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I squeezed back through the rough-hewn tunnel, gaining yet more scratches—some of them deep enough to bleed. The sharp scent seemed to fill the air, and somewhere out there in the deeper darkness, evil stirred.
Find, Amaya muttered. Kill.
That’s the plan. I just hoped it was Lauren’s presence I was sensing, and not another of her traps.
The second tunnel was wide enough to walk down normally and led into a chamber as large as the main one. I scanned the floor, but once again there was little more than dirt here. The shelves and tables that had been hacked out of the earth held various dusty items, none of which appeared to have been touched or moved since we were here last.
I frowned and slowly turned around. There was nothing here—nothing that hadn’t been here previously. Yet the nip of magic was stronger, indicating we were at least closer to whatever it was Lauren had planned.
So where in hell was she?
There was nothing else in this underground system—no other rooms or tunnels. Or was there? It wasn’t like she hadn’t concealed entranceways before—she’d certainly done it in the underground system we’d discovered under that warehouse near Stane’s.
Amaya?
Something, she said. Trace not.
Which wasn’t a lot of help. I flexed the fingers on my free hand, though it didn’t do a lot to ease the tension that was growing stronger by the moment, then walked across to the wall and pressed my fingers against it. The magic that continued to nip at my skin had no pulse in the warm earth, so I moved on, keeping my fingers against the stone and earth as I slowly moved around the room.
As my touch ran across one of the half-filled shelf slots, energy stirred, the sensation cold and oddly flat. Amaya hissed, the sound filled with excitement as it echoed through me.
Evil, she said. Down.
Down?
She didn’t answer, instead briefly taking control and forcing me to squat. The cold bite of magic got stronger. I ran my fingers across the space between the shelf and the floor. If this was a doorway, then it was a damn small one. At barely two feet square, there certainly would be little enough room to maneuver, let alone fight.
And that was probably the whole point.
I pressed my hand hard against the cold, flat magic concealed within the wall of earth. It resisted briefly; then, with a slight sucking sound, my hand went through. Damp air briefly caressed my fingertips before I jerked my hand back. There was definitely a tunnel behind the magic, and one I very definitely had to explore, even if every instinct within me screamed to do the exact opposite.
With the butterflies going nutso in my stomach, I took a
deep breath, then pushed Valdis through. Her flames crawled away from the touch of the magic, dancing across her hilt, then my hand, before finally extinguishing as I went in after her. As had been the case the last time we’d gone through one of these concealed doorways, it felt like I was crawling through molasses. The magic creating the illusion was thick and syrupy, and its cold tendrils clung to my body, resisting my movements, then releasing me with an odd sucking sound. I shuddered, my skin crawling with horror as I continued to force my way through.
But unlike before, there was no wider tunnel to provide relief. The cold, foul magic played around me, resisting my movements, tearing at my strength and will as I moved deeper into the underground darkness.
Then, with a suddenness that forced a yelp from my throat, the ground gave way and I was falling.
Chapter 12
I landed on my back with a grunt of pain, the sound echoing as I scrambled to my feet. The room in which I’d landed smelled of wet earth and foul magic, and it was so filled with shadows that the light from the candles forming a large circle around me barely made an impact.
I couldn’t see but I didn’t care. Azriel was here. The connection we shared flared to life, bright and fierce, even if somewhat constrained. I couldn’t hear him—whatever magic caged him obviously restricted our ability to communicate—but given the circumstances, that was probably a good thing. He’d no doubt be furious about me walking—or, more accurately, falling—into Lauren’s trap.
Fire rippled down Valdis’s sides, lilac flames that briefly glowed a fierce and bloody red. Her steel quivered in my grip and tugged lightly to the left, as if eager to be free and moving. But until I knew for certain where both Azriel and Lauren were, I couldn’t release her. Our demon swords might be able to move of their own will, but I didn’t need Lauren realizing that.
“Well, well, well,” an all-too-familiar voice said. “Look what the trap just dropped into our laps.”
I swung around, Valdis raised high. Her lilac flames burned through the shadows and revealed the evil that hid beneath them.
Lauren stood twenty feet away. She was a tall, full-bodied—almost matronly—woman, with angular features and dark hair cut close to her head. Her nose was large and Roman, and it gave her an arrogant air. But it was her eyes that sent shivers skating across my skin. It wasn’t so much that they were a blue so pale it was almost impossible to separate the iris from the white, but that, in this place, they glowed with a fire that was cold, cruel, and very definitely otherworldly.
But then, this was a woman who had willingly handed herself into the hands of hell—and then walked free.
“I have to say,” she drawled, voice coolly amused, “while I did not really expect you to be so foolish as to step into the transport stones, I certainly wasn’t expecting your capture to be this easy or this fast.”
“It was only easy because I wished it to be,” I said. “Where’s Azriel?”
