“Can’t you stop any of it? I mean, no offense, but if your abilities are only good enough to sneak around the Castle, I’m beginning to doubt their usefulness.”
“My ability will be used effectively when the time isss needed,” he snaps.
“What are you holding out for?”
“Nothing. I simply see no sense in wasting it. Nor should you. Now here.” He puts his hand on my arm and shuts his eyes. The next second they flutter open and he stares at me as if I’ve turned into a bolcrane. “Can you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
“The energy you’re drawing. From them.” He flicks a hand toward the black crawling mass and murmurs, and the next second he’s forcing an image. From the ground rises a wraith from the Dark Army. Rags seeped in a putrid-smelling oily substance drag as he walks toward me. His hands are made of bolcrane claws and his face is that of a dead man’s. “Take him down,” Myles whispers.
I inhale, and to my surprise, he’s right. I am drawing energy. Out here in the night air and span of atmosphere, it’s as if my body remembers how to do this. How to come alive with power. Just like with my old Elemental abilities, my reactions and control are the same, even if what’s feeding this surge feels colder. Stickier. Darker.
I lift my hand and it flattens, the bones not so bent as I press it against the wraith’s chest, and it’s so real I feel his clammy skin and taste his defiling breath as he lunges for me. I duck and shove my palm harder against him, and abruptly I can sense the energy drain inside him, fueling the hunger inside me. His eyes go blank and his body falls, dissipating into a gray fog.
CHAPTER 27
MYLES AND I HAVE RUN THROUGH THE SCENARIO twice when, just as the last of it fades, the hissing filling the night air spikes louder and I swear I hear actual voices. Myles must hear them too because he tugs my sleeve and steps away from the low metal wall and into a shadow thrown by the white trees. It takes a minute before I locate the voices as coming from the far side of the roof. The speakers don’t seem to be moving this way.
My body tingles with the energy in the air, the energy I’ve been drawing on. I glance at Myles and promptly mutter a curse at him when he whispers up a new fa?ade for both of us, which turns me into a short, balding Bron soldier. I spin on my heel and creep into the forest toward them.
As we draw closer, the gurgling water muffles the voices, but from what I can tell, three speakers are arguing on the other side of the waterfall. Slipping next to the noisy brook and then round the giant rock outcrop, I wedge behind a thick spurt of trees. Sinking my feet into the grass, I peer through the branches.
My lungs arrest.
Draewulf, Isobel, and a wraith.
Myles’s slimy hand finds my shoulder and squeezes, whether in reminder to be silent or because he’s a nervous bolcrane baby I’m not sure, but I shake him off and, sliding out a knife, hunch down to watch the three carrying on about something.
“Why not crush the Bron soldiers?” Isobel’s voice rings out. “We can take full control instead of this farce of working with them!”
“Because, my shortsighted daughter,” Draewulf snarls, “we don’t expend resources for the sake of a control we already have.” His hood is thrown back, revealing jagged hair smeared back in a distinctly unlike-Eogan style. He looks at her with a twisted expression that is at once hateful and weary. The effect only makes him loom more dangerous, like it’s requiring effort not to snap.
“Yes, and morphing that many would require more energy than either you or I should spare at the moment. But if we’re still in Bron when the Assembly realizes this is a coup—”
“They already know it’s a coup and they will believe what they need to in order to stay alive. Just like draining an animal’s blood—do it too fast and you’ll waste the experience. Drain them slow and you’ll get the rush of seeing them whimper and succumb, my dear.”
His tone is so cold my spine ripples.
He turns to the wraith. “How much longer until your underlings are ready?”
“The ones assembled to keep hold of this city are near ready. The rest come with us to Tulla.” The tall dead thing slurs his gravelly words into the breeze, which carries them low and whips them around. “The timing now depends on you, m’lord. And whether your vessel is prepared?”
“She performed as I said she would. We’ll know soon if it took in the way I require. If not, I’ll ensure she returns for more. Either way, it won’t be long.”
“And in the meantime?” Lady Isobel glares at her father. “Are you ready? Because you look like hulls, and I’ll not have us embark before I know you’ve managed control over your host.”