The sound of razor-thin steel severing map point space was like silk ripping across a razor blade.
Vesper’s four front claws extended in an instant, silver-white blur. The young White Tiger didn’t merely strike the physical air. Her claws slipped into the interstitial gap between the three-space-folding universe and the fourth spatial dimension.
SHRRRRK.
Three of the dark, barbed hyphae lunging toward Arthur’s neck spine were snapped clean through before they could touch his flight jacket. The cut ends of the void tentacles dissolved into oily violet smoke. It hissed as they fell into the physical world. But the fourth tendril, dense with rotting moving mass, struck Vesper across her left ribs with the force of an air-powered sledgehammer.
The small white cat was propelled fifteen feet across the marble floor. It rolled three times before digging all four sets of claws into the tiles to arrest her skid.
“Vesper!” Arthur shouted, his boots turning in an instant.
Vesper scrambled to her feet without a whimper. Her ears were pinned flat against her sleek, high-born head. Her whiskers shook with hair-trigger venom. Her amber eyes flared with blazing bright, hungry rage. A thin streak of dark purple ichor clung to her silver chest fur, but she ignored it fully. She arched her slender back, hissed like a striking viper at the empty air behind Arthur, and vanished.
