Another bit of Holy, for your reading pleasure, which includes the lines I shared from this WIP for today’s #1lineWed theme on twitter: Sound! This time,  the words come from scene one, draft two! 

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It had been a quiet night. Now, there were too many lights flashing, and the noise of too many heavy, booted feet. The old brick and concrete behind the new installations of Wall-ads and neon signs hovered in a vague haze of too many colors, too much bright. It was the part of the city Artemio didn’t come to, not any more, not even though he’d been born here. They’d called it Old Boston but it wasn’t the Boston he remembered. Just a reflection, gone blurry and eye-catching on wet asphalt. He stubbed out his cigarette against the door of the van.

“Too many goddamn lights.” What was the point of calling his team in if the regulars were gonna fuck it all up before they had a chance to get started? He heard the wet slap of Taj’s boots against the pavement as he rounded the back of the van and came up beside him. Artemio threw an expectant glance at his second, but Taj was already shaking his head.

“No dice. We’re gonna have to go with the info and blueprints we got out of storage, Luca’s got nothing. No access in or out, this place isn’t even hardwired to the old surface ‘net so there’s nothing to patch in on.”

Artemio grimaced, shrugged. “Guess we’re gonna have to do it the hard way, then.”

“You wanna wait for the girls?”

“Can’t. How long’ve the regs been out here like this? Anything serious inside’s gotta know they’re out here by now, and we’ve been here five minutes – five more’s too many. We’re goin’ in – take out those east windows, blow the whole inside of the ground floor flat and clean.”

“Got it.”

“Get Jer at the rear, I want you on point with me and Marina’n Luca in the middle.”

He didn’t turn to make sure his orders would be followed, he knew they would be. He waited twenty seconds, then raised his fist, dropped it. At the signal, Luca tossed a pair of crackers, and the world dissolved into a flash of shattered magic and the sound of breaking glass.

Artemio swung himself into the window, dropped and turned to the cover the room while Taj slipped in beside him. Something was…off. The sound of the sirens had faded out of his awareness as soon as he was inside the building. He could still hear the glass breaking, but only where it crunched on the floor under his feet, and then Taj’s. “What the hell? Taj -”

“Yeah, I feel it. I can see it. Something strong. Dunno what, I’ve never felt anything like this.”

Artemio felt magic moving on his skin, itchy-tingling, already strong enough to make him tighten his fist and run the fingers of his other hand back through his hair. He drew his gaze along the walls, peered into dark corners, then glanced at the windows and noticed the way they failed to let in light, as well as sound. More glass crunched as Luca dropped in and crossed to stand beside Taj, and Artemio watched Marina drop in behind him, cat-quiet. Jer came last, face scrunched in irritation as his vestments caught on the glass.

He signaled them all out to check the rest of the downstairs, because this room was sure as fuck empty, and despite the noise they’d made busting in there was nobody on the stairs. Artemio turned his attention back to the windows. Reflections from the lights on the building across from them spilled toward them, but just like the sound nothing entered.

Artemio  scoped out the room around them again with sharp eyes. That was the other thing bothering him – not a single shadow was disturbed, though there should be many. He filed the thought away with all the other things that already stuck out as wrong about this place.

It was right at the edge of the worst of the blasted district that still had buildings standing, but this one was untouched. There wasn’t a boarded window or a cracked brick in the whole place, at least not that he’d seen. And the silence, when outside there was the beginnings of rain and the sounds of sirens, crackling speaker-static, tires on wet pavement, boots tramping and conversation? All of that was loud enough that the noise should have been spilling in, flooding the whole of this downstairs room. The shadows didn’t move because the outside lights went dark at the line of the window, as if they didn’t dare come in.

Artemio stared at the broken pane of glass for a second – yeah, just what he’d been afraid of. The line of dark and light was sharp, unnatural, cut off just where the glass should be.

“Somebody fortressed this place up real good. Best goddamn barrier I’ve ever seen.”

And that’s not good.