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  Lucca smiled. ‘You’ll never get out alive,’ he said again.

  Gwen followed his eyes. He was looking across the apartment to where a little girl with golden hair stood. She looked sleepy, as if she had just woken up. She held a strange rag doll in her arms with candy-striped trousers and turned-up shoes.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she said.

  Wendy saw her. ‘Alison!’

  She lurched towards her, but Owen caught her wrist.

  ‘No, don’t go near her.’

  Wendy looked at him, her eyes full of rage and confusion. ‘What the hell do you mean?’

  ‘Why are you aiming guns at Mr Lucca?’ she asked. ‘Mr Lucca is my friend.’

  ‘It’s OK, little girl,’ said Jack. ‘Just go back to your room. Everything is going to be fine.’

  ‘Alison!’ cried Wendy.

  ‘It’s all right, Mummy. But Mr Pickle says we have to help Mr Lucca. Mr Lucca is our friend.’

  ‘Alison, Mr Lucca is a bad man. You shouldn’t be friends with him,’ said Gwen.

  ‘But I understand you, don’t I?’ said Lucca, looking at the child. ‘I know who you are, don’t I?’

  ‘She’s my daughter!’ Wendy shouted.

  Owen said, ‘He’s not talking to Wendy. He’s talking to Mr Pickle.’

  Wendy snarled like an animal. ‘What? You’re mad! You’re mad! Let me go!’ She started to rain blows on Owen.

  Toshiko went to him. Held Wendy. ‘Please, Mrs Lloyd, be calm.’

  Jack had moved in closer to Lucca now, still had him covered by the Webley. Alison stood in the middle of the room, holding Mr Pickle in her arms.

  ‘OK, Owen,’ Jack said calmly, keeping an eye on the girl as much as Lucca, ‘do you want to tell me that Mr Pickle isn’t the sad-looking pixie doll she’s holding.’

  Alison turned to look at him as Owen spoke. ‘Mr Pickle is a thought-form. You know, like some yogis in the Himalayas are supposed to be able to create after years of concentration.’

  ‘What?’ said Gwen. ‘They can just think a creature into existence?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Lucca. ‘A servant to do their bidding. There are many stories.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ snapped Wendy. ‘She’s just a little girl.’

  Owen addressed Jack and Gwen. ‘Alison had a car crash. She died at the scene for five minutes. She brought something back with her. Something that in hospital became manifested by her as a doll, Mr Pickle.’

  ‘But the thought-form couldn’t maintain its physical form indefinitely without cellular matter,’ Jack guessed.

  He looked across at Lucca. ‘And you worked all that out?’

  ‘I saw it. And I made friends with Alison and Mr Pickle.’

  ‘In the name of learning?’ Owen asked, his voice dry with sarcasm.

  ‘And survival,’ he said. ‘When Torchwood showed up, it sensed that it was under threat. That was why its attacks increased.’

  Toshiko looked at the girl. If she understood any of this she gave no sign. The doll remained cradled in her arms, and looked like nothing but a doll.

  ‘That is why,’ Lucca said. ‘You won’t get out of this room alive. The thought-form knows who its friends are, and who are its enemies.’

  And that was when Mr Pickle started to shimmer in Alison’s arms. As they watched, the doll transformed into a cloud of rippling light and slime, and Alison fell to the floor, unconscious.

  Wendy screamed and tried to run to her daughter, but Toshiko held her tight, and the thought-form swept across the room towards Toshiko.

  Owen leaped between them.

  ‘You want her? You’re going to have to take a bit of me first!’

  And from his pocket he drew the hypodermic that he had snatched from Julie in the flat. It was filled with a dark, almost black substance. Owen raised his fist and pushed home the needle. The black liquid sprayed across the inside of the thought-form, attaching itself to the strange sunburst lights within it.

  As they watched the lights began to dim, and the thought-form began to writhe, sweeping this way and that, rippling and sagging.

  And then it was gone.

  Lucca stared around in horror. ‘You killed it!’

  Toshiko released Wendy, who rushed to her fallen child.

  ‘Alison! Alison!’

  Owen was at her side. ‘Let me look at her.’ He felt for a pulse. There wasn’t one.

  ‘What’s going on?’ demanded Jack.

  ‘Tosh,’ Owen commanded. ‘Quick, I need you to give her mouth to mouth.’

  Then he started to give her heart massage, talking quickly as he worked. ‘I worked out the thought-form needed living cellular matter. That was why it left me on the floor. I’m dead tissue, I was bad for it. So I pumped it full of my blood.

  ‘Trouble is, the thought-form was linked to Alison. She brought it back with her. It’s entangled with her being. Killing it could kill her.’

  Toshiko was giving Alison the kiss of life.

  Owen had his hands on her sternum, pressing, counting. And he found himself praying – if God didn’t exist, then maybe something else might hear him. He didn’t want her to go back into the dark again.

  ‘You have to save her!’ cried Wendy. ‘Alison, come back to me darling, come back.’

  ‘Come on, Alison. Come back. Out of the dark, darling. Out of the dark.’

  And then Owen was aware of something beneath his hands.

  Her heart?

  ‘Quick, Tosh,’ he said. ‘Check her pulse!’

  And then Alison coughed, and her eyes opened.

  Alison wrapped her arms around her mother and hugged her tighter than anything in her life.

  Owen looked at Toshiko, and they smiled.

  Owen thought it felt good to smile.

  THIRTY

  Ianto was waiting for them outside SkyPoint with the SUV when they came out of reception with Besnik Lucca, his hands fixed behind him with cable-ties. They left him sitting on the steps of the central police station with his ankles also bound with plastic and a package slung around his neck. Gwen made a call as the SUV screeched away and when the cops opened what hung around Lucca’s neck they found all the digital detail they needed to put him away for half a century.

  They took the SUV back to Roald Dahl Plass, but Owen didn’t go with the others down to the Hub. He said he’d been cooped up in that bloody skyscraper too long, and he needed some air.

  It was half past four in the morning. It wouldn’t be long before dawn broke. There might be time for just one coffee down at Constantine’s before the sun came up.

  When he got there the café was empty.

  This was no-man’s-hour for the nightshift workers and the clubbers. Neither the night before, nor the day after. In another hour or so there would be the early-shift workers, but until then nobody. Owen wondered if it was even worth buying the cup of coffee that he wouldn’t drink.

  The chances of the twins showing up now were pretty remote.

  What the hell? Where else are you going to go?

  He walked down to the counter, but the kid wasn’t there. Owen thought he’d probably gone to the bathroom, or was maybe taking a drag out back.

  Then he heard something break.

  There was a doorway behind the bar. Owen had no idea where it led – some sort of kitchen, he had always assumed. It sounded like a bottle breaking. A milk bottle. Nothing too strange about that in a coffee shop, he thought. Only afterwards there was no curse, no sound of someone sweeping it up.

  Owen’s senses were electrified. He moved around the counter and into the kitchen area behind it.

  The coffee shop kid – or what was left of him – was on the floor. The twins had divided him between them again and were quickly and efficiently devouring him.

  Owen felt sorry for the kid. And that it was maybe his fault that he was dead.

  Owen stepped into their line of vision and the two sisters looked up at him, with their shark eyes, blood and tatters
of meat hanging from their distended savage jaws.

  ‘Ladies,’ he said.

  This was a moment he had thought about a great deal since that first night hiding behind the rubbish while the girls chewed up the ponytailed French student. If ever there was a more certain way of ending this walking death, he couldn’t think what it could be. To be torn apart, eaten and digested by two carnivorous predators might be painful – but couldn’t be any worse than what he had been enduring. And he had seen that they were quick. More importantly, he couldn’t believe that there was any chance that his consciousness would survive. If he gave himself to them, it would be over.

  No doubt.

  They looked at him and he could see that they were hungry for more.

  ‘Come and get it,’ he said.

  They looked at each other, and he could have sworn they actually smiled. And then they pounced.

  And Owen pulled the automatic from inside his coat and tore them to pieces in mid-air with a spray of bullets.

  He stepped back as the dead meat hit the kitchen floor tiles with a wet slap next to what had been their last supper.

  He slid his gun back inside his jacket and checked himself in a grease-spotted mirror by the doorway for any blood-spray. He looked fine. For a dead man.

  Quickly, he slipped back around the counter and got out of the coffee shop. The last thing he needed was to meet any customers coming in.

  Instead he ran into Toshiko. She was waiting for him outside the door.

  ‘Tosh?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I needed a walk, too.’

  ‘You mean you followed me?’ he said.

  She didn’t try to lie, there was no point. ‘What were you doing in there? You don’t drink coffee. You can’t.’

  Owen pulled up his coat collar, the first threads of morning were starting to show in the sky and he thought the first chill of the autumn was coming with it.

  ‘You know, that’s right,’ he smiled. ‘But do you know something else, there’s so much more to life.’

  She smiled, and wanted to take his hand. But didn’t.

  They walked a few steps along the road in silence. A rubbish truck rumbled past them as Cardiff started to come to life.

  When he turned to her again, he wasn’t smiling any more.

  ‘I don’t want to go back into the dark, Tosh,’ he said. ‘Not ever.’

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A writer’s greatest friend should always be his editor. A good one can make you seem so much better than you really are – so my greatest thanks to Steve Tribe for, if nothing else, the patience of a saint. Also to Gary Russell for his encouragement, talent and hard work in all we have done together.

  Thanks also to Hayley for putting up with a clattering keyboard into the the wee hours, and to all the cast of Torchwood – particularly Burn and Naoko, who brought Owen and Toshiko to life and then so beautifully took them into death. I will miss you!

  But biggest thanks to Russell for creating such marvellous shows and proving that there is a place for fantasy on British TV, and thanks also – and to Julie – for letting me be a part of it.

  Also available from BBC Books

  TORCHWOOD

  THE TWILIGHT STREETS

  Gary Russell

  ISBN 978 1 846 07439 4

  UK £6.99 US$11.99/$14.99 CDN

  There’s a part of the city that no one much goes to, a collection of rundown old houses and gloomy streets. No one stays there long, and no one can explain why – something’s not quite right there.

  Now the Council is renovating the district, and a new company is overseeing the work. There will be street parties and events to show off the newly gentrified neighbourhood: clowns and face-painters for the kids, magicians for the adults – the street entertainers of Cardiff, out in force.

  None of this is Torchwood’s problem. Until Toshiko recognises the sponsor of the street parties: Bilis Manger.

  Now there is something for Torchwood to investigate. But Captain Jack Harkness has never been able to get into the area; it makes him physically ill to go near it. Without Jack’s help, Torchwood must face the darker side of urban Cardiff alone…

  Featuring Captain Jack Harkness as played by John Barrowman, with Gwen Cooper, Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato and Ianto Jones as played by Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoki Mori and Gareth David-Lloyd, in the hit series created by Russell T Davies for BBC Television.

  Also available from BBC Books

  TORCHWOOD

  PACK ANIMALS

  Peter Anghelides

  ISBN 978 1 846 07574 2

  UK £6.99 US$11.99/$14.99 CDN

  Shopping for wedding gifts is enjoyable, unless like Gwen you witness a Weevil massacre in the shopping centre. A trip to the zoo is a great day out, until a date goes tragically wrong and Ianto is badly injured by stolen alien tech. And Halloween is a day of fun and frights, before unspeakable monsters invade the streets of Cardiff and it’s no longer a trick or a treat for the terrified population.

  Torchwood can control small groups of scavengers, but now someone has given large numbers of predators a season ticket to Earth. Jack’s investigation is hampered when he finds he’s being investigated himself. Owen is convinced that it’s just one guy who’s toying with them. But will Torchwood find out before it’s too late that the game is horribly real, and the deck is stacked against them?

  Featuring Captain Jack Harkness as played by John Barrowman, with Gwen Cooper, Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato and Ianto Jones as played by Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoki Mori and Gareth David-Lloyd, in the hit series created by Russell T Davies for BBC Television.

  Also available from BBC Books

  TORCHWOOD

  ALMOST PERFECT

  James Goss

  ISBN 978 1 846 07573 5

  UK £6.99 US$11.99/$14.99 CDN

  Emma is 30, single and frankly desperate. She woke up this morning with nothing to look forward to but another evening of unsuccessful speed-dating. But now she has a new weapon in her quest for Mr Right. And it’s made her almost perfect.

  Gwen Cooper woke up this morning expecting the unexpected. As usual. She went to work and found a skeleton at a table for two and a colleague in a surprisingly glamorous dress. Perfect.

  Ianto Jones woke up this morning with no memory of last night. He went to work, where he caused amusement, suspicion and a little bit of jealousy. Because Ianto Jones woke up this morning in the body of a woman. And he’s looking just about perfect.

  Jack Harkness has always had his doubts about Perfection.

  Featuring Captain Jack Harkness as played by John Barrowman, with Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones as played by Eve Myles and Gareth David-Lloyd, in the hit series created by Russell T Davies for BBC Television.

  Also available from BBC Books

  THE

  TORCHWOOD

  ARCHIVES

  ISBN 978 1 846 07459 2

  £14.99

  Separate from the Government

  Outside the police

  Beyond the United Nations…

  Founded by Queen Victoria in 1879, the Torchwood Institute has long battled against alien threats to the British Empire. The Torchwood Archives is an insider’s look into the secret world of this unique investigative team.

  In-depth background on personnel, case files on alien enemies of the Crown and descriptions of extra-terrestrial technology collected over the years will uncover more about the world of Torchwood than ever previously known, including some of the biggest mysteries surrounding the Rift in space and time running through Cardiff.

  Based on the hit series

  created by Russell T Davies

  for BBC Television.

 

 

 
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