by Tracy Deonn
“There won’t be reception down there, so your phones are useless. Remember that the center of the campus is to our left, and hopefully we’ll all end up at the cave together. If you get there first, please try talking to Lord Davis.” Before using a weapon, she means. “But be on your guard. He might open a Gate to truly force Nick to defend himself.”
The pairs file in one at a time. Evan, Fitz, and I will go in last. Just as we take a step forward, William catches my arm.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” he says earnestly, his gray eyes searching mine. He glances into the cave and back to me again, and I see the worry there, so genuine it pains me. “It’s not your war.”
It’s not your war. I had a similar thought the last time I was here, when I was leaving the Legendborn world for good.
“I don’t want war,” I reply. “I want the people I love to be safe.”
“I thought you might say something like that.”
“You coming, Matthews?” Fitz calls. He and Evan are standing just over the threshold, faces limned in light, bodies already in shadow.
I say, “Right behind you,” and step forward into the earth.
51
THE SCENT OF rotting things overwhelms us. It burns the insides of my nostrils so much that I tug my T-shirt up over my nose for relief. The shift of my sleeves up my forearms makes me wish I had a coat; it’s freezing down here.
The others have already chosen their tunnel, so once we reach the small antechamber, we take the one farthest to the right.
We walk with our flashlights pointed down mostly, with occasional flicks up ahead, not that it helps very much. The tunnel turns vaguely left, I think. It’s hard to focus when the ceiling sometimes drops to just above Fitz’s hair and other times rises up into steep, empty columns to nowhere. Often, Fitz’s massive shoulders brush the wall, but for most of the way, the tunnel is about four feet wide. Our steps makes a crunching, scratching sound on the gravel under our feet. The sound of dripping water reaches us from somewhere out of sight. Probably where the mildew comes from. Its presence is a constant, deep green and black and slippery. We walk for twenty, maybe thirty minutes mostly in silence and single file. Fitz leads, Evan takes the middle, and I bring up the rear.
I feel a surge of relief that Vaughn warned me away from the staff. It’d never even fit in this part of the tunnel.
“Where are we, do you think?” My voice bounces in loud, jarring echoes in the tight space.
Fitz grunts. “Not sure. Tunnels aren’t a straight line. It takes about fifteen minutes to walk to the edge of campus aboveground, then another fifteen or so to the Tower.”
I’m not claustrophobic, but the thought of walking in and out of cramped, dark spaces for—at the minimum, if we’re on the direct route—another twenty minutes makes my heart pound in my ears. The sound almost blocks out the dripping.
“Do you really think Davis might open the Gates down here?” Evan asks his Scion. “If he does, and Arthur doesn’t Call Nick, they’d both be trapped.”
Fitz grunts dismissively. “He’d be out of his mind. Fighting in quarters this close would be a nightmare. I’m sure the cave is bigger, but even still. You’ve got to contain the threat or neutralize it in an enclosed space with limited exits. Tactical nightmare.”
Evan hums in agreement.
Fitz leads us into another left turn. I hear his sharp intake of breath about two seconds before I see its cause.
The tunnel opens up completely on one side, turning a narrow passageway into a path with only one wall on our left. On our right, dropping down into terrifying blackness, is a ravine about thirty feet across. Fitz’s flashlight shows us the other wall, a series of massive jagged outcrops reaching toward us like giant molars with sharp edges. When he and Evan point their beams down, we see that the ravine narrows as it drops, with stalagmites rising up from an unseen floor filled with shadows that swallow our light.
The path ahead is still four feet across, but everything about it seems more treacherous with certain death on the other side.
Fitz says what we’re all thinking: “Better hug that wall, y’all.”
We do. I hug it so much that I curl my left fingers into the bumpy, cold, slippery surface, hoping that a small handhold will appear if I need it.
We’re three, maybe five minutes into the new terrain when the skittering sound begins.
Fitz’s flashlight swings right. “What’s that noise?”
“Bats, maybe?” Evan offers.
It seems like he’s right; the skittering becomes the flapping of leathery wings. I cringe.
Evan’s flashlight pitches up just in time to catch a thick, scaly body and webbed foot before both disappear into the darkness. “That’s not a bat, y’all.”
“Well, what is i—” Fitz is struck by something solid. He grunts and goes sprawling along the path, dropping his flashlight into the ravine in the process.
I yell “Fitz!” and lean around Evan’s body, cutting my flashlight long across the wall. Fitz groans, but gets back up on his feet.
“That’s not a bat!” he roars, holding his hand up to shield his eyes from the light. Heart thudding in my chest, I direct my flashlight down to his feet.
Miraculously, his flashlight must have landed on an outcrop about ten feet below us and at an angle, because a wide beam of light hits the wall and path ahead of us.
“He’s right. I didn’t see it, but I heard it!” Evan shouts. “Whatever it is, it’s strong!”
High-pitched screeching sounds bounce around the cavern, and that’s all the warning we get.
A cloud of heavy wings descends on us. I hear Fitz yell again, then, a half heartbeat later, the singing whine of his aether sword when he pulls it from its scabbard. Claws pull at my shoulders. I scream and cover my head, dropping down to the ground. The gravel digs through my pants into my knees as I cower beneath beating wings and what feels like tiny, sharp daggers.
One of them lands on my back. I thrust an elbow back and up. It makes contact with something hot and heavy that howls and dislodges itself from my shirt.
Fitz screams. I drop my flashlight so that it faces his direction and spring up, drawing my sword. The angles of the light hit Fitz just right, and then I see them.
Four flying demons the size of swans swarm Fitz’s head and torso. Leathery wings as wide as he is tall carry their bulbous bodies and long, red, scaly limbs. Their hind feet are long and bent back like a wolf, but their hands look human, with long fingers ending in black claws that slash at Fitz’s arms and face.
“Imps!” he screams.
Evan is running, and so am I. I swing at the first imp I reach, hacking off its long, pointed tail. Its screech is a railroad spike driving deep into my brain, but it flies back over the ravine, away from us. Fitz manages to drive his blade into the body of another imp. A squelching, wet sound, and the silver tip of it pops out of its back, shining and covered in black blood. When the imp falls, it almost takes Fitz’s glowing sword with him.
One of the imps flies over Fitz’s head and makes a beeline for me. I swipe high, just slicing into the soft pocket of flesh under its arm. It screeches and wings upward.
Inside my skull, my grandmother screams.
Her wail sends me to my hands and knees—right at the edge of the path. I freeze, my head and shoulders just stopping before tipping me over into the chasm.
I gasp and scramble away until my back hits the wall.
‘Protect my grandchild, Lord, oh please…’
I think Not right now! at her as loud as I can, because the imp I injured is still circling the ravine. It loops back around and flies right toward me. It’s the first time I’ve seen one straight on. It has long, curved horns like a mountain goat and green glowing eyes. I drop into a loose stance. Wait for it. Wait for it.
‘The Lord is my shepherd…’
“Not now, Grandma!” I scream out loud, and slash downward with all of my strength, slicing the imp in two
from shoulder to hip. Both sides of it fall back into the ravine.
I shove Grandmother Charles into an empty room in my mental house and imagine locking the door tight so I can focus, then turn back to Fitz.
The last imp has sunk its claws deep into Fitz’s shoulders and hovers behind him where his sword can’t reach. He drops the blade and, face and chest bloody with gouges, reaches back behind his head to try and grab its ankles. It’s futile. Before I can take another step to help him, the imp laughs—a sound like nails on a board—and takes off, pulling Fitz up with him.
I watch, horrified, as Fitz’s feet leave the ground. The imp leans to the left, dragging Fitz’s weight toward the ravine. I run, only to end up standing right where he’d stood. Just in time to see the terror on his face when the imp extracts one foot.
“Fitz!” Evan screams, but it’s no use.
Fitz shouts. The imp lets go.
He falls.
There’s a heartbeat of silence, then a heavy, wet piercing sound—and silence again.
* * *
My brain has shut down.
It tries to process what it’s seeing in the ravine, but it can’t.
Fitz’s limbs, loose and limp, hang from his hips and shoulders, but his chest is gone. It’s gone. In its place is a shining red point of rock protruding up from his body like a spear.
I watch myself raise my sword again as if from a distance. The imp, still hovering, smiles with its double row of dagger teeth and dives again with claws extended.
My feet slide left. It misses me.
I swing the edge of my sword into its back, cutting it into two halves, a top and bottom. It dies against the wall with my blade sunk into the stone behind it.
I hold the hilt, my lungs heaving against my chest and my eyes burning with tears. I want to let go, but I can’t. I can’t yet. My knees hit the ground.
Evan slowly rises from his knees to his feet, his face stricken. “He’s—he’s gone.” The whites of his eyes shine as he casts a wild gaze at the bloody scene around us.
My brain clicks back into operation. I take a deep breath and unlock my fingers to pull my blade from the wall. The top half of the imp falls with a heavy splat that turns my stomach.
We both watch as his Scion’s sword shimmers, then fades to dust without its caster. A heartbeat later, and Evan’s sword, still on the ground, goes too.
Evan approaches, backlit against my still-fallen flashlight, and offers a hand. I take it automatically, and he pulls me to standing.
“He’s gone,” he repeats, stunned. His armor disappears before our eyes.
“I know,” I whisper, even though I don’t know. I don’t know what it would feel like to watch your Scion die right in front of you. Would his Oath punish him? Did he feel Fitz’s pain as well as his fear?
As I unstrap my scabbard and resheathe my sword, a cold certainty slides into my mind. Davis opened a Gate. He may not have killed my mother, but he did murder Fitz.
No more deaths.
52
EVAN HANDS ME my flashlight with a shaking hand. “We’ve got to keep moving.”
I meet his eyes, unwavering in his familiar face. I take the lead this time, flashlight in hand, although my hand trembles as I hold it.
We walk for another few minutes. It takes that long for my breathing to begin to slow, but nothing about the situation feels calm. My eyes and flashlight fly to every distant drip of water, every shadow of stone.
“Those were imps, right? Isels?” I ask, hoping to fill the quiet. Hoping that talking will keep my heart from racing right out of my chest.
“Yes,” Evan replies, his voice cracking.
“Why weren’t they invisible?”
“We’re underground. Aether is richest close to the earth. Down here every Shadowborn is more powerful than it is on the surface. Harder to kill.”
I nod, even though he can’t really see me do it. “That makes sense.”
Fifty feet ahead there’s another turn left. “Turn ahead,” I call back to Evan. I pitch my flashlight low to keep the path in sight so we don’t keep going straight and end up walking right over the edge. That’s how I see that the gravel on the path, which had been small and mostly flat, has changed over into heavier, round pieces. “Watch the ground, these rocks are loose.” I walk slowly, each step shifting the floor slightly before my foot settles. I pause to catch my breath and turn back to see Evan walking about six feet behind me.
It’s only when I turn back to keep going that I realize that while my feet send rocks shifting and crunching … Evan’s feet make no sound at all.
If the cave hadn’t been so silent, I’d never have noticed.
My next step falters, and I have to catch the wall to stay upright.
Goruchel.
Consummate mimics.
“You okay?” Evan asks.
When it facilitates their human ruse.
My heart pounds so hard that I can barely form the words to reply. And I am desperately certain that I have to reply. I push off the wall. “Yep, just slipped.” My voice sounds hollow and thin to my ears, but I hope he doesn’t detect the lie. I pray he doesn’t detect the lie.
I want to run. Run as fast as I can. But instead I walk forward, forcing myself to keep a steady pace and ignore the growing dread in my stomach. I’m so focused on not running, not revealing what I know, that I slip for real and land on one knee.
This time, when Evan reaches a hand toward me, my body flinches without my permission. An instinct. I look up into his dark blue eyes—and see the sliver of something canny move behind them.
“I’m good,” I say with a laugh. A laugh that sounds so fake that no one would believe it. I stand up and keep walking, this time a little faster.
He lets me go a few steps.
“Oh, Bree.”
“Yes?” I whimper, still moving quickly.
His mouth is suddenly at my ear. “You’re a little too smart,” he whispers in a voice like broken wind chimes falling on rocks.
I run then, feet sliding under each step. I don’t know if he chases me. I can’t hear him if he is. I only slow when I reach the turn. I make it without getting too close to the edge, but my left ankle twists sharply when I do it. I cry out in pain and drop the flashlight in my left hand, but keep moving.
Without the flashlight, the pitch black of the cave presses from all sides. I’m completely blind in the darkness. Can’t see my hand inches from my face.
I’d glimpsed the path ahead before my flashlight went flying. It had been straight, then a dip, then straight. I keep one hand against the wall and move as fast as I dare, straining for any sounds behind me. But I’ll never hear him coming.
Drawing my sword would be useless.
He could kill me here, and no one would know it was him.
When he speaks again, his voice is slightly muffled; he’s still on the path before the turn.
“Honestly, I have to thank you. If it wasn’t for you showing up tonight, I’d never have found the entrance to the ogof y ddraig. Well”—he pauses—“I’d have found it eventually, but my kind aren’t the most patient.”
Every step sends a lightning strike of pain through my ankle. I don’t stop, but eventually my jog becomes a limp. I grit my teeth and push forward. Use the wall to take the pressure off my foot.
“I have to thank Davis, too, you know.”
His voice is louder, more direct; he’s turned the corner.
“He threw the Kingsmage blood traitor off my scent by opening Gates of his own. I barely had to open any, really. Just one or two, like the night of the second trial. I’d hoped the foxes would take care of Sel, but then there you were. How’d you do that, by the way?”
The pain drives my teeth so deep into my lower lip that I taste blood.
Keep. Moving.
“Did you know the real Evan Cooper played the banjo? Do you have any idea how hard it is to learn to play the banjo? Nightmare.” His laughter is a stabbing sound. Dev
oid of humor.
He’s closer now, but I know he’s toying with me. He’s fast enough to catch me. To kill me, if he wants. The thought is jolting enough to make me trip. I fall forward onto my hands and knees in the darkness. Then I’m crawling. Crawling as fast as I can away from him into black nothing.
A hot hand closes around my bad ankle. I scream, but he drags me back across the rocks on my stomach, my free hand clawing uselessly at the gravel.
With a grunt, I heave up on my left hand. Punch up in an awkward backswing, knowing full well he’ll see it coming; I don’t need to wound him, I just need him to let go. And he does.
I scramble to stand, but his hand shoots out and strikes me, palm open, in the middle of the spine. The force knocks the breath from my lungs, and I fall again. I twist around to face him just as the Evan Cooper that I knew goes away forever.
In the light of his flashlight, the goruchel demon grins, his human teeth stretching in his mouth until they look like a boar’s canines. His fingers darken and elongate to crimson claws. The skin of his eyes recedes into deep hollows, and his blue eyes bleed to red. The smell that fills my nose is the sour scent of burning flesh.
His new gaze scorches my skin. Like my face could sizzle and peel, melt away until it’s only bones and seared muscle.
“It’s rude to ignore someone who’s talking to you,” he hisses. “Evan liked your attitude, Bree. Rhaz does not.”
“My bad,” I spit. “I don’t like listening to murderers!”
The demon—Rhaz—tilts his head to the side. “I didn’t kill Fitz. I only called the imps who killed Fitz.” When he jerks a thumb behind him, I see the long, fresh cut from the outside of his wrist to his elbow. He’d bled into the ravine somehow as we walked. He’d called those demons in the darkness without us even noticing. He clucks. “Well, no, you’re right. I did kill the real Evan Cooper. Took his life. Pretended to be Fitz’s new Squire—even copied Evan’s humanity enough to take that silly Warrior’s Oath right under the traitor’s nose. But it was awful, Bree. I can’t tell you how many times I daydreamed about ripping the skin from Fitz’s meathead face—”