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His nose protruded forward, too long, too flat, like the carapace of a horse skull, like an enormous beak, sheathed in a meager layer of flesh and tapering to a sharp, horn-tipped point. Below the nose a massive jaw supported two rows of oversized teeth. One of the incisors jutted like a boar tusk falling just short of touching the left cheek. His eyes, small and white, sat deep under Neanderthal eyebrows.
Between the eyes cartilage broke through the skin to form a thin, sharp ridge that vanished into his fleshy forehead.
It was as if the skulls of a horse and a human had somehow been blended into a horrid whole. A human face stretched over the meld, with barely enough meat and skin to cover the bone. This thing could not be man.
Behind him the darkness slithered and gained shape, solidifying into long black hair and a thousand crow feathers, streaming like a mantle behind him.
Morfran.
He raised his hand and spoke a word.
A gray bubble popped into existence by his fingers and began to expand. It swallowed his hand, then his head, then his feet. Instinctively I knew I didn’t want the bubble touching Curran.
The Beast Lord hesitated.
“Run, Curran!” The words left me even though I knew he couldn’t hear.
The bubble gulped the cauldron.
My heart clenched. “Run!”
Curran turned on his heel and ran, swiping Jim’s body off the ground.
“Andrea!” I screamed, but he couldn’t hear me.
The bubble hid the Shepherd and the vision faded.
CHAPTER 23
THREE HOURS LATER BRAN AND I RODE UP TO THEpack keep. The witches had lent us the horses and we had ridden them until they were soaked in sweat. Bran seethed. He cursed me for not giving him the lid in time. He cursed Curran for losing the lid. He cursed Morrigan for denying him the mist as a punishment for his failure. He cursed the Fomorians by name, reaching for stronger and stronger words until his curses no longer made sense. I said nothing.
After a half hour of cursing, Bran wore out his voice and lapsed into silence. “The gray bubble we saw is a ward,” he said finally. “The Fomorians can only crawl out of the cauldron one at a time. Morfran is buying time to build his army.”
“Can we break the ward?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Cú Chulainn himself couldn’t break through it. In fifteen hours it will fall and your city will drown in blood. We are riding through the Otherworld because all of them”—he swept his hand