Only she wasn’t.
Cursing under his breath, growing increasingly anxious when there was no sign of her, he walked all the way out to the edge of the borer grove, where the ground started to go hollow. Then he backtracked and circled around the cave. And he picked up her trail heading back down the incline, beelining straight for the standing stones.
“Son of a bitch.” He had underestimated her mental strength, her disbelief and her determination to break free of what she thought was an illusion. Scrambling back to the cave, he grabbed his supplies and weapons, hoping to hell he hadn’t just made a fatal mistake. Worse, as he pelted downhill, the horizon beyond his tree-hidden cabin started to glow.
His stomach plummeted. He was going to be too damn late.
STANDING JUST INSIDE the stone circle, Moragh threw her head back and laughed with delight as fat blue sparks leaped from one stone to the next and wind stirred her hair, fanning it out around her face.
Raising her voice to carry over the sparks and crackles of power, she called, “Oh, joyous dark gods, I knew it, Nasri! I always knew the Book of Ilth was real.”
She had argued with the sorcerer’s so-called scholars, who had written the text off as either fiction or a heretical interpretation of the gods and the Abyss. Granted, nothing had happened back then when she had tried the two simplest spells, but she hadn’t known that location mattered. It stood to reason, though, that the separation between realms would be thinnest at certain points, the magic connecting them more active. It had taken the lost prince’s spell to draw her to the right place at the right time, and the stirring of vortex wind for her to figure out that she needed to try the first of the two spells she had memorized.
It had worked then, and again just now. She was facing the beginnings of a vortex of her own, one she controlled.
“Are we going home now, Mistress Moragh?” Nasri called from where he stood outside the stones, holding the submission chain of the surviving ettin, which was still stupidly looking around for its brother.
Admittedly, she should have set both of the creatures on the prince and made sure of the kill. But she hadn’t realized right away that something in this realm—gods, she was in another realm—would dull her connection to his father’s spell, making her unable to track him beyond the immediate area of the standing stones. But no matter, she suddenly had new and wondrous options.
“Yes and no,” she said in answer to Nasri’s question. “I must return home and retrieve the Book of Ilth.” Her heart lifted at the thought of wielding the book’s power—it didn’t contain only realm-travel spells, but also summoning spells more powerful than anything the kingdoms had seen in centuries, power transference spells—the possibilities were nearly limitless. “I will take the ettin with me, so you are not troubled by him, and then I shall seal this portal behind me, so the prince cannot follow.” That was the second of the spells she had memorized. Sealing this particular portal might not trap the prince in the wolfyn realm—there were probably other locations where vortices could be made—but it would slow him down, giving her enough time to steal the book from the very scholars who had mocked her for believing it real.
The gnome’s eyes widened. “And me, mistress?”
Satisfied that the vortex was well under way, she stepped out of the stones, froze the ettin in place with a three-word command and then turned her attention to Nasri, who had backed away a few paces when he thought she wasn’t looking. And even though he had long ago stopped appealing to her, the thought of what she was about to do had her secondary canines descending easily, breaking the skin with that itchy pinch of pain she loved so much, and then gliding into place alongside her lower teeth, just touching the gums with a kiss of the wickedly sharp points.
“I have a special job for you, Nasri.”
He blanched at the sight of her fangs, but the compulsion was well rooted. Even as his entire body cringed away from her, he took three jerky steps forward and raised his arm, offering her a wrist dotted with tooth-marks in various healing stages.
She surged forward and took his throat instead, biting deep and hanging on as he writhed and the glorious tang of blood flowed down her throat. New connections formed; new magic came to life, and she found his weak little mind with hers. Now pay attention. This is what I want you to do….
REDA DIDN’T SCREAM, but that was only because she was paralyzed, stuck flat to the ground beneath a dense clump of underbrush at the edge of the clearing, where she had a perfect view of the dark-haired woman drinking from the neck of her small, wizened servant, and a clear soundtrack of the vampire’s rhythmical sucking noises interspersed with mewls of horror from the victim.
Her gorge rose. This woman—this Moragh—was a vampire. Dear God.
She swallowed again and again in an effort to keep herself from puking at the sight of the little man’s body convulsing, his hands fluttering at his sides, as if he wanted to fight her off but couldn’t. Just as he had wanted to run the other way before, but had held out his arm instead. Compulsion. Enthrallment. First the wolfyn and now this. Was every nonhuman creature in this realm capable of inflicting its will on others? I have to get out of here, she thought as the breath sobbed in her lungs. I just want everything to go back to normal.
She had to get through that vortex, and she had to do it now, while the vampire was occupied. But she couldn’t move.
Not now, she begged her body. Please don’t freeze up on me now! But she couldn’t force herself to stand and make a run for the standing stones, couldn’t so much as wiggle a toe. She was vapor locked again. Immobile. Useless. All she could do was watch as the vampire let go and the little man swayed on his feet, throat drenched with blood. His eyes were glassy and unfocused, his voice monotone when he said, “I shall find the pack.”
He stumbled off, headed on a tangent for the woods, seeming not to care that there was blood streaming down his front.
The vampire watched him go with a small smile playing over her bloodstained lips. “I wouldn’t worry. I suspect they’ll find you very soon.” Moonlight glinted off her fangs as she smiled fully, horribly. Then she turned away, snagged the monster’s chain off the ground and led the creature into the stones.
The vortex roared and they disappeared.
The second they were gone, Reda’s paralysis snapped and she was on her feet and racing for the stones, her heart pounding as she called up the spell that had gotten her into this mess.
She was only a few steps away when Dayn burst from the trees, shouting, “Reda, wait!”
Hesitating, she glanced back. And as she did so, a cracking sound filled the air and the vortex collapsed in on itself and disappeared. Seconds later, there was a brilliant amber flash and the air went utterly dead. “No!” She flew through the stones and raced to the center. “Wait, no! Take me!”
“Reda, stop.” He grabbed her by the arms. “Stop. It’s over. It’s gone.”