Page 5 of Autumn L.A.W

He nodded shakily. “Whatever you say.”

“Good,” Lioness said. “Because my friend Sahara is currently lecturing someone into their next lifetime.”

Sure enough, Sahara stood at the exit, hands on hips, the fire chief looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.

When she saw them emerge alive, upright, and coated in dust, relief flashed across her face, followed immediately by exasperation. “I cannot take you anywhere,” she muttered to Lioness.

Lioness shrugged. “But I saved a firefighter.”

“Lieutenant Cal Monroe. And yes, she did. She also somehow knew exactly what my buddies had to move to get me out.”

His gaze lingered on Lioness for a half-beat longer than necessary.

Sahara noticed. Sahara noticed everything.

Lioness, blissfully unaware, just grinned, proud and dusty and glowing with adrenaline.

“I’m glad I could help. We’ll be on our way now.” She flounced off toward the park with Sahara following and shaking her head.

CHAPTER 2

Lioness Graves hit the Central Park path at a half-jog, still dusty from the building collapse and riding the high of not dying before breakfast. Sahara stalked beside her, muttering under her breath in increasingly sophisticated forms of profanity. A pigeon took one look at Sahara’s expression and immediately changed flight plans.

The caution tape around the fissure fluttered in the breeze. More of the ground had shifted since Sahara’s earlier inspection. Now, the very tip of something that looked like stone jutted barely an inch above the soil. It might have been the top of an obelisk. Just the suggestion of a point, but unmistakable.

Lioness slowed. “Oh. That wasn’t there half an hour ago.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Sahara pinched the bridge of her nose. “Which means we’re out of time and options. I need to use the bathroom before I do something regrettable. Don’t touch anything.”

“I never touch anything,” Lioness lied.

Sahara snorted, hard. “Five minutes. Do not cause a scene.”

Lioness gave her a thumbs-up that Sahara absolutely did not trust. Then, Sahara power-walked toward the public restrooms like a woman whose bladder was the only thing preventing a homicide.

The moment Sahara disappeared behind the restroom door, the air shifted.

Lioness inhaled sharply. Oh. Not good. Her stomach dropped an inch, then swooped back up as a wave of pressure rolled through her chest, like being caught between a whisper and a scream. The ground vibrated beneath her boots. The tiny point of the exposed obelisk began to hum at a low frequency that she felt more than heard.

“Okay,” she whispered. “That’s not nothing.”

A spark skittered through her fingers. Not a spell she’d cast. Not anything she controlled. This was a pulse, a demand, a grab-you-by-the-ribs signal from elsewhere.

And then the vision hit, impolitely. It slammed into her senses like a door ripped off its hinges. Her knees buckled; she dropped onto the dirt next to the park bench. Her hand landed on something familiar… Sahara’s notebook. Already open to a page of immaculate glyphs.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Lioness muttered, not stopping, not thinking, because the vision had her by the throat, and her fingers were already moving. She grabbed Sahara’s pencil and sketched in frantic, slashing strokes. Spirals. Runes that weren’t runes. Bars. A cage! She dragged the pencil across Sahara’s perfect handwriting, layering her images over the carefully drawn symbols.

The prison shifted in her mind’s eye. It bulged. Something on the inside pushed, stretching the structure like it had grown too big for its confinement.

Lioness’s breath hitched. “Oh. That’s bad.” She kept drawing.

Lines darkened. The obelisk stretched downward into the earth like a spine made of stone. Beneath it, a hollow chamber burned with pressure—dark, ancient, and furious. She drew the cracks spiderwebbing from the chamber’s walls, spreading upward toward the surface. She drew the entity’s shape, but only a suggestion—a ripple where something should not have been able to move. A shadow that wasn’t a shadow.

She didn’t draw eyes. The thing didn’t have eyes. It had awareness.

Her wrist cramped. She ignored it. Her heart pounded. She ignored that too. The air thickened with magic so old it smelled like dust. Her pencil scraped hard across the paper, tearing into Sahara’s notes.

Footsteps approached behind her. Lioness didn’t hear them at first, not through the rush and roar in her ears. Not until Sahara’s voice sliced the air like a thrown dagger.