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With a wince, her very bones screaming in agony, Loren pushed to her feet among rubble, blinking fiercely into the sudden blackness.
No, that wasn’t smoke.
That was night—shadow.
The Void. The dimensions had collided, the preternatural blackness of that other realm invading their own.
And within that blackness, horrible things began to bay. Jaws and teeth and bones clicked. Claws scraped on rubble and clinked on shattered glass. Fell things scuttled in the dark, some of them hissing, others snuffling in search of prey.
“Malakai?” Loren called, the word as brittle as she felt. Using her magic had hollowed her out, and while the explosion had not killed her, it had still taken its toll. Her heart felt weak, her head heavy, limbs buzzing as if it were acid flowing through her veins instead of blood.
Every part of her body hurt. The bodysuit was all but shredded, and she felt something wet and warm trickling down her arms and legs. Her back.
She reached over her shoulder, wincing as her fingertips grazed the shredded flesh of her back. That warm wetness was blood, the rusty scent of it calling out to the creatures she could sense nearby, the monsters swarming the streets all around her. The creatures she could not see.
Something moved to her left. Breathing noisily in the dark.
Scenting her.
Heart shooting into her throat, she turned toward the sound. Backed up several paces, rock clacking underfoot. “Malakai?” she called again.
It was the otherworldly cry of a creature that answered her. The rasp of claws on stone.
She held her breath. Choked down her scream. She staggered through the dark, hand held out before her to keep from bumping into things, the other poised to grab her gun, should she need it. It might not be able to kill most breeds that had come through the Veil, but it was better than having nothing.
Through the darkness, she walked, covering barely any distance, the eruption of pavement nearly impossible to maneuver when she couldn’t see. The darkness was pressing, as if someone had pulled a blanket over her head.
A dry cough cut through the eerie quiet.
“Malakai?” she said again, hushed now.
“Loren?”
“I’m here,” she said, her words choked with relief. She stumbled toward the sound of his voice, her feet catching in rubble.
“Where?” he rasped.
She closed the last few paces to his side. Her toe caught in a crevice of rock, and she crashed to the ground beside him, pain splitting through her kneecaps. Loren felt around for him, her hand at last closing around his searching fingers. “Here,” she said, feeling the raw skin of his callused fingers, the blood coating it. “I’m right here.”
“I can’t see anything, girl.”
“Hold on—hold on, I’ve got an idea.” She had one bead of magic left—just one. She could feel it humming in her core, a tiny spark waiting to gutter out.
She closed her eyes, resisting the urge to tremble when it made no difference to her surroundings…and pushed her unusual Sight into her vision, like she had that night at the carnival.
When she reopened them, she could see again—not as if the darkness was gone, but…as if she were a hellseher.
Quickly, she scanned the Void. The auras and energies; the spells rippling over the buildings, the magic sputtering with the effort to keep working. Her protection had kept the Control Tower from fully coming down, leaving the buildings that remained standing with at least partial protection.
Nobody in the immediate area was still alive. The only sentient creatures that stalked among the rubble were different breeds of monster, all of them equally terrifying.
“Loren?” Malakai ground out. He blindly felt around for her in the dark.
“I can see,” she whispered. She grasped his other hand, holding them both now. “I can see,” she said again.
“How?” His hands squeezed hers. “Did I go blind?”
“No.” She shook her head. “No—it’s the Void. It’s swallowing everything.” There was a lump in her throat, and she couldn’t get it down. “Can you see with your Sight? Anything?”
