Dead Men's s Boots

My hands were still cuffed behind my back, but at least I was in with a chance now.

Or I would have been, if Todd hadn’t kept the gun in his pocket when he switched to the knife. He stepped back now, the gun once again in his hand. He looked annoyed.

‘What the fuck did that achieve?’ he demanded.

Was it a trick of the light or was something moving behind him, outside the window? I took a step towards the door and he moved in to block me, which conveniently blind-sided him as far as the window was concerned.

‘You’re not going to kill me,’ I said, playing for seconds.

‘No?’ Todd raised a mildly sceptical eyebrow. ‘How come?’

‘The noise,’ I said. ‘Someone wilÓ216l hear. And you’ll have a roomful of dead cats to explain as well as me.’

He aimed at my head, thought better of it, and lowered the gun to point it at my stomach: messier and more painful, but a safer shot.

‘Silencer,’ he explained, and pulled the trigger. I was watching his hand and I dropped as his index finger squeezed, but he would still have hit me.

Even with gravity on my side I can’t outrace a bullet.

But the window exploded inwards, and a human figure danced in a blur out of the unfolding storm of broken glass, limbs scything so quickly that they left stroboscopic after-images on the air. There was a wet, insinuating crack, and Todd’s arm folded backwards at a point where the human body doesn’t actually have a moving joint. The figure landed and turned, without any sense of haste or even of intention. It was more like watching someone practise the steps of a dance than anything else.

It kicked Todd in the stomach: the sound this time was more muffled, but the damage seemed just as profound. Todd slid sideways against the desk, crumpling inwards like a flower closing for the night, and then slowly sank down onto his knees.

Moloch straightened his cuffs like a dandy after a duel, staring down with cold amusement at the man he had just crippled. I gawped at him, confused and uncomprehending.

‘Not the saviour you were expecting?’ the demon demanded, giving me a glance of cold, sardonic amusement.

Todd was curled up almost into a foetal crouch on the floor, absolutely silent, absolutely still. He could even have been dead: the kick to the stomach was easily hard enough to have ruptured some vital organ.

I struggled up on one knee again, but then took a breather, my legs trembling. ‘Not exactly,’ I admitted hoarsely. ‘You told me you’d had enough of saving my life.