The slake-moth turned on Derkhan. Two of its whip arms flailed across the seven feet separating them and smacked petulantly across her back. There was an almighty cracking sound. Derkhan was thrown through the open door, her breath pushed violently through her lungs. She wailed as she fell.

“Don’t look round!” screamed Isaac. “Go! Go! I’m coming!”

He tried not to hear Barbile begging. He did not have time to reload.

As he made his way slowly for the door, praying that the creature would continue to ignore him, he watched what unfolded in the mirror.

He refused to process it. It was, for now, a mindless slick of images. Later he might consider it, if he left this house alive and found his way home, to his friends, if he survived to plan, he would think on what he was seeing.

But for now he carefully thought of nothing as he saw the slake-moth turn its attention back to the woman held fast in its arms. He thought of nothing as he saw it force open her eyes with slender simian fingers and thumbs, heard her scream until she vomited with fear and then stop all her noises very suddenly as she caught sight of the flexing patterns on the slake-moth’s wings. Saw those wings gently widen and stretch taut into a hypnotic canvas, saw Barbile’s entranced expression as her eyes widened to gaze on those morphing colours; saw her body relax and the slake-moth drool in vile anticipation, its unspeakable tongue unrolling again out of that gaping mouth and snaking its way up Barbile’s saliva-spattered shirt to her face, her eyes still glazed in idiot ecstasy at those wings. Saw the feathered tip of the tongue nuzzle gently against Barbile’s face, her nose, her ears and then shove suddenly, forcefully past her teeth into her mouth (and Isaac retched even as he tried to think of nothing), thrusting at indecent speed into her face, her eyes bulging as more and more of the tongue disappeared into her.

And then Isaac saw something flicker under the skin of her scalp, bulging and wriggling and rippling beneath her hair and flesh like an eel in mud, saw a movement that was not hers behind her eyes, and he watched mucus and tears and ichor pour from the orifices of her head as the tongue wriggled into her mind and just before he fled Isaac saw her eyes dim and go out and the slake-moth’s stomach distend as it drank her dry.

Chapter 32

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Lin was alone.

She sat in the attic, leaning back against a wall with her feet splayed like a doll’s. She watched the dust move. It was dark. The air was warm. It was sometime in the small hours, between two and four.