Necropolis

temple. She was standing by the door, blinking nervously. Her three birds were in their cages on a table, hopping up and down, frightened by all the noise.
    Lohan hadn't stopped moving. He was heading toward a second door and the kitchen beyond. "This way, Scarlett," he called out.
    Scarlett followed him into a room with a fridge and an oven and little else. A large hole had been knocked through the wall. The sides were jagged, with old bits of wire and pipework sticking out. They climbed through the brickwork and into the apartment next door, and then into the one after. Each one had been smashed through to provide a passageway that couldn't be seen from the corridor. The last two apartments were completely abandoned, with dust and rubble all over the floor. They came to a window with a steel structure on the other side. A fire escape. Lohan jerked the window open. They climbed out.
    Scarlett found herself standing on a small, square platform with a series of metal ladders zigzagging all the way down to street level, about twenty floors below. It was very cold up there, the air currents rushing between the buildings, carrying the driving rain. She looked down onto the sort of scene she would normally have associated with a major accident. There must have been at least a dozen police cars parked at different angles in the street. They might have turned their sirens off, but their lights were flashing, brilliant even in the daylight. Barricades were still being erected around the building, and all the traffic had been stopped. Men in black-and-silver uniforms were holding the crowds back.

    They couldn't go down. The fire escape led into the middle of all the chaos, and the moment they reached the bottom, they would be seized. Worse still, one of the policemen had seen them. He shouted out a warning and pointed. At once a group of armed officers ran forward and began to climb up.
    Lohan didn't seem worried. "We don't go down," he muttered. "We go up."
    There were just three flights of stairs from the platform to the roof and, aware of the policemen getting nearer all the time, Scarlett made her way up as quickly as she could, keeping close to the wall in case any shots were fired. Draco and Red followed up behind, and a minute later, they had all reached the roof and were squatting there, catching their breath in the shelter of a rusty water tank. The rain was slicing down. Scarlett was already drenched, her hair clinging to her eyes.
    Lohan had taken out a phone. He pressed a direct-dial button and spoke urgently into it, then folded it away. The other men hadn't said a word, but they seemed to understand what had been agreed. Then Red muttered something and pointed. Scarlett looked up, wondering what he had seen. And shuddered. She had thought their situation couldn't get any worse…but it just had.
    There was a cloud of what looked like black smoke in the distance, high above the tower blocks of Kowloon. It was traveling toward them, against the wind. Scarlett knew at once that it couldn't be smoke. It was the swarm of flies. They had come back again. They were heading directly for her.
    "Move!"
    Lohan set off at once, running across the roof, no longer caring if he was seen or not. He had hung the jade pendant around his neck and Scarlett realized that as long as he was wearing it, the flies would know where he was. That was his plan. It was the reason he had taken it from her. He was protecting her, making himself the target in her place. He leaped over stacks of cable, moving toward the back of the building. Scarlett followed. She still had no idea where they were heading, or how they were going to get down.
    They reached the other side and came to a breathless halt. Once again, Scarlett was completely thrown.
    There was no fire escape, no ladder, no window cleaner's lift. The next apartment block was about fifty feet away and there was no possible means of crossing. Lohan was standing at the very edge of the building. For a moment he looked like a ghost, or maybe a scarecrow with his pale skin and his dark clothes, drenched by the falling rain. His black hair had fallen across his face. The scar seemed more prominent than ever.
    "Follow me," he instructed. "Don't look down."
    And then he stepped into space.

    Scarlett waited for him to fall, to be killed twenty floors below. Instead, impossibly, he seemed to be standing in midair, as if he had learned to levitate. More magic? That was her first thought — but