Lights clanked on along the high ceiling, light raining down, dust motes swirling lazily. Parts of the ceiling had crumbled away, exposing the next empty floor, high above.

In the center of the room, arranged in a diamond, were four clear polymer cylinders, running floor-to-ceiling. Each one was eight to ten feet in diameter, and easily twenty-five feet in height.

A circle of coarse sea salt surrounded each cylinder.

Small, black-feathered creatures—they were roosters—stepped around the inside of the cylinders, pecking at the bare feet of hunched-over, aged beings, their flesh the glistening pineapple yellow of human body fat.

Each had the wrinkled body of a three-hundred-year-old man. Eyeless, earless—seemingly featureless—but when the nearest being, tormented by the roosters, twisted around, Odessa saw its entire face flap open and reveal a mouth, yawning in hunger.

Much like a lamprey, the mouth was made of concentric circles of vibrating flesh, lined up with cartilaginous protrusions, not properly teeth, but barbed nubs.

Odessa grasped the fabric on the back of Blackwood’s jacket, steadying herself. Blackwood said, “They are called the Hollow Ones. The emptiness—the ever-hungry. Mesopotamian lore has them born last of the Udug Hul—the foul spirits. Don’t come close to the sea salt circle, you don’t want to touch it.”

Another of them hissed and gnashed its teeth, shrinking away from a rooster at its ankle.

“Foul entities,” said Blackwood. “You see them revealed here in visible form. But there are many entities surrounding us, at all times. I have seen, in the course of certain investigations, forensics experts enter a crime scene and use a special ultraviolet lamp…”

“A Luma Lamp,” said Odessa.

“Yes, to reveal how a clean room truly looks—that which is invisible to the naked eye. Well, that’s the way these things are visible to me. All around us. All the time. These particular ones: larvae, who jump from human body to human body like young adults stealing cars and taking them on a…what is it?”

Joachim said, “A joyride.”

Distressingly, all three entities followed Odessa around the room with their gazes, turning their eyeless heads in unison.

“Yes, a joyride. A Hollow One only inhabits a human host for a limited amount of time. They are creatures of chaos. They thrive on it. They enjoy when their host body is killed. That is how they are forcibly ejected from the body, ending the ride. You have to understand that the moment of death, of being murdered, is to them an immensely pleasurable experience, which is why they go on killing sprees. The hosts experience these occupations as blackout moments. Such as your fellow agent, Leppo.”

The thought of Walt Leppo was the only thing that could bring her voice back into her throat. “Walt?” she whispered.