Free Blood by K. J. Wignall Page B

meters away. It leapt towards Will and he threw the traffic cone as hard as he could. It thumped into the dog, which had managed to get close enough for him to feel the heat of the fire that engulfed it.
    The dog flew backwards, maybe six meters, the fireball briefly extinguishing itself as the animal landed with a flailing crunch on the footpath. It skidded on a bit further and its shape shifted violently as it tumbled, looking for a second or two like a human form before it solidified once more into a dog.
    No sooner had it regained its shape than it started running back towards him, the flames sweeping around it, then a ball of flame, hurtling along the path towards him. Without even thinking, Will reached up and tore the nearest vertical scaffolding pole from its brackets, the metal bolts shearing and flying away.
    He turned, simultaneously raising the pole over his head with both hands, holding it like a lance. And this time, as the burning dog leapt towards him, he struck hard, stabbing the scaffolding pole into the heart of the flames, pinning the creature to the floor.
    It writhed viciously around the pole, the fire still licking out menacingly, but Will could see it disintegrating, too, turning liquid just as the woman had in the church, almost as if the entire mass of it was being sucked back into the air.
    Then as suddenly as it had appeared, the flames were extinguished and he was pressing the pole into the hard ground with no sign of the creature that had been pinned there. He kept his position, and even when he sensed it had gone, he put the pole down only reluctantly.
    He turned to look at Eloise, but she was staring in silence at the place on the path where the dog had been. She stared so intently that Will had to double-check that there was no longer anything there. He didn’t know what to say to her.
    The wind picked up, a gust reverberating around the warehouses. And on the back of that wind he heard a voice, an already familiar whisper, the words faint but recognizable— Death to you, William of Mercia . There was another noise, too, a creaking, but it was only when Eloise came back to herself and stared up at the building that he realized what it was.
    The scaffolding. He grabbed her by the arm for the second time, but she knew what was happening now and ran without needing to be dragged. He heard the destabilized scaffolding straining against itself, creaking and wrenching, and they were still running when it collapsed and crashed explosively behind them.
    They stopped to look. A cloud of dust was billowing up into the night sky. Much of the wood and metal had tumbled into the river and looked now like some strange playground. A couple of people walking across the road bridge stopped to stare in amazement.
    â€œI don’t understand,” said Eloise. Then she looked accusingly at Will and said, “What the hell happened?”
    â€œIt must have been me—I made it unstable by pulling that pole off like that, then the wind …”
    She threw her bag onto the floor and screamed, “No! I mean, what happened! That dog was on fire and it disappeared and what did you do? How did you break that pole loose? What! Happened!?”
    He put his hands on her shoulders and stared into her eyes, but couldn’t quite capture her. Having to fall back on words alone, he said, “Eloise, I’ll explain everything, but right now, we have to get your other bag and we have to get out of here. The police will come.”
    She shook her head, making clear that he just didn’t get it, and said, “I don’t care about the police. I don’t care about the scaffolding. I care about the monster dog that just attacked us, that spontaneously set on fire, that disappeared when you killed it.”
    â€œI don’t think I killed it. I don’t think it was even alive. And it wasn’t attacking us, it was attacking me.”
    â€œOh, fine. Well, that makes me feel a lot