I closed the distance to the enormous Hunger, half a foot taller than me, planting my feet, twisting at the hips, pushing through my legs, and throwing my right fist forward in a strike that brushed past the chin of Thomas’s physical body and slammed into the space where the Hunger’s nose should have been in a right cross that would have dropped a big man into a boneless heap.
The impact sent a ripple of red light in a languid wave that washed over the Hunger’s empty face and simultaneously up my forearm and biceps to my shoulder. Its head rocked back and then whipped toward me, silver eyes blazing. The muscles in its forearms knotted, huge hands squeezing, and Thomas let out a slow gasp of pure agony.
I felt my energy-form seize the Hunger’s arms, plungingthroughThomas’s body to do it, my fingers crushing down on the emaciated thing’s wrists, digging in hard, forcing the grip to loosen.
“I forbid thee!” I thundered from my physical body. I was repeating it over and over, at least in intention, but my lips moved like they were trapped in amber, every motion and sound dragged from them over the course of a small eon.
The Hunger’s silver eyes widened in sudden shock as I crushed its grip into looseness. Then I set my teeth, leveraging my whole body in the motion, and slowly forced its hands away from my brother.
“That’s right, big guy,” I snarled from lips without physical form. “You aren’t the Hulk here.”
And I started dragging the Hunger over toward the other side of the infinity symbol carved within the circle.
But its huge eyes whirled and spun in a mad silver-on-silver spiral, and its voice slithered into my head like cold oil.I know thee, wizard. I have fought by thy side again and again.
“Thomas did that,” I spat. “That was never you.”
The Hunger’s lips split into a too-wide grin.Didst thou never question his love of danger? His desire for violence? His skill at battle? Never was that of his own heart. That was me. Ever, ’twas me.
And with the words, the Hunger twisted, its strength snaking sinuously, reversing, and suddenly I was fighting for my life as one of its huge hands surged against everything I could do and began to close aroundmythroat.
“Thomas!” screamed Lara, the sound ringing out painfully slow in the red light.
My eyes flicked toward him. His body was falling, slowly, pale eyes rolled back in his head. He was falling to the floor like a crash test dummy, boneless and helpless.
“You’re killing him!” I snarled to the Hunger. Its long fingers closed on my throat and began to tighten like a constrictor, patient and powerful and lithe. A chill went through me, and suddenly my voice was cut off.
Child who thinks it understands,the Hunger’s voice purred in my head.He has already surrendered to the inevitable. I but claim the life he has yielded to the void. The life in which I made him vital, strong. Yet before I snuff out that final spark, I can devour more, if you would force it upon me.
Its other hand twisted from my weakening grip, sinking into the flesh of my spiritual form, closing around the energy point, the chakra of my heart.
I gasped, from both physical and spiritual bodies, and suddenly the red light blurred to orange and then yellow, and then the green of the crystalline chamber, and time flowed normally again.
Thomas hit the floor like a dead fish.
My heart and my belly twisted in absolute terror.
I felt the strength going out of me, felt the demon tearing it away from me, drinking the energy of my life like blood. I felt my knees buckle.
“Dresden!” Lara snapped. She lunged in front of me as my balance wavered, hands on my shoulders, bracing me up. “Dresden, what’s happening?”
I felt the cold spreading through my body, and it wasn’t pleasant at all. It was ugly, nauseating, mindlessly malicious, devouring, a cold like must exist in space, ripping from me everything it touched, unable to be truly satiated.
I tried to answer Lara, but it was like my lungs and throat had turned to ice.
I could feel myself dying. Sound faded. My vision grew dimmer.
Yes,the Hunger growled, in my head.Now you understand. Empty Night. The end of all motion, all joy, all passion, all fear, all pain. The end of all. The absolute, perfect, unblemished silence. Empty Night, wizard.
And it tightened its grip upon me.
And the cold became everything.
Chapter
Forty-Eight
Empty Night.
