What would she do in those wild places, that demon child, without streets and shops, without Woolworth’s and the graveyard?

Rachaela, seated on the ground, her back against a tree, could only watch, the witness, as now she watched the Scarabae.

Her body was a medley of pains and she wept from pain, but the Scarabae, with half their garments scorched off them, only stood in a little loose group above the house, and watched it flame and watched it fall, as perhaps they had watched other fires and fallings.

Rachaela, in her agonized exhaustion, did not go near them, did not consider them. Did not care.

Yet at her wrist her watch ticked on.

The darkness was on the land like mourning, but in an hour it would be dawn. The sun would rise.

What then?

About the Author

TANITH LEE is one of the most respccted and best loved writers of fantasy fiction. She has won the August Derleth Award and twice won the World Fantasy Award. With Dark Dance, her first horror novel, she takes an exciting new direction in her writing and establishes herself as a major new voice in dark fiction She lives in England with the writer John Kaiine and one black-and-white cat