movement, jerked his face forwards and headbutted the top of my nose. Blood exploded into my vision. I blinked, blinded, and took my hand from the gun to wipe the red viscous liquid away. He seized his opportunity and punched me in the stomach.
It was a mistake, for none of the souls within were bound and tethered as before. In fact we were unleashed and free.
And very, very angry.
As I hit the floor my feet kicked out and caught his legs. I pushed hard on his shins and threw him off balance, kicked out again and brought him down. There was a crack from his elbow as he hit the ground. With a movement that was at once of me and yet not so, I was on him.
Unable to struggle against all our strength he tried again to wrest the gun from my grip, but failed. This time he took one look at my face, gritted his teeth, then, just as his fingers crept forwards to curl round the gun, it seemed his attention was drawn to something just beyond my head. He paused for a millisecond then stopped moving, his face wrinkled into confusion.
His body twitched back away from me, and I considered the notion that somewhere inside Felix had relented, realised the error of his ways or experienced a brief pang of conscience.
Those thoughts disappeared when I saw his eyes widen into huge semi-circles of white. In them was an expression of utter terror. Suddenly his body went limp.
As I lay transfixed, gazing at him, unsure of what to do, something detached itself from my hair – a tiny winged thing, black and wriggling. It circled the Witchfinder’s face then settled on his eyebrow. He released his hand from the gun and tried to brush it off, but another landed beside it. A shiver ran through me as another, then another, then another dived onto his face.
He gasped out and tried to yell but it was no good. Within a couple of seconds his face was swarming with tiny creatures.
Everything happened very fast. The moths became a bobbly blanket covering his features, like an enormous beard of bees that spread over all his face. Only his mouth grew visible as he opened it to breathe. They had been waiting for that. A couple peeled away from his cheek and flew into the red cavern. As his lips opened wider in a silent panicked scream, I saw at least fifty pairs of black wings waddling over his tongue, disappearing behind the curve of his throat. More poured into his mouth, so that shortly his tongue and teeth were no longer to be seen. Groping for air, his hands clutched his face, clawing at his mouth, then flung out in desperation to his sides. That was when he felt me. At least, his knuckles bruised against the barrel of the gun. I don’t think he could see what he was doing. I don’t think he meant to do it at all. Maybe the moths had got right down inside him and cut off his oxygen supply. I don’t know. But I can tell you this – it was over in one quick movement. His upper body spasmed as he squeezed the trigger. There were a couple of flashes or maybe three, and two loud shots echoed across the river.
In the seconds that followed I can’t be sure what occurred. Even now I have only a vague memory of being giant-like, of wings and voices and screams, of fire and smoke and dewdrops.
And then it was all over.
Chapter Forty-Six
When I came back to myself I could distinguish Felix’s form across the grass. The moonlight crawled across him. There were no moths upon what was left of his face.
His body wasn’t moving.
From where I lay, maybe three feet away, I just about made out a dark stain seeping over his clothes. I pulled myself onto my hands and knees and crawled to him. My body felt out of sync, as if on some time delay. I couldn’t hear a thing – I’d been temporarily deafened by the shots.
Part of Felix’s head was misshapen and concave. One remaining red eye stared up into the night sky, unseeing. The expression on his face was a rictus of surprise. His shiny brown hair was covered in thick bloody clumps of matter. I prodded his arm. My hand met with no resistance. A ragged and bloody hole was in the place where his chest should have