Yes. Suddenly, there it was. Borne to them on the wind, almost a part of the wind’s wail. Soft but piercing, a preternatural squall. More than one voice, it seemed. A chorus of voices. A chorus of tormented voices, of subterranean laments breaking free into the swirling air. Now, as they cocked their ears, it strengthened, became one high, screeching yowl, a single, tortured stridor. Rising, blooming, peaking. Then bursting, splintering again into that pitiful choir. It went on and on.

Now am I come where many a plaining voice smites on mine ear, thought Harper Albright, every muscle tight. There shrieks are heard, there lamentations, moans, and blasphemies …

And even Storm whispered, “Jeepers. It sounds like the damned.”

“Yes,” she replied aloud. “A very encouraging vocalization.”

And then it stopped. It faded into the wind until they couldn’t tell it from the wind. Until the wind cried alone, all around them, forlorn. Harper narrowed her eyes behind her streaming glasses, peered intently past crypt and statue, peered and peered at that lump of snow, that hunk of venison, on the wall.

“Do you think …?” Storm began to say.

And the creature took both of them completely by surprise.

There was no warning. A silent enormity of movement—a fluid leap, as of the night itself—and it was on the wall. Not where the venison was, not where they’d expected it. It was crouching, poised, to their left, not five yards away, just above their heads. Its carnivore eyes glittered down at them.

Storm threw himself in front of Harper, his arms spread to defend her. It was a lovely gesture. It warmed the cockles of her heart. But this was no time for warm cockles. She’d lifted her stick. Her right hand gripped the dragon head. Her left was wrapped round its shaft. She drew the two apart to reveal a flashing length of stainless blade.

“Never mind me,” she growled. “Take pictures!”

She rejoiced to see him go at it. All courage, steely as her sword. Moving at her command on the instant. Snapping the plastic bag from one camera, snapping open its case even as he pulled the strap loose over his shoulder.

Harper felt a moment’s anxiety. The cameras—all things mechanical—were as mysterious to her as the White Horse of Uffington. But Storm raised the device expertly, his hand shielding the lens,.

There was a flash. It caught the creature. And the creature snarled, glared lightning strokes of white death across the corner of the snowy graveyard, into the camera’s single eye.

Harper let fly with her double bark of a laugh: “Ha-ha! Oh, that’s our cover art, I think. Well done, well done. ‘So one tracks love, whose breath is deadlier …’ ” She had a weakness for quotation.

The beast shifted its panting bulk their way.