Technomancer (Unspeakable Things: Book One)

scorch mark and the finger that lay nearby. The hands of his old gold watch kept shivering and pointing toward the spot, and he seemed to have a lot of faith in that watch.
    I’d found him a poor conversationalist over the preceding hours. He seemed to have had series of broken relationships, and he’d given up on women except for the occasional casual hookup when he felt the urge. He drank, smoked, and used recreational drugs now and then—but not while working. Because the man had only one focus in his life: his investigative work. He’d doggedly followed these freaky events around the metro area for the last couple of years. Each month, they’d gotten more dramatic and disturbing. Somehow, he’d gotten himself assigned to handling these impossible cases. After sitting in this spooky, echoing mansion for hours, I could see why no one else wanted the job.
    I’d investigated the various vintages during the long hours and marveled at the expensive bottles. Most of the racks were empty, but there were a large number of dusty bottles still present.
    The anomaly didn’t take shape exactly over the scorch mark; instead, it appeared atop the Gray Man’s severed finger. It didn’t look like a swirl of dust as I’d expected. It was more of a bending of light and mind. It reminded me of a heat shimmer on a desert highway, seen close-up.
    “Whoa,” I said, taking a step backward among the wine racks. “There’s something happening, Detective.”
    His gun was already out. I followed his lead and drew my .32 automatic.
    The vortex was much closer to the stairway—a good five feet closer—than either of us had expected. Part of the stairway was, in fact, merged with the twisting of space, if that’s what it was. More than anything else, this fact worried me. I felt my heart pound as I realized there was no way out of this cellar if things went badly. The only way past was to walk through the edge of the warped region. I could tell that if I ran up the stairs, I would be forced to touch the border of that blurred area. I had no intention of doing so.
    “Is something coming out?” I shouted, although the vortex really didn’t make that much noise. There was as odd sound…a susurration like that of a distant train or a breeze moving through the treetops of a forest.
    McKesson peered into the blurred region. “I see something,” he said. “It’s growing bigger—closer.”
    I stared into the space and I could see what he was talking about. Something loomed inside that region. I realized we were looking through the vortex into another place. The image was still blurred, as if seen through churning water or rippling smoke. A shadow approached. I wondered about the scene I was peering at. Was it a city street on the other side? I couldn’t tell.
    The approaching shadow loomed larger. If that shadow was a creature, it was massive, the size of a great white shark. Cold concrete pressed against my back. I held my gun in both hands. I wished now I’d called Holly and asked her to return and pick me up. I should never have stayed here.
    The shadow slowed, and as I watched, it spit out more shadows from its sides. Four of them—no, it was at least six.It took a moment for me to register what I must be seeing. Realization came with a tiny fraction of relief. I wasn’t witnessing a monster spawning young. The original looming shadow was a truck or tank. It wasn’t a single living thing. But it had been full of smaller shapes, and now they approached us in a rush.
    Without hesitation, they began to step through into our world. It took them several seconds to make the crossing. I stared as they grew ever more distinct. At first, I thought they were human, but as the figures stopped rippling like open flame they coalesced into what I now knew to be Gray Men.
    McKesson fired first. He didn’t cry out a warning or a challenge. He didn’t say anything at all. The first Gray Man didn’t even get his weapon up, which appeared to be a strange, shotgun-like device. There was a stock and a handle at his end, and a muzzle that pointed in our general direction. But unlike a shotgun, the device had a circular disk of dark metal built into the middle of it and a bulb at the business end instead of an open barrel. I was reminded of an old-fashioned Thompson submachine gun. Whatever it was, he handled it like a weapon.
    McKesson put three rounds in him. The Gray Man never even pulled the trigger. He sagged down and I almost