Then, suddenly, the arm around her shoulders was around her throat, choking her; he lifted her off her feet and threw her to the ground, then knelt astride her chest, pinning her arms with his knees.

She looked surprised, but didn’t resist.

Smith swallowed bile and stepped forward, out of concealment, a little voice in the back of his mind shouting at him, she’s a woman, an innocent, this is wrong, it’s murder!

Khalil emerged, and Elias, and Maggie, and the four of them surrounded Sandy and his prisoner. She looked up at them and suddenly screamed, “Rape! Help! Rape!”

With a curse, Sandy thrust his fist in her mouth to stop the screams, but as he did he felt a hundred sharp, sharp points prick at his knuckles from either side, like hot needles. His own mouth came open, but no sound emerged; he tried to pull his hand back and couldn’t.

The screaming was stopped, but his hand was being maimed, he could feel it, the razor-sharp points drilling into his hand, into the tendons, the pressure of her jaws forcing his own fingernails into his palm.

He slapped at her with his free hand, and felt her skin shift at impact, loose from the flesh beneath.

“Let go, bitch!” he shouted.

She smiled, around his hand – except that one side of her mouth didn’t work right, where he had slapped at her, the skin slid loosely and sagged, and something dark grey, almost black, showed underneath, something that looked like a dog’s gum, twisted upward in a leer. The eye on that side gleamed red, while the other was still Mary’s familiar blue.

“You killed her, bitch, you aren’t her,” Sandy shrieked. “Let go of my hand, goddamn it!”

Then Elias was there, with the axe, threatening her with it. She let go suddenly, and Sandy’s hand came free. He fell backward, blood spraying from the dozens of punctures.

“Jesus!” he said, looking at it.

Blood was flowing freely now, winding around his thumb and down his wrist and arm in a steady stream; he clutched at the wounds with his left hand, trying to stem the flow. He could feel each individual puncture, each one stinging, each as if a nail had been driven into him.

Maggie was beside him, looking around helplessly for something to use as a bandage, and Smith was holding out the oaken stake. Sandy looked down at the thing that had bitten him, the thing that had pretended to be Mary, the thing he was still half-sitting on, and he spat at it.

It grinned at him, and he could see the long silver needle-teeth, each one tipped in bright red; one eye was equally red, the other still human and blue. The skin – Mary’s skin – had pulled away from the jaws completely now, and the chin was hanging loose on the thing’s neck, while the upper lip was wrinkled across the bottom of its nose, like a thrown-back bedsheet. In between, the jaws were dark grey, corded with heavy muscle, like ropes of thick clay. The thing’s own lips were thin and black, not at all like Mary’s lush red mouth.

Both its own flesh, and Mary’s skin, were spattered with a fine spray of his blood. A stray shaft of sunlight suddenly broke through the clouds and spilled through the trees to blaze golden from her hair, and Sandy could see gleaming red droplets in her hair, on the surrounding earth, on the moist undergrowth.

All around, the crickets sang.

His spittle caught it on its bare cheek; it didn’t react.

It wasn’t struggling, he realized. It was lying there, grinning at them all, no longer screaming, just lying there.

He felt a chill, and he flexed his neck. Why was it so calm? He suppressed a shiver.

Why was he shivering? Shit, he’d been hurt worse than this, been through worse, without being scared.

Blood loss, he thought, looking at the trickle that was dripping from his elbow. He was losing a lot of blood. Or maybe there was venom in the wounds.

It wasn’t dangerous, though, not unless there was venom, and he didn’t have time to worry about it. They had to kill the thing.

“Give me that,” he said, and he snatched the stake away from Smith, who was standing helplessly, like a fucking baby, Sandy thought, he started this and now he can’t go through with it.

He placed the stake between the thing’s breasts, point down, ignoring the blood that dripped from his hand and ran down the rough oak.

Before he was really ready, Khalil swung the hammer, and the wood ripped against his palms; the point drove down into the thing’s flesh, tearing through the flimsy halter it wore, and tearing through Mary’s stolen skin.

He braced himself, squinting against the expected spurt of blood.

Nothing came; the thing gasped softly, and lay still.

It was still smiling.

“Again,” Sandy said.

Khalil swung again, and the stake drove down again, tearing at Sandy’s hands; he let go, and it stood upright, held by the creature’s flesh.

Khalil swung a third time, and the stake drove in again, and this time Sandy saw the thing’s hands flop at the impact, saw the loose skin on its hideous face bounce up. Something came loose, and its other eye shone red, Mary’s blue gone forever.

Sandy moved back and climbed unsteadily to his feet; once upright, he clutched at his wounded hand again.

God, that hurt!

He looked at the thing on the ground, and saw that only about eight or nine inches of the two-foot oaken stake still showed. It had obviously been driven clear through the creature, and well into the ground beneath.

That was pretty good driving, he thought; Khalil was stronger than he looked.

Maggie knelt by the thing’s side, and Sandy started to shout at her, to warn her away from it, because despite that shaft pinning it to the earth he was not entirely convinced it was dead.

He was having trouble getting his breath, though.

Then Maggie grabbed Mary’s halter top and tore a strip of the fabric away, exposing bare pink skin and a shrivelled nipple. The skin had torn where the stake went in, revealing the grey flesh beneath, and the slackening had let the nipple slide over to the outside of the lump on the creature’s chest, a lump that was not a breast, but only a rough imitation of one.

Sandy gagged at the sight, remembering all too clearly when that nipple had stood atop a real woman’s breast.

Then Maggie was there in front of him with the strip of cloth, wrapping it around his injured hand to stop the bleeding. He looked down, and realized that his hand and arm were completely covered with his own blood, that blood had run down his T-shirt, down his jeans and into his Nikes, that the thing that had pretended to be Mary was smeared and splattered with blood – and all of it was his.

The daylight was dying, the sun was almost down and the clouds were closing in again.

“Cut off its head,” Sandy tried to say, but his voice failed him. He tried again.

“Cut off its fucking head!”

That was better.

Elias was standing there holding the axe, and not doing a damn thing with it. Khalil was holding the sledge, and looking ill. Smith wasn’t holding anything; he was just standing there, staring at the thing.

“He’s right,” Smith said. “Elias, cut off its head.”

Suddenly Elias looked sicker than Khalil did. “I can’t,” he said, “You do it!”

Sandy started forward, intending to take the axe and do the job himself, but he brushed up against Maggie and stopped as pain laced through his hand again.

He probably couldn’t even hold the damn axe, with his hands all torn up!

It didn’t matter; Smith had taken the axe from Elias, and was lifting it up over his head. The sharp edge caught the last glimmer of direct light, as at that moment the sun finally vanished for good.

Then the thing on the ground moved, it twisted its head to look up at the axe, and its arms came up.

The axe came down, but a hand was there to meet it, meet it not at the blade, but the haft, just behind the head. The axe didn’t stop, not at first, but it slowed, and never reached the thing’s neck; it stopped an inch or two short, the creature holding it with both hands. It glared up at Smith with those baleful blood-red eyes, its needle-teeth gleaming.