Shadow Hour

Prologue

Prologue

As the time struck twelve, the shadows of the city chased each other through the night.

Atop the highest point of a clock tower, a large crow perched, blanketed by a backdrop of stars that were hidden to the human eye by the pollution of streetlights and exhaust fumes. The crow did not have a nest to fly home to, nor did it need to wait for the early morning sun to hunt for worms in the undergrowth. Instead, it cast a beady eye across the wide, sprawling expanse of London, with its neon lights and screeching cars and frantic, pulsing hearts. The city was a jungle of a different kind.

After one final moment of rest, the crow stood and spread its great, feathered wings, preparing for flight. Like a ghost in the darkness, the crow soared from its perch and dove towards the brightly-lit streets below. With a swift flap of its inky black wings, it levelled with the roofs of the concrete buildings and swept through the night.

The air was thick and cloying with the stench of human living; the metallic tang of rumbling car engines, the oily grease of deep-fat fryers in fast food chains, the poison of liquor and alcohol, mingled with the putrid sick and bile of those who had ingested too much of those insidious beverages.

Yet, underneath the overwhelming smells that were by-products of a thriving population, there came other scents - those that enticed rather than repulsed.

The sweet, herbal aroma of potions brewed behind closed doors. The earthy, woody scent of natural-made charms and wards, hung along the walls and windows of those who knew there were things to ward against. The unmistakable burning spark that was left hanging in the air after an incantation was muttered away from prying eyes.

To the trained nose, these secret scents could be identified among a throng of mundane ones. For the masses, however, these odours went largely unnoticed, covered for the most part by the infinite other smells of a hectic city life. What consequence was a single, strange detail amidst the many exciting attractions of the grand wide world?

As the crow soared through the midnight nightlife, it flitted past a tall, cream-brick apartment building. A girl seated on a window ledge, her knees tucked under her chin, looked up as the crow flew past in a flurry of black feathers. She frowned. The sight of the creature flying through the night gave her a prickling sense of unease, though she could not explain why.

Still, the crow glided on. It gave no thought to girls on window ledges who should be asleep in their beds. In fact, it gave thought to barely anything at all. After all, it was a crow.

During its voyage, the crow also flitted past a supposedly empty, boarded-up warehouse situated on a cobbled backstreet alley. Most people who passed the warehouse spared it barely a glance and a muttered, "That place is never open." Inside, however, unbeknownst to most, the warehouse was filled to the brim. People wearing pendants and charms, some with occult rings, others with chipped black nail varnish and spells on their tongues danced the night away. They drank and chatted and fought in a state of euphoric revelry. They toasted to their secrets, downing bottles of enchanted beer and sipping glasses of fizzing wine, all while fingering their charmed pendants.

The crow's passage by the warehouse went largely unnoticed by most of the peculiar inhabitants, and if any of them did feel a slight momentary chill, they simply attributed it to the cold autumn climate.

Other dwellers of the city, however, were not so blissfully ignorant. As the crow flitted through the air, sinister shadows began to grow in its wake. They loomed in the spaces between buildings and the cracks beneath cobblestones. Deep in the sewers below the streets, rats squealed and scurried into the light, avoiding the growing patches of darkness. In the houses of humans, cats yowled and hissed at supposedly empty spaces, waking their sleeping owners.

The lesser creatures of London knew what the coming of the crow meant, and they recoiled in terror. Insects and spiders fled from their burrows, seeking new habitat that was not tainted by the arrival of the shadows.

It would be a long time before the humans felt the presence of evil in quite the same way. For now they slept or danced or laughed the night away, believing, as humans often did, that their lives would always be this easy.

And all the while, the shadows spawned and grew, following the crow in its journey through the city.