“It’s best that we not speak of these things in here,” he told Torvik.
Torvik continued to swing his legs.“Okay.What should we do?Play a game?There are tons of games me and my friends play.”
Aphid leaned his shoulder against the stone wall and glanced at the boy.“Ever played the silent game?”
He frowned.“You mean thequietgame?”
Aphid shook his head.“Silence is not the same thing as quiet.It’s probably not something you could win at.We probably shouldn’t attempt it.”
“How do you know?I may be the best silent game troll out there,” Torvik said, his voice filled with indignation.
Aphid pretended to think about it and then said, “Okay, if you’re sure you want to try.I mean, it’s okay if you don’t?—”
“I can do it,” he demanded.
“Okay then.The silent game begins as soon as I’m done explaining.You cannot make a single sound.Even your breathing must be soundless.” The little troll started to ask a question but Aphid smoothly lifted his finger to his lips.With a soundless pout, the little Torvik sat with his arms folded and his amber eyes staring out into the cavern looking about as happy as a turkey on harvesting day.
CHAPTER9
“The living always mistake restraint for weakness.They call it balance.I call it fear dressed in pretty robes.”~ Raja
Raja had forgottenhow loud the human realm was.Not merely sound, though there was plenty of that.Sirens screamed in the distance, their wails tangling through the smoke-choked air.Metal groaned somewhere to his left, the long, slow complaint of a structure settling into its own destruction.Glass shattered in bursts, small and musical, like brittle laughter breaking apart.Humans cried out in pain, in fear, in rage, their voices threaded through the dark in ragged waves.The city around him pulsed with frantic life, every heartbeat a small, desperate drum begging not to be silenced.
But beneath the noise was something far more delicious.
Desire.
It poured from them in waves he could feel against his skin like heat from an open furnace.Fear.Greed.Hunger.Rage.Grief.Need.So many brittle little souls packed into streets and towers and tiny boxes of light, all of them pretending civility was anything more than a thin cloth laid over rot.When in reality, all they really thought of was themselves.How will this affectme?How much time will this takeme?Me, me, me.That’s all humans think about.Themselves.And if it doesn’t benefit them in some way, then don’t count on them.
Raja stood in the middle of a ruined avenue, his hands clasped loosely behind his back as smoke curled around his boots in slow, searching coils.A bus lay overturned thirty yards away, its windows blown outward, its side peeled open like the skin of a split fruit.A traffic light swung from a bent pole near the intersection, blinking red into the haze as if order still mattered in a place this thoroughly undone.The air tasted of copper and burning rubber, and Raja drew a slow breath through his nose, savoring it the way another man might savor wine.
He smiled.
Yes, the human realm was uglier than he remembered, and far more useful.
A demon crouched near the wreckage of the bus, its long, spidered fingers buried wrist-deep in the chest of a dead man while it fed on the fading warmth of terror still clinging to the body.Two vampires lingered at the edge of the street, cautious now, no longer drunk on the chaos Celise and her sisters, now long gone, had unleashed across the city hours before.They watched Raja with the careful stillness of predators who had finally recognized a greater predator in their midst.
Good.Recognition saved time.
One of the vampires, a pale male with blood smeared along his mouth and soaked into the collar of his shirt, took a single step forward.His boots crunched over broken glass.
“What are you?”
Raja turned his head slowly, the movement deliberate, unhurried, as if he had all the time in the world.Which, he did.Who would be able to go against him?No one.The wolves were a complete wreck after losing one of their precious healers and her mate.It would take time for them to gather their emotions and mourn their loss–emotional beings that they were.
The vampire froze.
Such a small thing, that first flicker of fear.Barely a spark.But Raja felt it.Tasted it.Pulled it through the air without lifting a hand.The vampire’s face went slack as the terror rose inside him and then left him all at once, and his knees hit the cracked pavement with a dull, wet sound.
Raja sighed, soft and almost patient.“You asked the wrong question.”
The vampire’s body trembled, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly, fangs gleaming in the strobing red of the broken light above.
“The question is not what I am.”Raja stepped closer, his boots silent on the ruined asphalt, and when he spoke again he lowered his voice, though every creature in the street heard him as clearly as if he had whispered directly into their ears.“The question is what are you willing to become?”
The vampire’s eyes widened.
Around them, the demons stilled, their clawed fingers pausing mid-motion.Even the one crouched over the corpse lifted its head, yellow eyes narrowing as something older and far more dangerous than it had ever encountered moved through the smoke.
