as Jack.
‘Hard to believe that anything could spook a single Weevil that badly.’ Gwen bit her lip. ‘Let alone eight of them. I can’t imagine anything that eight Weevils couldn’t handle.’
Jack was still gazing out into the darkness. ‘Let’s not forget that one of their kind was taken down and eaten by something prowling this fine city. That kinda puts a damper on your day, even if you’re a Weevil. They’re a strangely gregarious lot, far as I can tell. I don’t think they sit around the campfire toasting marshmallows – or whatever else they find floating down in the sewers – but the death of one of them has a strange effect on the others. I think they’re truly scared.’
‘Scared of what?’ Owen asked.
‘Scared of that,’ Jack said, nodding his head towards a patch of darkness that seemed to have come unmoored from the night and was drifting along the side of the warehouse. ‘Tosh – anything on the scanner?’
‘Nothing,’ she replied, tearing her gaze away from the moving shadow and checking the display. ‘Whatever it is, it’s not registering on here.’
‘That means its body temperature is closer to human than the Weevils are,’ Jack said.
‘Or it hasn’t got a body temperature at all,’ Owen continued bleakly. ‘It’s cold-blooded. Or it hasn’t got any blood. No blood. Bloodless.’
‘Come on,’ Gwen chided. It sounded to Toshiko as if she was trying to talk herself out of bleak thoughts, rather than Owen. ‘You’re a doctor. You saw the photographs of the dead Weevil. Whatever killed it had teeth. That means it has a mouth. That means it needs to eat. That means it… oh shit. I’ve run out of conclusions. You know what I’m trying to say. It’s real, not some spooky Scooby-Doo ghoul thing.’
‘Actually,’ Toshiko felt constrained to say, ‘the ghouls and ghosts and monsters in Scooby-Doo always turned out to be men in masks. Usually the caretaker.’ She noticed Gwen’s raised eyebrow. ‘I liked Velma,’ she said defensively.
‘Yeah, which only goes to prove that you’re not a true Scooby-Doo fan,’ Owen said. He was still watching the patch of darkness as it hugged the corrugated metal side of the warehouse, moving slowly but inexorably toward them. ‘The sixth incarnation of Scooby-Doo, dating to the early 1980s, had Scooby and Shaggy meeting up with real ghosts, vampires and all kinds of shit. Didn’t you ever see The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo? Or Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers?’
‘Sadly, no.’
‘Fun though this is,’ Jack interrupted, ‘I think we have a more pressing concern right now. Although I did think that Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf marked an absolute low in the output of the Hanna-Barbera studios.’ He stepped forward. Toshiko expected him to raise his gun, but instead he left it hanging by his side. ‘Hi,’ he said brightly. ‘We’ve kinda gone astray. What’s the best way back to the Millennium Stadium from here?’
‘I… I’m not sure,’ said a tremulous voice from the darkness. ‘I think I’m lost. Can you help me?’
‘We can help anyone.’ Jack’s voice was confident, but Toshiko noticed that he wasn’t moving forward. ‘That’s what we do. It’s our shtick, if you like. Or our raison d’être, if you prefer. Do you want to step out into the light, where we can see you?’
‘Are you all right?’ Gwen called when the voice didn’t answer.
‘I’m hungry,’ the voice said. ‘I’m so very hungry.’
And then it was on them in a blur of limbs and clothing, crossing the concrete wharf between the warehouse and them before anyone could react. Its feet seemed to touch the ground once, twice, propelling it forward like a greyhound. Its limbs were just as thin, its face narrow and pointed.
It wore a silk blouse and large, silver earrings, Toshiko noticed in the frozen moment before it launched itself at her face, jaws impossibly wide, teeth strung with glistening strands of saliva. And its belt was probably Prada.
The thing’s hands caught her right in the middle of her chest, but it was like being hit with a handbag. Toshiko stumbled backwards more through the shock of the impact than anything else. Whatever the thing was, it was light.
As she fell, she realised that the thing was snapping its teeth in her face, trying to rip the flesh from her cheeks. She held it off as best she could, but it was strong – much stronger than its size would have indicated.
Her head hit the concrete of the wharf. For a moment, concerns about teeth and body