Her eyes narrowed and then the amber light engulfed her once again. The cloak she’d worn before the shift was back on her when she returned to human form. It must have been spelled; most shifters couldn’t turn with the clothes still on.
“Yes. I heard a slinking about forty klicks due west. If we stay to the east we should be—”
Suddenly the ground pitched, tossing them both in separate directions. Giles reached out for Lilith, who was scrambling to her feet as a heat wave blanketed the area. Sharp, rocky spires ripped out of the ground, one of them shoving between his legs. He had just enough time to shift to shadow before the next one tore through his middle.
A killing blow if he’d been in physical form.
Breathing hard and disoriented by the chaos, he screamed Lilith’s name. Her fingers were clawing at the loose rock, scrabbling for purchase as her section of earth suddenly punched an easy sixty feet into the sky. Sending her flying upwards as she dangled by little more than a toehold. Her black hair whipped like charmed cobras behind her as a blast of heated air ripped through the canyon.
“I’m coming, Lilith, hold on!” he cried, rushing to her side.
He wasn’t sure if she heard him or not, but she was shaking her head and kicking her foot over the cliff’s edge toward more solid ground.
He was no more than ten feet into the air when his shadowed form felt like it’d suddenly been sucked into something gelatinous, and he was unable to push forward even another inch.
Heart racing, he reached out for Lilith, who was now standing. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she screamed, “You can’t come get me. I’ll come get you. Stay out of the water!”
He shook his head, still attempting to push beyond the boundary of whatever invisible barrier had him netted. But she was no longer looking at him, and turning on her heels she raced for a reddish-colored cave behind her.
Giles had heard of dragons. In fact, the land of the demone had been rife with the fire-breathing variety. Dragons were a nasty, hot-tempered bunch of creatures. Of all the tales in fairy, the dragon legend was the most accurate.
Obsessed with jewels and all things beautiful, they’d kill anything stupid enough to venture too far into their territory. Scanning the modified landscape, he noted that where it had been dry before there now seemed to be miles and miles of water spread out to either side.
Lilith seemed somewhat familiar with this place and the dragon, though it bothered Giles that they’d been separated. He’d meant what he’d said when he’d promised to keep her safe, and he could only hope that the water serpent had a network of tunnels dug through the cave system and that somehow she knew how to find her way out.
As a shadow he should be able to move freely through any object, but whatever spell the dragon had activated prevented him from sailing beyond the ten-foot mark. The canyon looked no wider than half a mile, if that. If he couldn’t go up, then he’d float across the open expanse to the other side and hopefully meet up with Lilith there. He’d just have to keep above the water as best he could.
Decided, he turned and headed north. He was almost to the halfway point when the calm waters suddenly began to froth and churn, whipping into violent rolling waves. Giles sailed higher into the sky to try and avoid it touching him, but whatever barrier had been in place when he’d been closer to land was still in effect. He’d move up and the waves would seem to grow exponentially until finally he had nowhere else he could move.
Zigging and zagging through breaks in the water, he was now less than a hundred yards from shore. But pressed against the gelatinous wall, the waves grew and grew until finally one single, solitary drop brushed against his cheek.
Eyes wide, he brushed it off. Pulse thundering in his ears as he waited with bated breath for the dragon to somehow magically manifest. After a minute of hearing nothing but the sound of his breathing, he assumed he’d somehow managed a fortunate stroke of luck, but just as he was about to sail the last few feet to land, the waters erupted in a geyser of heat and thick, cloying white smoke.
A creature unlike any he’d ever seen cut through the waters with the power of a graceful predator. Rows of glinting blue and green scales winked in the heat of the sun. Giles tried to move, but he was trapped. The barrier that’d only been above him was now a box all around him.
He tried moving to the sides, but he couldn’t. When he tried to go down, into the water itself, he couldn’t even do that. He was trapped and staring wide-eyed at a creature that seemed to have no end lift its broad, serpentine heads up from the waters.