Sally the banshee burst into the shattered remains of Burns and Stoke through the window, talons outstretched through a billowing cloud of plastic bags and pigeon feathers. Her wings beat at the mass of detritus that spun around her, caught in the turmoil of her passage as she descended on the bags smothering Gretel and began to rip away at them with her claws. The banshee had torn a great gash through the bags covering Gretel’s face and scraped off a large swatch from the troll’s side before a cloud of plastic, turning in the air as tightly as a flock of starlings, slammed into her, knocking her to the floor with a great ploomph.
Gretel was rolling, using her free arm to tug away the rest of the bags holding her down, while Sally kicked and bit and slashed at the rustling clouds that threatened in turn to engulf her. Edna managed to wriggle, snake-like, across the floor to where Kevin lay choking and hacking, his face almost lost beneath a writhing mass of plastic. She struggled to drag a couple of bags away from the vampire’s face, then threw them aside, at which they drifted upwards to join the swarm attacking Sally.
As Kevin’s mouth and face came free, the vampire looked up, and shrieked, “Stop the spell!”
“I don’t know how.”
“I don’t know what that looks like!”
“Smash stuff until you do!”
Faced with this uncouth suggestion, Edna hesitated. Meanwhile a sudden ear-splitting shriek announced that Sally, raining shredded plastic around her, had pulled herself free enough to stagger to her feet and snap her wings open. Hopping clumsily, one foot still tangled in plastic, the banshee struggled to the window and, with the aerodynamic elegance of a sofa, launched herself out into the night. A great billow of plastic bags followed, twisting like live creatures. For a moment, writhing across the sky, the swarming mess of plastic seemed to take on a single dragon-like form.
Then Sally was gone, plummeting towards the earth. The mass of plastic followed, snapping in the sky with the sound of a battle pennant in a storm. The banshee got to within a few feet of an uncomfortable encounter with gravity, then snapped her wings back open and twisted in the air, passing over neat hedges and tidy stone paving with enough speed to send leaves dancing up in her passage. She skimmed over bus shelters, then looped her way above the nearby railway, and still the plastic swarm snaked after her, hissing in her wake.
“Smash things!” hissed the vampire amid the wreckage of the office. Edna, shaking from the ends of her pendant earrings to the toes of her sensible slip-on shoes, grabbed the nearest waste-paper bin and started to break up what remained of the place. Glass flew from computer screens, desks splintered, drawers spilt their contents across the floor, books tumbled from shelves, paper exploded in the air as Edna tore through the office, apologising silently to each and every item that she trashed.
Outside, Sally folded her wings in tight and swerved along the platforms of Heron Quays station, dipping so low her claws nearly scratched the shining metal rails. Behind her, the snake-swarm, lashing wildly in its flight, lost half its tail as it tangled itself on the station announcement board and shed a storm of ripped plastic across the platform and track. Sally swerved again and spread her wings, beating her way across the short distance to Canary Wharf station, whose raised platforms stood overshadowed by two great towers. There she turned once more, swooping almost vertically upwards and away, climbing between walls of steel and glass towards the narrow glimpse of sky far above.