By the light of the torch fastened under the barrel of Macks’ heavy weapon, Drusher saw that some kind of energy discharge was crackling over the walking bones, like a faint bioluminescence. It was an electric-green, which reminded him of deep-sea leachfish, or the cave worms, Nematodus cryptus, that he had catalogued in Southern Gersha. The glow came and went, never totally present. For a moment, it shimmered around arm bones, and he saw the brief, ghostly traceries of veins and capillaries. He saw phantom tendons and intercostals come and go across stained ribs. He saw spectral organs pulse in the abdominal void. Some kind of energetic pattern, a light-echo of the lost soft organics. Green pinpricks lit in the empty orbits of the skull sockets, the ghosts of eyes.

‘If you don’t answer, then we’re done,’ said Drusher. ‘This will be good night. I won’t allow you to come any closer. I have a gun. It will shatter what little is left of you.’

The skeletal thing took another wavering step closer.

‘I warned you,’ said Drusher. Very calmly, he thumbed off the weapon’s safety, braced it in a low grip because he knew it would kick, and fired.

In the tight confines of the passageway, the boom was deafening. The blast hit the figure in the sternum.

The explosive force dissipated like steam. Drusher heard flecks of shot patter onto the stone floor, all force spent. The figure kept coming, as though nothing had happened.

‘Throne,’ said Drusher. He charged the pump grip and fired again, then repeated quickly. Each shot blew out like vapour as it reached the advancing thing.

Only now did fear begin to register in Valentin Drusher. He felt it creep into his joints like frost, numbing him. He got the first taste of bitter metal on his tongue.

He fired one more shot, then ran into the parlour and slammed the door.

Eleven

ELEVEN

At the Threshold

He locked the door behind him. As an afterthought, he dragged one of the old armchairs over and shoved it against the door.

Macks was staring at him. Her eyes were red, and she wiped at her dripping nose with her sleeve.

‘We, um,’ he began.

‘Did you see it?’ she whispered. ‘You saw it too?’

He nodded.

‘I shot it,’ he said. ‘Several times.’

‘Did you…’ she asked, her voice very small, ‘did you kill it?’

‘Not… no,’ he said. ‘Not really at all. I don’t think it can die, because it’s not alive. Something odd happened with your gun. Is it loaded… I mean, did you put some kind of blanks in it?’

‘What are you even saying?’ she gasped at him, incredulous.

‘Blanks, you know… pooofff!’ he said. ‘The shots didn’t do any damage. Like they were just dummy rounds.’

Macks swallowed hard. She took a step forwards and snatched the gun from his hands.