I concentrated on my hands, allowing my now familiar green fire to light up and flicker, then I slowly turned, every sinew of my body ready to launch myself at the she-daemon.

Aubrey had been right. The Batibat, standing heavily in front of the dead tree, and thankfully blocking the dryad from my sight, was indeed hideous. She was morbidly obese, virtually the width of a small car, with folds of greyish fat and loose skin hanging down from every rounded corner of her body. Her breasts were drooping enough to hit the centre of her stomach, and her dirty blonde hair was scraggly and limp. My mouth dried, but I forced myself to lift my eyes up to hers.

She looked down at my hands then back up to my face, with a complete lack of expression. For once in my life, I had absolutely no idea what my opponent was about to do.

I tilted my chin up. “Hello.”

The Batibat stared back at me, without so much as blinking.

I tried smiling. It didn’t reach my eyes, and I was well aware that I had the habit of looking like a maniacal psychopath when that happened, but I wasn’t quite sure what else to do. She still just stared at me.

Okaaaaay. I took a step forward. She didn’t move. I kept my arms by my sides, trying to show that I wasn’t going to attack her unless she struck out at me first, but I didn’t extinguish my flames, making sure that she knew that I was also more than ready to take her on if I had to. It occurred to me that maybe I should have thought this whole operation through in a little more depth first.

Just when I was starting to wonder if the Batibat was completely immobile, she suddenly let out a huge shuddering sigh, and turned her back on me, lumbering back to the tree that was just a few feet away.

“Hey!” I shouted out towards her, suddenly alarmed. The last thing I needed was for her to get back within the branches and completely conceal herself again. At least right now I knew where she was. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going? I want to talk to you!”

She completely ignored me, continuing her shambling return to the tree. I so wasn’t in the mood for this. I outstretched my arm and extended my index finger to just beyond her body, zapping the ground with a line of green fire. Thanks to the already heavily burnt earth, however, my efforts immediately sizzled away into nothing. The Batibat didn’t even react, hooking one hand into one of the lower branches, and swinging herself up with a dexterity that astonished me. She clearly possessed some kind of affinity with trees, not least because the branches that looked dead enough to snap the second so much as a whisper of a breeze gusted by them, easily held her weight. Before I could so much as blink, she had completely vanished.

I remained standing in the same spot for a moment, utterly dumbfounded. I flicked a glance over to the mages and Aubrey who were still on the other side of the barrier, all their mouths gaping open, and gave an expressive shrug. So much for big old scary me, then. The seeming apathy of the tree daemon had me baffled. The entire point of forcing both Solus and myself to the point of physical pain to transport through the ward had been to confront her. And yet she just seemed as if she couldn’t care less.

I considered my options. I could of course climb the tree as she had done. But I was no tree spirit. I’d end up flat on my arse with a bunch of broken sticks around me. The Batibat’s very essence had been absorbed by the wood. The only thing that would be absorbed if I tried to do the same would be everyone’s recognition of my own stupidity. I kicked irritably at the ground, sending a cloud of black dust into the air.

Sighing deeply, I figured that the least I could do now that I was here was to disentangle the dead dryad from her dishonourable position. It wasn’t just that releasing her body from the hold of the tree might re-ignite the Batibat’s interest and encourage her to reappear, but also that the dryad bloody well deserved to be taken down and properly cared for. I’d promised both her and myself that I would do that. The thought of having to touch her dead skin and feel the weight of her against me, without anyone nearby who would be able to help and provide companionship through the horror, made me sick to my stomach. I had no right to that emotion though. What Mereia had gone through to end up in that position in the first place was far worse than anything I could experience by cutting her down. Once her body was safely removed then I was going to torch that fucking tree with the Batibat inside it.

With a heavy heart, I walked round to the other side and looked upwards, avoiding spending too long gazing at the dryad’s sunken skin and dead eyes. Instead I focused on her hands, trying to work out how she was being held up. Aubrey had been right before: her wrists were somehow twisted into the very branches of the tree itself. I’d already surmised that I wouldn’t be able to climb up and reach her, so there seemed nothing else for it but to use shots of my green fire to bring her down. I’d have to do this carefully if I was going to give her the dignity she deserved.

Taking three steps backwards, I squinted up, trying to select the best place to aim. It was vital to be gentle. I closed one eye and pointed out towards one of the curving twigs and, oh so very carefully, sent out a soft small stream of fire.

When it hit the tree, the twig unravelled with a sharp hiss, loosening its grip on the dryad’s arm. Emboldened, I tried again, this time with slightly more power. My shot rang true, and yet another dead branch was loosened. It was difficult to tell from where I was, but it appeared that Mereia’s wrist was starting to pull away from the tree’s unhappy knot.

“He won’t be happy if you do that,” stated a raspy voice, with an air of unerring calm.

I was so surprised that I lost my footing and half stumbled, sending up more clouds of black dirt as I did so. I looked upwards and saw the face of the Batibat peering down at me implacably.

Forcing my heart to return to a normal rhythm, I injected a flat air into my tone. “Who are you referring to?”

Her expression looked puzzled. “Him of course.”

Seriously? I gritted my teeth. “I don’t know who you mean. Can you tell me?”

“He won’t like it.”

My fingertips tingled with dangerous embers of heat. “Yes, you already said that. Who?”

She blinked languorously down at me. “He left her like that for a reason. He’ll know if you take her down.”

Nope. I couldn’t do calm after all. I lifted my right hand towards her, green flames still flickering round. “Fucking tell me who you mean or I’ll destroy you now,” I snarled.

“He has no name. He is all there is.”

She began to draw back into the tree again, but I was determined this time not to let her disappear. I shot up one stream of fire, avoiding her face by millimetres. The Batibat hissed.

“Did he do this?” I shouted up at her. “Did he kill her?”

There was a loud creaking sound from the dead tree as she shrugged, shaking even the trunk into shuddering vibrations. The body of the dryad quivered in response. Screw this.

I turned back to the remaining snake-like branches that were clinging to the tree nymph’s arm and sent out a streak of fire once again. Having snagged exactly the right section, her arm swung free, and her entire body fell heavily down to the side, now just hanging to the tree by her one remaining wrist. Her head dropped down to her collarbone, tendrils of dark green hair falling limply forward like a sad shroud, and her left foot dragged along the burnt ground.

“Not long now,” I muttered, moving over to the other side to complete the process.

“He’ll come,” the Batibat stated obdurately down at me, although when I flicked a quick glance up at her there was a definite expression of fear across her heavy features.

“Let him,” I grunted, eyeing up the remaining branches that were holding the rest of Mereia’s corpse in place, in order to try and work out which point would be best to target. I had no time for mysterious evil-doers who couldn’t even be bothered to have names.

The Batibat moved again, the tree groaning as she did so, and her whole body emerged from within the grey branches as she clambered back down and planted her bare heavy feet onto the dark ground.

“You don’t understand,” she rasped, “you cannot beat him. “

I half-turned towards her. “Do you work for him?”

She laughed. At least I assumed it was a laugh; it sounded like much more of a grating shriek than a hearty chortle. “You make it sound as if I have a choice.” She leaned in towards me, a cloud of her foul breath wafting towards my face. “He has bound the trees that we live in. We either do his bidding or,” she cast a quick look at the sagging dryad’s body, “we suffer a similar fate to that poor creature.”

I squinted up at her. “So when you say ‘we’, who do you mean?” I wasn’t prepared yet to let her know that I was aware that there was another of her species in London causing problems, if not for the general population, then for the profits of a certain troll anyway.

“There are others like me.”

“And where are they?”

“All over.” Her voice was suddenly so quiet I had to strain to catch her words. I abandoned that avenue of questioning for now and switched tactics.

“Did he tell you to attack my, er,” I paused for a moment. Aubrey wasn’t my friend. “Companion?”

She half-cocked her head. “You mean the brown haired emotional boy? He’s a bit weak that one.”

I wondered what she’d say if she knew that until very recently he’d been a merciless master vampire. My eyes turned hard. “Answer the question.”

She allowed herself a small smile. “That one was just for me.” She licked her lips in a manner that turned my stomach. “I like young men.”

He wasn’t really all that young, I thought sardonically. I changed the subject. “So what does he want?” There was no doubt as to which ‘he’ I was referring to.

“What do all men want? Power. Control.” She shrugged. “The usual.”

“Most men don’t go around slaughtering innocent tree nymphs,” I commented, trying to keep my swirling bloodfire under control. I needed to keep it from consuming me so that I could get as much information out of the Batibat as possible. It was fucking hard not to give in to the temptation to blast her into a pile of smouldering cinders, however.