The city lights glinted minutely on the spiders multiple eyes.Close set and impenetrable, as cold and disinterested as a shark’s… except tonight…

The spiders trembled.

In the wilds of South London, Anansi watched from rooftops. Hecould feel the air shifting. He could taste the presence of histroops.

The sewers boiled with rats, incited to a frenzy.

Their Crown Prince had passed among them. Saul had spread theword. He had commanded them, controlled them, sent them forth.

The rats surged through the tunnels like a flash flood. Smallertributaries streamed into the main branch, bodies on bodies, fat andfast.

They poured under the streets and over the skyline. Up in thecanopy of the city, in the thin air, rats bounded over walls andbetween partitions, scrabbled along slates and behind chimneys.

The river was no obstacle: they found their way across almostwithout pause.

Different dirt, different packs, a hundred different smells…all the tribes in London running for the south, gnawing on forgottenfilth and shaking with adrenaline, ready for battle. An enormoussense of wrong had been encoded in their genes for years, eating themalive like a cancer, and for the first time they could smell acure.

Rats spewed out of a hundred thousand holes and converged on thewastelands of South London, a scratching, biting mass, hungry andscared, trying to be brave.

Insidiously, furtively, the rats gathered round the warehouse, andwaited.

The warehouse was a spark plug. It crackled with energy. It wassurrounded by invisible circles, waves and cadres of rats andspiders, crowned with confused, wheeling birds, penetrated bypeople.

It was a magnet.

Loplop still watched from above.

Anansi scanned the rooftops.

‘Where the fuck is she at?’

Three Fingers, wiry and cantankerous, addressed his question toone of the bouncers. The huge man shook his head. Fingers danced fromside to side in frustration. The wet thumping of basslines and beatswelled up behind him. He felt as if he could lean backwards on thesound without falling, cushioned, held in the air.

He stood at the entrance to the warehouse, gazing out at the crowdassembled in the forecourt. He had been on the top step for someminutes, waiting for Natasha. All the other DJs had arrived. Fingershad already had to rearrange his running order a little, in caseNatasha did not appear. He trotted down the stairs into thecourtyard, strode out to the split in the wire-mesh fence and lookedup and down the street.

Swaggering dancers were still appearing from all over, convergingon the warehouse. Looking absurdly drab in their midst, a few localspassed by, staring at Fingers and glancing uneasily at the warehouselit up and pounding, monstrous in the dull light.

A tall figure rounded the corner and bore down on him. Closebehind him appeared two figures, a slim black man and a short woman.Fingers started, looked hard. It was Natasha.

‘Where the fuck have you been?’ shouted Fingers, smiling tightly,amiable but pissed off. He strode off down the street towards Natashaand her escorts.

She looked amazing. Her hair was pulled up into a high, coilingponytail. Her body was sheathed in a tiny bra-top, reflective red,and her trousers were so tight they looked painted onto her legs. Shewore no jacket, nothing on her thin arms or midriff. She must befreezing, Fingers thought. He shrugged: no surrender to comfort inthe style war. But he was surprised. Whenever he had seen her DJbefore, S Natasha had resolutely dressed down, in clothes that werebaggy and comfortable and nondescript. But not tonight. Gold glintedin her ears and around her neck.

Fingers stopped short, waited for her to come to him.

She was approaching with an odd gait, he realized, a peculiarhybrid, at once arrogant sashay and aimless wander. He noticed thatshe was wearing a walkman, as was the guy next to her, Fabian.Fingers had met him once before. He was as dressed up as Natasha, andwalking in the same half-lost manner. It suddenly occurred to Fingersthat the two of them might be high, and he gritted his teeth. If shewas fucked up and couldn’t perform…

The tall man reached him first and proffered a hand, which Fingersstared at, then shook perfunctorily. Fuck knew where Natasha hadpicked this one up, he thought. An embarrassing grin, his blond hairenticed into a ponytail it clearly resented, and clothes thatproclaimed his indifference to fashion. Incongruously, his face wascovered in thin, half-healed scratches. If he hadn’t been withNatasha, he would never have got past the bouncers. ‘You must beFingers,’ he said. ‘I’m Pete.’

Fingers nodded briefly and turned to Natasha. He was about toharass her about her late arrival but, as he opened his mouth, herface passed from shadow into the dim glow of a street lamp and hiscomplaints died unsaid.

Her make-up was immaculate and excessive, vampish, but it couldnot disguise how thin and pale she looked. She looked up at him witheyes that did not properly focus, smiled abstractedly. Drugs forsure, he thought again.

‘Tash, man,’ he said uneasily, ‘are you OK?’

Behind him the thumping beats of the warehouse were audible, abackdrop to his conversation.

She cocked her head, pulled the headphone from one ear. Herepeated his question.

‘For sure, man,’ she said, and he was a little reassured. Hervoice sounded firm and controlled. ‘We’re ready to go.’

Fingers realized that Fabian was nodding his head slightly, intime to the beat passing through his headphones, his eyesunfocused.

Natasha followed Fingers gaze. ‘You’ll be hearing that later,’she said softly. ‘You can join in. I swear you’ll love it. Have yougot a DAT player in there? Pete brought mine, in case.’ She pausedand gave another wan smile. ‘You have to hear what I’ve been doing.It’s special, Fingers.’

There was a silence Fingers did not know how to fill. Eventuallyhe inclined his head for them to follow him, turned and walked backtowards the warehouse.

It felt like a long way.

As he walked, he heard a brief sound, a snatch of billowing andsnapping like a sheet being shaken out. He turned, but saw nothing.Pete was looking into the sky, smiling.

Giddy with excitement and terror, Loplop spun in circles in theair, passing through narrow passages between buildings, searching forAnansi. He caught a glimpse of his nude torso tucked under the eavesof a building. Loplop hovered before him like a humming-bird,screeching incoherently. Anansi understood. He glowered and mouthedsomething.

He’s here. The Piper’s here.

Loplop nodded, shrieked, disappeared.

Anansi whispered into his hand, released the tiny spider heldtherein. It scuttled away from him down the side of the building, tothe bottom of the drainpipe, where another five comrades awaited it.They caressed the newcomer with their long, powerful legs, leaned inclose and gazed into one another’s eyes. Then all six turned anddisappeared, their paths forming an expanding asterisk, until eachspider met others of its kind, waiting, and there was another briefconference, and more messengers joined the throng, exponentially,faster and faster, and word spread among the spiders likecontagion.

Directly opposite the warehouse rose a high red wall, the boundaryof a long-gone factory. Behind it was a small area of urban scrub,and beyond that a thickset tower block, fabricated from grey slabs,that overlooked the warehouse and its courtyard.

On the top of the block’s flat roof, something moved under a pileof old cardboard. Stealthy hands with filthy nails crept gingerly outfrom underneath and gently cleared a small space. Two indistinct eyespeered out as Natasha, Fabian and Pete followed Fingers up the stairsof the warehouse, past the bouncers and into the building.