Nightlife (Cal Leandros #1)(80)

Anyone with less intestinal fortitude, inhuman or not, would've been curled up on the floor sucking his thumb. I basked in the attention and took it as my due. I'd always known I was a star. Without me, the Auphe were nothing. I was the key, and the gate was a lock only I could open. At this moment I was, as I'd always suspected, God. Spreading my arms, I let my head fall back and closed my eyes, my streaming hair a silk touch on my shoulder blades. "Suffer the little children to come unto me." Opening my eyes, I smiled gently at the Auphe.

A shaken breath broke beside me. "Jesus. Sweet Jesus."

I tilted my head toward Samuel. "Oh, my sights are set higher than that." His face was as gray as that of a dying man and a cold sweat sheened on his skin. He ripped his eyes from the milling Auphe to me.

"What are they going to do?" Samuel's voice was hushed and strained to the breaking point, but his apathy had disappeared. It would be hard for even the most suicidal man to be complacent at the sight before him now.

I took the headset from his frozen hand. "I think it's a little late to be worrying about that now." I slipped on the headset, my eyes following him as he backed away slowly, step by step. "You might as well stick around, Samuel. There's nowhere you can go to hide from this. Nowhere in the world." He kept moving and I let him go, dismissing him from my mind. I had but one thought now. One aim. One goal. One desire. I turned my back to the Auphe to face the empty wall and held my hands out, fists clenched. Behind me they stood… a concert crowd waiting for the headliner to come onto the stage. They nearly filled the warehouse now that all were gathered together in fatal anticipation. The panting grew heavier behind me and then faded completely to a deadly and waiting silence. Before me one cleared wall flanked by speakers stood blank, a canvas waiting for the artist's hand. Beneath me the undying fury of restless souls howled for release.

I gave it to them.

Their energy rocketed into me with the force of a freight train and I reveled in it. Every inner part of me was clasped with greedy, ravaging fingers as the souls continued to rush up through me. Mindless, gibbering fury and need, it kept coming and coming until I thought I would explode into a thousand shards of rage and death. And it was for me, all for me. I felt my muscles spasm into rock-hard knots, felt my eyes open wide and stare at nothing. The sizzle of ions raced over my skin like lightning and the blood seemed to boil in my veins as I rose into the air. Feet inches off the floor, I was a fly in amber. And still it went on, an ocean pouring into a teacup. I found myself straining, stretching, swelling, until every cell shrieked out in protest.

Then it stopped. Finally, the influx halted and I hung, burning from the inside out. I still couldn't see, but I didn't have to. Opening my hands to frame the gate, I channeled all of that frenzy, all of that savagery, into one amplified, earth-shattering note. Singing was the one thing I had in common with my banshee sisters. For different reasons, yes, but we all sang. Some called it wailing or screaming or even shrieking, but it was none of those things. It was beautiful, passionate, life-destroying song. And that song fed every iota of the stored energy within me into a dark creation, channeled it into a wholly unnatural birth.

The gate opened.

It was as simple as that. A little song, a little dance, a little open sesame, and here we were. Good-bye to electric blankets, good-bye to hot showers, good-bye to fast food, designer clothes, fast cars. And so long and farewell to the human race. In the end, I guess it all balanced out. In the end, it was the end.

My vision returned and I saw the gate swirling sluggishly on the wall, eighteen feet tall by nearly the same number wide. Through tears in the rippling and foaming gray light, I could see glimpses of a velvety purple sky dotted with stars nearly as big as your fist. Air wafted through, warm and redolent with sulfur, bitter musk, and sweetgrass. I remembered the smell. It was the scent of lava rivers, massive animals that moved as majestically as ships, and grass a shade of green no longer found in nature. It was…

"Home." The Auphe said it for me. In their rasping, sand-scraping tongue they said the word with more reverence than I'd known they had in them. "Home."

With the energy gone from me and now bound into the gate, I was dropped back onto the floor. My arms were still extended and I was shaking with the effort to hold the rip in time and space. "No time like the present, boss," I gritted between clenched teeth. "This baby isn't going to stay open much longer."

Behind me came a snake's hissing sigh from a hundred mouths that yet managed to sound as one. A culmination of centuries of want and work had arrived and the Auphe were joined as one in the moment. And together they took that first step in perfect synchronicity. I heard it: a ponderous thud that echoed like thunder. The lightning came a split second later in the form of a sword stroke when Niko and Robin came out of the left speaker. It was like a magician's trick: Now you see them, now you don't—only in reverse. Niko's blade had split the speaker cover from the inside with one quicksilver slash. Stepping through the opening, my brother paused as his eyes took in the Auphe army and then locked on me. His hair was gone. The waist-length, dark blond hair had been sheared close to the skull. It meant something, that. I wasn't sure what, but it tickled in the back of my mind like an itch I couldn't scratch. Robin appeared behind him and freed my attention.

The speaker, damn, that was ingenious. I'd noticed the imbalance when I had sung. I'd assumed a mechanical malfunction. I'd been wrong. As I'd ordered, Samuel had provided me with speakers… one for me and one for betrayal. It was one frigging inopportune time for the son of a bitch to develop scruples. He must have gone to his niece to track down Niko and then collaborated to bring him and Goodfellow here. When his conscience reactivated it'd done so with a vengeance. I should've eaten him when I had the chance.