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68

In a grim twist of fate, Banno had become the very thing he had accused James of being. A walking corpse. A pile of meat without enough sense to know it was already dead.

James shifted his weight from foot to foot, trying to time his attack exactly. He'd only get one shot at this.

"Dad?" Tim said, tugging on his elbow. "Dad, what are you doing?"

"Stay back."

Banno waited for him at the foot of the stairs. Maybe he still had enough brains to know that this narrow staircase wasn't a good match for him. Or maybe he had deteriorated to the point where he couldn't climb anymore. A hopeful thought, but one James couldn't bring himself to believe.

No... it was all in that smile. Even though it was carved into Banno's face and he couldn't change it even if he wanted to, James still got the feeling that it was real, somehow.

On some level, Banno was actually enjoying his.

James bent his knees, raised his arms, prepared to leap...

Come on, you sick bastard. Just try and squeeze in here. Just one more step...

A soft tapping noise reached his ears. At first, he dismissed it as more blood dripping to the floor, but it was too far away for that.

Banno heard it, too. He took a quick step back and looked over his shoulder, giving James a good view of the relatively 'normal' side of his face, with chunks of glass still glittering inside the tacky black clumps of fur. He raised his hand and pointing an accusatory finger at whatever had caught his attention. "Don't touch her! Don't you touch her!"

And then, to James's complete surprise, he turned around and hobbled back into the living room, towards the broken front door.

James hurried down the stairs, clutching his burning chest. He knew he was only a few steps up, but it felt more like a few hundred. He was panting like a greyfur by the time he reached the bottom.

Luke was trying to wake Kiana, alternately shaking her by the shoulder and giving her light taps across the cheek with his good hand.

"Don't touch her!" Banno screamed, lurching along on his crippled stump. Blood dribbled down his chin as he raised one club-like arm above his shoulder, ready to swat the boy like an insect where he sat, staring up at his approaching doom, too hurt to get out of the way in time.

"Luke!" James grabbed one of the overturned chairs and hoisted it high above his head. The wound in his chest throbbed like a second heartbeat.

"You don't touch her!" Banno raved like a lunatic, blood and spittle flying from his mouth. "She's not for you!"

James hobbled towards them, feeling like a participant in a race of the cripples. There was a warm patch of wetness building up beneath his bandages, a blatant warning he had no choice but to ignore. "Hey! Banno!"

Banno turned around just in time to see the chair swinging down towards his face. James didn't know if it was because of his injuries, or fatigue, or the illness riding his breath in putrid waves, but this time Banno was too slow to react. The chair struck him squarely across the head, breaking apart at the seat and clattering to the floor, leaving James holding the broken back in his hands, panting and heaving, staring up at the monster who, despite the massive blow he just took, was still standing upright.

Banno looked down at him, a subtle snarl pulling his upper lip away from his crimson teeth.

James raised the broken chairback above his head, but this time Banno was ready for it. He knocked the hunk of wood out of James's hands, sending it crashing into the mantelpiece above the fire and shattering it into ever smaller pieces. One of the splinters actually landed in Kiana's hair.

"Dad!" Tim had descended the stairs and was standing out in the open, looking around in frantic desperation, not knowing what to do.

James was about to yell at him to stay away, but the words turned into a helpless croak as Banno's fingers slammed into his throat and closed shut like a vice, cutting off his air. He scratched at Banno's hand, which was already covered in the scratch marks of his previous victims, to no avail. His fingers kept slipping through tacky strands of blood-sticky fur.

"I will save Valery from this world..." Banno whispered into James's upturned face, puss boiling from his punctured eye socket. "I won't let you turn her into another one of you!"

The pressure around James's throat increased, causing blinding spots of light to burst around the edges of his vision. His feet suddenly left the ground, and now there was nothing but the pain around his neck. Banno was lifting him clear off the ground like a doll, his feet kicking and twitching. James could actually feel his eyes bugging out, throbbing in painful bursts. He tried to scream, but the only sound he could produce was a raspy gargle. There was something brown moving towards his face, divided by black lines, and it was with a sense of wonder and horror both that he realised his head was actually touching the ceiling.

In what must have been a huge expenditure of energy for someone with a crushed wrist, Luke crawled up to them, wrapped his good arm around Banno's leg, and sank his teeth into the soft meat behind the knee, biting down on the tendon.

Luke! No!

Banno looked down at the boy biting into his leg, not in pain or anger, but irritation. He raised his leg high, actually lifting Luke partway off the floor, and stomped down right in the middle of his stomach. Luke screamed and a bright red glurt of blood shot out of his mouth and splattered across his face. James prayed that all that blood belonged to Banno, but even in his muddled state, he knew better.

Luke grabbed hold of Banno's foot and tried to push it off, but that only made the brute press down even harder, pinning him to the floor like a bug impaled on a sewing needle.

"Dad! Luke!" Tim cried out, stepping around shattered bits of chair and broken glass.

Banno held out his palm, a grin playing across his mutilated face, horribly off-centre. "Fetch Valery," he said, "and I'll let them go."

Tim stood frozen in place, watching his father and brother writhing in pain, one up high and one down low, unable to do anything for them.

"Fetch Valery!" Banno raised James even higher and gave his head a hard knock against the ceiling. A moment later he bore down on Luke's stomach, grinding his foot back and forth, and Luke screamed in agony, gritting his teeth and gasping for air.

And then something happened that surprised even James. Although, looking back, it probably shouldn't have.

Timothy curled his fingers into fists and, even though there were tears shining in the corners of his eyes, they blazed just as furiously as the coals in the fireplace. It was as if James wasn't looking at the boy who used to ride on his knee, or splash around in the Farmer's River, or tag along after his brother. This was someone else. Someone older than the sum of his years.

Looking through the haze of pain and crimson darkness at this older Fox, James came to understand something. His sons would always be his sons, but they were not mere boys anymore. They stopped being boys the moment they first worked together to protect their little sister, so it was high time he stopped treating them as such. Maybe that was part of his promise, too. Taking care of them, nurturing them, helping them grow into strong Foxes capable of taking care of themselves as well as each other.

They were his sons, they were his family, and he would be damned if he let this monster hurt them any more.

A small frown creased Banno's brow, squeezing blood from the crescent cut where his eyelid used to be.

Timothy screamed and put on a burst of speed, keeping his head low and his shoulders squared. Maybe he thought that, if it had worked once before, it could work again, but this time was different. Banno could see the blind charge coming.

He raised his free hand, the fingers splayed wide open and the claws gleaming in the firelight like five daggers of polished ebony, covered in blood.

It was at that exact moment, just as Banno began his swing, that James pulled his legs up and kicked out as hard as he could, striking Banno right in his blind spot; the eyeless side of his face. It wasn't a very powerful blow, but it threw off his aim just enough for those claws to go slicing by right over Timothy's head, cutting through the tip of his left ear instead of dislodging his skull entirely.

With a furious grunt, Timothy ploughed headlong into Banno's midsection, grabbing hold and pushing forward with every ounce of strength he had. It must have been like hugging a tree made of pure muscle, a diseased tree that reeked of infection, carrying fruits that boiled with maggots instead of seeds. For a second James could actually feel Banno begin to tilt, to teeter on the edge of balance...

Luke sat up as far as he could, twisted his body, and punched the back of Banno's bloodied knee, taking out the only solid base he had left. Banno crashed onto his back with an impact that shook the entire house, followed immediately after by James falling on top of his chest. An unintentional move to be sure, but one that nonetheless took the wind out of Banno's sails. An inarticulate grunt of anger issued from his throat, spraying a fine mist of blood droplets into the air.

James clutched at his burning throat, gasping and wheezing. Every breath was torture, but he forced his lungs to work regardless, sucking it all in until the fog began to clear.

Banno was choking on his own blood, drowning in it, and the boys were scrambling away from this horrific sight as quickly as they could.

This was it. This was the chance he had been hoping for.

James half-clambered, half-hurled himself up towards Banno's head and wrapped his hands around the demon's neck, pushing down hard. More pain flared up inside the broken fingers of his left hand, but he didn't care. He had never tried to strangle anyone to death before, but it was an instinctual knowledge, and he knew exactly what to do.

"This is for my family, you sick piece of filth!" James screamed, bearing down with all his weight, pushing and squeezing, watching his thumbs sink deeper and deeper into the flesh of Banno's neck.

Banno reared up and snapped at James's face. It was a close call, and his teeth slammed shut just a hair's breadth from the tip of his nose. James leaned back as far as he could while still forcing as much of his weight down on his hands as possible, trying not to choke on the vile miasma that had issued from the crimson hole that was Banno's mouth. It reeked of the cloying, metallic scent that always accompanied large amounts of blood, but there was something underneath, something even stronger than that, more invasive. It was the stench of rotting meat, of dead things trapped in cellars and under porches and wedged in crawlspaces.

An odd expression was forming on Banno's face. It was difficult to read because the left side of his mouth was sliced up so badly, giving him a permanent smile of sorts, but the other side was a different story. The smile on that side was fading. The smug look of superiority was giving way to surprise.

"That's right, you bastard! You feel that, you feel every last bit of it and you choke on it!" James screamed, wondering (not for the first time) if he was going insane, if Banno's condition was somehow catching.

Banno grabbed hold of James's wrists and tried to prise them loose. Even with the double blow he had taken to the stomach and chest, the power in those fingers was something to be feared. James could feel the tips of those claws sinking into the flesh of his arms far more effectively than his own fingers were sinking into Banno's. Blood started to well up and flow over the black hands, and James wondered if he would end up just like Luke, writhing in agony with two shattered wrists to pay.

He bore down even harder, fighting to win this race of death. Banno's one remaining eye slowly started to roll back in its socket. The veins were swelling up, standing out in stark contrast against the white.

He can't do it, James thought, incredulous, hardly daring to believe it. He doesn't have enough air to fight back. I'm going to murder this bastard. I'm actually going to -

Banno crawled his hand up James's arm like a spider, found his chest, and jabbed his thumbclaw directly into the wound left behind by his own fireplace poker. He heard the ripping sound of the bandages and then felt the claw sliding inside, parting his flesh apart by simple virtue of its curve.

And then he twisted.

The pain did not come immediately, but the blood did. It spurted out of his chest, bathing Banno's face in a fine spray, slowly turning his pitch black fur a deep shade of red.

I have to finish it... he thought, bearing down, squeezing as hard as he could... I have to finish this... I made a promise...

Emily...

I'll keep them safe...

His fingers wouldn't obey him anymore. He willed them to close, to squeeze the life right out of this monster, but they slipped right off.

Was someone screaming? He thought he could hear screaming... but... where? The voices sounded familiar, but he couldn't be sure. They were too slow, their echoes too far.

James held his hands up to his face. They were soaked in blood.

That was when the pain finally came in full force, washing through his body, stopping his breath and locking his muscles tight. He looked down, equally in wonder as in horror at the blood gushing out of his chest, darkening his clothes in a spreading cloud of red. And beyond that cloud, staring up at him from hell itself, a demon with one glowing red eye and a mouth filled with hundreds of rows of rippling, undulating teeth.