Ben Aaronovitch - Moon Over Soho

As when a chimera is racing up the staircase to reach you.

He was male, muscular, stripped to the waist to reveal that he was covered in short russet fur. His hair was black and cut long and shaggy. His nose was all wrong, as black and glossy as a healthy cat’s. As he bounded up the stairs toward me his mouth opened too wide to reveal sharp white teeth and a lolling pink tongue. None of this registered until he was almost on top of me and I didn’t have time to do anything but scramble back and lash out with my foot.

Doc Martens, patented acid-resistant-soled, reinforced leather shoes, as recommended by police officers and skinheads everywhere — when you absolutely, positively have to kick someone down the stairs.

Predictably Tiger-Boy landed like a cat, twisting his spine as he dropped to fall into a crouch on the landing below.

“Get up on the roof,” I shouted through the door.

Tiger-Boy took a moment to shake his head and give me a big feline grin. His eyes were quite beautiful, amber-colored, slotted like a cat’s, and obviously adapted for hunting at night.

I heard the door open and Peggy and Simone dragging a still-whimpering Cherie out of the room and onto the stairs up to the roof. I didn’t dare take my eyes off Tiger-Boy; he was just waiting for me to lose concentration.

“Who the hell is that?” asked Simone.

“Nobody you want to know,” I said.

Tiger-Boy hissed. I saw his tail twitch and found myself wondering whether he’d cut a hole in the back of his Y-fronts to let it out.

“Little mousy,” lisped the Tiger-Boy. “Why don’t you jump about? It’s more fun when you jump about.”

The pop-in light switch popped out, it went dark, and Tiger-Boy leapt toward me.

I put a werelight in his face.

I’d been practicing and had managed to produce one that burned as brightly as a magnesium flare. I’d closed my eyes and it still lit up the inside of my eyelids, so it must have hit Tiger-Boy right in his specially low-light-adapted eyes.

He howled, I jumped and this time managed to get both size elevens in contact with his body. He probably outweighed me but Isaac Newton was on my side and we went down the stairs together, only he was hitting all the steps and I was surfing down on him. At least that was the theory.

We hit the landing harder and faster than I expected. I heard a snap under my feet and there was stabbing pain in my left knee. I yelled and he yowled.

“You’re right,” I said. “It is more fun when you jump about.”

I didn’t have any cuffs or rope to secure him, so I settled for scrambling back up the stairs, ignoring the shooting pain in my knee as I went. Behind me Tiger-Boy wailed pathetically and, more important, stayed where he was. I ran through the roof door, ducked under a clumsy swing by Peggy, and slammed it shut behind me.

“I beg your pardon,” said Peggy. “I thought you were him.”

I looked at the three women. They were clutching one another for support and had the dazed unfocused look that people get after bombing incidents and motorway pileups.

I pointed to the north. “Climb over the railing, go that way across the roof,” I said. “Go to the right. There’s a fire escape down to Duck Lane.” I’d spotted it during my night of passion with Simone as a possible access point for burglars. Which proves, if nothing else, that a police constable is never off duty even when he’s not wearing his underpants.

They didn’t move — it was strange they were acting so slow and dull. As if they were drugged or distracted.

“Come on,” I said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“Will you be quiet,” said Peggy. “We’re talking to someone.”

I turned around to find that an evil magician had been standing behind me.

HE WAS standing at the far end of the roof garden leaning nonchalantly against the railing. He was dressed in a beautifully tailored dark suit and a pale silk cravat; he was carrying a cane topped with a mother-of-pearl handle. The witnesses had been right about his face. Even as I concentrated on his features, I found myself noticing the gleam of his gold cuff links, the scarlet triangle of his pocket handkerchief, anything except his face. This was him — the Faceless One.

“Oy,” I shouted. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

“Do you mind?” said Faceless. “I’m trying to talk to the ladies here.” His accent was generic posh, public school, Oxbridge — which fit the profile and endeared him to my proletarian soul not at all.

“Well, you can talk to me first,” I said. “Or you can go to the hospital.”

“On the other hand,” said Faceless. “You could just take a quick jump off the parapet.”

His tone was so reasonable that I actually took three steps toward the railing before I could stop myself. It was seducere , of course, the glamour, and it might have worked on me if I hadn’t spent the year having various demigods and nature spirits trying to mess with my mind. Nothing gives you mental toughness like having Lady Tyburn trying to make you her house slave. I kept heading for the railing, though, because there’s no point giving away an advantage and I was curious to know what he wanted from Simone and her sisters.

“Ladies,” he said, “I realize your true nature may have come as a shock and right now you’re a little confused.” He was speaking softly but I heard his words with unnatural clarity. Part of the seducere ? I wondered. Nightingale and I were going to have to have a long chat about this sometime soon.

I’d reached the edge of the roof, so I turned and put my foot up on the railing as if I were about to climb over sideways before plunging to a horrible death. It also gave me an opportunity to see what Faceless was up to.

He was still chatting up the girls. “I know you believe that you are cursed,” he said. “Forced to satiate your unnatural appetites by draining the life force of others. But I want you to think outside the box.”

I still couldn’t see his features, but I’d done a bit of reading since Alexander Smith had given us a description of his face or, more accurately, hadn’t. Victor Bartholomew, possibly the most boring magician who ever lived, named it vultus occulto — which even I knew was pig Latin — and had devoted an entire chapter to the subject of countermeasures, which, typically for Bartholomew, I could boil down to one sentence — “Keep looking really hard and sooner or later you’ll see through it.” So that’s what I did.

“What if,” said Faceless, “ — and I throw this out to you as a hypothetical — what if it was all right to feed on people? What is feeding off people anyway but good old exploitation? And we’re perfectly happy to exploit people, aren’t we?”

I glanced over at Simone. She and her sisters had stopped holding one another and were regarding Faceless with the same polite interest one might give to a visiting dignitary in the hope that he gets on with it and shuts up soon.

Ha, I thought. Tyburn would have them genuflecting by now.

“This notion that we’re all equal is so intellectually bankrupt anyway.” As he spoke I blinked a couple of times, and suddenly I could see his face. Or rather I couldn’t, because it was hidden by a plain beige-colored mask that covered his whole head. It made him look like an unusually tasteful Mexican wrestler. I think he may have sensed that I’d pushed through the disguise, because he turned to look at me.

“Are you still here?” he asked.

“I wasn’t sure whether I should go headfirst or feetfirst,” I said.

“Do you think it will make a difference?”