Two figures emerged.
Louise gagged. It was Rachel Handley, one of the manor’s maids. She looked the same as normal. Except her hair. It had turned brick-red, the strands curling and coiling around each other in slow, oily movements.
Then Daddy was standing beside the chunky girl, still in his militia uniform. His face wore a foreign, sneering smile.
“Come to Papa, baby,” he growled happily, and took a step towards Louise.
All Louise could do was shake her head hopelessly. Genevieve had slumped to her knees, bawling and shaking violently.
“Come on, baby.” His voice had fallen to a silky coo.
Louise couldn’t stop the sob that burped from her lips. Soon it would become a mad scream which would never end.
Her father laughed delightedly. A shape moved through the liquid green light behind him and Rachel.
Louise was so numbed she could no longer even manage a solitary gasp of surprise. It was Mrs Charlsworth, their nanny. Variously: tyrant and surrogate mother, confidante and traitor. A rotund, middle-aged woman, with prematurely greying hair and an otherwise sour face softened by hundreds of granny wrinkles.
She stabbed a knitting needle straight at Grant Kavanagh’s face, aiming for his left eye. “Leave my girls alone, you bloody fiend,” she yelled defiantly.
Louise could never quite remember exactly what happened next. There was blood, and miniature lightning forks. Rachel Handley let out a clarion shriek. Shattered glass erupted from the frames of the oil paintings down half the length of the corridor as the blazing white lightning strobed violently.
Louise crammed her hands over her ears as the shriek threatened to crack open her skull. The lightning died away. When she looked up, instead of her father there was a hulking humanoid shape standing beside Rachel. It wore strange armour, made entirely of little squares of dark metal, embossed with scarlet runes, and tied together with brass wire. “Bitch!” it stormed at a quailing Mrs Charlsworth. Thick streamers of bright orange smoke were belching out of its eye slits.
Rachel Handley’s arms turned incandescent. She clamped her splayed fingers over Mrs Charlsworth’s cheeks, teeth bared in exertion as she pushed in. Skin sizzled and charred below her fingertips. Mrs Charlsworth mewed in agony. The maid released her. She slumped backwards, her head lolling to one side; and she looked at Louise, smiling as tears seeped down her ruined cheeks. “Go,” she mouthed.
The grievous plea seemed to kick directly into Louise’s nervous system. She pushed her shoulders into the wall, levering herself upright.
Mrs Charlsworth grinned mirthlessly as the maid and the burly warrior closed on her to consummate their vengeance. She raised the pathetic knitting needle again.
Ribbons of white fire snaked around Rachel’s arms as she grinned at her prey. Small balls of it dripped off her fingertips, flying horizontally towards the stricken woman, eating eagerly through the starched grey uniform. A booming laugh emerged from the clinking armour, mingling with Mrs Charlsworth’s gurgles of pain.
Louise put her arm under Genevieve’s shoulder and lifted her bodily. Flashes of light and the sounds of Mrs Charlsworth’s torture flooded the corridor behind her.
I mustn’t turn back. I mustn’t.
Her fingers found the catch for the concealed door, and it swung open silently. She almost hurled Genevieve through the gap into the gloom beyond, heedless of whether anyone else was on the stairs.
The door slid shut.
“Gen? Gen!” Louise shook the petrified girl. “Gen, we have to get out of here.” There was no response. “Oh, dear Jesus.” The urge to curl into a ball and weep her troubles away was strengthening.
If I do that, I’ll die. And the baby with me.
She tightened her grip on Genevieve’s hand and hurried down the spiral stairs. At least Genevieve’s limbs were working. Though what would happen if they met another of those . . . people-creatures was another question altogether.
They’d just reached the small anteroom at the bottom of the spiral when a loud hammering began above. Louise started to run down the corridor to the storeroom. Genevieve stumbled along beside her, a low determined humming coming from her lips.
The hammering stopped, and there was the brassy thump of an explosion. Tendrils of bluish static shivered down the spiral stairs, grounding out through the floor. Red stone tiles quaked and cracked. The dimming light spheres along the ceiling sprang back to full intensity again.
“Faster, Gen,” she shouted.
They charged into the storeroom and through the green door leading to the courtyard. Merlin was standing in the wide-open gateway of the stable block, barking incessantly. Louise headed straight for him. If they could take a horse they’d be free. She could ride better than anyone else at the manor.
They were still five yards short of the stables when two people ran out of the storeroom. It was Rachel and her father (except it’s not really him, she thought desperately).
“Come back, Louise,” the dark knight called. “Come along, sweetie. Daddy wants a cuddle.”
Louise and Genevieve dashed around the gates. Merlin stared out at the yard for a second, then turned quickly and followed them inside.
Globules of white fire smashed into the stable doors, breaking apart into complex webs which probed the woodwork with the tenacity of a ghoul’s fingers. Glossy black paint blistered and vaporised, the planks began to blaze furiously.
“Undo the stall doors,” Louise called above the incendiary roar of the fire and the braying, agitated horses. She had to say it again before Genevieve fumbled with the first bolt. The horse inside the stall shot out into the aisle which ran the length of the stable.
Louise rushed for the far end of the stables. Merlin was yapping hysterically behind her. Fire had spread from the doors to straw bundled loosely in the manger. Orange sparks were flying like rain in a hurricane. Thick arms of black smoke coiled insidiously along the ceiling.
The voices from outside called again, issuing orders and promises in equal amounts. None of them were real.
Screams were adding to the clamour in the courtyard now. Quinn’s disciples had inevitably gained the upper hand; Cricklade’s few remaining free servants were being hunted and possessed without any attempt at stealth.
Louise reached the stall at the end of the stables, the one with Daddy’s magnificent black stallion, a bloodline geneered to a perfection which nineteenth-century sporting kings could only dream of. The bolt slid back easily, and she grabbed the bridle before he had a chance to arrow into the aisle. He snorted furiously at her, but allowed her to steady him. She had to stand on a bale of hay in order to mount him. There was no time for a saddle.
The fire had spread with horrendous speed. Several of the stalls were burning now, their stout old timber walls shooting out wild sulphurous flames. Merlin was backing away from them, his barking fearful. Over half a dozen horses were milling in the aisle, whinnying direly. Flames had cut them off from the stable doors, the noisy inferno pressing them back from their one exit. She couldn’t see Gen.
“Where are you?” she shouted. “Gen!”
“Here. I’m here.” The voice was coming from an empty stall.
Louise urged the stallion forwards down the aisle, yelling wildly at the panicking horses in front of her. Two of them reared up, alarmed by this new, unexpected threat. They began to move en masse towards the flames.
“Quick!” Louise yelled.
Genevieve saw her chance and sprinted out into the aisle. Louise leaned over and grabbed her. At first she thought she’d miscalculated the girl’s weight, feeling herself starting to slide downwards. But then Genevieve snatched at the stallion’s mane, causing it to neigh sharply. Just as Louise was sure her spine would snap, or she’d crash headfirst onto the aisle’s stone flagging, Genevieve levered herself up to straddle the base of the stallion’s neck.
The stable doors had been all but consumed by the eerily hot fire. Their remaining planks sagged and twisted on the glowing hinges, then lurched onto the cobbles with a loud bang.
