They wouldn’t catch him. Jonah would get away, and Ben would show he was on the right side, retrieve a small part of his reputation. Jonah would see him do it, though, hear him, and he’d run and never look back.
And that would be best for them both. Jonah was the catastrophe Day had called him. He should do it. Anything else was madness.
Ben stared up. Jonah gestured, quick and urgent.
Day had told him not to sacrifice himself for Jonah again. Day, who had looked so much as though he wanted to help. In fact, Day had warned him…
“Oh no,” Ben said under his breath, and charged up. He had no idea how to do this but he lifted a leg as though ascending an imaginary staircase, and felt the spongy support form under his foot, and then he was climbing frantically, great long steps, terrified of falling or a hand closing round his ankle, with furious cries erupting below. He scrabbled, desperate and terrified, up through the air to the rooftop where Jonah crouched, white-knuckled. Jonah grabbed for him, and Ben flung himself to the tiles, and jerked out, “Trap!”
Jonah yanked Ben to his feet and cursed as a shot spanged off the lead guttering. “Buggery! Come on.” Ben jerked his bound hands, and Jonah whipped out a knife that severed the rope in a single slice. He grabbed Ben’s hand, and they were scramble-running up the roof, over the ridge—
A small form flew at Jonah with a banshee screech.
He let go of Ben’s hand and leapt, hurtling upwards, just avoiding the attack. Jenny Saint tumbled past, rolling and turning like a circus acrobat, and sprang upwards as Jonah crashed down on her from the air, feet first. They collided hard, Saint sending Jonah head over heels even as he landed on her, the impact knocking the breath out of both.
Ben, bereft of Jonah’s hand and the magical pressure that kept him steady, scrabbled desperately for balance and fell sideways, getting a hand around the roof ridge. The tile he gripped shifted and gave, and he grabbed for another, sick with terror. That held, and he hauled himself up for a more secure grip on the chimneystack, watching the windwalkers as they both staggered back to their feet.
Saint was ready for action first. She lashed out with a spinning kick that looked more like ballet than fighting, but it caught Jonah in the chest with vicious force as he rose. He stumbled and fell again. She gave a triumphant yell, leaping at him, and Ben, still hanging on to the chimney, wrenched off the loose tile with his other hand and hurled it at her.
It caught her square on the side of the head. Ben felt a fraction of a second’s intense satisfaction before he realised with abrupt horror that he’d assaulted a young woman and an officer of the law. She stumbled sideways, staggering, clutching her head, tripped on the gutter, and fell off the roof with a shriek.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Jonah was back by Ben, grabbing his hand. “We’re going to die. Run.” He tugged him along to the edge of the roof. “You first, straight over, hurry.”
Ben leapt out, took three long strides and heard a volley of shots. He stopped, the instinct operating well before his brain, and the air went from beneath his foot. Jonah screamed something, and there was a hard shove under his flailing foot, but Ben wasn’t running now, he was falling, and unlike Jonah he couldn’t turn in midair.
Something crashed between his shoulder blades, pushing him forward into the brick wall that faced him, just as another shot went right by him. There was a buffeting sensation under his feet, keeping him up as he scrabbled for a grip on the brick, then a thump above him as Jonah hit the roof and hung down, arm outstretched, hand perhaps three feet from Ben’s head.
“Jump!” Jonah yelled.
There were more shots. Cries from below. Ben braced himself against nothing and urged himself upwards. He found a hand clutching his, and Jonah somehow hauling and pushing him up.
“Run,” Jonah gasped, as Ben rolled himself over the gutter onto the tiles. “Come on. Stay away from the edges.”
There was nothing Ben wanted more than to stay away from the edges. There were men with guns down there, and probably practitioners, and his shoulder blades were prickling in anticipation of Miss Saint rising up in the sky like an avenging Cockney angel. Jonah kept twisting round as he ran, evidently with the same fear. They were on a long string of terraces now, though, house adjoining house, and out of sight of the people on the ground. Jonah sent Ben over a gap onto another, lower set of buildings, older ones, river-rotted with the damp of the nearby Thames, and they slipped and slid and stumbled together, with the great dome of St. Paul’s rising high in the cityscape that faced them.
They ran and jumped and windwalked, till the cathedral was well behind them, until finally Ben’s prison-bound legs, too long off the rugby pitch, were screaming their protests. Jonah gasped, “Breather.” He pulled Ben down with him, nestling into a space between a crazy coppice of chimney pots, and ducked his head between his knees as Ben tried to fill his lungs with the salty, grimy air.