucy spoke. 'They didn't see you,' she said.
'No.'
'Are you invisible?'
'Can you see me?' I asked her.
'Yes.'
'Then no, I'm not invisible.'
'Why didn't they see you?'
I was on the verge of asking her whether her mother told her not to ask too many questions, but then realised her mother was downstairs in the bedroom with her throat ripped out.
'They didn't see me because I didn't want them to.'
'Oh,' She said. 'They're looking for Daddy, aren't they?'
'Are they?' I asked her.
'He brought the beast home with him, and now they're looking for him.'
'The beast is…'
'The cat. The really big black one,' she said.
'You've seen it?'
She nodded solemnly. 'It follows him around, and goes wherever he goes. When he lived with us it used to come upstairs when it thought I was asleep and slip out of my window.'
'It came into your room?'
She nodded again, slowly.
'You must have been very brave, not to make a noise.'
She nodded again. 'You have to be very quiet or it will know you're awake.'
I swallowed. I was about to say that it wouldn't be bothering her again, but then she might know very well what that meant.
'It won't come up here now,' I said.
'I heard you fighting. Did you kill it?'
Faced with that open-eyed stare I simply nodded. 'Do you think you can be brave again, Lucy?'
'Why?'
'We need to get you downstairs and find you someone who will take care of you.'
'What about Mum?'
'We need to get you downstairs. We can't go down your stairs because of the policeman, but I could carry
