Shadow Work: Hunted
Source: Jianwei Yang/Flickr
They will not be visible to him, he knows. Their clothing, their every movement will be perfectly tuned for crypsis in crowds large and small, unobtrusive and obfuscatory. He is one and they are many. He will never catch them looking at him or each other. They will not have to. The protocols are taken to be understood by all.
He must do the same.
Try as he might, he will not locate them. Fortunately, he will not have to, knowledge of their existence is sufficient. The many can strike a blow mighty in space and small in time. The one, if patient, has no choice but the reverse.
Obiagu cannot afford patience.
His pace quickens now, knowing of them in the streaming crowd as they know of him, concealed from them in it as they are from him, the words of the world speaking to him and guiding his feet to hide his spoor. They are swords in a field of grass, held by unseen hands. When the words speak truest, he will seize those blades and draw those hands into his ambit.
The city speaks now in its susurrus of raven wings, of narrow places and diminished space. The alley will force their approach, his stillness a lodestone to which they must fly. He made for it with no heightened haste, only a sense of purpose and expectation.
There!
One of them breaks ranks, a ripple in the surface tension of the crowd. Young, slender, male. Obiagu backs into the alley and lets the boy enter. It is time to learn the nature of his enemy.
...
The boy knows of his presence but only because his demon had told him so. A shallow demon, chest-beating, belligerent, swollen with belief in its own strength. Though the boy's hand hovers at his hip, its snarls in his body speak of berserk predilections and Obiagu starts toward it without that concern. Besides, he would have drawn already.
The walls flatly state their dimensions and distances. The roar of traffic speaks only of its continuing ignorance of that which is to occur. The wind is to his back, laminar, refuse-redolent. The ground, as ever, assays nothing. He spreads his hands in challenge. The demon snarls openly from the boy's mouth and with the boy's hand, snatches away an earpiece. Still armed. Obiagu already knew this boy could not possibly be in the service of the Scourers. Now he knows the boy could not even be of The Fire. He is safe.
The demon strikes, dagger leaping from his sleeve. OSS Sleeve, a reproduction. Obiagu steps forward and stops the boy's wrist with his own and twists against it, the wrist smoothly entering his grip but a sudden explosion of sweat and sebum (the demon's work, in concert with the boy) loosens his grip and he withdraws at speed from the now-upturned knife that seeks his downturned palm and leaps back to avoid the strike at his throat and readies for the demon to grow impatient and overextend ...
So. Apparently there was more. My bad.