The sixth-order demon in the nearest sector of her elaborate perimeter had finally finished thinking through its situation and realised that Walden was the person stopping it from enjoying its night out in London. It had been in the real world for long enough that it was starting to reify spontaneously. When it drew towards her, it appeared to be a ghostly figure outlined in a blurred pale drift of snowflakes. Meltwater dripped in its wake. Pedestrians stopped, pointed, aimed phones to take video—phones? Were they crazy?—and Walden readied a banishment. What had happened to Mark? A little of the competence he displayed on their planar patrols would be really very useful right about now.

No mercy, the Phoenix whispered.

Walden cast.

Nothing complicated. Complicated had to be saved for the perimeters she was still maintaining. A straightforward banishment like a blast of strong wind. Another. It’s weak, murmured the Phoenix. It doesn’t know what to be. Melting snowflakes dripped from the demon’s inchoate, half-real shape. Somewhere behind Walden there were sirens shrilling, a long rising wail that joined the growing hunt-song in her thoughts. It does not see me yet, the Phoenix crooned, exultant. It will not flee in time.

Kill it. Eat it.

Walden’s next spell was not a banishment, but a slash of golden claws.

The demon disintegrated. Immediately, without pause for thought, Walden activated the siphoning spells in her other set of tattoos, the ones on her left arm.

A swirl of snowflakes and shadow. The lines of spellwriting among the tattooed flowers on her left arm prickled, but did not burn. She tasted chill at the back of her throat, as if she’d suddenly swallowed an ice cube. The demon was gone, disintegrated into raw magic; and the magic was gone, because Walden had consumed it. The Phoenix luxuriated, triumphant, in power possessed for its own.

Then the Marshals arrived.

chapter twenty-two A SLIGHTLY REGRETTABLE DECISION

The Marshals made up for taking nearly fifteen minutes to get there by being extremely busy and officious once they turned up. The remaining demons—only four of them, because Laura had taken out one of hers while Walden was facing the snowflake-creature—were swiftly and efficiently despatched by a double squad of KMVs. Someone who must have been Laura’s partner turned up and joined her, and all three hunting pairs switched into patrol mode: Laura and her partner ranging the street, a second pair checking in and out of shops and alleyways, and the third stamping their feet in the cold for a few moments before someone in overalls turned up and levered up a manhole cover for them so they could climb down into the dim underbelly of the city.