I was about to reply when the sound of crunching gravel pulled my attention to the dirt road.
“My car!” I jumped up. Driving up in my silver RAV-4 was Gear. In the passenger seat sat Eva.
‘Gear and Eva are here with my car!’ I shouted into Logan’s head using our bond. He’d been planning our trip back to the elf’s house with Dominic, going over routes and making sure we were well stocked.
How the hell had Eva met up with Gear?
I took off running, and one side look told me Danny was right next to me.
‘Eva?’ Logan was as shocked as I was.
The second Eva got out of the car, I knew something was wrong. She was holding her arm at an odd angle, and crusted blood was dried to the side of her face.
“Eva!” Logan called out behind me, and before I could move to help her, he was there taking her into a light hug. It was evident how much he loved her. Like a son embracing his mother.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t call. They burned down my bar…” she said with cold hard grit in her voice.
Logan frowned as Danny and I gasped behind him. “Was anyone hurt?” I asked.
Her supernatural bar in Flagstaff was her home and source of income. How dare they? I assumed they were the druids. My dragon pulsed with anger then, and Logan looked over his shoulder at me with green lizard eyes.
‘Calm down. You shifting right now, would be the worst possible thing to happen.’
I hated being told to calm down when I wasn’t calm. It made me want to throw a fit like a toddler just to prove I could. Grabbing every ounce of maturity I possessed, I took a deep breath and felt my nerves calm. Being in heat made me edgy as all hell.
Eva shook her head. “Everyone got out. They’ve been tracking me ever since. I was able to glean from your voicemails that Gear was out of town, so I did a spell to find him. Together we lost them and got back here.”
“Lost who? Steven?” That Irish bastard was getting on my nerves. My dragon wanted nothing more than to rip off his meaty head.
Eva shared a look with Gear. “Get the pack together. Things have changed.”
And just like that, a cold dread washed over me. If Eva was asking for a pack meeting, there was trouble.
Ten minutes later the pack was assembled, including Isaac. We all met in one of Isaac’s many “dwellings,” this one a large recycled cloth yurt. The thick canvas cloth was stretched around some woven sticks, and at the top was an opening to let in light. I hadn’t gotten around to telling Isaac how talented and amazing he was with sustainable building design yet, but I wanted to. One side of the cloth was zippered open and tied back so that the pack could spill out into the forest.
Isaac, Logan and I were in the front row, looking at Eva, who sat down on a polished wooden tree stump. She looked old and frazzled. In pain. Things I’d never seen her look before; it broke my heart.
She looked at Isaac. “Ardan is initiating all of his hunters, making them into druids. They’re fighting in packs now. Packs of druids.”
Isaac hissed and Logan stepped forward as if he was hoping he’d heard her wrong.
“What? What does that mean?” I had yet to receive my supernatural dictionary, so I was still learning.
Eva swallowed hard, holding her injured shoulder. “Hunters are pretty harmless, sweetie. They are glorified humans until their druid master initiates them and bestows power on them.”
“Okay…” Just spit it out.
Isaac stood, resting one hand on his staff. “So instead of having one powerful druid and his pack of idiots to fight off…”
“We have a pack of powerful druids,” Logan finished as Keegan let a curse word fly.
“So the druid race is doubling overnight?” I squeaked.
Eva flinched. “Quadrupling.”
“What do they want?” I asked. Sort of a rhetorical question, but I wanted to hear her say it.
“The rest of the Skyborn. They think the time is ready to expunge the Earth of humanity and build their own world of purebloods.”
I kicked the ground as a growl ripped from my throat.
“That’s not all.” Eva stood and stepped closer to me. “Sloane, they want you. They know you’re a fire druid.”
“How did…?” How did Eva even know what I was? We hadn’t talked to her.
“How?” Isaac demanded. “How could they know? We only found out a few days ago from Grid—” He stopped speaking and his eyes fell to the floor.
“The elf is dead,” Eva said and her voice cracked.
I stumbled backward. “Wait, what?” That wasn’t possible, we just saw him. This was too much information at once.
Eva looked like she was holding back tears. “I went to see an acquaintance, someone who deals with rare and magical artifacts. He sold me this.”
She pulled from her coat … a small copper ball. It was the size of a tennis ball, solid shiny copper in her hand.
“Cool.” I tried to sound excited for her, but really, I was having a hard time being jazzed about a ball right now. Griddish was dead and the druids were after me. En masse. Frick.
“As I live and breathe,” Danny said, approaching Eva slowly with one hand over his chest. “Is that…?” He couldn’t speak. His voice had gotten all emotional, damp at the edges.
Eva nodded. “The Eye.”
“The Eye?” I questioned.
Eva nodded, swinging her hair over one shoulder. “Rumor is that when the queen of Faery fell, she plucked out her eye before she died, giving it to her palace sorcerer. The sorcerer did a spell, encased the eye in copper, and now it can see almost anything past or present.”
My eyebrows climbed. Gross. But if that was really true, then it was damn near priceless.
“He just gave you this thing? Out of the kindness of his heart?” I questioned.
She scoffed. “Hardly. I gave him every last thing I owned, including the bar, all of the money in my bank, and two dragon scales.”
Danny reached out as if he wanted to touch it, but then pulled back. “The bar that just burned down?” he asked.
Eva flinched. “Yes, which brings me to why I look like this.” She indicated her disheveled appearance, her blood-crusted face. “Hensel, the sorcerer I bought this from, wasn’t too excited to find out I’d sold him a worthless business. I of course didn’t know it was burnt down when I signed over the deed and my clientele list.”
Logan’s voice became deadly still and deep. “He did this to you?”
Eva gave Logan a small smile. “I’m fine, dear. Needless to say he wants the Eye back, but once I saw the druids’ initiation through it, and the attack on the elf, I knew we needed it. So … I ran.”
I threw up my arms. “Great, so now we have a pack of angry druids on our ass and an angry sorcerer that you stole from?”
Eva furrowed her brow. “No one stole anything. I bought it fairly and then the druids burned half my payment.”
Logan sighed. “But the sorcerer will be coming after you, yes?”
Eva nodded. “But we have the Eye. It has its limits, but until they know I can see them, we have a front row seat into the druids’ actions.”