The rune in his hand exploded. The shockwave shattered the glass cabinets and knocked Daud back to the floor. The tower room was filled with exploding glass; Daud rolled onto his front, shielding himself as the debris rained down. His eyes were screwed shut, but he could see a blue light, so bright it was blinding, and all he could hear was the guttural roar of his own voice as he screamed and screamed again until his throat felt shredded.
What had gone wrong? Had he forgotten how to use runes? Or had it been too long—had something changed as he had aged? Or had he simply lost control? Rather than channeling the power of the rune into himself, perhaps he had reversed the process, diminishing his own power and overloading the artifact?
That thought did not sit well. If he needed power, then he couldn’t risk trying another rune. Norcross’s specialcollection housed dozens of them, and there were none he dared touch now.
Finally, there was silence, save for the tinkle of broken glass. Daud opened his eyes.
And found himself staring at his own face.
He blinked, his breath catching in his throat even as his chest heaved. He stared at the face—the dark hair, streaked with gray, hanging across the brow. The beard, long and thick and black, the gray stripe down the middle; the whiskers caked in dust and wet with spit. The scar, running down the right side of the face, skirted the eye before vanishing into the beard.
It was the face of an obsessive. A loner, standing apart from the world, years of running from his own history culminating in a new monomania, the all-consuming reason for his being.
He blinked again, and reached for the large shard of black mirror that lay on the floor in front of him. He recognized it—the artifact from the other pedestal, some kind of heretical object worthy of displaying next to the Twin-bladed Knife. Despite the carnage of the tower room, the object was undamaged, and as he looked at his own image in its pure, metallic surface, Daud felt as though he could almost reach through the glass and the liquid surface would part for him, allowing him access to the Void itself.
As he knelt on the floor, he found himself doing just that, his right hand creeping closer toward it, fingers outstretched, reaching for the shadow world beyond the mirror’s horizon. In the mirror he saw something—someone—moving, far away, walking toward him across a desolate landscape of metal and ash. It was a young man: dark hair, dark eyes, his arms folded, his very being radiating sheer, unbridled arrogance—
That was when he heard the sound. Footsteps, running, and relatively close. Daud looked up, ready to see Norcross and his bodyguard arrive from their secret panic room.
What he saw instead was a figure dressed in a black suit, the tail of his coat flying as he bounded across the tower lobby and raced down the stairs.
It must be one of the intruders—disturbed by Daud, and now taking their window of escape.
Daud stood and reached out with a roar, transversing the gap between where he was kneeling and the top of the tower stairs in the blink of an eye. Ahead, he could hear the intruder leaping down the stairs as he fled. Daud wasted no time. He moved down the stairs, bouncing from the curved exterior wall of the tower as he rematerialized in split-second intervals down the side of the staircase. He traveled past the man in black, arrived at the bottom of the tower and quickly turned and transversed back up into his quarry’s path.
His forearm connected with the man’s throat, throwing him backward onto the stone stairs. Before the intruder had even touched the stairs, Daud grabbed the man under the armpit and shifted back up and around the tower staircase three times, reappearing in the tower room in a hurricane of debris. He felt a shard of glass pierce his face, the blood running down his beard and into the corner of his mouth. He licked at it, tasted copper, and then with one arm threw the intruder up into the air. Daud moved forward, traveling just a couple of feet, and caught the man’s suspended body by the neck once more before throwing him into one of the shattered display cabinets. The man rolled his head, blinking away dust. He was battered, but alive.
Just as Daud intended.
He transversed the short distance across to the manand grabbed him by the lapels of his coat. Daud’s tight grip tore the man’s shirt, revealing a large tattoo on his exposed chest—a hollow triangle, with a cross emerging from one side. Daud peered at it with a frown. The symbol was unusual, perhaps marking the intruder as part of a gang. Daud ignored it and pulled the man’s face up to his own.
“Where have you taken it?” he roared.
The man screwed up his face, his arms swimming uselessly as he struggled to get away. Daud did nothing but tighten his grip.
“Listen to me,” Daud snarled. “You’ve taken something I need. The Knife. Where. Is. It?”
The man squinted at his attacker and began to laugh, which sounded like more of a choking cough as his fingers feebly pulled on Daud’s hand.
Daud snarled and relented, letting go. The intruder dropped back into the ruined cabinet and rolled onto his side, feeling his neck as he sucked in great lungfuls of air.
Grabbing him by the jacket again, Daud drove his fist into the man’s stomach, then as his victim wheezed for breath, he pulled him up until they were nose to nose.
The man tried to focus on Daud’s face. He laughed. “You’ll never find it.”
Daud’s lips curled into a snarl. “I can make your death fast or I can make it slow. You choose.”
The man laughed again, and Daud let
