With a long, bony finger, he pointed at Brogan.
She shook her head at him. “Then take me, if you must. I’m all you’ll be getting today! I won’t let you have them! You hear me? No more!”
He charged at her.
In an act of absolute bravery, she stood her ground without flinching.
Blaise caught her an instant before the Crom would have mowed her down. Lifting her in his arms, the mandrake whirled her past the razor-sharp, blood-encrusted hooves that were mired with the remnants of the Crom’s past victims.
Urian went charging in to cover them with Falcyn by his side.
Rolling her eyes at their brave stupidity since none of them were armed, Medea joined their cause. She manifested her sword and twirled it around her body. Urian unleashed his fireballs while she watched the fey creature turn around for another pass.
It started for them.
Until it saw her sword.
With one last shrieking cry, it vanished in a puff of pungent green smoke.
What the hell was that?
“Okay … that was effing weird. Where did he go?” She glanced around, half-expecting him to manifest behind them. “What just happened?”
Brogan inclined her head to Medea’s sword. “’Tis the gold of your blade and hilt. It’s his weakness. With that, you could have maimed him.”
Medea gaped at her. “You couldn’t have told me that before he charged?”
“Wasn’t allowed to say it until you found it on your own. I’m forbidden to.”
“Well, that just sucks!”
Brogan smiled. “For me more than you, my lady. Believe me.”
She had a point.
And Blaise had yet to set her back on her feet. In fact, he seemed reluctant to let her go.
“My lord?” Brogan blushed profusely.
Blaise hesitated. “Not sure I should let you down. You seem to keep finding trouble whenever I do.”
Falcyn glared at them. “Blaise! Set her down! Now!”
Medea popped him on the arm as Brogan appeared stricken by his sharp tone. “What is your problem?”
Falcyn gestured at Brogan. “He doesn’t know where she’s been.”
“Oh my God, Falcyn! He’s not some two-year-old child and she’s not a piece of candy he found on the floor that he stuck in his mouth!”
“Well, that’s how he’s acting. He looks at her like he could eat her up.”
“And you’re acting like a baby. Get over it. He’s a grown dragon. He’s allowed be nice to any woman he wants to. Without your permission or approval, you know?”
Falcyn’s nose actually twitched and flared. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.” He groused like that two-year-old she’d just mentioned.
Blaise rolled his eyes and shook his head. “He always acts like an old woman. I’m used to it.”
Brogan laughed as Blaise finally set her back on her feet, but he kept her tucked by his side.
Before she could ask about it, Brogan drew their attention to the stones that, when they stepped back, Urian realized formed a half-broken demonic face suspended on pedestals over a deep, fiery abyss.
“Well, that’s different.” And the dais was impossible to reach …
Medea arched a brow. “I take it that’s the portal we’re looking for?”
Brogan nodded. Her mood now was subdued and quiet. Gone was any hint of the playful sprite she’d been a few seconds ago.
Medea cast a dry stare to Falcyn. “This is when having a flying dragon would come in handy.”
Falcyn snorted. “So would rope … and a gag.”
Medea swept a hot, seductive glance over his long, lush body. “A rope and a gag come in handy for lots of things, princess,” she said suggestively.
Urian curled his lip. “Ew! Hey, brother over here and I do not approve of this entire line of conversation with my sister! Back to a G rating, folks.”
Laughing, albeit a bit nervously, Brogan started toward the platform. She’d only taken a step before a light flashed and smoke exploded in front of them—this realm seemed to like that a lot. Apparently, the entire place had once doubled as a stage show for an Ozzy tour.
The peculiar portal in front of them churned into action, spinning and turning like a rusted nickelodeon. Light shot out from the demon’s mouth and eyes, with a blinding intensity. Symbols twisted around it in a frenetic ballet that was painful to watch.
And out of that madness came more smoke and mist. As if an angry beast snorted at them with a furious hatred. Spiraling up and dancing to a jerky beat, the mist solidified into the shape of a tall hooded beast.
No, not a beast.
A man.
Urian hadn’t seen a copián in a long, long time. At least not one who looked like that. At first glance, they looked more like a wizard of some kind. Or shaman. Indeed, his flowing feathered robes and chains, along with the braided black hair and the huge, elaborate raven-skull headdress, would have lent itself to that assumption. Especially since bells chimed as he moved and he held a blood-red torch staff in his left hand. One that belched more fire and smoke as it shot arcing balls of light upward around his head.
Yet they were far more powerful and ancient.
Timeless.
As he turned to face them, Urian saw that he’d painted a thick black band over his golden eyes that made their unusual color more vibrant. He stepped down the dais with the grace of a man half his age. And when he neared them, he flexed his dark gray gloved hand that held the staff, digging the wooden claws that were affixed to his fingertips into its leather-wrapped shaft. His gaze bored into them with the wisdom of the ages, and with the sharpness of daggers. As if he were cleaving secrets from their very souls.
“Kerling,” he growled in the gruffest of tones. “What is this?”
Brogan curtsied to him. “They were brought here against their wills, copián. They don’t belong in this realm. I seek to send them on their way.”
A deep, fierce scowl lined his brow. The red light of his torch flared again and turned blue.
Confused, Medea leaned toward Falcyn. “What’s a copián?”
“Hard to explain. They’re time wardens and keepers of the portals.”
She scowled. “Why don’t we have one for the bolt-holes in Kalosis, then?”
“You do,” the copián said, telling her what Urian already knew. “Braith, Verlyn, Cam, and Rezar were the first of our kind. They set the perimeters for the worlds and designed the portal gates between them. It’s how they trapped Apollymi in her realm—by her own blood and design. It’s why her son is the only one who can free her from her realm where she was imprisoned by her own sister and brother for crimes they imagined that she never committed.”
Because Apollymi was the ancient goddess Braith. One of the very gods who’d first set the gates.
Another reason she sat at her pool and why Xyn had been put there as one of her servants and guardians.
Brogan gestured toward them. “As you can see, their presence disturbs the balance. This isn’t their world and they shouldn’t be here. We have to return them before they’re discovered by the others.”
Two lights shot out of his torch. They streaked up like the stray magick blasts had done earlier and circled around the old copián to land on each side of him. There they twisted up from the floor to create two tall, lean linen-wrapped plague doctors. With wide-brimmed cavalier hats, they stared out from their long-beaked, black linen masks from shiny ebony eyes. Soulless eyes that appeared to be bleeding around the corners. It was an eerie, macabre sight.
“What are those?” Medea asked.
Falcyn leaned down to whisper, “Zeitj?gers.”
“What do they do?”
“Guard time. But mostly they steal it.”
She frowned. “How do you steal time?”
Falcyn laughed. “You ever been doing something … look up and it’s hours later and you can’t figure out where the time went ’cause it feels like you just sat down?”
She nodded.
“Zeitj?gers,” he said simply. “Insidious bastards. They took that time from you and bottled it for their own means.”