Flesh and Blood by Jackie French Page A

with door handles — but tonight I’d shut it. The night breeze was cool.
    I pulled the door open.
    It wasn’t the Wombat. It was the Centaur.
    I think I screamed. Not loudly, just a rush of breath. I don’t think Neil heard.
    ‘I … I’m sorry,’ I stammered. ‘I wasn’t expecting … you see I thought …’
    The Centaur didn’t speak. He didn’t look at me either. His eyes looked strange, brown, almost milky. His arms hung limply by his sides.
    Had he just been so deeply unconscious that we’d taken him for dead? But surely he’d been cold to touch, so very still.
    ‘Do … do you want to come inside?’ I asked. He had never been inside before. Had never knocked, or was it scratched, on the door either.
    He didn’t answer. It was almost as though he didn’t see me or hear me. But he was looking straight at me; his ears, too high on his sloping head for human ears, were pricked towards me. He lifted his hands, so for a fraction of a second I thought he was going to shake hands, or take mine in his.
    Then suddenly he moved. The hooves clattered forward on the hall floor, his hands grabbed my dress. The fabric tore.
    ‘Wha—?’ I tried to run, but he’d crashed against me now. I fell under his hooves, rolled to escape them, but his hands reached for me again. I caught the stink of his breath, the stale stench of sweat and hair. I tried to push his hands away. His flesh felt soft and tight all at the same time.
    I think I screamed again. At any rate Neil came running; I could hear his footsteps down the hall.
    Neil yelled something, I don’t know what. I scrambled between the Centaur’s legs. He wasn’t expecting that. He tried to turn, but the hallway was too narrow. He backed into the dining room doorway till he was facing me again, but I was out the front door now. I got to my feet and stumbled down the steps.
    ‘Danny!’
    ‘I’m all right …’ The floater … if I could get to the floater I’d be safe. Or even to the back door, we could shut him out, surely he wasn’t strong enough to break the door. This house had withstood the Wild Years, it could withstand a centaur’s hooves …
    I glanced back. The Centaur peered out the door, then stepped slowly down the steps, as though he found them difficult.
    I began to run, then caught a glimpse of Neil in the doorway. For a moment I thought he held an old-fashioned rifle, the sort you see in ancient vids. But it was just an umbrella, the only weapon that we had.
    I shouldn’t have looked back. The rosebush hooked the rag end of my dress. It took a second to tear free, and in that second the Centaur grabbed me again, not with his hands but with his teeth, those blunt wide teeth tearing at my arm. It could have been my neck, I thought vaguely, even as I screamed again. If it had been my neck I would be dead.
    He shook me like a cat shakes a rat, to soften it before it eats. I could see blood on the almost human face. My dress was wet with it.
    Suddenly he dropped me. I landed face down, then rolled. Above me Neil yelled and stabbed with the umbrella into the Centaur’s neck and then his eye. I saw the point descend. Neil drew it out, but again there was no blood.
    I was beyond screaming. I half crawled, half dragged myself away from the hooves till I was against the wall. I reached into my pocket for the amplifier, but for some reason my hand wouldn’t work. Why wouldn’t it work?
    It must be all the blood, I thought dazedly. I used my other hand, flashed Theo, said ‘Help’ weakly, vaguely, as though that was all I needed to say.
    Stab and stab and stab, aiming always at his hooves. The battle by the steps continued. The Centaur tried to rear, to raise the weapons of its hooves, but the bushes caught his legs and forced him down. Neil struck again. I’d never thought, I realised through the grey haze that surrounded me, that an umbrella could be such a weapon. The Centaur’s arms were too short to reach around it, and when he tried to