Free The Fire King by Paul Crilley

walls. Then he saw the looks on their faces and dropped immediately back into his seat.
    â€œYes. Terrible affair, that. Tragic. Tragic.” He shook his head sadly. “’Twas a silly prank.” He hung his head in shame. His shadows slunk slowly back along the walls to take up their accustomed place.
    But then Puck looked up again, his eyes dancing with delight. “But you should have heard her scream,” he said gleefully.

C HAPTER S EVEN
    A traitor revealed.
    B arnaby Stephens hurried through the late-afternoon streets of London. The sun was sinking just below the skyline, sending hazy shafts of golden light past the roofs of buildings to spear the ground.
    Beyond a brief, cursory glance, Barnaby ignored such things. Beauty had no place in a city such as London.
    He held a kerchief to his mouth as he walked. To get to his destination, he was forced to travel through some of the less desirable areas and, although the plague had finally left the city last year, he wasn’t taking any chances. Who knew how long it would linger in the damp and dirty corners, waiting for the opportunity to take down the unwary.
    Even though, if things went according to plan, there would be other means of combating the disease, of cleaning up the city. Less … scientific ways.
    It was dusk when Barnaby finally arrived at the house. It was nondescript, very much like any other house in London. Yes, the garden was slightly overgrown, but again, most gardens were. Those who had returned to London after the plague hadn’t quite gotten round to tidying up what Nature had wreaked in their absence.
    It was the first time he’d been here. He had been ordered never to come. That if he was seen it could ruin everything. But this was important. She would want to hear the information he had uncovered.
    Barnaby pushed open the wooden gate and stepped onto the paving stones that formed a winding path up to the front door (half hidden behind a clump of bushes).
    He hesitated for the first time. The deepening dusk drew shadows out of the undergrowth, patches of darkness where anything could be hidden. A strong wind was gathering, warm and dry. It flicked against his face, doing nothing to soak up the sweat on his brow. If anything, it made it worse.
    He moved tentatively forward. Just walk, he told himself. Walk up to the front door and knock. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. In fact, he should be praised for his actions.
    So thinking, Barnaby squared his rounded shoulders and set off at a brisk pace.
    Until he heard the noise.
    It sounded like a hundred people whispering at the same time, a dry, sibilant hiss that made his neck prickle with fear. Barnaby whirled around in a circle, searching for the source.
    Then he saw it. A patch of oily, heaving darkness that detached from the shadows and floated through the air toward him. He hesitated a second too long. When he finally decided to retreat to the street outside, the cloud was upon him, enveloping him in thick, cloying strands that probed and prodded his face. He opened his mouth to scream, but the strands (strands that now felt like fingers), crawled down his throat, choking off any sound. He couldn’t breathe. His eyes opened wide with horror. He saw faces in the darkness, defined by darker shadow and brief flashes of light, as if he were watching lightning flickering in thunderclouds. The faces whispered nonsense in his ears, threats and promises of what was going to happen to him for trespassing.
    Depart, Sluagh, said a disembodied voice. He has my … reluctant blessing to attend.
    The whispers in Barnaby’s ears changed to hisses of frustration. The strands pulled slowly from his throat, from inside his ears, his nose, leaving Barnaby on his knees, gasping and retching.
    Through a haze of pain he heard a curiously comforting sound: the clicking of a door latch. He looked up through streaming eyes and saw the front door of the house swing open.
    Barnaby