Sebastian

demon waggled his ears and snorted. Sebastian had no idea if that meant yes or no.

    The ground felt soft again, fluid again. And he would have sworn on everything he held dear that he heard a whisper of sly, wicked laughter coming from nearby.
    He knew the Den. Knew these alleys as well as he knew the main streets. Something wasn't right here.
    "Lets go," he said, backing away from the corpse. Was there something moving up there on the walls?
    Something just beyond the torchlight? "Teaser, let's go."
    The alley wasn't long, but he felt as if he labored for hours to gain each step.
    Halfway back to the street and the crowd. He turned and focused on Philo and Mr. Finch, two humans who had found their way to the Den and had settled in to stay.
    Then he heard it. A faint scratching as something shifted on the wall.
    He didn't think. There wasn't room inside him to think, not when he was certain that if he didn't get out of that alley now , he'd end up like that woman. Or worse.
    He sprinted for the mouth of the alley. Between one step and the next, the alley stretched like warm taffy, and the people waiting for him receded as the hard ground turned to sand that pulled at his feet, slowing him down. In another moment the alley would disappear and there would be nothing but sand, nothing but—
    No ! He was in the Den, in an alley. A short alley. Hard ground beneath him. Stone walls on either side of him. Teaser and the bull demon running just behind him. Familiar people waiting for him a few steps away. Just a few steps away. Just—
    They burst out of the alley and were caught by the crowd.
    His heart pounding, Sebastian spun around, deaf to the cries and questions of the humans and demons around him.
    He'd almost slipped into another landscape. The alley had almost changed into another landscape. A terrible place… from which he would never return.
    The certainty that something terrible had existed in that other landscape made his legs weak.
    "I need a drink." Now as desperate to get away from the crowd as he'd been to reach them, Sebastian shoved his way through the bodies and headed for Philo's place.

    Standing at the back of the alley, It watched the crowd follow the incubus like a herd of trembling sheep.
    On another night, It would have walked among them, looking like a well-to-do, middle-aged gentleman who had come to the Den for a little gambling, a little whoring. On another night, they would have looked at It and seen potential prey. The succubus It had killed a few days ago had certainly seen It that way.
    The human female stinking up the alley had been less convinced that another "human" could give her the same sensual thrill as an incubus. It had shown her It wasn't human—and then It had shown her other things. Not that she'd been able to see most of them, since her eyes were one of the first pieces of forfeit.
    Her fear had spilled out with the rest of her, a delicious feast of emotions, spiced at times with the hope that someone would see her, help her. Killing the succubus, a creature so diluted from the pure-bloods of her kind, had produced the first shivers of fear in the hearts of the people who lived in this place. But the human female's terror, coaxed and nurtured in the few minutes It had taken to kill her, had seeped into the ground, changing the alley's resonance into something It could use as a connection to one of Its own landscapes. Then It wouldn't have to move through landscapes held by Its enemies in order to reach this hunting ground.
    But something had fought Its attempt to shift the three males into the bonelovers' landscape. They had almost crossed over, had felt the sand beneath their feet for a moment. But something—or someone—
    had been strong-willed enough to hold on to the alley and keep them in this place. Anything that strong was a rival to be eliminated.
    But even a strong rival could be beaten if fear was molded into a sharp enough weapon.
    It resonated, imposing Its will on the ground around It—forcing Ephemera to yield to Its desire.
    Between the alley's stone walls, the ground changed into rust-colored sand around the corpse.
    It shifted form, Its large body changing color to match the stone while Its eight legs climbed the wall.
    Then It waited.
    A few minutes later, the first bonelover appeared. Not long after that, the sand was hidden under a mass of glistening black bodies.
    A little girl's fear of ants had been the seed It had nurtured long ago, feeding that