The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 19

minus four hundwed and fifty-nine point seven thwee degwees Fahwenheit!'

Richard felt a chill wafting from the ice-slopes of Hell.

'We're supposed to be impressed?' said Leech.

'You can't get colder than absolute zero,' said Richard. 'That's minus four hundred and fifty-nine point six seven Fahrenheit.'

'I have bwoken the Cold Bawwier,' announced Cleaver, proudly.

'Not using physics, you haven't.'

'So what was it, magic?'

Richard wasn't going to argue the point. There weren't instruments capable of measuring theoretically impossible temperatures, but Richard suspected the Professor wasn't making an idle boast. Within his Box, reality had broken down. Quantum mechanics gave up, packed its bags and went to Marbella, and the supernatural house-sat for a while.

'It's where I found the Cold. Minus point zewo six. She was sleeping there. A basic hexagon. I almost missed her. Bweaking so-called absolute zewo was so much of an achievement. McKendwick saw her first. The little lab assistant took her for pwoof we had failed. There shouldn't be ordinawy cwystals at minus point zewo six. And she wasn't ordinawy. McKendwick found that out.'

Richard assumed McKendrick was the snowman with the tam o'shanter. The others must be the rest of Cleaver's staff. Kellett, Bakhtinin, Pouncey. And whoever the postman was. What about the few other residents of Sutton Mallet? Frozen in their homes? Ready to join the snow army?

'Fwom a hexagon, she gwew, into a dendwitic star, with more stars on each bwanch. A hexagon squared. A hexagon cubed.'

'Six to the power of six to the power of six?'

'That's wight, Mr Leech. Amusing, eh what? Then, she became a cluster of cwystals. A snowflake. Then… whoosh. The Box burst. The power went out. But she was fwee. She came fwom beyond the zewo bawwier. A pinpoint speck. Woom tempewature plummeted. The walls iced over, and the fweeze spwead out of the building. She took the village in hours. She took McKendwick and the others. Soon, she'll be evewywhere.'

'What about you?' asked Leech. 'Will you be the Snow Queen's 'Pwime Minister'?'

'Oh no, I'm going to die. Just like you. When the Cold spweads, over the whole planet, I'll be happy to die with the west of the failed expewiment, humanity. It's quite inevitable. Hadn't you noticed… when you were coming here… hadn't you noticed she's gwowing? I think we'll be done in thwee months or so, give or take an afternoon.'

Richard whistled.

'At least now we know the deadline,' he told Leech, slipping the hypodermic out of his hairy sleeve.

Cleaver frowned, wondering if he should have given so much away. It was too late to consider the advisability of ranting.

Leech took hold of the Professor and slammed his forehead against the older man's, smashing his spectacles. A coconut shy crack resounded. Cleaver staggered, smearing his flowing moustache of blood.

'Yhou bwoke mhy nhose!'

Richard slid the needle into Cleaver's neck. He tensed and went limp.

'One down,' said Leech. 'One to go.'

'Yes, but she's a big girl. What are the snowmen doing?'

Leech looked out of the window, and said, 'most have wandered off, but the postman's still there, behaving himself.'

'While Cleaver's out, they shouldn't move,' Richard said, unsure of himself. 'Unless the Cold gets angry.'

Richard plopped the Professor in a swivel chair and wheeled him into a corner, out of the way. Leech unslung his giant backpack and undid white canvas flaps to reveal a metal box studded with dials and switches like an old-time wireless receiver. He unwound an electrical cord and plugged it into a socket that wasn't iced over. His bulky gadget lit up and began to hum. He opened a hatch and pulled out a trimphone handset, then cranked a handle and asked for an operator.

'Who else would want a telephone you have to carry around?' asked Richard.

Leech gave a feral, humourless smile and muttered, 'Wouldn't you like to know?' before getting through.

'This is DL 001,' he said. 'Yes, yes, Angela, it's Derek. I'd like to speak with Miss Catriona Kaye, at the Manor House, Alder.'

Leech held the trimphone against his chest while he was connected.

'Let's see if Madam Chairman has gathered her Talents,' he said.

Richard certainly hoped she had.

VI

They were on the road to Mangle Wurzel Country because some paranormal crisis was out of hand. Jamie had a fair idea what that meant.

Growing up as the son of the current Dr Shade and the former Kentish Glory, it had taken several playground spats and uncomfortable parent-teacher meetings to realize that other kids (and grown-ups) didn't know these things happened regularly and — what's more — really didn't want to know. After getting kicked out of a third school, he learned to answer the question 'what does your Daddy do?' with 'he's a doctor' rather than 'he fights diabolical masterminds'. Since leaving home, he'd seen how surre-ally out-of-the- ordinary his childhood had been. No one ever said he was expected to take over his father's practice, but Dad taught him about the Shade Legacy: how to summon shadows and travel the night-paths, how to touch people inside with tendrils of velvet black, how to use the get-up and the gadgets. Jamie was the only pupil in his class who botched his mock O Levels because he'd spent most of his revision time on the basics of flying an autogyro.

Jamie thought Mum was pleased he was using the darkness in the band rather than on the streets. He was carrying on the Shade line, but in a different way. His father could drop through a skylight and make terror blossom in a dozen wicked souls; Jamie could float onto a tiny stage in a pokey venue and fill a dark room with a deeper shadow that enveloped audiences and seeped into their hearts. When Jamie sang about long, dreadful nights, a certain type of teenager knew he was singing about them. Because of Transhumance, they knew — if only for the forty-five minutes of the set — that they weren't alone, that they had friends and lovers in the dark, that tiny pinpoints of starlight were worth striving for. They were kids who only liked purple lollipops because of the colour they stained their lips, wore swathes of black even in this baking summer, would drink vinegar and lie in a bath of ice cubes to be as pale as Gene, lit their squats with black candles bought in head shops, and read thick paperback novels 'from the vampire's point of view'. Teenagers like Vron — who, come to think of it, he was supposed to be seeing this evening. If the world survived the week, she'd make him pay for standing her up.

Gene had found Vron's dog-eared Interview with the Vampire under a cushion in the back of the van, and was performing dramatic passages. Read out with a trace of (sexy) French accent, it sounded sillier than it did when Vron quoted bits of Anne Rice's «philosophy» at him. Vron wrote Transhumance's lyrics, and everyone said — not to her face — the lyrics needed more work. Bongo said, 'You can't rhyme 'caverns of despair' with 'kicking o'er a chair' and expect folk not to laugh their kecks off.' About the only thing the band could agree on was that they didn't want to be funny.

So what was he doing on the road? In a van with four weird strangers — weird, even by his standards.

Gatherings of disparate talents like this little lot were unusual. Fred had said they needed 'everybody'. Jamie wondered how far down the list the likes of Sewell Head came —