The London Pride by Charlie Fletcher

was flat and empty, covered in rain-slick chips of gravel. There was a skeletal railing that ran around the perimeter, blocky air-conditioning units that looked like inside-out refrigerators, and some skylights.
    Thankfully there were no lions or dragons or cobras or rats, golden or otherwise. There was just wet grit and the unsightly working bits of buildings that get piled on the top of modern buildings, the stuff no one is meant to see from the street.
    Jo wrenched her mind into gear: she was, for the moment, safe: wet, shivering and definitely twinge-y in the leg, but temporarily safe. Temporarily was the problem: she knew she had to get back to Will, or get Will back to her, and there was only one way she could think of doing it.
    Selene.
    Selene was on the front of the building. She was meant to be guarding it. So that meant the lion and the snakes and the rats had crept in elsewhere, perhaps around the back. So Selene might, she realised, not even know what was going on.
    There was a thunderclap and a brutally swift flash of lightning, and then the rain just seemed to bunch up and redouble its efforts at drowning the city. Jo limped across the roof, feeling the fat raindrops beginning to pummel her head and shoulders, her feet dragging across the gravel.
    She got to the front of the building and gingerly looked down into the street.
    It was empty. Or rather it was full of unmoving people who glowed blue and ghostly in the gloom of the downpour, but there was no sign of Selene where she should be, on guard on her plinth overlooking the front entrance to the hotel. No Selene. No help. Just plinth.
    ‘Great,’ said Jo through gritted teeth. ‘Just gr—’
    The word died on her lips, unfinished. Below her she saw two large bronze lions prowl lazily round the corner, threading between the frozen people, low to the ground, their tails twitching sinuously – unmistakably hunting. They stopped at the front door to the hotel and leaned gently forwards, nostrils flaring. One of them jammed its muzzle to the gap beneath the glass door and worried at it, sniffing air in noisily, as if trying to inhale whatever was inside, like a giant feral vacuum cleaner.
    The second lion raised its head to look upwards. Jo wound her own head back so fast she heard bones click; she didn’t want to be seen. There was no way the lion could jump even a quarter of the way up to the roof, but she didn’t want it to spot her, nor did she trust herself to look into its eyes.
    Will. He was trapped in the room, unaware that there were lions in the building, and more than one by the look of it. She had to warn him.
    She scrabbled back and edged around the perimeter of the roof. There was no easy way off the building that she could see, but she didn’t want to retrace her steps down those stairs. Her heart was still thudding hard, trying to punch its way out of her ribcage, and she could hear herself panting hoarsely. She shut her mouth and tried to calm herself by breathing through the nose.
    She realised she might be able to shout down to Will and warn him. She quickly jogged across to the back of the building and looked gingerly over the edge, trying to remember how many floors she had run past so she could work out which window was his.
    She didn’t need to work it out. It was clear. The huge gold bugs fluttering around the window were the big giveaway. From outside she could hear a whirring and a high-pitched whine that Will – inside the room and muffled by the double glazing – had been spared. She saw the gilded mosquitoes, big as falcons, taking it in turns to bash themselves against the glass. Every time they hit, all the raindrops bounced off and fell outwards in a fine mist.
    She withdrew her head and took a deep breath to calm herself, because her mind really did feel like it was about to collapse into hopeless panic. She tried to find something to hold on to. The thing they’d said as they shook hands back on the stairs came back to