Technomancer (Unspeakable Things: Book One)

know?”
    I paused. “No, I didn’t know that.” Inwardly, I cursed myself. I’d used the sunglasses right in front of him. Now he knew what object I had, and how it worked.
    “Did you come here to steal from me?”
    “No, I came to ask you what happened to Tony.”
    “Ah,” said the man. He stirred and moved in the darkness, rustling. I heard the clinking of ice in a glass.
    “May I ask your name, sir?”
    “I am Rostok, but people here call me the Ukrainian.”
    Better and better, I thought with a hint of despair. I felt myself yearning for the good old days of Italian mobsters. At least they kept the lights on.
    “Mr. Rostok, sir,” I began, “now that I’ve met you, I would ask you for information. For the good of the entire Community, can you shed light upon the recent killings?”
    A rumbling sound began. For a moment, I was alarmed, then I realized he was laughing. “Shed light, he says! Funny! Pig balls, I tell you! Is it not so, Ezzie?”
    “He’s got big ones, all right,” said a strange voice to my right.
    My head snapped toward the voice of a third party I’d been unaware of until that moment. There was
something
there, but I couldn’t see it. Something that didn’t sit in a chair, but was gathered into a pyramid formation. It was almost in the pose of a sitting person, but I had the feeling it was a coil of flesh on the floor. Perhaps it was a giant cobra. Whatever it was, it was not human in shape. I felt rather than saw the shadow rearrange itself. It was an abyss that sucked in light even in that dim room.
    “Allow me to introduce you, Draith,” Rostok said. “This is a very new member of the Community. This is Esmeralda. She is here for purposes I will explain shortly.”
    My mouth had gone dry. Up until that moment, I’d been maintaining my cool. But now I’d been faced with something that could not be human. Meeting it in the pitch-dark made it worse.
    I steeled myself against panic. I felt a great urge to run to the door and fling it open. Was that what they wanted? Was that the trigger that would allow the feasting to commence? I forced myself to sit back and put up a brave front. I was sure they could see in this darkness better than I could. They could probably read my shocked expression. I reshaped my features even as the thing reshuffled its odd body. When it moved, I heard a grinding sound, as if stones rubbed stones. I also felt a slight warmth as it passed nearby in the dark.
    “Nice to meet you, Esmeralda,” I said. I was surprised my voice didn’t squeak, but it didn’t.
    “I want to taste him,” said the shadow called Ezzie. “He makes me curious.”
    I compressed my lips into a tense line. Again, I thought of bolting, but I suspected it wouldn’t do any good.
    “Did I mention who sent me?” I asked, deciding it was time to do what little name-dropping I could. “Dr. Meng asked me to find out what happened to Tony Montoro.”
    I realized, of course, that Rostok could be the very person I was searching for. He certainly seemed stranger than anyone else I’d yet run into. If he was in the habit of feeding people to this thing called Ezzie, which I was sitting next to, that would explain a lot right there.
    “You see?” Rostok said to Ezzie, leaning forward in his chair. The leather creaked, and I got the impression he was a big man. “He stays right on target. He does not quake and shit himself. So many others have failed inside their minds when they first meet Ezzie.”
    I supposed I was being complimented, but I didn’t trust myself to speak right then, so I kept quiet, waiting for an answer.
    “I’m cold,” complained Ezzie.
    “I will do an unusual thing,” Rostok said, ignoring her. His outline shifted. I thought I saw him lift a thick finger into the air and point at the ceiling as he talked. “I will talk of the things you ask about. I will give you a message to take back to the others who suspect me.”
    “I’m listening,” I said.
    “I’m hungry,” said Ezzie.
    “You are annoying,” Rostok snapped. “Shut up.”
    Ezzie twisted parts of herself in the darkness and squirmed irritably. But she did shut up.
    “You have asked about Tony Montoro. I have told you that he stole from me. I can see how others who know this might believe I took revenge upon him. But I did not kill this man.”
    “Who then? And how?”
    “Do you know how to kill a thing like Ezzie?” he asked.
    “No. I don’t even know what she is.”
    “She is a