Iced

But this is different. I’m feeling panic with a capital P. Crazy, dumb, blind panic. All the sudden, for no reason I can figure, I’m ducking like a rabbit in the middle of a huge, open field with no cover for miles and the sky just went dark with hawks, flying wingtip to wingtip. Death seems that certain. One swoop, a rustle of wings, and I’m gone. All because of some weird spot in the air. What the feck? I’m panicking because of a shimmer in the air? Dude, what’s it going to do to me? Give me a Twilight moment, make me all shimmery, too?

I’m torn between fighting to run and staying put so I can see what’s happening because I can’t conceive of anything that could panic me so bad and I need to see it! I’m tired of these eyeballs missing all the exciting stuff lately!

I realize I’m not the only one freaking out. Everybody that was trying to get my sword is suddenly scrambling away from the dock like they’re running for their lives, which I take it to mean we’re all in agreement about not liking unexplained shimmery spots in the air. I see my blade is still flying up, but it’s moving slow like it’s about to come back down. If I could just get Fade and Kasteo off my fecking arms, I’d rush in and catch it … well, maybe I would. I’m not real sure about that because my feet aren’t obeying a thing I’m telling them about moving forward. Much to my annoyance, they’re inching me backward.

The princes vanish.

Jayne and the Guardians are rushing straight for us.

Christian, Lor, and his men freeze-frame out, then Lor’s replaced the other two dudes and has my arm, and he’s dragging me away from the dock.

Then we’re all retreating and I grin when I realize we’re backing together, shoulder-to-shoulder, in tight formation. Jayne’s next to Kasteo, who’s next to Christian, who’s next to a Guardian, and way down at the end are the full-blood princes, which totally freaks me because I can’t figure anything they’d back away from. There are more balls in twenty feet of street here than there are in all of Dublin, and I’m proud to be swaying in the nut sack. We might fight each other, but in times of danger, we’ll fight together. Dude!

A dark slit appears in the center of the shimmering spot. My panic increases exponentially. I’d turn and run but I’m anchored by two dudes that could hold the Titanic during a tsunami.

The slit widens and belches thick fog. I shiver. Frozen fog becomes hard rime. Hard rime coated every person that got iced and died.

The caged Unseelie howl like banshees, and the one making that horrible screeling noise finally nails its hellish crescendo. The windows that didn’t shatter when Dancer’s bombs went off blow out now—not in slivers and chunks—they’re literally pulverized, spraying the streets with glass dust.

The slit widens. More fog puffs out, milky and cold. The temperature plummets.

“Hold!” Jayne shouts, and we stop.

Fade says, “What the—”

Sound ceases.

The world goes silent.

Utterly.

Still.

Did I lose my hearing? Did the Unseelie’s crescendo deafen me? I can’t even hear my own breath in my ears like when I’m swimming underwater. I look at Lor. He’s looking at me and pointing to his ears. I point to my own and nod. Everybody is doing the same thing. Least if I lost my hearing, we all did.

I look back at the widening slit and the oppressive silence grows.

It’s worse than a vacuum.

It’s. Awful. It’s. Messing with my. Head. It’s …

Void.

Disconnect.

Feels like being dead.

But there’s something …

I slide into my sidhe-seer center and extend curious tentacles …

I get a mishmash of impressions but I can’t find words for them because what I’m feeling is beyond my ability to comprehend. Like I’m three-dimensional and what I’m feeling is six or seven dimensions. It’s …

Complicated.

Ancient.

Sentient.

I try to get a read on its … well, mind for lack of a better word, and all I get is a weird flash of … calculation?

Something missing. Something being searched for.

I look at Lor and see an expression on his face I’ve never seen before and never thought I’d see.

Fear.

It worries me. A lot.

He looks at Fade and Kasteo and they nod. He tightens his grip on my arm.

The slit widens and it comes.

Holy fecking crikey, it comes!

TWENTY-FOUR

“And the beat goes on”

Cruce came tonight as he always does, stealing my sleep, parting my lips and thighs, leaving me near dawn in tangled bed linens, soaking with sweat from sex and shame.

In the few moments of rest I snatch before rising, I have a terrifying dream.

I walk to the hidden entry of the catacombs with the shuffling, mindless gait of a woman dead and risen from the grave.

Margery blocks the door of stones that looks like any other wall unless you are privy to its secret. She is voluptuously nude, hair and eyes wild, smelling of him—a scent I know too well. A banshee, she shows sharp teeth in a cackle and tells me he is gone. I am too late.

With violence of which I did not believe myself capable, I shove her aside, and when she slams into the wall, she slumps down it and is still. Blood blossoms behind her head, staining red daisy petals on the wall.

Bemused by the hostility in my heart, I pass through the door and shuffle on.

The tunnels are pitch, forcing me to feel sightless passage along damp stone walls. This is not the Underneath I know: dry and well lit, with everything in its place. In this dark, moist maze, moss grows thickly on walls and bones crunch beneath my feet. The odor of decay couples with some fecund scent on the breeze. There is nothing down here to generate wind unless a thing stirs that cannot possibly be stirring.