25

PANDEMONIUM EXPRESS

he path ended suddenly, blocked by a towering bramble wall, no optical illusion this time. But the Vigilants had blown a huge yawning hole through the thorny barrier and the scorched opening fizzed and spat orange sparks. A keen smell of smoke came from whatever was burning beyond it, and the shots were only occasional now, the last exchanges of a dying battle.

Following Mr October through the smouldering entrance, we came to the central square, a walled-off expanse of pock-marked earth around which the remains of enemy defenders were scattered

Their torn torsos lay on the silvery grass like heaps of refuse, and the air hung heavy with stinging petroleum fumes. Vigilants were dousing the remains with flamethrowers, and small fires lit up the square from all corners. In the middle distance was a larger fire, a blazing moat surrounding a small black island.

The last few survivors were crawling towards the hedgerows for cover but not many made it that far. One wyvern-like being with slow-beating wings and long snapping jaws sent a feeble trail of smoke from its snout as a cluster of rifle shots toppled it. A many-armed, squid-like demon jetted a stream of darkness from its bulging ink sac but hadn’t time to flee inside the shadow it made before another round of shots stopped it short.

Mr October called to one of the Vigilants, requesting a progress report.

‘Been securing the area since mid-afternoon, sir,’ the guard said, reloading his rifle. ‘Nearly done with this lot but more took off below, so good luck down there. You’ll need lots of luck where you’re going,’ he added, indicating the moat of fire.

Now I noticed a shape on the island, a small domed building half obscured by the flames. That must be the gateway entrance, but I couldn’t see a way to reach it past the fire.

Typically, though, Mr October could.

‘Well . . . in for a penny,’ he said, and without explanation he set off to the moat, quickening his step along the way and spreading his arms for balance before scrambling down its steep near side and vanishing into the furnace.

I stared after him, dumbstruck, following the movements of his outline as it passed between the flames and the flames warped and reshaped themselves around him.

‘Now us,’ Becky said.

I looked at her. ‘Are you serious?’

‘It’s OK, Ben. Don’t you see? It’s like the other illusions, like the map and the hedgerows. It looks like fire but it’s not. It’s another trick.’

She had to be right. Mr October had just this second reappeared, his wide-hatted silhouette standing tall on the island. We were looking at the maze’s last illusion, the only thing between us and the journey below. Giving each other the nod, the three of us broke into a run and tumbled down into it.

The flames billowed around us, dazzling orange and yellow and white, but they gave out no sound or heat because – unlike the fires back on the square – they weren’t there. Moving through the blinding haze I soon lost track of the others, but I had a feeling they were somewhere ahead of me all the way. The hardest part to navigate was the nearly vertical slope on the far side. Straining for purchase up the hard ground, I twice reached the top before sliding back, but then Lu was above me, hauling me up.

The dome resembled a squat mausoleum with pillars either side of a blistered black door. Mr October gave the door a push and it opened with a haunted house creak. It was pitch black inside, and a rumble reached us from deep underground – the soul train at its platform.

How long did we have? How far from here to the train? Lu found her flashlight and swept it through the dark, over a filthy wet floor and across a graffiti-covered wall. A sequence of runic symbols carved into the wall caused Mr October to cluck his tongue and shake his head but the message meant nothing to us.

‘What’s it say, then?’ Becky asked.

‘It loses a lot in translation, but in any case I won’t pollute your ears with such talk. Ah, here we are. . .’

The light settled on a grimy lift door and the control panel on the wall beside it. Lu hit the call button and the lift juddered far below in the shaft, beginning its climb.

It was a long climb, too, because something like two minutes passed before the doors rattled open. There wasn’t much room inside, and the lift cage wobbled under our weight. I wouldn’t have trusted it to carry more.

The descent began. The cage dropped at speed, making my ears pop, and with the sudden rise in pressure Becky sighed and held the bridge of her nose. We seemed to be in freefall, plunging through space with nothing to hold us. Then the lift stopped with a bone-crunching shudder and settled, taking its time before opening its doors.

Exiting into a grimy low-ceilinged walkway, we were met by a wall of sound from somewhere away to the left: engine noise, booted footfalls, voices shouting orders in the same reverse-sounding language we’d often heard on the rounds.

Mr October listened carefully, then said, ‘My grasp of their Abhorrentongue is patchy, but without question they’re preparing to board.’ Other voices, banshee cries and rattles, joined the call and response. ‘They’re bringing the prisoners – the mere mortals, they call them – from holding. There’s no time to intervene, so we’ll have to take our chances on the train.’

An almighty siren rose and fell, and a voice crackled from a tannoy, repeating the same short phrase over and over in Abhorrentongue.

‘Just a warning to mind the gap,’ Mr October interpreted, ushering us towards our first sight of the platform.

The train stood along it, its corrugated steel sides covered with graffiti slogans written in runes. The doors were open, and from the little I could see from the walkway the insides looked like bare drab cattle cars, but this train hadn’t been built for comfort. Above the engine noise the siren wailed on.

‘Move to the end but stay out of sight,’ Mr October said. ‘If we’re spotted this will end before it begins. Wait till I give the word.’

We crept to where the walkway met the platform and huddled against the wall, not making a sound. With a rushing heart, I chanced a peek around the corner.

The platform was as busy as a marketplace, patrolled by guards in uniforms and helmets of bony armadillo armour. Their deathly grey faces were blessed, or cursed, with many spider-like eyes which glanced all ways at once. In their hands were scaly hooked and clawed weapons, which writhed like Professor Rictus’s terrible tools. Their jackboots smacked the concrete as they moved along, checking compartments. There were scores of them, at least as many demons in other forms, Shifters and Deathheads and feral dog-like beings which the guards held on leashes, and now another wave of guards turned onto the platform from a tunnel at the train’s midway point.

Their arrival sent a charge through the air. All those present stopped and turned to look, and some bowed their heads respectfully.

‘What’s happening?’ I said. ‘What are they seeing?’

Mr October’s eyes never left the crowd. ‘It’s the distraction we’ve been waiting for. Everyone to the train while they’re occupied.’

The open carriage faced us, perhaps ten paces away. Mr October waved us on. The girls ran ahead and slipped neatly inside, but I’d only half crossed the platform when I saw what was causing the disturbance further down.

When the guards stood back to make way for the new arrivals, I had a clear view of her through the crowd. It was only a glimpse, and the great relief I felt at first was quickly replaced by horror. What had they done to make her look like that?

Swathed in a tatty grey blanket, eyes downcast and head hung low, Mum looked broken – a hollow woman with her soul ripped out. She glanced neither left nor right as they steered her along and she didn’t react when the tannoy squealed with feedback. She was in a trance, unaware of where she was or what was unfolding. While she and three other captives were being ferried to the train another face appeared in the crush, and the sight of that face turned my stomach.

It was Luther Vileheart as I’d first seen him in the personnel office, an almost human figure whose hateful eyes with their vertically slitted pupils were anything but human. A poisonous aura surrounded him like a storm cloud, and the guards jumped to attention at the snap of his voice. He gestured up and down the train, barking instructions, but that was all I saw before Mr October dragged me to the doors.

‘She’s there. . .’ I said. ‘She’s alive.’

‘I know, but you can’t help her if you’re seen, can you?’

But maybe I’d been seen already. As Mr October bundled me inside, the guard nearest our end of the train turned and looked our way.

If he’d spotted us, he’d alert the others, it would all end here. We huddled in the train, Becky gnawing her knuckles, Lu watching the door space ready to fly at whatever came through it, me still reeling from what I’d just seen of Mum. I looked down the empty, wooden-boarded compartment as the doors slid shut. A tremor ran through the train, and we were moving.

But the guard had entered the carriage in front. His spider-eyes were peering straight at us through the door, and he wasn’t alone. The door opened and a second guard followed him through.

Their sixteen sharp eyes held us. The weapons morphed restlessly in their hands. Lu spun round to face them, and I moved in front of Becky to shield her from what was about to happen. At the same time, Mr October set off up the carriage, meeting the guards halfway and raising a hand as if preparing to launch another fireball.

The guards tensed, their eyes blinking nervously. Those weapons, whatever they were, looked a match for anything he might throw at them. But Mr October had only reached to tweak the brim of his hat, and the two guards clicked their heels and saluted.

‘Status, please,’ Mr October said.

The one on the left answered first, his watchful spider face flickering, switching rapidly between several sets of features.

‘The four are being held at the centre of the train,’ he said. ‘They’re heavily guarded and there are other hostiles in the carriages either side of theirs.’

‘And what of our teams?’ Mr October said. ‘How many made it aboard?’

The second guard answered, his features scrambling too.

‘Only a handful besides us,’ he said. ‘Others are waiting at Mercy Road, where the last two prisoners are due for collection. If we haven’t recaptured these four by then, they’ll storm the train there – subject to your order, sir.’

It wasn’t until then that I knew I’d met these two before. I hadn’t recognised them with their spider masks, but these blurry ever-changing faces were still fresh in my memory.

Becky tugged at my sleeve. ‘What’s this about, Ben, and who . . . I mean what are those things?’

‘The Shuffleheads,’ I said. ‘Undercover specialists, masters of disguise. Nobody knows their real names.’

Lu sighed and relaxed. They’d fooled her too, though she knew them well enough from the field and the hours she’d spent with them in the truth cellar interrogating Rictus.

‘So far, so good,’ Mr October said. ‘Now take us to the prisoners. We’ll go as prisoners with you as our captors.’

‘Yes, sir,’ they said together.

‘Pardon?’ I said. ‘Are we giving ourselves up?’

‘On the contrary,’ Mr October said. ‘Rather than fight our way through, we’ll join them in peace, but we should do so before the next stop.’

The Shuffleheads nodded, their faces reverting to those of spider-eyed guards. The way those eyes blinked at different times and stared in different directions unsettled me, so I tried not to look too closely.

‘After you,’ they said. ‘Stay in single file.’

We worked our way along the bucking carriage and on through the next, steadying ourselves against the train’s motion with the stirrups that dangled from the ceiling. Black tunnel walls rushed past the windows. The lights stuttered on and off. Behind us, the Shuffleheads’ boots clomped the wooden floor.

‘Mercy Road in two minutes,’ one said.

‘Enemy in the next car,’ said the other. ‘Put your hands on your heads to show you’ve surrendered.’

We did as he said. The occupants of the carriage, seeing us coming, opened the door before we reached it. Twenty or more demons waited inside. Some were armoured guards, suspicious and alert, levelling their weapons. Others were horned and reptilian. Still others, the dog-like beings, had salivating mouths all over their muscly bodies, as many mouths as the guards had eyes.

A weird clicking and rattling came from the guards’ throats. It could have been a cautionary sound, an alert, or joyful noise at the sight of new mere mortal prisoners. Their inexpressive faces made it hard to tell which.

One of the Shuffleheads spoke in a calm, authoritative voice, addressing them in their own language. The guards listened carefully and two replied with what sounded like questions. The Shuffleheads answered curtly, wasting no words.

The guards fell back to let us through but couldn’t resist prodding us with their weapons and suckered hands as we passed. We were curiosities, they hadn’t seen many like us, and they treated us with the same reverence they’d shown towards Mum and the others on the platform. Although they seemed in awe of us, I was worried the demon dogs might bite.

A guard at the end averted all its eyes and obligingly opened the door. In the next two carriages the Shuffleheads again took charge, demanding the armed guards make way, and again we were allowed to continue.

‘The prisoners are here,’ one Shufflehead whispered as we neared the fifth compartment. The train jerked and the lights went out, turning everything black for an instant, then flickered on again as we trooped inside. Every face in the carriage turned towards us except one.

She sat on the floor with the others, the blanket around her drooping shoulders. Her hair was drab and unwashed and she was shivering and staring vacantly ahead. It would have been better to see fear or confusion – or anything – in her eyes, but there was nothing there at all.

If she heard my voice would she recognise it? If she saw my face would she know me? Tears prickled my eyes as I started towards her. Becky held me back, touching a finger to her lips.

Wait, her look said. Just wait.

The other prisoners had the same docile, beaten-down appearance as Mum. One, a woman in her forties, chattered to herself between gasps and sobs. The other two were children no older than Mitch and Molly Willow. Blue-eyed and red-haired, they held each other and trembled.

If they were defeated and afraid, Mum was an empty shell. She never looked up, never knew I was there, and she didn’t react when Luther Vileheart’s voice cut across the bustling carriage.

‘What have we here?’

Wiping my eyes, I turned towards the voice. At the same time I felt the restraining pressure of Mr October’s hand on my shoulder.

‘A prize catch, unless my eyes deceive me,’ Luther Vileheart said. ‘Imagine the welcome in our homeland tonight when they see the ten living souls we’ve brought for the price of six.’ His piercing eyes found mine. ‘Such prizes too, but did you really have to capitulate so easily, Ben Harvester? Frankly, I expected more of a challenge. Have you lost your nerve, or have you simply lost your will to live, like your mother?’

‘Don’t listen,’ Lu cautioned me. ‘He’s baiting.’

‘I’ll tear him to pieces,’ I said through my teeth.

My voice carried well enough to send a shocked murmur through the carriage. The guards drew breath and one prodded my ear with his rifle. In their world it must be unthinkable to make threats against demons of Vileheart’s high standing.

Ignoring me, Luther Vileheart addressed the Shuffleheads in that reverse-sounding tongue. They pushed us towards the prisoners.

‘Take your place with the others,’ one Shufflehead said. ‘Steady now. One false move and they’ll . . . we’ll hit you with all we’ve got.’

The train rocked and a shrill squeal of brakes needled into my skull. Outside the window, ghostly tunnel lights gave way to a first sight of the platform under Mercy Road school and a splash of white wall running alongside it.

‘It won’t be long, Mum,’ I said, kneeling over her. ‘It’ll soon be over.’

She stared into space, frail-faced as she’d been on the day of her first hospital clinic.

Now Becky settled down with her, gathering Mum’s good hand in both of hers. If Becky was afraid, she was putting on a bold face. ‘I swear I won’t let anything happen, Ben. Don’t worry about us, think about what you’ve got to do.’ She paused. ‘You know what I mean.’

The brakes shrieked again. The train was slowing. Luther Vileheart’s eyes fixed on something outside the window.

The platform was as busy as the one before, but there was no order here, only chaos and confusion. Vigilants who’d come to seize the train had been met by heavy resistance and were running pitched battles with enemy guardsmen. Bodies from both sides littered the red-spattered platform under a shroud of smoke. Some defenders were attack-dog-shaped, iron-jawed and sharp-fanged, like those on the train. Three were playing tug-of-war with a Vigilant who lay tattered and struggling on the ground. His eyes met mine through the glass for an instant, then rolled up to white. A demon staggered past the window in flames, thrashing its many limbs until a hail of rifle shots felled it. The thing lay still, radiating black smoke and ashes.

There were shots and cries and jets of flame everywhere. Shadow-like entities swirled above the mayhem, others swept down to join in. One closed itself over a Vigilant, smothering him from head to foot in darkness until there was nothing of him to see. The Shifter soared away, carrying him screaming with it.

Meanwhile, further down the platform and barely visible through the smoke, four figures were making an exit. A blast of fire at their heels – a Vigilant torching a many-mouthed attack dog as two others sprang at him from behind – made one of them, Kate Stone, stop and turn.

Even from here I could see the nerves tugging at her face. She and Joe Mort had the last two Bad Saturday prisoners, a hobbling elderly couple, and were guiding them towards a walkway tunnel. The conflict had given Joe’s team a perfect opportunity to steal in, and it was still escalating along the platform when they quietly slipped away.

Luther Vileheart gave a furious shout, and the train jerked ahead without stopping. Without the two elderly souls the Ministry had recaptured, it had no reason to stop. While I hadn’t understood a word he’d said, I knew he’d given the order to keep going.

Moments before we re-entered the tunnel, an almighty roar went up on the platform and a figure flashed through the warring crowds towards the train, moving so fast I saw only a black and bronze blur. Its power must have been enormous. Enemy guardsmen scattered around it like wind-blown leaves, collapsing to the ground in a blood-red mist. The train lurched, struck by an incredible force. A shock wave rolled through the carriage, throwing a number of demons to the floor while others flapped for balance.

‘True to his word, as ever,’ Mr October said to Luther Vileheart. ‘Unless I’m mistaken, a certain one-man army has just crashed your party.’

Vileheart’s eyes faltered. His expression turned rapidly from bewildered to terrified to murderous, and if looks could kill, I thought, Mr October’s name would be arriving on the telegraph anytime now.

‘The berserker,’ said Vileheart.

The enemy guardsmen shuddered.

The train rolled on into the dark.

‘The very same,’ said Mr October. ‘So why don’t you and your pestilent minions cut your losses while you can and give back what you’ve taken?’

‘Over my festering body,’ said Vileheart.

‘As you wish,’ Mr October replied – but it was Luther Vileheart who struck first.

With blinding speed he lashed out a hand, and a streak of white lightning leapt from the tip of his long curving index finger to thump Mr October full in the chest, rocking him back on his heels. A smell of singed clothing filled the cramped space. The guards held their straining attack dogs, ready to unleash them on Vileheart’s command. The train thundered on, dipping and swerving from dark to deeper dark.

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ said Mr October, his features contorting. ‘You won’t like me when I’m angry.’

‘I never liked you in the first place,’ said Vileheart. ‘Or did I not make that clear?’

We’d entered a kind of stand-off, us and them, everyone silent and twitchy and waiting for the next move. And all the while a confusion of roars and screams further back in the train were coming nearer.

‘Becky?’ I said.

Becky nodded. She knew what I wanted and had already draped herself over Mum to protect her. She knew it was about to start, and Mum sensed it too, letting out an anguished cry.

‘There now,’ Becky said. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right. . .’

Becky shouldn’t have come, I hadn’t wanted her to, but now I was glad she had. I couldn’t trust anyone else to do what she was doing. If anyone could take care of Mum, it was her.

‘Forget about us, Ben,’ she said. ‘Get your mind right!’

‘Quit jabbering,’ Vileheart said, training his lightning finger on Becky.

I stepped in front of her as he let rip, and a bolt of pain jarred my hip, spinning me full circle. It felt like something had bitten a chunk out of me. A metallic scent of blood mingled in my nose with the smell of scorched clothing, and I only kept my footing because Lu put out an arm to steady me.

‘You go to hell,’ I told Vileheart, and without effort, hardly aware of what I was doing, I rolled a thought out towards him – a little parcel of anger.

Vileheart looked at me in total astonishment and touched his upper lip, feeling the first trickle of the nosebleed. He frowned at his slick red fingers, then glowered at me, baring a mouthful of pointy off-white teeth.

‘Well, now,’ he said. ‘What else have you got?’

‘There’s more where that came from,’ I said. ‘I’ll show you.’

And then it began.

All at once the attack dogs were free. Another lightning bolt lanced across the carriage, missed Lu by a fraction and punched out a window behind her. In response, Lu turned her invisible blade on the first snarling dog that came her way, stopping it dead in mid-leap, while Mr October flicked a fireball which took out two guards at once. One moment they were shouldering arms, the next they were tottering figures of flame.

But I’d turned my sights on Luther Vileheart. Our eyes locked across the carriage. I knew what should follow – that nosebleed was only the start – but a hooked weapon sliced my midriff, and a stunning blow caught me under the jaw, knocking me off my feet.

For the next few seconds I was gone. Like the train, I was hurtling through a tunnel with no light at the end, but a thunderous roar brought me back, a terrifying sound from the carriage behind.

The adjoining door disintegrated, and the Shuffleheads jumped aside as a procession of enemy guards poured through. We were already outnumbered, we didn’t stand a chance against this many – but they hadn’t come for us. They were fleeing in terror from the full-blooded battle cry behind them. A tidal wave was crashing through the train, an unstoppable force of nature, and its name was Kirk Berserker.

He came like a man possessed, twirling an axe in one hand and a sword in the other, slicing and flattening everything in his path. On his head he wore a helmet with a red Uruz symbol, across his chest a breastplate of burnished bronze. His face was a bare-toothed picture of fury as he tore through the carriage, spraying the walls with enemy blood, and all the while his shout rose and soared. He paused only to tip me a wink as he went.

‘Hi kid, how’s it going?’

He then set his sights on a charging attack dog, plucking it from the floor with one huge hand, making a face in disgust at the snapping mouths that covered its body and hurling it with great force at the doors.

Meanwhile another fearsome warrior had materialised in the carriage, a shield and gleaming sword in his hands. He fought in a frenzy, tearing into the guardsmen as they threw themselves at him, and when some reverted to shadow shapes he sliced with precise strokes of the blade, carving apart their darkness until there was nothing left but empty space.

The two warriors exchanged a glance and a respectful nod. I’d been wondering who this new one was and where Mr October had gone, but now I knew that they were one – this was the personality Mr October preferred to keep hidden, the one Kirk called the whirlwind.

The train raced on, sucking hot air through its fractured windows. The demons were still multiplying, their shadows drifting in from the tunnel through air vents and cracks in the glass. The darkness they brought threatened to overtake us, and now the lights were failing again.

‘Ben!’ Lu said.

She was sprawled on the floor nursing a scalp wound, the blood matting her forehead and darkening her fingers, but she wasn’t the least bit concerned about the injury. She was gesturing at the far end of the carriage, where Luther Vileheart was backing away, feeling for the door-handle behind him, beating a coward’s retreat.

If he thought he could slip away unnoticed, he’d better think again. Setting off after him, I ducked to avoid a flying head severed by a swing of Kirk’s axe. The head rebounded from a window to land at his feet, its lips spitting curses and its eight eyes staring hatefully up at him until Kirk kicked the thing away like a football.

I looked again for Vileheart. Vileheart wasn’t there. The door he’d taken flapped open and shut in time with the train. A pathway had opened all the way to it between piles of hacked-off limbs and twitching tails, but the injured hadn’t given up the fight yet. One severed hand lashed at my ankles as I ran, and a suckered arm looped itself around my knee, tightening like a vice. Lu, on her feet again, sliced it away.

I didn’t look back. Leaping clear of a snake demon slithering across my path, I flung myself through to the next compartment.

Luther Vileheart had reached the far door when he sensed me there and spun round. A forked tongue flicked around his lips and his vertical pupils sent a wave of icy bad air my way.

I started towards him. He stood his ground. A fireball detonated in the prisoners’ carriage behind me and I felt its heat on my back but refused to look. It was just me and Vileheart now.

Fear, Mr October had said, makes us make mistakes but also gives us focus. I was gripped by fear, frozen by it, but I had something else – and all my pain was directed at the entity in front of me. All of this carnage and hurt and misery were because of him.

He knew what I was thinking. The doubt crossed his face and he again touched his lip, expecting the nosebleed. His dark aura crackled, and I felt a pressure in my skull as if the bad vibes he was sending out carried a physical force. I didn’t dare turn away, but it sounded like the hostilities were tailing off. Kirk Berserker’s roar was becoming a triumphant cry.

‘It’s ending,’ I said. ‘Vileheart, you’re finished.’

Vileheart scoffed. ‘Didn’t they tell you? There is no end. There’s no beginning. This is how it always was and will be. You’re marked for life, Harvester, because of the choices you’ve made – and not just for life. In a moment I’ll break you to pieces and then you’ll see for yourself.’

‘Why should I listen to you? You’re a murderer, a liar, a coward—’

‘And you’re even less than that.’ The black cloud snapped with white lightning. ‘You’re a statistic, a number on our hit list.’

‘You know what you can do with your list,’ I said, but I didn’t get to finish what I’d started.

I’d been watching his hands for sudden movements, but the lightning bolt leapt from the aura itself, flashed across the carriage and caught me full in the chest. Its force was astonishing, like nothing I’d ever known. It slammed me back against the wall, stopping my heart for several beats. My mind whited out and I started to sag, but the next thing I knew I was being lifted off my feet, not by Vileheart’s hands but by the strength of his mind.

His face was rigid with concentration and his hands were uplifted like an orchestral conductor’s. When he flipped at the ceiling I must’ve hit it hard enough to leave a permanent imprint across it. The impact was still rattling my bones long after I’d hit the floor.

‘Imagine an eternity of this,’ Luther Vileheart said in a voice that sounded miles away, trapped in an echo chamber. ‘An eternity of suffering. That’s what you signed up for when you took sides.’

I was straining for consciousness, willing myself not to slip away. As my head slowly cleared I looked down my body, aware of a throbbing pain coming from somewhere. I must have broken something, at least cracked a couple of ribs, but the sight of my left hand’s little finger doubled back on itself nearly made me pass out.

The commotion in the prisoners’ compartment sounded more muted. A series of shots, a gargling high-pitched cry, the ferocious swish of a blade . . . all of these sounds floated past me. But then another sound, the faintest of voices, came into my head.

‘Ben . . . where’s Ben?’

My mother. She was still here, still with us, and she knew my name. That was all I needed to know. Thank you, Becky, I thought. Thank you for being there.

And somewhere inside the whirling space in my head I found what I needed, I saw what I wanted to see. With every rattle and roll of the train the picture came clearer.

The train I was hearing wasn’t this one. It was the train Dad had taken from Edinburgh to London four years ago. I saw him now, seated by the window, looking out at the green and brown land, not knowing that this journey home would take so long to end. And I heard him years before that, reading me bedtime stories in a mellow voice that made me feel safe. I saw the mischievous look in his eye one night when Mum went to bed early and he let me stay up with him to watch my first horror film, Brides of Dracula. I remembered how he’d covered my eyes with his hand during the scary parts and said, ‘Don’t look now!’ Mum would’ve gone spare if she’d known, but she never found out. It was our secret, something we shared, and next morning at breakfast Dad had smiled and winked at me over his newspaper when Mum asked why I looked tired.

Don’t look now, Dad, I thought. This one’s for you.

As I hauled myself to my knees, Vileheart made a whimpering sound and stumbled back three, four paces. By the time I was on my feet he was visibly shaking. The nosebleed hadn’t started again, but instead his bloodshot eyes were streaming crimson tears down his cheeks. He clamped both hands to his head as if to stop it exploding, but that wouldn’t help him – nothing would help him now.

Vileheart staggered back, his mouth locked open in a silent scream. The pain poured out of me and all the way through him. This was for what he’d done to my family, for everything he’d taken, for Mum and Dad and all the hope and faith and love he’d tried to smash.

And when hope and faith and love run out, I thought, remembering the comic adventures of the Lords of Sundown, you’re left with one thing only.

‘You’re out of luck,’ I said, and that was when Luther Vileheart’s face began to cave in.

A few more seconds and it would be over. I’d teach him a thing or two about suffering. I had my focus, the picture was bright and sharp, and I was only vaguely aware of the raised voices and heavy footsteps in the carriage behind me.

Two guardsmen passed me left and right, skirted around Luther Vileheart without looking at him and ran to the carriage in front. I didn’t give them a glance or a thought. I couldn’t be distracted now. The picture was nearly complete, and it was time to finish what I’d started.

Vileheart slumped to his knees, clawing with both bony hands at his rupturing face. ‘Please. . .’ he said, although it was hard to understand because he no longer had much of a throat. ‘Please, I was only following orders. . .’

‘Orders to kill and steal,’ I said.

‘Ben?’

A voice at my shoulder. I shrugged it off.

‘The train, Ben,’ the voice came again. Becky’s voice. ‘The Shuffleheads went to stop it. We have to leave. We have to get off now.’

My concentration snapped. My body went slack. That must have been the moment Luther Vileheart slipped away.

A firm hand steadied me and I looked up into the placid eyes of Kirk Berserker. Behind him were a range of other familiar faces – Lu and Becky, still holding on to Mum, and Mr October with the three Bad Saturday survivors.

‘Sometimes, kid,’ Kirk said, scratching his beard, ‘you have to know when the battle’s won and there’s nothing more to do.’

But I was shaking, still seeing red.

‘Ben, that’s enough,’ Becky said, looking at me as if she didn’t recognise me. ‘You have to stop now. Let it go.’

‘But I had him,’ I said, looking at the bloody patch on the floor where he’d been. It had taken him only a fraction of a second. He must had fled in shadow form through a vent or a door-space, perhaps changing shape again after that. He could be anywhere now. ‘I could have finished. . . I should have. . .’

‘You’re forgetting,’ Mr October said, beginning his sentence as the warrior and ending it as the gunslinger-pirate. ‘We have what we came for. Your mother is safe, their forces are in tatters and our business here is done. I’ve told you about personal feelings, Ben. There’s no place for revenge in our work.’

‘I see you have a few anger issues,’ Kirk Berserker said. ‘Believe me, no one knows more about that than me. We’ll have a little talk sometime, just the two of us.’

‘Anyway, you need to get that looked at,’ Lu said, frowning at my buckled finger. ‘Soon as we’re out of here, we’ll run you to the clinic.’

An empty platform came into view through the window, a station stop without a name.

‘We’re under the river,’ Mr October said. ‘It’s an unscheduled stop, but it’ll do for us. We have a bit of a walk to the Embankment, though. Do you think you can manage that, Mrs Harvester?’

Mum hadn’t much of a voice yet, but she nodded, and at last her eyes found me.

‘Darlin’?’ she said.

She still knew me. Nothing else mattered.

Looking at Becky with her arm around Mum, I began to see what she’d been all along – as much an empathiser as Mr October’s old man persona, the caring soul I’d first seen in Highgate. The one who took the pain away.

The journey was ending. The doors hissed open, and we spilled together onto a cold and gloomy platform. The Shuffleheads were waiting there. They’d dispensed with the guards’ heads and uniforms and their fuzzy, rapidly changing masks were restored.

‘Don’t stand too close to the doors,’ Mr October said, but Becky hung back anyway to let Mum through to me.

Mum didn’t say anything as she clung to me, but I felt her love and the warmth of her tears on my neck. I must have been crying too, because when I looked up Becky seemed to sparkle and glow. She had a kind of aura, too, one filled with shimmering lights.

‘Love you, son,’ Mum whispered.

‘Me too,’ I said awkwardly.

We stood trembling on the chilly platform, and the anger – an anger that frightened me as much as it frightened Kirk Berserker – slowly lifted, and all I felt then was relief and gratitude.

Finally Mum relaxed and let me go, and Mr October passed her a handkerchief while I looked over at Becky. ‘Thank you,’ I mouthed, and she smiled as if to say, ‘Oh, that’s OK.’

She was still smiling when the fuzzy dark shape flitted past the open doors behind her. She was standing too close, altogether too close to the train. There was no time to warn her, to call her away.

It was on her before anyone could react. In the blink of an eye the shadow took physical form, snaking one of its hands around Becky’s mouth and hauling her back inside the train.

The doors slid shut at once. The engine boomed and revved. Becky’s hands pressed the glass as she stared out with stunned, confused eyes, and behind her was another face – a different, altered face from the last one I’d seen, but I knew without a thought whose it was.

The suddenness of what had happened threw everyone into shock. Before Mr October could call the order – ‘Stop this thing! It mustn’t leave!’ – the train was moving, gathering speed along the platform.

I sprinted alongside it, screaming, hammering the windows and doors where Becky was trapped. Her breath misted the glass between us. Luther Vileheart’s leer at her shoulder, a victorious grin, wasn’t even the worst thing about what I saw then. The worst thing was the look on Becky’s face in the instant before the train carried her into the tunnel, a look I’d never forget. It wasn’t even a look of terror, but one of resignation that seemed to say, ‘Sorry. Ben, I’m so sorry. My fault.’

Then the darkness took her. The train hurtled on. There was a tremendous crash further back on the platform when Kirk Berserker ripped away a pair of sliding doors with his bare hands. But the train was travelling too fast and furiously even for him. Thrown off balance, he keeled over and fell back on the concrete with the two severed doors skidding away either side of him.

The train’s lights shrank into the tunnel, and all that remained was its throbbing sound. Seconds later that faded too, leaving only a memory of the train and its echo, and after that only silence.

I looked frantically up the platform. Every face was pale with shock. I started back towards the others, numb to the bone and empty inside, as if a large part of me had been torn out and taken with the train.

‘Please,’ I said to Mr October. ‘Tell me . . . what do we do now?’

And for once Mr October, who knew everything, had no answer. Instead, he threw back his head and emptied his lungs with a grief-stricken cry.

More than a few times I’d heard the enemy mourning its losses, sending out heartbroken wails like cats in the night, but I’d never heard a sound as chilling or terrible as the one Mr October was making now.