When the tether’s shadow ruptured, the riot of pain that shot through Reaper’s left arm where the scars first formed brought him to his knees.

He had watched the thing as it moved out from his fingertips--those whispering tendrils of darkness that both scalded and froze his flesh simultaneously--and he marveled at how the entity that had taken up residence in the corners of his eyes seemed to press forward within in, taking up more space where he usually had full autonomy and made its own presence known instead. It had been late in the afternoon when the darkness swirled and wavered in his vision, alerting him with a sizzle of his arm’s skin that it sensed something he did not--that it wanted him to follow whatever thread it had first had him sniffing after the previous night at the bottom of the sea levee with Larson.

Admittedly, it was harder to follow the threads than Reaper anticipated it to be. The hungry, compelled being he was harboring had estranged ways of seeking out information--like a distracted dog, it had Reaper wandering from street to street of London proper, his eyes squinting against the newly-acquired disturbance in his vision and his head throbbing in tandem alongside of his tender arm. One second it had him hot on the tail of whatever it was after, forcing him to run through alleys and around backwater corners, and the next it would go completely dormant, unable to sense anything at all and leaving him reeling in some godforsaken corner of Camden Town, totally turned upside on his head.

He had spent the better part of the night trying to locate the thread after a particularly long dry spell where the tether seemed uninterested in trying to track anything down, as it had gone completely silent, even retreating back from his vision until it had taken up only a millimeter or so in the far corners of his sight. Reaper was profoundly miffed by this total abandonment, and he was especially miffed that the rain it had him mucking about in was ceaseless. By the time the dawn had arrived and he was stark in the middle of Whitechapel, he was waterlogged, a centimeter from freezing, and disgruntled to low hell.

He spent the most of the morning holed up in a frustratingly Common diner by St. Paul’s Cathedral that was adorned with red-striped barstools and checkered floors. After a soggy serving of chips that needed at least five more minutes in the fryer paired with a lukewarm cola in a cold glass, Reaper was thoroughly peeved, both by the pitiful situation he had found himself in with a seemingly-broken tether, a three week deadline to procure a near-mythical force of magic for the Syndicate, and a downright terrible brunch that he had no intention of paying for.

It seemed appropriate, he brooded, that he should once again be served the short end of the stick when it came to assignments. Ever since Lars had taken on a larger leadership role in the Syndicate, and Morse had faded more and more into the background to do whatever his most recent secretive exploit had him off on, Reaper had discerned more and more that he was the proverbial dumping ground for all the shit work that Lars happily pawned off when he didn’t want to do it himself. This had been largely the theme for all the duration of his pompous post, and it ruffled Reaper to no end. As one of the senior members, he took Morse’s complete negligence in the choosing of his second as a slap on the wrist. He took the squandering of his own formidable talents underneath Lars’s taloned thumb as an even greater offense when faced with the abysmal assignments he was handed month after month.

This deal that Reaper had entered, however, was raising stakes in a way that both delighted and infuriated him as he had poked at an unsavory glob of ketchup. He had been brash in his acceptance, surely, but the imagined reality of his triumph had completely taken control of his better judgment when Lars had held out that damned little box in the downpour of rain to the tune of the lapping Thames.

He had felt a flicker of desire within him that egged him on--do this, and you’ll be revered. Do this, and Morse will realize just how important you are, and how washed-up Lars is--the thoughts had stolen any weighing of possibilities out from under him. It wasn’t until the tether enacted on his flesh that he even realized quite what it was that he had pledged himself to in the first place. But after sensing that first strange scent of distant magic--coupled with the tether’s starving, lunging tug on his body, whispering at him to chase it--adrenaline had choked him; consumed him.

Capturing a Giver for the Syndicate would change everything for him. Conversely, failing to deliver one would likely do the same, but not in a good way.

At noon, he skipped the bill and was striding through the rain until he reached a side street heading away from Camden. As soon as his heels hit the sidewalk at the crosswalk turning him southward, the tether burst to life. The first allusion to it was the pain--searing crackles, as if he had touched a smoldering burner--it shocked up and down the fingers and in between the knuckles of his left hand. He cursed loudly, ducking out of the flow of pedestrians and into the stone alcove of a doorway of an apartment building, gripping his left wrist with his right hand and tugging down his coat sleeve.

The scars that the tether had licked across his flesh were purple with blisters, the skin taught and shining with the strain, and he noticed that the tiniest wisps of darkness were beginning to form at his fingertips, just reaching barely beyond the nails. He watched them for a moment as they gathered lazily, his back turned away from the sidewalk, his lumbar throbbing from how much he hunched over to conceal himself from view. They didn’t seem to be doing much of anything except burn him, as the pain was constant and singing up and down his left palm. He gave it a moment, then two, and then in his exasperation, he smacked his hand against the side of the alcove with a ferociously colorful curse.

The tether gripped him, a lightning strike across all of his senses, igniting that sweet smell of magic somewhere in the distance. The tendrils that had formed began to stretch, leaving his fingertips and pooling down around his ankles before stretching out from him heading south, following along the edge of the alcove and then against the edge of the gutter, the downpour completely concealing it to the naked, Common eye. It picked up speed, and Reaper leapt after it, pushing over a young child on the sidewalk in his haste and bolting after it determinedly. He could feel it pulsing--yearning--and he knew that it wanted him to pursue it; that it was at last awake to some target.

But it had been fast, and Reaper couldn’t keep pace with it as it darted along across streets and through traffic, barreling headlong in a jagged line to the southwest. He lost sight of its end, but he traced the trail it left behind, using his left hand as a guide as to where it was headed. As he hurried on, he sensed that vague magic growing stronger and more-formed. It was becoming potent, and lifelike, and it was unlike anything that Reaper had ever sensed before. He rifled across roadways, dodging through busy crosswalks and ignoring cars as they bleated at him in his haste and his shunning of the law.

Hungry, he felt the word rumble through his bones, and he gasped, his eyes rocketing open wide as he gripped at his chest.

“You speak?” He breathed. Amazingly, something inside of him nodded.

Starving, it answered. Move, Syndicate. I will get it.

Reaper had never heard tell of tethers that could speak. Surely, there had been plenty of almighty ones cooked up from Morse’s end that possessed the strength to take away a person’s autonomy and that could force their hand, but…no one had ever mentioned a tether that spoke. Let alone one that could express something as discomfitingly estranged as hunger.

This enthralled him, even as the rain slicked his boots and caused him to slip ungracefully over a curb’s edge. This thing inside of him was strong--so strong that it was communicating with him as it led him straight towards his target. If he had been entrusted with such a vital resource as this, then Morse must have some scrap of true faith in his success of the mission. And besides the fact of Morse; whatever this lead was that the tether had latched onto, it was taking him towards something powerful enough to rattle the stones beneath his feet. He was going to be a victor, and Lars could absolutely eat rags when he proved triumphant.

It took him all of four hours to Westminster by foot, dancing around potholes filled with rainwater and following the darkness through various random sidestreets in a chaotic pattern that turned him around more than once. He got the sense that the tether was trying to locate the source as it moved--it had the inkling of it, but it wasn’t entirely sure what flight pattern to use to get there--as if it were playing a laborious game of hide-and-seek. Once it had him flying down one of the cavernous entrances to a tube station, only to magic his way by the ticket kiosk before turning him abruptly back around to exit onto the street where he had first come down from. The taunt of the rain was enough to drive any sane man walking multiple kilometers by foot absolutely barking mad, but Reaper clung to that scent deep within him--clung to the shred of ancient, raw power--or at least, that’s what he expected it to be.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Reaper groaned at it at one point, and he felt only a snap of jaws somewhere far off in the darkness within his chest.

When he came around a bend and saw the door of the Commoners’ gaudy, overpriced Abbey, he was almost entirely out of breath from his chase. People were darting to and fro on foot in their haste to call for cabs or to crowd into shops to escape the rain, and cars filled the streets tirelessly, honking and squeaking in the splashing array of puddles that covered every surface of the roadway. He saw the shadow’s trail turning off into another alleyway to the right, and he groaned, his soaked feet gaining the tension of a few angry blisters.

This had better be worth it, he thought coldly as he ducked into the alley after the line of darkness. Come on, show me what it is that you smell, little demon.

At the end of the alley, Reaper stepped out onto the sidewalk, and the tether began to frizz at the edges. Perplexed, he paused, and he bent low to the curb to see how the darkness was fraying--as if it were thick knitting yarn that was decidedly being yanked out incorrectly from its wind--and as he examined it, he felt something welling up inside his chest that did not resemble his own magic.

No, this sensation was not his own at all. It was voracious, and desperate, and markedly nasty. It felt like ice down the back of his spine, and sharp needles at the crown of his head. The shadow narrowed, moving erratically, and Reaper felt a cold sweat break out on him as he looked ahead to where it was leading him--across the street and down the crosswalk to another line of shops.

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Just as he straightened up to keep pursuing the trail, the tether screamed.

Not in the way that Commoners would hear--no, not something accosting to the ears--rather, it was a shriek of anguished rage so guttural and so raw that it reverberated like cannonfire through Reaper’s marrow. The tether, assailed by something Reaper was not near enough to see, writhed in desperation so much so that the trail Reaper had been following shook and jostled wildly, fracturing and cracking like sugared glass.

The pain that hit him then was remarkable. Reaper was on his knees in an instant, his trousers soaking, his body hunching over itself unceremoniously as the wicked, cruel agony of the tether’s distress overtook him, flaying the flesh of his arm and snaking up his shoulder and down onto his chest so much so that he could not draw in breath. Instead, he fell to his side on the pavement, and he choked on a scream, unable to form the vowel--unable to recall if he had ever learned to speak at all in the first place. Stars exploded in front of his eyes, and his fingers and toes curled up into the flesh of his hands and feet involuntarily, cramping viciously and bringing him to the point of nausea.

The pain lasted for a single, brutalizing moment. And then, miraculously and mercifully, it was over; silently slipping through him like sand to an hourglass that had just run out of time.

“Sir,” a voice drifted into Reaper’s consciousness as he tasted rain and the grit of pavement beneath him from where he lay. “Are you quite alright? Do you need a medic?”

Reaper blinked up through bleary, unfocused eyes at the fat businessman who was leering over him, his blue umbrella a beacon of sanctuary that shielded most of the rain from his massive, suited shoulders. “What happened, man? Did you not have your morning drink, is that it?”

Reaper, shaking with the effort, forced himself to his knees once more, and it was only then that he noticed the whimpering, shivering presence within him. The tether had been beaten back into submission into his chest, the darkness peering out from the corners of his vision as if it were afraid of the light. When he glanced down at the gutter where the shadow’s trail had been, he saw only the constant piddle of rainwater flowing wryly towards the drainage ditch to the sewers below. Had something just attempted to kill it? The scent of ash was rampant all around him--power sizzling through the mist of the air even on the damp sidewalk--something immensely formidable was lurking nearby, and the shadow that was cowering inside of him licking its wounds had just come dangerously close to being destroyed by it.

“Come now,” the businessman said briskly, “you look to be a bit dazed. Get out of the rain--there is a charity kitchen down the lane on Bursberry should you need a warm meal.”

Reaper glared at the man as he reached for his shoulder, and he brushed him away with a snarl, “I’m fine,” he snapped. Filthy Commoners--think they’re such self-righteous saviors to downed drunks and other vermin they stick their noses up at.

“I say,” the man bristled, straightening up and stepping determinedly away from Reaper in a huff. “Next time, I won’t bother.”

The man strode away, and Reaper clamored to his feet, his knees wobbling, his chest hollow. He looked in the direction where the shadow had last led him, and he staggered towards it, feeling his pulse beating wildly in his wrists and at the nape of his throat. What the bleeding high hell was that? He questioned the tether, what did you do?

He received only maddening silence, and he pressed onward, his body quivering with echoes of frightened stress that rattled through the shadow within him every few moments or so. He could sense that the tether was wounded somehow--unable to rise up within him even if that delicious scent of strange magic still lingered at his periphery--and he felt panicked at the thought that perhaps he himself had broken it somehow. The ash was fading from the air, the power subsiding, and it all felt like an awful rendition of a feverish dream tainted with rain and mirth at every corner of street that he encountered.

You’d better not be some weak, piece of bull shit shadow work, Reaper threw the thought violently at the thing within him. Whatever you just did--it had better be a real bit of work.

After clearing the crosswalk, Reaper looked right and left down the next street, unable to see anything that led him definitely one way or another. Frustrated, furious, and losing faith, Reaper dragged himself down the street to the left, trying hard to keep his wits about him. A jab of pain hit him, just between the ribs on his right side, and he winced, looking down at his chest. He could feel something there bubbling up--some foreign tension building--and with another jab of pain, he turned around and made his way to the right instead. The pain subsided, and Reaper grimaced. Take me there then, you blasted rat.

Another corner led to another street, and another jab of pain had Reaper coming to a line of scrubby shops. When he saw the crowd of people swarming around one a block or so down, he felt the shadow roil inside him, wavering and clawing, pricking at his chest with its needling little talons, urging him onward. He could see lights of police cars approaching, their red and blue sirens screeching to a halt before the crowd, casting glimmers of color off of the passing traffic, the windows of hgh rises, and the slickened road signs that peppered the street. There were a few people gawking, standing stark in the rain, while others milled about in authoritative confusion, all of them squawking in panic.

As he approached the smattering of Commoners reeling around in anxious chaos, he finally glimpsed the cause of the uproar--the brown cafe building with a massive front window that had shattered from end to end, leaving the grime of the street reflecting the sky in a million tiny shards.

The demon inside of him growled, low and terrible, and Reaper clutched his chest with one hand as he gazed at the destruction. Police were flooding the rain-stained roadway, shouting and rolling out huge lines of yellow tape across the empty frame of the window, and Reaper stared inward at the cafe, the smell of burning, charring smoke curdling his sensations as he studied the innards of the establishment, his eyes narrowed to points. His flesh rose, electricity crackling in the air and sending his body on an edge that both provoked and repelled him.

That smell--that ancient, holy smell--wafted up through it all. Something he knew was not ordinary wielding, but also something that was fading out, like a wavering flame on a nub of a threadbare wick. Dwindling, the smell ignited a rocket of frenzied panic up from the shadow within him, causing it to ricochet off of the sides of his ribs with frightening vigor.

Go after it, the shadow begged out from some dark hole that it had taken up residence in as it clamored about. Go, now! Before it gets away!

“Where?” Reaper asked aloud, glancing around at the bystanders nearby, avoiding any gazes. “It’s snuffing out!”

As the sense choked and diminished further, Reaper pivoted and looked around him on the street, peering through the waves of people that were all marveling at the havoc of the broken storefront. He moved to the left, and pain struck him. When he moved to the right, it was worse. He tried going back in the direction that he came from, and he almost doubled over at the claws that buried themselves into his pleura.

No! The thing screamed at him. No! No! Behind! Must get behind!

Reaper grunted, and he took off down the street to the alleyway that led behind the cafe. A police car rolled by him, moving towards the storefront, and Reaper hid his face in his collar, turning away from the wheels to avoid being sprayed by the puddles it kicked up unceremoniously onto his legs. The shadow was boiling with rage and with desire, still poking him with those sharp tendrils, but egging him on.

Closer! It cried. Go!

Reaper moved down the alleyway and out onto the cross street of Chadwick. As his heels hit the cobbles, he felt the shadow abruptly pause in his chest, as if considering something, drawing back away from his flesh. The breath stole from his lungs as it seethed, gripping some tight vise down low inside him.

Too late, it breathed, and panic overtook his senses. Reaper looked both ways up and down the street in alarm, only seeing the bustle of commuters; a few old ladies bumped by with shopping bags, some businessmen hurried past with suitcases, and a young couple strode arm in arm down the sidewalk away from him, the man’s coat brushing the tops of his boots. Lost the smell.

“Which way?” Reaper asked under his breath, his heart sinking. “Which way did it go, damn it!”

Tired, the shadow sighed inside of him. Hurting. Need to rest.

“Shit,” Reaper snapped to himself, smacking a hand to his thigh. “Shit!”

The power that he had sensed warping the air and beckoning him forward had disappeared into the fresh onslaught of the rain that was beating down on all sides from above, and his ruthless, violent demon that he possessed needed a nap. Reaper wanted to set something on fire, but he felt as if the rain would quite literally dampened any of his attempted efforts. “Useless,” he hissed at the shadow, which was skulking in some deep corner of his mind. “And you call yourself a proper tether.”

Slothy, whining Syndicate, the graveled voice resonated in between his ears, sending a sour taste through his mouth. Watch your tongue, or I will cleave it from your mouth.

Reaper turned back down the alleyway, heading once more to the wreckage of the cafe. It would have taken something like an out-of-control automobile crash, or a rogue strike of lightning, or a barrage of shotgun shells to destroy glass as thick and as wide as that window had been. As he moved on to the street before it, the throngs of the crowd had grown larger, and more police officers were holding back onlookers. There was a reporter van with large cameras setting up nearby, and a lady in pink seersucker holding a microphone and an umbrella, reaching for a cue card in preparation for the evening breaking news.

“What was it?” Reaper asked the tether as he glared at the glass scattered for seemingly kilometers on the street and inside of the hollow cafe.

Powerful, the tether answered cooly. Old.

“What do you mean?”

Don’t know. Didn’t get a view. Just felt.

“Did it hurt you?” Reaper felt a chill take over his arms and legs, pain erupting from the scars on his arm, licking fresh aches up and down his left side. He felt the unmistakable sensation of blackened eyes turning sharply upon him, glaring at him.

Almost killed, the demon whispered reverently. Powerful, and old.

The scattered glass dusting every inch of the street shuddered with each pedestrian footstep, casting the cobbles in a quivering, tumultuous frenzy. As the reporter began her scripted stint from over Reaper’s shoulder into the glossy camera, and as the extraneous police men began barking for onlookers to go about their days and to leave the scene, he knelt to the ground and pulled up a shard of the stuff, jagged and cruel.

Bringing it to his eye and examining it keenly, he ran a thumb along the snapped edge, just lightly enough to keep from drawing blood.

“Where do we go now?” He murmured to the demon. It curled up in a ball at his sternum, sinking far into the depths.

Must rest, it answered slowly. Must tell others. Must be ready for next time.