‘The police…’ said Dennie, but that was as far as she got.
Everett’s cannibal grin widened as he swept the knife across Lauren’s throat.
* * *
David was being chewed. He was face down in the dirt under Gar’s full weight, and the only thing stopping Gar from taking off his shoulder and left arm along with it was his jacket, which had so far resisted being torn. He actually heard one of the bastard’s teeth squeal as it scraped his shoulder blade, like a carpentry nail being dragged along glass. Gar’s breathing was full of gasps and crackles, and David hoped that he’d suffered a punctured lung.
Viggo came at Gar again, and he was forced to relinquish his human prey once more. Weakened as Gar was by his chest wound, the dog easily bore him to the ground, and it was all David could do to flop to one side as they came down right next to him like falling giants, with Viggo’s forelegs planted on Gar’s chest and his muzzle working at the boar-man’s throat – worrying, tearing, flinging pieces of flesh, and fan-sprays of blood while Gar squealed and beat at him weakly and more weakly still until he wasn’t moving at all. But Viggo kept snarling and ripping all the same.
David was dimly aware that somewhere Dennie was screaming, but there was nothing he could do about it.
That was when the allotments were bathed in blue flashing lights and the sound of sirens.
* * *
Dennie screamed, but it wasn’t just her voice screaming. Sabrina was screaming with her, screaming through her, and for a moment she was there in the shed for all to see, raging and accusatory. Everett reeled in bafflement at the sight, letting go of Lauren, who slumped forward onto the blood-soaked earth, making hideous gargling sounds as her lifeblood jetted into it.
‘What is this?’ he snarled. ‘What is this!?’
Then police sirens split the night and a patrol car slewed to a halt diagonally across the neighbouring allotment. Doors slammed, radios barked, voices shouted.
‘The end for you,’ Sabrina told him. ‘Mud and worms and nothing else, Deserter.’
‘NO!’ He tossed the knife aside and produced a pistol, then shoved past her and out into the night.
‘Everett?’ cried Ardwyn. ‘Everett, don’t you dare leave me!’
But he was gone, and the door swung shut behind him. His pistol cracked once, twice, and there were more shouts.
Dennie fell to her knees by Lauren, whose terrified eyes were rolling in her shock-pale face. She was trying to say something but could only make wet sounds. Dennie clamped her hands to the appalling wound, her hands instantly slicked – thinking how hot the girl’s blood was – and screamed, ‘Help us! For God’s sake somebody please help us!’ The headache was building, harder and faster than before, and blood was pouring from her nose to mix with the gore.
‘Your God,’ sneered Mother. ‘Your bloodless, impotent God. Meet mine.’
She raised the bone horn to her mouth and blew.
* * *
It was an act of pure desperation. Ardwyn had no idea whether four vessels would be enough. The replenishment had always required six to be complete, but that had been with swine. Human blood might be more potent, who knew? The bone carnyx might summon Moccus whole and entire, or not at all, or as some half-finished thing. She might be arrested, or even killed by men with guns. The only thing she knew for certain was that it was over, at least like this, and that she could not leave him in the ground to languish half-born. So she blew the bone carnyx and summoned her god to life – whatever form that took.
* * *
Dennie felt the ground begin to convulse and did her best to twist her body around to shield Lauren while trying to maintain the hold on her throat. The girl’s shuddering was becoming weaker. Sabrina had disappeared, or retreated into her again, and the shed had resumed its normal dimensions as her sight left Dennie. Hands flailed upward through the blood-mired soil and something with arms and legs and a head but otherwise obscured by the filth that hung in clots from it, crawled like a lizard out of a swamp to stand, trembling and weak, at the edge of the pit.
‘My… lord?’ murmured Mother.
Its head swivelled towards her, and then back to regard Dennie.
Dennie knew those eyes. The last time she’d seen them, they’d been glazed with death and staring up at the shovelful of soil that she’d dumped on them in this very spot. The fact that they had subsequently been exhumed and reburied elsewhere didn’t change the truth that this place was where the rootstock had originally been planted – all the innocent blood that had been spilled here since was the fruiting scion, and this hybrid thing that glared at her with Colin Neary’s eyes above a tusk-filled muzzle was the result.
‘That’s not possible…’ she whispered.
‘Interfering old witch,’ he snarled, and reached for her. ‘Her blood is mine!’ The creature wasn’t reaching for herself, Dennie realised, but Lauren.
‘You’ll have to get through me first,’ she replied, and something of Sabrina must have still been in her voice because the creature hesitated.
‘You there, in the shed!’ shouted a woman from outside. ‘This is the police! Armed units are on the way! Step out now!’
‘My lord Moccus,’ said Ardwyn. ‘There’s no time. You must leave now while you can.’
Moccus
