The electric hum vanished.
Locks clicked all around us, and a couple of the cages swung open.
Still, none of the creatures moved. Fiona certainly had her work cut out for her.
“Do you know where he’s keeping the witches?” I asked, tucking the keycards back into my pocket. “I’ll free them, then we’ll reconvene here and figure out how to get everyone the fuck out of this place.”
Fiona nodded. “They’re all on C-block.”
I pulled up the map on her comms device, hoping like hell my trust hadn’t been misplaced. “Show me.”
Nine
Gray
That monster couldmove.
While Jonathan watched on impassively from the other side of the rift, I bolted into the forest, dodging between felled trees and hopping over crevices, trying to outrun the beast chasing me.
It was the size of an SUV with the body shape of a lion, two dragon-like heads, and a spiked tail that looked like it could do some serious damage to my skull. The only thing saving me was the fact that it was too big to fit between some of the trees, so it couldn’t always keep up with me. But no matter how hard I ran, the thing showed no signs of tiring, always waiting for me on the other side.
With nowhere else to hide, I circled back toward the lake, hoping like hell the beast couldn’t swim.
I dove straight in and swam for the center. When I got to what I assumed was the deepest part, I bobbed up out of the water and whipped around to look for signs of my would-be attacker.
He paced the shoreline, as if he were trying to decide on the best way in. Razor-sharp claws glinted on all four of his giant paws, leaving deep holes in the muddy embankment wherever he stepped.
Please don’t swim… please don’t swim…
Still watching me, he stopped pacing and reared up on his hind legs, letting loose a violent roar that left ripples in the lake and reverberated through my chest.
When the awful sound finally stopped, he crashed back down onto his front paws.
And—poof!—the entire lake evaporated.
Without warning, I fell a good twenty feet, landing on my ass on the lake’s muddy bottom.
It knocked the wind out of me, but that fall… it should’ve killed me. At the very least, it should’ve broken most of the bones in my body.
Instead, it just made everything hurt.
I scrambled to my feet, struggling against the slippery mud. Pain echoed through my bones.
Now I wascompletelyscrewed. I was twenty feet deep in a pit with walls made out of mud, and the animal was already making his way toward me with ease.
As soon as he reached the bottom of the former lake, he charged at me once again, faster than lightning.
I had no time to react. He was on me in a heartbeat, knocking me flat on my back, pinning me down as each one of his demonic heads sank their sharp, filthy teeth into my shoulders, piercing my flesh down to the bone.
A shock of the most terrible pain I’d ever felt shot through my body, burning an agonizing path from my shoulders to my fingers, then down my back.
I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t even breathe.
I wanted to curl into a ball and die. As long as the burning stopped, I didn’t care.
But deep inside me, a glimmer of my magic sparked to life, temporarily breaking through the haze of pain.
Fight, Gray. Fight!
