I bound forty, then fifty of the spirits to my core.
Every breath I took drained more of my foes. The first batch vanished in puffs of gray dust, and I lashed fifty more to my technique. My core swelled and stretched to accommodate the sacred energy I’d stolen.
The spirits panicked and howled for more of their brothers and sisters to come aid them. There was no answer.
Realizing what they faced, the monsters screamed and scrambled away from me. I consumed more and more of them, until my aura couldn’t hold any more aspects, and the power I stole leaked away and evaporated into nothingness. My Eclipse nature gloated over the destruction, encouraging me to kill more, to take them all. For once, I didn’t fight it.
The sages let their barrier fall and greedily cycled the jinsei that had returned to the room as I mopped up the battle’s remnants. The weight of the powerful Empyreals’ attention crashed against my aura, then slipped away like a wave pounding against a beach. Their curiosity slowly turned to fear and confusion, and I wondered if any of them really understood what, exactly, I was.
And what they’d do about it once they did.
The last of the spirits screeched and came apart. I’d done it. I’d destroyed the spirits and saved the survivors of the initial assault.
The dark urge I’d unleashed, though, was still inside me. It wanted more. The death and hunger aspects and jinsei I’d stolen didn’t satisfy it. Those had only whetted its appetite. It needed to consume the bubbling vibrancy of life.
This was what the Empyreals feared. A hunger that couldn’t be stopped. A threat that made the Locust Court look like nothing more than a passing annoyance. The dark urge told me I could kill everyone in the room. I could devour the elders and the sages. All I had to do was let it go. It would do the rest.
“Mr. Warin,” Tycho said, his voice tinged with the faintest threads of concern, “thank you for what you did here. Are you quite all right?”
My teeth ached with the need to bite and tear. The Empyreals before me would fill me with power. Maybe enough to advance my core to the disciple level. Or further. It would be so easy...
“No,” I whispered. “That isn’t happening.”
It took a monumental effort of will to shut down the feral greed for life that flowed from the dark urge in a heady stream. I clenched my fists, gritted my teeth, and begged the Empyrean Flame for the self-control to beat this thing inside me. Finally, I trusted myself to speak.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I just need a few minutes.”
I turned away from the sages, my eyes locked on the far wall of the courtroom. The patterns of blood there seemed to shift and writhe, though I knew that was impossible. It was just my supernatural senses showing me the churning currents of jinsei that teemed within the red splatters. They were merely echoes of life, the remnants of the people they’d spilled from.
Emergency personnel and guards burst into the courtroom behind me. They went to work with quiet efficiency, searching the fallen to separate those who could be helped from those who were far beyond the reach of technological or mystical medicine. Guards shouted over the clatter of their beeping and flashing equipment, and the confusing flood of Japanese made it hard for me to concentrate on keeping my Eclipse nature at bay.
“Leave him be. He saved us,” Tycho said, and then let fly a string of syllables in a language the guards could understand. For once, I was grateful to have him speak for me.
Despite the tragedy that had occurred, a sense of relief flooded the room. There’d been an attack, but now it was over. The bad guys had been driven back, and the good guys could start putting the pieces of their worlds back together. It wouldn’t be easy, and the survivors would remember what had happened here for a very long time. For the moment, though, we were safe.
So why couldn’t I relax?
I pushed back against my Eclipse nature. Its hungry demands had distracted me from the real danger.
The droning hum I’d heard during my mad rush to the courtroom hadn’t stopped.
It was growing stronger.
“Do you hear that?” I asked no one in particular.
I turned to face the disaster. Emergency medical technicians and jinsei artists loaded the fallen onto gurneys or into body bags. The courthouse guards stood around, looking ineffectual now that there was no immediate danger to deal with.
“Hear what?” Tycho asked from his position near the witness stand. It looked like Grayson wasn’t dead, which was a relief. I wanted to see him punished for what he’d done.
“That humming noise,” I said, distracted by the sensation of someone peering at my core. It was a soft touch, but annoying. “You can’t hear it?”
“No,” Tycho said warily.
Orange light poured into the courtroom accompanied by an earsplitting shriek. A blast of freezing wind poured over my back and whipped my hair around my head. My Eclipse nature howled, a joyous sound of recognition.
Oh, no.
Something heavy whipped past me and smashed into the wood next to me. Splinters of wood flew in every direction, and I threw an arm up to protect my eyes from the shrapnel.
“You fool,” a voice snarled behind me. “How could you betray us?”
The room erupted in confusion. The civilians screamed in panic and horror. The sages shouted to one another in a cacophony of languages I didn’t understand. I wasn’t sure if they’d gathered their strength enough after the spirit ambush to be of any
