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was hunting us, herding and chivvying, safe in the knowledge that we were vulnerable, squashy and tasty and I was
damned
if I’d let some overgrown demonic Labrador finish me off before I’d ever had the chance to own a pair of Jimmy Choos.
    â€˜Here!’ I led the running band into the shelter afforded by the flimsy side of the ice-cream van, where we all collapsed against each other. ‘I thought you lot worked out!’
    â€˜What for?’ A be-suited Hunter wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘We kill. There’s not a lot of working-out you can do to prepare for killing.’
    â€˜Don’t you ever have to chase anything?’
    He patted his gun. ‘Ammo does the chasing, not us.’
    â€˜It’s gone.’ One of the more observant Hunters, the Matrix-Trinity-lookalike, I think, was watching round the side of the van. ‘Just, kind of, sank into the earth.’
    â€˜Then it’s moving in the Underworld, coming round in front of us,’ I said.
    â€˜How do you
know
this stuff?’ Ken Symes, our Visitor from Dorset, was slumped on the other side of me, still wheezing.
    â€˜I watched
Buffy
,’ I said, shortly. They stared at me. ‘You know,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer?
TV programme? Teenage girl who fights demons?’
    â€˜Yeeeesss,’ said one of the York Hunters, impeccably dressed but with mud marks on both knees, ‘but we never thought of using it as an instruction video.’
    I rolled my eyes. ‘Right. We need to be ready. Everyone grab as much ice-cream as they can carry. The big plastic buckets for preference, but lollies will do.’
    â€˜This is a wind-up.’
    â€˜No, this is extemporisation,’ and then I had to add, ‘it means, thinking on your feet. As soon as you see it start to come back up, we need to tip all the ice-cream over the top of it.’
    â€˜
What?
’
    â€˜Just
do it
!’
    â€˜There it is!’
    The bubbling pool of smoky-black was beginning to rise, trickling up through the earth on our side of the van, and I jumped for it. The others, thankfully, followed, copying me when I emptied the sludgy, half-melted contents of my plastic container over the ground, sloshy yellow foam and chunks of vanilla cascading in a waterfall of rancid lumping.
    The earth shrugged aside and the beast burst free, but the running pool of artificial additives, flavouring and colours flowed smoothly over the top. Where it encountered the smoke-like semi-formed lines of the hell-hound it solidified into a sticky entangling web. The creature shook its head, trying to break the bounds, but the stickiness was tying it, binding it, making its insubstantiality into something concrete and solid.
    â€˜Do you carry tranqs?’ A small pistol was passed over someone’s shoulder and I fired the unfamiliar weapon into the neck of the hell-hound, once, twice, until I felt the creature stop struggling and go limp. ‘Mr Whippy, one, hell-hounds, nil.’ Someone at the back applauded. ‘We tied it to the earth.’ I was surprised at how strong my voice sounded. ‘They can’t fight that. You’ll need to call Enforcement to deal with it now, but make it quick because once the ice-cream has dried it will go all stiff and they’ll never get it in the van.’
    Hands heavy with dignity, I passed the tranq gun back to its owner and managed to walk all the way back to my parked car before shock caught up with me.

Chapter Seven
    Next morning, as soon as I arrived at work, I was greeted with, ‘Well, if it’s not the hero of the hour!’
    â€˜Don’t. Just don’t. It was horrible, Liam. Really. Never let me get volunteered for anything like that again.’
    Liam shoved the daily paper under my nose. There, spread across the front page, was a truly dreadful picture of me leaving the Museum Gardens, ice-cream stains across the front of my shirt and an inexplicable,