Prologue: Tentacles in the Dark

Tony took a long, slow drag of his cigarette, and flicked the butt into the shadows. He pulled his donkey jacket tighter around himself as he breathed out a cloud of smoke and watched the sparks cast from the cigarette as it hit the hard ground.

It was a cold night, and last month’s heatwave made this month’s chill even more pronounced. Any other June, this would have been a nice day and cool evening, but right now he felt the cold. The cold fingers of dread clamping on his spine… he stamped his feet and tried to dismiss the mood he was in.

Think of the heatwave, he told himself. The warmest May he could ever remember. The packed parks, parties on rooftops, and drunk and happy marks. He’d scored a very nice engagement ring from one of them.

“That’s righ’, Tony,” he muttered to himself, “think ofa’ good things.” Not the freaky thunderstorm that ended it, with hailstones as big as walnuts, so deep that the army had been called in to clear some of the streets. That was a bad night to remember. That was the night Radolfo had gone missing. Freak weather and his friend taken into the shadows by the weird thing that was running around the city, hunting them.

No one knew what it was. Demon, monster, a great spirit summoned by a wrathful sorcerer. It came out of the darkness like some monstrous human spider and attacked in complete silence before vanishing into the shadows. It had turned up at the end of May and taken Radolfo. For days, they thought he was dead, his body in some shallow, unmarked grave or tossed into the Thames. Then he was found unconscious in a hospital bed, with no indication how he had gotten there, and his charge sheet glued to his forehead.

He’d been tortured for over a week, then taken to hospital in a way that was sure to end up with him in prison. Every inch of him had been battered, his body was one entire bruise, and yet the damage had been surprisingly light. The hospital had him out in two days, and he was in the cells now, waiting for the magistrate’s trial.

Tony shook his legs out and changed position slightly, trying to get some of the chill out of his limbs. He told himself again that it was a cold night, and that the chill was just from that. He was a hard man. Solid. He’d busted kneecaps, he’d been in rumbles. He’d lost two fingers on his left hand. He wasn’t scared of the dark.

The only thing that really scared him were big dogs, and that wasn’t something he could help. It had been a big dog that got his fingers when he’d been a kid and tried to pet it. That wasn’t a story he told anyone, though. No one needed to hear why he’d lost fingers, just that it had happened. He never lied, he just let people think it had been in a brawl or something. He’d heard one story where it had been a shark, which had been hilarious. A shark in London, in the Thames? It was ridiculous what people would believe. Sharks in the Thames and monsters in the shadows.

The rumours were only rumours.

No way they could be true. Well, unless a monster was attacking gangs in London. Going after Sabini? Coming out of the dark with tentacles, of all things? It was stupid. Tentacles? It couldn’t be real.

It had taken Radolfo.

He glanced around again, peering into the shadows. The flickering electric light above him illuminated the door he stood before, and a few feet on either side. Beyond that, the cracked concrete of the deserted yard faded quickly into darkness, though he could still see darker blotches he thought might be motorcars, dotted through the night. Nothing was moving. Nothing was here.

Last week, the thing in the dark had gone after six Hoxton boys, standing guard on an opium shipment. Five of the men were picked off, beaten senseless, left trussed up for the coppers to find. The opium had been burned, and the police tipped anonymously. Each of the men left unconscious near the smouldering remnants of the drugs had a charge sheet glued to his face.

The sixth had escaped, ranting about tentacles coming out of the shadows at them, and a dark shape swooping down from above. Complete silence as it struck without warning, no hesitation in its precision attacks. Others said it couldn’t be that good if someone escaped, but Tony thought the man who had run away might not have warrants out. It felt more like he’d been permitted to leave.

Now his mind was broken, and all he did was rant about tentacles in the dark.

Tony glanced over his shoulder at the heavy iron door behind him, set deep into the stone around it. Whatever was going on inside that building, he knew it wasn’t drugs. He’d watched the lorries arrive earlier; he had a rough estimate of how many men were on patrol. Besides, they weren’t the Hoxton louts. Darby Sabini and his men didn’t do drugs, they had more refined tastes. Racetracks. High class brothels. They catered to the aristocracy.

It wasn’t drugs, and that meant it could be something that attracted the attention of a monster.

No, dannazione. He shook his head and returned to staring out into the darkness, repeating to himself that monsters weren’t real. London was not Marseilles. Besides, he had a plan, just in case he was wrong. Well, more of a knife than a plan. More of a cleaver than a knife, really. Still, it should work. Lop off a few tentacles and see how that thing felt then. He pulled the cleaver out now, just in case, and took a few practice swipes at the air. The tentacles might be fast; he had to be faster. His cold fingers struggled to grip the hilt, but he forced them to hold on. He was ready for it.

He was ready for anything.

Except the tentacle that came out of the shadows behind him, a few inches above the dark ground, and encircled his ankle without touching him. He wasn’t ready for it pulling tight and yanking up so hard he flipped upside down and dropped the knife. Another tentacle caught the blade in the air, whilst a third slid around his head, pressing into his face. He felt warm, wet silk against the cold skin of his nose and mouth, and a pleasantly sweet scent filled his senses before he slipped into darkness.

Chapter One – Getting Better Acquainted With the Riffraff

Editor’s Note

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

From: The London Eye Editorial Board

Subject: Meteorological Reports

Date: June 11, 1922

Because it came up a lot in early beta-reads, I feel the need to clear the air here. The weather is not supernatural. In fact, it genuinely happened. There are existing reports of hailstones the size of walnuts or pigeon-eggs falling in 1922, so many that they blocked a street and the army was called in to clear it. Admittedly, it wasn’t in London, but it did occur in England and relatively close to London, so I just shifted the clouds a little bit.

You can look it up if you want, but it took me a lot of digging to find it, and I wasn’t looking for it specifically. I was going over weather reports for the whole year. When it rains in the story, it rained in real life, too.

Author Note

I have an additional website, the Goblinpunk Queerguide, which is dedicated to discussing Raptors of London. Queerguides won’t accompany every single chapter, but so far more chapters have them than don’t.

Sometimes it will be additional context regarding the events of the chapter, sometimes it will be my thoughts on prose. I know not everyone wants to read about writing craft so I will clearly mark in an author note if it’s context or craft.

Yes, I could have posted them directly under the chapters, but I didn’t want to do that. Some of the Queerguides are 3000 words long. Also some readers aren’t interested in craft chats, and some don’t even want context.

The queerguides are extra content. You don’t need to read them. They’re mostly for me, to be honest. I just like ranting about craft and over-explaining myself.

I’d blame the goblin, but it’s mostly other reasons.

The first post on that site gives an overview of what the site is about.