Desperation fills me as I scramble across the gravel floor just as the creature appears. It’s enormous nostrils flare as it turns its lizard-like head this way and that, a long thin tongue flickering out to taste the air.
“Blow the horn!” Soraya snaps, blood dropping from her temples as she presses her back against the rock wall.
She’s trapped there.
Our eyes meet.
“It can only be used once!”
“Then use it! Blow the cursed horn!”
I set the horn to my lips and blow.
Nothing happens. I’d been expecting the bellow of something like the trollhorns they have in the north, but this is silent. All I can hear is my breath, whispering through the brass curve.
“It didn’t work.” I jerk the blasted thing down.
But Soraya’s face pales, as if she sees something I don’t. “Stay still,” she whispers, sinking back against the rock. “Don’t move.”
Mist pours into the cavern, lit from above with eerie blue. Little gleaming lights sparkle within it, and it’s not until it draws closer that I realize they’re eyes.
The grymhounds of the Wild Hunt.
Creatures you can barely see until they’re upon you.
The questing beast roars its rage to the pack, and then it lunges toward them, teeth snapping. A hound vanishes into a curl of mist as its ruthless teeth close over it, but another darts beneath its belly, angling for the back of its front hoof.
“Move.” Soraya shoves me further into the blackened cave.
A low, echoing growl rumbles from within. I skid to a halt as she slams into me.
And then a creature appears, huge and wolf-like and carved of glowing light. Its eyes shine with blue light—empty and emotionless, but the growl tells me everything I need to know.
“What’s it looking at?” Soraya whispers. “Isn’t it supposed to respond to the horn blower?”
“Define ‘respond,’” I reply grimly, “because Keir said something about how they guard the horn. Maybe it is guarding it.”
“Guard? Guard? It’s looking at you like you just murdered its firstborn.” Soraya draws her knife and the pair of us glance at its glowing blade.
“What’s it doing?” I whisper. “Is it supposed to be doing that?”
“Not that I know of.” She whips the knife through the air in a threatening arc. “Stay behind me.”
It’s been years since we’ve worked together like this. My back meets hers, and while I draw my own blade, I doubt it’s going to do much.
“They’re impervious to steel,” I tell her. “The only thing that effects them is silver.”
“Good old goblin-forged weapons,” she says with a smirk. “Come on, you mangy cur. I dare you.”
The enormous grymhound stalks toward us. It has to be the alpha of the pack. Others turn away from the questing beast at its growl, falling into place around us.
Then they’re upon us. Glowing teeth snapping for my face. The heavy weight of rancid wolf slamming into me, the impact numbing my arm to the wrist.
I Sift out of the way, but something catches on my sleeve as I go, and the ice-cold burn of teeth grazes my wrist. The second I reform, the pain drives me to my knees.
“Z!” Soraya lunges toward me, driving her glowing knife through the heart of the alpha. It vanishes in a swirl of mist, but those glowing eyes reform barely ten feet away.
Teeth chattering with the pain of its bite, I stagger to my feet. “It doesn’t like your blade.”
“Recall them!” Soraya yells.
Two sharp blows of the horn will draw them back to the Other World from which they came. I blow sharply. Once. Twice.
Instantly the hounds evaporate, curls of light eddying into nothing.
The questing beast looks toward us before it hesitates. Its gaze shifts over my shoulder—into the black interior of the cave—before it makes a desperate sound and limps away, vanishing into one of the smaller caverns that branch out from this one. Blood drips from the bite marks slashed into its hide and the braying sound it makes reminds me of mournful beasts heading for the slaughterhouse.
It’s not the poor bastard’s fault it was brought into this game.
Both of us sink to the floor.
I can’t get over the sensation of how close we came to death. I can feel the beast’s breath on the back of my neck still. I can hear its wheezing roar.
“Why didn’t you Sift out of here?” Soraya demands, pushing to her feet and offering me a hand.
A tingling sensation burns through the bite marks in my wrist as I let her draw me to my feet. “It all happened too fast.”
Soraya makes a growling sound. “You lying wretch. We spent years testing your reflexes. You had more than enough time. You stayed because of me, didn’t you?”
The words lie trapped behind my teeth.
Yes, I stayed. I always will, because I can no sooner leave her behind than I ever could.
And she senses it.
“Didn’t you?” she snarls, shoving me back with a hard slam to the chest.
Instinct kicks in. I sweep low, taking her feet out from under her, and the second she moves to retaliate, I’m gone, punching back into being several feet away.
“What was I supposed to do?” I demand, my fists curled at my sides. “Leave you behind? The only thing keeping it off our backs was the fact there were two of us. It couldn’t work out which one of us to focus on.”
“I don’t need you to watch my back—”
“Because you were doing such a good job of it before I found you in Malechus’s sarcophagus!”
“I didn’t ask you to rescue me,” she says coldly, examining the cavern. “When Malechus came back—”
“If he came back,” I point out. “You could have suffocated in there. And you’re welcome. You’re always bloody welcome.”
Bristling with fury, she stalks past me. “Where are we?”
It’s Soraya’s way whenever there’s conflict. If she knows she’s in the wrong, then she simply won’t argue any further. I want to scream. I’ve been bottling this all inside me for years.
“I don’t know.” Bending
