“Can you, I don’t know, sniff it out or something?” I asked.
Kael frowned. “I’m not a bloodhound.”
I walked around the boulders, and Kael trekked around the perimeter near the trees. We met back up at the center, both clueless.
I raised my voice. “Um, owl?”
The shifter scoffed and leaned heavily against a boulder. My heart jumped.
“Watch out,” I said.
“Why?”
“Just do it.” I shoved at him.
He was too heavy for me to actually budge him, but he sighed and got out of the way.
There, right where he was leaning, was moss in the shape of an owl.
“It’s the owl,” I grinned, “it has to be.”
I leaned down closer, and there at its center was a tiny rune. A whisper came to me on the wind, pulling me closer. The rune beckoned me to touch it, to utter foreign words from my tongue. I reached for it, but a hand grabbed my wrist.
How did Kael’s fingers get so frigid if he never gets cold?
I tilted my head to ask him what his problem was and found the mage. Fear rippled through me. I wasn’t ready to face him. Not yet.
“I see you,” he said, words crackling like heat lightning. His lips turned up, his smile lanced through with cruelty and darkness. “You would do well to turn back now.” His hand constricted more, threatening to snap my wrist with the pressure.
I gasped, and then Kael was standing there. I blinked several times. It had been a vision. Even without the key in my possession, the mage was still messing with me.
Kael closed the distance between us. His hand squeezed my shoulder. “Hey, are you okay?”
“Two things,” I said. The air seemed colder, a bone-marrow freezing chill clutching at me. “One, the mage knows we are here. And two.” I glanced at the mossy owl. “I don’t think he wants us going in there.”
Chapter 19
Time faded away with each rapid beat of my heart. How long until the mage tried to stop me? How long before our efforts were too late?
Kael grabbed my shoulder. “How do you know the mage knows we are here?”
“I saw him.”
“When?”
“Just now! He was right...” I gestured past Kael. “Well, right there.”
“Either way, we need to hurry.” He took his hand off me and squinted at the moss-formed owl. “How do we get in?”
I stared at the rune in the center. Once again, it seemed to whisper to me. I touched the rune, and the whispers pulled ancient words from my mouth. The owl and the surrounding rock crumbled beneath my fingertips.
I gasped and stepped back as the last few stones rolled across the cool grass, revealing an open doorway. Inside, there was nothing but blackness.
Kael edged closer to the doorway and peered inside.
I stepped up beside him. “Well, what does your kitty sense say? ”
He turned to me with an amused smile. “Kitty sense?”
“Yeah, does your inner jaguar smell anything?”
“It smells…cold.” Kael rubbed at his nose. “Uncomfortably so, like if you take a deep breath when it’s below freezing out.”
I took a sniff. I didn’t smell anything.
Kael shuffled beside me and pulled off his clothes. Guess he was going to shift. How long would it take me to get used to him just shucking off his clothes?
“Be careful in here,” he said.
I didn’t glance at him, but I rolled my eyes. Careful. Clearly, he had a lot to learn about me.
In the next moment, his jaguar form was standing beside me. This time, I did peer at him to find his yellow-gold eyes staring back.
“Let’s go get that key,” I said.
He nodded, and we entered the ruins side by side. It was fortunate we could walk next to each other. It would have been difficult for me to argue with a giant cat about who got to venture in first.
My boots scuffed across gritty ground, and darkness enveloped us. I held up my hand and let the magic warming my veins twist around my fingers. The light of it dimly glowed on the surrounding rock walls, though not as brightly as it should, as if the cold stone was leeching the brightness away.
A path of steps led downward. My footfalls echoed around us. Kael’s padded feet were silent as he walked beside me, and his ears twitched back and forth, as though listening for any danger.
I stepped off the bottom and onto a flat floor with smooth stones. Behind us, a loud grinding noise shook the dark space.
Kael growled, and I wheeled around. A massive stone door settled into the floor with a puff of dust, blocking us from the steps.
I pushed uselessly at it, then noticed a keyhole. “Locked. ”
Kael stared at the door with lifted lips, his scrunched face revealing sharp teeth.
“I think the only way out will be to find the relic,” I said.
I put my back to the door and studied our surroundings. I hissed in a breath through my teeth. I hadn’t noticed the skeletons, at first. There were dozens of them, most yellowed with age, but some fresher. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones who had tried to find the key and become trapped down here.
I never planned on becoming nothing more than a pile of dusty bones in a ruin, and I didn’t plan on starting, either.
Carefully, so as not to tread on any bones, I stepped across the floor with Kael trailing me. The whispers started again, beckoning me forward, tempting my soul and pulling me across the stones. Where were they coming from?
A snarl ripped through Kael. I pivoted to find the bones of the surrounding skeletons scraping across the rough stone. My startled cry bounced off the rock around us. The skeletons shifted as they stood upright, their thin and tattered clothes that draped across their frames drifting on a breeze that wasn’t there.
Pale, mottled skin materialized and wrapped around their bones, stretching on their faces like wet paper as they opened their mouths and screamed.
The animated bodies charged. Kael let out another snarl, pulling me from my shock. He leaped at one of the bodies, deadly claws out. A deep-rooted instinct took a hold of me, and I had no time to think of anything else to do other than to give in to the ancient urging.
Magic tumbled from my fingertips and twisted forward to grab one of the bodies around the neck. I jerked my arm and flung the creature into the wall. It hit with a sickening crunch, and when it fell, bones rattled across the floor.
A cold, rigid hand painfully grasped my shoulder. I whirled and sank my knife into the body’s chest to the hilt. I hadn’t even realized I’d reached for Chaucer. A scatter of bones fell at my feet, the skull coming to a stop to peer at me with empty eyes.
I caught a brief sight of Kael leaping from one pile of bones to sink his teeth into the neck of another assailant, but my view was soon blocked by a pair of new attackers. One of them had a knife of their own, the blade seeming to be made of hardened mist.
I arched back as the weapon sliced through the air, narrowly missing my throat. Only quick footwork saved me from continuing backward. I shot forward another burst of the fuchsia energy. It hit the one with the knife in the head. As the head exploded and a bit of skull thwacked me in the face, my stomach twisted.
Gross .
The other body that hadn’t faltered lurched toward me. Sweeping out my leg, I sent it crashing to the floor. I kicked it in the side, and my foot sank into its ribcage with a disconcerting amount of give. I yanked my foot free of its side before dropping to my knees to stab it in the chest.