The sound didn’t come through the air at first. It traveled through the solid steel heavy beams of the citadel like a spark hum. It was an impossibly high, brittle tone. A clockwork rhythm that set Arthur’s teeth on edge. Then he made the glass ampoules in his Transfixer rattle softly in their rubberized slots.
Beside the running table, Titus stopped chewing his cabbage. The giant terrapin raised his massive, horned head, his yellow eyes narrowing as his sensitive belly shell detected the rapid, micro-ground-shaking pulses pulsing through the bedrock foundations of the floating castle.
Then, from the rusted speaker grilles mounted along the hangar ceiling, the melody began to play.
It was an antique, dissonant tune, played on a music box with chipped steel tines. The notes looped in a halting, minor-key waltz, with a faint, rhythmic ticking like the gear catch of an uncoiling clock spring. Beneath the heard music ran an undercurrent of intense high-pitched shaking. A piercing a deep hum that bypassed the human ear canal entirely. It shook directly against the time bones of the skull.
Grimm’s head snapped upward in an instant.
The dread-wolf’s lips peeled back from his black canines, a harsh, defensive snarl rattling in his throat. He didn’t growl at an enemy he could see. His ears twitched wildly, trying to filter out the invasive sound wave. Beside him, Vesper leaped from Arthur’s boots to the top of Titus’s back shell in a single, panicked blur, her back arched like an…
