Before Hunter could act, the acne-scarred man raised his gun and moved in swiftly. Mallory whirled, sword at the ready, but the pain from his ribs left him off-balance. ‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ he snapped.

‘Shut it!’ the soldier shouted.

A low whispering rolled out from the undergrowth. Spooked, Hunter’s team turned, guns cocked, scanning back and forth for the source.

‘Come on — we need to get out of here,’ Hunter said to Mallory. ‘Quickly.’

‘Tell him to drop his weapon.’ Mallory nodded at the acne man, who had moved in even closer to Sophie. Deep in her trance, she was oblivious to what was going on around her.

‘You’ve no need to be afraid of us,’ Hunter said. ‘We’re on the same side-’

He fell silent as one of the riders burst from the bushes in a trail of purple mist. Gunfire erupted from all sides, but neither the rider nor its mount appeared to be harmed.

‘Come on.’ Her trance broken, Sophie grabbed Mallory’s arm insistently.

‘You called it?’

‘Come on!’

Bones shattered with a sickening dry-wood sound as the reptilian horse smashed into one of the soldiers. The others continued to fire at it futilely, knowing no other way to deal with it. The horse-creature lowered its massive head, pulled its jaws wide sending saliva everywhere and then proceeded to rip and tear at the fallen man’s stomach. Blood and flesh rose up in a cloud.

In the confusion, Sophie and Mallory had managed to skid a little way down the scorched grassy slope before the acne man appeared to one side, his gun aimed at Sophie.

‘Stop!’ he shouted.

Sophie glanced back and saw that the soldier was shaking, as if gripped by some kind of internal battle. The eerie whispering was clearly affecting him deeply: his wavering self-control was echoed, despite his training, in the gradually worsening tremor running through his arms.