It was too quick for him to cry out. The slender knife went straight up and into his chest with such suddenness that all he could manage was a choked moan, then a long, low sigh as he slowly sagged. Walther Grey held him as he fell and calmly dragged him to the shelter of a small cul-de-sac, where he laid him down gently on the wet paving stones. He tugged loose the knife from Niko’s chest, wiped it thoroughly on the dying man’s wet jacket, and tucked it into his own raincoat. From another pocket he took out a scalpel and held it aloft in gloved hands, pondering the first cut.

“Only a touch.”

The voice did not belong to Grey. It was more than sound; it echoed in flesh and bone and made the skin prickle with the passage of subtle lightning. Chance stiffened, noting without a glance that his brother had also gone very still and that Miranda was looking at them both, sensing the tension and puzzled by it. Couldn’t she see it? Couldn’t she see that formless figure, that undying one, standing on the edge of human reality, observing the slaughter with a casualness that suggested this was an old trick?

“I can do it,” Grey replied, trembling in irritation and fear.

“You are too careless. A touch is enough. I will do the rest.”

Grey cut through outer and inner garments until Niko’s bleeding torso was bare. He carefully lowered the tip of the blade, traced a shallow line over the sternum, and drew back. The bone cracked with a shocking sound like wood breaking. The ribs opened out like the leaves of a book, gaping red but strangely scant of flow, as if the blood vessels refused to acknowledge their severing. The shadow leaned forward at last with an eager hand, grasping the heart and folding it smaller and smaller into his fist until it was consumed, or absorbed, by his own substance.

Miranda, seeing at last, cried out. The tension increased a hundredfold, lightning gone from subtle to sharp. The entity on the edge wavered, blurred in disbelief, and then hardened with menace.

We have been seen. Chance and the Trickster discarded their human appearances and knit themselves into a protective cocoon around Miranda. The made-room, the theater for her viewing convenience, vanished. Chance could feel Miranda screaming within him. He ignored her and held even more tightly to his brother, ensuring that neither seam nor crack could be found in the shield that protected Miranda from annihilation. The rogue undying one, furious at being found, hit them like a hurricane, tearing at their combined fabric with desperate strength and malicious intent.