Excerpt:

A young man walks down a dark lane, somewhere else. A stone wall rises on his right, but the gloom obscures anything more than ten paces away. He is lanky and graceful, dressed in an impeccable grey suit. He clutches a music player in his hand. Most people pass quickly through this place, but he is unhurried, lost in the music that streams into his ears.

A thicker darkness peels away from the crevices and cracks in the wall. It flows down the road a little way and hangs there like an oily fog.

The young man slows and pulls off the headphones. He has vanquished this creature many times, and been vanquished by it in some bodies. He knows to be wary of it, but not to show it fear.

A face appears in the fog, its features ragged and fluffy.

The man stops a few yards away. “Good evening, fellows,” he says.

The creature darts toward him and slithers up his side, feeling of cold steel cable. It parts around his neck like water around a rock, and a second head emerges from the new end. They drape themselves over his shoulders. He shudders and tries to bat them away, but they are no more substantial than smoke.

It’s out of its place, is it not?” one head asks. It is cold against his cheek and neck.

“Far, far from its home. What is its business here?” asks the head at his other shoulder. Their voice is the sound of dry leaves skittering over stone.

He recovers and looks at them from the side of his eye in turn. “Only passing through.”

One head tilts a little, looks down at his hand. “What’s that it’s got, then?”

He holds the device tighter, swallows hard. “Nothing.”

They swarm down his chest and arms like rats along a ship’s rope. “Oh...” they breathe.

One looks at the other. “It’s got treasure from the sunlit world!”

“Give it to us!” says the other.

He feels cold, sharp nails digging at his hands and tries to turn his body away from them. He traded dear for this prize and he has no desire to lose it so soon. “No!”

They stop and look at each other from across the space between his forearms, swaying like cobras.

“It won’t share with us,” one says.

“It is selfish,” says the other.

“It is rude.”

He starts walking again. “Let me alone. I don’t have anything to give you.”

“Not true! It has soft guts,” says one.

“And sweet hot blood,” says the other.

“And such a fine voice when we’ve made it sing.” This last in whispered into his ear in a strangely intimate tone.

He suppresses a shiver, but does not rise to the creature’s bait. He keeps walking. But he is nervous now and the thing knows it.

The head to his left slides back up to his shoulder. “And just how does it expect to find him barging around blind here?”

He stops then, whips his head around to look at it. “What?”

They laugh, the sound of pebbles dropped on stone.

“It’s not lasting long alone,” the other says. “There’s far worse that us out here.”

“You,” he starts, but his voice is unsteady. He swallows and takes a breath. “You’re the ones he sent to bring me?”

The thing’s misty body extrudes a small hand and caresses his cheek. “It doesn’t think we’re here for our health, does it?”

“This way,” says the other head.

The entire beast flows off his shoulder and away down the road. He barely has time to shove the player into his pocket before he gives chase. It eels down the lane like a black snake, and he has to move quickly to keep from losing his guide in the darkness. Finally he stops in the yard of a small cottage. The tidy yard is lit by a glow like the light from a thin slice of moon. Lamps burn in the front windows, but there is no sign of life about the place. The thing vanishes under the door.

The man hesitates. He’s never been pleased with the bargain he made, and this looks like his last chance to walk away from it. After a moment he raises his fist to knock. Before he can, a man opens the door. He has grey skin, drawn tight over his bony face. His eyes are deep-set and piercing. When he smiles, it puts the young man in mind of a filthy picket fence.

“Ah, hello!” says the grey-skinned man. “Adrian, is it? Adrian Blackburn, who has dominion over the shiny-armored Knight?”

The smoke-thing twines around the man’s ankles like a cat. “Hero,” it hisses, its tone suggesting a far more obscene word.

The man called Adrian remains on the step. He hears mockery in the grey-skinned man’s voice, and something strikes him as strange about the use of his formal titles when it’s only the three of them here in the dark. Adrian looks down at the smoke-thing and up at the grey-skinned man again, biting his lip. He’s already paid his end, he thinks, but he could still just run. The thing would be on him in moments, of course, and oh, he’d sing pretty for it then. But he could still run.

“Yes, that’s me,” he admits.

“Well come in, come in!” says the grey-skinned man, opening the door wider.

Inside Adrian can see bare plaster walls, the glow of a fireplace reflecting off the wall at one end of the room. A wooden table and chairs sit in the middle of the room. A blond man with delicate features hunches over the table across from him. His arms are folded on the edge, his shoulders and chest slumped forward. He makes eye contact with Adrian, nods once, and looks away again. Adrian remains where he is, realizing that there’s something very wrong with this situation.

The grey-skinned man is behind him now, one hand on Adrian’s back. Adrian tries to balk as the man pushes him forward, but the force is too much to resist. “Come now. You probably know my associates, the master of Turncoat and...” He flicks a long-fingered hand as though shooing a fly. “Oh, something else I can never remember.”

Adrian turns, his eyes wide and his mouth open to speak, just as someone closes the door.

“Hi,” says the curly-haired boy who had been standing behind the door. His smile is broad and friendly.

“Are... are they leaving with us?” Adrian asks lamely.

The master of Turncoat laughs, then punches him hard in the stomach and mouth. He staggers but doesn’t fall. Turncoat hits him in the side of the head. The blond only sits at the table, looking as though he would rather be anyplace else at that moment.

The grey-skinned man steps between them. “Fool, he isn’t of any use if you beat him to death right now.” He sounds exasperated. “This is how you do it if you want to put someone out.” Adrian is dimly aware of him pulling something from his pocket, and then there’s a hard blow to the back of his head.

The grey-skinned man is not wrong.