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“Then why don’t you do it?” Fix asked in a very polite, mild tone. “Your Majesty.”
“She is unwilling to … take my calls,” Mab said. “She will do as she will—but she should be informed. It is her right.”
Fix frowned, but Sarissa lifted a finger and said, “She’s right. Go now.” The Summer Knight nodded, bowed to her, and immediately withdrew. I was impressed with that. He’d been unwilling to expose the previous Summer Lady to danger, to a paranoid degree. Sarissa had evidently established a different dynamic to their relationship.
“Queen Mab,” came Ebenezar’s voice. The old man sounded calm but respectful. Mab didn’t react well to aggression, and even worse to weakness. “If I may ask … where is the Winter Knight?”
“He was last seen consorting with Ms. Raith,” Mab said in an offhand voice. She glanced in my direction, and her eyes suddenly became bright green and very cold. “Rest assured he will participate in the defense of the city as soon as he has concluded his business.”
Ebenezar’s jaw hardened. “Ma’am, with respect. I will need to coordinate with him. The sooner the better.”
“I will send him to you,” Mab said, turning a cool gaze to the old man.
Ebenezar met her eyes for a moment and then nodded a stiff-necked acceptance.
Great. Now I had this to explain.
“Very well, then,” Marcone said. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you could each send someone with executive decision-making capability with me, we will establish a command center for the city’s defense… .”
The room stirred, generally speaking, voices rising as people started moving, and I took Mab’s hint. I also had business to conclude. The evening had gone completely sideways, sure—but whatever the result of the battle, if Etri was still around afterward, he’d be after my brother. Right now, the only thing keeping him from hunting down and killing Thomas was Ethniu’s major distraction, and the fact that no one had yet realized that Thomas had escaped. It had just become even more urgent that I get him clear.
There was only one place that I could do that, and there was little time to do it in. Mab’s instructions had been crystalline, even to me—get it done and get back.
I headed for the door through a sea of worried monochrome faces, and hit the night running.
31
Being the Winter Knight mostly sucks, but it comes with a few perks that can be damned handy.
First, I’m strong. Not like Spider-Man strong, but I’m about as strong as someone built like me can be, and I’m not exactly a tiny guy. I’d gotten myself mostly dead as part of the deal, and by the time I’d gotten back to the world of the living, my body had wasted down to nothing. Part of recovery had been physical training—a whole hell of a lot of it. And since the constant primal pressure of the mantle could be safely eased through intense exercise, I’d kept it up.
It didn’t turn me into an instant superhero or anything, but you don’t want me punching you in the nose, either.
Second, I can have issues noticing pain and discomfort. Mostly, that means things like cutting myself a lot while shaving. Sometimes when I stand up after reading for a long time, I don’t notice that my leg has gone to sleep and I fall down. I have to really pay attention to notice pain, most of the time. It’s probably been good for me to work on a little more self-awareness, but it isn’t much fun.
On the other hand, when you’re doing something to which pain is a serious obstacle, like running, it can be really convenient.
The average fit young person can manage about sixteen or eighteen miles an hour over a short distance. Top human sprint speed is about twenty-eight miles an hour. I can’t run that fast. But I can run considerably faster than average, maybe twenty-two or twenty-four miles an hour, and I can do it without slowing down for more or less as long as is necessary.
So when I hit the streets, I was really moving. I knew it wouldn’t take me long to reach the waterfront. In fact, my biggest worry was that I would break an ankle and not notice it until I’d kept running and pounded my foot to pulp.
But Chicago’s streets had changed.
Cars had simply come to a halt, dead in their rows. There were no streetlights, no lights in buildings, no signs, no traffic lights. No nothing. People had gotten out of their cars and were standing together in small groups, nervously talking. Everyone was holding a phone in their hands. None of the devices were working. The only human-made illumination came from, here and there, emergency road flares that people had deployed as light sources. If there hadn’t been a waxing moon, it would have been too dark to move as fast as I was.
It was eerily silent. Chicago was a busy place. At any time of the day or night, you could hear any number of the sounds of the modern world: radios blaring, deep bass notes from someone’s tricked-out car stereo, traffic, horns, sirens, construction equipment, public announcements, tests of the emergency broadcast system, what have you.
All of that was gone.
The only sounds were worried voices and my running footsteps.
There weren’t any screams. There wasn’t any smoke.
Not yet.
But it was coming. My God, it was coming. If Ethniu and the Fomor hit the city during the blackout, the resulting chaos could kill tens of thousands independently of whether anyone swung a blade or fired a shot. The sudden blackout had to have killed people in hospitals, in automobile collisions, maybe even in airplanes. I mean, how would I know? I couldn’t see the highways. A plane could have gone down a few blocks away and if I hadn’t seen it happen, and if there weren’t any fires to mark it, I’d never be able to tell from here.
The Accorded nations were preparing for all-out war. Freaking Ferrovax was involved.
I ran for the docks, and as I did, I realized something truly terrifying:
I had no idea what was coming next.
This was out of my experience, beyond what I knew of the world. The supernatural nations might have their issues, and when we fought sometimes there was collateral damage—but for the most part, we kept it among us. Old ruins, jungles, deserts, underground caverns, that was where we did most of our fighting.
Not in cities.
Not in the streets of freaking Chicago.
I mean, my God, she had kicked Mab through walls. Mab. Walls, plural. Ethniu had gone through her as if she didn’t exist.
A creature with power like that might not be impressed by a mere seven or eight billion mortals. She might very well be determined to play this one old-school, and a protogod’s idea of old-school probably checked in around the same weight class as Sodom and Gomorrah.
Before the night was out, the city would fight for its life. My grandfather and my friends and allies on the Council would be in the middle of it. My God, I had to get Thomas clear of it before it got started. I had to warn people. I mean, the supernatural-community grapevine would be spreading this one like wildfire, and everyone would be paying attention because I’d spread the word for everyone to keep their eyes open—but that left the rest of Chicago. Ninety-nine percent and then some of the city’s populace would have no idea what was going on when the attack began.
Like, zero idea.
And being initiated to the supernatural world was difficult even when it happened gently—much less when it rolled up and ripped someone’s face off.
