Shadow Creatures (30 page)

Roxton nodded decisively. ‘Good. Bring the phone – we’ll use it.’

‘What about this bloke?’ one of the men holding Rhino asked.

‘Kill him,’ Roxton said. ‘Do it quietly, and out of the way. Don’t be seen, and leave the body underneath a pile of rubbish.’ He grimaced. ‘There’s
certainly enough of it around.’ He glanced at Rhino, then looked away, dismissing Rhino from his thoughts completely.

Rhino opened his mouth to shout for help – not that there was any around, but it would get people looking in his direction. Before he could make a noise, one of the men holding him punched
him in the stomach again. He folded up, pain exploding through him like a supernova. He nearly retched.

The two men dragged him off. Through a red haze, he saw Roxton and the man who had his mobile phone walking away, not looking back.

The two men pulled him towards one of the large pillars that studded this level. It was thick enough to shield them from the marketplace. They released Rhino, and he fell to his knees, still
feeling as weak as a kitten.

‘You want to do it, or shall I?’ one of the men said.

‘Whose turn is it?’ the other one asked.

The first man shrugged. ‘I’ve lost track. Tell you what – I’ll take this one; you take the next.’ He unclipped something from his belt and flicked his hand. A
spring-loaded knife flashed into view, blade gleaming in the meagre light. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said reassuringly. ‘I’ve done this loads of times. There won’t be
any pain – apart from the obvious.’

‘There’s something you forgot to do,’ Rhino said quietly, reaching to a small leather holster attached to his belt behind his back.

‘What was that?’ the man asked, stepping closer. Rhino felt the comforting rubber grip in his hand.

‘Search me.’ Rhino sprang to his feet and lashed out with the weapon he had retrieved. The impetus of his swing extended the weapon from a short tube to a long club made of hollow
telescopic sections of steel and terminating in a solid steel ball. It was called an ASP, and it could break bones.

Which is what it did.

Rhino caught the first man in his chest. The man crumpled, gasping in agony as several ribs cracked under the impact of the metal. He still had his knife in his hand, and he scythed it round,
desperately trying to catch Rhino, but Rhino brought his ASP up and then down again on the man’s forearm. It snapped, bending in a highly unlikely fashion. The man screamed once; then passed
out.

Rhino stepped forward towards the second man, snarling. The man was reaching behind his back. Rhino thought for a moment that he might have a gun, so he stepped closer, ASP raised up ready, but
the man brought his hand sweeping back low and fast. Rhino heard another mechanical clicking noise, but before he could react the man’s own telescopic baton caught him just below his waist.
Only the thick fabric of his chinos protected him from serious damage, but the impact of the weighted steel on the point of his hip sent spikes of sickening pain arcing through his body like
lightning. He tried to take a step back, but his leg was numb and he fell, rolling away on the gritty concrete as best he could.

The second man stepped closer, raising his baton over his head so that he could bring it crashing down on Rhino’s skull.

Rhino kicked out with both feet, catching the man on his shins. His legs shot backwards and he fell forward, arms outstretched to brace himself. Rhino rolled out of the way and sprang to his
feet. By the time he had turned round, his assailant was also upright, and facing Rhino, baton extended like a sword.

‘Let’s dance,’ he said, and lunged forward, the heavy steel ball at the end of the baton heading straight for Rhino’s throat.

Rhino blocked the lunge with a parry of his own. The impact of the two metal batons clashing sent shockwaves up his arm, numbing it.

The man stepped backwards. He considered for a moment, and then came at Rhino with a flurry of blows from left, right and above. It was all Rhino could do to keep blocking them as he took small
steps backwards, but each strike got closer and closer to his head. It was only a matter of moments before his skull was fractured and the fight was over.

He had to do something, and he had to do it fast.

Still blocking with his right hand, holding the extended ASP, Rhino jerked his left hand forward, thumb extended. He pulled his head back, away from the other man’s ASP, and used his right
leg to push himself forward, inside the man’s guard. His thumb, aimed precisely, hit the man’s right eye. The man jerked backwards, bringing his hands up to cover his face. Rhino
brought his baton down, catching the man’s own baton close to the rubber grip. The man dropped the baton, nerves temporarily paralysed by the impact. The baton clattered on the floor.

The man cursed, and reached towards his belt with his left hand. He had a knife there, like his companion, and Rhino realized with sudden shock that the man was ambidextrous. He could fight
equally with both hands!

Rhino had to finish this.

He aimed a backhand stroke at the man’s head, hoping to knock him unconscious, but the man’s right hand moved quicker than Rhino could see, catching the steel ball on the end of the
baton and holding it still with amazing strength. His muscles bulged with the effort of overcoming the swing of the weapon, and he snarled.

‘Weren’t expecting that, were you?’ he said tightly. He jerked his knife towards Rhino’s stomach.

Rhino pressed a small button in the base of the baton’s grip. The battery inside sent a huge pulse of electricity through the steel ball on the end. Rhino heard a sudden crackle. The
man’s eyes went wide, and his hand clenched even tighter on the ball. A small curl of smoke escaped from his fingers. He toppled forward slowly, like a tree, and Rhino had to step out of the
way and pull the baton from the man’s grip so that he could hit the ground face first.

‘How about that?’ he muttered. He took his finger off the button and pushed the ASP against his leg, folding it back up. Thank the lord for unauthorized modifications . . .

High up in the Chinese temple, the centipede’s pincers snicked together a few inches from Gecko’s eyes. Liquid dripped from them and towards the floor. Knowing what
he did about centipedes, Gecko was sure it was poisonous.

The centipede turned its head towards him. Its black eyes stared at him. He saw nothing but pain and death in them. He could smell something sharp and acidic that made his eyes water and his
nose sting.

Time seemed to slow down. Gecko became fascinated, and repelled, by the complexity of the centipede’s mouthparts. The pincers curved into sharp, black points, but behind them and around
them were other, smaller pincers, and thick hairs, and things that he couldn’t even name, all of them waving and moving in a strange choreography around the central wet hole of the
thing’s gullet.

He knew this was it. He was crouched in the space between the rafter and the roof. The centipede was in front of him, and there was nothing behind him but bracing beams and empty space. His only
option was to jump, but it was a long way down to the stone floor, and he didn’t think he would survive the fall.

Still, it was better than ending up with that obscene, incredible, complicated mouth fastening itself on his face.

He was just about to push himself off the rafter and jump down when something from below caught the centipede beneath its head segment. The creature’s mouthparts spasmed as the thing
– whatever it was – went straight through the exoskeleton and into the soft innards. Gecko heard a
crack
and then a
squish.
The centipede jerked, pincers gaping wide while
all the way down its body its legs spread wide, claws groping at empty air. The ammonia-like smell intensified to the point where Gecko felt sick.

The giant centipede seemed to float away from Gecko. He watched it go with amazed eyes, but then the smoke momentarily cleared and he realized that the thing he’d seen coming up from
beneath was a wooden pole. Its sharp end had been the thing that went through the creature’s head segment.

He followed the line of the pole downward, to where Natalie was holding it like a long spear. A yellow silk banner lay by her feet. It was one of the banners from the steps outside.

She let the pole drop. The end she was holding hit the ground, and the rest of it pivoted, carrying the twitching centipede to the ground where the pole clattered and the creature splattered
like a fly on a car windscreen.

‘That was . . . good work,’ Gecko called down in a voice that contained too much sheer panic for his liking. ‘How did you do that?’

‘Lots of cheerleader practice,’ she shouted up. ‘Banners, flags, pom-poms – you name it!’ Despite her bantering tone, her face was white. ‘Are you coming
down, or are you going to stay up there all day?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. He felt as if his muscles were locked in place. ‘Is it dead?’

Natalie glanced over to where the giant centipede had landed and burst sickeningly. Some of the priests and the worshippers were in the process of covering it up with the yellow silk banner.

‘I really hope so,’ she said, with feeling. ‘If it’s not, then I don’t see what else we can do, apart from get hold of a rocket-launcher.’

‘I’m sure Rhino could do that, if he felt it was necessary,’ Gecko said, beginning the climb down.

Rhino raced through the market stalls, desperately trying to work out where Roxton and his friend had gone. He couldn’t let them get to the giant centipede first. They
might actually capture it, which in a sense would solve Rhino’s immediate problem, but Nemor would then get the DNA, and Rhino had no idea whether or not Natalie and Gecko had retrieved any
DNA from their own target creature. The people of Hong Kong would be safe, but Calum Challenger’s aim would have been thwarted. More likely was the possibility that Roxton and his friend
would scare away the creature, and it would go to ground somewhere. That way it would be free to wreak havoc whenever it came out for food. And what if it was pregnant? Rhino had no idea about
centipede biology – how
did
they reproduce? – but he knew he couldn’t take the risk. He had to be the one who got to the giant centipede first.

He ran in the direction in which he’d seen Roxton heading, past the edges of the jade market and out into a less crowded surrounding market of stalls selling food, silk, mobile phones and
fireworks. He was feeling lightheaded after the fight, and he was limping after that blow to the hip, but he had to keep moving. He had to.

Up ahead he saw blond hair. There weren’t many blond Chinese, so it was highly likely to be either Roxton or his friend. He increased his speed.

Outside the final ring of stalls, in the shadows of the area beneath the blocks, he came upon a macabre sight. The scarlet and blue creature was halfway up one of the pillars, claws digging in
hard to the concrete, head turned round to face Roxton and his companion, who were approaching it carefully. Roxton had a long rod with a grip on the end. Presumably he intended to catch the
creature in the grip. His companion had a sack, which looked pitifully small compared with the size of the centipede.

The creature obviously had no intention of being captured. Its head spun round to face Roxton’s sidekick, and it seemed to spit a stream of venom across the distance between them. The man
jerked backwards, hands clamped to his eyes, screaming.

Roxton looked down at him dismissively then took a silenced pistol from inside his jacket and shot him. He scooped up the sack and approached the creature again, long-handled grip extended.

Rhino’s first impulse was to let Roxton find out just how dangerous this thing was, but he feared that once the creature had incapacitated or killed Roxton it would vanish. There was a
hole at the top of the pillar, and if the creature got up there it would be impossible to find.

Rhino looked around desperately.

Market stalls. Jade. Food. Silk. Nothing he could use.

Except . . .

He turned and rushed back past a stall where the holder was cooking soup in a tureen over an open flame and to the stall he’d seen selling fireworks. The Chinese had invented fireworks,
and loved to use them on all occasions. Rhino grabbed a handful of rockets in cardboard tubes. The stall-holder tried to catch hold of his arm, but Rhino pushed him away. He bent down and scooped
the cold end of a piece of burning wood from beneath the tureen as he ran past the food stall.

Up ahead of him, Roxton was facing the creature, and looking scared.

Rhino dumped all the rockets on the ground apart from one. He held the wooden stick by the end and aimed it at the creature. He quickly inspected the firework. There was a hole in the tube,
about halfway down, through which he could see the fuse. He lit the fuse with the burning wood, pointing the tube towards the giant centipede as it reared up and prepared to attack Roxton.

Holding lit fireworks is dangerous. Holding lit fireworks is
stupid.
He knew people had blown fingers and even whole hands off doing this, but he couldn’t think of anything else to
do. He had to kill that creature. Because he – or, rather, one of the kids he was meant to be looking after – had been responsible for releasing it.

The rocket
whished
out of the cardboard tube and away from him with a horizontal spray of golden sparks. He felt his hand burning as the sparks peppered it.

The rocket flashed a few inches away from Roxton’s face. He screamed and clutched at his eyes, just like his friend had done, but for a different reason.

The centipede seemed to sense something. It scuttled upward, and the rocket hit the column just below where it hung, exploding in an expanding cloud of red, green, blue and yellow stars.
Rhino’s eyes were dazzled, but he could just see the centipede turn and head upward, towards the hole between the top of the column and the ceiling.

Rhino lit another rocket, and aimed high.

Another
whish!
as the rocket launched from the tube towards the giant centipede. More golden sparks. Rhino’s hand was an agony of burning, blistered flesh. For a second he thought
he had misjudged it, and the creature would be inside the hole before the rocket could get to it, but the rocket went in and exploded outward, blasting the centipede apart in glowing colours. Even
at that distance, Rhino could smell something cooking. Bits of centipede fell to the ground, still burning.