Cheyenne glanced around the dining room and gritted her teeth.
Almost as quickly as it had started, the earthquake stopped.
The table fell silent again as everything in the Summerlin house stopped rattling and shaking. Bianca lifted her napkin to the corner of her mouth again. “Eleanor, remind me to thank you for talking me out of installing that chandelier in the dining room.”
“I stand by my decision.” Eleanor nodded slowly, her eyes wide. “That was…”
“Unexpected, yes. I’ll look into it after dinner. Just one more benefit of living all the way out here away from the city, Ember.” Bianca smiled curtly at the fae and returned her napkin to her lap. “Even the natural surprises feel a lot more isolated than—”
The second wave rocked the house with surprising force. The metal salad bowl jolted off the end of the table and clattered to the floor, followed by the bottle of mineral water.
“All right. Everyone out from under the staircase.” Bianca lurched to her feet and stumbled away from the table, helping Eleanor out of her chair with a firm grip on the other woman’s hand.
Cheyenne leaped up and grabbed the handles of Ember’s wheelchair before whisking her friend away from the table.
“Cheyenne?” Ember rubbed the back of her neck and looked at the halfling with wide eyes.
“I don’t know.” The half-drow pulled Ember away from the table and out from beneath the staircase, then turned to look out the wall of windows and past the veranda. A flash of dark light bloomed from within the trees at the edge of the small meadow. A wide swath of oak trees and loblolly pines rustled violently before crashing down against each other. The shaking house settled down a little, a slow rumble still rising from beneath the floors. The halfling barely noticed, her attention split between the almost painful tingle across the tops of her shoulders and the second flash of dark light between the trees. “Shit.”
Chapter Ninety-Seven
“Cheyenne.” It wasn’t a question the way Ember said it. Not from Bianca Summerlin.
“I don’t know, Mom.” The halfling wheeled Ember toward Bianca and Eleanor, then set a hand lightly on her friend’s shoulder and nodded at her mom. “I’ll be back.”
“If you don’t know, Cheyenne, I doubt it’s a good idea to go chasing after it.”
“Yeah, but at least it won’t come chasing after me into this house.” The halfling shot her mom a warning look, and the fiery determination Bianca saw in her daughter’s eyes sucked the breath out of her. “Just stay here.”
“What’s happening?” Eleanor squeaked.
No one had the time to answer her before the house rocked again. Cheyenne staggered toward the double doors and threw them open. The calm air outside on the veranda was at odds with the shaking stone beneath her feet and the echo of groaning trees and earth before both snapped and split open. Black and purple light bloomed in long flashes within the trees.
The halfling stopped halfway to the balcony and ripped the Heart of Midnight pendant off her neck for what felt like the thousandth time. This is really getting old.
As soon as the chain broke, Cheyenne’s magic flared with an overwhelming intensity up her spine and through her entire body. The force of it sent purple sparks shooting from her fingertips as her hair went from black to white and her pale skin darkened. For a second, everything went violet in her vision as purple light flashed behind her glowing gold eyes, then she stepped back before sprinting toward the railing at the edge of the veranda.
She vaulted over it and dropped nearly two stories.
“Oh, my God, Cheyenne!” Ember fumbled to get a grip on the chair’s wheels, but Bianca stepped toward her and just barely touched her fingertips to the fae’s upper arm.
“It’s all right. She’s been doing that since she was nine.”
“What?”
Eleanor clasped her hands together and raised them toward her trembling lips as all three women stared at the edge of the veranda. “We asked her why she would ever need to put that skill to use.”
“Apparently, Eleanor, we were wrong.”
Cheyenne landed on the grass and dropped into a roll. The next second, she was back on her feet and racing across the manicured lawn toward the flashing lights and the huge patch of felled trees and snapped branches. I don’t care what it is as long as it stays away from the house.
Slipping into drow speed, she sprinted toward the tree line and almost staggered backward when she saw what was behind the dark flash of light suspended in front of her.
A frozen black tentacle rose halfway behind the light, two more crossing behind it, blurred by the frozen shimmer of the light. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
She dropped out of drow speed to study the flashing lights in real-time. The ground bucked again beneath her, and more trees splintered and crashed into their neighbors. A huge, thick oak shrieked before the entire thing fell sideways. Dirt and grass, leaves and twigs erupted when the massive trunk crashed to the ground at the edge of the field, the entire base ripped out of the earth. A shower of dirt and shredded roots rained down on the forest floor.
Cheyenne stretched out her fingers, gritting her teeth and breathing heavily as she scanned the woods. They can’t get through if there’s not an actual portal.
As if the earth read her mind, another earsplitting crack rose from the ground, and a jagged black line ripped across the earth from where the giant tree had been uprooted. It zig-zagged toward the halfling and through her feet before she leaped aside. Then the ground shuttered and roared. The black and purple lights strobed faster between the trees.
The halfling’s eyes darted across
