The creature dropped to the floor, his face appearing to slide from his skull like a mask, blood flooding from his eyes and his mouth and once again the blood glittered, glittered, as if with myriad tiny pulsing bits of living light, skittering, swirling in the blood.

The creature lay in a heap.

Garekyn put his fingers into the blood and lifted the blood to his lips. A zinging sensation swept through all his limbs. He licked and licked at the blood. Amel. Motion, voices, another realm breaking in.

He reached down and ripped with his fingers at the white flesh, scraping it loose from the gleaming white bones of the skull and there in a great fissure he saw what must have been the brain, sizzling and hissing with tiny pinpoints of light.

Images swam in his ken. The twins, the Mother, the devouring of the brain, Benji talking on and on about the old tales, the new tales…Amel in the brain.

He squatted down beside the battered heap of the creature, and he scooped up the brain and forced it into his own mouth, his throat locking in nausea even as he did it. But the nausea vanished. The world vanished.

An immense web, a web so intricate and beautiful and vast it appeared to compass the Heavens, and the stars pulsing in it like tiny beings, alive, calling, pleading. Dim echo rising as if it were a splash of blood on a wall: Armand, help me, attacked, murdered, not human, not human!

Retching, doubled over, Garekyn held the dissolving brain in his mouth, pressing against it with his tongue, the great web growing brighter and brighter.

He opened his eyes. He was sprawled against the cold white toilet. Blood all over his clothes. Blood all over his hands.

Unthinking, he shot to his feet, unlatched the door, and fled, not back into the restaurant but out a back passage and into a dim alley. Smashing into large glistening black plastic sacks and stacks of cardboard boxes he blundered, nearly falling, slipping in puddles of grease and water, running as fast as he could, with no idea of what lay ahead of him.

He heard someone pursuing him. He knew he was meant to hear this, hear the boots striking the stones. On he ran only to see a wall rise up in front of him.

He pivoted just in time to recognize the white-faced being who closed in on him. Beatific face, auburn hair! Armand. The master of Trinity Gate. Upwards, they rose, higher and higher until the wind was roaring in his ears. And once again, fang teeth were in his neck, and this time a chorus of voices crying in the great empty darkness.

All be warned. Something not human!