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Prudence Leung, taking charge as always, lifted her hand. “It’s okay, Dust,” she said. She looked to Herald, then to Bastion. “The Scions are hesitant to act, to say the least. They say that – they say that there isn’t firm enough evidence of the return of the Eldest.”
“Foolishness,” Carver hissed, slamming his fist on the table. “Rampant stupidity, when it was one of their very number that set the gears into motion and attracted the attention of the Old Ones to begin with.”
“It almost feels deliberate,” Bastion said, his tone uncharacteristically nervous. “Odessa at least is willing to listen, but what’s one voice against many? The Scions put it to a vote, and for now, they aren’t planning to acknowledge the Eldest as a threat.”
How could anyone think that? I chewed my burger angrily, but with relish, refusing to let the terrible direction this conversation was heading spoil my appetite. And yet – and yet I got roped into it anyway.
“What about Royce?” I said, my mouth half full. “Can’t he vouch for us? He’s a Scion, too. Surely his voice counts as well.”
Herald shook his head, his arms folded across his chest. “There’s the tiny matter of the Scions generally being displeased with Royce’s performance as of late. That whole mess with Mona, and the Prism, and the Tome of Annihilation? Hardly anyone takes him seriously anymore.”
I was involved in, oh, basically all of those things, and I knew that Herald didn’t say all that to make me feel bad, but I almost felt guilty about being so singlehandedly instrumental to ruining Royce’s professional reputation. Almost. I mean the guy was a dick.
“Fools,” Carver said. “Idiots. The lot of them.” He bared his teeth as he took his frustrations out on a bottle of hot sauce, squirting way too much of it over his open-faced burger. It looked like a bloodbath.
“Carver,” I said. “That’s way too much hot sauce for one person.” He’d drenched the entire surface of his exposed patty. Even just looking at it made my throat burn.
“Spare me,” Carver scoffed. “This diluted fire water of yours does nothing for me.”
He muttered to himself as he reassembled his burger, and I caught snatches of what could have been Arabic, or what could have been Sumerian for all I knew. There really was no telling with Carver, considering the sheer enormity of his brain and the dozens of languages he’d mastered over the centuries.
Asking him never helped anyway. He always got touchy, scolding us for our “bloody well annoying insistence on dwelling on origins.” The closest answer we ever got was “Some place filled with burning sand, scorching desert winds, and more magical might than you could ever dream of.” Which could be somewhere in Egypt just as easily as it could be the Grand Canyon, but never mind that for now.
It was like dealing with a cranky grandfather who had lived hundreds upon hundreds of years, one stuck in the body of a mysterious and stylish forty-year-old business tycoon. Not for the first time I considered the vainer, more practical benefits of magical immortality, but I knew for a fact that Carver had done some pretty shady things to attain lichdom. I wasn’t sure I had quite the stomach for that.
“Listen, Carver,” I said. “Let’s just drop the issue. We all came here to have a good time, right? This was supposed to be a chill afternoon.” I sighed when he made a face. “That means relaxed. Don’t take everything so literally.”
I watched expectantly for a response as he slowly chewed, then swallowed a bite of his ass-blastingly spicy hamburger. He wasn’t looking at any of us, for some reason. He was just staring over my shoulder for – well, something behind me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to look.
“Carver? Seriously. There’s been no news about the Eldest in weeks. Surely that’s a good sign. Maybe we’ve brought things to a halt somehow. Let’s just have a little fun. Put off dealing with the Eldest for as long as we can.”
“Oh,” he said, putting his burger down on his paper
plate, dabbing at the corner of his mouth with a napkin. “I do hope you’re prepared to eat your words, Mister Graves.”
Everyone sprang to their feet and whirled on their heels, searching for the thing that Carver was staring at.
Oh. Uh-oh.
It was a rift, shaped like an oval. Brilliant and white, the trademark of the portals that belonged to the Eldest. In its center was a black dot, so that it looked like an eye set on its side. The dirge song that came with its appearance hummed and shrieked through the air, so dissonant in contrast to the bustle and cheerful laughter of so many park-goers.
Of so many people. There the rift wavered, right in the middle of Heinsite Park. Right in the middle of its picnic area, full of families out for a fun weekend afternoon, full of children. Normals, all of them, and more importantly, innocents. My breath quickened as the slit in reality tore wider. The black dot in its heart grew, like a door cracking ajar.
They were coming.
Chapter 3
The normals had noticed. Who wouldn’t spot a humming, shimmering white teardrop floating in thin air, anyway? They pointed and gasped, probably thinking it was some kind of spectacle, a holographic light show, never mind that technology wasn’t even close to being good enough for that kind of shit.
I turned to the others, already panicking about our next move, when Bastion fell to one knee, smashing his fist into the earth. He hadn’t missed a beat. That was why the Lorica held him in such high regard. Forget his arrogance and his overbearing personality for one minute: he’d started preparing a shielding spell just as soon as he spotted the tear.
The field of protection spread over us, gleaming in the air like a huge glass bell jar, infused with one of Bastion’s special augmentations. Like any other of his shields, this dome would keep the normals out, but he’d also imbued it with a glamour that would prevent them from seeing what was happening within.
For the Mouths, wiping away the memory of a picnic table and nine people disappearing would be a damn sight easier than the alternative. What stories would they even have to spin if the normals saw the horrors of the rift? Either way, Royce and his PR team were going to have a hell of a time cleaning this one up.
Of course, that also meant that we were locked in with the rift – and with the shrikes that began to pour out of it in the shrieking, gibbering dozens.
I glanced over my shoulder, desperately searching for my father. “Dad,” I yelled. “Get back. Run for cover!”
