Then the witches in the circle sighed and rose. The oldest of the three stepped from the circle and stopped beside Rozelle.
“It has been completed,” she said, her voice etched with weariness. “The reaper’s energy has been woven into the spell surrounding this building. He may move about within freely, but must keep to flesh.”
“Thank you,” I said. “We appreciate —”
“Stop this person,” she cut in. “And that will be thanks enough.”
“We plan to.”
“Good.” She waved a hand toward the broken roller door. “You should enter and exit from that point. It was the weakest section of the spell, and therefore the easiest place to create our doorway.”
Azriel pressed two fingers against my spine, ushering me forward. I crawled into the loading bay yet again, then rose, dusting the dirt off my jeans as I scanned the area. Nothing had changed, and I couldn’t smell the shifter’s presence.
I glanced around as Azriel climbed to his feet. “The only way we can get into the tunnels is via that pit Jak and I fell into.”
“Given I must retain human form while in this building, our only option is to fall into it once again.”
“Or we could grab something heavy, and spring the trap first.”
“That would also work.” He paused. “There were chair remnants in the room next door, were there not?”
“Yes.”
“Then I will retrieve them.”
We headed up the stairs. Magic crawled across my fingertips as I opened the door to the pit room, its touch stronger and dirtier than before. Either I was becoming more sensitive to magic, or it had changed somehow.
Azriel appeared with the chair remains. I stepped aside, giving him room, and watched as he tossed them into the middle of the dark room. For a second, nothing happened. Then, with a crack, the entire floor dropped. As it hit the cavern floor far below, dust bloomed, making me sneeze.
Azriel drew his sword and squatted near the edge of the hole. Valdis’s flames fanned out, lifting the darkness and revealing the all too familiar pit. It was about ten feet square and smelled of earth and age. But there was something there this time that hadn’t been there the last – wooden stakes.
An over-the-top response to our previous intrusion into the place, no doubt.
“The bitch is getting nasty,” I muttered.
“She has always been nasty,” Azriel commented. “But I believe she is becoming desperate.”
“And desperate people make mistakes.” Or so the saying went. There didn’t seem to be much evidence of it so far. My gaze swept the floor. The stakes had been set in a semicircle that covered the area immediately below the doorway – the place where most people would fall. The other half of the small pit was unencumbered by any additional security measures. Nothing that was so blatantly obvious, anyway.
“Can you jump that far?” Azriel asked.
I nodded. “Just be there to stop me falling back onto the stakes.”
He nodded and rose. After sheaving Valdis, he took several steps back, then ran at the pit and leapt. I watch, heart in mouth, as he dropped down, hit the dirt, and rolled well clear of the stakes.
He rose, dusted off his hands, then glanced up. “Your turn.”
I pushed upright, and tried to ignore the twisting in my stomach as I backed away from the pit. I took a deep, steadying breath, then ran and leapt. I cleared the stakes by several feet, hit the dirt hard, and rolled a little too fast and far. It was only thanks to the fact that Azriel grabbed my arm and yanked me to an abrupt halt that I didn’t smack headfirst into the pit’s wall.
“Thanks.” I climbed to my feet and rotated my shoulder to ease the ache. “The concealed entrance to the tunnels is over here.”
I drew Amaya and walked across to the wall where she’d found the exit for us last time. Flames flickered down her dark steel, sparking brightly off the quartz that lay embedded in the pit’s walls. I ran the tip of her blade along the wall until she hit the exit and disappeared.
“Let me enter first,” Azriel said.
“For once, I am not about to argue.” I stepped back. “The hellhounds, if there are any, are all yours.”
“That is very sensible of you.”
I smiled. “I can be, when I want to be.”
“So it would seem.”
He pushed through the barrier and disappeared. I followed, sword first. As before, it felt like I was walking through molasses – the magic creating the illusion of a solid wall was thick, syrupy, and unclean. I shuddered, my skin crawling with horror as it clung like tendrils to my body, resisting my movements for several seconds before abruptly releasing me into the tunnel. It was a tight fit – there was little more than an inch between my shoulders and the tunnel’s walls. Azriel, several inches taller than I am, not only had to stoop but stand slightly sideways.
“Which way?” Valdis was ablaze in his hand, and her fire lent the dark stones around us a bluish glow.
“The transport stones Jak and I found were to the right, so we need to head left.” I eyed that end of the tunnel warily. The last time I’d been here, I’d had a sense of something waiting down that end, something that was inherently evil. Given the hellhounds had more than likely come from that direction, my senses had been right. While I wasn’t getting a similar sensation right now, something still didn’t feel right.
“No,” Azriel agreed. “There is magic down there. Dark magic.”
My gaze shot to his. “As in demons lying in wait to munch us up, or something else?”
He half smiled. “Something else. And demons hardly munch. They rend and tear, or swallow whole.”
“Oh, that’s so comforting,” I muttered, and lightly pushed him forward. “After you.”
With the twin blazes of the two swords lighting the way, we crept forward. The tunnel continued to narrow, forcing me to go sideways. Azriel, already sideways, was in worse shape, the rocks and debris in the soil tearing across his shoulders and back. The scent of blood stung the air, an aroma that would call to any demons who might wait ahead.
“They don’t,” he commented. “Whatever magic lies ahead, it has not the feel of either hell’s creatures or something living.”
“Meaning the sorceress isn’t here.”
“Or that she’s already gone through the gate, if that is the magic we sense.”
“If she’s gone through, the Raziq would have her.”
“If they did, I daresay we would know.”
I frowned. “How? It’s not like we’re in constant contact with them.”
“No.” He paused, squeezed through a particularly nasty narrow section, scraping both his back and his chest in the process. “But Yeska would inform us. He has a predilection for flaunting his victories.”
I snorted. “The more I learn about the Aedh, the more their reputation for being unemotional beings bites the dust.”
“They are unemotional, at least in the sense that humans view emotions. Love, desire, caring – they are unnecessary states in the minds of the Aedh. Hence the reason they do not live in family units.”
“So how come they developed a completely different mind-set to the reapers? I mean, you’re both energy beings, so I would think you’d both have a similar evolution.”
“Just because one comes from the same source does not mean evolution will follow a similar path.”
“True enough.”
It was my turn to squeeze past the tight spot. The stones that had torn into Azriel’s back now tore into mine. I winced and tried sucking in my gut in the vague hope it would also suck in my breasts, with little success. Thankfully, my sweater bore the brunt of the damage, the stones snagging the fleece and tearing several large holes into it. I guess I should be thankful I wasn’t overly endowed in that area, because the damage would have no doubt involved a lot more skin.
The tunnel continued to narrow, making me wonder if anyone else but hellhounds actually used this. The Razan Jak and I had seen in the other tunnel certainly hadn’t been thin, and yet he’d had none of the scrapes on his body that we seemed to be collecting. Maybe he’d been using a special oil or something that allowed him to slip through.
“The end is nigh,” Azriel said, after a few more minutes.
“I hope you’re talking about the tunnel and not anything else,” I muttered, and yelped as a particularly nasty stone caught my left breast. I rose on my tiptoes, squeezing past it without damaging my other breast, then sighed in relief as the tunnel immediately widened.
We finally came out into a cavern that had been hacked out of the stone and earth by something other than nature itself. The floor was mainly stone, and in the middle of it stood two massive stones. They were more than eight feet tall and a good four feet in diameter at their base, but rising to an almost needlelike point at the top. Unlike the stones we’d discovered in the other tunnel, which were mostly gray, these two glowed as brightly as a harvest moon. The flames of the two swords sparked the quartz within the stones to life, and sent rainbow-colored flurries across the earthen walls. These stones, like the others, were etched with symbols and markings. It was a form of cuneiform, and an ancient and powerful language that people from a long dead civilization had once used to call the Aedh to Earth.
My gaze swept the cavern’s floor. Surprisingly, these stones weren’t guarded. Not by a protection circle, at any rate.
“Perhaps not,” Azriel said, “but there is some form of magic active here.”
He took a cautious step forward. Energy trembled across my skin, its touch light and yet oddly distasteful. “Azriel —”
“I know.” He raised a hand. Sullen orange sparks danced across his outstretched fingertips as he moved to the left, feeling out the barrier’s dimensions. Predictably, it ringed the two stones completely. “I cannot feel any sort of break in it.”
I crossed my arms. “Unsurprising given neither of us knows much about magic. Do you think she’s already been here?”