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Original art by Rob Pegler.

Chapter 1

The trouble at Downsfield High School started just after the 9:00 a.m. bell. It was the sudden silence that got everyone's attention.

At 9:04, the head of the PE department arrived in the Principal's office in a breathless run, saying there was something terribly wrong in the gym. Other teachers and staff turned up over the next few minutes, many of them in a panicked state. All of them gave disturbing, if garbled, accounts of things going on in their classrooms. Several of the faculty were unaccounted for.

At 9:09, just after the Principal had managed to calm everyone down, the caretaker fell from the third floor and landed in a dumpster outside the office window.

Two minutes later, as the Principal and her remaining staff fled the building in a panic, the students took to the hallways.

The police arrived at 9:28, and immediately cordoned off the school, but there seemed to be little need. No students had left the building, nor did they appear to be rioting or making demands. Hacking into the schools security system, a police surveillance expert called over the Inspector in charge of the siege and showed him several images from the security cameras. Many of the images were puzzling. Others were extremely disturbing.

Parents began arriving at the police cordon just before 10:00 a.m. Reporters, camera crews and onlookers were close behind them. There were already several confused reports about what was happening inside the school. The word "riot" was being thrown around, along with "mass psychosis." But the word that got a lot of people's attention, passing through the crowd and across the airwaves, was "zombies."

At 10:36 a.m., someone called the office of Downwright & Pope.

By 11:52, Inspector Parrish had decided it was time to say something.

It wasn't that he objected to a consultant being called in. He didn't mind that the consultant had pulled up in a grubby dented van, or even that he was carrying a metal baseball bat. He wasn't even concerned about the steel-capped boots. What put him off was the fact that the consultant had arrived twenty minutes ago, and still hadn't consulted with anyone. Or even introduced himself.

The consultant was a young man, tall, lean but strongly built, and a little dishevelled. He had short brown hair and looked like a man who got punched a lot, albeit one who knew how to punch back. He wore dark cargo pants and a heavy black jacket over a grey t-shirt. He hadn't said a word since he'd arrived, just stood out in front of the police cordon, bat laid across his shoulders, staring up at the school building. All very dramatic, Parrish thought, but it's not really getting us anywhere.

Stepping out beyond the line of police cars, Parrish cleared his throat. "Uh . . . excuse me?" He fumbled through his short-term memory for the name the sergeant had given him a few minutes ago. "Gabriel Pope?"

"Call me Gabe," said Gabriel Pope, without turning around.

"Whatever. I'm Inspector Parrish. I'm in—"

"Good. How many students in there?" asked Gabe.

Parrish faltered. "Uh . . . a little over two thousand."

"Any staff still inside?"

"About fifteen, we think. Listen, I—"

"Any of them been eaten yet?"

Parrish shrugged. "I don't know. They haven't asked us to send any food in, if that's what you—"

"No," said Gabe, "I said, have any of the staff been eaten yet?"

Parrish took a moment to roll the question around in his head. "Look, what kind of consultant are you, anyway? They tell me you've worked a case or two with Jacob Cobb, but I hear it's all been off the record. Doesn't exactly inspire professional confidence. And those cases are still listed as unsolved."

"Trust me," Gabe replied, "they were solved."

Parrish bristled. "Are you going to tell me what's going on in there?"

"Not sure myself. Depends what type we're dealing with."

"What type of what?"

"What type of zombies."

"Excuse me?"

"Mel?" Gabe called, without turning around.

Parrish was suddenly aware of a tall, elfin young woman on his left. She had long green-brown hair and exotic eyes, and was stylishly dressed in shades of brown and tan. Slipping a hand through his arm, she gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder. "Hi. I'm Meliad. Okay, there are various different types of zombification, but they fall under three main categories: viral, transentient and psychoinvasive. Now, your viral zombies are . . ."

Parrish stared helplessly at Gabe as he was maneuvered away behind the cordon.

Gabe turned to see a group of harried-looking adults standing behind the police cars, sipping stryrofoam cups of coffee and smoking cigarettes. Teachers, he thought, and wandered over to them. "Who's in charge?"

A middle-aged woman with strawberry blonde hair turned around. "I'm the Principal," she offered, with a gaunt expression that suggested she'd rather be anything else.

"You'll do. Can you tell me what happened this morning?"

The Principal seemed to deflate a little more. "I don't know. Everything was fine. Normal day. The students had just gotten into class, and then they . . ." She trailed off, helplessly throwing up her hands.

"They stopped."

Gabe turned to the teacher who had spoken, a large middle-aged man with a beard. "Stopped what?"

"Everything," said the man. "I had an English class with thirty kids in it, all sitting around yammering and laughing, and then they all stopped. Dead silence. Just sat there, staring into space."

"The whole class?"

The Principal's lip was trembling. "The whole school."

Gabe nodded slowly. "And then what happened?"

The English teacher looked down. "Then they started . . . doing things."

Gabe's eyes moved around the group of teachers, most of them wearing the same haunted expressions as the Principal. Some of them had minor injuries. One, a dark-haired woman of about fifty, was sitting on the ground sobbing while an older man tried to console her. She had scratches on her face and arms, and her clothes were torn.

"And this happened all over the school? At the same time?"

"Yeah. Nine o'clock."

Gabe scratched his chin. "Did you notice any—?" He looked around. A bell was ringing somewhere in the building in one long, shrill note. "What's that?"

"The school bell," said the Principal. "It's automated." She looked at her watch. "Twelve o'clock. Beginning of lunch. Or it should be." She looked at Gabe. "Do you know what's happening to the kids?"

Gabe was staring up at the building. "I think we might be about to find out . . ."

The Principal followed his gaze, and let out a gasp. All along the police line and the crowd behind it, people were turning to look.

There were faces appearing in the windows. All across the three storeys of the building students were appearing—black, white and asian, big and small, teenagers of every age, race and clique. They stood framed in the windows, silent and expressionless, staring out at the cordon. Here and there a number of desperate voices called out as parents in the crowd recognised their children.

Gabe was moving back to the center of the line, eyes moving from window to window, looking at the blank silent faces. "What are you doing . . .?"

Then, as one, several of the students raised their hands. Each of them was holding something—knives, scissors, scalpels, box cutters, even drawing compasses. Sharp objects of every description, salvaged from all over the school building. Simultaneously, without expression, they slowly drew the weapons across their own palms, drawing blood. Gasps and screams rose from the crowd, and the cops on the line had to move quickly to hold people back. Others had their guns trained on the windows, unsure as to whether they were aiming at offenders or victims. Gabe stood still, chaos rising behind him, watching intently as the students began to smear their bloodied hands across the windows in front of them. The rest just stood, staring in a silent vigil.

Gabe's eyes settled on a window on the third floor. A stocky boy with blonde hair and a rugby jersey was dragging his slashed palm down the middle of the window pane, leaving a long bloody trail. Then he turned his hand and wiped it slowly along the top and bottom to leave two horizontal lines...

Gabe's eyebrows raised. The kid had written a letter I. In blood.

His eyes quickly moved to the next window along, where a tall Indian girl was smearing a two long lines at right angles onto the glass—an L. In the windows on either side of them, others were marking out a T, an N, a W . . .

"Aw, shit . . ." he muttered under his breath.

Their task completed, the students lowered their injured hands and, in unison, turned to move away from the windows. As they vanished Gabe's eyes were already moving across the building, window to window, spelling out the message they'd left behind.

W I L T O N
W A S · H E R E

Gabe sensed Meliad coming to stand beside him. "Well, this just got a lot more interesting," she commented.

"Yep," Gabe agreed.

Inspector Parrish emerged from behind the cordon, ruddy-faced and staring. "What the fuck was that?"

"That," Gabe told him, "was a psychoinvasive phenomenon."

"A wha—?"

"Mel?"

"Psychoinvasive zombification," Mel explained, as Gabe walked away. "The kids are still alive, but they're being controlled by something. A shaman or wizard, maybe some malign entity. Whatever it is, it's extremely powerful, and goes by the name of Wilton. And apparently," she added, looking up at the bloodied windows, "it wants to make its presence felt."

Gabe was approaching the huddle of teachers again. "Anybody know who or what Wilton is?"

The Principal managed to drag her eyes away from the windows. "W-Wilton Grey?"

"You tell me."

"Well . . ." The Principal gave a helpless shrug. "Will's a student."

"Not a very good one," the English teacher put in.

"Well, no," the Principal conceded. "He's . . . a troubled young man—"

"He's an evil little shit, is what he is," the English teacher corrected her.

Gabe raised his hands. "Can we back up a bit? How old is he?"

"Uh . . . sixteen," the Principal said, after a moment's thought.

Gabe looked dubious. "You're telling me a sixteen year old did all this?"

"He's into things," said the English teacher. "Occult shit, you know. I set an assignment a couple of weeks ago. Prepare a report on a non-fiction text and present it to the class. He turns up with some dusty old book called the . . . Old Dominatrix, or someth—"

Gabe looked up sharply. "The Occulo Dominatus?"

"Yeah, something like that. Made-up languages, pictures of dragons and squid people and naked women with horns. I told him to put the book away and go sit down, and he gave this look, like . . ."

Gabe wasn't listening. He turned on his heel and marched back across the street towards where his van was parked.

"Hey!" the Principal called after him. "What's happening to the kids?"

Halfway across the street, Mel caught up to Gabe and fell into step alongside him. "You've got a look," she said in a hushed tone, coming up alongside him.

"I'm going in," Gabe replied, removing his jacket.

"Yeah, that look. I think we need to handle this one with a little finesse."

"Finesse?" Gabe opened the back of the van, which looked like the travelling showroom of a very specialized arms dealer. He picked up a leather harness and started fastening it around his torso.

"This isn't a vampire den, Gabe," Mel reminded him, as he started grabbing weapons. "It's a high school. With live kids in it. Whose parents are going to want them back in one lazy self-absorbed piece when this is all over."

Gabe paused. Both their eyes slid down to his hands. One was holding a silver-plated bowie knife, the other a hand grenade.

"Fine," he sighed. He replaced the weapons, drew his revolver and handed it to Mel. "But I'm taking my bat."

"Good enough. Want me to come with you?"

He shook his head. "I need you out here to liase with Parrish."

"Liase?"

"Babysit."

"Ah. Can do. Oh, wait . . ."

Gabe frowned as she hurried around to the driver's door and rummaged in the glovebox. She returned a moment later carrying two small black walkie-talkies, complete with headsets. "Bought these over the weekend. Good a chance as any to try 'em out."

Gabe patiently waited, arms raised, as Mel fussed around attaching the unit to his belt and hooking him up. Then she grabbed his wrist, pulling a black marker from her pocket. He frowned as she pulled the cap off with her teeth and began carefully drawing an angular runic symbol on the back of his hand. "If dere's shomefing in dere working a mind mojo," she said, the plastic cap still wedged between her teeth, "dish should help ward it off."

"You do look after me."

"Shomebody hash to."

A minute later, they closed up the van and started back towards the cordon. Gabe wore his silver baseball bat slung across his back, a few religious charms and several mini-bottles of holy water strapped under his right arm. Parrish saw them coming and came out to meet them. "What's the problem?"

"We've got several," Gabe replied. "For starters, there's a troubled teenage loser in there playing with a copy of the Occulo Dominatus."

Parrish opened his mouth, then paused and looked at Mel.

"The Hidden Powers," she explained.

Parrish absorbed this, and decided he didn't want to know. "So what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to go stuff him in his locker."

"By yourself?"

"You can come with me if you want. Keep in touch," he said to Mel as he started off.

Mel tapped her headset in response. "Don't die or nothin'."

Parrish looked on as Gabe slipped through the cordon and set off at a run, entering the school grounds. Then he turned and stared helplessly at Mel.

"Don't worry." She smiled and patted his arm. "He grows on you."

Chapter 2

It didn't take long to find an inconspicuous entrance. Public buildings like schools and hospitals tended to have all kinds of little back doors and service entrances that most people didn't notice and wouldn't think to secure. Gabe recalled half-watching a film in which a group of people had survived for weeks inside a shopping mall while zombies roamed the streets outside. In his experience, people in similar situations generally met a sticky end because they'd missed an unlocked fire exit in the parking lot.

As he slipped into the school building through a side entrance behind the dumpsters, the irony was not lost on him.

He found himself in a short corridor, with a door at the far end and another to his right. He smelled grease and detergent and body odour and other, less pleasant things, and identified it as the kitchen. The door up ahead was presumably the cafeteria.

He eased the kitchen door open and slid through.

The room was a mess, as he'd expected. It looked as though the kitchen staff had been laying everything out to start preparing meals, but someone else had taken exception to the idea. The floor was covered with dropped utensils, spilled foodstuffs and other garbage. Bulk tins of food were scattered around the floor, some of them open and leaking. The freezer unit was open, the contents ransacked. Here and there in the chaos, Gabe spotted patches of blood on the floor.

The screen on the servery was still down, but the little lock was easy enough to pick. Gabe slipped his thumbs under the screen and—wincing at the prospect of squeaky runners—eased it up an inch. Leaning over the servery, he peeked through the little gap and into the cafeteria beyond. He saw rows of tables and benches, surfaces still gritty with swirling streaks left behind by cleaning products. Unlike the kitchen, the cafeteria itself seemed to be largely untouched. There was no one in sight.

There was another door across the kitchen. It led to a corridor along one edge of the cafeteria, past what looked to be a boiler room, before coming out in the main corridor beyond. Gabe was on edge as he slipped out into the open again, but he was in the east wing of the school, away from the main entrance, and there was no one to be seen.

He moved quickly but silently, taking the corridors in short spurts, checking each door or corner before moving past it. The lights were out, and the hallways lay in a dull half-gloom, the only illumination from the windows around the perimeter. There was no more evidence of vandalism here, or at least no more than one would expect. The place seemed completely deserted. If Gabe hadn't known better, it would have appeared that the school was simply closed for the day. If the students were here, they were—

He froze. In the corner of his eye, something had moved.

He turned, hand already reaching for the bat on his back. He came around to face a long row of lockers, all closed and locked. There was nothing else there.

Gabe backed up slowly, eyes scanning the hallway, looking for . . .

There. Near the ceiling.

His eyes moved just too late. He caught the barest glimpse of the thing, then it was gone. He couldn't be sure he'd seen it at all. He stood completely still, staring at the spot where it had been. Something glassy and indistinct, moving across the ceiling, or . . .

Gabe frowned. Through the ceiling?

Shaking it off, he turned and moved on down the hallway. Forget it. Seeing things. Situations like this always screwed with your head.

Coming to another corner, he took a cautious look. The next corridor was short, and led to a stairwell. Still no sign of anyone. Except . . .

Leaning forward, Gabe held his breath and listened. There was a sound—very faint, but audible. It was a rhythmic thumping, slow and steady, like a drumbeat. It sounded like it was coming from upstairs.

Stepping back, he crouched at the corner, in a position to see both hallways. Fiddling with the walkie-talkie on his belt, he pushed the button down with his thumb. "Mel?" he said into the microphone as loudly as he dared. "Mel, you there? Mel?"

No reply. Shaking his head, he released the button.

"—UTTON SO I CAN TALK TO YOU, GABE."

With a harsh curse, Gabe yanked the headset off, almost losing his balance. Ears ringing, he twisted himself around and fiddled with the unit on his belt until he found the volume control. Gingerly holding the headset to his ear again, he pushed the button and hissed, "What was that?"

Releasing again, he waited a second before the headset crackled, and Mel's distorted voice came through. "I said, you have to let go of the button so you can hear me. These things are one-way."

"Yeah, got that." With a scowl, he awkwardly slipped the headset back on and adjusted the mike. "Can you hear me now?"

Crackle. "Yeah. Where are you?"

"Near a stairwell. Northeast corner, I think. Haven't seen anybody yet. Any movement out there?"

"Not much. We've seen a few of them moving past the windows on the second floor. No more self-mutilating graffiti, though."

"Good to hear. Okay, I'm going up."

He paused at the foot of the stairs, listening intently. The stairs rose to a landing before turning up to the left. The thumping sound was louder, probably just above him. Beneath it he could hear other sounds, distant and irregular—voices, perhaps. Somewhere, a muffled crash echoed through the corridors.

He was halfway up the first flight of steps when the girl appeared. She staggered into view on the landing above and stood there, swaying gently on her feet. She was tall and slim, blonde hair tied in a long ponytail, probably about seventeen years of age. She was dressed in gym clothes, grey shorts and sneakers, and a blue t-shirt with the school emblem across the front. She looked around for a moment, as if unsure of her surroundings. Then she turned towards Gabe, and he froze.

The girl took a step forward, then another. She stumbled a little on the first step, but somehow managed to keep her balance. Gabe's eyes moved to her feet as they moved down the stairs—shaky and uncertain, like a toddler learning to walk. Her eyes were still on him, but they were dull and lifeless—looking through him, not at him. Gabe quietly moved to one side as she passed him, wobbling her way down the steps. She was within arm's reach now, but he didn't touch her. Psychoinvasives were a tricky thing to deal with—you never knew how strong the hold was, or how they would react. He kept a close eye on her as she moved on down the steps.

Something moved across her back.

Gabe blinked, staring at the girl's shoulders. There didn't seem to be anything there, and yet . . .

There it was again. A shadow, the ghost of a shape. A sinuous, slithering thing, writhing its way between her shoulder blades, curling around under her arm and . . .

The girl's foot came down sideways on the edge of the next step, wobbled for a second, and then slipped forward with a rubbery squeak. Without a sound, without any attempt to check her fall, she toppled over sideways and tumbled down the lower half of the staircase, flopping onto the floor below like a rag doll.

Wincing at the sight, Gabe started down the steps to see if she was injured. He stopped as the girl sat bolt upright, still staring blankly ahead. Her ponytail had come halfway loose, hanging sideways from her head. She had fresh grazes on her arms and legs and blood was streaming from her mouth, but she didn't seem to notice. Rising to her feet like a jerky rag doll, she wheeled around and walked drunkenly away down the hall.

Gabe turned and continued up the stairs.

Reaching the landing, he peered up the next flight of stairs and finally located the source of the thumping noise. A skinny boy of fifteen or so was sitting on a step about halfway up, huddled into the wall on one side. He had long unkempt hair, and wore grubby jeans and a black t-shirt. His knees were drawn up to his chest, but his arms hung limp on the steps beside him. He was staring straight ahead, just like the girl, as he rhythmically thumped the left side of his head against the wall. As Gabe carefully moved closer, he saw blood trickling down the boy's cheek. The wall beside him was smeared with it.

Gabe crouched beside the boy, unsure what to do. He didn't want to risk touching any of them, but the kid was going to give himself brain damage, assuming he hadn't already. Perhaps he should . . .

A thunderous crash echoed down the steps, coming from the second floor. Gabe was on his feet an instant later, sliding his bat from its sheath. The crash was followed by another, then another. Behind them, a frantic screaming was ringing through the halls. Leaving the kid on the steps, Gabe made his way quickly but quietly to the top, and checked the next corner.

A long corridor stretched away from him, lined with lockers and classroom doors. The floor was littered with junk—mostly paper, stationery supplies, odds and ends. There were a few items of clothing as well. About two thirds of the way down the hall, but coming closer all the time, was a short podgy boy in dark pants and a sweater. He was staggering down the hallway in a shambling, spinning run, a metal-framed chair in his hands. He was screaming as he came, wild animal sounds mixed with unintelligible ranting, as he repeatedly smashed the chair into the lockers on either side of the hallway. Several of them had broken open, spilling their contents onto the floor.

Gabe was wary as the boy came closer, but the problem soon took care of itself. Whirling around in a wild arc, the boy struck the chair across the corner of a locker, jarring it out of his hands. As it bounced away from him he lost his balance and flopped to the floor. The screaming abruptly died, and he curled up into a ball in the middle of the corridor.

Gabe moved away from the stairs and made his way past the kid, keeping a close eye on him. He lay in the fetal position, arms over his face, making no sound. He was shivering all over.

He saw others as he moved on. A few were out in the halls, walking listlessly around like the girl downstairs, some just standing or sitting, staring into space. Some of them had injuries. A boy wandered past him with his shirt off, red scratch-marks raked down his pale torso. Most of them seemed to be concentrated in the classrooms. Some were milling about, others were engaged in strange activities of their own. One room contained at least twenty students, all industriously pulling the posters and displays off the walls, dropping them into a scattered carpet on the floor. In the room next door, thirty kids were sitting attentively at their desks, eyes on the blank whiteboard at the front.

He came to a boy's bathroom and carefully pushed the door open to look inside. A row of cubicles stood opposite a line of stainless steel sinks, covered with broken glass—the mirrors above them had all been smashed. Sitting on the floor about halfway down the room was a pretty Hispanic girl, using a piece of broken mirror to cut off her long black hair. Most of it was lying in fallen strands on the tiles around her. As Gabe drew closer, he heard her quietly humming to herself, the same four notes over and over. "Hmmm-hm-hmmmmm-hmmmmm . . . hmmm-hm-hmmmmm-hmmmmm . . . hmmm-hm-hmmmmm-hmmmmm . . ."

Sinking to one knee beside her, Gabe gingerly reached out and grasped the the piece of glass. He tensed, waiting for a reaction, but the girl easily let it go. The edges were bloody where they'd cut into her hand. As Gabe threw it away, she gently rolled over onto her side and started playing with her fingers, still humming.

Standing up, Gabe turned to see a boy sitting in one of the cubicles. He was fully clothed, perched on the edge of the toilet seat, looking up at the ceiling. His lips were moving, but no sound was coming out. He seemed to be mouthing the same words over and over. Gabe couldn't tell what words they were, or even if they were words at all. Tears were rolling down the boy's face. With a frown, Gabe pulled the cubicle door closed, stepped past the girl and returned to the corridor.

As he left the room, something slithered across the wall behind him.

"Coffee?"

Mel looked sideways. A cardboard cup with a plastic snap-on lid was hovering a few inches from her face. She regarded it with mild distaste. "I don't suppose you've got any hibiscus tea?"

The junior detective holding the cup tried not to smile. "Seems unlikely."

Mel tried not to smile back. "Philistines," she said, taking the cup.

"Any word on your boy?" said another voice. Mel turned to see Inspector Parrish appear beside her, leaning on the rear of the police car behind them.

"He's in," Mel reported. "Heading for the second floor." She sipped the coffee through the little hole in the lid, and her eyebrows lifted slightly. "Is this caramel?"

The junior detective winked at her as he withdrew.

"Does he even know what he's looking for?" Parrish wanted to know.

Mel carefully removed the lid from her cup and held it under her nose. "He's looking for Wilton Grey," she sighed, taking a sip. "One kid in a building full of them, and none of them are at their best right now. Give it time."

"I haven't got time," Parrish snapped. "These parents are going to start rioting if we don't fix this mess soon. TV cameras up my arse. And I've got nothing to go on. No fugitives to negotiate with. Can't storm the building because the offenders and hostages are the same fucking thing. All I've got is a crazy mercenary with a bat and some story about a teenage hoodoo man. If this—"

He stopped short as a uniformed officer appeared on his left, leaning in to murmur something into his ear. Parrish frowned, then nodded. "No shit. Okay, bring her up here."

The officer hurried back the way he'd come. Mel gave Parrish a questioning look.

"This should be interesting," he told her. "Wilton's mother just arrived."

Gabe was halfway down the next corridor when he heard the commotion up ahead. Running footsteps, furniture being overturned, the resounding crash of a door. There was the tinkle of breaking glass, then a scream. Gabe raised his baseball bat as he approached.

When he heard the words "Help me!" he broke into a run.

He came around the next corner at a sprint, gripping the bat in one hand. He saw figures moving up ahead but kept his pace, assessing the situation even as he charged towards it. A classroom door had been thrown open, the inset window shattered, glass scattered across the hallway floor. A big kid with short red hair and a flannel shirt was standing outside the door, struggling with another figure at his feet. This one was smaller, female and—judging by her grey hair and style of dress—much too old for high school. She was sprawled on her back, trying to scramble away, but the red-haired kid had a firm grip on her ankle and was trying to drag her back into the classroom. Gabe saw several other grasping hands in the doorway.

Deciding that this was a golden opportunity to hit first and ask questions later, Gabe lowered his shoulder as he approached at a run, driving it into the kid's ribs. The boy's feet left the ground, and the rest of him rejoined it about three feet from the door. By that time Gabe was already dodging the other hands reaching through the doorway, crouching to scoop the old woman up off the floor. She came up awkwardly, trying to pull away from him, but he dragged her around and set her on her feet and then they were running, going back the way Gabe had come as bodies came spilling through the door behind them. Risking a look back, he saw several blank-faced teens pushing and scrambling their way through the door, falling over each other, glassy eyes darting wildly. None of them were making a sound.

Coming to another door, Gabe bustled the woman through it and swung it closed behind them. He found the deadbolt and snapped it shut, bracing his shoulder against the wood. He heard running footsteps out in the hallway, but nothing came at the door.

After a few seconds, he relaxed enough to survey his new surroundings. He was in what looked like a resource room—a long table dominated one wall, covered with boxes, a computer, a laminating machine. On the other side were row upon row of shelves laden with books, art supplies and science equipment. An antiquated photocopier stood on his left, next to several boxes of rolled-up maps. Gabe briefly wondered if he could drag the copier in front of the door.

The elderly woman from the hallway had backed up to one of the bookcases and was now sitting beneath it, back to the shelves, knees drawn up. She was trembling, and looked as though she might be sick.

"You alright?" Gabe called softly.

The woman didn't answer.

"Hey." Gabe moved slowly away from the door, crouching as he approached her. "Are you okay?"

The woman slowly raised her eyes to look at him.

"Are you a policeman?" she asked.

"No," Gabe admitted.

"Oh," said the woman. "Then you probably don't have a gun." She sounded disappointed.

Gabe smiled in spite of himself. "Not . . . today. Who are you?"

The woman looked at the door. "Are they still out there?"

"Not sure. But I don't think they—"

"Ellen Figgis."

Gabe faltered. "What?"

"I'm . . . my name's Ellen Figgis. I teach economics. Can you get me out of here?"

Gabe raised a hand. "Slow down. What's the story here?"

Ellen Figgis gave a little shrug. "I . . . I don't know. W-we were just starting classes, and the students all went—"

"Yeah, I heard that part. What about those kids back in the room?"

Ellen was silent for a moment, lips moving. "I saw Vanessa."

Gabe nodded slowly. "Okay. Good. Who's Vanessa?"

"Vanessa McInnes," Ellen explained. "One of my kids . . . I mean, I taught her. I've known her since she was twelve. I was hiding, but then I tried to get out, and Vanessa was . . ." She waved a hand, unable to find the words. She looked as though she were on the verge of tears. "I tried to follow her, but she went into that room, and the others started . . ." She shook her head.

"Right." Gabe patted her hand. "It's okay. I'm going to try to sort this out. But I need to know what's going on in the school."

Ellen looked lost. "I'm not sure. I heard . . . I mean, someone said there was something happening in the gymnasium. A fire or something."

"When?

"This morning. When all this started."

Gabe looked around at the undamaged building. "Can't have been much of a fire, then." He glanced back at the door, but there was no activity from outside. "What can you tell me about Wilton Grey?"

"Wilton?" Ellen tried to hide her distaste, and failed miserably. "What do you want with him?"

"A terse word or two. Do you know him?"

"Well, he's been in my class before, but . . . well, he's . . ."

"Troubled?"

She bobbed her head non-committally.

"An evil little shit?"

Ellen smiled. "You've met him, then?"

Mel was waiting by the cordon when Gabe's voice sputtered in her ear. "Mel. You there?"

She reached for the unit on her belt. "Hey, kid. Any action yet?

"Some," said Gabe. "I rescued a teacher. Sort of."

"Sort of?"

"Well, I don't want to risk sneaking her out of the building yet, but she's safe. I mean, safe-ish. I've locked her in the second floor resource room. Make sure the cops know where she is if things . . . get interesting." There was a long silence, then, "She said something about some trouble in the gym this morning. It's one floor above me. I'm going to go check it out."

Mel was only half-listening. Her eyes were on Parrish, approaching along the line of police cars with a small, somewhat frumpy woman in tow. "Okay," she said into the microphone. "Keep in touch."

"Will do. How's everything out there?"

Mel's eyes were fixed on the approaching woman. "Getting interesting."

". . . is one of the consultants on this case," Parrish was saying, indicating Mel as they approached her. "Mrs Grey, this is Miss . . . uh . . . This is Meliad."

Mrs Grey didn't appear to be listening. She was short and a little overweight and in her forties. She had long curly hair bundled back into a busy ponytail, streaks of grey showing up amid the auburn. She wore jeans and a sweater under a rough wool coat that was too big for her. Her face was lined and rather plain, and she had the look of someone who worried a lot. Her pale blue eyes were fixed on the school building. They widened a little as she saw her son's name spelled out in blood.

"Mrs Grey?" said Mel. The woman turned to stare at her, and she smiled and extended a hand. "My name is Meliad. I'm with Downwright and Pope. We're . . . liaising with the police on this matter."

Mrs Grey slowly raised a rough hand to return the handshake, her eyes fixed on Mel's green-brown hair. "Okay."

"So," Mel asked, with a soothing smile. "Let's talk about your son."

Chapter 3

The stairwell to the third floor proved a little more challenging. There were about twenty blank-eyed students on the stairs—some standing, some sitting. All of them were staring at the same spot on the ceiling. Gabe looked and, as he'd expected, saw nothing there.

He stood for a moment and considered the stairwell. It would be easy enough to slip between the kids, as none of them seemed to be acknowledging his presence. On the other hand, he wasn't sure he could count on that for long. A number of the staff had apparently been attacked when the phenomenon had first taken hold, and Ellen Figgis seemed to have sparked something off simply by walking into the wrong room. It was probably best not to tempt fate.

Heading back the way he'd come, he began to make his way towards the far end of the building.

Back on the stairs, one of the kids turned her head to watch him go.

Outside, Mrs Grey was laughing.

"C'mon," she managed, between snorts. "Will's hypnotized the whole school? In his dreams."

Mel smiled, but only with her mouth. "It's not exactly hypnosis," she pointed out. "But the information we've got shows he may have . . . tapped into something."

Mrs Grey responded with a questioning smile. "Like what?"

"Have you ever heard of the Occulo Dominatus?"

"No. Do I want to?"

Mel sighed inwardly. "Well, have you noticed your son reading any unusual books?"

Mrs Grey laughed again. "You obviously haven't met Will. All he does is read unusual books. He got stacks of the things. Buys 'em online. Or he goes sniffing around those occult shops. He's into all that mystical witchery crap."

Mel and Parrish exchanged a look. Mrs Grey spotted it.

"I mean, I'm not worried about it," she went on. "I messed around with crystals and dreamcatchers and stuff when I was his age. It's harmless, right?"

"How's he doing at school?" Parrish chimed in.

Mrs Grey rolled her eyes. "Long story."

Parrish glanced back at the police cordon stretching away behind him. "We're not going anywhere."

Mrs Grey frowned. "You're serious, aren't you? You think Will's behind—"

"Please, Mrs Grey," Mel said, smiling. "We just want to know a bit more about him."

"I don't know." Mrs Grey shrugged. "His grades are alright. He's smart. Smarter than his sisters. He could do better if he tried."

"What about friends?"

"He's got friends," she assured them. "Or he did. I haven't heard much about them the last year or so. I think . . . maybe he's having a hard time of it, but he never says anything. Clams up when I ask. You know teenagers."

"What about his father?" Parrish asked. "Sometimes boys—"

"He's dead," Mrs Grey replied, rather flatly. "Died when Will was six." Her pale eyes moved from Parrish to Mel, and back again. "Is one of you going to tell me where my son is?"

The other stairwell was more accessible. There were only two people on it, and neither of them seemed especially menacing. The first was a chubby kid of about seventeen with short brown hair, huddled in one corner of the landing. Wedged between him and the wall was a young woman, probably around twenty, smartly dressed in a blouse and knee-length skirt. She didn't look like a student, and Gabe realised she must be one of the teachers.

He tensed up for a second, wondering if he was witnessing another attack, but neither of the pair were moving. As he made his way up the steps Gabe noticed that the woman's leg was hooked around the boy's, and his face was turned towards hers as if they were making out. The whole scene had such an intimate look to it that Gabe was almost embarrassed to be witnessing it. As he passed them he saw that the boy was cupping the woman's chin in his hand, holding her still as he methodically licked her neck and cheek. She was gazing blankly up at the ceiling, softly giggling to herself.

Gabe moved on up the stairs, feeling slightly ill.

The hallway at the top was deserted, though even more strewn with junk and wreckage than the floor below. Whole desks had been dragged out of classrooms and smashed, and displays from the walls littered the corridor. Crouching by the stairs, Gabe reached for the walkie-talkie on his belt. "Mel."

"Yo."

"Just made the third floor. How's things outside?"

"Oh, the plot's thickening. Look, there's something we haven't discussed."

"Yes," Gabe sighed. "I'm aware that we'll probably have to present the Board of Education with a hefty bill for all this."

"No," Mel snapped. "Well, yes, but that's not it. I mean what we're planning to do when you find this Wilton kid."

"Well, first order of business would be getting that book away from him."

"And what if it's not that easy?" said Mel. "From what I'm hearing, our Wilton's quite the dabbler in the arcane. And he's got to have some pretty serious juice to have pulled off an enchantment like this."

Gabe smiled. "You worrying about me, Mel?"

"Him, actually."

"What?"

"I'm worried," she went on, "that you may not be able to shut him down without doing some damage. Possibly the lethal kind. We're not usually in the business of killing humans. Especially ones who aren't old enough to vote."

"Won't come to that."

"Might come to that."

"Can we worry about this when the time comes?" said Gabe. "We don't even know where—"

He stopped. A pair of sneakers had appeared beside him. They were small and pink.

His eyes moved from the sneakers to the bare shins above them, following them upwards as far as the knees, where they vanished inside a denim skirt. The owner of the skirt was a petite Japanese girl, hair in a ponytail, standing over him with her fists clenched at her sides. She was staring straight at him.

A pair of black boots came into view on the other side of Gabe. These belonged to a tall white kid with close-cropped hair.

Gabe slowly rose to his feet, his thumb slipping off the 'talk' button.

"-abe? What's happening? You okay?"

Gabe heard footsteps behind him. The young teacher and her chubby beau were walking up the steps, eyes fixed directly on him. About half a dozen others were bringing up the rear.

The Japanese girl lunged, grabbing hold of his arm. As he turned to pull away the tall kid moved in to grab him from the other side. Gabe twisted and swung an elbow, catching the boy in the chest and sending him stumbling backwards. No sign of pain showed on the kid's face as he fell back; his mouth made no sound. Coming around to face the girl, Gabe raised a fist, hesitated, then gritted his teeth and swung. A spray of blood escaped the girl's mouth as she spun to the floor, hands slipping away from Gabe's arm. Resolving to fight now and feel like shit about it later, he came around to face the wave of attackers coming up the stairs. Grabbing the young teacher by the shoulders as she reached the top step, he threw all of his two hundred pounds against her, sending her reeling backwards before she could get hold of him. She collided awkwardly with the kids behind her, the whole group falling over themselves and tumbling back to the lower landing in a messy avalanche of flailing limbs. They landed in a messy heap, not one of them letting out a word or a cry. As he turned to move, Gabe could already see some of them getting calmly back to their feet.

The tall kid was already back up, coming for him again. Gabe ducked and launched a sharp kick at the boy's shin, dropping him to the floor. The Japanese girl reached for his ankle, but he was already running. As he bolted down the corridor, doors began to open.

They came out in a swarm, teens of all ages, shapes and sizes, pouring out of classroom doors, crowding into the hallway. This wasn't the clumsy, blinkered mob that had come after Ellen Figgis, but a coordinated army, moving with one mind, united by one purpose. All eyes were fixed on Gabe as he rushed past them, hands reaching out to snatch at him as he ducked and dodged. The corridor behind him was already full, hundreds of feet pounding and squeaking on the linoleum floor as they sprinted after him en masse. Other doors were opening up ahead of him, dispatching more assailants to cut off his escape. At least two dozen more appeared around the corner up ahead.

Gabe came to a halt, hundreds closing in from either side, nowhere left to run. He cursed and drew his bat.

"Gabe!" Mel's voice barked into his ear. "Talk to me! What the fuck's going on up there?"

Gabe jammed his thumb down on the button. "They've got me cold, Mel. Don't send anyone else in. Tell Parrish to—"

Then the crowd rushed in from both sides, and he released the button and gripped his bat with both hands, and swung at the first charging body to come into range.

"Gabe!" Mel squeezed the button on her walkie-talkie, staring up at the windows as she yelled into the mike. "Gabe! What's happening?"

She heard white noise, a crack and whine, then nothing.

"Shit!" Yanking the headset off, she moved to the police car beside her and started unbuttoning her jacket.

Parrish hurried over, leaving a startled Mrs Grey behind him. "What's up?"

"No idea," Mel replied, pulling off her jacket and throwing it across the boot of the car. "I'm going in to find out."

Parrish stared up at the school building. "What? I'm not sending anyone else in there until—"

Mel spared him a glance. "Sending me? That's cute." Her hand fell on Gabe's revolver, resting on the car beside her jacket. She hesitated for a moment, then picked it up and thrust it into the back of her waistband. "Don't let anyone else in!" was her last instruction to Parrish as she set off at a run. A few cops moved forward to stop her, but Parrish shouted and waved them back. As she dashed by one of them, she snatched the nightstick from his belt. The police and onlookers were left to stare as she sprinted barefoot through the school gates, up the front steps, and barged her way through the front doors. The last they saw of her was a trail of flowing green-brown hair vanishing into the gloom.

Parrish let out a heavy sigh, turned to lean against the car, and dropped his chin to his chest. He was beginning to see why Inspector Cobb always looked so grouchy.

Chapter 4

Mel was already on the second floor before she encountered any resistance. Reaching the top of the steps, she dashed into the corridor beyond to find two glassy-eyed teens blocking her path. They responded almost immediately to her presence, lunging forward with hands outstretched. Mel dodged one and swung at the other, the nightstick held along her forearm cracking him across the skull. As he fell, she picked a direction and ran.

Students were coming out of the woodwork to give chase. The corridor was scattered with zombified teens who lunged, swung or grabbed at her, but Mel had a lifetime or two of monster-fighting under her belt and was too fast to catch, too nimble. Clearing the hallway in record time, she rounded a corner and hurtled down the next, keeping one step ahead of the doors opening on either side. She risked a glance over her shoulder and saw dozens of kids pouringinto the corridor behind her, all thundering after her, wearing the same lifeless expression. More were pouring out of doorways to join the chase.

She took the next stairwell in bounding leaps, pausing to drive a knee into a burly jock and send him tumbling down the steps behind her. Coming to the third floor, she turned right and broke into a sprint again. Halfway down the corridor, she slid to a halt.

The corridor was empty, although she could hear the crowd struggling up the steps. Yet there had clearly been a struggle here. Garbage and torn clothing were scattered on the floor, alongside spatters of fresh blood. Mel spotted a discarded shoe, also stained with blood, and even a few broken teeth. And in the midst of it all, lying on the stained linoleum near the wall, was Gabe's silver baseball bat.

Mel caught her breath. "Well," she said to no one in particular. "That doesn't bode well."

Gabe tried to struggle as he was carried through the hallways, but it was no use. He was being carried belly-up, two students clutching each arm, two holding his belt and two on each leg, like pall bearers. Two boys were marching along behind as rearguard, two more in front. The whole group had the air of a funeral procession. The halls were filled with dull-eyed teenagers, shuffling aimlessly about or standing in doorways. None of them spared him the slightest glance as he was carried past.

A set of double doors opened, then swung shut as the procession passed through. Gabe had a skewed impression of a short, dank corridor before a second set of doors was opened and they passed through into a larger space. It was a huge echoing room with high ceilings, constructed mostly of varnished wood. Rungs and ropes lines the walls, and a basketball hoop passed over his head as he was carried in.

Well, here I am, he thought, a little bitterly.

There was a crowd here as well. At least three or four hundred students were gathered around the middle of the room in a loose mob. It was to here that Gabe was being carried, and the crowd silently parted like water to let his captors through.

That was when he noticed the light. A flickering orange glow was coming from the middle of the room, washing across the blank staring faces of the teens. All of them were focused on the same spot, the source of the fiery light. He craned his head back, but couldn't see through the crowd from this angle.

At an unspoken command the procession stopped walking, and let go of him. He flopped painfully onto his back, cracking his head on the hardwood floor. He let out a curse as the students turned without a word and marched back the way they'd come, leaving him to whatever fate awaited him. The source of the flaming light was right behind him, and yet he felt no heat. In fact, the air around him was unnervingly cold . . .

He slowly rose into a crouch and turned around, looking up at the figure above him.

His heart sank. "Aw, no . . ."

Mel looked around as the crowd of students on the stairs poured into the corridor behind her, renewing the chase. Ducking to snatch up the bat, she dug in her heels and launched into a run. Taking the last stretch of the corridor in a few seconds, she darted around the next corner and stopped in her tracks.

The next corridor was full of them, dozens of them, standing around in a loose mob and staring into space. As Mel appeared, they all slowly turned to face her. She heard the crowd behind her slowing down as they approached the corner. She was cut off.

Well, that figures, she thought.

Backing up, she slowly edged into the corner as they closed in from two sides. Pushing the nightstick into her belt, she hefted the bat in one hand. Her other hand brushed over the handle of the revolver.

Down in the office, an automated timer clicked over to 1:00 pm.

The school bell went off again, echoing through the corridors of the building to signal the end of lunch. All over the school, hundreds of shuffling figures stopped in their tracks, heads slowly craning upwards.

Up in the third floor corridor, the closing crowd came to a halt and looked up as the bell sounded. Mel paused, looked around at the mesmerized crowd of teenagers. The bell seemed to have them all in some kind of trance.

Carpe testiculum, she thought, and ducked into the crowd.

She moved fast, darting and dodging through the gaps. She misjudged a step and bumped into a blonde girl, who simply swayed backwards and kept looking up. Mel was already two-thirds of the way through before the bell stopped, and even then she had a few seconds as the teens returned their attention to the gap where she'd been earlier. Upon finally noticing that she was gone, there was a moment of bewildered shuffling and blinking before they caught sight of her again. By that time she was three kids away from the edge of the crowd. She darted around the first one, ducked under a clumsy swing by the second, blocked and counter-punched the third, and was sprinting away down the corridor before he hit the floor. She heard the squeaking of dozens of sneakers on linoelum as the crowd moved again, but they were too far and too slow to catch her now. Rushing though a set of fire doors, she turned to swing them closed behind her. With the crowd bearing down, she laid her hands on the doors and closed her eyes.

A strange vibration went through the doors, like the creaking of an ancient tree in the wind. The surface of the wood shuddered and rippled, and the doors began to shift and warp. Snaking tendrils of reanimated growth appeared around the edges, curling and twisting together, merging the doors into the frame that surrounded them, sealing them together in the center. As Mel released her hold and stepped back the doors had become an impenetrable knot of tangled wood. There was a shuddering crash on the other side as the crowd of pursuers threw themselves against it, but the barrier held. As Mel turned to continue down the empty corridor, little white flowers were beginning to sprout around the frame.

Gabe crouched at the base of a towering column of flame, stretching from floor to ceiling, spinning above him like a fiery tornado that neither heated nor disturbed the air around it. It was focused over the center circle of the basketball court and, glancing downwards, Gabe noticed that someone had been busy with the chalk. The solid white band of the circle had been overlaid with eldritch script and arcane symbols, transforming the innocuous floor marking into some twisted variation of the Seal of Solomon.

And inside the circle, hanging five feet off the floor in the midst of the whirling flames, was a levitating figure that could only be Wilton Grey.

He wasn't quite what Gabe had expected. Gabe wasn't entirely sure what he had expected; some skinny, dopey-looking goth, he supposed, with stringy black hair and a pointy adams apple. Or a smarmy, repressed nerd who'd thought that working high magic was as simple as drawing a rough pentagram and making a saving throw on a D20.

Instead, the figure suspended inside the flaming whirlwind was an ordinary, plain-faced boy of sixteen, a little small for his age, with a mop of sandy hair that was now swirling around his head in the unnatural tempest he'd unleashed. He wore a grey hoodie over a Joker Saints t-shirt, slightly baggy jeans and black basketball shoes. Aside from the spinning flames and the levitating, he wasn't the sort who would have stood out in a crowd. He had a glazed look in his eye, his expression completely blank. His gaze was fixed on the object in his hands.

The Occulo Dominatus.

There were—to Gabe's knowledge—only three surviving copies of the book, and no two of them were exactly the same. There had originally been five, owned by five key members of an ancient and very short-sighted cult who believed that one's soul was a small price to pay for a fast track to absolute power. One of the books had been destroyed during a power struggle within the ranks of the cult, the other four had been stolen, scattered and lost. One had turned up in Kiev in 1919, where it was recovered and later burned by Malachi Pope, Gabe's great-grandfather. Another was said to be locked in an iron box in a bricked-over vault somewhere under the Vatican. No-one had ever found out what became of the last two.

Wilton Grey, it seemed, had acquired the Argent copy. Not as dangerous as the other two, but still worth a boatload of WMDs in the wrong hands. It was sitting open in Wilton's gentle grasp, his eyes never wavering from the page. Gabe could only guess at what the kid saw there.

Gabe slowly stood up. None of the assembled students moved, though he sensed a faint change in tension as he rose to his feet. A few of the closer ones were staring at him, as if studying him. Wilton was still looking down at the tome in his hands, but Gabe had the impression that he was studying him, too.

For long moments, nothing happened. Then, as one, the hundreds of teens in the room opened their mouths and spoke as one.

"What are you?"

Gabe frowned, looking around at the crowd.

"What are you?" they repeated.

"Never mind me," Gabe muttered. "What the hell are you?"

The crowd hesitated, as if trying to gather their collective thoughts to reply. "We are Wilton."

Gabe raised an eyebrow. "Are we now? And what are we doing today, Wilton?"

Another pause. The kids seemed to be having trouble finding the words—not just the right words, but any words. It was as though the language was scattered in their minds and they were having to assemble each sentence from scratch. Finally, they found an answer.

"We are waiting."

Gabe turned away from the crowd, looking up through the swirling flames at Wilton himself. "Waiting for what?"

The reaction was not what he expected. Wilton let out a gasp, twisting and shuddering in midair, his face showing a flash of pain. Then gradually, he relaxed again.

All around Gabe, the rest of the students swayed and shuddered on their feet, as if responding to the seizure. It was as if they were all linked somehow, all plugged into the strange boy suspended in the circle. There were spells that could do that, join two or more minds as one, but on this scale? There had to be something else at work here, Gabe thought, some other force that was . . .

And then he saw it.

Standing near him was a small, round girl with curly brown hair, standing silently with her eyes on Wilton, but there was something esle there. It was the barest glimpse at first, a little flicker of movement like he'd seen downstairs. Something was coiled around her chest, a silvery snake-like thing, almost invisible. He had to concentrate hard on it to see it, and even then it looked more like a mirage than a solid object. It was wrapped lightly around the girl, as if carressing her. Coiling up over one shoulder, it stretched up into the air, hanging like an anchor line, connecting her to . . .

Gabe looked around, straining his eyes to see what wasn't there. They all had one—hundreds of them, long glassy whip-like things curling through the air, wrapped around the silent bodies standing in the gym. Hundreds more snaked out through the walls and floor, permeating the building, reaching out to the students all around the school. All of them were connected at one point, fanning out from the fiery maelstrom in the middle of the room. Every kid in the building was tethered by them, connecting them to Wilton Grey.

Gabe moved towards the circle, looking more closely. The snaking lines seemed to merge together at his throat, joining into a thicker appendage, indistinct and only half-seen, like . . .

Oh.

. . . like a fat wriggling worm coiling around his neck, that curved upwards over his head and . . .

Oh god.

. . . and thickened out and coiled and writhed like a snake and . . .

Oh god no.

. . . and vanished into the bulk of the great bulbuous thing hanging above him, half there and half not, only visible if you tried not to see it, straining and glistening and pushing itself through a hole in the world . . .

Gabe stepped back, eyes wide, staring at the huge, repulsive shape writhing in the air above Wilton's head.

"Oh," he breathed, "we are so fucked."

Chapter 5

Mel peeked around a corner, carefully checking the corridor ahead. It was short, messy and full of students standing still and silent like sentinels. The good news, for what it was worth, was that they were all facing the other way.

Mel leaned out a little further, looking past the taller ones, trying to see what they were all looking at. At the far end of the corridor was a set of closed double doors set with small rectangular windows. Above the doors was a filthy faded sign that read GYMNASIUM. From her vantage point Mel could see a flickering orange glow inside the windows, as if an open fire was burning inside.

Ducking back behind the corner, she considered her options. A sudden sprint past the kids might work, considering she'd be coming from behind. The element of surprise might even last long enough to get through the doors before they gave chase, assuming the doors weren't locked from inside. And even if they weren't, she had no idea what was on the other side.

A good vent, that was what she needed. Mel had never been a big fan of vents, but if you were slim and agile enough—which she was—they occasionally proved useful. She stepped back and ran her eyes along the ceiling. There was a vent cover about halfway down the corridor to the gym doors, but given that she'd have to stand on one of the mesmerized students' heads to reach it, that was probably out. Lowering her eyes, she saw a door on the right side of the corridor. It was close enough to reach without attracting any attention, if she moved quietly enough . . .

Gabe slowly backed away from the circle, keeping an eye on the thing hovering above Wilton. It shuddered and moved, swelling a little larger. "So," he asked, a faint tremor in his voice, "what do you want?"

Wilton's eyes flickered. "Want?" came the chorus of voices around him.

"You must want something," said Gabe. His right hand moved under his arm until his fingers encountered something cold and hard. "What are you looking for?"

"We want . . ." The voices faltered.

Gabe's hand closed around the object as he counted in his head. One . . . two . . .

"We want a way in."

Three.

Gabe flung out a hand, a tiny bottle of holy water spinning through the air. It hit the spinning wall of flame and shattered, releasing a spray of sanctified liquid . . .

. . . that solidified into a shower of ice shards, tumbling down to scatter harmlessly across the floor.

Wilton's eyes moved.

Gabe tried to dodge as something long and silvery shot out of the maelstrom, but he wasn't fast enough. He got only the briefest glimpse before it caught him around the throat, and squeezed . . .

Mel padded softly into the room, watching the shadows. The room was dim and dank, with a cold, hard cement floor and an musty atmosphere. Tiny slit windows, encrusted with mould and dirt, let in only a little feeble light. Hard wooden benches lined the walls beneath rows of menacing steel hooks. The stench in the air was almost overpowering.

Boys locker room, she thought.

She made her way inside, adopting the faint pouting squint of a female in a sweaty male world, following the air duct in search of a downward vent. There was a central double row of lockers in the middle of the room, and just above it . . .

There it was. It was a fairly small grille, but she was sure she'd be able to squeeze through. She was about to climb up onto the locker when she heard a sound behind her.

Swish-splat, swish-splat, swish-splat . . .

It was the sound of bare feet shuffling across damp cement. Mel turned around.

Behind her was a tall, strapping lad of about seventeen, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts and holding a short wooden softball bat. Staring through her with pale, dull eyes, he raised the bat and took an unceremonious swing at her head.

Mel ducked and wheeled away as the bat slammed into the locker door with a deafening bang. She came up to regroup and came face-to-face with a different boy, wearing a grubby t-shirt and holding a hockey stick. The hooked end whistled past her as she sidestepped and moved back, trying to get her bearings. She came to a stop with a wall behind her, Gabe's silver bat in hand, preparing to face her attackers.

There were an awful lot of them. At least a dozen young men shuffled into view in front of her, armed with everything from lacrosse sticks to cricket stumps. Most of them were in various stages of locker room undress. Three of them were wearing nothing but jockstraps. They started to move forward.

Mel looked up. They were between her and the vent.

I'm going to jail, she thought, and swung the bat.

Gabe fought for breath as he was lifted off his feet. The unseen force gripping his throat tightened its hold until spots danced in front of his eyes. He tried to pull it loose, but there was nothing to pull. It was as if some huge clammy hand were strangling the life out of him, but he couldn't touch it.

Whatever it was, it was slowly pulling him towards Wilton. The boys eyes were fixed on him, but there was something else behind them, studying the struggling man with interest, as a small child might study a helpless bug.

Gabe was three feet from the fiery whirlwind now, and the air was as cold as a meat locker. He didn't want to know what would happen if he was pulled into it, but it seemed he had little choice but to find out. His hands and feet were numb, and his strength to fight back was running out fast.

Somewhere in the distance, he heard a crash. Wilton's eyes flicked, briefly, to one side.

The kids stationed around the gym reacted immediately, turning and converging on the sound. A lithe figure swung out from a broken ventilation duct and dropped to the floor in a crouch, just in front of the doors.

The two boys nearest the vent moved forward, hands outstretched. Mel rolled forward onto her hands and kicked out with both feet like a mule, slamming them both back into the wall. And then she was up and running, dodging one kid and rolling past another, swinging Gabe's bat at a shin to send its owner crashing to the floor. When she was in range of the circle, she swung her arm back and let the bat fly in the direction of the flaming shield, straight for Wilton Grey's head.

She hadn't really expected it to get through, but it was worth a try. The hurtling bat glanced off the swirling sheet of flame and ricocheted past a few feet in front of Gabe. It shifted direction in midair, as if it had struck something, and tumbled away to clatter to the floor. She saw Wilton flinch.

Gabe dropped, released from whatever invisible force was holding him up. He fell onto his backside as he landed.

Behind her, Mel heard a crash. She looked back to see the double doors of the gym flying open. The crowd from the corridor surged through, at least three dozen, falling over each other as they poured into the room like lemmings.

Gabe had just staggered back to his feet when Mel rushed past, grabbing an arm and pulling him along with her. Something big and heavy slapped against the floor at their heels. A few more kids got in their way, but with nimble dodge, a leg sweep, a body check and couple of punches, they made it to a set of doors on the other side of the gym. These opened inwards with a shove, and Gabe half-fell into the darkness beyond as Mel swung them shut again. A moment later, the pursuing crowd crashed against the doors like a wave breaking on a cliff side.

Mel caught her breath and looked at their new surroundings. They were in a room about six metres by eight, lined with shelves and hangers and bins filled with sporting equipment. Light from the gym, tainted with the orange glow, streamed in through a series of slit windows near the ceiling. The doors they'd entered through, now shuddering and pounding from the crowd outside, were also the only way out.

"You alright?" Mel asked, helping Gabe up.

He coughed and rubbed his bruised throat. "I was about to ask you the same thing."

Mel grinned and brushed away the hair clinging to her face. She was grubby and disheveled, her arms and clothes smeared with residue from the vent. Her ponytail had come loose, she had a grazed elbow and a red mark on one delicate cheekbone. "Had a little pep talk with the team," she said. She nodded towards the door. "So what's up with Tornado Boy out there?"

Gabe steadied himself against a wall, still massaging his neck. "He's not the one we have to worry about."

Mel nodded, looking at the floor. "Yeah. I know."

Gabe looked up. "You saw it?"

"I saw it."

"Shit." Gabe straightened up. If there'd been room, he would have started pacing. "How the hell did it get here?"

"Kid played around with the book," Mel surmised, with a little shrug. "Poked a little hole. Probably trying to open a portal to somewhere, maybe summon a succubus or something. And instead he got . . . well. Them."

Them.

Everyone knew about alternate dimensions, or thought they did. Most people thought of them as parallel realities, all lined up in a neat little row, where every little result of every little decision was played out. You order the eggs benedict instead of the pancakes, but in the next universe over . . .

The reality was a lot messier. It took a lot of pressure to create a splinter universe, a big world-moving event like a plague or a holocaust or a world war, something that sent thousands or millions of souls down a different path. When the pressure of all that opposing potential got too great, the universe would crack like a bathroom tile and two or three or six different shards of reality would break away from each other. Some would sustain themselves, evolving in their own way. Some would fold back into one another. Some simply collapsed under the sheer weight of their own improbability, and crumbled into oblivion.

But every time it happened, a lot of energy and matter and life would bleed out into the gaps between realities, and start to clump together and evolve and grow and feed . . .

That was what was out in the gym now, hanging in the vortex above Wilton's head. They weren't demons, because demons were part of the cosmic food chain. They were a by-product, an infection, gnawing and sucking at the rough edges of creation. They weren't good and they weren't evil. They were just alive, and determined, and hungry. They were the things that grew in the cracks.

"Doesn't make sense, though," Mel went on. "What's with all this psychoinvasive mind-mojo crap? Normally when they find a hole, they just squeeze through it and starting eating everything. Subtlety ain't one of their strong points."

"It's him," Gabe muttered.

"What?"

"Wilton. They're using his mind as a way in. They just want to protect him and keep the hole open long enough to squeeze through. I figure once they had their hooks in his mind, they used him to snag the others. That's why they've only managed to control the kids and the younger teachers. They're using his teenage brain as a Rosetta Stone." He raised his right hand, indicating the symbol Mel had drawn there. "If it wasn't for this, they might be able to get into my head too."

Outside, the students were hammering at the door. They didn't have much chance of breaking through with their bare hands, but the sound was disconcerting all the same.

"So what do we do?" Mel asked.

"Depends."

"On what?"

He paused, but only for a second. "On whether you brought the gun."

Mel gave him a look. "Gabe . . ."

"I don't like it any more than you do," he insisted. "But it's him or it's everything. Right now he's their anchor in this dimension. As soon as they push the opening wide enough to come through, he'll be an appetiser." Stepping forward, he held out a hand. "It's come to that."

Mel hesitated. Outside, the students kept thumping on the door. "Dammit," she snapped, pulling the revolver from her waistband. "I hate it when I'm right."

Gabe took the gun, breaking it open to check the ammo. "It's a long shot anyway," he admitted. "No way of knowing if a bullet will get through that shield. Even iron rounds."

"I'll worry about the shield," Mel assured him. "But you'll have to take care of the other kids first."

He looked up, locking the gun closed again. "How?"

Despite herself, Mel managed a tiny smile. "You gotta love brainwashing."

Several minutes passed. The teens gave up beating on the storage room door, but stayed huddled around it to form a mindless human blockade. The intruders may have been safe for the moment, but they weren't going anywhere. Wilton Grey, still hanging in the maelstrom, shifted slightly and gave a little wince. Above him, the half-seen thing tensed and stretched, growing a little larger as it squeezed a little more of its bulk into the world.

A faint creaking sound was heard, coming from the doors. It grew steadily louder, intensifying into a cracking sound. Some of the students in front looked down, staring blankly at the doors as they bulged outwards like twin wooden balloons.

Then, all at once, they exploded.

The crowd fell back, tumbling over one another like bowling pins, many of the closer ones covered with cuts and splinters. No sooner were they down than a tall figure rushed through the rain of sawdust and tumbling shards that was all that remained of the door. He was almost a quarter of the way across the room before the crowd moved to pursue him. The hardwood floor thundered with a stampede of footsteps as Gabe sprinted across the room, giving the flaming column in the center a wide berth, bearing down on the far doors. Several kids moved to block his path and, had their minds still been their own, would have regretted doing so. When Gabriel Pope needed to get somewhere, those who got in his way never did so for long. He was a juggernaut of fists, shoulders and elbows, flattening students or throwing them aside, leaving them tumbling and often bleeding in his wake. The rest of the pursuers fanned out on either side to go around them, still bearing down on Gabe. Dodging past the last kid in his way, Gabe hit the far wall of the gym hands first, the mob closing in around him.

On the wall in front of Gabe was a little red box with a glass cover. Driving an elbow into the glass, he flipped the little switch inside. Bells blared into life all over the school.

Across the gym, the entire crowd shuddered to a halt and stared upwards. They kept their vacant eyes on the jangling red bell across the room even as Mel darted out of the storage room, weaving through the crowd on her way towards Wilton. The boy was still drifting in the midst of the storm, but the thing above his head was larger now, and seemed more solid. It writhed and undulated in midair, slithering tendrils snaking out in all directions. Mel sidestepped as one rolled past her, slapping against the wooden floor.

Gabe was already on his way back, drawing the revolver as he came. Skidding to a halt with a clear line of sight to Wilton, he raised the gun in both hands. "Whatever you're gonna do," he yelled above the incessant ringing, "do it now!"

Ducking another writhing tentacle, Mel dropped to one knee, slammed her right hand down on the floor, and squeezed her eyes shut. A ripple went through the floor, a vibration in the wood, as if someone had dropped a pebble into a pond. Between her and Wilton, several floorboards warped, strained, arched upwards... and broke. Splinters flew through the air as the ground beneath Wilton ripped asunder, tearing up the wood, obliterating the magic circle he'd chalked onto the floor. With a rush of freezing air, the flaming shield around Wilton whipped away like smoke, vanishing into nothing. The thing above him trembled and contracted, tightening its grip. The students around the room lurched and staggered as if their leashes had been pulled.

Gabe took another step forward, training his sights on Wilton's head. His finger closed over the trigger.

And Mel moved. Launching herself upwards, she broke into a run, sprinting towards Wilton.

Gabe's grip on the gun faltered. "Mel?"

She was a couple of metres away now, hand outstretched, her eyes fixed on the book in Wilton's hands. The last thing she heard was Gabe shouting, "Mel! Don't . . .!"

Then her feet left the floor, clearing the shattered floorboards in one jump, grabbing hold of the boy hanging in the air. Her right hand slammed down onto the pages of the Occulo Dominatus . . .

. . . and the world went away.

Chapter 6

It was cold, and Mel was falling.

Her limbs spread out, moving helplessly through the nothing as she tumbled end over end, plummeting through a black void. She'd been falling for what seemed like forever, and . . .

Wait . . . was she falling? She felt no wind. Perhaps she was floating. Floating in the void. Not much of an improvement, actually.

She opened her eyes, and saw nothing. Thick, smothering darkness closed in on her from all sides. It smelled of dead flesh.

Well, she thought. This was a brilliant idea.

She felt the first stirrings of what might have been panic. She tried to turn, to find some source of light, something for her eyes to focus on. Her hand passed in front of her face, gleaming white in the blackness, leaving a faintly glowing afterimage on her . . .

Wait. Back up.

A persistently logical part of Mel's brain reminded her that if it were pitch dark, she shouldn't be able to see her hand, let alone have it lit up like a glowstick. Frowning, she looked down.

Her body hung weightlessly in the dark, limbs drifting as if underwater. She noted with interest, but without any undue distress, that she was completely naked. Her skin shone as if lit from beneath—a soft white glow with faint greenish tinge, like a firefly. Her hair drifted about her head like seaweed, soft and silky and a particularly foresty shade of green. She hadn't had a good hair day like this for almost a hundred years.

She hung there for a while, mulling things over. The lack of clothing didn't concern her much—technically she was a nature goddess of sorts, albeit a very minor one, and the very concept of clothing had once been utterly alien to her. Besides, it was beginning to occur to her that she wasn't actually here—wherever here was—at least not in the physical sense.

She peered out into the blackness, straining to see anything. Nothingness continued to peer back at her.

This wouldn't do at all.

Leaning forward, she kicked out with her legs and waved her arms, trying to propel herself forward. It might have worked, for all she could tell, but the darkness offered no point of reference. In frustration she gave one final sweep of her arms, and . . .

A light glimmered.

Mel froze, unsure as to whether she'd actually seen anything. Stretching out her right arm, she waved it again. Harder.

Just ahead of her, a little hole in the darkness seemed to open, like smoke parting. For a second a dull glimmer of light showed through, then it was swallowed up by inky blackness again.

Mel set her jaw. Right.

Placing her palms together, she thrust both arms out in front of her. Closing her eyes, she focused her energy into one spot, pushing all her strength down into her fingertips. Then, with a soft groan of exertion, she swept her arms outwards as if parting a curtain.

She felt the light pour in, washing over her face as the darkness rushed away like smoke. The air around her—if it was air—felt thinner and colder, as if a barrier had been lifted. Lowering her arms, she slowly opened her eyes.

"Oh," she said.

A nightmarish landscape lay about her, stretching away in all directions as far as the eye could see. She was still weightless, drifting about a foot in the air. Her feet were unable to touch the ground, but when she saw the ground they weren't touching she was rather glad of the fact. It was flat, featureless and an unpleasant shade of mucus green, spreading out beneath her like a billiard table. Looking closer, she noted that the surface was coated with a layer of glistening slime. Writhing shapes—stubby worm-like things as thick as her wrist—were moving around in it. Thousands of them. She drew her feet a little higher.

Her eyes moved towards the horizon, half-shrouded in a filthy haze. There were shapes there, looming over the gruesome plain like distant mountains. She couldn't discern the outlines, but they seemed to be moving, softly undulating like the things down in the slime. The sky above was a murky black soup, broiling storm clouds rolling above the hideous terrain below.

And then there was the tree.

It was the only landmark on the plain, rising from the muck about thirty feet away from her. It was the ugliest tree she'd ever seen, and Mel was a being who knew a lot about trees. A lumpy grey trunk rose unevenly from the slime, spreading and separating into twisted limbs that stretched out at unnatural angles, reaching endlessly towards the sky above. It had a haggard, tortured appearance, its bark torn and mangled. The trunk and branches were caked with what looked like old blood.

The phrase Tree of Woe came unbidden to Mel's mind. Legend had it, she recalled, that the pages of the Occulo Dominatus had been made from a crucifixion tree, felled on the plain of Golgotha. The wood had been harvested raw and filthy, soaked in the blood of wicked men . . .

There was a body hanging on the tree. It was a male, young and lean, and as naked as she was. His arms were stretched back above his shoulders, pinned to the trunk, while his head—a tangled mop of sandy hair—hung down over his pale naked chest. His legs were laid out at an unnatural angle across the wood. He was completely still.

Mel tried to move forward, and found to her surprise that she could. She drifted gently through the air, willing herself towards the hideous tree. It loomed above her as she approached, seeming to stretch itself higher as she came. It was as if it were preparing to defend itself.

She came to a halt an arm's length away from the boy. Raising her arm, she reached towards him, hesitated, and finally laid a hand on his head. He was as cold as ice.

"Wilton?"

Slowly, the boy raised his head. A gaunt, dirty face stared out at her through strands of matted hair. His eyes were glazed and blurry, fighting to focus on her face. Dragging a tortured breath into his throat, he tried to gasp out a word.

"H-hel-p . . ."

Mel's hand moved to his face, pushing back his filthy hair. "Can you move?"

He tried to reply, but couldn't find his voice. He shook his head, his face wracked with pain.

Mel's eyes moved to his arms. They were twisted back on the tree trunk, pinned to the wood. Up close, she saw now that his arms weren't nailed to the tree—they were merging with it, flesh and tortured wood bleeding into each other. One of his hands was almost completely absorbed in the trunk. Looking down, she saw his legs were being pulled in the same way. Blood was trickling down his arms, running in jagged streams over his shoulders.

Mel took his face in both hands, forcing him to concentrate on her. "Wilton. Will? We need to get you out of here."

Wilton's head sagged. "Can't . . . I can't," he managed to gasp. "They . . . they won't let me go . . ."

They?

Mel saw his eyes roll upwards, towards the rolling clouds.

She looked up.

The tree rose like a tower above her, its writhing branches reaching higher and higher, becoming thinner and more flexible, until they became writhing whip-like limbs curling upwards into the sky itself. The clouds bubbled and swirled above her, and she saw that they weren't clouds at all. They were fleshy, pulsating things, glistening and slithering their way across and around each other, filling the sky from horizon to awful horizon. There were millions of them, billions, a churning sea of filthy hides and slithering limbs and glassy black bubbles that could have been eyes. They were swarming in a circular motion, like a storm system, spiralling around a central point. There, at the heart of the swarm, one of them was fixed in place, straining and pushing its horrible bulk through a hole in the sky. The others were crowding around it, pushing their way in, jostling for position as they tried to follow. It was halfway through already.

A flutter of wings caught her ears, and her eyes followed. A large black bird settled onto the tree, perching on a branch several feet above them. It was a carrion crow, its feathers matted and filthy. Mel stared at it, wondering, as it turned a beady scarlet eye in her direction. Then, with a ragged croak, it launched itself from the branch and fluttered away into the haze. Mel watched it go with a frown.

"I didn't mean it . . ."

Dragging her gaze away from the departing bird, Mel looked down at Wilton. "What?"

"I didn't want this," he moaned, his head hanging. "I just wanted to see . . ."

"Wilton . . ."

"He did it," Wilton went on, choking on the words. "They said he died, but he, he, he did it. He went through . . ."

"Wilton."

"My dad, he . . ." Wilton faltered, but pushed the words out. "He used the book, opened a portal. He went through." He raised his head. There were tears in his eyes, tinged with blood. "I just wanted to see if . . . I wanted . . ."

"Will!" Mel shouted, pulling his head back up. "We need to go now. You have to try to move."

"I can't . . ." He sagged back against the tree, his head rolling back. "It's too late. I'm in Hell . . ."

"Not yet, kid," Mel told him, "but you're definitely circling the drain." She looked past him, at the trunk of the tree. At first she thought the wood was moving, but quickly realised that things were moving under it, shapes slithering half-seen beneath the skin of the tree, things in the shape of runes and arcane signs and old words of power . . .

"Okay." She reached out to shake the sobbing boy. "Listen to me. You're going to pull yourself off this tree. I'm going to help you, but you need to get yourself out of this, Wilton Grey, because you're the stupid little shit who got yourself into it. You listening to me?"

Wilton was still shaking, but managed a nod.

"Okay." Mel moved a little closer, raising her hands. "Ready?"

Wilton opened his mouth to answer and she moved, lunging forward, her hands reaching past him and grabbing hold of the tree trunk.

It hit her like a burning sledgehammer, the age and power and sheer tearing flesh malevolence of the tree, of the book, of the living words huddled inside it eating out my insides, words dripping with power skull splitting in half harnessed and tamed and laid down by men long dead boiling in my bones, evil men who'd murdered and tortured and sold their souls to live one more year, kill one more enemy, learn one more dark secret eating me alive, and her hands pushed inside the wood and tore at what lay beneath mouth full of blood and shit and the tree fought back, dragging her in, the filthy bark crawling across her arms chewing at my flesh and she shrieked at Wilton to just let it go, and she heard him scream in agony as he pulled himself away and the tree was screaming in my head and suddenly he was free, arms tearing away from the trunk and falling around her shoulders as he fell against her, and she threw every last boiling drop of her strength against the tree and kicked away, grabbing hold of Wilton as the tree split open and the world came back and her right hand slammed down on the book, knocking it out of his grasp as they fell.

Mel heard a twisted shriek from above. The writhing tentacle around Wilton's neck came loose, leaving both of them to tumble to the floor of the gym. The Occulo Dominatus hit the ground a few feet away, slamming to the floor like a lead weight, pages laying open.

All at once the silvery strands spreading through the building began to detach, whipping away from the other students. All over the building, two thousand bodies slumped to the floor like marionettes as the strands were pulled inwards to their source. They swirled and twisted together in the air, coalescing into one long, snaking appendage that lashed about in a panic as the creature fought to keep its grip on the world. The tentacle desperately slithered towards the fallen book, curling around it as it scrambled to hold on . . .

And then Gabriel was there, leaping over the fallen students at his feet, hand reaching under his arm. Grabbing two bottles of holy water, he wrenched the caps off and hurled them at the Occulo Dominatus. Water splashed across the pages, soaking through the crackling paper, blurring and smearing the ink, and the book shuddered and crumpled and burst into flames as though it were doused in kerosene. Gabe fell back as the fire raced its way up the length of the writhing tentacle, engulfing the thing in the vortex in a swirling blanket of flame. The creature shuddered and constricted and let out an inhuman squeal . . .

. . . and then it retreated, dragging itself back out of the world, pulling the crumbling appendage behind it, and there was a sound like a thunderclap as air rushed into the collapsing rift. And it was gone.

For almost three seconds, there was silence.

Then the bodies started to move, slowly at first, pulling themselves shakily from the floor, and there was crying and shouting and screaming, hundreds of terrified voices echoing through the halls of the school. Those who were able got up and began to run. Some ran for the exits and the stairs, some ran to their friends, some just ran.

Outside, the police along the cordon raised their weapons as the doors burst open and a torrent of bodies spilled out, some bruised and bleeding, some half-dressed or covered in filth. They poured down the front steps in a screaming mob, and Inspector Parrish charged along the line roaring at them to stand down even as the crowd behind them surged forward. The two stampedes merged somewhere in the middle, hundreds of terrified parents scattering through the mob in search of their children, while the police were pushed or barged aside. Parrish was knocked off his feet as a terrified girl cannoned into him, wrapping her arms around his chest. Mrs Grey stood in the middle of it all, staring helplessly at the school building.

Upstairs, the gym was in complete chaos. Students were running everywhere, some of them injured and bleeding, clinging desperately to each other or huddling on the floor. Gabe moved through the throng as best he could, pushing aside wailing kids as they collided with him or tried to grab him. His eyes were fixed on the center of the room, near the broken circle on the floorboards. There sat Mel, head bowed, arms still wrapped around the shaking form of Wilton Grey. He was clinging to her like a baby, his face buried in her shoulder. Mel was still and quiet, a little island of calm in the bedlam around her, cradling the sobbing boy in her arms.

Gabe looked down at the revolver in his hand. With a soft sigh, he uncocked the hammer and slowly slid it back into its holster.

THE END