The cobbled stones were slippery from the misting rain. I watched in horror as a young girl fell, crying out. She was trampled in seconds as the crowd swept on. An elderly man—why on earth was he out here?—went down next. A teenage boy was jostled into a streetlamp, rebounded, lost his balance, and vanished from view.
For time uncounted then, I was driven by a single imperative: Stay on your feet. Stay alive.
I rode the crowd, an unwilling mount, feet trapped in the stirrups, from one block to the next. Twice I managed to break free, fight my way to the outer fringes, only to be drowned in the herd again, propelled forward by its relentless stampede.
I feared two things: that they would gallop me straight into a Dark Zone, or that the Sinsar Dubh would make a sudden appearance, and I’d fall to my knees, clutching my head. I couldn’t decide which death would be worse.
My cell phone was in my backpack, but there wasn’t enough room to maneuver in the crowd and get to it. I worried that if I slipped my pack from my shoulders, it would be jerked from my hands and carried off. My spear was cold and heavy under my arm, but I was afraid if I whipped it out, I might be speared by it in the crush.
Unseelie.
I had baby food jars of it in my pockets.
With its dark life in my veins I would be able to break free of the mob.
We were nearing the edge of the Temple Bar District. The Dark Zone wasn’t far. Were we being deliberately driven? If I were able to float above this riot, would I see Unseelie herding us from behind, cattle to the slaughter?
“Sorry,” I muttered. “Oops, didn’t mean to hit you.” Without pissing off anyone badly enough to get myself punched, I managed to extract a jar from my pocket. I’d twisted the lids too tight to open them one-handed. I jostled for space, and popped the lid. Someone shoved into me and I lost my hold on it. I felt it hit my boot and then it was gone.
Gritting my teeth, I dug for another one. I had three in my pockets. The rest were sealed in plastic bags tucked inside my boots. I’d never be able to get to them in the crush. I was more careful with this jar, easing it out, clutching it for dear life—which I hoped it was. I had to get out of the crowd. I knew my landmarks. I was two blocks from the Dark Zone. I managed to pop the lid but was unwilling to duck my head to eat it, for fear of taking an elbow in the eye, freezing or stumbling in pain, and going down.
I raised the bottle close to my body, tossed my head back, gulped and chewed. I gagged the entire time I chewed. No matter that I’d been craving it; it was work to get it down, crunchy with gristle and cystlike sacs that popped when I chewed. It wriggled in my mouth, and crawled like spiders in my stomach. When I lowered the jar, I was looking straight into the eyes of a Rhino-boy, around the heads of two humans and, from the expression on his beady-eyed, bumpy gray face, he knew what I’d just done. He must have seen the pink-gray flesh moving in the jar as I’d tossed it back.
I guessed word was getting around, between Mallucé, and the LM, and O’Bannion and now Jayne eating them. He bellowed, ducked his head, and charged. I spun, and began violently pushing my way through the crowd. I managed to get the third bottle out, and gulped that, too, as I fought toward freedom.
The only other time I’d eaten Unseelie, I’d been mortally wounded, and close to death, so I didn’t know what to expect. Last time, it had taken several large mouthfuls just to begin the healing, and nearly ten minutes to complete the journey from dying to more alive than I’d ever been. Tonight I was whole and uninjured. Strength and power slammed into me like I’d taken a needle of adrenaline straight to my heart. A chilly heat suffused me as the potency of Fae spiked my blood.
Savage Mac raised her head, and looked out through my eyes, thought with my brain, and rearranged my limbs into a sleeker composition: powerful, predatory, padding on certain paws.
Within moments, I was free of the crowd, but in the distance, I could hear another approaching. The city had gone crazy tonight. I would learn later that Fae in human glamour had broken into houses and businesses all over town, attacked owners and residents, and driven them out into the streets, forcing the riots to begin.
I glanced back. It appeared I’d lost the Rhino-boy in the crush. Or maybe he’d decided he was more interested in the destruction of an entire mob, than measly me. Behind me was the Dark Zone. Ahead was another mob, its front wave led by Rhino-boys smashing out streetlamps with baseball bats. To my left were sounds of violence. To my right was a pitch-black alley. I slipped off my backpack, dug out my MacHalo, strapped and buckled it beneath my chin, then hit the Click-It lights, one after another, until I blazed like a small beacon. I smacked my wrists and ankles together, lighting up my hands and feet.
The mob rushed me in a great wave.
I took off down the dark alley.
I lost track of time for a while then, racing down streets and alleys, drawing up short, doubling back, trying to avoid the mobs, and evade the troops of Rhino-boys, with whom I had repeated close calls, since I could no longer sense them, now that my sidhe-seer senses were deadened by my gruesome meal.
They marched militantly, rounding up the stragglers to herd into the mobs. I crisscrossed the same blocks dozens of times, hiding in doorways and Dumpsters. I had a terrible moment where I got hemmed in between two groups of them, and was forced to sidle behind cardboard boxes in the shadows of a trash bin, and turn off all my lights to let the horde of Unseelie crash by.
I tasted death sitting there in the darkness, wondering if there were Dark “Spots”—really tiny areas where only one or two Shades lived—and any moment it might slither from a crack and get me, and the thought was almost worse than flinging myself into the middle of the passing Unseelie, which, by the way, I unzipped my Baggies and ate some of, sitting there with my knees tucked up in the darkness behind the steel bin. Maybe, as I’d once joked to Barrons, Shades really didn’t like dark meat, and they’d leave me alone.
After the troops passed, I crawled out and clicked myself back on.
Yes, people were being driven. Gathered and herded.
Lambs to the slaughter. My people.
And there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. Eating Unseelie might have transformed me from a pocketknife into an Uzi, and turned me into a walking weapon, but I was still only one weapon, and acutely aware of it. I was defense, not offense. There was no offense to be made in this city tonight. Not even Savage Mac, the cockiest of cocky, felt punchy. She felt threatened, feral. She wanted to find a cave to hide in until the odds were more in her favor. I was inclined to agree. Survival was our prime directive.