We stood shoulder to shoulder, our weapons held out before us. Subway Sue sat down suddenly inside the circle and covered her face with her hands. The scavengers were running towards us, bounding across the broken ground, driving forward from every side at once. Wave upon wave, in numbers too great to count. If there’d been anywhere to run, I’d have run. But the bright pillar of light seemed as far away as ever, and we were surrounded. So all that was left was to stand and fight, and, if need be, die well.

Hopefully, someone else would find a way to get to the tower in time, and stop it. I wished . . . well. There were so many things I wished I’d done, or said. So many things I meant to do . . . but I suppose that’s always true, no matter when you die. I glanced at Molly, and we shared one last sweet, savage smile. And then the scavengers hit us.

They reached Giles first, and he cut them down with effortless ease. His long blade swept back and forth as though it was weightless, the incredibly keen edge slicing through flesh and bone alike. Dark blood spurted and the scavengers fell, but they never made a sound. Giles laughed happily, doing what he did best, and glorying in it. Mr. Stab reached out casually with his blade, cutting throats, piercing bellies, stabbing eyes with graceful skill. He smiled too, but there was no human emotion in his eyes, only a dark, desperate need forever unsatisfied. The Sarjeant-at-Arms stamped and thrust with brutal efficiency, killing everything that came within reach. He was frowning, as though engaged in necessary, distasteful work.

Molly and I fought side by side, hacking and stabbing at the horribly unfinished creatures that kept looming up before us. The scavengers had no sense of tactics, or even self-preservation. They just came at us with clawed hands brittle as dead twigs, their rotting eyes glowing, dark saliva dripping from their circular mouths. There was nothing in them but the need to kill and feed. To drag us down and tear us apart, and never know or care who it was they were destroying.

The dead piled up around us, the flesh already decaying, the dark blood eagerly soaked up by the parched stone ground. My whole body ached from the strain of wielding the silver blade without pause or rest, of hacking and cutting through flesh like mud, that seemed to suck and catch at the blade. I was bruised and cut, my clothes torn, sweat and blood running down my face. I could hear Molly breathing harshly beside me, and Giles singing some obscure battle song to my other side. There was something almost inhuman about his cheerful refusal to be stopped or even slowed by the impossible numbers set before him. He killed and killed, and was always ready for more, like a starving man at a feast. It crossed my mind then that, in some ways, Giles Deathstalker was even scarier than Mr. Stab.