CHAPTER SEVEN

 

The life of the park went on around her: women walking children, men walking dogs, a group of students tossing a Frisbee, languid in the humid heat now that the rain had passed. Anya kept her gaze on them and not on Karamov as the big Russian walked towards her.

Was he - yes, he was going to sit on the bench right beside her, the one she'd deliberately picked because it was nearest to the water tower.

Both Tom and Belle were elsewhere, out of sight of Karamov and the protection he'd brought with him. The bodyguards were keeping their distance - probably part of the agreement with whoever Karamov was meeting - but Anya was crawlingly aware of their presence. The slightest hint that she wasn't just an innocent tourist, and they'd come swarming. Damn Tomas anyway, for landing her in this on her own!

Beside her, she felt Karamov shift then shift again, probably unable to get his bulk comfortable on the wooden bench. Or maybe he was nervous. He'd been sweating like a pig as he approached, dark patches of moisture in the armpits of his ugly blue-and-yellow shirt and in the crotch of his cotton trousers, and a sour cloud of body odour had engulfed her as he sat down. Anya eased herself away from him, so that his flabby, moist thigh was no longer resting against hers.

He shot her an irritated look. She pretended she hadn't seen it, that she was engrossed in the tinny music blaring out of her iPod headphones. It was a nice little device, a recent invention. The music fed out, audible only to those around her. It was amazing how easy people found it to ignore someone with a personal stereo, as if they were inhabiting a slightly different world. The headphones' real input, meanwhile, came from the directional mic in one of her blouse's buttons. If Karamov stayed within her sightline, she should be able to hear what he said.

He shifted again, glanced at her one last time, then settled back with a sigh. It looked like he hadn't rumbled her. Typical of his kind of Russian, she'd found. It never occurred to them that a woman might be anything more threatening than arm candy.

Who was he here to meet, though? She leaned back casually and glanced around her.

Coming up the path to the left was a very tall man leading a tiny, fluffy dog with a big blue bow in its tail. He looked absurd, and from his face she could see that he knew it. Probably not him.

Further out, sitting on the grass, a group of three young people sunbathed. One of them was reading, book held over her eyes to shield them from the newly emerged sun. Definitely not them.

From the right this time, a small, pinch-faced young woman approached. She was pretty but pale, and her eyes squinted as if she wasn't used to daylight. Anya looked away - not her either.

Except then she felt a shadow fall across her, and when she allowed herself to glance upwards she saw that the girl had stopped right in front of Karamov.

"Hello, Mr Karamov," she said. Her Russian was heavily accented. Anya's own wasn't good enough to know its origin, but she guessed somewhere rural and remote.

Karamov's eyebrows rose in amused recognition. "Natasha!"

She nodded sharply. "If you like."

Karamov leered, stretching his fleshy jowls wide. "It's lovely to see you, darling, but I really am very busy. Maybe we can have some more fun together later."

"You're busy meeting me," Natasha said. "I summoned you here."

Anya could hear in the woman's voice that she liked saying summoned, that she enjoyed its suggestion of control.

Karamov seemed too shocked by her words to protest them. "You?"

"Me. You've fucked up, Karamov." Natasha's voice was acrid with hatred. Could he hear how much this woman despised him?

"Not here," he hissed. "Walk with me." He levered himself out of the bench, leaving a sweat stain on the wood. Then he grabbed Natasha's arm and pulled her towards the water tower.

Now the voices were only coming to Anya through the headphones. "So our mutual friend has been watching me a while, eh?" Karamov said. "I guess I should have expected it. But this is his fuck-up, not mine. He was the one who arranged the transfer point."

Natasha shrugged, a twitch of her bony shoulders towards her ears. "And it was your bodyguards who were supposed to secure the venue."

"It's gone, that's what matters. We both need to get it back. Does this mean you've got no more idea who's taken it than I have?"

Natasha rocked back on her heels. "Ah, so you don't know. That changes things, of course."

"You thought I had something to do with it?"

"Even you wouldn't be stupid enough to double-cross us. But we thought you might know who was responsible. Perhaps some enemy of yours."

"I don't have enemies. No living ones, anyway."

Natasha laughed. It was a horrible sound, a gloating gurgle, and even Karamov seemed to sense the danger in it. Anya saw him take a step back, releasing the woman's arm.

"You've got some enemies now," she said. "You know too much, and you're worth too little."

While he was still gathering himself to respond, she lifted something to her lips - and a piercing, unbearably high-pitched whistle screeched through Anya's headphones.

Over by the water tower, the woman smiled around the whistle as the note died. "And by the way," she said. "My name is Valeria, not Natasha."

There was a moment's silence, then another sound took the whistle's place - a high, inhuman howl. Anya couldn't find its source until she saw the man she'd noticed earlier, the tall man with the little dog. The animal was pulling so hard at its leash it actually dragged the man a pace or two. Its mouth was open, spittle hanging off its small white fangs, and suddenly it didn't look so funny.

As Anya watched, the little dog gave one final tug and its leash flew out of the man's hands. The moment it was free, the animal flew over the grass towards Karamov.

And behind it, from every corner of the park, a hundred other dogs raced after.

 

There was a moment of darkness, and then a dull clank as the lights came on, neon strips in the ceiling. It was Raphael who'd thrown the switch, a metal lever on the wall of the large, white-tiled room. The old man was smiling, still looking absent-mindedly amiable. But the hand holding the semi-automatic pointed at Morgan was absolutely steady.

Morgan spun round, knowing the door was right behind him.

So was another gun. A round-faced, thick-lipped young man waved it at him, the universal gesture for "take a step back".

Morgan stumbled a little as he complied, and saw the young man's finger twitch on the trigger, a sheen of nervous sweat glittering on his forehead.

"Easy, Vadim," Raphael snapped. "Morgan isn't going to do anything unwise, are you?"

Morgan shook his head as he backed away, all the while calculating distances and strategies. He was ten feet from Raphael, fifteen from Vadim. The old man was the obvious target, but Morgan knew that he was the real threat. The boy was unsure of himself. He was the one who could be tricked, maybe manoeuvred into a position where he was blocking Raphael's line of fire...

"Stay where you are please, Morgan," Raphael said, as if he'd read his thoughts.

Morgan nodded, holding his hands away from his sides as he let the tension in his body relax. The old man was too dangerous to play games with, at least until he'd got a better sense of what was going on. He took the chance to look around him instead.

The room might once have been a laboratory. Old, grooved benches and rickety stalls lined its walls, but they didn't seem to be serving their original purpose. The entire central area had been cleared to leave twenty square feet of dark wooden floorboards. At first Morgan took the patterns on them for dirt or decay, but after a second his eyes resolved them into elaborate runes written in chalk. The surrounding benches were crowded with junk. He spotted statues, elaborately carved in ivory, one a horned man, another of a heavily pregnant woman. Nearby, an old-fashioned telescope was resting against the skull of something that might have been a monkey or a man. A jar next to it held the pitiful, deformed remains of a human foetus.

Morgan managed a twisted grin at Raphael. "Doesn't look much like a library to me."

"Indeed," Raphael said. "Nor do you look very much like an employee of Karamov's to me."

"You were the buyer for the book, weren't you?"

Raphael nodded, smiling almost apologetically. But even when he lowered his head, he kept his eyes trained unblinkingly on Morgan, and his gun hand never wavered.

Morgan didn't need Tomas there to tell him he'd been an idiot.

 

Anya ran towards Karamov the second he started screaming. There were three dogs on him already, and more were streaming across the grass, howling as they charged.

When Anya was twenty paces away she saw him stamp his foot to crush the head of the smallest dog, the absurd little Pekingese. There was a splatter of gore, skull fragments and cloudy white brain tissue, but the blood on the dog's muzzle was Karamov's.

As Anya watched, ten paces away and closing, she saw an Alsatian leap forward to clamp its jaws around Karamov's knee. She heard the sound of cartilage crunching and a silver bell on the dog's collar swung in time to the shaking of its head.

There were six dogs on him, then seven. A bull terrier worried at his toes then fell back, three of them in its mouth. A small white poodle scratched its way up his calf to tear at his thigh. It must have caught something crucial in its teeth, because Karamov's leg suddenly gave. He fell to his knees, and now the dogs could reach his face and neck.

He wasn't the only one screaming. When Anya finally reached him she had to push her way through a ring of people. The dogs' owners watched, horrified, as their pets ripped a man to shreds.

Karamov's bodyguards had reached him too, but even they hesitated, watching the carnage in mute shock. Anya didn't want to get any closer either. She really didn't want to see the ragged mess the animals had made of Karamov's face, flaps of skin fluttering from his jaw like ribbons.

But he kept on screaming, and something essentially human in her couldn't hear that desperate noise and not respond. She tackled the poodle first, prising its jaws away from the wreckage of his leg with an effort that nearly tore her shoulder. When it was finally free, she took the little creature by its collar and dashed its head on the ground. Somewhere behind her there was a muted gasp of protest and a woman fell to her knees beside the animal's corpse.

Anya grabbed the Alsatian next - but it was much too strong. Even as she pulled at it, its jaws closed, severing Karamov's right leg below the knee.

The big Russian's face was grey and slack. He'd lost too much blood and suffered too much pain. Anya let the Alsatian go, knowing that nothing was going to save Karamov now.

His eyelids flickered, consciousness fading. Then for one brief moment his eyes opened and stared into hers, bright and clear. "Raphael," he gasped. "All the bastards I know - and he's the one to kill me."

 

Morgan knew he still had one thing Raphael wanted, the only thing that was keeping him safe. The book was tucked into the waistband of his jeans, hidden from the old man's view. Until Raphael had the book in his hands, Morgan didn't think he'd risk harming it by harming him.

Once he had the book, all bets were off.

"Give it to me," Raphael said.

Morgan backed away a step, towards the far side of the room where there was another door leading - who knew where? Out, and that was all that really mattered. "Why should I?" he said.

Raphael looked at his gun.

Morgan shook his head. "I meant, you know, morally."

"Morally?" Raphael laughed. "Because I paid for it. Because I know how to use it. I know what it is. Do you?"

"Obviously not. That's why I came to see you."

Vadim was looking between them, perplexed. His semi-automatic had drooped as his attention wandered, the barrel pointing down at the dark wood of the floor. Good. One less threat to worry about.

Raphael's tongue flicked out, pink and pointed, to moisten his lips. "If you give it to me, I will tell you what its purpose is."

"There's a flaw in that arrangement - I'm sure you can see it." Morgan took another step backwards.

Raphael's eyes narrowed. "Then let's return to the fact that I have a gun."

Another step. "If you were going to shoot me, you'd have done it already."

Raphael's pale face flushed with anger, and Morgan instantly knew he was right. The old man didn't mean to kill him.

Morgan's heart was pounding against his ribs as if it wanted to break them, the confrontation too cold and calculated for battle fever to carry him through it. Death seemed real and imminent - but he had to take the one chance he had.

He took a last look at Raphael, making very sure that he'd judged him right, then turned his back and sprinted for the far end of the room.

One shot rang out, deafeningly loud in the confined space. The bullet shattered the white tiles on the wall ahead of him.

That had been Vadim, he was sure. And he could hear the clatter of hard leather heels on the floor behind him but also the old man shouting in a language Morgan didn't know. He could only hope he was saying "Don't fire!"

Maybe he was, but another shot rang out before Morgan could reach the far wall. It was better aimed this time and he felt a tearing at his side that left a searing pain behind. Every instinct told him to curl in and shield the wound. He compromised with a hand pressed against the blood oozing from beneath his ribs and kept on running.

Two more paces and he was at the door. It was made of a thick, silver metal and it opened with a wheel, not a handle. Morgan spun it desperately, working against stiff resistance.

The footsteps were right behind him now. As he felt a hand claw at his shoulder he kicked back and up, viciously hard. There was a whoosh of lost air and a tiny, almost sub-vocal squeak that in other circumstances might have been funny. Morgan felt the hand slide down his shoulder, fisting in his t-shirt for a moment of pain before slackening and falling off.

Two more twists of the wheel and the door was open. He flung himself through, dragging it shut behind him. There was another wheel on the inside, and he twisted that shut with the same frantic haste until it wouldn't turn any more.

Only one problem left - no lock.

The door had opened inward, though. It could be jammed. Morgan saw five metal tables lined up across the width of the room. He braced his shoulder against the nearest, heaving hard. The exertion forced a gush of blood from the wound in his side, and he wasn't sure he had the strength to lift it, but he had to try. He took a gulp of air, then let out a strangled yell as he strained upwards with everything he had.

The table rocked, lifted - and then it had all the momentum it needed as it swung up and toppled over to rest against the door. Gasping for breath now, Morgan forced himself to make one last effort, levering the table up so that it pressed against the door at an angle, the other end jabbing into the floor. A second later there was a clatter against the outside of the door, then the louder bang of something striking it repeatedly - probably Vadim's shoulder.

The door opened an inch as the table skidded across the floor. Then its corner ground to a halt, digging into the grouting between two tiles. Morgan flung himself prone onto the flat silver surface, and his weight pushed the table down, slamming the door shut and holding it fast.

There were more loud bangs against the outside, but this time the door didn't shift at all. Then there was the much louder retort of a gunshot. The metal didn't even shudder, far too thick for the bullets to pierce.

All the air seemed to finally go out of Morgan, and he sagged to the floor like a deflated balloon. His side hurt like hell. The bullet had missed anything vital but gouged out a thick slice of flesh on its journey in and out. Thankfully, the blood was already starting to clot in the profound cold.

The cold. For the first time Morgan actually looked at his surroundings. The air was so frigid he could see his breath in a cloud of white in front of him, floating towards the low, metal ceiling. The far wall was lined with metal too, even tessellations that looked like a honeycomb. After a moment Morgan realised they were drawers. The other two walls were entirely blank - no other doors leading out.

He crawled towards the far wall on his hands and knees, lacking the energy to stand up. His path took him between two of the other silver tables, the ones that were still upright. He felt something brush against his cheek and brushed it irritably away, only to have it swing back down and hit his face with more force.

It was a hand. There was a body on the table, arms and legs the discoloured yellow of elderly custard, the chest cut open and splayed out, the cavity empty of organs. Those were on a low bench at the side of the room, Morgan realised, the heart sitting on a set of electronic scales.

There were two other bodies on neighbouring tables, one of them a teenaged girl and almost whole, the other rendered down to its constituent limbs. Morgan suspected that the drawers at the end of the room held more corpses, if this was a morgue, and what the hell else could it be?

He shivered again and kept on shivering, the cold slowly seeping through his skin and into his bones. He took one last look around and then crawled back to the door, wondering if there was anywhere worse he could possibly have locked himself.

 

Anya had retreated to the far side of the water tower, away from the police who'd descended on the scene of Karamov's slaughter, and the shell-shocked dog owners who somehow had to explain what their pets had done.

The scene kept replaying in her mind, over and over on an endless loop, the white teeth tearing into the red flesh. But worse than that, worse than the sight of a man ripped to pieces in front of her, was how familiar it had all felt.

She'd seen Karamov torn apart and something inside her had said, that once happened to me. But of course it hadn't. How could it have? So why did she feel like there was a memory of pain as intense and brutalising as the Russian's, hidden somewhere in her past?

Her hands were shaking as she leafed through the folder, shoving pages aside impatiently when she failed to find what she was looking for. She could see that she was leaving red stains on the white paper but she managed to concentrate so hard on her search that she didn't have to think about what they were.

After a few minutes a hand rested on hers, stilling it.

It was Tomas, his grave face unusually gentle. "What happened back there?"

"Karamov's dead."

"We saw." That was Belle. The little girl hovered a few paces away, seemingly reluctant to come any closer.

Anya set the folder aside and batted Tomas's hand irritably from hers. "It was the girl, Natasha - or, I can't remember her real name. God, I really should remember her name..."

"Anya," Tomas said softly.

"What? Oh, the girl. She was the one who made it happen. She used some sort of whistle to summon the dogs. Some power in it, I don't know, I've never seen anything like it before. Sumerian, maybe, I've heard that they -"

"Working for Karamov's rivals?" Tomas cut across her. "He must have - have had - a lot of enemies."

"Not a rival. Raphael." She picked up the folder again and started to leaf through it, the pages swimming in and out of focus in front of her eyes. "He's in here somewhere, I know he is. Karamov had been phoning him and we couldn't figure out why. But it didn't occur to us - it just didn't seem probable - that he'd be the buyer."

Tomas tried to catch her eye again. "Why didn't it seem probable?"

"Damn it!" Anya shouted, throwing the folder to the ground. The wind riffled the paper then began to blow it away. "Where the hell has the briefing document gone!?"

Belle knelt to pick up the pages, stacking them into neat piles with her small white hands.

"Listen," Tomas said, more sternly this time. "You can fall apart later. Right now the trail is hot and we have to follow it. As soon as this Raphael hears the job's been done he'll have no more reason to stay here. Tell me what you know about him."

Anya nodded sharply, trying to jolt herself back to rationality. It seemed to work, because her voice was only shaking a little when she said, "He's a visiting professor at the university here. He specialises in linguistics, ancient languages mostly. Beyond that, we couldn't find out very much. At the time, we couldn't fathom his connection to Karamov. But now -"

"He might want the book because he's the only person who can actually translate it," Belle suggested.

Anya nodded. "Which is why I need to figure out where the hell the briefing notes on him have got to!"

The same thought occurred to all three of them at once, but Tomas was the first to voice it: "Morgan."

 

Morgan knew the fact he wasn't shivering any more wasn't a good sign. The blood had stopped seeping from the hole in his side, which he'd plugged with scraps of cotton ripped from the bottom of his t-shirt, and he felt okay. Better than okay. He was in an almost euphoric haze.

That probably wasn't a good sign either.

When the pleasant drowsiness threatened to tip over into actual sleep, Morgan forced himself to stagger to his feet. The pain instantly registered again, along with the searing cold, and he was sorry he'd done it. There was no window in the thick metal door, which meant he had no way of knowing what Raphael and his goon were up to. For all he knew, they could have given up and left - but he doubted it.

He shuffled over to the back wall instead, to the honeycomb of drawers. Most of them were empty. The ones that weren't held corpses in greater states of decomposition than the ones on the tables. A stench of formaldehyde oozed out when he opened the last drawer and he hurriedly shut it, hiding away the blank white face and glassy blue eyes of the occupant.

A second after the metallic chink of the drawer closing there was another softer noise behind him. He spun round, a surge of adrenaline instantly washing away the haze blanketing his mind.

The door was still closed, the upended table wedged tight against it. But the sound came again, recognisable now as the soft whisper of fabric against metal, and this time Morgan realised that it was coming from inside the room.

It was the movement which finally drew his eye, the withered hands reaching out to press against the metal of the table as the corpse levered itself upright. There was a waft of cold air which stank of corruption.

The corpse's hands, wizened and claw-like, groped at its chest, sinking deep into the cavity where its organs had once been. After a second, they dropped to its sides.

Morgan's back pressed against the icy metal of the wall, as far away from the body on the table as he could possibly get.

"Don't worry, this thing won't kill you," the corpse said.

"Yeah?" Morgan's teeth started chattering audibly the moment he opened his mouth. If he hadn't met Tomas, he wondered if he would have thought he was hallucinating.

"Yes. In fact, it's the cold that will finish you off."

Morgan realised he knew that voice. Despite the mushy, awkward sound it made working round a half-decayed tongue, it was recognisably Raphael's.

"Is that book really worth dying for?" the old man asked.

"I don't know," Morgan said. "You tell me."

"Come out here, and I will."

"Tell me and I'll think about it."

There was a brief silence, then, "This isn't stalemate, Morgan. In less than two hours you will die, and the book will be mine anyway."

"Yeah? So why are you going to all this trouble to talk to me?"

The corpse shrugged, gaping the cavity of its chest open and shut. "Maybe I'm sentimental. Maybe I don't want to kill my old friend's son."

Morgan wondered if Raphael could see through the corpse's milky eyes. If he could, the old man would be able to read his expression of shock.

"I'm talking about Geraint Nicholson, of course," Raphael said after a moment. "Not whoever it was that raised you."

Morgan knew this must be a trap, a ruse to get him to give in, but he couldn't help asking the question. It was why he'd come here in the first place. "You're saying you knew my dad?"

The cadaver nodded, head flopping loosely on its neck. "I knew him very well." A brief, wet laugh. "Probably better than anyone. Who do you think taught him to control the dead?"

Morgan tried to make sense of it, but he felt like he was being given pieces to two entirely different puzzles. "That means you were part of the Hermetic Division, right?"

"I knew your father before he founded it. Do you want to know what kind of man he was? I expect you do. I don't imagine they've told you much, those people you're working for. Information is currency to them, and they've always been miserly with it."

"There's no way they could have told me about him, is there? Until today I didn't even know he existed." Morgan snapped his mouth shut at the corpse's smile, knowing he'd revealed more than he'd intended.

"So they've been keeping you in the dark, you who had more right to the truth than anyone. How very like them."

There was a long silence, and Morgan understood the old man's game. He was waiting for Morgan to ask a question, to admit that he wanted the information. Morgan wanted to resist, but the cold seemed to be closing in on him, squeezing the air out of his chest and freezing the thoughts in his head. Raphael had got it wrong. Morgan doubted he had two hours. Less than one, probably, before he was finished.

Fuck it. He did want to know. "All right then, what kind of man was he?"

"He was - "

The corpse fell back to the table, arms flopping brokenly against the metal. For a moment Morgan thought it was a trick, maybe a test of how badly Morgan wanted to know. But the seconds stretched on and the body didn't move. Raphael had gone, and the answers with him.

 

Whoever was inside hadn't locked the door. It burst inward to hit the wall with a muted ring like a cracked bell. The instant it was open Tomas leapt through, Anya and Belle close behind.

There were two men in the room, both holding guns. Tomas recognised the younger. It was Karamov's contact from the restaurant, with his round face and drooping, weak mouth. He kept darting nervous glances at his companion, as if waiting for instructions.

"Raphael?" Tomas guessed.

The old man frowned. "And I imagined the rash Mr Hewitt was on a solo mission."

"Where is he?"

Raphael didn't react, but the young man jerked an involuntary glance behind him, before looking back at Tomas.

Tomas took a careful step forward, watching the men's eyes and not their guns.

"In case you haven't noticed," Raphael said, "we are armed and you are not."

"I'm not afraid of your weapons," Tomas told him.

"Aren't you?"

Tomas shrugged. "Shoot me and see."

Raphael stared at him a second, then moved the angle of his muzzle a fraction. "And what about the ladies? Do they share your indifference to bullets?"

Tomas knew his expression had betrayed him when Raphael smiled.

"Hurt them and I'll kill you."

"Indeed," Raphael said. "And vice versa, naturally."

Tomas kept his eyes trained on Raphael and his underling, but he saw a swirl of movement in his peripheral vision and knew that Anya had moved to stand beside him. Hopeless - he couldn't shield her that way. But then there were two men with two guns; all they had to do was move apart. Raphael had him locked down and he knew it.

Still, stalemate went both ways. Tomas took three more paces forward. He felt the young man twitch the barrel of his gun round to track him, but Raphael never moved, keeping his own trained on Anya as he'd promised.

"That's quite close enough," the old man said.

Would he fire? Could he really kill a woman in cold blood? Tomas had a brief flash of memory: the pack of dogs tearing into Karamov's flesh as the fat Russian screamed and screamed. If Raphael had ordered that, he was capable of anything.

"I don't want to hurt you, I just want to find Morgan," Tomas said. He really did, though he wasn't quite sure why. His partner had been nothing but a pain in the arse since they'd started working together.

Raphael's lizard-thin lips twitched downward. "I have no idea who you're talking about."

Anya stirred beside Tomas and he spoke before she could say the wrong thing. "That's fine. Just let me look in that room behind you, and I'll go." He'd spotted the thick metal door as soon as he'd stepped nearer, and it didn't take a genius to figure out where the young man had been looking when Tomas mentioned Morgan.

It also didn't take a genius to work out that Morgan must still have Nicholson's book. Why else would Raphael be so worried about keeping Tomas away from him?

"I'll even let you have the book," Tomas said, "if you let Morgan go."

This time it was Raphael who couldn't control his reaction. His mask of elderly affability vanished, replaced by something much less wholesome. "The boy is more important to you than the book? I don't think so."

"We've already copied the entire thing," Tomas said. "You getting hold of the original is regrettable, but within mission parameters."

The old man studied him for a long moment. Finally, he shook his head. "No. Morgan said nothing about any copies."

Tomas kept his face impassive, but inside he was smiling. The old man was slipping, admitting that he had seen Morgan. "You think we'd tell a green operative like him what we were up to? Take the book, Raphael, and give me the boy."

"There are only two real choices here," Anya said. "Everyone walks out of here alive, or no one does. I know which I prefer."

Tomas saw it in the young man's face, the sudden realisation that he might die. He hadn't come here expecting a fight, and he wasn't ready for its consequences. For the first time his gun wavered, barrel shaking with his hand.

In that moment of irresolution, while Tomas was debating whether he could risk rushing the young man, and the young man was wavering in the face of his own mortality and Anya was backing carefully away, and everything seemed poised on a knife edge, something none of them had been expecting happened.

The metal door behind Raphael swung inward, letting out a blast of ice-cold air - and Morgan.

Morgan staggered, Raphael spun to face him, and Tomas finally moved. A bullet from the young man's gun took him in the chest, enough power in it to push him back, teetering on his heels, but he didn't fall and he kept advancing.

The young man's eyes widened in horror as his mouth slackened in fear. And then Tomas was on him, bearing the slighter man's body to the ground with his own.

Too hard. The impact tightened his opponent's finger on the trigger, and Tomas felt a second bullet slam into him. The agony was searing, loosening his hands for a crucial second from around the other man's shoulders.

As soon as he was released, the young man rolled and rose. He could have shot Belle then. She was standing to the side of the action, utterly defenceless. But all he seemed to care about was escape. He didn't even look at Raphael as he bolted for the door.

Tomas didn't try to stop him. Raphael was the one he wanted. As he staggered to his feet, groaning at the pain of the bullet holes in his chest and gut, he saw the older man stumble to his knees, the gun falling from his hand.

It was Morgan. Tomas's partner looked dead on his feet, but his mouth was twisted in a snarl and his fist was still clenched from the blow he'd delivered. Why hadn't Raphael shot him? Slowed by age, maybe.

But not so slow that he couldn't lash out with his own fist to catch Tomas where the first bullet had gone in. Tomas's body curled helplessly around the pain. In the second that bought him, Raphael pressed a wrinkled hand underneath him and pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. Then he was up and running for the door.

Morgan moved to follow but fell to his knees instead, as if all his strength had suddenly given out. Anya crouched at his side, a steadying hand on his back. Tomas straightened with a yell of pain and ran in the old man's shadow.

Raphael was at the door before Tomas caught him. He grabbed Raphael's arm, his own hand so large it enclosed the frail wrist with a finger joint to spare.

"Leaving so soon?" he gasped, through the pain of wounds that should have been mortal.

"Don't worry, it's only a temporary parting." Improbably, Raphael smiled. He was still smiling as the knife he'd hidden in his other hand flashed up, and then down. The blade was surgically sharp, cutting clean through skin and muscle and tendons and finally bone.

The moment the tendon was severed Tomas's fingers loosened. He watched, helplessly, as his hand released Raphael's wrist and fell to the floor. He looked at it there, swimming in a pool of his own blood, like a fleshy pink spider drowning.

With an effort of will, he forced his attention back up to Raphael - and for just a second their gazes locked.

The old man's eyes were bright blue beneath the gumminess of age, and a light shone out of them which froze Tomas where he stood. He felt like something rank had touched him, something he'd never be able to wash away.

Then the door opened and shut, and Raphael was gone.