I stepped through the shadow into total darkness.
Oh, the nightmare realm had been dark and ful 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 il uminated 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 chil ed 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 stil I couldn’t see. I blinked at the impenetrable darkness fil ing 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
“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, especial y 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 smal 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 wal .
A wal that was breathing.
“Is that a dragon?” Hol y 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 patrol ing.
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 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,” Hol y whispered as she patted her pockets. A smile broke across her face and she pul ed out her cel phone. She cued the phone to display our GPS
location—the riverwalk park not far from the Magic Quarter
—and then dialed 911.
“Tel them to bring the real y 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’l give away our position. Look at me,” he said, and then reached up and placed his palms over my eyes. When he pul ed 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. Stil no reaper, but we did have the accomplice. Death said to summon him once I located the accomplice. I activated the spel he’d pressed into my skin and a blaze of unfamiliar magic surged through me, building, until it burst from my skin.