Another voice, much warmer, with power that glowed gold with leaden shadows, said, “You are mine still.This will not be your end.”
Darkness and light, time and stasis, life and death, reality and destruction flickered.
I breathed again, lived again.
I was sitting in our old silver truck, on the twisted road near the hunter’s hideout, Lula—beautiful, living, breathing Lula—next to me.The book was in her lap, the blisters on her hands already healed.
I should be rattled, shocked, reeling from the whiplash of life and almost death.But my head was clear, my heartbeat steady.
Cupid stood outside the truck, his god power so bright, I winced.He was swathed in golden armor, massive pure white wings spread out behind him, a huge bow and brutal arrows in his hands.
“Apep knows where you are,” he said.“He knows you have the book.Casting the spell—both of them—gave you away.You need to run.Now.Back to the hideout.Back to the hunters.”
He snapped his fingers and the truck engine growled.
The wind buffeted us, rocking the truck.
“Run!”Cupid took three great strides and the sky thundered as he disappeared.
“Lu are you?Are we?”I said.
She nodded.“The box.Open the box.”
I spotted the witch’s box by my feet and hurriedly pulled off the shadow cloth and lid.
She dropped the book inside.
I covered the box, and Lula gunned the engine, tearing down the rutted trail at speed.
I slid over the bench seat and wrapped my arm around her.
“Abbi?”Lula asked, as we jerked and jostled down the rough trail.
“Card got her,” I said, searching through my jumbled, scattered memories.“I think he saved her with magic.”
“The Walches?”
“I don’t know.”
The sky was dark, the sun swallowed whole by heavy black clouds crackling with silver-shot lightning.
That wasn’t a natural storm building above us.That was god power clawing across the heavens.
“How did we?Who?”she asked.
“Death,” I said.“Cupid.How far?”
Lula shook her head.“Miles.Ten?”
Ten wasn’t good.Ten was a lot when there was a god on your heels.
The sky caught fire—literal red flames licking across the bellies of the clouds, burning and churning.
A massive serpent—at least a mile long and made of smoke and fire and onyx—slithered out of the sky.
The snake blasted into the land behind us, shaking the world.Its head was the size of a mountain, its scales gold and ivory with onyx bands.It opened its jaw and its fangs dripped with venom.
Apep, the god of chaos.
