Books Of Blood Vol 6

He levelled the gun at her. She threw back her head suddenly, her face contracting, and unloosed a sound of which, had Harry not heard it from a human throat, he would not have believed the larynx capable. It rang down the corridor and the stairs, in search of some waiting ear.

'Butterfield is here,' said Valentin flatly.

Harry nodded. In the same moment she came towards him, her features grotesquely contorted. She was strong and quick; a blur of venom that took him off-guard. He heard Valentin tell him to kill her, before she transformed. It took him a moment to grasp the significance of this, by which time she had her teeth at his throat. One of her hands was a cold vice around his wrist; he sensed strength in her sufficient to powder his bones. His fingers were already numbed by her grip; he had no time to do more than depress the trigger. The gun went off. Her breath on his throat seemed to gush from her. Then she loosed her hold on him, and staggered back. The shot had blown open her abdomen.

He shook to see what he had done. The creature, for all its shriek, still resembled a woman he might have loved.

'Good,' said Valentin, as the blood hit the office floor in gouts. 'Now it must show itself.'

Hearing him, she shook her head. 'This is all there is to show,' she said.

Harry threw the gun down. 'My God,' he said softly, 'it's her .

Dorothea grimaced. The blood continued to come. 'Some part of her,' she replied.

'Have you always been with them then?' Valentin asked.

'Of course not.'

'Why then?'

'Nowhere to go ...' she said, her voice fading by the syllable. 'Nothing to believe in. All lies. Everything: lies.'

'So you sided with Butterfield?'

'Better Hell,' she said, 'than a false Heaven.'

'Who taught you that?' Harry murmured.

'Who do you think?' she replied, turning her gaze on him. Though her strength was going out of her with the blood, her eyes still blazed. 'You're finished, D'Amour,' she said. 'You, and the demon, and Swa

Despite the contempt in her words he couldn't stand and watch her bleed to death. Ignoring Valentin's imperative that he keep clear, he went across to her. As he stepped within range she lashed out at him with astonishing force. The blow blinded him a moment; he fell against the tall filing cabinet, which toppled sideways. He and it hit the ground together. It spilled papers; he, curses. He was vaguely aware that the woman was moving past him to escape, but he was too busy keeping his head from spi

Was this such a dream; this insipid fellow in his fine suit? If not, how had he gained access to the basement, when the door was locked and bolted? He asked no questions of the intruder. Something about the way the man stared at him baffled his tongue. 'Chaplin,' the fellow said, his thin lips barely moving, 'I'd like you to open the furnace.'

In other circumstances he might well have picked up his shovel and clouted the stranger across the head. The furnace was his baby. He knew, as no-one else knew, its quirks and occasional petulance; he loved, as no-one else loved, the roar it gave when it was content; he did not take kindly to the proprietorial tone the man used. But he'd lost the will to resist. He picked up a rag and opened the peeling door, offering its hot heart to this man as Lot had offered his daughters to the stranger in Sodom.

Butterfield smiled at the smell of heat from the furnace. From three floors above he heard the woman crying out for help; and then, a few moments later, a shot. She had failed. He had thought she would. But her life was forfeit anyway. There was no loss in sending her into the breach, in the slim chance that she might have coaxed the body from its keepers. It would have saved the inconvenience of a full-scale attack, but no matter. To have Swa

As the echoes of the shot died above, he took the black lacquer box from his jacket pocket. The janitor's eyes were turned heavenward. He too had heard the shot.

'It was nothing,' Butterfield told him. 'Stoke the fire.'

Chaplin obeyed. The heat in the cramped basement rapidly grew. The janitor began to sweat; his visitor did not. He stood mere feet from the open furnace door and gazed into the brightness with impassive features. At last, he seemed satisfied.

'Enough,' he said, and opened the lacquer box. Chaplin thought he glimpsed movement in the box, as though it were full to the lid with maggots, but before he had a chance to look more closely both the box and contents were pitched into the flames.

'Close the door,' Butterfield said. Chaplin obeyed. 'You may watch over them awhile, if it pleases you. They need the heat. It makes them mighty.'

He left the janitor to keep his vigil beside the furnace, and went back up to the hallway. He had left the street door open, and a pusher had come in out of the cold to do business with a client. They bartered in the shadows, until the pusher caught sight of the lawyer.

'Don't mind me,' Butterfield said, and started up the stairs. He found the widow Swa

'We're in trouble,' said Valentin. 'I hear noises downstairs. Is there any other way out of here?'

Harry sat on the floor, leaning against the toppled cabinet, and tried not to think of Dorothea's face as the bullet found her, or of the creature he was now reduced to needing.

'There's a fire escape,' he said, 'it runs down to the back of the building.'

'Show me,' said Valentin, attempting to haul him to his feet.

'Keep your hands off me!'

Valentin withdrew, bruised by the rebuffal. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'Maybe I shouldn't hope for your acceptance. But I do.'

Harry said nothing, just got to his feet amongst the litter of reports and photographs. He'd had a dirty life: spying on adulteries for vengeful spouses; dredging gutters for lost children; keeping company with scum because it rose to the top, and the rest just drowned. Could Valentin's soul be much grimier?

'The fire escape's down the hall,' he said.

'We can still get Swa

Til help you,' he said, avoiding sight of the creature. 'Just don't expect love and affection.'

If it were possible to hear a smile, that's what he heard.

They want this over and done with before dawn,' the demon said.

'It can't be far from that now.'

'An hour, maybe,' Valentin replied. 'But it's enough.

Either way, it's enough.'

The sound of the furnace soothed Chaplin; its rumbles and rattlings were as familiar as the complaint of his own intestines. But there was another sound growing behind the door, the like of which he'd never heard