Dead of Light by Chaz Brenchley Page A

high agony.
    That time Devereux heard it too, and was still for a moment; then, “Not our responsibility,” he said, as I should have expected. “Leave it alone, for God’s sake, we’re not the police.”
    Ignoring him, I got out of the car — and then I could see, as well as hear. Then I knew. Not my responsibility, no, I’d disinvested; but not well enough, seemingly. At any rate, there was no question of my leaving it alone.
    Through an archway under a run of flats, through a short square tunnel came that wailing scream again, and a light that failed as the scream failed: a cold, pale, flickering light, the nightfire that marked all my family but me.
    Somewhere through that archway there was a Macallan in desperate trouble, his strength no succour now; and me, I was already moving.

Seven: Total Meltdown
    Through the tunnel at a run, heedless and stupid, and what was that Devereux had been saying about inbreeding? ‘Vicious’ I might have argued with, back then at least, but the rest was plain to be seen.
    Through the tunnel and into a mugger’s paradise, one of those Sixties housing experiments that went so dreadfully wrong. It was an enclosed court, with blocks of flats three or four storeys high and no grass, only paving underfoot. Just the one way in and out for cars, but several more of those tunnel passageways; and balconies and stair-wells all around, any route you fancied to go under or over or through, and hardly a light to see it by except for the car burning like a torch, like a lantern, like a sign.
    No noise, no heat. Nightfire’s no true flame, unless it’s the opposite of that: unless it’s the truest expression of flame and mortal fire is only a clumsy imitation.
    Nightfire doesn’t feed on what it burns. Destruction isn’t incidental. Where it touches, damage is cold and slow; the light it throws is blue and thin and telling. Seen once, there’s no mistaking it.
    Here was a car burning that way, the metal of it writhing as I watched; and someone of my kin had set it to burn there. That was a given, didn’t need debating.
    No one in sight, though, no one at all. There should at least have been faces lining the balconies, peering down. Not all those flats were empty. A fire, and a man’s screams: they should have been irresistible.
    But maybe these riverine families weren’t so stupid after all, however inbred they might be. I guessed that the people who lived around here would know nightfire as well as I did and were being as wise as they knew how, keeping behind closed doors and shuttered blinds. If a Macallan was screaming, they truly didn’t want to know.
    That’s what it was, no question: the man who set that fire to burn was the same man who’d been tearing the night apart with his howls. This was Jacko’s universal rhythm in action, and inarguable. The light had flared with the scream, searingly bright, striking out through that passageway to find me; and now in the scream’s silence it flickered and guttered, bright enough in here where no light was but no beacon now.
    I might have no fire of my own but at least I wasn’t vulnerable here, my blood was worth that much to me. I could walk up to the flaming car, and did; I could and did walk around it, looking to see inside, seeing nothing but fire and distortion; being that close I could and did stumble over the body lying dark on dark paving, lying where no one would see him because they’d all be looking into the light.
    It was only logic now, told me that this was a Macallan. All his skin was moving.
    o0o
    I knelt beside him when kneeling was the last thing I wanted to do, or close to the last. Kissing him would have been bottom, maybe, but any form of getting closer was bad. Kneeling was quite bad enough. It took me near enough to see and to smell what was happening to him, without doing what it was meant for. My eyes searched him desperately,