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Free at last to concentrate on the greatest problem, Morgan retraced her steps, her long, ground-eating strides swallowing the miles. Up Piccadilly. Through Covent Garden and Holborn. Into the City. Past St. Paul’s and the Tower. Back to the river. Back to the unfinished canal. Back to Doran.
Cam swam up out of unconsciousness, a drumbeat pound in his head, cramped muscles in his shoulders and back. He tried shifting his weight, coming up against the heavy rasp of rope, binding his wrists. His ankles. A slow drip of water echoed every thud in his skull, making thought nigh impossible. But he didn’t have to think too hard to realize who’d struck him from behind. Who’d brought him here. In confirmation, the spine-crawling snap of Rastus’s cracking knuckles sounded off to his right.
Dim, murky light illuminated a rounded misshapen ceiling, pools of brackish oily water, the flotsam of shovels and spades, crates of what he hoped weren’t explosives.
No more than ten yards away, in the center of the room, stood Doran Buchanan, a hand pressed to his side, over the prone figure of another. A man bound just as Cam was. A man he recognized with a sick churning in his gut.
Brodie.
But if Brodie was here, where was Morgan?
He tried craning his neck to search the room for any signs of a third body, but his range was limited, and he didn’t want to call attention to himself. If they thought he remained out cold, all the better.
Think, Sinclair. What now?
As he struggled to form even a ludicrous plan of action—better than giving in to the defeatist idea that he alone still lived—Doran stirred. Words ripped from Cam’s memory slit the air.
“Airmid gwithyas a’n fenten. Ev sawya.” A language that in Morgan’s sultry voice heated his blood spilled now like the speaking of a curse. “Dian Cecht medhyk a’n spryon. Ev sawya.”
A wounded Doran sought to heal himself.
Uncurling from his place by Brodie’s side, seeming more creature than human, he unsheathed Neuvarvaan.
And Cam got his first sight of what he’d risked his life and soul to find.
Double spirals decorated the pommel, more of that ancient, headache-inducing script etched into the hilt’s quillion. Seeing the mottled reflection off the wide-leafed blade, he knew he stared death and life in the face.
Apparently whatever magic Doran had used worked. With the toe of his boot, he shoved Brodie onto his back. Raised the sword high overhead, point poised over what Cam knew would be Brodie’s heart.
A high-pitched whine like that of a mosquito began, an incessant uncomfortable buzz that dropped in octaves even as it lengthened, the buzz stretching to individual pulses of sound as the seconds passed. It was hardly perceptible at first, Cam chalking the steady throb up to the lump in his head, the rush of blood in his ears. Yet this low pulsing thrum came from around him. Vibrating through the air. Carried through the soil.
Finally it became like the gr
owl of the ocean or the whoosh of the wings of a thousand geese as they rose from the fields. But not at all like any of them. It was a tribal chant. A barbaric call for blood. A sound he knew signaled the beginning of the end.
Part of Cam wanted to curl into a ball, hunker farther behind the cluttered stack of barrels and boxes, and pray Doran forgot about him. Another part couldn’t tear his gaze from the dreadful action playing out before him.
Even as it grew louder, it grew more focused. Buried itself in Doran, expanding him. He seemed taller. Burned brighter. Crackled with a sinister light.
Then just as the sound became a deafening crescendo, silence fell over the room, but for Rastus’s useless prayers.
With a primal scream, Doran plunged the sword downward, Brodie’s body heaving with the force behind the blade’s descent into his flesh.
Writhing against his bonds, Cam swallowed his own scream. Bit his lip until blood flowed.
Waited for Brodie to age. To die.
Wished it had been him.
The trail couldn’t have been clearer if Doran had marked it with a big arrow. Drawn down into the empty warehouse cellars by the combined scents of blood and mage energy. Compelled by the sudden gripping in her chest as if a giant hand squeezed her heart. Pulled the part of her that was Other from between her ribs. Stole it. Used it for Doran’s black arts. His Morkoth sorcery.
The narrow corridor opened into a larger room. Doran stood fifty feet away, the air quivering around him, Andraste’s sword still embedded in the chest of the man lying spread-eagle on the ground.
Cam. She’d been too late. Uncle Owen had spoken truth.
Shrieking her fury, she hurled the darkest, deadliest spell she knew at Doran’s exposed back. Let the voraciousness of the nownek glas burrow into his blood, where it would eat him from the inside out, leaving the shell of a carcass behind.
Focusing on his victim’s expected transformation, Doran wheeled to face the unexpected attack, catching the spell in the face. Eyes bulging, the bones of his skull collapsing in on themselves as the spell worked its destruction.
