The spell didn’t do anything.
I spun forward, every muscle throbbing.I was absolutely horse-whipped.It took everything I had not to drop the mirror.
Headwaters’ hood was thrown back revealing a face of horror that had been permanently etched in my brain.
He was vampire, only by the paleness of his skin and the hook of fangs over thin, blood red lips.His forehead was wide and protruded over cat-like eyes the color of wet ash.Yellow hair slicked his skull and hung lank to his shoulders.
If he had ever been human, there was no sign of it now, his expression alien and intense and utterly devoid of soul.
He raised his hand?—
—just as the spell exploded.
I crashed to the ground, Lula next to me, pinned like a giant foot was crushing us.
I couldn’t breathe.
The air was gone?—
—diamonds?I wondered, deliriously.Had we cast the wrong spell?—
—the sky and earth melted into mind-twisting terrors I could not describe.
I couldn’t feel my body, but still, I reached for Lula.
I couldn’t feel her hand, but I knew it was in mine.
The world exploded again and a great howling filled the air.
Something huge loomed above us, so large it blocked out the sun.
It had eyes—too many.
It had limbs—too many.
Its teeth were massive and stained with blood.Its body was built of fur and bone and scales.
The beast.
It howled, but it did not attack us.
It did not attack Headwaters.
It swung its head to the sky and exploded into smoke.
The sun burned again, the ground solid beneath me, the sky blue and arching overhead.
I sucked air, like I’d just dug up out of my own grave, and tasted blood and ash.
Lu’s hand in mine was warm.
All the rest of me was frozen.
The book was closed in Lu’s arms.
The beast was gone.It had broken free from the book and disappeared.
We had failed.
