Nayl fired again. The las-bolts pummelled at its ribcage, but their heat and light vaporised on contact, becoming a lambent crackle that radiated out across the skeletal form, and vanished.

Nayl cursed. He stood his ground in the doorway and let go of the lasrifle, so that it dropped hard onto its sling, swinging at his waist. He drew a heavy autopistol from a chest holster, ejected the clip, racked the weapon open and took a single round from his breast pocket. He fitted it into the open receiver, slammed the slide shut and took aim with both hands.

The thing was just an arm’s length from him.

Nayl fired.

The shot struck the figure in the forehead. The skull burst like a smashed vase. Bone shards sprayed in all directions.

Headless, the figure wavered for a moment. Electric-green energy patterns coursed and flickered around its frame.

Then they winked out.

The dead bones abruptly disarticulated and collapsed like rubbish tipped out of a bucket. They fell in a heap on the parlour floor where the figure had been standing. Thin smoke curled up from the mound of bones.

Nayl lowered the pistol.

‘Get Eisenhorn,’ he said.

Twelve

TWELVE

The House of Sark

Early morning light speared in through the slit windows of the washroom on the second floor of the fortress. It was a grey day outside, but the storm had cleared, and the rain had eased back to drizzle.

Drusher was clean, but shivering. There had been no hot water to fill the tin tub, and it had taken a long time to scrub the fireplace soot out of his skin. He had a clean shirt, but his jacket and trousers were the only ones he’d brought along, and he had been forced to put them back on despite the dirt that had rubbed into the fabric.

Macks came in. She’d washed earlier, and her uniform looked clean, but her face was drawn and pale.

‘I brought you these,’ she said and held out a box of dressings for the burns on his hands.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

She looked away, then took a breath and busied herself applying salve to his palms and fingers. He held his hands out obediently. He wanted to say something, something about what had happened. And not just the horror that had overtaken them in the parlour. About everything. About their chance meeting twenty-seven years before, about their insane adventures, which, to him, included three oddly sweet years in Tycho City that had finally ended in a lot of shouting and slamming of doors.

As usual, and as then, his interpersonal skills failed him.

‘The Archenemy of mankind,’ she said eventually.

‘The what?’

‘That’s what it was,’ she said. ‘What they preach about, what they tell us to watch for. I never really thought… I never really thought it was real. But that, that was real.’