Jacob stalked through the doorway, his golden features bathed in shadow and crackling with a violent luminescence. The wind tore at his clothing and his hair, wrapping him in a whirlwind that nearly lifted him off the ground.
His green eyes glowed with an otherworldly light.
The slipshots and shills dropped to their knees and screamed, terror contorting their faces. The spirits and figments flickered, cutting in and out of reality. Without looking at them, Jacob swiped his hand through the air, and all of Jagger’s creatures lining the walls dropped to the floor. Unconscious? Dead? Their screams were cut off.
Even the spirits crumpled into boneless heaps.
Shadow and light pulsed around Jacob. It expanded and retracted, making a strange whoom-whoom-whoom sound in my ears.
“Jacob,” the Clark said. It sounded like a curse.
Jacob didn’t look at the Clark. He didn’t look at me or Jagger or Griff or Justice.
When he’d first stepped through the dining room doorway, he’d scanned the room, discarding everything and everyone until he found the person he was looking for. Once he’d found him, nothing and no one else existed.
He stalked across the hall, the wind ripping at him and roaring.
I’d once, years ago, seen a growling driven mindless with bloodlust. Growlings were predators by nature, with very little restraint, but if you starved them and then tossed a creature their way, they’d lose what little control they had. Nothing, not even bullets or electric shocks, could keep a growling from tearing a creature apart in the middle of its bloodlust.
Jagger had once used a growling’s bloodlust as entertainment. The growling had displeased him, so he’d starved it, induced bloodlust, and then laughed as the creature tore apart its own mate. It was so focused on the kill it didn’t realize what it had done until it was too late.
Jacob had the same predatory bloodlust intent as that growling.
Darkness leached into the hall, and a cold wind ripped across us.
How long had it been since the first scream? Twenty seconds? Thirty?
“Luvic,” Jacob said, and his voice was a terrible ringing gong.
Last flinched and covered her ears.
“Ward,” Luvic snarled. A growl sounded low in his throat. If he’d had hackles, they would’ve been raised.
But then the rattling growl was cut off.
Luvic screamed.
It tore out of him. It ripped through his throat and tore away every pretense he’d ever had. It was agonized, mournful, terrified. It was the scream of a man locked in a coffin, buried beneath the earth, his fingernails ripped free as he tried to claw his way to freedom. And couldn’t. It was the scream of a man forced to live a million agonies; a thousand torments. The sun was eclipsed, and it was never coming back.
His scream shredded me. It raked fingernails down my skin and left me bleeding. It felt like the moment I’d gripped the knife, thrust it into Finn’s heart, and watched the life leak from his eyes. It was the agony of knowing I’d killed the one man who trusted me with his life.
“Stop!” the Bard screamed. “Stop!”
He twisted his hand, thrusting a nightmarish miasma at Jacob.
Jacob conjured a blinding ray of light that swallowed the nightmare. Still, Luvic screamed. He collapsed to his knees. Blood dripped from his mouth.
“Stop him!” the Bard shouted at me.
I shook my head. “He’s not . . . he’s not conjuring.”
He wasn’t. There was no illusion. There were no knots. It was that same darkness—the anti-illusion I’d sensed in the north. Whatever Jacob was doing, I couldn’t stop it.
The Bard stumbled back, shoved by the wind.
The Clarks kept their distance, hunched underneath the whirlwind’s barrage.
Luvic’s voice broke. He gripped his head in his hand, his eyes unseeing. His shoulders shook as he kneeled on the ground.
