The Rhino-boy twists and ducks at the last second and my sword gets lodged in one of its yellow tusks.

I sigh. What does Jayne think their tusks are for besides blocking blows to their heads? Well, they use them for impaling, too, but mostly to protect their skulls and necks.

The Rhino-boy is enraged. Squealing and grunting, it nearly breaks free. Somebody shoots it, then Jayne’s men wrestle it back down to the floor.

He yanks the sword from its tusk and when it comes out he stumbles. Somewhere an Unseelie guffaws.

Jayne regains his balance, raises his arm and swings again.

I wince.

Jayne is strong. But Unseelie are made of sinew and gristle and weird bony structure where you least expect to find it, and cutting their head off isn’t as easy as it looks like it should be.

Now the sword is halfway through its thick neck and the Rhino-boy is gushing green goo, squealing like a stuck pig, flopping stumpy arms and legs, and hundreds of caged Unseelie start screaming again.

Jayne saws at the thing’s head with the sword and I almost puke. His men don’t look any happier. The noise is deafening. Rhino-boys are emitting one continuous high-pitched squeal, tiny winged Fae (the ones that make you laugh yourself to death!) are chiming with fury and making dazzling light displays as they try to escape their iron pens, slithering multilegged Unseeliepedes writhe between their pen-mates, and the sound they make is like several tons of gravel dumped onto metal sheets, getting dragged across it. Gaunt, slender wraiths flicker in and out of solidity, emitting a high-pitched whine. The sound is so huge I feel the vibration of it in the concrete dock beneath my palms.

Jayne finally manages to kill the Rhino-boy he’s hacking away at, and turns to one of his men for a towel to wipe away the goo and blood. He looks back at the cages, his expression bleak. I snicker mirthlessly. No doubt he’s got a new appreciation for the speedy services of moi! It isn’t easy walking into a warehouse full of condemned monsters and killing them all. But each one that gets back out on the streets will ultimately kill dozens, maybe hundreds or thousands of humans, in its immortal existence. It’s what they do. It’s us or them.

I check my cell phone. My timer’s counting down. I got seven minutes before Dancer sets off the charges. I would have gone for a single explosion but Dancer wanted multiple sites, the better to divide Jayne’s men and increase our odds of getting in and out smooth and easy.

I stare at my sword. I’m fixated. I know it. I don’t care. There are worse things to be fixated with. Like, say, Jo with Ryodan. Duh. How fecked up is that?

Jayne’s men have emptied a cage of all but the tiny, death-by-laughter Fae. Now they net the brilliant little harpies and toss the nets on the floor in front of Jayne. Dainty, pretty Fae scream and shake their fists as Jayne swings again and again. Making the scene even more macabre, the men in the immediate area, including the good inspector, laugh helplessly, many of them doubled over with mirth, until the last one is dead.

The caged Unseelie roar and howl.

Because I’m a sidhe-seer, I can sense Fae in my bones, in my marrow, in that strange hot/cold center of my brain other folks don’t have.

Before the walls fell, when there were fewer of them in our world, my “spidey-sense” was a crystal clear beacon, warning me if one of them got too close to me long before it was close enough to be a threat. But ever since the walls fell, there are so many of them around me that my Fae-alarm is constantly going off, 24/7. Like every other sidhe-seer that wants to remain sane—or just get some much-needed sleep—I’ve learned to mute it. If you don’t figure out how to turn the volume down, you’ll go crazy. It’s not just an inner alarm saying, “Warning, a Fae is near.” It rides tandem with a flash of pure rage, of prime directive to kill, kill, kill, and do it right now this very instant even if you have to use your bare hands to tear it apart. It’s not something you can suppress. It’s too strong. The older women at the abbey say it’s like having the worst, most bloodthirsty hot flash imaginable, a hormone surge of pure homicidal fury. I don’t want to live long enough to get hot flashes. Puberty is bad enough.

My Fae-sensor is on full mute right now. And even with it completely shut down, I feel it: a very powerful Unseelie is close to me, too close for comfort.

In order for it to be penetrating the barricade of silence I’ve erected around myself, its power has to be enormous. I nudge my volume up a hair, trying to figure out the who, what, and where. With so many Unseelie in the warehouse it takes me a few seconds to isolate the new arrival.

There it is!

I expand my awareness, taking its measure.

Ancient. Deadly.

Sex. Hunger. Rage. Hunger. Sex. Hunger. Rage. Hunger.

I feel it but I can’t see it.

The short hairs on the back of my neck are tiny needles in my skin.

Suddenly a shadow moves in the gloomy, humid dawn and it’s there, on the other side of the dock, hair and eyes barely visible. We’re directly across from each other, no more than thirty feet of concrete between us.

It’s not Christian this time. It’s one of the full-blood Unseelie princes. Then again, after finding the dead naked woman stuffed between his bed and the wall, I’m not sure that’s a meaningful distinction.

I go as still as Christian’s dead woman.

It’s not looking at me. It’s watching Jayne. It appears to be completely unaware of me. I consider slinking down out of sight and cowering on my knees, focus hard on trying not to see all those graphic sex pictures on the inside walls of my skull like I’m seeing now.