‘Sod off,’ shrieked the first, silvery voice. ‘Get out of it before I set the dogs on you.’

Of course, said Fang to himself, she isn’t to know. That’s all right then.

‘I’m warning you. All right, then. Here, Buttercup, Popsy, Snowdrop! Kill!’

A yard or so to his left, the door creaked open and three large Rottweilers bounded out, ears back, tongues lolling. Fang let them get right up close and then, in his best parade-ground voice, barked out, ‘Atten-shun!’

The dogs skidded to a halt, lifting divots with their outstretched claws. By the time they came to rest, they were sitting up ramrod-straight, chests out, chins in, Oh-God what’ve-we-done expressions engraved on their stupid canine faces. Fang counted to five under his breath and said, ‘At ease,’ whereupon the dogs snapped like lock-components into a triangular crouch.

‘All right, as you were,’ he murmured, and the Rottweilers sloped hurriedly off into the tower. Fang had plenty of time to slip in after them before the doors clanged shut.

‘You there,’ he grunted. ‘Where’s the witch?’

The nearest dog clicked back to attention, raised its offside front paw and pointed to a spiral staircase. Fang nodded, murmured, ‘Carry on,’ and bounded up the stair before any of the trio of feeble doggy minds had a chance to evaluate the recent exchange. Bred-in-the-bone instinct was one thing, but personally he wouldn’t trust a dog called Snowdrop as far as he could sneeze it out of a blocked nostril.

Perhaps justifiably; somewhere near the top of the stairs, Silvery voice was yelling, ‘Buttercup! Popsy! What are you doing down there, you pathetic animals?’ with such venom that, if he were a dog (even a dog called Snowdrop), he’d obey its commands without a moment’s hesitation. Time, he decided, to get to the bottom of all this, find the witch and get out of here fast.

He turned a corner and found himself out in daylight again; and dead ahead of him, just turning away from the parapet, was the most beautiful girl in the world. Slim as a wand, with startlingly blue eyes, rosebud lips and golden hair that cascaded around her shoulders like the crystal waters of a mountain stream — Instinctively, Fang threw himself sideways, lunging for the slight cover of the doorframe. If he’d had to rely on purely human reflexes, he’d never have made it; as it was, he was showered by chips of flying stone as a twenty-round burst from the girl’s Uzi turned the frame and lintel of the doorway into gravel. Then there was a click, followed by a clatter as the discarded magazine hit the stone floor. Fang was up and out of the doorway before she had time to rack back the bolt, but he was still too slow. He could see her sweet face, and the snub barrel of the gun, behind the bowed shoulders of the ugly, wrinkled, hook-nosed, shit-scared old crone his tardiness had allowed her to use as a human shield.

‘Back off, Fido, or Granny gets it,’ the girl snarled. Then she lifted the gun and squinted down the barrel at him; he had a fleeting glimpse of a cornflower-blue eye along a runway of blued steel before his training and survival instinct sent him scampering back the way he’d just come.

Spiffing, he muttered to himself, as another fusillade of shots chiselled shrapnel out of the stonework inches from his head, a hostage situation. One fuck-up, and it’ll be the teddy-bears’ picnic all over again. He forced himself to stay calm. She had the hostage, the gun and the benefit of knowing the layout. Plus any other wee surprises she might have stockpiled up there, such as grenades. He, on the other hand…

…Had a matchbox.

Yes. Well. Put like that, it wasn’t exactly mutually assured destruction. But a matchbox, under these circumstances, was at least a three hundred per cent improvement on nothing at all. He fumbled in his pocket, found the box and slid open the lid, praying as he did so that in his recent displays of acrobatics he hadn’t contrived to squash its contents flat.

‘Get lost,’ hissed the elf.

‘Shut up,’ Fang reasoned, ‘and listen. Up there, there’s a fairytale princess with a machine gun. She’s holding a witch hostage. I need your help.’

From inside the recesses of the box came an unpleasant snickering noise. ‘I agree you need help,’ said the elf, ‘but since I don’t have a degree in severe personality disorders, probably not mine. Now bog off and leave me alone.’

‘I—’ Fang’s next few words were drowned by the ear-splitting roar of the Uzi, as its hail of lead sheared away another slice of the doorway. ‘I’ll make a deal,’ he said. ‘Do as I say and we’re quits. You can go. Free and clear. How about it?’

From inside the matchbox came a small, clear rude noise. Fang lost patience and knocked the box out over his open palm, somersaulting the elf into the fork between his index and middle fingers.

‘Ouch,’ screamed the elf, ‘you’re squashing me!’

‘I know,’ Fang replied, ‘but not nearly as much as I want to. Now listen.’

While he was telling the elf what to do, another clatter on the stone floor informed him that the fairytale princess had slammed in a new clip and was ready to resume demolition. ‘You got that?’ he hissed; then, without waiting for a reply, he straightened his fingers and blew hard. The elf was buffeted into the air like a fragment of gossamer and floated away, shrieking curses at him, out of sight.

‘You in the doorway,’ called out the silvery voice, ‘you got one chance. Come out now with your hands where I can see ‘em, and—’ The silvery voice broke off and turned into a fit of coughing that suggested that she was on at least forty a day; whereupon Fang hurled himself out of cover, lunged forwards, barged the witch out of the way and made a grab for the Uzi. He managed to get hold of it easily enough, but in the process — ‘AAAAaaaaaaaaaaah!’ said the silvery voice; and then there was a dull thud from somewhere down below. Laying the gun carefully on the floor, Fang stuck his head over the parapet and had a look, just in case she was hanging from a ledge doing Doppler-shift impersonations; he needn’t have worried. Far below he could see what looked like a Barbie doll that’d just been run over by a Mack truck. Fair enough, he muttered to himself; the cuter they are, the harder they fall. He turned back, and — ‘Oh for pity’s sake,’ he complained, as the crone prodded him in the tummy with the barrel of the Uzi. ‘I just rescued you, you senile old fool.’

‘True,’ the witch conceded, ‘which explains why I ain’t shot you. Yet,’ she added, tightening her arthritic forefinger on the trigger. ‘But you’ll have a reason for doin’ that, I dare say. Handsome princes don’t do nothing ‘cept for a reason.’

‘All right,’ Fang sighed wearily. ‘Stop poking me with that thing and I’ll tell you.’ He nodded towards the parapet. ‘Or we can do this the hard way,’ he added meaningfully.

The witch shuddered. ‘Ain’t no need to go making threats,’ she squawked. ‘I’m just a lonely, defenceless old woman tryin’ to take care of herself.’ Her eyes flicked towards the edge, and then back to Fang. ‘Say,’ she said, ‘how did you do that?’

Fang shook his head and grinned. It wasn’t such an impressive grin, now that he had a toothpaste-ad smile where a row of foam-flecked upper canines used to be, but he could still make it fairly unsettling. The old lady cursed and lowered the gun, though she didn’t hand it over.

‘I had help,’ Fang said. ‘Now there’s something I’d like you to—’

‘Not so fast,’ snapped the witch. ‘What kind of help would that be, exactly? Only…’

‘This kind, stupid!’ said a tiny shrill voice somewhere in the vicinity of Granny’s ear; and while she was looking frantically round to see where it had come from, Fang was able to reach across and take the gun away from her. Smirking, the elf hopped down off the top of her head and flitted like a small, tawdry moth on to Fang’s wrist. ‘You owe me,’ she said blithely. ‘Again. When this is all over, you’re going to have to buy me Unigate.’