Amber got to the other side of the road while he stopped to allow a car to pass, then she clambered awkwardly over a low fence, got out of sight behind the house there, and shifted. The pain was manageable once again and she started running, her mind alight with possibilities. She hurdled a low wall and carried on. She could hear him behind her, the Narrow Man, running. Catching up.

Good. Let him.

She jumped another wall, landed in another backyard. She ran for the patio door, her scales prickling against her skin as she put her head down and crashed through the glass. She stumbled against the dining table. No alarm went off. No one cried out in shock. Beyond the tinkling of the glass, the house was quiet. She looked back as the Narrow Man dropped into the yard. He saw her, hefted the axe.

Grimacing against the pain in her shoulder, Amber ran for the hallway, grabbing a poker from beside the fireplace as she did so. She experienced a moment of blind panic when she couldn’t figure out how to unlock the front door, but then stumbled out, pulling the door shut behind her.

A car passed on the quiet street, but she didn’t revert and she didn’t run. Instead, she stepped sideways, pressed herself against the wall, and crouched.

A moment later, the front door opened again. The Narrow Man was Oscar Moreno once again, and he stepped out, still smiling, still holding the axe, his gaze directed at the street, expecting to see her running.

But Amber wasn’t running. Not anymore.

She straightened and swung the poker with all of her demon strength. It caught Moreno across the back of the head and he went down, went straight down to his knees, the axe clattering to the ground.

She hit him again, heard the poker crunch against his skull, and Moreno slumped face down. Blood began to mat his hair.

In this form, he bleeds.

Amber screamed at him, a scream of triumph fuelled by fear and hate, and brought the poker down a third time. She would have stood there and split his head wide open if a police cruiser hadn’t swung round the corner. Before the snarl had even escaped her lips, the cruiser had braked and Novak was jumping out.

Amber dropped the poker and ran back inside the house, into the dining room towards the broken patio door. Two other cops, Woodbury and Duncan, were closing in. She stumbled backwards, turned left, ran down a short corridor into a bathroom, backed out and ran into a bedroom. She slammed the door, looked around. Novak passed the only window, his gun drawn.

Amber whirled, searching for a weapon. A shotgun, baseball bat, anything. She tapped her pockets. Found a key.