Chapter 30
Chapter
Thirty
The world blurs as the dragon dips beneath a sweep of star-black clouds.
One moment I’m clutching Chase’s arm, the next I feel the air shiver—like the pause before thunder.
Intellectually, I know that St. Augustine and The Griffin’s Nest still exist, and probably close by too, because we’re now in another dimensional plane that I can’t quite wrap my mind around.
But none of that matters. For right here and right now, this is the only world that exists. This hard and dangerous realm.
The wind fractures into shards of hot and cold, and Chase mutters something sharp, his fingers flexing like he’s reaching for something just out of sight. “We’re close,” he says. “Whistler’s waiting. Hold tight.”
He reaches up toward nothing, as if to pull a blade from the sky. Except this time, it’s different. This time, the air splits, light bending like it’s being forced to obey, and when Chase yanks his arm down hard, reality screams. The sky tears—and a dragon bursts through the rift.
I gasp, then gasp again when I see that Whistler’s on its back, crouched low, his hair whipping around his face.
For just an instant, he’s distorted, like a photo with too few pixels.
The next moment, he’s solid and gasping, pulling his dragon into formation beside ours.
I hear myself yell his name, thrilled to see him, but also shocked that he’s out here with us, instead of us going back to him.
Before I can ask, the air convulses. The dragon shudders beneath us, wings faltering as a crushing pressure rolls through my chest while the world twists sideways—or maybe it’s me. “What’s going on?” I manage to choke the words out, but they scatter like leaves in the storm.
“They know we’re here,” Chase calls back, his voice fighting the twisting of the wind.
The horizon tilts. The dragon roars and plummets as air burns past my face.
For a second, I feel the fierce grip of Chase’s arm around my waist. Whistler shouts something drowned by wind—and then the sky collapses, tumbling us down, down, down until we crash into something that seems only partly solid, like the world unmaking itself around us.
Heat, sand, gravity. All slamming in at once.
I’m thrown forward, my bare arms scraping over coarse grit before Chase catches me, shielding my body as we tumble.
When the motion stops, I’m on my back staring up at a rust-colored sky. The dragon is gone. So is the wind. Everything smells scorched, electric.
“Cora.” Chase’s voice is raw. He’s kneeling beside me, blood smeared on one side of his face.
But those gorgeous golden eyes are clear, and I reach up to stroke his cheek, the smidgeon of lingering anger about the park and the Brides now buried under the flurry of our hellish landing and my delight at still being alive.
The corner of his mouth curves into a smile, as if he knows what I’m thinking. Considering all his surprises, maybe he does. “You’re good?” he asks. “You’re sure?”
“I—yeah.” I push upright, spitting sand. “Whistler?”
A few yards away, Whistler rolls onto his side, then coughs as he waves one hand. “Still breathing.”
“Then we’ll call it a victory,” Chase says.
The landscape stretches empty in every direction—sand and jagged rock, dunes birthed from cruel angles. Heat waves shiver like something alive.
“We made it? We’re really in the Nightmare Realm?” I whisper the words as a question, but I know the answer. I may not have seen this part of the realm, but I know its essence.
This is it. This is Adric’s home.
“We’re in one of the dead zones,” Chase says. “Nothing grows here. And nothing sane can survive here.”
I shoot him a sideways glance. “Aren’t you a ray of sunshine?”
“This realm has no sun. Just the five orange moons.”
Above us, those moons arch across the sky, the shadows of spinning and flying dragons seeming to dance upon their surfaces.
It’s surreal. And oddly beautiful.
For a moment, the three of us are quiet—even the air seems to hold its breath—then there’s a sound like a portent. I tilt my head, trying to make it out. A faint, rhythmic pulse under the sand, thrumming like distant drums.
I glance between Chase and Whistler, and I can tell from their faces that they hear it too.
Then it stops.
The next sound I hear is a snarl.
I twist to look behind me, then suck in a gasp, my heart pounding wildly.
That’s when I see the shapes moving along the moonlit ridge.
Eight creatures, maybe more. Broad shoulders.
Pale eyes catching the light. Some are low to the ground, running on four legs, looking like—well, like a nightmare version of a wolf.
But the ones that truly terrify stand almost erect, their backs curved as they move with a grace and power that seems oddly incongruent with their bent and broken forms.
Whistler hauls himself to his feet, thrusts his hand up, and draws his curved blade from the air. “That’d be the welcome committee.”
“What are they?”
Chase pulls two swords from the air, then nods to me.
“The kind of creature that might show up in a nightmare,” he says as I thrust my hand up, then draw it down fast, my fingers now tight around the familiar curved blade with those deep blue stones decorating the hilt.
“So what do we do?” I ask. “About the wolves.”
As if they know we’re talking about them, the creatures turn, moving as one to face us.
For a moment, they’re still, red eyes gleaming.
Then they leap forward in unison, one giant wall of wolf racing toward us, rocks tumbling behind them, the crash and thud of the ridge’s collapse echoing across the desolate landscape.
Fear cuts through me, cold and stifling. There’s no place to go, nowhere to hide. No choice at all except the one to fight or die. I thrust my free hand out, expecting to throw sparks, but nothing happens, and I curse as I tighten my grip on my blade.
I took two semesters of fencing at my shitty-but-posh boarding school. Now I’m hoping those minuscule skills translate to knife fights.
At my side, Chase thrusts his arm out. “Get behind me.”
I want to argue, but before I can speak, a massive wolf-creature leaps from a rock toward Whistler, who slices the creature’s belly open before it even lands.
Black ichor spills out, but the creature isn’t dead, and it hits Whistler like a boulder.
He staggers, parries, then drives steel up into its throat.
Two more hit him from the flank. His blade flashes—one beast drops—then the third slams him hard. There’s a wet sound, a grunt cut short as Whistler’s knees hit the sand.
“Whistler!” I cry, lunging for him as another creature rips across my path, forcing me back as Chase dives forward, steel ringing.
For a breath, I can’t see Whistler through the bodies and sand and claws.
Then a wolf slams into him from behind—he twists, driving his blade up, but another hits from the flank.
He goes down hard, the sand blooming red.
The wolves close in, teeth flashing, and one catches his arm, dragging him toward the rocks.
“Let him go!” I scream, throwing out my hand. Sparks leap from my fingers—weak, sputtering light that dies before it touches them. “No!”
“Cora!” Chase cuts down the beast that’s lunging for me as another wolf launches off a boulder, all teeth and momentum.
Chase turns to meet it—too late. Claws rake across his thigh, ripping denim and flesh so fast I catch a glimpse of white bone before the blood wells up, mixing with something black and oily.
He cries out, and I drive my knife into the attacker’s eye. The creature collapses. The rest of the pack slows, then peels away, loping behind the jagged rocks until the ridge swallows them whole—taking Whistler with them.
Silence slams down. I stagger forward, then drop to my knees where the sand is wet and thick with blood. “No,” I whisper. “No, please—”
From the ground where he’s fallen, Chase reaches for me, his other hand clamped to his thigh as he stumbles to his feet. “He’s gone,” he whispers in a voice filled with grief. “We have to move.”
“There’s nowhere to go.” My voice breaks as I twine my fingers with his. “They’ll come back. And you can barely walk, anyway.”
“I can manage,” he says, but he can’t. His jaw is clenched tight, his skin gone gray.
I ease him back to the ground, and rest his head in my lap, then press my palm to his forehead.
He’s already feverish. His pulse flutters.
I can’t stop the tears—hot and silent, cutting through the grit on my cheeks.
Time unspools. The five moons climb. The world is sand and the harsh rhythm of Chase’s breathing and the useless ache of my empty hands.
A rustle. Movement at the edge of the ridge.
I look up fast, scrubbing at my eyes. A figure steps into the open, the silver ties in her black hair catching the orange moonlight as she looks straight at me.
Kali.