“Do you think they can be killed?” Nyx wondered. We were now only a few hundred feet from the warehouse, and the mass of crawling, buzzing creatures swarming over it. They didn’t seem to notice us, their attention entirely focused on what was inside. “If they’re related to the Monster, they could be immune to glamour.”
I took a breath and felt the cold, killing rage in me expand. “Kenzie,” I said without turning to look at her, “take Razor and get back. There’s a lot of small, fast creatures, and we don’t know what they’re capable of. A dozen enemies we could kill quickly, but there might be thousands of these things, and if they’re immune to glamour...”
“Say no more.” Kenzie sighed, and I felt her take a step back, surprising me. I had half expected her to protest. “Razor and I will be leaving the battle zone now, don’t worry about us. I know when to hold my ground and when to get the hell out of the way so the big powers can handle things. Ethan...” I felt her and Meghan’s brother share a look. “Be careful.”
“I will,” Ethan promised, and Kenzie walked away, her footsteps crunching over gravel, until she and Razor disappeared into the shadows.
As soon as the footsteps had faded, Meghan moved beside me, power and glamour rising around her and making the air crackle. “All right,” she murmured, as my own magic swirled up in response. Overhead, the sky darkened, the moon and stars disappearing as black clouds formed, billowing and ominous. “Let’s get to Keirran. Ash?”
That’s what I had been waiting for. I gave a vicious smile and threw out an arm, sending a wave of winter glamour at my enemies.
A storm of glittering ice daggers streaked through the air, slamming into the hordes clinging to the warehouse walls. Several of them instantly exploded into coils of black smoke that dissolved in the wind, leaving a shrieking echo ringing in my head.
“Oh, well,” Puck said, as the entire swarm immediately exploded into motion, wings droning as they rose into the air. I had kicked the hornet’s nest, and now they were coming for us. “Here we go. I always forget to bring that can of OFF! for these adventures.”
The mass of nightmare piskies descended toward us, thousands of wings a droning hum in my ears. As they drew close, the cloud seemed to shift and change, as hundreds of tiny bodies merged into one huge, looming creature. A giant appeared, glowing eyes peering down on us, as it opened a gaping, shifting mouth and roared.
Lightning streaked from Meghan’s hand, slamming into the giant’s center, and the creature instantly exploded into thousands of swarming fey. Hissing, they rose up and came at us like wasps, and the air was suddenly filled with tiny black creatures zipping around us.
Whispers surrounded me, buzzing in my ears and making my teeth vibrate. This close, the creatures were a condensed cloud of anger and fury, a mire of frantically swirling emotion. And suddenly, I could feel a different type of glamour in the air around us, one of rage and hate, violence and fear. The ugliest of human emotions, with nothing to filter them. My Unseelie nature stirred, and I was tempted to reach out, to use the fury spinning around us. There was power there; I could feel it, an anger that called to the Unseelie within, urging it to let go, to draw that glamour to me and release it in a violent explosion of ice and death.
The piskies descended on us, blurs of motion and darting wings. I felt several land on me, driving needle teeth into my skin with tiny, red-hot jabs of pain. Vaguely, I was aware of Puck fighting at my side, of Nyx being a whirlwind of deadly grace, darting in and out of the swarm. I could sense Meghan and Ethan behind me, felt the flare of Meghan’s power snapping at our enemies, but even they were blips of motion in my consciousness.
I closed my mind to it all, and reached out to the nightmare glamour.
There was a flare of power, along with an immediate spike of rage. I felt my Winter glamour surge up, cold and deadly, bolstered by the infusion of strange magic. There was strength in anger, in fury and hatred, and the Unseelie side reveled in the power coursing through my veins.
I directed that rage at the creatures swirling around us, and released that energy into the cloud.
There was a burst of frigid glamour, and for a moment, everything went completely silent. The sound of their wings stopped, the shrill hisses and shrieking cut out, and everything hung in icy stillness. I looked up to see nearly all of the swarm frozen in midair, wings iced over, tiny bodies rimmed in frost. For a split second, they hung there like crystal ornaments. Then, as one, the entire frozen horde dropped to the ground, shattering like glass against the pavement.
I breathed deep, feeling the rage subside and the ripple of strange glamour fade. The others lowered their arms, watching as the rest of the few remaining piskies scattered, flying over the tops of buildings and out of sight. None of them gave me odd or wary looks, not even Meghan. I had used this particular glamour technique before; it wasn’t anything new. But the power I’d felt when tapping in to my anger was instant and overwhelming. For a moment, I’d felt like the Winter prince again.
“Brr,” Puck complained, rubbing his arms where a coating of frost had spread over his skin. “Not that I mind when you do the whole instant-blizzard thing, ice-boy, but a little warning would be nice. I hate it when my nose hairs freeze.”
Kenzie appeared, walking back across the lot with Razor buzzing irritably on her shoulder. The gremlin kept glancing up, scanning the sky as if he feared piskies would dive-bomb him from above.
“That was fast,” Kenzie remarked, observing the carpet of dead, melting piskies fading to nothing on the ground. “So, now that the bugs are gone, we should be able to see what they were so attracted to.”
“Hopefully the princeling,” Puck said. “And a lot of Forgotten. Unless that’s a honey factory in there.”
Meghan caught my gaze, a shadow of worry crossing her face. But she turned toward the warehouse, hope and fear mingling with concern as she gazed up at it.
“I can feel a barrier surrounding the building,” she murmured. “It’s weak, flickering, but composed of all three magics—Summer, Winter, and Iron.”
All three glamours. “It’s Keirran,” I growled, and strode across the lot with the rest of them at my heels.
As I vaulted up the steps to the heavy steel doors, I could suddenly feel what Meghan was talking about. A shield of glamour encased the whole warehouse like a shell, pulsing with energy that made part of me—the winter side—want to recoil and back away.
“Ouch,” Puck said, shivering as he took a step back. “That’s a pretty impressive barrier. Summer-, Winter-, and Iron-repellant, huh? Whoever is on the other side definitely doesn’t want anyone coming through.”
“Hang on,” Ethan said, coming up the steps. “I’m immune. Glamour doesn’t affect me, so it shouldn’t—ow!”