The Shadows are coming... In a small country town a young mother hangs clothing on the clothesline while her toddler plays on the lawn beside her. When her son's happy gibberish suddenly breaks off into choked gasps, his mother is horrified to find him wrapped in her shadow, choked and grey and gasping for breath. The Shadows are coming.... A man sits in a park feeding pigeons, shadows pooling around his feet. A pigeon strays too close and the man's shadow drops over it like a blanket, devouring it in a puff of dust and feathers. The Shadows are coming... When Ben Reilly returns to his home town of Casino, he's hoping for little more than the familiar comforts of home and a place to clear his head. Instead, he finds a town full of strange, hungry people with jet black eyes and shadows that tug at their heels like hungry dogs. And like dogs, they need to feed... Searching the internet for answers, Ben draws the attention of a mysterious stranger with no shadow who claims to be impervious to the effects of the shadows. Known only as Shade, the stranger will lead Ben into the heart of darkness in a centuries old battle against these sinister Shadoweaters, people who are little more than appendages to the living shadows that have infected them.