“What is she?” Cara asked, voice hushed.
“I thought… Oh, shit!” The female’s body blurred and stretched without warning, expanding, enlarging, growing until the sable coyote—or demon?—was the size of a horse, stiff ruffed and vicious-looking, with coal red eyes that fixed immediately on Cara, suddenly all too familiar.
The hellhound had arrived in the flesh. And this time it wasn’t letting her get away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Come on,” Sven yelled, dragging at Cara’s arm. “Fall back. I can shield us!”
Heart pounding, she turned to run. “Go!”
No! The nahwal’s voice cut through her panic and confusion. Join now or all is lost!
And she stopped dead. “Oh, gods.”
Sven spun back. “Here? Now?”
But Cara got it. She freaking got it.
They had been right about some things, wrong about others. And they’d been very wrong about the two of them. “It’s not talking about us joining,” she said softly. “The signs have been pointing toward this guy all along.” She indicated the hellhound, which was crouched with its head low, its hackles raised, and its huge teeth bared. “He’s not the enemy. He’s tried to reach me whenever I’ve been deeply linked to the magic through you.”
Sven shook his head, but there was a look of dawning wonder on his face. “He’s a she, and she’s the one who’s been sending me the visions. She’s been looking for you.” His voice quieted. “I thought she was your familiar.”
Cara caught her breath. My familiar. Gods. And in that instant, she yearned… and then she let it go, because the creature facing her was nobody’s familiar. “No. I think she’s the key to the resurrection spell. Her and the winikin together.”
That was what the signs had meant. Not that she and Sven were destined.
He took a step toward her. “Cara—”
Shouts interrupted, coming from the shield. The Nightkeepers were breaking the spell and rallying with the winikin as more camazotz poured from the tunnel. They were going to need help, though.
Cara held out her hand to Sven. “I need to borrow your magic. It’s working now, isn’t it?”
He avoided her eyes. “Yeah. Good as new.”
That shouldn’t have pinched, but did. She accepted the pain, though, just as she accepted the terror that took root and grew as they approached the hellhound. Mac stalked at her side, bristling, though she didn’t know whether that was coming from his instincts or Sven’s thoughts. Maybe both, because the creature was monstrous up close, fierce and fanged, and smelled faintly of burned hair and ozone.
The storm had gone quiet, but the clouds remained. Now, as the hellhound’s growl notched up, thunder grumbled beneath their boots.
“Don’t be rude,” Cara said in a reproving voice. “You came looking for me, remember?”
Lightning flickered and the air grew heavy and storm-charged.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dez say something to Strike, who shook his head. When Anna did the same, her stomach clenched. The Nightkeepers were exhausted, the shield failing, the teleporters possibly too spent to evacuate.
So when the beast shifted, looking ready to charge, she pulled her combat knife, opened the slashes on both her palms, and held out a hand to Sven. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
He hesitated. “Cara, I—”
“Not now,” she interrupted. Because if he gave her one more empty apology right now, she was afraid she would be the one to block him, not the other way around. “Tell me after.”
He said nothing more, but nodded and took her hand, and when the blood-link formed, it carried with it a huge upwelling of warmth and support. She nearly staggered from the impact of it, the aching sweetness of feeling magic coming through the bond once more when she had thought it lost forever, and from how much she wanted to send the same back to him. But the difference was that while she would mean it wholeheartedly, his would last only as long as it was convenient.
So, saying nothing, she accepted the warmth along with the magic, and crossed the last few feet that brought her into the hellhound’s range. Coal red eyes watched her approach, but the huge beast didn’t move.
Lightning flickered, though, followed by a growl of thunder.
“You came looking for me,” she reminded the beast. “Well… I’m here. I don’t know what you want from me. But whatever it is, you can have it.”
“Cara…”
She ignored Sven’s warning growl and, with his magic inside her and his blood-link making her feel like she could do anything, be anything, she held out her hand and opened her fingers to let the blood trickle free.
The beast moved like a striking snake, snapping its jaws to trap her hand in its massive teeth. She screamed in shock, but when Sven and Mac both surged forward, she said, “No! It’s okay. It’s…” She trailed off as the huge animal’s tongue swiped her palm and new heat seared through her, new magic.
“Holy shit,” Sven said, and looped an arm around her waist to support her when she sagged. “What is this? What the fuck is this?”
She didn’t know, couldn’t have told him if she did, because suddenly the creature reared back on its haunches and let out an earsplitting howl that drove her back and into his arms. She didn’t want to cling, but she could only watch in terrified awe as fresh lightning split the sky, thunder pealed, and the clouds erupted, fragmenting into a dozen vapor trails. Twenty. Forty.
The cloudy shadows spun momentarily and then plummeted straight for the dome and then through, not deterred by the shield or the Nightkeepers’ spells.
“Incoming!” Sebastian bellowed, and raised his machine gun.
“No!” Cara shouted, surging toward him even knowing she would be too late to stop it. “Hold your fire!” For a nanosecond his decision hung in the balance as a vapor trail beelined straight for him. He glanced at her. Didn’t fire.
And the mist slammed into him and disappeared.
Sebastian yelled and staggered back, clutching his chest, then his forearm. “Son of a—” was all he got out before the fog erupted once more, streaming from where his fingers covered his bloodline mark. But it wasn’t the same fog that had gone into him: As it emerged, it stretched and lengthened, growing wings and a body, gaining dark substance and form and a set of razor-sharp claws and a wickedly hooked beak.
The shadow creature—it was still a shadow, translucent despite the visible detail—flapped up and hovered above him while his face blanked with shock. “What? Who?”
“Whoo!” The huge owl was more streamlined than its real-world counterparts, with long, powerful legs and wings that cut through the air like scythe blades.
“Jesus, gods,” Cara whispered, flashing back on the day of the funeral, when Sebastian had been nearly suicidal over having been marked by the magic. “It’s his bloodline totem. The owl is his totem.”
“The others too,” Sven said, voice hushed.
She started to push away from him, but then her eyes went past Sebastian. And she froze at the sight of shadow creatures everywhere—felines, foxes, monkeys, reptiles, peccaries, and more. There was a totem shadow for each of the winikin, all bigger, stronger, and meaner-looking than their native cousins. The winikin themselves looked stronger and meaner too, as if they had been lit by a new inner power. And as they connected with their creatures, their shadow-familiars, their faces lit with fierce joy.
Magic, she thought, awestruck.
Shaking now, she turned back to the hellhound—so much bigger than the sleek coyote it had masqueraded as. The beast wasn’t crouched down anymore; she was standing, her attention going from Cara to the outer perimeter and back again. Her body was quivering too, though with eagerness rather than shock, and a low whine sounded at the back of her throat.