Free On the Loose by Christopher Fowler

the two young women were not prepared to scrabble up the muddy bank that now rose at the sides.
    He turned his head to watch them. His muscular arms were bare, his chest and thighs covered in some kind of coarse fur. They had almost passed him when he abruptly dropped from the ridge and loped toward them. Sashi screamed.
    Meera turned as the stag-man came alongside, reaching down and looping his arm around Sashi’s waist to lift her easily off the ground. The detective constable was about to kick out at his knees when she saw that he was playing with Sashi, swinging her from side to side. Sashi’s shrieks were fearful but flirtatious, like those of a girl at a funfair.
    The stag-man swung her onto his hip and Sashi started to laugh. His shining eyes were deep-set above a short-haired snout. In the lamplight Meera could see that the brown-and-white fur on his chest and shoulders rose seamlessly to his thick neck and headpiece, on top of which was a magnificent pair of glittering steel antlers. They must be heavy , Meera thought vaguely as she stood by, miserable in the rain. ‘Come on, Sashi, stop—’
    But then the stag-man swung his captive high above his rightshoulder and let her go, so that she tipped and fell into the surrounding vale of mud, landing heavily on her side. Sashi’s yelp of laughter turned to anger and confusion as Meera ran forward, first pulling her friend up to her feet, then slamming into the stag-man. He’s stoned, he’ll go down , she thought as she struck out, kicking him in the stomach, but it was like hitting rock. As that didn’t work her next kick aimed lower. This time he cried out. As he dropped his head at her, she saw that the steel horns were not made of sticks and tinfoil, but comprised the blades of dozens of kitchen knives bolted together. That’s why the headpiece is so light , she remembered thinking, that’s how he can keep his head up , but by that time he had slashed at her, slicing open the material of her leather sleeve and cutting through to the skin of her right arm.
    By the time she looked back he had disappeared over the ridge, and Sashi was left kneeling in the mud, crying.
    Meera sat on an orange plastic chair in a cubicle of the A&E department at University College Hospital, watching dispassionately as a nurse placed sutures across the cleaned wound.
    ‘You were lucky,’ said the nurse, tapping her forearm. ‘He just missed the artery here.’ She had a strong Irish lilt in her voice that most patients would have found comforting.
    ‘Yeah, right, lucky me,’ said Meera, who was not comforted. She had sent her mud-spattered friend outside for a smoke. Sashi was probably on the phone by now, telling everyone what had happened. Meera was surprised she hadn’t managed to film the attack for her Web page.
    ‘Why did you have a go at him, love?’ asked the constable who had accompanied her to UCH.
    ‘You mean apart from the fact that he was assaulting my friend?’ She found it hard to keep the sarcasm from her voice.
    ‘You said he was on his stag night, so he was probably a bit drunk.’
    ‘No, I said he was dressed as a stag—there’s a difference.’
    ‘So why did you have a go at him?’
    ‘Because I’m trained to react like that,’ she told him, reaching across into her jacket with her free hand and flipping open her badge wallet.
    ‘Bloody hell,’ complained the constable. ‘Peculiar Crimes Unit? You lot have given us some grief in the past, you know.’
    ‘Don’t start with me, PC—what’s your name?’
    ‘Purviance, Darren.’
    ‘You’re from Camden nick, Purviance Darren.’
    He wasn’t wearing his jacket, which had identifying epaulettes. ‘How d’you know?’ he asked.
    ‘You’ve got the look.’ She didn’t mean it nicely.
    ‘Hasn’t your unit just been disbanded?’
    ‘Placed on hiatus,’ Meera corrected. ‘Don’t you want a description of the bloke who attacked me?’
    ‘I thought you attacked him. You didn’t go