He hurried down a side street. There was a woman walking towards him, silhouetted by the lights, her shadow stretching long and thin over the cobbles. He couldn’t see her face. It could be Quibble or, worse still, Razzia, or it could just be another citizen of Roarhaven going for a late-night stroll through the city. Temper held the gun behind his back and kept walking.

They drew closer. The gun felt slippery in his grip. He went left and so did she, and it was only when they passed each other that he glimpsed a face he didn’t recognise. She gave him a courteous nod and he returned it, and they walked on and he breathed in relief.

“Excuse me,” the woman said behind him, and he turned just as a shadow detached itself from their surroundings and snapped the woman’s neck. She crumpled and Razzia stepped over her body.

“Thirteen,” Razzia said in her broad Australian accent. “Thirteen innocent bystanders. I’m not saying I’m breaking any records, but you gotta admit that’s impressive.” She looked up, smiling brightly. Beautiful, blonde, always dressed in tuxedos, Razzia was also completely and utterly insane. “You have been a naughty boy.”

Her hand flashed up and Temper ducked, hearing tiny teeth snapping beside his ear. He glimpsed the black tendril retracting into Razzia’s palm like a nightmarish tape measure and fired at her, but she was already sliding back into the shadows. There was someone behind her, striding up. A bald woman with a gun. Quibble.

She opened fire and he kicked a door open and fell inside, more bullets peppering the doorframe after him. Inside there was a man leaping off a couch and a woman with two mugs of coffee in her hands, staring at him in shock as he barged past her. Temper ran into the next room, saw two men through the window and turned back, took the stairs. The couple shouted and raced after him, and now he could hear a baby starting to cry. He ignored it, hurried to the master bedroom, and through the wide-open curtains glimpsed a young man on the rooftop opposite. Thin, with shockingly platinum hair. Nero. Temper blinked and the young man was gone.

“Dammit,” Temper muttered.

He sprinted to the window and then Nero was beside him, sticking his foot out, and Temper tripped and collided with the wall. He twisted, bringing the gun up, but Nero was suddenly right next to him, snatching the weapon from Temper’s hand before vanishing again.

Temper had a full second to get to his knees before Nero teleported back into the room, gun aimed squarely at Temper’s chest. This time he’d brought a friend, dressed in black, a uniform of rubber and leather. The mask he wore covered his whole head. Not even his eyes were visible behind those tinted lenses.