Page 11
No.
Another wave rolls through me.
Harder.
The apple slips from beneath my hand and rolls across the counter as pressure climbs through my throat, vibrating against my vocal cords until I have to grab the edge of the counter to keep myself steady.
The water in the glass ripples.
Once.
Again.
Then faster.
My eyes lock onto it.
“What the fuck are you?” The question barely leaves my mouth before it hits.
The roar tears through everything I am tuned to hear, and my knife clatters to the floor. Both hands fly to my ears even though the sound isn’t coming through them, and my knees buckle as something enormous punches straight through every frequency my body knows how to hear. My shoulder slams into the cabinet on the way down, but I barely feel it.
The windows shake.
The glass beside the sink cracks straight down the middle.
My song explodes up my throat in answer, wild and instinctive, and I bite it back hard enough to taste blood. Then, somewhere beyond the walls of this shitty little rental, another note rises.
Faint.
Female.
Siren.
A second answers farther away, then another.
And the implication registers, and every thought in my head stops.
They heard it too.
The roar keeps coming, ripping through the layer that has belonged to our kind for longer than anyone remembers, except whatever is moving through it now doesn’t belong there.
I know every shape power can take when it becomes sound.
I’ve spent my entire life learning them.
This isn’t one of them.
Another pulse slams through me, rattling the cabinet doors and sending the broken glass skittering across the counter.
And underneath all that inconceivable force, something burns.
Not metaphorically.
Actually-fucking-burns.
Heat rides beneath the sound, tangled through another current so bright and clean my siren recoils from it before immediately reaching back, desperate to understand what the hell she just heard.
I press a shaking hand against my throat because whatever made that sound just made every siren who heard it sing back.
