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Chapter Thirteen
We walked in the darkness for what felt like forever. The light of the ball Grant had given me didn’t stretch far, just enough to see Troy’s back. Grant had taken the front, then Troy, me, Kase and Hunter at the back. I suspected it was because Hunter could easily shift into his smoke form to end up wherever he might be needed, and Grant knew the way. The rest of us just piled in between those two.
The tunnels were silent.
Well, silent other than a horrible skittering I tried hard to ignore. It reminded me of a movie I’d seen, where the legs of a spider tapped against a tile floor. I could only imagine the things that might exist in such aplace.
And, yes, maybe I was a big-scary-reaper, as Grant would tell me, but even I had my limits, and spiders seemed to be one.
It wasn’t just forward, though. We climbed flight after flight of stairs, my calves killing me partway through. Grant had said we were headed for the roof, but I hadn’t realized just how far up that was.
Our feet shuffled against the stone floor, and I clutched the light as if it might get away. It didn’t give me much of a view, but something was better than nothing, so I cherished it. Grant didn’t speak—no one offered anything other than steady breathing, the stroke of our feet against the floor and whatever crawled along the rocks.
Troy stopped in front of me so fast that I ran into his back, the ball escaping me. When it hit the ground, it shattered, a bright flash before fading to nothing.
Panic struck me when I couldn’t seeanything. I felt adrift, cut off, as if I were alone in the black and lost.
Before it had time to gain any real footing, however, a hand caught the back of my neck and a body pressed against me. “You’re okay,” Kase’s smooth voice told me.
I pulled in a shaky breath, the darkness allowing me to catch the brimstone of Hunter, the scent of the forest from Troy.
I’m not alone.Even in the darkness, even when I had no idea which way was forward, I wasn’t there by myself.
It let me release the tension, the fear. As soon as Idid, Grant whispered something, and light poured into the tunnel. He hadn’t performed another light-ball spell, but rather the wall in front of him—which must have been why Troy had stopped as well—parted.
Stepping out of the tunnel felt like sliding into a warm bath—heavenly.
At the end, I peered back just before Grant closed it to findfartoo many eyes staring back at me. Thankfully, I only caught sight of the glow of eyes, because I really didn’t want to see what they were.
The new room we found ourselves in was also made of stone but largely empty. A single staircase went up from the center, and a sealed doorway sat on one side. Shimmering sigils that glowed red told me that was a door I didnotwant to fuck with. I would guess that was the normal way into the room, and all that shiny ‘stay away’ stuff kept people out.
Instead, Grant took the stairs, and the rest of us followed. The steps wound up, far enough that I got winded again after a few minutes. Grant’s wholethirty-minutetrip must have counted on people who were far more in shape than I was.
The ceiling opened at the top, and when we reached the place where no more steps sat, I let out a gasp.
The world stretched out around us. We stood at the top of the mountain—building—whatever it was. Posts rose in arches around the flat top, built of ancient stone yet somehow not crumbling, as if time couldn’t touch them. A circle of rocks sat at the center, and even me, with my ability to not feel most magic, couldn’t ignore the way it coursed through this place.
Wind whipped through my hair, but it was hot and heavy.
I swallowed down a sickness that the magic caused in me, a reaction that was probably my body’s way of telling me to get the fuck out of there.
Grant walked around the circle, whispering, his hand doing more of those practiced movements that normally entranced me.
Not this time, though. The way the sky melted away, the waynothingexisted beyond the mountain, kept all my attention.
And for once, the others seemed equally enthralled. I didn’t feel like the only person surprised or impressed by something they all found normal, as if I were some caveman gushing over a lightbulb. Instead, Kase froze, his eyes wide, an almost youthful expression on his features. Troy had his thumbs tucked into the pockets of his jeans as he stared out, as well.
Hunter crouched, his head tilted as if he were trying to understand it.
Grant gave us little time to take it in, though, before a blast of power knocked me backward—against Troy, or I’d have ended up on my ass.
At the center, where nothing had been a moment before, a portal of swirling blackness stood, and Grant beckoned me toward him.
I placed my hand in his, knowing already what was coming. He used a small knife to slice through my palm, then walked me around the circle, dripping blood on the stones. Each one caused another blast of that power, sounding almost like a gunshot. When we reached the start, when the entire circle had been exposed to my blood, the portal shifted from black to gray, to a bottomless void that beckoned me, as if it knew me.
I took a step, called by it.
Grant caught me. “Not so fast,” he said above the howling wind. He took a small vial from his pocket, then dipped his finger into the blood of my palm, collected the ash from the vial, and smeared it onto my forehead.
