“I’m a shape-shifter. I—”
Beast opened the Gray Between. A tornado of knives opened with it. I began to shift. As I fell to the cave floor, the Flayer of Mithrans opened his eyes, watching me.
***
It took way too long and I was beyond starving when I finally settled into my half-form, gagging from the pain, too bony, too skinny, and too sick to move. I was huffing and puffing and feeling as if I had been held down and suffocated with a pillow while being beaten with a baseball bat.
“I put a stake in the belly of Beetle Man, but it popped out and hit me in the head.”
I managed to get my eyes open, sort of focused, and looked up at Stacey, who had been talking. “Oh?”
“I tossed his head out of the cave and ten minutes later it was back. And you got fur and fangs, just in case you didn’t know.”
I managed some kind of a smile. “I noticed.” Ten minutes. I’d been out awhile. “And just so you know, we aren’t alone in here. We have a ghost, not that I believe in ghosts. But we have one.”
“A gho—Oh. You mean the dark shadow.”
I shook my head and made it to my feet. Strapped the gobag around me. I tore open the remaining jerky and shoved it in my mouth, which was too dry to soften the dried meat, but the taste was fantastic—which showed me how sick and calorie deprived I really was. I swallowed the leathery stuff whole and said, “I’m going to jump down. You’re going to toss EJ to me. I’ll set him down; then you jump. I’ll catch you.”
“No way in hell.”
“Fine. Then I’ll carry the kid down with me and leave you here.”
Stacey gave me a scowl worthy of Molly. I’d have laughed if I’d had the energy. “I don’t know you,” she said, “but so far I don’t like you much.”
I tightened the tie at the waist of my sweatpants. “Don’t care, but remember this. I didn’t come for you. Icame for the kid. You’re just icing on the cake.” I bent to pick up EJ.
“Fine. But if your hair falls out or you grow warts, you can blame me. I’m a witch and I’m pissed.”
“Watch your language,” I said as I helped her with EJ, adjusting him in her arms. “Kid present.”
“He’s asleep. And you sound like my mother.”
“Good.” I leaned out the opening and chose how I’d get down. There were plenty of handholds and toeholds to the crevice floor. I grabbed the gobag holding the cell phone and pivoted my body, taking the first of the steps out of the cave. It didn’t take long, but I could feel magic in the air and I knew that the floaty charcoal thing was magical and operated independently of the Flayer. I had a bad feeling that whatever it was, it made Shimon Bar-Judas the Flayer of Mithrans, the Soul of Darkness, the Son of Deception, the Son of Shadows, et al.Son of Shadows.Right.
At the bottom I positioned my feet so I could move in any direction. “Toss him.”
Stacey tossed EJ over the lip of the cave. Time did that battlefield slowdown where everything happens in slow motion. I saw the cape flutter. Saw EJ’s hand flop out. Saw his bare feet. Saw when his body started to spin. I angled myself to the right and caught him, dropping down with him so gravity didn’t break his bones against my arms. I carried him across the rocks to the flat floor of the crevice and placed him on a wide, moss-covered boulder, retied the cloak over him, and went back to my place. “Jump.”
Except there was no one there. No one replied. And I realized that Stacey had been taken by the Flayer of Mithrans. I raced to the stone and picked up my godson, tossed him over my left shoulder, and rushed back along the crevasse toward the point where I had dropped down in Anzu form.
CHAPTER 21
Tossed the Girl to the Rocks
Stomach rumbling, body quivering from hunger, I dashed along the bottom of the crevasse. Deep in the hole, it was darker than any night I had ever experienced in my lives, both of them. Only with the enhanced night vision gifted to me by Beast did I manage to avoid deadfall, shattered stone, and openings and holes in the rock beneath me. But fear was a tangible presence at my back as I ran.
I kept glancing up, looking for a faster way to the surface, one I could climb three-limbed, holding EJ. I finally saw one, and just hoped the rocks held. Tightening my arm around my godson, I leaped. Caught a rock protrusion. Swung to the toehold and shoved up. Trying to ignore the pain in my belly, I began the arduous climb to the surface.
***
I fell on the snow, the cold agonizing at the top of the split in the earth. My lungs strained, breath painful. Gasping. When I could breathe, I rolled to my back and saw stars and the moon overhead. The clouds were breaking. I adjusted EJ on top of me for what warmth I could provide to him, and pulled the gobag off my chest. Found the cell.The call had been dropped, but I now had a signal. I dialed Alex. Felt into my middle. My fingers met something hard and pointed. Dudley. Dang. The tumor had found this shape too.
“Jane!” Alex shouted into my cell.
“I got EJ,” I said between hard breaths. “He’s spelled asleep but he’s breathing and nothing seems broken. At my current coordinates.”
“Thank God,” Molly said over the connection. And she burst into tears.
