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Raze looks at her. “What?”
She uncrosses her arms and plants both hands against the table. “That’s what the third presence was pulling on.”
Every muscle in my body locks.
“Third presence?” Roxy asks.
Echo’s face changes, and whatever I see there has me wanting her away from this table, away from this conversation, away from anything that put that fucking look in her eyes. “There was something else underneath the extraction.”
Sentinel’s burned hand curls against his thigh. “That’s what you heard?”
Echo nods slowly. “At first, I thought it was part of Malgrave’s Hellwarden power. There was so much happening inside Carnage at once that I couldn’t separate any of it properly. But once I got past what Malgrave was doing…” her eyes find mine again, “… I could hear the difference.”
I hate the way her face loses another shade of color.
I hate even more that I’m the fucking reason she heard it at all.
“Malgrave was there…” she continues, “… but this wasn’t him. It was underneath everything he was doing, and it was so much bigger than him that I don’t know how I missed it at first.”
Coil finally leaves the wall, moving closer to the table. “Bigger how?”
Echo looks toward him. “Powerful.”
“Plenty of things are powerful.”
“Not like this.” Something in her voice shuts down whatever Coil might have said next.
Echo presses her palms harder against the wood. “I’ve spent twelve years listening for things most people don’t even know are there. Siren calls, compulsions, glamours. Magic buried underneath other magic. You learn pretty-fucking-quickly how to tell when something is stronger than you.” Her throat works. “Whatever I heard inside Carnage made Malgrave feel insignificant.”
Jesus Christ!
Malgrave—the bastard who walked into our clubhouse, ripped my voice out of my body, and left without a single one of us being able to stop him. Insignificant?
My hellhound starts pacing beneath my skin.
“And it was pulling,” Echo says.
Raze’s expression hardens. “At Carnage’s roar?”
“No.”
I don’t like how much that one word bothers me.
Echo looks at Sentinel, then me. “At both of them.”
Sentinel goes still beside her, furrowing his brows. “My Grace?”
“Your Grace and his hellfire together.” Echo’s voice shakes again, but she pushes through it. “That fused power you created when you closed the fracture? That’s what it wants. Malgrave’s extraction is reaching into Carnage and pulling at the place where those two powers are still joined.”
Fucking hell.
I look at Sentinel, who’s already looking at me.
For once, neither of us has a smart-ass response ready. Because suddenly losing my roar feels like the smallest piece of this whole fucked-up thing.
Someone didn’t steal my voice.
Someone found a way to get their hands on what Heaven and Hell made when we put our power together.