By the time I finish binding her wrists and ankles, I'm beginning to feel oddly weak. The noises outside the door to the crypt have died down. Go to sleep, I tell my feeders; they crawl and writhe outside in the tunnels, happy and replete with the feast of new flesh, and need little urging to fall into a state of torpor. It's becoming hard to think clearly. I know there's something I ought to be doing, but . . . oh, that. I take the ring-bound black folder from Iris's improvised altar and tuck it under my arm, then I look at my patient feeder, who stands by the altar with a vacant expression, his eyes luminous in the dark. Go to the entrance to the chapel. Open the doors. A truck will come with men. Lead them here, then sleep.

He turns and shuffles towards the door, grateful and obedient to the Eater of Souls for granting him this brief existence. Then I am alone in the crypt with Iris. Who has begun to recover from her tasering, and tries to squirm aside as I walk past her to the bed. "Hasta la vista," I tell her: "Give my regards to the Auditors."

Then I keel over on the dusty black satin sheets, dead to the world.

THERE IS CHAOS IN THE CHAPEL AS THE CULTISTS DESPERATELY prepare to defend the perimeter.

On the roof, the surviving guards—Benjamin is not among them—have taken up positions around the corners, pointing their guns out at the sea of bodies that slowly shuffle towards the building. Below them, the worshipers on the ground mill and rush in near-terror until three of their number, better organized and equipped than the rest, gather them into groups and set the unarmed to dragging pews into position to form an improvised barricade, while those who bear arms prepare to defend against the creeping wave of darkness.

Crouching behind the gargoyle at the southwest corner, Michael Digby (orthodontic technician, from Chelmsford) glances sideways at the cowled head of his principale, the sergeant-at-arms responsible for the coven's guard. "What are we going to do, sir?" he asks quietly.

"What does it look like, soldier?" Clive Morton (retail manager, from Dorking) studies the darkness with dilated pupils.

Digby looks back to the field of fire in front of the chapel as a brief snap of gunfire knocks over a clump of drunkenly walking figures that have shuffled out of the long shadows cast by the floodlights in the chapel doorway. "Looks like zombies, sir. Thousands of 'em."

"Right. And we're going to hold out here until dawn, or until All-Highest figures out how to drive them away, or we run out of ammunition. That answer your question?"

"You mean the only plan is to stand behind a few feet of church benches?"

"Beats having your soul eaten ..."