Davida looks at her watch and smiles serenely. “Nine more minutes. Then Lord Loss and his familiars burst out of the D warehouse and kill just about every living soul in town.” She brings her hands up and claps slowly, to emphasise each word. “Lights! Camera! Slawter!”

THE REAL STARS OF THE SHOW

Dervish rushes out of the office, leaving a laughing Davida and unconscious Chuda Sool behind. Bill-E and I hurry after him. “Shouldn’t we have tied Davida up or knocked her out?” I pant, running fast to catch up with Dervish.

“No time,” he barks.

We race through the mostly deserted streets of Slawter. Dervish spots a group of people making their way to the assembly point. He roars, “Get out! Go back!” They stop and stare at him oddly.

“There’s been an explosion!” Bill-E yells, lurching up behind us. “They think it’s a gas leak. The entire gas system’s been compromised. There could be further detonations anywhere within town. We have to get out. Now!”

“Good one,” I compliment him as the panicked group turns and heads west.

“We need to think about this logically,” he gasps, face red from running. “If we tell people that demons are going to kill them, they’ll think we’re mad.”

“So we make it a gas leak instead,” I nod. “Get them moving away from the danger zone. You hear that, Dervish?”

“Whatever,” he grunts. “But in another few minutes we won’t have to tell them anything— they’ll see the demons themselves.”

We round a corner and approach the gigantic D warehouse. A huge crowd has gathered outside. Most of the people are at the southern end, but some spill around the east and west wings of the building. There are cameras everywhere, on tripods and cranes, in the hands of cameramen mingling with the crowd, a couple on top of the warehouse roof. I guess the cameramen are part of Davida’s inner circle, wise to the Demonata, otherwise she couldn’t trust them to man their posts when the chaos erupts.

Several of the crew have megaphones and are directing the crowd. Dervish storms over to the nearest one—a young man with a ponytail—grabs the megaphone and shouts into it, “Gas leak! There have been explosions! Everybody out! We have to evacuate now!”

Uncertain mutterings among the crowd. People stop talking and stare at Dervish. He’s running up and down, repeating his message, gesturing in all directions, telling people they have to make for the outskirts of town immediately.

Before anyone can move, a large man steps forward with a megaphone of his own. It’s Tump Kooniart. “Ignore that lunatic!” Tump roars. “It’s Dervish Grady. We fired him last week. He’s trying to disrupt proceedings to get his own back. Guards—seize him! The boys too!”

Security guards move forward. Dervish curses and tosses his megaphone aside. “Enough of this gas-leak crap,” he mutters. “Time to open their eyes.”

Dervish says something magical and points at the guards closing in on him. They float up several metres into the air with yells of alarm and fear. All around us, jaws drop. Eyes fix on the floating guards, then on Dervish, who looks like a man charged full of electricity.

Dervish touches a couple of fingers to his throat and addresses the crowd, his voice far louder than it was with the aid of the megaphone. “You’re all going to die. Davida Haym has struck a deal with demons. Real demons. They’re going to break out of the warehouse in a couple of minutes and kill everyone. Unless you flee now, you’re doomed.”

“Ignore him!” Tump Kooniart screams. “He’s lost his mind!”

I see Bo and Abe close behind their father. They look worried, scared, incredulous, like most of the people around us.

“Real demons?” Tump snorts. “Madness! He’s trying to wreck the shoot. He—”

Tump Kooniart chokes, drops the megaphone, falls to his knees, face purple, hands clawing at his throat and mouth.

“Don’t kill him,” I whisper in Dervish’s ear.

“He deserves to die,” Dervish snarls, looking completely unlike the gentle man I’ve lived with all these months.

“Maybe,” I say, voice trembling. “But we don’t have the right to kill people. We’re trying to save them, even those who don’t deserve it.”

Dervish snorts, but breaks the spell. Tump Kooniart breathes again.

“Listen to us,” I shout, using magic to amplify my voice. “I know it’s hard to believe, but you can see the guards floating overhead. You can hear our voices, even though we’re not using any equipment. Your lives are in danger. You have to run now or else—”

“Enough!” Davida Haym screams, her voice even louder than mine or Dervish’s. The guards fall back to earth, some injuring themselves badly. Davida’s standing behind us, a groggy Chuda Sool by her side. Her eyes are blazing. “You’re not going to ruin my movie! Cameramen—are you ready?” Dozens nod and shout that they are. “Sound?” Davida cries.

Dervish raises a hand to stop her. Before he can, he’s spun aside by a magical force. It’s not Davida’s work. Doesn’t look like Chuda’s doing it either. There must be a powerful, hidden mage somewhere in the crowd.

“Sound?” Davida shouts again and this time there’s an answering bellow. “All right. Let’s dispense with the countdown and cut to the chase. You lot inside the warehouse—it’s time to make your grand entrance.

“Action!” she roars, and the hounds of hell are unleashed.

The giant door in the middle of the southern wall of the warehouse explodes outwards. Those nearest it are caught by flying splinters, some as long as my arm. Most go down screaming, though a few are torn apart and killed instantly by the shrapnel.

Stunned silence from those not struck by the debris of the blast. Everybody’s staring at the wounded and dead. Wondering if this is real or part of the movie. They live in a make-believe world where anything can happen and nobody is ever really hurt. Their senses tell them this is different, it’s not part of a script, they should run. But the movie-making part of their brain is trying to figure out how the explosion was arranged and how the scattering of the splinters was timed so as not to harm anybody—struggling to convince themselves that those on the ground are acting, the blood isn’t real, it can’t be.

Dervish is back up on his feet. Staring at the hole in the wall like the rest of us. The explosion created clouds of dust around the doorway. As they clear, a figure glides forward from within the warehouse. Pale red skin, lumpen, no heart, eight arms—who else but the ringmaster himself, Lord Loss?

“Alas,” he sighs, looking around sadly. “Here we all are. Bound by chains of blood and death. No way out. Doomed. Dervish tried to warn you, to save you, but he failed. Here you are trapped. Here you will die.”

One of the cameramen moves in for a close-up. “Yes,” I hear Davida murmur. I glance back. She’s speaking into a microphone, directing the cameraman. “His face first, then pan down to the hole in his chest. I want to see those snakes slithering.”

Lord Loss gazes without much interest into the camera. He smiles slightly, then runs his eyes over the crowd, judging their mood, taking in their expressions, most more confused than terrified. “Ah,” he notes. “You do not believe. You think this is part of the film. That I am a movie prop.” He chuckles. “It is time to burst that bubble of misperception.”

He moves to one side. I glimpse other shapes behind him. Eyes. Tendrils. Teeth. Claws. Fangs. “Now, my darlings,” Lord Loss whispers.

The demons spill out in their dozens, each one more misshapen and nightmarish than the last. A variety of vile monsters, spitting bile, oozing pus and blood, screeching and howling with malicious glee. They collide with the shocked members of the cast and crew closest to the building. Cut into and through them, severing limbs and heads, disembowelling, biting and clawing.