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Oh, fuck me. That wasn’t a plant.
I turned my head just in time to see the ropes that had been secure around my wolf form slip away into the dark water. Holy hell. My human form was smaller, and I’d just kicked off my only way out of this lake.
Panic flooded my mind, and my mouth opened, trying to suck in oxygen that wasn’t there. I screamed wordlessly as I tried to cough out the water, but it was too late.
I writhed and kicked desperately toward the surface, but something had caught my leg. Something was pulling me back down, yanking me against the bottom of the lake. I fought to get away, blackness edging into my field of vision. Then a surge of electricity jolted around my body, locking my muscles out straight and stiff.
I felt myself being pulled through what could only be a magical barrier, even though I’d never felt anything like it in my life. That same electrical current skimmed over my skin, popping and sizzling as I was dropped in a heap on my hands and knees, gasping for breath.
And to my complete surprise, I was getting air. My lungs burned as I hacked up the icy water, but I was breathing air.
Finally, I managed to raise my head and look around me. I was in some sort of cave, lined with shimmering black stone that still looked like the night sky. There was a wide pool of water next to me, and I gaped at the magic crackling across its surface.
Between the strands of silvery magic, I glimpsed the lake bed, and deeper in, the bottom of the ice I’d fallen through, a patch of sky still showing beyond the jagged hole. It was like I was in an upside-down room beneath the bottom of the lake.
Gravity was inverted, and impossibly, the lake bed was on the opposite side of the floor of this cave. My mind spun trying to take it all in.
“Who are you?” a female voice hissed behind me, and I whipped toward it, shifting halfway back to my wolf form to hide my naked vulnerability.
A woman stood before me, tall and regal. She was beautiful and looked young, but somehow I sensed she was much older than she appeared. Her hood covered her ears, though she smelled like fae.
“Luca,” I said, coughing around the word as the rest of the water cleared my lungs. She watched me silently with cold eyes. As I slowly acclimated to the idea that I hadn’t drowned, my body eased up enough for me to take in more of my surroundings. Including the wall of gobbelins waiting silently in the dark - I hadn’t noticed them before, but as my eyes adjusted, I stumbled to two feet, feeling the fur prickle up around my waist, legs, and all the way up my back.
Fear surged through me, mixed with triumph.
I found them, I called to Vento through the wolf speak, but the words bounced like echoes in my mind, and there was no reply. Whatever magic made that barrier was blocking mine.
Still, I’d found the gobbelins. This had to be where they were passing into Saori Sang - and they were working with the fae, by the looks of it. But I wouldn’t be able to warn Vento or Kanaunless I got out of here alive. I straightened, measuring the woman before me.
Could I fight her? Could I be fast enough to get away, and could I make it through that magical barrier on my own merit? It was so fucking cold down here - much worse than the water. My muscles were still cramped up and weak from the lack of oxygen and the strain of swimming hard. And regardless of the woman’s power, there was no way I could fight so many gobbelins.
The woman suddenly laughed, and the sound reminded me of insects scuttling across dry leaves. “Well,Luca. You stink of shifter, but also of my son. Lachlan. Bring him home to me, wolf, and I will consider sparing your vampire princess when I come for her city. She is what you truly want, yes?”
“Lachlan?” I repeated, my teeth chattering around the word. I knew the name, but my mind was too fucking slow, shutting down as the extreme cold threatened to pull me below conscious thought. Or was it the glittering magic swirling from her fingers toward me? And how did she know I wanted Kana more than anything else in life?
“Bring Lachlan to me without delay,” she repeated, and then a blinding burst of her dark magic shot through the air, propelling me down through the crackling magical barrier and back into the freezing water where I tumbled head over heels. The force of her magic whipped my head forward like a blow from a sword, stealing the last of my energy as I realized I had no idea which way was up. I felt myself slipping down into the black nothingness of unconsciousness.
It was just too cold. Too much. Too far.
I had nothing left.
CHAPTER EIGHT
KANA
Rush and Kas had already chosen a blood slave when they sent for me to begin our first effort at curing the coma-like state they were in.
“I’m really glad you chose an empty room,” I said as soon as the young vampire who had led me there was gone. The blood slave had been through enough - she didn’t need to see my father’s gruesome laboratory or the inside of the dungeon room where Merden had done her work, either.
“We... chose a strong one,” Rush said, his lips set in a grim line. I heard the unspoken thought - neither of them had wanted to risk beginning with Acadian, and neither of them was certain any of this would work.
“I haven’t found any new spells,” I admitted, already feeling defeated.
“As much as I hate to admit it, I thought we might have to start with a simple reversal of what Merden did,” Kas said, anger lacing his determined words.
“This vampire has veins full of winter rabbit blood,” Rush elaborated.
“So... you were going to drain her, then re-feed with... something like fox blood?” I asked, my stomach turning at the idea of repeating Merden’s techniques. Just because our intentions were nobler, it didn’t make this any less of a cruel experiment.
