Headlights swept in and she turned. A taxi slowed to a stop, and the driver got out. He looked at her, looked at Vile, looked at the churned-up road. He didn’t ask any questions, he just stood there like he was waiting for an explanation. She didn’t like that. She didn’t like him. She stepped forward to tear him in two and then Vile grabbed her jacket from behind, lifted her off her feet and slammed her through the bonnet of the car.

Her face crunched into the engine block, and he hauled her out before she even knew what was happening, and hurled her through the window of a Burger King. She hit a table and flipped sideways to the floor, coming to a stop in the dark as an alarm started up, so loud that it pierced the world. She got to her hands and knees, spitting blood, and the shadows snaked out, seized her wrists, and she flew back out through the broken window, hitting the ruined taxi, denting the passenger-side door. Above the alarm, she heard the driver screaming as he ran away, and then Vile reached down, closed his fingers around her throat.

Her held her off the ground with his left hand and hit her with his right. His fist was a block of stone, showing her explosions of bright light every time it connected. She needed to stop him before he punched her brain out through her skull. She’d done that once. It was funnier when it happened to other people.

She took hold of his left wrist with both her hands, and squeezed. Vile’s head tilted. He reinforced the armour on his forearm, but Darquesse just squeezed harder. Finally, he had to release his grip, and she smacked him under the chin. He hurtled backwards off his feet and she launched herself into the air, smashed into him, flying low. The street whipped by underneath. She got a hand around his throat and dipped, smashed the back of his head into the steps that led up to Eason’s bookshop. The steps cracked under the impact and Darquesse smashed his head down again, and again. A pillar of darkness erupted from his chest like a piston, throwing her to the pavement. He stood and she waved an arm.

The energy that enveloped him would have turned rock to dust, but all it did to Vile was send him staggering to the metal shutter covering the shop window. The shutter melted, the glass shattered and another alarm rang out. Darquesse leaped to the top of the steps and barged into him, taking them both through the window into the shop.