Samuel couldn't breathe. He couldn't see. He couldn't hear.

As soon as he stepped into the portal, the cellar beneath the warehouse in the southern district of Labrys Town swirled away, the police officers and their guns blinked out of sight, and it was as if the old bounty hunter had jumped into a huge, suffocating blanket. The blackness engulfed him, pressed against his eyelids like the thumbs of a murderer; filled his mouth and nostrils like thick poison searching for the passage of his throat. And it was cold.

In vain, Samuel tried to shout his defiance; to thrash and struggle against the darkness that refused him air and light and sound. He felt numb. With an unfeeling finger, he tried to squeeze the trigger of his revolver, to shoot blindly, madly, into the void. But somehow Samuel knew his deadened nerves had relaxed his hand to a listless thing, and the revolver had already slipped from his grasp to be lost forever in nothingness.

The suffocating blanket seemed to stretch under his weight, until finally it ripped open and spilled him into freefall.

No sooner had he sucked in a great gulp of air than it was stolen from his mouth by rushing wind. His vision was assaulted by streaks of purple lightning. The echo of a bestial scream reached his ears, full of rage and pain. It seemed to Samuel that he would fall forever, down, ever down, until age withered his body, addled his mind, and his life would crumble to dust amidst a starless sky.

Just as he embraced this notion, imagining himself as a curled foetus doomed to travel an endless birthing canal, silver light dazzled his eyes, and the darkness spat him out onto hard, solid stone with a bone-jarring thud.

Lying face down on damp cobbles, Samuel groaned and rose to his hands and knees. He looked up. Evidently, the portal had chosen to expel him feet first. Its glassy surface rippled within a rectangle on a wall of black bricks before him.

With a nudge from his prescient awareness, Samuel jumped to his feet and drew the rifle from the holster on his back. He ejected the empty magazine, slapped a new one into place, and took aim at the portal. The power stone behind the barrel gave a small whine and glowed with violet light as he thumbed it. He might have run out of fire-bullets, but the four metal slugs in the magazine would still kill anyone who dared to follow him.

"I do not think the police will be brave enough to come after us, Samuel."

The old bounty hunter looked over his shoulder. Van Bam stood behind him, his green glass cane standing on the ground, his hands resting atop it.

The illusionist added, "And I suspect the portal closed once we left the warehouse, anyhow."

As if to confirm Van Bam's words, the portal began shrinking with a low drone. In but a moment, with a sigh and a puff of dust, it disappeared, leaving behind black bricks and no sign that it had ever been there.

Samuel lowered his aim and turned around.

Van Bam's smoothly-shaved head was tilted to one side. The black, loose-fitting shirt and trousers he wore looked dishevelled. The tip of his glass cane touched the cobbled ground between his bare feet, and the metal plates covering the illusionist's eyes glinted with reflected light.

Samuel looked up: Silver Moon shone in the night sky. He looked to his right: a long, wide alleyway stretched away into the gloom. Its walls were supported by buttresses positioned every fifteen paces.

Samuel's features fell. "The portal led us out into the Great Labyrinth?"

Van Bam nodded gravely.

Samuel was speechless.

Fabian Moor and his fellow Genii had taken control of the Nightshade; they had claimed total dominion over Labrys Town, and all had seemed lost. Yet the Relic Guild had found an unlikely ally in the form of a blue ghost, an avatar which had a strange and dangerous way of offering aid. It had led them to a secret portal hidden in the cellar of an abandoned ore warehouse in the southern district of town. But the portal was meant to be the Labyrinth's backdoor, an emergency exit, an escape route that would lead the Relic Guild to those who could save the denizens from the machinations of the Genii. Instead, it had led them out into the endless twists and turns of the giant maze that surrounded Labrys Town. People disappeared in the Great Labyrinth.

"How does this help us?" Samuel demanded of Van Bam.

They both knew they could have been anywhere in the Great Labyrinth. The only point of civilisation was Labrys Town, at the centre of the maze. And even if returning there was an option, it could take hours or days, weeks, months or years of walking through never-ending alleyways to find it.

"It would seem the portal has only delivered us to the midway point in our journey," Van Bam replied solemnly. His face was turned toward a stone pedestal that rose from the alley floor like a slim chimney, a few paces ahead.

Closely followed by Van Bam, Samuel stepped over to the pedestal. Its top had been fashioned into a square box. The box was filled with a gelatinous substance, flat and colourless. Before the pedestal, a section of the cobbled ground had been smoothed to form a large disc of grey.

"A shadow carriage," Samuel whispered.

Van Bam nodded. "It is a sure sign that the doorway to the House we need is in the Great Labyrinth. But to summon a shadow carriage to take us to it, we must first know the symbol for that House."

Samuel frowned. "Where's Clara?"

Van Bam gestured with his head, and Samuel looked to his left. The alleyway stopped at a dead end. Against the wall, Clara's small figure lay crumpled. Moonlight glinted from the blood that pumped from the bullet wound in her side, which she had sustained back at the warehouse. It formed a puddle on the cobbles around her. She wasn't moving.

"No," Samuel said.

He took a step towards her, but Van Bam's voice stopped him.

"We have another problem, Samuel."

The ex-Resident was staring down the long alley. Straight away, Samuel could see something moving down there. Although the sky was clear, it was as though a veil of cloud was being drawn over the light of Silver Moon. In the near distance, darkness deeper than the gloom slithered over brickwork and cobbles, making oily, fluid progress along the alley towards the agents of the Relic Guild.

A light breeze brought strange scents to Samuel's nose. Age. Corruption. Hopelessness. The temperature dropped, became colder than the fresh chill of Silver Moon.

"Shit," Samuel spat, his breath frosting before his face.

The Retrospective . . . the House of dead time, of corrosion, perversion, where all the monsters dwelt . . . it had sensed the Relic Guild. Its doorway was opening.

"I lost my revolver," Samuel stated. He gripped the rifle tightly. "I only have four bullets left."

With gritted teeth, Van Bam stabbed his glass cane down onto the ground. To a musical chime, bolts of illusionist magic sped from the cane, hurtling down the alleyway to merge and form a hard barrier of transparent green that stretched from wall to wall. When the slithering doorway met it, a low creaking filled the freezing air. But the barrier held. It had halted the Retrospective.

"It will not last long," Van Bam warned.

Inside Samuel, his magic was flat and unresponsive. The prescient awareness that had served him well throughout his life, that had saved his skin on innumerable occasions, told the old bounty hunter that this was his last stand. There was nowhere else to turn, and soon the wild demons of the Retrospective would come hunting his flesh.

Samuel looked at the pedestal rising from the ground, capped by the stone box, and he felt a searing sense of frustration. All he needed to do was draw a House symbol into the gelatinous substance that filled the box, and a shadow carriage would appear to whisk the Relic Guild away to safety.

"We need that damned House symbol right now, Van Bam!"

"If the avatar knew it, then Clara is the only person it gave it to."

Clara's small form remained unmoving against the dead end wall.

"Clara!" Samuel bellowed. He felt a small pang of relief as her face twitched, and she stirred. "Did the avatar give you a symbol? Quickly!"

The changeling struggled and failed to open her eyes. She released a moan of pain.

Samuel made to approach her again, but this time Van Bam grabbed his arm.

"Do not touch her," he hissed.

Samuel froze. He had never heard such fear in Van Bam's voice before.

"It is her colours, Samuel," the illusionist added. "I can see-"

A loud snap shattered the air. A jagged crack had appeared in Van Bam's magical barrier. It continued to spread and groan as the weight of the Retrospective pushed against it.

Clara moaned again. Or was it a growl?

With slick, greasy fingers, she was trying to open her medicine tin. The lid gave, but the tin slipped from her grasp, spilling tiny white tablets into the puddle of her blood. She looked up at the night sky, opened her mouth and gave a growl of frustration. Her canine teeth had lengthened to sharp points. She glared at Samuel and Van Bam, her eyes shining with yellow light.

"It's coming," she whispered hoarsely.

And Clara howled like a wolf.