The waiting was always the worst part. It gave the mind too much time to dwell on what was coming, and Marcus hated the slow, insidious rot of anticipation.
He stood behind the battered stainless-steel bar, the blackened iron of the M16 cold under his sweating palms. The diner was a sarcophagus of stale air and rising anxiety. The 'Closed' sign faced out to the street, drapes drawn tight against the late afternoon Texas sun. The ancient air conditioner labored with a rhythmic thrum-clunk, fighting a losing battle against the heat and the unbearable tension in the room.
Three hours had passed since they locked down. Three hours of listening to the refrigerator hum and the too-loud sound of their own breathing. The silence was unnerving, broken only by the whispers of the two elf sisters.
On the counter, wrapped in layers of plastic, foil, and half a roll of gray duct tape, sat the tea tin containing the hesh-kel. Even buried under layers of shielding, Marcus could feel it. It wasn't a heat anymore; it was a vibration in the base of his teeth, a low-frequency buzz that spoke of the coin's connection to the Weald desperately trying to re-establish itself.
"They are pushing," Eira said softly.
She was sitting on a barstool, utterly still, legs tucked up beneath her like a dancer, conserving every ounce of energy. She looked serene, almost asleep, but Marcus knew better. She was listening to the "sky-threads," feeling the immense, crushing pressure against the thin membrane of reality separating Weedfield from the Shadow-Weald.
"Pushing how?" Marcus asked, keeping his voice low, his eyes scanning the empty front window.
"Like water against a dam that has a crack," she murmured without opening her eyes. Her gold-flecked irises were still, focused inward. "They taste the Mark on you, Marcus. They know the anchor is here. The metal box confuses them, but it does not stop the scent. It only makes them angry."
Liri was perched on the counter near the cash register, wearing her oversized 'SLIPGATE' cap. She wasn't looking at anything specific. Her eyes were unfocused, staring into the middle distance, her small, delicate, pointed ears twitching beneath the cotton brim at sounds Marcus couldn't hear. She was taking her role as the Early Warning System with deadly seriousness, her lips pressed into a thin, anxious line.
Under the nearest booth, a faint rustling sound indicated the Glimmucks were still present. Pearl and Nix had refused to leave the proximity of the kitchen's sugar supply and Marcus's "dream-loud" presence. They were currently arguing in silent, furious gestures over a shiny, crumpled gum wrapper Nix had found and Pearl claimed had a "spiritual gleam." They looked like miniature, extraordinarily beautiful movie stars bickering over a prop.
Marcus checked the load in the M16 for the fifth time in an hour. Magazine seated. Chamber empty. Safety on. Ready to rack and rock in one motion. The routine was a lifeline.
"If they breach," Marcus said, running through the tactical catechism again, his voice flat and professional. "Liri, you go low behind the counter. Eira, you use light to flush them toward the kitchen doorway. I take the primary lane of fire down the center aisle. Glimmucks... try not to get stepped on, and stay away from the fire."
A faint, annoyed hiss from under the table was Pearl's only acknowledgment.
"The air is heavy," Liri said suddenly. Her voice was brittle, thin as glass, and it cut through the room's tense silence.
Marcus froze, his heart slamming against his ribs. "Heavy how, kid? Like humidity? Like storm clouds?"
Liri shook her head slowly, her eyes widening, now focused on the floor. "No. Heavy like... like before thunder, but thick. Like oil. The flies have stopped buzzing in the kitchen."
Marcus listened. The faint, background drone of a couple of houseflies near the grease trap.. a sound he normally tuned out.. was gone. The silence underneath the AC unit suddenly felt thick, viscous, swallowing sound.
The lack of the real.
"Eira?" Marcus snapped, turning his head.
Eira's eyes snapped open. The gold flecks in her irises were spinning, like tiny cogs turning.
"Not the door," she whispered, standing up so fast her stool wobbled and nearly crashed. "Marcus, it is not the door. They are trying a faster way."
"Where?" He brought the rifle up to a low ready position, thumb hovering over the safety selector.
Before she could answer, the diner groaned. It wasn't the sound of wood settling or wind hitting the siding. It was a deep, structural moan, like the iron bones of the building were being twisted by giant, unseen hands, shrieking in protest.
The reality shift hit them hard. The familiar, sickening nausea rolled through Marcus's gut, the sense of the world tilting on an unseen axis. The fluorescent lights flickered rapidly, strobing between the warm yellow of the diner and a cold, sickly blue-gray that made Eira look like a corpse.
"Center mass!" Eira shouted, pointing toward the middle of the dining room floor, between the third set of booths. "They are coming through the floor!"
The linoleum tiles in the center aisle didn't just crack; they erupted.
A geyser of black dirt, splintered subflooring, and foul-smelling black mud blasted upward, coating the ceiling fans and the tops of the booths. The stench hit them instantly.. that same thick, sulfuric odor of rotted meat, stale plasma, and ozone that preceded the Pig Men before.
Through the ragged, steaming hole in the floor, something massive was clawing its way up.
It wasn't just two scouts this time.
A massive, scarred, gray-skinned hand, tipped with cracked black claws the size of railway spikes, slammed onto the edge of the hole, tearing up more tile and wood with sickening shred sounds. A horned head followed, the thick, ridged snout snorting out clouds of moist, foul vapor in the air-conditioned room. This Hunter was bigger than the previous ones, a living tank with a hide scarred with white, runic tribal markings. Crude, heavy hammered iron plates were bolted directly into its flesh, making it look like a grotesque parody of medieval armor.
It roared.. a sound that wasn't just noise, but a physical pressure wave that rattled the dishes in the racks and made Marcus's teeth ache.
Behind it, the snout and tusks of a second, only slightly smaller Hunter were already emerging from the jagged hole.
"Contact front! Center aisle!" Marcus bellowed, his voice tight and professional, cutting through the chaos.
He didn't wait. The soldier took over. He racked the charging handle of the M16, the metallic clack-clack sounding impossibly small against the shattering roar of the beast. He shouldered the weapon, the red dot sight snapping onto the center of the first Hunter's massive chest, aiming for the spot where the iron plates were thinnest.
He flicked the safety off and squeezed the trigger.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK.
A controlled three-round burst of 5.56mm NATO slammed into the creature. Black blood and chunks of gray, muscled flesh sprayed backward from the impact site. The Hunter bellowed, staggering, one foot slipping back into the hole, but its momentum was too great. It crashed forward, smashing violently into a booth, splintering the Formica table and red vinyl seat like balsa wood.
It wasn't enough. These things were tanks made of meat and history.
The second Hunter was already half out of the hole, snarling, its small, vicious yellow eyes locking onto Eira.
"Liri, down!" Marcus yelled over the continuous roar.
Liri didn't freeze. She dropped behind the counter instantly, curling into a small ball near the ammo cans, just as they had practiced, her hat pulled low.
Eira didn't run. She stood her ground by the end of the bar, her face pale but fierce, her golden hair whipping around her head. She raised both hands, palms outward. She didn't have the energy for a destructive kill-shot like the one that shattered the door, but she had something else.
She shouted a single word that sounded like cracking ice and shattering glass.
A flash of intense, blinding white light erupted from her palms.. not a directed bolt, but an omnidirectional flare. It was a flashbang made of pure, raw magic.
The leading Hunter, still tangled in the booth wreckage, bellowed in pain, throwing its massive hands up to cover its sensitive, night-adapted eyes, stumbling blindly sideways into the jukebox, which let out a final, dying ping. The second one paused, blinking rapidly, disoriented by the magical surge.
"Move! Kitchen!" Marcus ordered, firing another burst into the general mass of the first Hunter to keep their heads down.
He grabbed Eira by the arm and dragged her toward the kitchen doorway. The dining room was a kill box now. They needed a bottleneck, a choke point.
They burst into the kitchen, the heat of the grills hitting them like a wall.
"Back door," Marcus gasped, chest heaving, adrenaline flooding his system. "We have to bail. This position is burned. We need open air."
He shoved Eira toward the heavy metal rear door that led to the alley and the grease dumpsters. He turned back, aiming through the pass-through window to cover their retreat.
The first Hunter, shaken but furious, was tearing its way toward the kitchen, tossing the remaining tables aside. The second was right behind it, its snout dripping black blood.
Marcus reached for the door handle.
It was locked.
Not just locked. It was fused. The heavy metal was cold to the touch, rimmed with a creeping, unnatural frost that shouldn't exist in a Texas summer. The handle wouldn't budge.
"Eira, the door!" he shouted, his voice cracking with sudden dread.
Eira slammed her shoulder against the steel. Nothing. She felt the magic on it.. a heavy, foreign seal. "It is sealed!" she cried, panic finally threading her voice. "They closed the way behind us. It is a hunting trap!"
They were trapped in the kitchen. The Hunters were coming through the front. Their tactical retreat was dead.
And then, from under the stainless steel prep table, where the two Glimmucks had sought shelter, came a sound.
Ching. Ching. Ching.
It was the sound of metal on metal. Rhythmic. Insistent. Nix was crouched low, his miniature muscles bunched tight. Pearl, her amber eyes burning with a sudden, sharp intelligence, was holding a stolen soup ladle, tapping it furiously against a tiny, concave piece of gold jewelry.. a broken locket.. that she had retrieved from her satchel. The combined tapping created a clean, unnaturally high-pitched ringing.
The sound was not loud to human ears, but Marcus instantly knew: this was no random noise. It was a deliberate, resonant frequency. A tool. A weapon. A high-pitched, insistent tone that was an ancient weakness of the Weald's thick-skinned, heavily muscled Hunters.
Nix, noticing the effect of the sound, snatched a fork from a nearby drying rack and joined his partner, tapping it hard against a stainless steel container.
CHING-CHING-CHING. HIGH-HIGH-HIGH.
It was the sound of a hinge breaking.
The intense, rhythmic sound of metal on metal had stopped the charging Hunters dead in their tracks, their massive, tusked heads tilted in confused pain.