The cardboard rose, then fell away as Saul stood.

He was still for a moment, breathing deeply, calming himself,slowing his heart.

His old clothes, stolen from the prison, fluttered around him.

He closed his eyes briefly, rocked on his heels, then snapped toattention, scanned the air for any signs of Loplop coming forhim.

It was partly in case of such an attack that he had concealedhimself, but there was more and less to it than that. He could notspeak, could not talk to Anansi, could not make any more plans. Hegave an empty smile. As if they had come up with any plans.

This was the night when it would all happen. This was the nightwhen he would free himself, or the night he would die. And he wantedto be alone in London, using the city as his climbing frame,asserting himself alone, before the night came for him.

And as he had known it would, the night had come.

It was time to move.

Saul leant forward, grasped the gutter with both hands, shook itvigorously, testing its strength.

His legs bent a little for leverage, he paused, then vaulted overthe edge of the building.

Saul swung round in mid-air, his hands leapfrogging over eachother as he renewed his grip, tugged himself out of his acrobatic arcand into a sharp sideways movement, curtailing his curving passageand slithering along the gutter to the drainpipe.

He slipped down it as if it were a firefighter’s pole, his handsand feet moving imperceptibly fast to avoid the bolts that tetheredit to the wall.

He touched down on the desiccated earth and moved through thedesultory patches of dandelions and grass into the shadow of thewall.

Saul clicked his fingers imperiously. Immediately a dozen littlebrown heads poked up from hiding places behind old bricks, from holesin the earth, cavities in the wall. The rats watched him, twitchingin excitement and fear.

‘It’s time,’ he said. ‘Tell everyone to get ready. I’ll see you inthere.’ He paused, and spoke his final words with a flat excitement,a fatalistic thrill. ‘In you go-’

The rats bolted.

Saul ran with them. He overtook them, ran through them like asymbol of victory. He slunk along the top of the wall, invisible. Hecrossed the road unseen, now in the shade of a car, now flattenedagainst a building, now as a passer-by; into the gutter and out, overthe wall and along the side of the warehouse, past the waiting crowdswithout giving them a second glance. The air was thick with the tasteof alcohol and scent, but Saul held his nose through that.

He kept his nose clean to smell his troops.

Up a low garage and across its collapsed skylight, a ramp onto thecrumbling brick walls of the venue, clinging to forgotten nails andthe undersides of heavy old windows. He gripped the edge of thegently sloping roof and bent his legs against the wall. He could feelthe bricks vibrate with bass. Then, just as King Rat had done so longago, on Saul’s first night among the beasts, before he had eatentheir food, when he was still human, Saul pushed out with his legsand swung around in a perfect circle, landing solidly on thewarehouse roof.

He slithered quickly up the slates towards the massive skylights.They were cracked all over, a few seconds work to pry open and pushaside, opening the way to an attic space, a dusty wooden floor thatjumped with the bass from below, as if the building itself was eagerto dance to the music in its bowels.

Saul paused. He could taste a mass movement in the air. He couldsense the migration of the compact little bodies, was aware of theexodus of his troops from the streets and sewers and scrub, towardsthe glowing building. He could feel the scratch of claws on concrete,the feverish searching for causeways and flaws in brick.

The rats and Saul left the relative safety of London’s nightlandsand entered the warehouse, the frenzied jaws of Drum and Bass, thedomain of smoke and strobe lights and Hardcore, the Piper’s lair, theheart of Darkness, deep in the Jungle.

The wooden boards drummed under Saul’s feet: the dust motes wouldnot settle but hovered instead in an indistinct mist around hisankles. He crept the length of the long attic. In the corner of thegreat dark space there was a trapdoor.

Saul flattened himself against the floor and tugged at it verygently, raising it slowly away from the surrounding boards. Music andcoloured light and the smell of dancers spilled through the slit towhich he put his eye.

The lights below spun and changed colours, illuminating andobscuring, bouncing off suspended globes and dissipating throughoutthe hall. They cut through the darkness, confusing as much as theyelucidated.

A long way below him was the dancefloor. It was a hallucinogenicvision, shimmering and metamorphosing like a fractal pattern,feverish bodies moving in a thousand different ways. In the cornerslurked the bad boys, nodding their heads, no more than that, noreaction to the overwhelming music. On the floor the hard-steppers,swinging their arms, loose-limbed and syncopated; and those on speedand coke, ludicrously trying to keep up with the BPM, shifting theirfeet like lunatics; the rudegirls, arms spread wide, winding theirhips slowly to the bassline, a barrage of colours and clothes andundress. The dancefloor was tight packed, thronging with bodies,decadent and vibrant, thrilling, communal and brutal.

As he watched, a strobe light kicked in, transforming the roommomentarily into a series of frozen tableaux. Saul could investigateindividuals almost at his leisure. He was struck by the multiplicityof expressions on the faces below.

The Drum and Bass felt as if it would lift the hatch out of thefloor, off into the sky. It was unforgiving, a punishing assault oforiginal Hardcore beats.

A little below him an iron walkway described the edge of the hall.It was deserted. There was a ladder in one corner, tucked up underthe walkway and secured with chains. It was designed to swing down toanother, similar ledge further down. This lower level was crowdedwith bodies, people looking down on the dancers ten feet below.

Saul cast his eyes around the hall. There was a tiny movement inthe corner opposite him.

Red and green lights swirled around a black shape suspended fromthe ceiling. Anansi swung gently from one of his ropes. His arms andlegs were tucked up impossibly tight. His knuckles were just visible,motionless, and stretched taut from grasping.

He swayed from side to side, buffeted by sonic vibrations. Saulknew that Anansi’s army was with him, around them both, invisible andready.

Directly below Anansi, Saul saw the stage raised above thedancefloor. His breath quickened a little: there, framed by twocolossal speakers, were the decks.

Behind the stage a huge graffito was hung: the same grotesque DJwho had adorned the poster, and the legend Junglist Terror!!! waswrit very large. Dwarfed by the unlikely figure on the canvas, the DJlabouring behind the decks paced quickly to and from his record box,a bulky pair of earphones tucked against one ear. He moved with acontrolled, feverish energy. Saul did not recognize him. As hewatched, the man deftly segued between two tracks. He was good.

Behind him, Saul felt the tentative lick of a rat tongue on hishand. He was no longer alone.

‘Alright,’ he whispered, and stroked the little head withoutlooking backwards. ‘Alright.’

Saul opened the trapdoor. He poked his head upside-down into thehall, breaking the surface tension of the music and immersing himselfin it. He lowered himself gently to the iron grille below. The beatswere overwhelming. They crept into every crevice of the room. He feltas if he was moving underwater. He was almost afraid to breathe. Outof the corner of his eye he saw Anansi notice him, and he raised hishand.