“Five fucking gold!” I snarled once we were back on the street.

  “Jesus, Bob! Keep it down!” Tex hissed. “You want the Gloomies taking an interest in us? That’s a lot of money around here. They probably can’t kill you, but I’m a merchant! I’m a slit throat away from the end!”

  The large man leaning against the wall when we went in had vanished. My tongue darted out. There was blood in the air, coming from somewhere nearby. I glanced around suspiciously, but I couldn’t see any obvious threats beyond the cutthroats lounging in doorways and the rough-looking locals of this district hurrying about their business.

  I felt a tug on my sleeve and looked down to find a small, grubby face staring up at me with big, watery eyes. Dirty blond hair framed the face of an unwashed cherub, snub-nosed and cute as a button.

  “‘Scuse me, mister. I’m so hungry. Reckon you can spare a few bronze for me?” Sniffle, sniffle. I sighed internally. Karma, you’re a harsh taskmaster. The ascot was having a hard time stopping me from yelling at the kid to get a job and sod off.

  “Sure, kid, here.” I pulled a couple of bronze coins from my storage and pressed them into the child’s dirt-stained hands. “Now piss off. Look, Tex, thirty-three loads is going to take years! You’ll be out of contract before I get done! And he fucked me on the price!” I hissed. “Tex?”

  His face had gone pale. He looked left and right like he was a lump of meat in the tiger enclosure at a zoo. He grabbed my arm and started trying to pull me back into Phillpot’s Pap Shack.

  “Bob… You shouldn’t ought to have done that,” he whispered.

  “Gee, thanks, mister! That was real generous of you!” the child called out loudly. I don’t know where they came from. They sprang up like mushrooms after an autumn rain. Suddenly, there was a sea of dirty-faced children all calling out with a hand upraised, surrounding us.

  “Hey, mister, me sister's starving, spare a bronze for a poor street waif?”

  “Mister! I gots the clap and need some lotion for me nethers!” Childish sniggering, quickly suppressed, was replaced by more pleas for aid. One of the other kids elbowed the one claiming to have the clap. Tex was being washed away, gradually driven deeper into the Glooming as he frantically slapped at the upraised hands and cursed at the kids. I started to wade through the mob of tearaways carefully, conscious that accidentally crushing a small child would be bad for my soul, however tempting it might be.

  Tex had been swept around a corner into an alley, so I began carefully lifting the kids out of my way and putting them down behind me. They squawked indignantly as I moved them in pairs, one in each hand, while I fought my way to the last place I’d seen Tex.

  “Mister, Mister, Mister!” echoed around me as I reached the alley and found Tex in a bubble of open space. The kids had pulled back around him, and three very large men wearing dark suits stood next to my trader. One was resting a hand on Tex’s shoulder. That one had some kind of contraption attached to his left temple. Metal melted into flesh, and a clear screen extended over his eye, through which he was now squinting at me with his other eye closed.

  The kids around me made space. They had penned me in; I could see a solid wall of the little shits behind me, but the ones in front were filtering back to join the ones behind me. I glared at them, and they either flinched or made rude gestures depending on how brave or stupid they were.

  “Here you go, Bulldo. Gift wrapped as requested,” called the kid who’d claimed to have an STD. “I’ll catch up with Mr. Dalgliesh later.”

  “Good job, Dodgy Pete. The boss will be pleased,” said the man with the contraption over one eye.

  “No worries, dude. This one's a proper fuckin’ bogan,” the kid replied in a suddenly Australian accent.

  “Mr. Bulldo. I’ll thank you to unhand my merchant and explain what the hell is going on?” I said as menacingly as I could. I stepped closer, but Bulldo slipped a hand around the back of Tex’s neck, and the poor guy started to shiver almost uncontrollably.

  “Scooter can’t get a lock on his power level. But it’s over nine hundred,” Bulldo muttered to his friends, who suddenly looked a lot sharper as they tensed up and glared at me from behind the tinted lenses of their glasses. “Mister Bob. A pleasure to meet you. I apologise for the irregularity of our method of contacting you, but my employer believed it would be best if we did this discreetly.”

  “Take your hands off Tex. He’s mine.” No one steals from a dragon, or threatens to, and gets away with it.

  “I’m afraid that at the moment that is impossible,” Bulldo said. His voice was rich and smooth. Cultured and intelligent. He didn’t sound like the kind of person I suspected he was. “My friends and I would prefer to avoid any violence, and you are a touch too strong to be casually threatened. Mister Tex here–” he lifted Tex off the ground by the scruff of his neck with one hand for a few seconds, “–is far more fragile. And we certainly don’t want any delicates to get broken at this point in our relationship. It really will be worth your while, and Mr. Dalgleish is not a man that people like yourselves get to say no to, I’m afraid.”

  If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  I growled and used Hunter's Gaze as I strode towards them. The muscle didn’t even flinch, the pair of them moving smoothly forward to intercept me, but Bulldo recoiled and raised his free hand to his face.

  “Enough! Mister Bob, I mean no disrespect. Jack, Ganley, get back here!” Bulldo grimaced and waved his left hand in front of him. Sparks flashed and flickered from his wiggling fingers to spread out into a three-metre-wide circle. More finger dancing and intricate lines and diagrams that looked more like a printed circuit board from back home than any kind of magic symbols I could imagine began to glow faintly on the street. “Sir, if you would please step into the circle, we can have a quick chat with my employer, then I will return you to the Long Horn intact and a great deal richer than before.”

  “The urchins work for you?” I asked, moving to stand at the edge of his magic circle.

  “Hardly I! You truly are fresh off the transdimensional boat, aren’t you? First time in the big city?”

  “You’re from Earth?” I glared at him.

  “Not at all! I fell a lot further than that, Mister Bob. And sad to say, I’ve landed in much the same life as I had back on Kalista. The circle, sir? I swear on the system that neither of you will be harmed by me or my men here, and I will return you to the Horn afterwards. Mr. Dalgliesh is interested in what you have for sale, and would like to make a generous offer for your goods.”

  “We already sold the stuff. You should have reached out before, and without the kidnapping-via-feral-youths. Go talk to Phillpot, he’s got all my gear.” My greed had briefly rubbed its claws together in my mind, but then the memory of five fucking gold had spoiled my mood.

  “Oh, I apologise for the misunderstanding. Not the dungeon trash. Mr. Dalgleish is interested in the Arkendrite and is willing to pay handsomely. I assume you didn’t try and pass that to Phillpot? He would have reported you to the guild immediately, and that would be a sorry state of affairs for all involved.” He gave me a warm smile and a wink as he finished his speech.

  Shit. Someone had spilled the beans. And the fucking sausages. The entire bloody pantry was scattered across the floor. I looked back over my shoulder and found the urchins had all disappeared, leaving me alone with Tex and three gangsters. No witnesses. Gangsters are innately bad people, right?

  Sure, they might feed the odd stray puppy, might donate to the occasional charity, kiss their kids goodnight, and all that jazz, but they were, in essence, evil. I was pretty sure I would be doing the world a solid, and thus my own karmic balance a favour, by eating these douchbags. My fangs began to lengthen behind my lips, and my fingertips started morphing into claws.

  Something must have betrayed me because one of the goons pulled a dark shape from his pocket, and a blade sprang out of it that he held to Tex’s throat as he glared at me.

  “No need for any messes,” the man growled. Now, unlike Mr. Bulldo, this man sounded like a thug. I suspected someone had to do his tie for him, or it was a clip-on.

  “The rabbit goes round the tree, then jumps through the hole,” I muttered as I weighed my options. Both thugs looked confused, but Tex and Bulldo snorted.

  “Mister Bob, I don’t think you understand just how much money you are about to make if you agree to my boss's generous offer,” said Bulldo.

  Damn you, greed-demon.

  I stepped into the circle, and we vanished. After a brief moment of transcendental weirdness, we reappeared in a large room, and fancy wood paneling lined the walls, light streamed in through a tall window framed with satin drapes.

  My first action was to move into Double-Winded-Giraffe and simultaneously punch the two thugs so hard they left gangster-shaped indents in the walls before I snatched Bulldo up by his well-tailored lapels. I gave him a big, overly toothy grin.

  “Mister Bulldo, where the hell are we?” I hissed, much more sibilantly than usual.

  “I’ll thank you to unhand my man Bulldo, there, Bob. Can I call you Bob?”

  I turned my head and dropped the thug in shock. The voice had sounded odd. The Scottish accent had been straight from Earth, but the pitch hadn’t matched the tone. It was like hearing an adult talking with a child's voice, and sure enough, he was a kid, dusky skin and brown hair framing dead eyes as black as pitch, standing smiling at me with a crystal glass of amber liquid in one hand.

  “You’re a bit short to be a mob boss,” I muttered as I shoved Bulldo away and checked Tex over. Throat intact. Clean trousers required. He’d live.

  “I ran with Fatboy Thompson back in Glasgow. Then the fucking Lyons and the Daniels took over. Everything went to shit after that. I think it’s a multiversal truth that every man has a limited number of drive-by shootings he can survive, and you never know how big that number is until it’s too late. So here I am, a sixty-year-old in the body of a thirteen-year-old.” I sniggered as his voice cracked at the end.

  “Puberty wasn't funny the first time around, Bob. Please don’t make me send for Big Kenny. If you’d like to accompany me, we can have a chat in a slightly more salubrious location than my teleport room, then Bulldo will take you home. He did promise you guest rights and safe passage?” I nodded. “Then come along, old lad, let’s get you two a whiskey and talk business.”

  He turned and walked away. Tex moved to follow automatically and grabbed my arm to drag me along as he passed me.

  “Do not piss this man off,” he whispered to me.

  “What’s he going to do, sing soprano at me? You remember what I am, right?”

  “Kenny is his left-hand man. The Hunters Guild is terrified of Kenny. Be nice!” he hissed in my ear.

  “Left hand?”

  “The one that you wipe with. Do not fuck about, Bob.”

  I shrugged, and we made our way down corridors that belonged in a Tudor country mansion. Paintings hung on the walls depicted cityscapes, agrarian scenes, and still lifes of obviously wealthy men and women.

  We were led into a plush smoking room, with luxurious leather chairs set in a circle around a mahogany table to one side, and there was an actual pool table that occupied pride of place in the middle of the room.

  “A glass of Golden Jack? I understand you enjoyed it back at the Broken Baguette,” he offered as he poured generous shots of expensive booze into two more glasses. He passed them to us and sat down, hitching his trousers up before crossing his legs. I took a seat opposite him, and Tex moved to sit down as well.

  “Ah, no! One moment!” Our host held up a finger at Tex, who froze like a hedgehog in a blender as you reach for the on button. “Samantha! We’ve got another soggy one! Be a love and fetch a towel, please?” he called.