Ben’s parents had been right. He had no reason to fear myths and monsters. It was the people. It had always been the people.

Aoife was all he cared about now. Only one person in the world could lead the Tír Mallachts to her – Sparling. And one of their creepers was outside his home night after night, waiting to be seen. And what happens then? Do they raid his fortress of riches for all its worth? What if amongst Sparling’s effects there was a diary or written record of their project?

Benjamin French has a three-year old daughter that he chose to keep secret.

A single sentence was all it took.

Somewhere, far from Ben’s thoughts, the celebratory din was dissipating. He hadn’t even noticed the change. He saw only Chloe’s bloodied, unrecognisable remains and recalled the sight of the creeper raising and dropping that hammer. But now he imagined Aoife’s little legs stretched out, lifeless, beneath him.

‘And now,’ the wasp declared with his beady eyes set on Ben like a hangman paid in advance, ‘we have the one with all the questions. I tried telling you to leave, but did you listen? Three nights you’ve seen him, and I think you know by now that this will be your last.’

Dying didn’t worry him. The pain Ben could deal with. His failures, those duties left wanting, were his only concern – Aoife’s safety and the loss of the one good thing he stood to leave behind.

Still the men held him down, their limbs coiled around him like hoops of steel.

‘Come now,’ the wasp said to the creeper, stroking his skull like a pet, ‘you aren’t finished yet. No hammer this time,’ he added to the men who had held him up. ‘He needs to do this himself.’

They each took an arm and lifted him tenderly up from Chloe’s body. The creeper was giddy now. His eyes were two gross eggs, their pupils a black dilated dot, ogling the next sacrifice. Ben no longer struggled. Any one of those three brutes anchoring him into the mud could have held him without the others.

But he wasn’t done. Not yet. In his surrender he saw his only shot at redemption.

‘Just let me go,’ he said, barely above a whisper. ‘I’m not going to stop you.’

The wasp strode over to him. His eyes pinched tight. All those vile etchings on his skin coalesced into that smile Ben had come to detest.

‘What did you say?’

‘Just fucking kill me, you asshole,’ Ben replied.

The wasp’s gaze lingered on him, considering his conviction. This was what the bastard wanted – for his creeper to kill without weapon or assistance. His bloody rite of passage.

‘You submit to your death?’ he asked.

Ben spat in his face. ‘Fuck you! Just get it over with.’