The goddamned thing was too quiet to hear. And his ears were full of shadow. And it came with a fucking microprocessor, so maybe it wouldn’t work flipped over on its side.

Then the shadow’s grip started to loosen.

Going, going . . . gone.

Arms thrown wide, Tony sucked in a lungful of sweet, moist air. Then another. Then he opened his eyes and started to cough.

Foggers used distilled water and glycerin. It was perfectly safe to breathe except that the brain saw smoke and another automatic response kicked in.

Coughing and choking and telling his brain to shut the fuck up, Tony staggered to his feet, groped for the other fogger, and stumbled with it toward the set. At 7560 cubic-feet-per-minute output—not something he knew; output was stenciled on the top of both machines—the lower half meter of the immediate area was nearly full. There were still places he could see the floor but those places were disappearing fast. Even so, he wanted the second fogger as close to the gate as possible.

The last time they’d needed them, someone—Daniel?—had told him they used a higher density fog juice that kept the fog close to the floor and away from the guts of expensive electrical equipment. But use enough fog, especially between the confining walls of the set, and it would rise. Fill the air.

Fog was visible because each tiny water droplet refracted light. Or reflected light, Tony wasn’t positive which. The point was it broke the light up into bits and that broke shadows up into bits. Destroyed their cohesion.

The light was real.

The shadows were an effect.

He thumbed the fog on as the extension cord hauled him to a stop at the edge of the set.

With no shadows, the Shadowlord had only the shadow-held remaining.

As the set filled, Tony set the fogger down in the covering fog from the other machine.

It felt like he’d been gone for hours, but it had only been minutes.

And not too many of them.

Henry still fought the shadow-held, but he moved too quickly and there were too many of them for Tony to see how the battle was going. Henry would win. Henry was very hard to . . .

A crowbar rose and fell. Impact against flesh and a snarl.

Henry might be hard to kill, but those he fought were more fragile. If he was hurt and the Hunger rose . . . If there was blood and the Hunger rose . . . Tony just hoped Henry would—could—remember that fragility.

Still no sign of Arra.

God damn, h . . .

The hair lifting off the back of his neck, Tony turned toward the throne. The Shadowlord stood staring at him through narrowed eyes. Even at that distance Tony could feel the rage rolling off him.

Man, the air is getting distinctly punky in here.

Teeth clenched, lips thinned to pale lines. Evil still looked pretty damned good. “Get him. Turn that thing off!”