I swallowed the bitter taste in my throat and stared at the shadows surrounding me. A few hours of nightmares, or a world where all known and unknown realities converge. Or maybe I was overestimating my evolvement. Maybe the collectors would stop this all on their own. Or the cops. Or some random good citizen who just happened to stumble by. But can I take that gamble?
I looked at Falin. “What do I do?”
He shook his head. “I would say the lesser harm for the greater good, but I cannot make this choice for you.”
“I’m voting for stopping the bad guys,” Holly said. She was a DA—her life was all about putting the bad guys away. She wiped her palms on her silk PJ bottoms. Nervous sweat? “I guess this will be a little more hands-on than my normal approach,” she said, flashing me a weak smile. “But someone deserves a hefty serving of revenge.”
Nightmares it is. Except one problem. “I don’t know how to open a door.” I’d tried before; it hadn’t worked.
“Yes, I did see your attempt in the shadow court,” the kingling said as he circled the hourglass.
“You saw?” That meant he’d been watching me long before I’d fallen through that nightmare. For all I knew, he’d sent my bad dreams.
He clasped his hands behind his head so his elbows framed his face. “The planebender bent Faerie—hence the name. He took two places that normally don’t touch and shoved them until they collided and a door could be opened between them. Very messy and very forceful. Your power is not. It is not your nature to shove realities around. Your power is to weave planes together.”
“And why do you know so much about planeweavers?” Kyran only smiled. “This shadow exists both here and in the mortal realm. They sit directly on top of each other. All you need to do is tie them together so you can walk between them.”
Oh, yeah, real easy.
But I had to try.
I handed PC to Holly. I didn’t want to be holding him while I tried to manipulate unfamiliar magic. If something went horribly wrong, I didn’t want him caught in the side effects.
Then I lowered my shields and focused on the shadow closest to me. I mentally reached for it, touching it with my power and trying to concentrate on the fact that it not only existed here but also was being cast by something in the mortal realm. At first all I saw was a shadow over sand. Then the shadow deepened, darkened, and I could tell it was being cast by a tree. Actually, more than one tree. I could see them. It worked?
A chattering sounded in the dark around me. Then the darkness surged forward. Somewhere behind me Holly screamed, but the nightmares weren’t after us. They were aiming for the door and there was no stopping them. The nightmares poured through the door I’d opened—dozens, hundreds. Maybe thousands.
I swallowed, watching the monsters I’d released escape into the unsuspecting mortal realm. Let this have been the right choice. Then the nightmares were gone, the darkness strangely empty without them.
“What were those?” Holly asked, still breathless from screaming.
No one answered. Falin scowled at the opening, and I wondered if he still thought the reaper and accomplice’s threat was more dangerous than what I’d released. But it was done now.
Kyran lifted the hourglass, using the pole it stood on as a walking stick. He damn near skipped as he headed for the door. “Coming?” he asked, glancing first at me and then at the hourglass. Only a sliver of sand remained. “Looks like the end, one way or the other, will be soon.”
Chapter 37
I stepped through the shadow into total darkness.
Oh, the nightmare realm had been dark and full of shadows that were more physical than any shadow had a right to be, but during my hours in Faerie I’d become accustomed to seeing the world illuminated with no obvious source of light. When I stepped through the doorway I’d created, reality crashed down on me with a darkness that crawled across my vision and left me blind. The weight of the grave, which I’d been blessedly free from for several hours, also returned to bash its chilled fists against my shields.
“Fuck,” I whispered, my head swinging back and forth as I tried to make out something, anything.
A hand closed over my mouth as an arm snaked around my waist and I froze, a scream brewing in my chest. But the arm dragging me backward was a familiar warm without being hot.
Falin.
I let him move me as I continued to blink, trying to focus. Cloth brushed against bark as he pressed us both into the cover of a tree, but still I couldn’t see. I blinked at the impenetrable darkness filling my vision. It didn’t help. I was blind. I probably had been since the fight with the hydra. Faerie just liked my eyes better.
Damn. I cracked my shields, trembling as the first traces of grave essence dug deeper into my psyche, but as I released my shields, the shadows parted.
“Cut the light show,” Falin hissed, his voice a harsh whisper.
“I need to see.” Because I definitely wasn’t hot on the idea of walking around blind, especially if Kyran was correct and this was near the accomplice’s ritual. I looked around, trying to get my bearings.
When I’d first realized the shadows were cast by trees, I’d thought we were in a forest, but now I saw we were in a small wooded patch in one of Nekros’s parks. In the distance I could hear the rush of the river, and a few feet in front of the tree Falin had pressed me behind was a large, emerald green wall.
A wall that was breathing.
“Is that a dragon?” Holly asked from where she knelt behind an unkempt bush huddled against my tree. Her fingers trembled as she clutched the amulet that she once again wore around her neck with one hand and PC with the other. Or maybe it was PC trembling. He was remarkably quiet, so he obviously realized something was wrong.
“A construct,” I said.
“Yeah, and there are two more,” Falin whispered as he eased his daggers out of their sheaths.
His blade glimmered in the moonlight drifting through the tree limbs as he pointed. On the other side of the clearing a blue dragon stretched wings that must have been twenty yards across, which caused a silver dragon to pause as it paced the outskirts of the clearing. No, the dragons weren’t pacing. More like patrolling.
The three constructs were guarding a circle that had been erected in the center of the clearing. The barrier buzzed a faint red in my senses, preventing me from feeling the magic inside the circle, but I could see the energy and it swirled in a chaotic storm. The shadows we’d seen in the nightmare realm truly were dancers. They spun and leapt through the air as the magic whipped around them like they were cogs in a giant magical conductor. And in the very center of the circle stood a hooded figure playing a pair of panpipes that looked a little too real in my second sight. The relic the collectors are searching for.
“Come on, be here,” Holly whispered as she patted her pockets. A smile broke across her face and she pulled out her cell phone. She cued the phone to display our GPS location—the riverwalk park not far from the Magic Quarter—and then dialed 911.
“Tell them to bring the really big guns,” I muttered, staring across the clearing. The accomplice stood inside the circle, but where was the reaper?
He wasn’t in the clearing, or in what I could see of the trees beyond. I peeked farther around the tree and Falin dragged me back.
“You’ll give away our position. Look at me,” he said, and then reached up and placed his palms over my eyes. When he pulled back an extra weight pressed against my face. I lifted my fingers, but he grabbed my hand, stopping me. “They’re just sunglasses to dampen the glow of your eyes, but don’t touch. Your magic tends to screw with glamour.”
Good point. I dropped my hand as I peeked out from our hiding spot again. Still no reaper, but we did have the accomplice. Death said to summon him once I located the accomplice. I activated the spell he’d pressed into my skin and a blaze of unfamiliar magic surged through me, building, until it burst from my skin.
I rubbed my gloved hands over my arms to chase off the tingle the spell had left behind. Well, now I know how a flare gun feels. I looked around, expecting Death to just miraculously appear. He didn’t.
Okay, then. I glanced back at the ritual. Magic continued to build in the circle as the dancers twisted and jumped. I shivered, remembering the pain I’d felt in the last ritual site.
“We’ve got to disrupt that spell.” The amount of energy in the circle had grown thick enough to stain the air like multicolored fog. I blinked. That can’t be. Clutching PC, I peeked out from our cover. Falin grabbed my shoulder as if he was afraid I’d rush into the clearing, and I pressed myself against the tree. “Is it just me, or are the tops of their heads vanishing?”
Everyone peeked out to see. Holly threw a hand over her mouth and made a small strangled noise, but she didn’t scream. Falin only nodded, his face grim.
Goose bumps prickled over my skin, my dread reaching the saturation point and trying to pour out of my skin. Death had said souls were the fuel of life, and I’d thought he was hinting only at the souls powering the constructs. But this ritual . . . I stared at the slowly dissolving bodies. This ritual was being fueled by the dancers—by their movement and by their very essence, body and soul. Those feet . . . All those feet. All lefts, and none with tool marks. And when I raised the shade, the foot had forgotten it had a body, and it had danced. It was the dance. They would dance until there wasn’t enough left of them to complete the next dance step. Until they were only a single foot. We have to stop this.
I turned to Falin. “I suppose suggesting that you shoot the piper would be too easy a solution to actually work?”
“We were in Faerie,” he said with a grimace. Which means no gun. “The only weapons I have on me are the daggers, but they’re enchanted and would never make it through the circle.”
Damn.
“So we have to break that circle.” But how?
“I have an idea.” Holly said. “Can I borrow a knife?”
I nodded and squatted as I struggled with the skirt of my gown. Curses burned my tongue as I wrestled with the material blocking my boots, but I bit them back. Once I drew the dagger, I passed it to Holly and she handed me PC. The small dog’s ears quivered, but he looked up at me with eyes that trusted I’d get him home safe. I wished I had the same confidence.