Extraordinaires 1 by Michael Pryor Page B

space with four or five drains emptying into it – one of which was choked with the rangy figures of those who’d abducted him from the police station.
    For an instant, Kingsley pulled back, recoiling from the horrible creatures. Then he crept forward, keeping himself concealed, unwilling to let them daunt him.
    The creatures were trapped in the tunnel mouth, pinned by Evadne’s rifle fire, but they weren’t defeated. They howled and shrieked and threw themselves out, tumbling one over another in a battle frenzy, plunging into the pool and floundering forward before Evadne struck them down.
    She stood on a small promontory that jutted into the pool, balanced on a pile of broken masonry, a silver-maned Fury. She fired again. The sound of ricochets added to the cacophony, but she didn’t stop. No doubt aided by her light-enhancing spectacles, she fired again, and again with accuracy that bordered on the phenomenal.
    She was crying.
    The light was poor, but Kingsley could just make out that she was sobbing as she worked the bolt of the rifle, gasping for breath in between tracking the Spawn as they sought her. She dashed tears away with the back of her hand but she held the rifle steady.
    Two Spawn threw themselves into the pool, rose roaring and were thrown backward by Evadne’s accurate fire.
    Kingsley rose from his crouch, squinting, trying to make out figures moving in the shifting shadows. There, on the other side of the pool – where Evadne had no hope of seeing them from her position out on the promontory of rubble.
    He abandoned the lamp. He leaped from the ledge and landed on a narrow, noisome shore. He ran, metal bar in one hand, skirting the pool, aware that if Evadne caught sight of him she could mistake him for one of the Spawn, but not hesitating for an instant – for he’d seen that the two vile creatures had emerged and were creeping up on her, well behind her field of vision.
    Kingsley hurdled over a broken wooden crate in time to see the first of these stealthy Spawn rear up behind her. She didn’t have a chance to move – it clawed her from her position. She fell and her spectacles flew from her head, glinting in the sparse light of Kingsley’s lonely lantern on the other side of the pool.
    Instantly, Kingsley was there. He swung the metal bar and the Spawn howled as it was driven back. Its companion wheeled on Kingsley in time to meet the bar coming the other way. It folded when the bar caught it across the midriff. Kingsley kicked and it toppled into the pool.
    The first Spawn staggered to its feet. This time Kingsley jabbed at it and took it in the throat. It gurgled and joined its partner in the mucky water.
    Kingsley reached Evadne. She was dazed and her head lolled from the Spawn’s blow. Panting, muscles burning, he scooped her up, threw her over his shoulder, tucked her rifle under his arm. ‘This is so undignified,’ she mumbled.
    â€˜I apologise,’ he said. More Spawn were assembling at the tunnel mouth. He set off in the other direction, back towards Evadne’s refuge. ‘It seems practical.’
    Evadne didn’t reply. Kingsley cast around for her spectacles, couldn’t see them, then set his teeth and began to jog as fast as he could.

    He carried Evadne inside the refuge, following her ragged instructions for bolting each of the doors as they went, holding her in his arms so she could see. ‘The viewing room,’ she gasped over the relentless alarm bells. Her face was streaked with grime and looked different without the spectacles. Kingsley wouldn’t have dared say more vulnerable, but he was willing to wager someone else might have.
    â€˜Push that switch up!’ she shouted over the bells.
    A dozen switches confronted him on the wall near the door. All of them were large and brass with rubber handles. ‘Which one?’ he shouted back.
    â€˜The green one!’
    Kingsley had to use a knee, but he