I have a growing, edgy feeling that I’ve missed something critically important. I’ve been plowing along, in harness and under stress, assuming that the crises I’m trying to deal with are all independent. But what if they aren’t? I ask myself. What if Angleton’s disappearance is connected to Panin’s search for the Teapot, what if the Fuller Memorandum holds an explanation, what if the cultists know that we stand closer to the threshold of the End Times than we realize and are trying to topple the balance, or perhaps to steal-

There’s a crack of dead branches under the trees behind me. Panting inhuman breath punctuates the thudding of a four-footed pursuit. The orange sodium glare leaches away around me, giving way to a different shade of darkness. Trees loom overhead, clutching at each other with wizened arms as bony as concentration camp victims’. A thin mist at foot level obscures the tarmac path and my stomach lurches. I’m not running through suburban London anymore; I’m running along the ghostly track bed of the Necropolitan line, and the hounds of hell are on my trail, and I left my protective ward with Mo, and I am a fucking imbecile. Shit, shit, shit.

Whatever the thing behind me is, it’s only seconds away. My heart’s already thudding uncomfortably from jogging an hour after dinner-fucking stupid of me-but while I’m ninety percent sure that I’m being tracked by something that’s about as bad as the proverbial hellhound, in which case I really ought to simply plug it with my pistol and ask questions later, I’ve got an even nastier feeling that it’s tracking me for someone, or worse, herding me along.

I have: a gun, a Hand of Glory, and a JesusPhone. So of course I draw my phone and flip the case open, thumb-swipe to unlock, and spin round, raising the camera to focus as I tap the grinning skull icon.

There’s method in my madness and my pursuer isn’t mindless-I get a glimpse of flying haunches and bushy tail as it leaps off the path and into the trees with a startled “yip!”

The screen flashes a red-rimmed maw gaping at me and my hair stands on end as the phone and my fingertips are engulfed in pale blue fire. Balefire, it used to be called. I hastily go back to the main screen and stab another app: a diagnostic. Seeing what it says, I swear quietly and pull up another one that sets a spinning wireframe projection of a 5D Tesseract on the screen as it does its valiant best to set up a ward around me. The dog-thing is hiding and the tendrils of mist draw away from my feet, so I shove the phone in my pocket-still running-and draw my pistol. Then I turn back to the way I was going.

The emulator running on the phone’s a poor substitute for a real ward, and it’s only going to keep it up for as long as its battery can keep its tiny electronic brain running at full power, but armed and warded is the first step to survival and now I see the peril I’m in with an icy clarity. The second app I looked at was the thaumometer, and I should have kept an eye on it earlier, as I walked-it’s almost off the chart. And all because I’m walking the Necropolitan line. If you wanted to set up a ley line, what better source of power could you hope for than the accumulated grief and sorrow of millions of mourners, to say nothing of the decaying lives of the corpses that traveled it? I should have seen it coming-but I usually only use this cycle path as a shortcut to and from the tube station, in daylight.

I’m pretty sure I’m being trailed by cultists. When I left home I was angry in the abstract but now I am really fucked off. These are the bastards who murdered a bunch of nursery school tots and their teachers, put Mo through the horrors-and they’re trying for me now. The only question is, are they chasing me or herding me?

I keep going, slowing my jog to a brisk walk, scanning ahead as I move. I hold my gun at the ready with both hands, close to my chest, relying on the invisibility ward to make it look as if I’m just clutching my right wrist with my left hand. The mist at ground level coils and curdles around a pair of translucent parallel rails the color of old bones, resting on a bed of ethereal track sleepers. The trees writhe and knot overhead, clutching at each other, imploring and beseeching. In the distance I hear odd noises-the ghost of sobbing, deep voices intoning something, words I can’t quite make out.

I’m sure it’s all very eerie, but when reality starts to imitate a second-rate computer game you know the bad guys have over-egged the pudding. Some fuckhead is hitting me with a glamour in hope of spooking me. It’s the sort of tactic that might stand a chance of working if I was a little less cynical, or if they had enough imagination to make it, oh, you know, horrifying, or something. Luckily for me they don’t seem to have grasped the difference between a Sam Raimi movie and standing by your dad’s hospital bed trying to work up the nerve to switch off the ventilator. So I find the fact that they’re sending me woo-woo noises and mist perversely encouraging.

(I’m having second thoughts about the cultist thing, though. The probability of running into two different cells of the fuckers in the same month is vanishingly slim; and if this nonsense is a message from the same group that tried to landscape downtown Amsterdam last week, they’ve definitely sent the B-Team.)

I up my pace again, and just then I hear a scraping noise from the embankment to my left and every hair on my neck stands on end simultaneously.

I swing round, extending my arms in front of my face and sliding my index finger through the trigger guard as this thing clatters and scrambles down the side of the cutting in a mad dash towards me, a growl of hatred and hunger sounding an organ note deep in its chest, and I have time to think, I hate fucking dogs, just as it launches itself towards me.

I squeeze the trigger twice, aiming below where my eyes are focused on it-I can’t look away; I get a flash of bared fangs and slavering tongue, eyeless and horrid and taller than any dog I’ve ever imagined-and there’s a sound like a palm slapping a lump of wet meat as the gun kicks silently in my hand. I jump sideways as it slams into the track sleepers where I was standing a moment ago, howling a scream of agony and snapping those huge jaws at its own shoulder.

It’s not a dog. Dogs aren’t as black as a hole in space, and their musculature and articulation follow mammalian norms-this thing bends wrong as it bites and flails around, and I have an inkling of a memory that tells me I should be very afraid right now. But I’m not. I started out pissed off and I am now toweringly angry. Which is why I walk behind the flailing body, lower my aim towards the back of its skull, and call: “Show yourself right now, or the doggie gets it!”

There’s a low chuckle. “Give us the Teapot and we will let you live, mortal.”

Mortal? Yes, it’s the B-Team all right; probably in robes with upside-down crucifixes or something. They’re the occult equivalent of the kind of suicide bombers who post their confession videos on YouTube two weeks before they learn the hard way that trying to blow themselves up with chapatti flour isn’t going to do anything except give the police an excuse to pat themselves on the back and reassure the public that Everything Is Under Control. “Come out where I can see you,” I demand.

The hound-thing on the ground whines in agony. It’s getting on my nerves, cutting through the barricade of my determination-then I notice out of the corner of one eye that the shoulder I blew a fist-sized chunk out of is writhing and foaming, dark tubules questing inwards from the ripped and shredded edges. Shit. If this is what I think it is, then by summoning it the B-Team have bitten off more than they can chew-and so have I. “You’ve got five seconds,” I add. “It won’t die, but it’s going to be real pissed off. And I reckon it’s fifty-fifty whether it blames me or blames you.”