Disclaimer: The Bartimaeus Trilogy is the property of Jonathan Stroud

A/N: This story might require a word of explanation. It is set in an alternate universe where Nouda was not killed by the staff breaking. Everything else happened as before, so Nathaniel is dead, Bartimaeus has been dismissed, and Kitty is left on her own to help the survivors. Hopefully that's enough background to keep you from being utterly bewildered!

The thick silence of the deserted London core was shattered by the crash of breaking glass. A young man, bearded and filthy, surveyed his handiwork with a self satisfied smile. A large, jagged hole gaped in the centre of the convenience store window before him.

"Not bad, eh?" He called over his shoulder.

The girl he had spoken to was leaning against the crumbling façade of the pawnshop on the other side of the narrow alleyway. She was a sorry sight, indeed. Strands of dark hair streaked liberally with premature grey clung to her grimy cheeks. Her rumpled clothing hung precariously from her slender frame, and her dark, expressive, features flitted between icy displeasure and fear.

Upon being addressed, she grimly gritted her teeth and hurried to his side.

"You've done it now Nick," the girl hissed, "That was loud enough to wake the dead! You'll have every demon from here to Whitehall on us!"

"Stop being paranoid," Nick replied. Nevertheless, he shot a nervous glance down the street.

Crumbled bricks, broken pavement, a lone bicycle wheel half hidden in the gloom. Not a pleasant scene of course, yet at any rate there were no glowing eyes or hoots of maniacal laughter. Any day without claws or fins or lopsided body-snatching monstrosities was a good day in these tumultuous times.

"See?" Said Nick, his voice growing brighter, "All clear!"

The girl tapped her fingers uneasily against her forearm, looking unconvinced.

"We shouldn't have come this far in," she said, "It's not safe here—we're far to close to Parliament. The demons wander around here all the time."

"Come on Kitty," Nick hefted a leg over the windowsill, "The sooner we get what we need, the sooner we can leave."

With a reluctant sigh, Kitty followed suit, scraping her knees on the rough brick as she scrambled through the window. Glass crunched softly beneath her shoes as she landed on the other side.

In the dim light, she could make out Nicks outline as he snatched a package of potato chips and stuffed it into a plastic garbage bag. She wandered to the back of the store and sifted through the heaps of canned food on the floor, which had evidently been knocked from their shelves by some fatal struggle or another.

As Kitty began to pack her bags with tins of creamed corn and pea soup, she found herself wondering what had happened to the owner of this shop. Had he been one of the lucky few who had managed to make it out of the city, or like so many others, had he fallen victim to Nouda's perpetual craving for human flesh? Given the devastation around her, Kitty found herself tending towards the latter.

Suddenly, Kitty's skin prickled. A can of lima beans tumbled from her inexplicably numb fingers as a voice—low and insistent—echoed through her head.

'Go.'

What was that? It had seemed to come from nowhere. Was she hearing things now?

"Did you say something, Nick?" Kitty called.

"No," Nick mumbled through a mouthful of peanuts.

'You must leave.' The voice came again, this time with greater urgency.

"Nick, I think maybe we should get going," Kitty said.

Nick licked the salt from his fingers with great relish, then fixed an irritated scowl on his face.

"Stop complaining," he said, "We aren't done here yet." Nick ripped into another bag of peanuts and began chomping them loudly between his teeth.

Kitty shrugged indifferently. It was probably wiser to refrain from following the mysterious voices in one's head, after all.

'GO!' The voice insisted.

Kitty ignored it.

Suddenly Nick leaped to his feet, straining his ears against the silence.

"What…?" Kitty began.

Then her blood froze as she heard it too—tap…tap…tap—slow footsteps on the cobblestones outside.

Kitty's eyes shot to Nick. The blonde man was pale as a corpse. He looked as though he might be sick.

"How hungry I am today." A strange, unearthly voice floated in through the broken window. Nick squeezed his eyes shut. A demon.

Kitty's hand moved silently to her back pocket. A steely resolve came over her as her fingers tightened over the smooth plastic surface of her inferno stick.

"And what luck! A tasty pair of humans, all wrapped up and waiting!" The demon spoke in a horrible, sing-song voice as it came to a stop outside.

Suddenly the thing came hurtling through the window. It shrieked with laughter as it flailed through the air and crashed straight into a display of sunglasses. The tatters of its once-fashionable suit jacket swung from its lean frame as it righted itself and spun this way and that, searching with slit-like eyes for its quarry. Kitty crouched behind a fallen shelf, weapon clasped in hand, eyes trained on the enemy.

Ragged clothing aside, to the casual observer, there was nothing unusual about the figure across the room. Its posture, perhaps, was a little off, and the exaggerated smile that twisted its features was definitely inhuman, but everything from the clumsy feet to the nondescript brown hair seemed completely ordinary. Kitty, of course knew better.

"There you are," the creature crooned. Its eyes had alighted on Nick, cowering behind the counter. Nick's eyes shot open. He stood transfixed in horrified fascination as the demon approached.

With a defiant cry, Kitty burst from her hiding place. She raised her weapon and uttered the command. A jet of electric blue flame barreled across the room, struck the demon between the shoulder blades, and sent it tumbling through the air. A choking smoke that smelled of burning cloth and skin filled the room, stinging Kitty's eyes. She fell back in a fit of coughing.

"I hear you, child!" The mocking note had evaporated from the creature's voice, leaving only raw anger. It seemed to echo up from all around her. Kitty spun frantically, searching for the source of the sound, but she could see nothing through the black smoke that clogged the room.

Harsh green light cut through the darkness. It sizzled over her skin, scorching the fabric of her clothes. She could feel the magic blister her face in spite of her innate resilience—this was a powerful spirit, indeed.

The lean figure emerged from the roiling smoke. It stalked steadily towards Kitty, insensitive to the flames that licked up and down its sleeve. Kitty backed away in a panic and bashed her hip on the sharp corner of the upturned shelf. With a cry of pain, she fell to the floor. The demon reached out for her with a fiery arm.

Kitty's impending demise was interrupted by a resounding crash. Nick had fled his corner, toppling a rack of magazines in the process. He dashed across the room like a fleeing rabbit and leapt for the window.

With lightning speed, the spirit sprang across the room and snatched Nick by the collar.

"Oh, no you don't!" It cried. Its face twisted into a hellish grin, lit by strange angles through the smoke and flame.

"Let me go!" Nick screamed as he dangled in the creature's grip.

The demon swung him into the wall. Kitty could hear the smash of his body colliding solidly with the brick from across the room. The spirit gave a nasty cackle.

Kitty's eyes darted frantically over the room. She needed a different weapon. Her gaze came to rest on a discarded crowbar propped up against the wall. Was it iron? She would have to take the chance.

She crept towards the demon, crowbar in hand. The creature leaned over Nick's crumpled form, reaching out once more for the near-unconscious man. With a sharp intake of breath, Kitty raised her heavy weapon and brought it crashing down on the spirit's smoldering head.

The spirit howled as its flesh sizzled beneath the metal. It stumbled back, feral eyes fixed on Kitty. Kitty held fast, brandishing her weapon threateningly.

The spirit hesitated a moment, as though it were evaluating the level of threat that she posed. Finally it backed away a few steps, then leapt through the window and took off down the deserted street, leaving behind a trail of ash and simmering essence.

The danger now over, Kitty collapsed to the floor. Her eyes fell shut as she sucked in great gulps of air. Nick broke the silence.

"You idiot," he wheezed.

Kitty's eyes snapped open.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me!" Nick cried, "You let him get away. They're going to know! They'll know that we're alive!"

Kitty scowled.

"If I hadn't saved you, we wouldn't be alive," she snarled.

It was hard to feel properly offended when Nick looked so helpless. His expression held defiance, but his pain and fear was plain to see. A steady stream of blood was trickling down his temple. Kitty sighed.

"Here," she said, offering her arm, "Let me help you walk. We need to get back home and patch you up."

With Nick leaning on one shoulder, and her bag of plunder slung over the other, Kitty slowly made her way home through the maze of narrow streets.

OoOoOoOoOoO

They arrived just as the sun was sinking beneath the skyline. A dilapidated warehouse on the edge of London was the place they now called home. It wasn't much, but at least was secure and out-of-the-way.

The heavy iron door swung open as they drew near. A crowd of rag-clad survivors swarmed them; some lead Nick inside, others relieved Kitty of her bag. They flocked around Kitty and clambered for her attention.

"What happened?"

"Is Nick okay?"

"What did you bring back?"

"You'll see, you'll see," Kitty mumbled, pushing her way inside.

In the shadowy interior, she could make out a small brown haired woman bending over Nick's head wound. She turned as Kitty entered, Rebecca Piper. Kitty gave a weary smile as Piper met her eye. The young woman waded through the crowd to stand by Kitty's side.

"Are you alright?" she asked. Suddenly self conscious, Kitty ran her fingers over the heat blisters that now decorated the side of her face.

"I'm fine," she said. "We had a bit of a run-in with a spirit—got me with a Detonation, I think."

Piper's eyes widened. Rebecca Piper was the only survivor in their group without any measure of resilience. There had been others like her in the early days, just after the Revolt had begun, but without any natural protection they had quickly fallen to the demons' magic. Piper had survived largely on her abilities as a magician, but these days there was nothing left: no food or water, much less chalk, candles, or incense. That, of course, was why they had taken to venturing close to parliament in the first place—it was the only place left with any supplies.

Tired of the chaos indoors, Kitty wandered outside. She needed a bit of space to clear her head.

The recollection of that night—the night of the Revolt—had put her in a melancholy mood. With the danger at hand, Kitty had no time or patience for self-pity, but her thoughts always flitted back to revolve around those terrifying moments when Nouda had rose like a behemoth from the ruin of the palace, shards of glass rolling off his back. It was the moment when she'd realized that Nathaniel and Bartimaeus were gone, the moment she'd realized she was truly alone.

In her mind's eye she could see Nathaniel as he had been the last time she had seen him: how pinched and pallid his face had appeared, how his hands shook as they grasped Gladstone's staff—but then there was that something lurking behind his eyes, an energy and intelligence belonging to another being altogether.

"Why did you let him do it?" Kitty hissed under her breath. "You must have known it wasn't enough." She kicked at an offending pebble that lay innocently in her path. It skittered across the broken pavement and came to rest beside a pair of dusty brown bare feet. Kitty stopped short.

Her eyes travelled up the knobby knees, over the white linen loincloth, past a pair of tanned shoulders, and came to rest on a dark, smiling face.

Her mouth fell open. She tried to say something—anything, but nothing more than an incredulous squeak escaped her constricted throat.

"Hello Kitty," the Egyptian boy said.