Free Kill Fish Jones by Caro King Page A

amazing?’
    The other demons burst into laughter that sounded like somebody choking horribly to death.
    Hanhut raised a hand and they fell silent. ‘No, no. I will answer. Let the creature hear me.’ He took another step forward.
    Grimshaw shuffled back, getting slightly caught up in his tail. The other demons had stirred jerkily into life and were moving in different directions. Grimshaw had a nasty feeling they were positioning themselves around him. It didn’t bode well. He twitched, then flattened his ears nervously and crouched a little closer to the sand.
    His eyes glowing like yellow fires, Hanhut stepped closer. He raised a hand heavy with shining claws and reached out slowly towards the cowering Grimshaw.
    â€˜Now, let’s see. How does it feel to plunge your hand into a man’s body and pull out his entrails? To see the life go out in his eyes and know you have ended all that he was and all that he might have been? To fly on wings of flame and see men pale and sink to their knees before you?’ Hanhut shook his head thoughtfully. Then he bared his long teeth in a smile that was more snarl. ‘It feels … POWERFUL. That’s how it feels.’
    Hanhut smiled. Grimshaw wished he hadn’t.
    â€˜But if such a lowly creature as you,’ Hanhut continued, ‘can never know how it feels to wield greatpower, I can at least show you how it feels to be …
the victim
.’
    Grimshaw gulped as the others closed in. He could feel them looking down their bandaged noses at him. Now he was keeping one eye on Hanhut and one on a darkening of the sky over to the right. There was only one thing in Limbo that could spread shadows in that way. The Horsemen. Hanhut and his friends hadn’t noticed yet because they were all focused on Grimshaw.
    â€˜I was just … erm … looking for Tun,’ Grimshaw gasped, ‘but he’s not here so …’
    Quickly, he spun dials at random and reached for the send button. He didn’t care where the chronometer was set for, pretty much anywhere in Limbo had to be better than the desert right now. Grimshaw had never met the Horsemen and didn’t want to. One look at their terrible shapes moving across Limbo, surrounded by darkness and the sound of screaming, was enough to tell him all he wanted to know.
    â€˜No, you don’t!’ A heavily bandaged hand took hold of Grimshaw’s arm and plucked him from the ground, dangling him in mid-air so that he couldn’t reach his chronometer without dislocating something.
    â€˜Look!’ said Grimshaw urgently. With his free hand, he pointed at the Horsemen heading towards them. In Real Space their arrival would blot out the light, casting shadow across the land. But in Grey Space the light just stayed, well, grey.
    â€˜You won’t catch us like that!’ Hanhut didn’t eventurn his head to follow Grimshaw’s pointing finger, he just laughed. It sounded like the baying of a terrible hound. The other Avatars joined in, making a hideous clamour that hid the distant sounds of the approaching Horsemen.
    The darkness arrowed down, swooping out of the sky. It was close enough now for Grimshaw to make out the huge shapes of the four Horsemen within it, wielding great fiery swords and clad in chain mail over bloody rags. He could see the night-black gloss of the horses too, their eyes full of flames and their lips rolled back to show teeth like tombstones.
    Grimshaw shut his eyes and whimpered.
    â€˜Look, he knows what’s going to happen to him,’ sniggered the most unravelled-looking Avatar in a voice thick with the dust of death.
    â€˜Yes,’ mumbled Grimshaw, ‘but I don’t think
you
do!’
    As he spoke, Hanhut turned his head, hearing at last the sound of tortured screams that followed the Horsemen wherever they went. He gave a hoarse cry of rage and fear. The others caught on and tattered hands everywhere flew to dig out their