“You doubt your power?” the king challenges again. My head snaps between the two of them like I’m at a tennis match.
“Never,” the basilisk replies simply. “Only technique. If I can do it on a small scale, a large scale shouldn’t be too much harder, surely.”
Mace nods slowly. “Is there a possibility someone will sense it?”
“Only basilisks and the newly dead play in the shadow realm, and dead beasts can’t tattle.”
“So you’ve told me. How much time do you need to prepare?”
The basilisk scratches his neck. “Tomorrow morning will do. Is this why the rooster has made an appearance?”
“We cannot be too sure.”
The basilisk smirks as if this pleases him.
When night falls the next day, we drive in a truck an hour away from the main house. Then I’m carried by the basilisk lord himself to a big, empty warehouse. I happily breathe in the air after being cooped up for days inside. My legs ache from this constant sitting position, but they won’t let me out except to use the toilet. I’m set on the floor, a little way from the basilisk andthe serpent king, who stand far apart on the concrete floor. It’s the three of us, everyone else has been told to stay outside.
The basilisk plants his heavy boots and looks around. “Ready?” he asks the serpent king.
Mace Naga nods, his eyes lit up with excitement. There is silence. Then?—
I feel it before we see it—a great, dark power and a feeling of dread. Such great dread that it takes me by the throat so I can only blink in terror at the sight in front of me.
A wind picks up, ruffling my feathers. A scary sound, like an ancient groan, travels through the air. It picks up, now like a jet engine. I squint through it, cringing against the roar in my cage. I cannot meet my death here! I have mates to look after! What will they do without me? Before I can crow, something changes.
A dark power, black as night and shifting like a shadow, comes directly from the basilisk, spiralling upwards from his body like a tornado. It reaches the ceiling of the warehouse, where it expands like a disc of pulsing black cloud. Like it’s a living, breathing thing of pure evil.
I want to crow, but the serpent king isn’t giving me the signal. He’s simply looking up into the black swirling power like he’s seen the Wild Mother herself. His black duster whips violently in the wind, but it doesn’t bother him. He is focused. I think this dark hurricane is where we go to meet our maker. It grows bigger, to the size of a car, spreading the feeling of dread inside of me.
“Told you!” the basilisk lord shouts above the roar of the wind. “It just needs to be bigger to take in the non-serpent animalia population in the state.”
My mind is seized with fear. The end of the world is coming, and Mace Naga is bringing it! He wishes to kill us all!
“It’ll just take me more—” The basilisk chokes, clutching his chest.
“Ghoul?” Mace shouts.
“Oh,” the basilisk says. He holds up a finger as if to explain, but his power sucks down into his body like a funnel.
“Eugene!” the serpent king roars.
I breathe in a mighty breath and crow as loudly as I can. The shadows tremble and vibrate, but they don’t stop their funnel down, down, down into Ghoul’s now rigid body. I crow as loudly as I can and the shadows travel down his back in a spiral. I think I’m helping but I can’t be sure.
The basilisk falls flat on his back like a dead weight and before his eyes close, they turn to me, and a voice like midnight whispers in my mind.“Find Aurelia Boneweaver, Eugene. Find the Boneweaver. Save the world.”
He does not move again. The wind is gone. There is only silence in the air, broken by Mace Naga as he shouts for help.
Chapter 89
Scythe
Aurelia calmly sets Eugene on the table and rises. Her face is like stone as she stands and walks over to the window, crossing her arms, her eyes unseeing, unblinking as she processes this information. Savage’s mouth has dropped open as he stares around the room like a revolving clown at a carnival.
“What did you see?” Xander asks irritably.
“It seems,” I say carefully, not wanting to make Stacey—or anyone else, for that matter—panic. “Mace Naga is bringing an apocalypse. He plans to kill us all.”
Aurelia turns around. “And by ‘all,’ Scythe means every non-serpent. In the state, presumably. It’ll be an…annihilation.”
