'I want you to open it when I say,' he said, tearing a strip off his shirt and wrapping it round an arrow. He searched his pockets for a match. 'And when you've opened the door,' he went on, as the cloth caught, 'I want you to run away very, very fast, right? Okay... open the door!'

Big Jim pulled at the handle. There was a very faint whoosh as the door swung back.

'Run!' Shawn shouted. He drew back the bowstring and fired through the doorway.

The flaming arrow vanished into the noisome darkness. There was a pause of a few heartbeats. Then the tower exploded.

It happened quite slowly. The green-blue light mushroomed up from storey to storey in an almost leisurely way, blowing out stones at every level to give the tower a nice sparkling effect. The roofing leads opened up like a daisy. A faint flame speared the clouds. Then time, sound and motion came back with a thump.

After a few seconds the main doors burst open and the soldiers ran out. The first one was smacked between the eyes by a ballistic king.

Shawn had just started to run back to the fight when someone landed on his shoulders, bearing him to the ground.

'Well, well, one of the toy soldiers,' sneered Corporal Svitz, leaping up and drawing his sword.

As he raised it Shawn rolled over and struck upwards with the Lancrastian Peace-time Army Knife. He might have had time to select the Device for Dissecting Paradoxes, or the Appliance for Detecting Small Grains of Hope, or the Spiral Thing for Ascertaining the Reality of Being, but as it happened it was the instrument for Ending Arguments Very Quickly that won the day.

Presently, there came a short shower of soft rain.

Well... certainly a shower.

Definitely soft, anyway.

Agnes hadn't seen a mob like this before. Mobs, in her limited experience, were noisy. This one was silent. Most of the town was in it, and to Agnes's surprise they'd brought along many of the children.

It didn't surprise Perdita. They're going to kill the vampires, she said, and the children will watch.

Good, thought Agnes, that's exactly right.

Perdita was horrified. It'll give them nightmares!

No, thought Agnes. It'll take the nightmares away. Sometimes everyone has to know the monster is dead, and remember, so that they can tell their grandchildren.

'They tried to turn people into things,' she said aloud.

'Sorry, miss?' said Piotr.

'Oh... just thinking aloud.'

And where had she got that other idea? Perdita wondered, the one where she'd told the villagers to send runners out to other towns to report on the night's work. That was unusually nasty of her.

But she remembered the look of horror on the mayor's face and, later, the blank engrossed expression when he was trying to throttle the Count with his chain of office. The vampire had killed him with a blow that had almost broken him in half.

She fingered the wounds on her neck. She was pretty certain vampires didn't miss, but Vlad must have done, because she dearly wasn't a vampire. She didn't even like the idea of rare steak. She'd tried to see if she could fly, when she thought people weren't looking, but she was as attractive to gravity as ever. The blood-sucking... no, never that, even if it was the ultimate diet programme, but she'd have liked the flying.

It's changed you, said Perdita.

'How?'

'Sorry, miss?'

You're sharper... edgier... nastier.

'Maybe it's about time I was, then.'

'Sorry, miss?'

'Oh, nothing. Do you have a spare sickle?'

The vampires travelled fast but erratically, appearing not so much to fly as to be promising entries in the world long-jump championships.

'We'll burn that ungrateful place to the ground,' moaned the Countess, landing heavily.

'Afterwards we'll burn that place to the ground,' said Lacrimosa. 'This is what kindness leads to, Father. I do hope you're paying attention.'

'After you paid for that belltower, too,' said the Countess.

The Count rubbed his throat, where the links of the gold chain still showed as a red weal. He wouldn't have believed that a human could be so strong.

'Yes, that might be a good course of action,' he said. 'We would have to make sure the news got around, of course.'

'You think this news won't get around?' said Lacrimosa, landing beside him.

'It will be dawn soon, Lacci,' said the Count, with heavy patience. 'Because of my training, you will regard it as rather a nuisance, not a reason to crumble into a little pile of dust. Reflect on this.'

'That Weatherwax woman did this, didn't she?' said Lacrimosa, ignoring this call to count her blessings. 'She put her self somewhere and she's attacking us. She can't be in the baby. I suppose she wasn't in your fat girl, Vlad? Plenty of room in there. Are you listening, brother?'

'What?' said Vlad distantly as they turned a corner in the road and saw the castle ahead of them.

'I saw you give in and bite her. So romantic. They still dragged her off, though. They'll have to use quite a long stake to hit any useful organ.'

'She'd have put her self somewhere close,' said the Count. 'It stands to reason. It must've been someone in the hall...'

'One of the other witches, surely,' said the Countess.

'I wonder...'

'That stupid priest,' said Lacrimosa.

'That would probably appeal to her,' said the Count. 'But I suspect not.'

'Not... Igor?' said his daughter.

'I wouldn't give that a moment's thought,' said the Count.

'I still think it was Fat Agnes.'

'She wasn't that fat,' said Vlad sulkily.

'You'd have got tired of her in the end and we'd have ended up with her always getting in the way, just like the others,' said Lacrimosa. 'Traditionally a keepsake is meant to be a lock of their hair, not their entire skull-'

'She's different.'

'Just because you can't read her mind? How interesting would that be?'

'At least I did bite someone,' said Vlad. 'What was wrong with you?'

'Yes, you were acting very strangely, Lacci,' said the Count, as they reached the drawbridge.

'If she was hiding in me I'd know!' snarled Lacrimosa.

'I wonder if you would,' said the Count. 'She just has to find a weak spot...

'She's just a witch, Father. Honestly, we're acting as though she's got some sort of terrible power-'

'Perhaps it was Vlad's Agnes after all,' said the Count. He gave his son a slightly longer stare than was strictly necessary.

'We're nearly at the castle,' said the Countess, trying to rally them. 'We'll all feel better for an early day.'

'Our best coffins got taken to Lancre,' said Lacrimosa sullenly. 'Someone was so sure of themselves.'

'Don't you adopt that tone with me, young woman!' said the Count.

'I'm two hundred years old,' said Lacrimosa. 'Pardon me, but I think I can choose any tone I like.'

'That's no way to speak to your father!'

'Really, Mother, you might at least act as if you had two brain cells of your own!'

'It is not your father's fault that everything's gone wrong!'

'It has not all gone wrong, my dear! This is just a temporary setback!'

'It won't be when the Escrow meat tell their friends! Come on, Vlad, stop moping and back me up here.. .'

'If they tell them, what can they do? Oh, there will be a little bit of protesting, but then the survivors will see reason,' said the Count. 'In the meantime, we have those witches waiting for us. With the baby.'

'And we've got to be polite to them, I suppose?'

'Oh, I don't think we need go that far,' said the Count. 'Let them live, perhaps-'

Something bounced on the bridge beside him. He reached down to pick it up and dropped it with a yelp.

'But... garlic shouldn't burn...' he began.

'Thith ith water from the Holy Turtle Pond of Thquintth,' said a voice above them. 'Blethed by the Bithop himthelf in the Year of the Trout.' There was a glugging noise and the sound of someone swallowing. 'That wath a good year for beatitude,' Igor went on. 'But you don't have to take my word for it. Duck, you thuckerth!'