“Vermishank sold off the…slake-moths?” Isaac said. Barbile nodded. A wind had picked up outside, and the shutters were rattling and banging violently. Mr. X looked around at the noise. No one else took their attention from Barbile.

“I was in touch with Flex because I thought it wasn’t right,” she said. “But something happened…the moths are out. They’ve escaped. Gods only know how.” I know how, thought Isaac grimly. It was me. “Do you know what it means that they’re out? We’re all…we’re going to be hunted. And the militia must’ve read Runagate Rampant and…and thought that Flex had something to do with it…and if they think Flex did then soon…soon they’ll think that I did…” Barbile began to snivel again and Derkhan looked away in disgust, thinking of Ben.

Mr. X walked over to the window to rearrange the shutters.

“So, look…” Isaac tried to collate his thoughts. There were a hundred thousand things he wanted to ask, but one was absolutely pressing. “So Doctor Barbile…how do we catch them?”

Barbile looked up at him and began to shake her head. She glanced up briefly, between Isaac and Derkhan who loomed over her like anxious parents, past Lemuel who stood to the side, studiously ignoring her. Her eyes found Mr. X, who was standing by the uncovered window. He had opened it a little, was reaching out to pull in the shutters.

He was standing quite still, looking out.

Magesta Barbile looked over his shoulder at a nickering wash of midnight colours.

Her eyes glazed. Her voice froze.

Something was battering at the window, trying to reach the light.

Barbile rose, as Lemuel and Isaac and Derkhan flocked to her in concern, asking what was wrong, unable to understand her little cries. Her hand rose, shaking, to point to the paralysed figure of Mr.X.

“Oh Jabber…” she whispered. “Oh dear Jabber, it’s found me, it’s tasted me…”

And then she shrieked, and spun on her heels.

“The mirror!” she screamed as she did so. “Look in the mirror!”

Her tone was fraught and utterly commanding. They obeyed her. She spoke with such desperate authority that not one of them succumbed to the instinct to turn and see.

The four of them gazed into the mirror behind the tattered sofa. They watched transfixed.

Mr. X was stepping backwards with the mindless tramp of a zombie.

Behind him, there was a dark flurry of colour. A terrible shape squeezed and folded in on itself to push its organic folds and spines and bulk through the little window. A blunt eyeless head poked itself through the opening and turned slowly from side to side. The impression was of an impossible birth. The thing that loomed through the space in the glass had made itself small and intricate by contracting in invisible, impossible directions. It shimmered unreally under the strain, hauling its glistening carcass through the opening, arms emerging from its dark bulk to push and strain against the window frame.

Behind the glass those half-hidden wings boiled.

The creature pushed suddenly and the window disintegrated. There was only a small, dry sound, as if the air was leeched of substance. Nuggets of glass sprayed the room.

Isaac watched, transfixed. He trembled.

At the edge of his vision he saw Derkhan and Lemuel and Barbile in the same state. This is madness! he thought. We’ve got to get out of here! He reached out and plucked at Derkhan’s sleeve, began to pick his way towards the door.

Barbile seemed paralysed. Lemuel pulled at her.

None of them knew why she had said to look in the mirror, but none of them turned around.

And then as they faltered towards the door, they froze again, because the thing in the room stood.

In a sudden flowering motion it rose behind them, filling the mirror into which they gazed, aghast.

They could see the back of Mr. X, who stood and gazed at the patterns on those wings, patterns that rolled with hypnagogic haste, the colour cells under the creature’s skin pulsing in weird dimensions.

Mr. X stepped back to see the wings better. They could not see his face.

The slake-moth held him in thrall.

It was taller than a bear. A clutch of sharp extrusions like dark cartilaginous whips blossomed from its sides and flickered out towards him. Other, smaller, sharper limbs flexed like claws.

The creature stood on legs like monkey’s arms. Three pairs jutted from its trunk. It stood now bipedally, now on four legs, now on six.

It reared up on its lower legs and a sharp tail slithered forward from between its legs for balance. Its face-

(Always those huge irregular wings, curving in strange directions, shifting in shape to fit the room, each as random and inconstant as oil on water, each a perfect reflection of the other, kept gently moving, their patterns changing, flickering in a seductive tide.)

It had no eyes that they could recognize, only two deep sunken hollows sprouting thick, flexing antennae like stubby fingers, above rows of huge slab-teeth. As Isaac watched, it cocked its head and opened that unimaginable mouth, and from it a huge, prehensile, slavering tongue unrolled.

It waved quickly through the air. Its end was coated in clumps of gossamer alveoli that pulsed as the enormous thing flailed like an elephant’s trunk.

“It’s trying to find me,” wailed Barbile, and broke, and ran for the door.

Instantly the slake-moth flickered its tongue towards the movement. There was a succession of motions far too quick to see. Some cruel organic jag snapped out and passed through Mr. X’s head as if through water. Mr. X shuddered suddenly and just as the blood began to well explosively through the sliced bone the slake-moth reached out with four of its arms, pulled him briefly closer and hurled him across the room.

He flew through the air trailing gore and bone-shards like a comet. He died before he landed.

Mr. X’s carcass slammed into Barbile’s back, sending her sprawling. He landed heavy and lifeless across the door. His eyes were open.

Lemuel, Isaac and Derkhan broke for the door.

They were shouting simultaneously in a cacophony of registers.

Lemuel leapt over Barbile, who lay supine and desperate, trying to kick free of Mr. X’s huge torso. She rolled onto her back and cried out for help. Isaac and Derkhan reached her simultaneously, and began to tug at her arms. Her eyes were tight closed.

But as they pushed Mr. X’s body free and Lemuel kicked it savagely out of the way of the door, a hard, rubbery tentacle snaked into their vision and wrapped with a whiplash motion around Barbile’s feet. She felt it and began to scream.

Derkhan and Isaac pulled hard. There was a moment of resistance, and then the slake-moth yanked at her with its tendril. Barbile was whisked out of Derkhan and Isaac’s grasp with humbling ease. She slid at breakneck speed along the floor, splinters tearing at her.

She began to scream.

Lemuel had forced the door open, and he raced out and away down the stairs without glancing back. Isaac and Derkhan stood quickly. They turned their heads simultaneously to look into the mirror.

Both gave a little cry of horror.

Barbile was squirming and screaming in the complex embrace of the slake-moth. Limbs and folds of flesh caressed her. She wriggled and her arms were held, she kicked out and her legs were pinioned.

The huge creature turned its head gently to one side, seemed to regard her with hunger and curiosity. It emitted tiny, obscene noises.

Its final pair of hands crept up and began to finger Barbile’s eyes. It touched them gently. It began trying to prise them open.