Instead, Saul stepped inside the killing blow.

He moved in a blur of rat-speed, channelling all his freneticpanic and power, burning calories from old food. He turned as hestepped forward and reached up with his right hand, grabbing theflute and twisting, spinning round in a full circle, tugging at thecold metal, ripping it out of the Piper’s too-confident fingers andbringing his left arm up and around, looking over his left shoulderas he spun, and slamming his elbow into the Piper’s throat.

The Piper staggered backwards. His eyes bulged and stared at Saulin disbelief. He retched, clutched at his throat, sucked at the air.Saul stalked towards him, holding the flute. The Drum and Bass waspounding in his ears. It wasn’t the Piper’s song any more; it was thedrums he heard, the drums and the bass.

‘One plus one equals one, motherfucker,’ he said, and brought theflute up hard under the Piper’s jaw. The Piper staggered back but didnot fall. ‘I’m not rat plus man, get it? I’m bigger than either oneand I’m bigger than the two. I’m a new thing. You can’t make medance.’ He slammed the flute against the Piper’s temple, sending thetall figure spinning across the stage in a spray of blood, towardswhere King Rat still danced.

The Piper twirled an ugly pirouette but still did not fall.

Saul advanced on him, hitting him again and again with the flute,brutal and unforgiving. He punctuated his assault withproclamations.

`Should’ve just killed me. You’re too strong for me, but you hadto get cocky. Well, I’m the new blood, motherfucker. I’m more thanthe sum of my parts.

You can’t play my fucking tune, and your flute means nothing tome.'

With the last strike, the Piper went down in the shadow of KingRat. His legs folded and he sat down hard on the floor, his back tothe brick wall. He stared up at Saul, horrified and broken. His facewas crushed and spoilt. Blood slid over the silver of the flute. ThePiper’s eyes were glazed with agony and with affront, with outrage atthis man who would not dance to his tune.

His breath rattled grotesquely in his throat. He fought to speak,failed.

Saul looked up. The dancing figures that filled the room wereslowing down. The flute was mutating, folding in on itself. It couldnot sustain itself without the Piper’s will. People’s faces wereconfused, their heads lolling as if in uneasy sleep. The rats andspiders were twitching pathologically as the flutelines that heldthem imploded.

King Rat fell to the floor and twisted in agony, pulling himselfout of the spell.

Always the strongest, thought Saul.

He looked back at the Piper, collapsed on the floor. With puffylips and bloody teeth, the Piper smiled.

Saul held the flute like a dagger, raised it over his head.

There was a Stygian rumble deep in the walls. The stage shook.Saul staggered.

`What the fuck…?'he said.

The floor lurched, shook violently. Saul fell backwards.

Above the Piper’s head a split appeared in the wall, thin andunnaturally straight as if scored with a vast razor. The stage shookuntil all the dancers had fallen. It was only because it was on DAT,safe from the caprice of styluses and shocks, that Wind City did notfalter.

The split widened and spread downwards, opening the bricks behindthe Piper’s back. The rent in the wall opened onto a sheerdarkness.

The Piper fixed Saul with his little smile.

The darkness widened and sucked at the air in the room. As if awindow on an aeroplane had burst, papers and clothes and fragments ofspider corpses whirled through the air into the black.

He opened a mountain once before, thought Saul urgently, he canopen up a wall. He’s heading for home.

The Piper was quite still as the split pulled itself open behindhim, the eye in a tornado of detritus that filled the room. Saulplanted his feet wide and got to his knees, adamant that the Piperwould not escape out of the world.

Then, as he steadied himself and gripped the flute once more,ready to strike, he heard a thin, desperate keening from the pit thatwas opening.

A child’s voice.

Saul froze, aghast. The Piper was still. He did not release Saul’sgaze. He did not stop smiling. The split behind his back was a footwide now, and he began to wriggle his way into it, holding Saul’seyes all the time. The pathetic wail stopped abruptly.

And just as abruptly a chorus of terror welled out of thedarkness, hundreds of tiny voices screaming, stripped raw, mad withfear.

The lost children of Hamelin could see the light.

Saul fell back in a paralysis of horror.

His mouth was stretched wide but only tiny noises burst out. Hereached out to the split in the wall, powerless, useless.

The Piper saw him crumple, and winked.

Later, he mouthed, and put his hands to each side of the split,gave a little wave.

A growling thing shoved into Saul at a fierce speed and tore theflute from his hands.

King Rat gripped the flute with both hands and leapt at animpossible angle from Saul’s lap to the Piper’s side. His teeth wereclenched, his feral roar barely contained. His overcoat whipped inthe vortex of wind. The Piper looked up at him, stupid andconfused.

King Rat’s growl burst, became a frenzied bark, he drew back hisarms, holding the flute like a spear.

He punched it into the Piper’s body with an animal strength.

The Piper gave a shout of amazement, ludicrously bathetic with themusic and the wails of the children behind him.

The flute punctured him like a balloon, shoved deep into hisbelly. His face went white under the blood, and he gripped King Rat’sarms, clinging to them with all his might, holding the hands thatheld the flute close to him, staring into King Rat’s eyes.

Everything was poised, for a moment. Everything hung in thebalance.

The Piper fell backwards into the dark.

King Rat fell with him.

All Saul could see was the curve of King Rat’s back, which lurchedforwards and stopped abruptly. The slit was suddenly closing aroundhim; the voices of the children were more and more plaintive anddistant.

King Rat’s back wriggled and his arms emerged above his head,holding the great rent open for half a second more as he bracedhimself and shoved back from the brink, falling across Saul.

The two sides of the rip met and resealed with a faint crunch.

The Piper had gone. The cries of the children had gone.

Only the Drum and Bass could be heard.

Saul lay still, exhausted, listening to King Rat breathe.

He rolled away, crawled across the stage. He surveyed theroom.

The disco lights still spun and stuttered pointlessly. Thewreckage of the hall did not seem real. It was a carnage of blood andsweat, dead rats, crushed spiders, collapsed dancers. The walls werefoul with a thousand different stains. The floor was slippery andvile. The dancers shuffled like revivified corpses from side to side,ruined, their eyes closed, shifting their weight from foot to foot,as the beat of Wind City droned on, and the flute continued todegrade. All over the hall dancers were falling.

Saul stumbled across to the decks and ripped the lead from the DATplayer. The speakers went dead. Instantly, all around the room, thedancers dropped, fainting where they stood, as still as the dead. Itlooked like the aftermath of a massacre.

The spiders and rats still dancing when the music stopped werestill for a moment, then bolted. They quit the hall and disappearedinto the London night.

Saul looked around the hall, searching for his friends.

There, under the heavy body of a huge dancer, lay Natasha. Hetugged her free, crooning.

‘Tash, Tash,’ he whispered, wiping the blood from her face. Shewas scratched and ripped, her skin welted with the poison of amillion tiny spiders, covered with bruises and rat-bites, but she wasbreathing. He hugged her very hard as she lay there, and squeezed hiseyes tight closed.