“Thanks for fishing me out back there,” she says. Then, with a devious smile that makes me instantly hard, she whispers, “But next time you put your lips on me, let’s make sure I’m conscious for it.”
Thirty-One
STEVIE
The sky is a deep shade of violet when I’m called urgently from a restless sleep.
I wander into the living room, not entirely sure if I’m dreaming or awake, and stand before the big windows.
It’s still hours before the sunrise, and the entire dorm is silent, save for the figures moving through the Forest of Iron and Bone. They’re dressed in black, but their bodies are limned in a faint light. I press my face to the window, but they’re too far away. I can’t make out their faces from here.
Damn, I wish I’d picked up some binoculars.
The instant the thought enters my mind, an explosion of white feathers streaks across my window, and suddenly I’m outside the glass, soaring high into the sky, wind rushing through feathers, my keen eyes easily tracking the figures through the shadows below.
I’m flying. I’m fucking flying! I can see the entire campus sprawling out below—the buildings no bigger than models at this height. Soaring over the petrified forest, I can see the towers reaching up toward the moon, the thin red ribbon of the river, the swoop of the Cauldron of Flame and Fury, shadows crawling across the bowl. I can even see the mists near the Void.
I fly higher, so close to the stars I swear I could pluck them from the sky and drop them into the forest below.
Somehow, I’ve become the owl. Or he’s become me. I still don’t know if this is a dream, but I spread my wings and ride the night air, swooping and swirling, never losing sight of the glowing orbs below. They twist through dark paths in the barren, rocky forest, one right after the other, and I track every turn, flying high enough to ensure they don’t see me.
They vanish, entering a deep cave along the northern edge of the forest.
I perch on the top of a jagged rock and peer into a crack in the cave roof, just wide enough to see the space below. It’s a small cave with some sort of stone altar at the center, a pentacle carved into the top. Torches along the walls cast an inviting orange glow, but everything else about the moment feels dark and sinister.
The men gather around the altar, their faces finally illuminated.
Kirin, Baz, Ani, and Dr. Devane.
They lift their black hoods, throwing their eyes in shadow once again.
I watch as they slice their palms with ritual blades, then squeeze blood onto their altar. The pentacle on the surface glows bright red, then dims.
“Who gathers here as bonded brothers?” Dr. Devane calls out. It’s his voice, but different somehow—deeper and more commanding. Older, if that’s possible.
“We,” the others respond together. “The Keepers of the Grave.”
Keepers of the Grave? What kind of fucked-up secret society game are they playing here?
“Who spills his blood as a symbol of our commitment to one another and in the service and protection of the first?” Devane asks in that same authoritative voice.
“We, the Keepers of the Grave,” they say.
“Who vows, by his life or his death, by his silence or his words, in this and all incarnations henceforth, to protect the one true source?”
“We, the Keepers of the Grave.”
“We, the Keepers of the Grave,” Dr. Devane repeats on his own.
With all that done, he presses his palm to the wall, and a soft red light glows beneath the spot he touched. It’s some sort of secret alcove—there’s a book inside, which he now retrieves. It’s old, with a cracked leather cover and pages as thin as onion skin.
The moment he opens it on the altar, my stomach clenches, a wave of nausea rolling through my gut. My mouth fills with the taste of blood, my ears ringing painfully. The book smells like fire and ash, and when I look at it for too long, I feel it sucking at me like a deep, black hole.
It’s evil. Pure, unadulterated evil.
“She asked about the book,” Kirin says, as he and the others sign it in blood with the tips of their athames. “Claims her mother mentioned it in a dream.”
Holy shit. He’s talking about the Book of Shadow and Mists. That must be it.
