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 to attention, scanned the air for any signs of Loplop coming for him.

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

This was the night when it would all happen. This was the night when he would free himself, or the night he would die. And he wanted to 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 it vigorously, testing its strength.

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

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

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

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

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

‘It’s time,’ he said. ‘Tell everyone to get ready. I’ll see you in there.’ 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 a symbol of victory. He slunk along the top of the wall, invisible. He crossed the road unseen, now in the shade of a car, now flattened against a building, now as a passer-by; into the gutter and out, over the wall and along the side of the warehouse, past the waiting crowds without giving them a second glance. The air was thick with the taste of 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 the crumbling brick walls of the venue, clinging to forgotten nails and the undersides of heavy old windows. He gripped the edge of the gently sloping roof and bent his legs against the wall. He could feel the bricks vibrate with bass. Then, just as King Rat had done so long ago, on Saul’s first night among the beasts, before he had eaten their food, when he was still human, Saul pushed out with his legs and swung around in a perfect circle, landing solidly on the warehouse roof.

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

Saul paused. He could taste a mass movement in the air. He could sense the migration of the compact little bodies, was aware of the exodus of his troops from the streets and sewers and scrub, towards the 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 nightlands and entered the warehouse, the frenzied jaws of Drum and Bass, the domain of smoke and strobe lights and Hardcore, the Piper’s lair, the heart of Darkness, deep in the Jungle.

The wooden boards drummed under Saul’s feet: the dust motes would not settle but hovered instead in an indistinct mist around his ankles. He crept the length of the long attic. In the corner of the great dark space there was a trapdoor.

Saul flattened himself against the floor and tugged at it very gently, raising it slowly away from the surrounding boards. Music and coloured light and the smell of dancers spilled through the slit to which he put his eye.

The lights below spun and changed colours, illuminating and obscuring, bouncing off suspended globes and dissipating throughout the hall. They cut through the darkness, confusing as much as they elucidated.

A long way below him was the dancefloor. It was a hallucinogenic vision, shimmering and metamorphosing like a fractal pattern, feverish bodies moving in a thousand different ways. In the corners lurked the bad boys, nodding their heads, no more than that, no reaction to the overwhelming music. On the floor the hard-steppers, swinging their arms, loose-limbed and syncopated; and those on speed and coke, ludicrously trying to keep up with the BPM, shifting their feet like lunatics; the rudegirls, arms spread wide, winding their hips slowly to the bassline, a barrage of colours and clothes and undress. 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 room momentarily into a series of frozen tableaux. Saul could investigate individuals almost at his leisure. He was struck by the multiplicity of expressions on the faces below.

The Drum and Bass felt as if it would lift the hatch out of the floor, off into the sky. It was unforgiving, a punishing assault of original 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 under the walkway and secured with chains. It was designed to swing down to another, similar ledge further down. This lower level was crowded with bodies, people looking down on the dancers ten feet below.

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

Red and green lights swirled around a black shape suspended from the ceiling. Anansi swung gently from one of his ropes. His arms and legs 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. Saul knew that Anansi’s army was with him, around them both, invisible and ready.

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

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

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

‘Alright,’ he whispered, and stroked the little head without looking backwards. ‘Alright.’

Saul opened the trapdoor. He poked his head upside-down into the hall, breaking the surface tension of the music and immersing himself in it. He lowered himself gently to the iron grille below. The beats were overwhelming. They crept into every crevice of the room. He felt as if he was moving underwater. He was almost afraid to breathe. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Anansi notice him, and he raised his hand.