Chapter 8
Quinn
“What are you doing here?” the man who’d grabbed me demanded in a raspy voice, his face shadowed by the hood of his cloak.
“You can’t let him—” I protested automatically, straining to run at the initiate as he continued bashing the little girl’s body, even though I could tell she was beyond saving now.
Before I could get my entire sentence out, the man who’d grabbed me smacked his hand over my mouth to cut off my words and dragged me back toward the trees. I squirmed against his grasp, but he held me too tightly. The others took up their chanting again as if I’d never intervened.
Another figure appeared beside us. I didn’t recognize her until I heard Vera’s voice from beneath the hood, low and urgent. “That’s the new one—the one I’ve been working with.” She tugged her hood back enough that I could meet her eyes, hers cold and flinty. “How did you get out here? What do you think you’re doing, Quinn?”
“Quietly!” the man ordered me in a harsh whisper as his hand loosened on my mouth. “You’ve already disturbed the rites enough.”
As if I were anywhere close to being the most disturbing thing that’d happened out there in the clearing. A slightly hysterical laugh quavered up from my lungs through my constricted chest. I was afraid that if I let it out, I might puke again too.
“I heard you leaving, and I was curious about what was going on,” I managed to murmur. “How can you— He’s killing people.”
But they already knew that. They’d brought those people to the enclave specifically for the guy to kill.
Where had his victims come from? How could the sorcerers possibly justify these murders to themselves?
They barely seemed to acknowledge how horrifying it was. “He’s becoming one with the monsters,” Vera said, confirming the impressions I’d gotten from their chant. “To be able to fully harness them, he must know them and their ways from the inside out. It’s the only way to unlock the sorcerer power within. Your magic came from the same place, somewhere down your family line.”
Not my family, I wanted to protest, but I didn’t want to give away that much of my personal history—or the fact that I’d lied about the origins of my powers. More nausea flooded me. My heart was thudding so fast my body was trembling with the beat.
What were the sorcerers going to do with me now that I knew their secret? Now that they’d seen my reaction to it? Should I pretend I was accepting it after my initial shock to buy myself enough time to get away, or would they refuse to believe I’d changed my mind?
There was still another victim somewhere over amid the trees, waiting to be slaughtered. How could I stand back and let that happen?
All of those questions were rendered moot by the tramping of footsteps toward us and the rough clearing of a throat. A man I’d seen once or twice around the enclave was approaching us from lower down the slope, wearing a regular jacket and jeans instead of the ceremonial robes, his narrowed gaze fixed on me.
“I thought I might find her here when I saw her bedroom was empty,” he said, shifting his focus to the sorcerers standing on either side of me. At his tone, the other man’s grip on my arm tightened. “She’s a spy.”
My heart just about stopped. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. I didn’t know what he’d found out, what I needed to deny or explain.
“What are you talking about?” Vera demanded, her voice still hushed.
The new arrival lifted his chin toward me. “I followed her on her trip into the village like we discussed. She spoke with a man there, someone she was clearly familiar with. I stuck around after she left to see what he was up to. He was awfully shifty, but he couldn’t completely evade me. I finally got close enough to tell it wasn’t a man at all. It was one of them. She’s working with the monsters.”
Oh, shit. The bottom of my stomach dropped out. “I—what?” I stammered. I could still act like I hadn’t realized, right? “The guy I talked to is just someone I met when I first got here. He seemed totally normal. He can’t be one of those shadow things.”
I couldn’t tell whether I’d been convincing. Vera’s lips pursed with a sour expression. She motioned to the man holding me, and he dragged me farther from the clearing, where the chanting and the sounds of a scuffle continued. Then she shook her head at me.
“It doesn’t matter whether you knew or not. That thing will have known what it was doing. It was using you. Who knows what else it’s up to?” Her gaze jerked to the man I’d had no idea had followed me to the village. “What did they talk about?”
“I couldn’t get near enough to listen in,” he said. “But they looked awfully chummy for two people who only just met.”
I had the urge to protest the description of my relationship with Rollick as “chummy,” but I didn’t think that would do anything for my case. “We were just talking about our travels,” I said hastily. “I didn’t mention anything about the enclave, of course. This doesn’t make any sense. He seemed like a totally normal?—”
“We can’t trust her,” the newcomer snapped, cutting me off. “They’ve managed to infiltrate our ranks, whether because of her cluelessness or with her cooperation. Who knows how else the creatures have their claws in her? They might be maintaining a connection to her even now.”
Vera’s expression hardened even more, and my entire body went twice as cold as it’d been just from the chilly night air.
They were going to kill me. Maybe they’d even sacrifice me to their initiate alongside the other victims they’d tossed his way.
They saw me as being as much of an enemy as the shadowkind they despised, and eliminating me would be the only way to cut off the connection.
I reacted on instinct again, but this time it was all self-preservation. The techniques from my long-ago self-defense classes flashed through my mind, and I jerked my arm toward me with a twist of my elbow that broke the man’s hold. Then I turned tail and ran as fast as my feet could take me.
I stumbled on the uneven terrain as I hurtled forward. The three sorcerers who’d been gathered around me sprang after me with restrained shouts and curses and the rustling of the underbrush. I swerved to head downhill, since that would give me more speed, but even as I careened onward, a sense of hopelessness closed around my heart.
The enclave lay downhill too—and it sounded like the man who’d spotted me with Rollick had already searched for me there. He’d have alerted the other sorcerers. They’d probably confiscated my car.
How the hell was I going to get back to any kind of safe place on foot? I wouldn’t even be able to follow the roads without the sorcerers catching me. Assuming I could get far enough ahead of my current pursuers to even think about making the longer trek back to the nearest village.
I had my health essentials in my bag but no food and only a single bottle of water. As soon as the enclave’s residents had the chance, they’d send some of their shadowkind slaves to hunt for me too.
I swung to the side to dodge a stump, and the chain around my neck shifted. A spark of hope lit in my chest.
I had the necklace Rollick had given me. I couldn’t think of a time I’d have needed it more. The last thing I wanted was for him to have to sweep in and rescue me somehow, but if I could at least get away from this bunch and hide out someplace where he could pick me up?—
Even as I thought that, one of my pursuers gained enough ground to snatch at my backpack. I lurched forward instinctively at the feel of the tug, wrenching free, but my pulse stuttered. Getting away even for a moment was seeming less doable by the second.
A metallic click carried from behind me. “Give me a clear line of sight,” one of the men barked, and I realized what the sound had been: the safety being released on a gun. He was going to shoot me.
In desperation, I leapt sideways and landed on a particularly steep patch of hillside. I ended up skidding down on my ass, just as a gunshot boomed overhead. The second my feet hit firmer ground, I was darting away again, my hand leaping to the necklace.
Screw dignity. I needed to get out of here alive, and I had to admit I couldn’t do it alone.
I dragged out the bird pendant, tugged on the wing, and twisted it the way Rollick had said. Then I dashed on, the metal charm thumping against my sternum.
Would he even get here in time? The man had suggested that Rollick had stuck around in the village for a while after I’d left, maybe because I’d told him about the rites tonight. He might have wanted to be nearby specifically for this reason. But he still had miles of territory to cover to reach me, and the regular shadowkind guards would be keeping watch along the edges of the sorcerers’ domain.
But it could be that the demon had come as close as he could to the enclave’s boundaries to wait. As I rushed on through the forest, one of my pursuers sucked in a startled breath. Then, between the thuds of my frantic feet, a distant shriek reached my ears.
I couldn’t tell if it was angry or pained, but it sounded as though some creature off in the wilderness was not happy at all.
“Something’s coming,” Vera muttered to the men. They slowed as they took stock, and I pulled farther ahead, sliding down another steep portion of hillside. I fled to my right, through a denser stand of trees, and spotted a narrow crevice next to me in the rocky ground.
I didn’t have time to think about it. I squeezed into the tight space that was barely a cave and pushed myself as far back into its darkness as I could get.
My legs were already wobbly from the exertion. I didn’t know if I could outrun my pursuers for much longer, especially when one of them was taking literal shots at me, but maybe I could hide until help came.
Voices carried from the forest beyond, mumbled words in English and in the strange sorcery language I only vaguely understood. They were calling their “harnessed” shadowkind to them now. To fend off the intruder or to find me?
Maybe both.
I held perfectly still, keeping my breathing shallow. A thick mossy odor filled my nose. It was dark enough in the crevice that I didn’t think anyone would be able to see me unless they leaned right into the opening, and then I wouldn’t be much more than a vague shape. I could hope that my pursuers wouldn’t notice the crevice at all.
Another cry rang through the air, this one a little nearer than the first I thought. It definitely wasn’t a victorious sound. My fingers curled into my palms as I waited.
Footsteps trod closer outside. The voices had fallen silent. There was some rustling as hands pushed through bushes in their search for me. I swallowed thickly, still afraid to move so much as an inch.
A few shouts went up somewhere farther away. From the enclave building or the clearing for the rites? I couldn’t tell. My pursuers murmured something to each other too low for me to make out. I waited and waited as they rasped through the vegetation around the crevice, willing them away with each second that passed by.
Abruptly, the sounds of movement stopped. Then I heard one phrase that turned my blood to ice.
“Over there.”
Shit. They’d spotted the opening to my hiding spot. I closed my hands into tight fists, planning to fight them off as well as I could if they came at me. Although they’d probably just shoot me where I crouched. Should I burst out and make another run for it?
Before I could decide, a shadow cast extra darkness across the entrance to the cave. A figure was bending down to peer inside?—
And then that figure was shoved to the side by another, larger form I only saw as a blur. There was a bang of a gunshot and a strangled sound, followed by a crack of breaking bone. Then came a shout, a heavy thump, and the tearing of flesh. It made me think of the scene I’d just witnessed in the clearing, and my stomach heaved all over again.
A face appeared in the dim light beyond the crevice. Rollick gazed in at me, his human face flecked with what I had to assume was blood. His eyes shone darkly in the dusk.
“There you are,” he said, somehow managing to make the remark sound jaunty despite the circumstances. “Come on out. I take it the rites didn’t go all that wonderfully?”
A choked guffaw lodged in my throat. I pushed myself out of the crevice, scraping my shoulder against the rough stone surface, and found myself staring at the mangled bodies of two of the sorcerers who’d been pursuing me.
Vera must have left, possibly to warn the others of a potential attack or to summon more shadowkind to her side. The two men sprawled on the slanted earth, both of their necks sliced clean through, one with a gouge in his chest as if Rollick had punched straight through his ribs into his heart. Which maybe the demon had.
I drew in a breath and realized that I was shaking. But none of my horror was for the scene in front of me. Alongside my nausea came a surge of anger and defiance.
“They were killing people—a kid, even—for their awful rites,” I said. “Then they tried to kill me. It’s all—it’s all some sick ceremony that isn’t even right?—”
I wasn’t sure I was making much sense, but Rollick’s gaze intensified. He grasped my arm, a brutal light flaring in his eyes. More shouts were carrying from across the forest in more than one direction.
“We can make them pay,” the demon said, a hint of his monstrous nature coloring his voice in a husky note that promised vengeance. “I can tear more of them apart. You can call up the creatures they’ve been chaining to break free and turn on their masters. I know you could unleash all that fury on them if you give yourself over to the magic. Just say the word, and I’ll be right there with you.”
His words sent a shudder of yearning through me. Part of me did want to charge back to the clearing and rip the sorcerers to shreds for the horrible acts they’d carried out tonight and who knew how many times before.
But that kind of violence was exactly what had sickened me about them. I couldn’t let my horror turn me into a person who was just as vicious.
“No,” I said roughly. “Thank you, but— I think we should just get out of here. There’s nothing else I can learn from them anyway.”
Not even the sorcerers of the enclave seemed equipped to deal with shadowkind on the scale we were grappling with. And they were as monstrous as our other enemies.
“We’ll deal with them,” I added, my jaw clenching. “We won’t let them keep doing this. But we’re not going to slaughter them like the savages they think shadowkind are. Later, after we’ve handled the bigger problem, we’ll come back.”
Rollick considered me for just a few seconds and seemed to decide it wasn’t worth a debate. He knelt down and shifted into his demonic form at the same time, his body expanding, his skin turning ruddy as his clothing vanished, his horns jutting up from over his angular features. As he held his hand out to me, his tufted tail lashed back and forth. “If you don’t want the bloodshed, then we’d better run, or I’m not going to have much choice.”
At his gesture, I stepped forward and let him heft me up so he could carry me piggyback-style. My arms wrapped around his neck, my knees bracing on either side of his expansive chest. His smoky scent flooded my lungs. As I secured my hold, he pushed off on his powerful legs, racing through the forest away from the enclave.
I closed my eyes against the rushing of the wind stirred by his swift pace. A lump clogged in the base of my throat.
The being I’d sworn never to trust had saved me. All I’d learned in the past week was that we were still on our own when it came to defeating the larger villains we were up against, with no more idea than before how to do that.
And the tremors of power rippling through my heart came from a source so horrifying I wished I could tear the borrowed organ right out of my chest.