Anne Bishop: Sebastian

The bull demon waggled his ears and snorted. Sebastian had no idea if that meant yes or no.

The ground felt soft again, fluid again. And he would have sworn on everything he held dear that he heard a whisper of sly, wicked laughter coming from nearby.

He knew the Den. Knew these alleys as well as he knew the main streets. Something wasn’t right here.

“Let’s go,” he said, backing away from the corpse. Was there something moving up there on the walls? Something just beyond the torchlight? “Teaser, let’s go.”

The alley wasn’t long, but he felt as if he labored for hours to gain each step.

Halfway back to the street and the crowd. He turned and focused on Philo and Mr. Finch, two humans who had found their way to the Den and had settled in to stay.

Then he heard it. A faint scratching as something shifted on the wall.

He didn’t think. There wasn’t room inside him to think, not when he was certain that if he didn’t get out of that alley now, he’d end up like that woman. Or worse.

He sprinted for the mouth of the alley. Between one step and the next, the alley stretched like warm taffy, and the people waiting for him receded as the hard ground turned to sand that pulled at his feet, slowing him down. In another moment the alley would disappear and there would be nothing but sand, nothing but—

No! He was in the Den, in an alley. A short alley. Hard ground beneath him. Stone walls on either side of him. Teaser and the bull demon running just behind him. Familiar people waiting for him a few steps away. Just a few steps away. Just—

They burst out of the alley and were caught by the crowd.

His heart pounding, Sebastian spun around, deaf to the cries and questions of the humans and demons around him.

He’d almost slipped into another landscape. The alley had almost changed into another landscape. A terrible place…from which he would never return.

The certainty that something terrible had existed in that other landscape made his legs weak.

“I need a drink.” Now as desperate to get away from the crowd as he’d been to reach them, Sebastian shoved his way through the bodies and headed for Philo’s place.

Standing at the back of the alley, It watched the crowd follow the incubus like a herd of trembling sheep. On another night, It would have walked among them, looking like a well-to-do, middle-aged gentleman who had come to the Den for a little gambling, a little whoring. On another night, they would have looked at It and seen potential prey. The succubus It had killed a few days ago had certainly seen It that way. The human female stinking up the alley had been less convinced that another “human” could give her the same sensual thrill as an incubus. It had shown her It wasn’t human—and then It had shown her other things. Not that she’d been able to see most of them, since her eyes were one of the first pieces of forfeit.

Her fear had spilled out with the rest of her, a delicious feast of emotions, spiced at times with the hope that someone would see her, help her. Killing the succubus, a creature so diluted from the purebloods of her kind, had produced the first shivers of fear in the hearts of the people who lived in this place. But the human female’s terror, coaxed and nurtured in the few minutes It had taken to kill her, had seeped into the ground, changing the alley’s resonance into something It could use as a connection to one of Its own landscapes. Then It wouldn’t have to move through landscapes held by Its enemies in order to reach this hunting ground.

But something had fought Its attempt to shift the three males into the bonelovers’ landscape. They had almost crossed over, had felt the sand beneath their feet for a moment. But something—or someone—had been strong-willed enough to hold on to the alley and keep them in this place. Anything that strong was a rival to be eliminated.

But even a strong rival could be beaten if fear was molded into a sharp enough weapon.

It resonated, imposing Its will on the ground around It—forcing Ephemera to yield to Its desire.

Between the alley’s stone walls, the ground changed into rust-colored sand around the corpse.

It shifted form, Its large body changing color to match the stone while Its eight legs climbed the wall. Then It waited.

A few minutes later, the first bonelover appeared. Not long after that, the sand was hidden under a mass of glistening black bodies.

A little girl’s fear of ants had been the seed It had nurtured long ago, feeding that fear until the girl had been glutted with it, then hollowed out by it. Her terror, day after day, had pulsed through the land, giving It the power to reshape something small and natural into a nightmare come alive—a nightmare people called bonelovers because that was all that had been left of the little girl who had been their first prey.

Sighing like a sated lover, It watched the last bonelover disappear. Being simpleminded creatures, they couldn’t cross over into the alley. For them, the alley didn’t exist. But anyone on this side of that fluid border who could be lured or driven onto that sand would disappear into the bonelovers’ landscape—and never return.

It climbed down the wall, Its body changing as It touched the sand. As a bonelover, It raced across the sand to the access point It had created that would take It back to the enemies’ lair—the place they called the Landscapers’ School. It had found a safe place there, a dark place where It could hide while It anchored Its landscapes within other landscapes—and searched for the landscape where the Dark Ones now lived.

As for the humans and other creatures who lived in this hunting ground…When they came back for the female’s body, they would find sand instead of hard ground, an elegant dress that was now tattered rags, a wide gold bracelet…and clean bones.

Sinking into a chair, Sebastian braced his arms on one of the tables scattered around the courtyard of Philo’s place. His body shook, as if it comprehended something his mind couldn’t bring into focus.

Teaser, collapsing into a chair opposite his, looked just as sick, just as frightened.

What had happened in that alley? Glorianna had told him once that a person couldn’t cross over into a landscape if the heart wasn’t open to what it held, just like you couldn’t always get back to a landscape you’d known if something had changed inside you so that your heart no longer resonated with that place. When you crossed a resonating bridge, the borders and boundaries that defined the landscapes could become as fluid as a dream. The only constant in Ephemera was that it was ever-changing.

So what did it mean that he, Teaser, and the bull demon had almost stumbled into another landscape without crossing any kind of bridge? How could two landscapes meld so that you saw one fade as the other became dominant?

Nothing like that had happened in the Den before.

Philo, a short, round, balding man who served the best food in the Den, hurried up to them and clattered two whiskey glasses on the table. Sweat beaded his forehead, but his hands were steady as he poured drinks and pushed the glasses toward Sebastian and Teaser.

Teaser gulped down the whiskey. Sebastian, afraid to haze the edges of his mind and slip into nightmare, took a cautious sip.

The crowd gathered in the street just beyond the courtyard, but there were a few precious minutes of silence before Philo shifted from one foot to the other, drawing Sebastian’s attention.

“This is the second one in two weeks,” Philo said. “There is no demon race that kills like that. Nothing in the Den kills like that. That’s why, when we found this one, we asked Teaser to fetch you.”

Sebastian frowned. “I don’t understand.”