When I awoke, I could hear the rain outside. It had calmed, but still it poured on. Rubbing at my bleary eyes, I sat up in the bed. Scarlett was staring out the window.

“How did you sleep?” she said without turning away from the misted glass.

My forehead ached. I rubbed at it. “All right,” I replied. “I dreamt of –”

The image of the masked figure cloaked in white flashed through my mind.

“Of what?”

I explained what had happened when Avi and I had confronted the monster in the alleyway. Scarlett frowned.

“Some mystery person showed up and killed the thing?”

“Pretty much.”

The whole case had become rather confused. Honestly, I hardly knew what was going on anymore.

“Let’s summarise what we know,” Scarlett said.

“Murders have been occurring around the Kur district,” I said. “The victims are mostly female and of a similar age range. Most of the time a pile of sand is all that’s left of them.”

“Right, except for the one. Mr Green’s daughter.”

“Hmm, do you think there are others like her?”

Scarlett looked thoughtful. “Chances are there’s cases we don’t even know about. My assumption, however, is that this monstrous transformation only happened because our sandman was interrupted halfway through killing the girl.”

I nodded. That much added up.

“We also know the approximate whereabouts of this sandman’s lair,” she added.

“Well then. On to the unknowns,” I said. “I don’t know who that masked person was.”

“And,” Scarlett said, her eyes lowering. “We don’t know what will happen to Avi after being bitten by that thing.”

I felt my chest tighten at the words.

“You know,” the Lunar Knight continued. “I wonder if that monster retained its freewill.”

“Why shouldn’t it?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Who knows. If it still had the girl’s mind, why did it eat Mrs Gurdy’s son?”

I scratched my chin. She was right. “We’ll just have to keep our guards up.”

***

“Oh, so this is how you were surveying the area?”

Scarlett watched proudly as the white drone rose into the air. We were perched on a tiled rooftop, the rain still coming down in drips and drabs, and dark of the night slowly setting in. The Lunar Knight had used some small device, stored of course in her dimensional pocket, to summon the small hovering craft from her docked ship. Its propellers were silent as it moved swiftly through the air like a dragonfly.

I was hesitant to leave Avi alone, but Scarlett told me there was little more we could do. She’d used her ship’s medibot to treat the girl, but Avi was still unconscious. There wasn’t anything the devices could find wrong with her, and her wounds had already begun to heal. I worried that she’d been infected by the chaos, like the men in the tower of Delphi.

“She hasn’t got a rash,” Scarlett said when I’d voiced my fear.

“Still,” I replied. “We don’t know the progression of the symptoms.”

“Hmm, that’s true.”

In reality we knew very little. I think Scarlett acted more confident about this whole situation than she really felt. She had to. She was in the leading position, after all.

“Do you think our friend will make an appearance?” I asked.

“Not sure,” the Lunar Knight replied. “There haven’t been any killings since this rain started.”

“Maybe he’s scared of water,” I said.

“Who knows,” she said with a hint of irritation.

We’d both been on edge. She just showed it in a different way to my cynical banter. Her scowl didn’t dampen her appearance, however. I watched curiously as a droplet formed on the tip of a wet strand of her hair, which clung to her forehead. It teetered for a moment before plunging over her brow onto her cheek.

“What are you staring at?” she said suddenly with a disdainful look.

“Nothing. I was just thinking about how this rain isn’t letting up.”

I turned away from her and scanned the rooftops. The twilight had all but vanished, leaving the night to settle in. Just then, I heard a beeping sound.

“My drone’s found something. Approaching rapidly from that direction,” the Lunar Knight said, pointing.

I squinted and sure enough, a figure was moving along the rooftops some distance from us.

“I have a bad feeling about whatever that is,” I said.

Scarlett’s green sword materialised in her hand. I drew my own, less impressive, weapon. As the figure grew closer, I felt a chill run up my neck. It was a girl; or it had been one. They had undergone the same transformation as Mr Green’s daughter. The sunken face – drained of life. Grime, and a crazed look in its eyes. No trace of humanity remained in the expression borne by its face.

“We have a plan?” I asked.

“You distract it. I’ll finish it off.”

“So, I’m the bait? Great.”

“We play to our strengths.”

“Thanks,” I replied sarcastically.

I was good at being bait? There wasn’t time to mull it over, as the transformed girl leapt towards us. We jumped aside and it screamed, flying past. It landed, cracking the roof tiles under its hands and feet. Its head spun wildly to face me, hair standing in all directions and a flash of bestial rage in its eyes.

I clutched tightly at the shaft of my blade. Behind the monster I watched as Scarlett glanced up at the night sky. The moon peaked out from behind the dark of the clouds, its silver light glancing softly off the falling droplets. Distantly, however, I heard the crack of thunder.

Scarlett’s eyes narrowed. “Keep it busy!” she shouted. With the light of the moon making its way past the cloud cover, she would have additional strength.

I faced our adversary. Nothing stood between me and the monster. It hesitated a moment before charging at me, its bare feet pattering on the roof tiles as it rapidly closed the distance between us. I swung. It dodged to one side and came at me with clawed hands. Evidently its nails grew as a result of the sandman, for they were not human.

It came at me, over and over. Each time its hand rushed past, it only barely missed my face as I stepped out the way. It got closer every time. I could feel I couldn’t keep this up forever. Stopping, I stood my ground. I breathed in slowly, as I had practiced doing. The monster ran at me. I shut my eyes and emptied my mind. I could hear its approach.

I attempted to release my energy as Scarlett had explained. I felt a knock to my chest. Air rushed by me. I didn’t know what had happened. Moments later I realised I’d been blasted backwards through the air. As I came crashing down on the rooftop, I saw the monster landing in a similar fashion a few metres away, the shattered remains of several rooftiles littering the space between us. On the opposite end of the roof stood Scarlett, her sword raised above her head and an ever-growing ball of green light gathering around the blade.

“Now, Scarlett!” I cried.

“LICHTSTRAHL RIESIGER ZERSTÖRENDER!”

I covered my eyes as the air was filled with a blinding light.