The door closed, and all sound shut out with it. The walls seemed to suck up any hint of vibration, like a soft, fresh coat of snow in a forest.
Not liking this situation at all, I pulled out my sunglasses and put them on. I felt for an opening mechanism and found it. The door was locked. I twisted the handle and felt the gears fight for a moment before going rubbery and beginning to give way.
“Very impressive,” said a sonorous voice in the dark. It was male and authoritative.
Startled, I turned toward the voice, taking off my sunglasses and putting them in my breast pocket. I could make out a figure in the dark room. There was about as much light as a movie theater with a black screen, but my eyes were slowly adjusting. Runners of LED lights ran under the furniture along the floor and around the ceiling, providing just enough soft illumination to see outlines once my eyes were used to it.
“I’m Quentin Draith,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant. I peered at the seated man. It didn’t look like a monster. I decided to ask a dumb question. “Can we turn the lights on in here?”
The man with the musical voice chuckled. “No. That would not be wise for either of us.”
I detected a slight accent, European most likely. Maybe Russian. I blinked in the blackness, wondering where to take the conversation and why we were in the dark. Was the guy an albino or a vampire or embarrassingly deformed? Did he have the senses of a bat and a gun on me, enjoying a private joke? I decided to play along. I could see the furniture in the room now as dim outlines. I took a step forward, felt the back of a leather chair, and took a seat without asking.
“You have what my relatives would have called pig balls, Draith,” my host said.
“Pig balls?”
“Have you ever been to a hog farm? Boars have very large equipment, you know. The size of cantaloupes. Did you know that, Mr. Draith?”
“I can’t say that I did.”
“They do, take my word for it,” he said. “They are quite impressive creatures. As are you.”
“Thanks,” I said, never being one to turn away a compliment. “You are doing a nice job with the intimidation routine as well. But what do you find so impressive?”
“Tony’s trick. I knew he had one, but I did not know it was the sunglasses. He stole from me several times in the past, did you 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.”