Tracks Harry by sound

The great bear whirled back to me and lunged into instant, savage motion, and again I skittered out of the way a couple inches ahead of being ground into paste. I darted a few more yards to one side, putting one of the displays between us. It didn’t bother to go around—it just crashed straight through, spraying gold and jewels everywhere, and I damned near got my head redecorated with a falling marble column. I slipped, recovered my footing, and kept moving, forcing the huge bear to keep turning laterally if it wanted to pursue me.
It went like that for a subjective century and a half, and maybe thirty objective seconds. Several suits of armor were crushed and scattered when a flashing, enormous paw shattered the marble column holding up the roof of their display area. Half a dozen pieces of art that might have been Fabergé eggs in delicate golden cages were smashed flat when a sledgehammer blow missed me by an inch. At one point, I picked up a cut diamond the size of my fist, screamed, “Get rocked!” and flung it at Ursiel’s nose before darting behind another exhibit, this one of rare sacred texts, featuring half a dozen Gutenberg Bibles as the centerpiece.
And then something scary happened.
The roaring stopped.
I froze in place, instantly. Everything got quiet, except for the rushing sound of the flames in the hands of the giant statues, and a rising tide of moaning, terrifying wails coming steadily and unnervingly closer from the rear of the vault.
Something made a metallic clinking sound. Like, maybe the sound a great big foot would make as its blind owner accidentally kicked a fallen gem into something made of precious metal.
Oh, crap.
I looked around, and realized that there was rubble scattered over every inch of floor around me for fifty feet in every direction. I had forgotten that Ursiel’s bestial nature was not the only one I had to deal with. The Genoskwa’s intellect had been at work behind it, too, and I’d been had.
The Genoskwa had been trying to catch and kill me, sure—but he had also been intentionally covering the floor around us with detritus so that there would be no way in hell I could move without making noise.
Then he wouldn’t need eyes to catch me and kill me.
“Little wizard,” rumbled the Genoskwa’s voice. It had a weirdly modulated quality to it. It was coming from behind a veil, maybe, and I couldn’t isolate the direction of its origin. “Going to twist your head off your skinny neck. Going to enjoy it.”
I had some material I could have thrown back at him, but I didn’t dare speak. I would have sounded terrified, anyway. The howls and the eerie presence of the shades continued to grow closer and more intense, and my heart was pounding hard enough to shake my chest. I held my feet perfectly still and tried to turn my head without rustling my clothing at all, scanning for the Genoskwa. I couldn’t see him, but his voice was close.
I knew I would only get one chance to move. If I didn’t do it right, he would run me down and do exactly what he said he’d do, and a weird little fluttery sensation went slithering through my neck at the thought of it. I had to know where he was.
“Take off your head like a cap, little wizard,” the Genoskwa rumbled, pausing to listen between each sentence. “Drink your blood. Like a bottle of pop.”
That image was so vivid that I nearly let out a nervous giggle. I caught it just in time and closed my eyes, Listening as hard as I could. I could hear small, faint sounds. Crunching rubble. Weight shifting atop a pile of spilled gems. But it all had the same distorted tone as the Genoskwa’s voice, impossible to localize.


Skin Game Chapter 47, Page 393-395