The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, стр. 47

The crack-crack-crack-crack of four rapid shots interrupted him. Merlin came back and looked through the window again.

“Damn! Clever. Susan, get your sword and lock the door.”

“What’s happening?”

“Stalking horse. Two gunmen, tricked out in vests holding quicksilver. Greene’s shed their blood on the boundary; blood and mercury will negate even those wards briefly and . . . I thought so . . . it is a Cauldron-Born. Lock your door!”

He exited, stripping off his glove, his left hand silver-bright.

Susan grabbed her saber, unsheathed it, and went over to lock the door, before returning to the window, her heart beating faster than it ever had before.

She copied Merlin and stayed to one side, leaning out cautiously to take a look. A man in a blue hospital gown flapping open at the back was walking slowly across the lawn, stark in the floodlights. He seemed like a lost drunk at first, someone concentrating too hard on walking steadily, till she noticed his head sat strangely on his neck, and then, with a terrible shock, that the shadow trailing behind was not human at all, instead a mass of smokelike, writhing tendrils that only connected to the man at his heels and did not mimic his upper body or movements at all.

Susan gasped as more shots rang out. Someone—Greene or Mrs. London—was shooting from the back door. She saw the rounds’ impact, fragments of flesh and bone spraying out where they hit in head and chest, but there was no blood and the Cauldron-Born barely staggered, as if he’d encountered a gust of wind, no more.

Then Merlin was there, with his old sword. He ran past, incredibly swiftly, striking at the Cauldron-Born’s knees. But it suddenly accelerated, leaping over the scything blade and twisting, almost managing to grab Merlin as he sped past and turned himself and then there was a sudden exchange of sword strokes and clawing hands, very fast. The sword hewed pieces from the Cauldron-Born but it was like striking chips from hard wood, and Susan gasped again as the Cauldron-Born almost managed to grab hold of Merlin’s arm. She knew instinctively that once it had him in its grip, it would never let go.

Merlin backed off towards the garden shed. He was trying to draw the Cauldron-Born away from the house, Susan realized. But it was fixated on its task. The creature took one step after the bookseller, then suddenly spun about and ran for the back door, only to be met by Mrs. L wielding a two-handed sword, a crude Glaswegian gangster’s copy of a claymore. She chopped diagonally at the Cauldron-Born’s shoulder, but she didn’t have a left-handed bookseller’s speed. The Cauldron-Born ducked under the blow and punched her aside, flinging the woman into the vegetable garden, where she hit hard and lay still.

But Mrs. London had slowed it down, perhaps at the cost of her own life. Merlin came up behind, and spinning on the spot, struck a titanic two-handed blow at the thing’s neck, where its head was already somewhat detached from whatever had killed the man originally. The blow decapitated the Cauldron-Born, the head flying off to strike the fence.

Even so, the headless body turned about and groped towards Merlin. Susan watched aghast as Merlin chopped and chopped and chopped at its legs and arms, switching sides and stepping back so it couldn’t grab him. Over by the fence, the dismembered head thrust out its tongue and worked its jaw back and forth, trying uselessly to pull itself around so it could see, its eyes half-buried in garden soil.

A noise in the room made Susan whip around. A soft tock, like a single muffled drumbeat. She couldn’t see anything in the dim light, but she heard another soft tock, quite close.

Something fell on her face. Her hand snapped to the place. She felt liquid, and looked up, her mind flashing through possibilities. It hadn’t rained that much, the roof had never leaked before—

A large circular section of plaster and lathe from the ceiling suddenly crashed down near the door, plaster dust blowing up in a cloud. Blood, as Susan now knew it must be, gushed down from where it had been splashed to break the protective wards on the roof. It was followed a moment later by the body of a dead or dying man. Even in the dim light Susan saw his throat had been slashed from ear to ear. Mercury slowly ebbed from a kind of life vest he wore, which had also been slashed. Bright silver trails flowed ponderously through the faster-spreading blood.

Susan lifted her sword and readied herself, shouting with all the breath in her lungs and every muscle in her throat, “Merliiiiin! Merliiiiiiin!”

Goblins dropped through the hole, lots and lots of them, two or even three at a time, a torrent of goblins who landed on top of each other, rolled and jumped and giggled—but it was weirdly soft and distant giggling, as if smothered under pillows. They were physically like the Mayfair urchins, twisted children with pinched faces and red cheeks, but these were dressed only in leather aprons that flapped up as they fell and tumbled on the floor, showing their sticklike legs, which joined straight to their torso, without a bum, and they had no genitals. Like foreshortened, wizened Barbies or Action Jacksons, made rude flesh.

Susan cut at the first one, steeling herself for the impact, the spray of blood, the horror. But the blade passed through the goblin, leather apron and all, as if parting smoke. Meeting so little resistance, Susan was swung off balance, almost turning around herself.

In an instant, the goblins were on her, and their grasping hands had no difficulty gripping her flesh. Susan dropped the sword, the metal not old enough to touch these faery invaders, and lashed out with fists and boots.

“Help! Help! Goblins!”

The goblins hung on Susan’s arms and legs, forcing her down. As soon as she was on the floor, they gagged her with her own pillow slip and wrapped her ankles and wrists with