Nothing would take him, he was a barbarian with the manners of a gentleman.
Neither night nor day entirely.
Voight was suffering: his pain was in his torn breath, in the gangling rags of his stride. They were just fifty metres from the steps and the finishing line, but Voight's lead was being steadily eroded; each step brought the runners closer.
Then the bargains began.
"Listen... to... me."
"What are you?"
"Power... I'll get you power... just... let... us win."
Joel was almost at his side now.
"Too late."
His legs elated: his mind spun with pleasure. Hell behind him: Hell beside him, what did he care? He could run.
He passed Voight, joints fluent: an easy machine.
"Bastard. Bastard. Bastard —" the familiar was saying, his face contorted with the agonies of stress. And didn't that face flicker as Joel passed it by? Didn't its features seem to lose, momentarily, the illusion of being human?
Then Voight was falling behind him, and the crowds were cheering, and the colours were flooding back into the world. It was victory ahead. He didn't know for what cause, but victory nevertheless.
There was Cameron, he saw him now, standing on the steps beside a man Joel didn't know, a man in a pinstripe suit. Cameron was smiling and shouting with uncharacteristic enthusiasm, beckoning to Joel from the steps.
He ran, if anything, a little faster towards the finishing line, his strength coaxed by Cameron's face.
Then the face seemed to change. Was it the heat haze that made his hair shimmer? No, the flesh of his cheeks was bubbling now, and there were dark patches growing darker still on his neck, at his forehead. Now his hair was rising from his head and cremating light was flickering up from his scalp. Cameron was burning. Cameron was burning, and still the smile, and still the beckoning hand.
Joel felt sudden despair.
Hell behind. Hell in front.
This wasn't Cameron. Cameron was nowhere to be seen: so Cameron was gone.
He knew it in his gut. Cameron was gone: and this black parody that smiled at him and welcomed him was his last moments, replayed for the delight of his admirers.
Joel's step faltered, the rhythm of his stride lost. At his back he heard Voight's breath, horridly thick, close, closer.
His whole body suddenly revolted. His stomach demanded to throw up its contents, his legs cried out to collapse, his head refused to think, only to fear.
"Run," he said to himself. "Run. Run. Run."
But Hell was ahead. How could he run into the arms of such foulness?
Voight had closed the gap between them, and was at his shoulder, jostling him as he passed. The victory was being snatched from Joel easily: sweets from a babe.
The finishing line was a dozen strides away, and Voight had the lead again. Scarcely aware of what he was doing, Joel reached out and snatched at Voight as he ran, grabbing his singlet. It was a cheat, clear to everybody in the crowd. But what the Hell.
He pulled hard at Voight, and both men stumbled. The crowd parted as they veered off the track and fell heavily, Voight on top of Joel.
Joel's arm, flung out to prevent him falling too heavily, was crushed under the weight of both bodies. Caught badly, the bone of his forearm cracked. Joel heard it snap a moment before he felt the spasm; then the pain threw a cry out of his mouth.
On the steps, Burgess was screeching like a wild man. Quite a performance. Cameras were snapping, commentators commenting.
"Get up! Get up!" the man was yelling.
But Joel had snatched Voight with his one good arm, and nothing was going to make him let go.
The two rolled around in the gravel, every roll crushing Joel's arm and sending spurts of nausea through his gut.
The familiar playing Voight was exhausted. It had never been so tired: unprepared for the stress of the race its master had demanded it run. Its temper was short, its control perilously close to snapping. Joel could smell its breath on his face, and it was the smell of a goat.
"Show yourself," he said.
The thing's eyes had lost their pupils: they were all white now. Joel hawked up a clot of phlegm from the back of his thick-spittled mouth and spat it in the familiar's face.
Its temper broke.
The face dissolved. What had seemed to be flesh sprouted into a new resemblance, a devouring trap without eyes or nose, or ears, or hair.
All around, the crowd shrank back. People shrieked: people fainted. Joel saw none of this: but heard the cries with satisfaction. This transformation was not just for his benefit: it was common knowledge. They were seeing it all, the truth, the filthy, gaping truth.
The mouth was huge, and lined with teeth like the maw of some deep-water fish, ridiculously large. Joel's one good arm was under its lower jaw, just managing to keep it at bay, as he cried for help.
Nobody stepped forward.
The crowd stood at a polite distance, still screaming, still staring, unwilling to interfere. It was purely a spectator sport, wrestling with the Devil. Nothing to do with them.
Joel felt the last of his strength falter: his arm could keep the mouth at bay no longer. Despairing, he felt the teeth at his brow and at his chin, felt them pierce his flesh and his bone, felt, finally, the white night invade him, as the mouth bit off his face.
The familiar rose up from the corpse with strands of Joel's head hanging out from between its teeth. It had taken off the features like a mask, leaving a mess of blood and jerking muscle. In the open hole of Joel's mouth the root of his tongue flapped and spurted, past speaking sorrow.
Burgess didn't care how he appeared to the world. The race was everything: a victory was a victory however it was won. And Jones had cheated after all.
"Here!" he yelled to the familiar. "Heel!"
It turned its blood-strung face to him.
"Come here," Burgess ordered it.
They were only a few yards apart: a few strides to the line and the race was won.
"Run to me!" Burgess screeched. "Run! Run! Run!"
The familiar was weary, but it knew its master's voice. It loped towards the line, blindly following Burgess' calls.
Four paces. Three — And Kinderman ran past it to the line. Short-sighted.
Kinderman, a pace ahead of Voight, took the race without knowing the victory he had won, without even seeing the horrors that were sprawled at his feet.
There were no cheers as he passed the line. No congratulations.
The air around the steps seemed to darken, and an unseasonal frost appeared in the air.
Shaking his head apologetically, Burgess fell to his knees. "Our Father, who wert in Heaven, unhallowed be thy name —"
Such an old trick. Such a naïve response.
The crowd began to back away. Some people were already running. Children, knowing the nature of the dark having been so recently touched by it, were the least troubled. They took their parents' hands and led them away from the spot like lambs, telling them not to look behind them, and their parents half-remembered the womb, the first tunnel, the first aching exit from a hallowed place, the first terrible temptation to look behind and die. Remembering, they went with their children.
Only Kinderman seemed untouched. He sat on the steps and cleaned his glasses, smiling to have won, indifferent to the chill.
Burgess, knowing his prayers were insufficient, turned tail and disappeared into the Palace of Westminster.
The familiar, deserted, relinquished all claim to human appearance and became itself. Insolid, insipid, it spat out the foul-tasting flesh of Joel Jones. Half chewed, the runner's face lay on the gravel beside his body. The familiar folded itself into the air and went back to the Circle it called home.
It was stale in the corridors of power: no life, no help.
Burgess was out of condition, and his running soon became a walk. A steady step along the gloom-panelled corridors, his feet almost silent on the well trodden carpet.
He didn't quite know what to do. Clearly he would be blamed for his failure to plan against all eventualities, but he was confident he could argue his way out of that. He would give them whatever they required as recompense for his lack of foresight. An ear, a foot; he had nothing to lose but flesh and blood.