EPILOGUE
What the hell is this place?
Do I even want to know?
Blinding light is everywhere, bleaching the landscape. I shade my eyes and see shapes in the distance, maybe hills? Fuck, the white rocks beneath me are sharp as coral, and my body fucking hurts.
I ache in places I didn’t know it was possible to ache.
Standing up, I arch my back. Even my skin hurts; it’s stiff, like someone threw a can of paint on me then left it to harden.
As I twist side to side, producing a loud series of spinal cracks, I think I see movement out of the corner of my eye.
It’s hard to know, the whole landscape ripples, like heat in a desert.
The movement could be a mirage. Just my mind playing tricks.
Theodora, Ludo, and Feniks are out cold. I check, then check again. They’re all breathing—that’s about as much as I know. I place my sweater under Theodora's head and smooth the hair back from her face.
Fuck. I stand again, keeping guard. The shifting air in the distance seems to be getting closer. I think. I notice Ludo has a wrench hooked to his coveralls, and I snag it. No idea what’s down here, or where ‘here’ is, but a wrench is better than no weapon at all.
And I’m going to need a weapon. There’s a creature coming towards me. Out of the shimmering landscape, the outline of a beast is emerging. What the fuck it is, I can’t say. Not a human.
For one thing, it’s on four legs and fucking huge.
The thing draws closer still, and now I can tell it’s some abomination of a horse.
I give Ludo and Feniks a kick, trying to wake them up, but to no avail.
The horse-thing isn’t racing towards me; in fact, it almost seems sick, dragging its hooves on the rocky ground.
Suddenly, a prickling feeling in my neck has me swinging around, but no one is behind me. Just the vast, empty white.
I turn back, and the creature is just a few feet away now.
It’s the body of a horse, but the torso of a man.
With a human face.
A gaunt, drawn face with hair down to its waist and shadowed, haunted eyes. Dear Gods. What is this?
“Cosmo…” it croaks,
I fall to my knees.
“Donovan?”
END OF BOOK ONE.