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!