it worthwhile. This one was different. Aerune bent his head low and sealed the mortal’s doom with a kiss. Spin for me, little Singer. Weave the web of your race’s doom.
The veil between the worlds began to thin, and the lattice that would anchor Aerune’s Nexus began to take shape on the midnight air. First the pattern must be completed, then the veil itself pierced, and then Aerune and his Court would be able to call up the power of Elfhame into the World of Iron with no more than a thought. The power poured through him from its mortal wellspring: intoxicating, vast. . . .
And then it stopped.
Aerune roared his displeasure, turning on the mortal in a fury. But the man was dead beneath his hands, his body wasted away, his skin and bones crackling like a handful of autumn leaves in Aerune’s grip.
Dead. And of no more use to me, Aerune realized, choking back his rage. The mortal alchemist’s elixir gave them access to their Power, he realized, but no way to replenish it from Underhill’s eternal wellspring, and so they burned out quickly, their bodies feeding on their own life-force.
The ghost of the Gateway, less than a shimmer on the winter air even to Aerune’s Sight, mocked him with its incompletion. But there are others. They are mine of right, and I will have them. Aerete, beloved, soon they will repay your death in the last full measure!
He whistled for his mount and was away again, in a clatter of hoofbeats so swift they sounded like one long drum roll.

Four of the containment cells in the underground warren at Threshold were full. It had been a busy—and potentially profitable—Saturday night, and Jeanette felt an excitement that had little to do with Robert’s glorious future.
Her drug was working. Not as well as she’d hoped, but working. She’d tweaked the last batch a little, hoping to shorten the time the subjects spent unconscious, and that yielded a kind of sorting mechanism. Ninety percent of those who received T-Stroke still died, two-thirds of them instantly. The thirty percent of the Survivors that were