Claws gripped my throat, shutting off my air, and Raziel laughed against my mouth. It was a triumphant rumble, feral and heated, but the amusement had an unfamiliar edge, and fear gripped me. "Yesss," he whispered, mind to mind, "where are the wheels?" The claws relaxed and I inhaled a scent, cloying and intoxicating, like lilacs and jasmine growing up from an open grave. "Your heart beats with the fragrance of Amethyst and her wheels. Where are they?" I tried to open my eyes. This isn't Raziel, I thought, instinctively hiding the knowledge deep in my mind where the whisperer couldn't find it. And, I'm trapped. I struggled to make a fist, to grip the sword hilt, the metal cold in my unresponsive palm. In the distance, a predator cat called a warning, a portent. A lynx. Distantly, an alarm sounded, muffled, flat tones. The door of my loft crashed open, followed by a bellow of rage. I opened my eyes. A Darkness recoiled, wrenched away, over my bed and was gone. In a single movement, honed from weeks of sword practice, I gripped the handle of my walking stick and pulled the sword from its sheath, rolled from the bed, and attacked. Blade and sheath whirled in a frenzy, upward, together, and back out in the sleeping cat - a move that could disembowel an enemy. The sword and sheath, one in either hand, whispered along Audric's belly.