The gargoyle now stood directly in front of Lilou. Its face was more monstrous than before, its body resembling cracked stone, and its erection swung before it as if steering the way. Its yellow eyes burned brighter, and Angela realised the terrible danger Lilou had placed herself in. The small knife she held would be all but useless once this creature pounced.

Angela snatched the chair leg from Bone and stepped up beside Lilou, raising the bent metal back over her shoulder.

“Handle’s stuck!” Bone said behind them.

“You better stop,” Angela said to the nymph.

“If I stop—”

There was another bright flash, an explosion that turned the gargoyle’s eyes from yellow to white. A heavy impact thudded through her feet from behind, and Angela already knew what she would see when she turned around.

Sammi was slumped across the head of the wall, dregs of white fire dripping from her hand, falling slowly to the ground as if made from feathers.

The handle to the big fridge glowed, and Bone winced as he grabbed it and worked it back and forth. With a creak it clicked back into its housing.

“We’re in!” he said, and he swung the door open two feet before it stuck on the uneven ground.

Angela took a deep breath against the stink she expected to emerge, but whatever might have been inside forty years ago had rotted down to nothing. There was only darkness.

Lilou backed up against the door, and when the gargoyle followed Bone stepped around it and shoved it through the opening.

“What about the others?” Lilou asked.

“You stay and keep watch here,” Bone said. He shoved the door closed and waited until Lilou added her weight to its outer surface. “Me and your friend here will get them. Right?”

Angela nodded. She caught Sammi’s eye and, exhausted and drained, the girl still managed a smile.

In her eyes Angela saw a sort of madness, and she had the terrible feeling that she should fear her niece more than these mad, recently woken Kin.

Taking care to avoid tooth and claw, they dragged Mohserran and the spitting, shivering werewolf across the dusty ground and managed to force them through the doorway into the metal structure. There was a damp, forgotten smell to the fridge. It was larger than Angela had thought, but still barely big enough for the three Kin to be contained.

Every second they pulled and pushed, she expected the werewolf or the strange man Mohserran to shake off their fugue and bite back. Burning yellow, their eyes displayed a depth of madness that terrified her more than their teeth and claws.

With the door shut behind them, lock braced with the metal chair leg and loose soil shoved back in and compacted against the structure, her attention turned to her niece. She was sitting up on the wall now, and she looked shrunken by what had happened.

“I did it,” Sammi said.