Page 55 of Sacrifice

Enough. You’re knackered, woman.

There was nothing left to do but go home.

Thirty

It wasthe strange tingling sensation on the back of Eve’s neck that snapped her out of her reverie. She was walking to the tube station in the thrum of people heading home. Alone, but in a crowd. She’d never felt in danger travelling at this time of day before, but something was off.

She paused at a bakery and pretended to browse the window, while really using its reflection to scan the surrounding crowd.

The street was busy with commuters, their heads down, bodies hunched against the cold misting rain. It was a mass of faces and bodies that made it difficult to pick out the anomaly, but she knew it was there. She could feel it.

Eve closed her eyes and took in a long, slow breath. There was something out of the ordinary here, something strong. She hadn’t tried to channel the quintessence again since Tiffany, and the experience with the little clay bowl had made her warier still. She touched the pendant and focused on her core.

Show me just a little more, she asked of it.

Heat bloomed in her chest and she swayed on the spot, grappling internally to keep the expanding power contained. It was like opening a bottle of champagne and then trying to jam the cork back in. She screwed up her eyes in concentration.The very smallest ribbon of energy she could release unfurled from her core to wind its way through flesh and consciousness. Tentatively, she looked around.

The street looked very different. The grey stream of people, their auras pale and dampened by the rain, now glowed with vivid color. A rainbow selection of light twisted through the crowd, but this new bright version of the scene was scarcely an improvement on its monochrome predecessor – it brought nothing but confusion. Until she saw him. A single pale figure, his energy candescent white, was stationary across the street while others flowed and blurred as they hurried by.

White. That was a new one. Eve had never seen a white aura before. That, in itself, felt worrying. She turned to look directly at them, but the surging crowd blocked her view.

Time to get out of here, Eve.

She joined the river of people to hide in the bustle of bodies that flowed toward the tube station.

Fear pulled at the quintessence and urged her to release it. She fought to keep it down, scared of losing control. It burned in her chest and threatened to escape, like a volcano on the verge of eruption. The dark entrance of Russell Square tube station lay open ahead like the great maw of a beast to swallow the human snake of commuters down into the underground. She swept along with the flow inside to where a queue formed for the lift. There was no way the energy trying to burst from her body would allow her to stand still. Instead, she bypassed the patient masses and made for the stairs to break into a run.

Color and light confused the way ahead, but the quintessence magnified her other senses too, smell and sound quite as overpowering as sight. The stench of urine and rusted metal assaulted her, but she pounded down the spiral staircase, trying not to breathe it in, too scared to look back. Her footsteps peeledlike a bell on the iron steps, their echoes bouncing away to be replaced by the approaching screech of metal wheels on rails.

She burst out onto the platform, heart pounding in her ears. Her fellow commuters glowed like neon tubes, their auras mingling the with dusty air to envelop them in clouds of light. Her senses reeled, overwhelmed by it all. She couldn’t quell the power now, nor find a way to turn the sensations down. She leaned against the cold tiled wall and tried to get a hold of herself. At least the cold was amplified too. It seeped in through her skin like a balm.

Overreaction, Eve. You’re seriously overreacting. You saw something new, so what? Just get home. You’ll be fine.

She swallowed down the fear and squinted at the overhead board. A train was due at any moment.

She sucked in a deep breath to steady herself, but the air was loaded with the stench of wet coats and the electrical tang of greasy rails. Her stomach rolled, and she staggered to the platform edge, fighting the urge to be sick. She needed space. She needed air.

The darkness of the tunnel to her right took on a solidity. Deep rasping she’d never heard before echoed from its depths.

Jesus, what now?

She turned to focus on it—a distraction from everything else, at least.

When she was younger, she’d imagined nightmarish monsters living in the underground that no-one knew about, crawling through forgotten passageways, living off rats and the discarded food of passengers. Right now, that didn’t seem like such a leap.

A man came to stand beside her, too close to be normal.

“Eve,” he whispered, “I need to speak to you.”

She spun to face him, and he caught her arm as she wobbled. He was cold as ice.

Eve squinted up at him through the white light of his aura and into a face that she now recognized. It was the police detective, Michaels, and he wore a grim expression.

“Jesus, you scared the crap out of me.” She yanked her arm from his grip. “Are you following me?” She looked him up and down, trying to make sense of his bizarre aura.

The train pulled in with a shrill blast of brakes and a torrent of hot, gritty air. Michaels raised his voice to compete. “You’re in danger,” he said close to her ear. “Lucien Knight is not what you think. You need to get away from him.”

The doors slid open and everyone on the platform got in. She didn’t owe Michaels an explanation. Following her around was virtually harassment and right now, she didn’t have the bandwidth to cope with warnings, no matter how well meant. She stumbled onto the carriage to stand gripping a handrail and briefly closed her eyes to shut out the world. Michaels got on too and forced his way through the other passengers to stand by her side.

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