“Eli, Bruiser, and team are less then fifteen hundred feet from your current location,” Alex said. “But Molly talked to the local witches again and they admitted one of them was missing. The fanghead has a fifteen-year-old witch.”
“Stacey. Yeah. I know. Which is why I’m leaving EJ here with the cell and going back down.”
“Don’t you leave my baby!” Molly growled into the connection.
“I have to buy Eli time to get him away. Only way to do that is to leave EJ and take on the Flayer.”
“Jane, don’t,” Alex said.
“We broke the circle at the Arboretum,” Evan said. “Even the humans are flayed. We think he can skin anything for his magic.”
Anything. Even me. “Yeah. Okay.” Knowing that gave me more incentive to go back down, to get Stacey and to keep my people safe until they could get away. Gathering what little strength I still had, I rolled to my feet and started shuffling through the snow looking for a deep pile of fall leaves. It was dark, but my Beast-eyes had adjusted and the night seemed lighter than it really was. Quickly I found a depression filled with leaves and covered by snow, kicked it around to make sure nothing was nesting in it, then buried EJ, wrapped in his cape, in the leaves. I placed the cell on a branch near him and made sure the Glob was in my pocket and that my other weapons were secure.
“Jane?” Alex said. “Jane!Jane!”
I glanced at the cell and spotted Brute in the distance. Timewalking. I wasn’t sure how I knew he was timewalking, but he was, and not the way I did it. A grindy was onhis shoulder, holding fistfuls of hair. Seeing them meant that EJ would have protection and fast.
Overhead, I heard a soft whirring, and I waved at a flying drone. It tilted itself back and forth at me, acknowledging that the pilot, wherever he was, could see me. Drones with low-light vision. Handy. The drone operator knew my exact coordinates now and my tracks would lead them to the easiest way down.
I turned my back to it and stepped off the edge, into the crevasse. Caught my weight one-handed and swung, like a howler monkey, to another protrusion. Dropping down and down, hands secure on the damp rocks. Plummeting into the dark.
At the bottom of the rock walls, I raced back through the crevasse. It took too long, and I knew Stacey was in danger. Knew Bruiser and Eli would follow, but would need lights and climbing equipment. I’d be on my own for a while, unless the team they led included vampires willing to face the Flayer of Mithrans. And the red-eyed shadow-whatever-it-was that was doing magic all around him.
It seemed to take a lot longer to make my way back to the stone floor below the cave entrance. I was exhausted and starving and wanted nothing more than to stop, lie down, and rest. But when I looked up, I saw the last Son of Darkness, the Flayer of Mithrans, standing at the top of the cave. He was holding Stacey in his arms. Before I could react, he dropped the shield and tossed the girl to the rocks.
I dove for her. Caught her head and shoulders but not her legs, which smashed into the knife-edged shattered boulders. A bone broke with a sharp snap. I smelled her blood. Felt the heated squish of her skinless flesh. She had been skinned. I bent, setting her to the side.
The world tumbled around me.
The Flayer of Mithrans landed on me.
We toppled across the dark stone. I pulled on my skinwalker strength and speed. Beast shoved her own unique power into me. I grappled with the creature, but he was all smooth exoskeleton except for the joints, but any spaces were too narrow for my bony fingers. As we tumbled, myclaws extruded and clamped into his shoulder joint. I ripped. He got his one good chitinous hand on my vamp-killer and snapped it free. He stabbed forward, three sharp blows. Aiming directly into my middle. Pulling on Beast-speed, I slid left, right, left, fast, and the blade caught the sides of my waist, slicing instead of stabbing. I didn’t think I’d get away with that one again.
I reached up and found his temple, rolled my hand up and discovered the rough place where I had broken his skull. It wasn’t completely healed. I shoved my fingers into the depression and the shell cracked under them. I shoved my hand into his brain. Clawed through it.
He laughed.
And stabbed me again. Right into the center of Dudley.
I grunted, a deep, broken sound. My blood gushed out. My energy pulsed out with it. Surging. Spurting. He’d sliced the tumor and hit an artery. My hand fell from his brain. My body went limp.
Shimon dropped me and the vamp-killer, scrabbled around my neck. Reaching for Soul, trapped in her crystal. If I let him get her, she was lost. If I let him timewalk, I was lost, and so was Stacey.
His fingers were cold and hard as they fumbled on my neck and chest. His insect claws couldn’t grasp Soul’s crystal. He needed both hands and the fingers I had burned. He hissed in frustration; the stench of his breath was bitter and caustic, burning my eyes.
A cutting icy pain curled along my right shoulder. Shimon skinned a strip of flesh off of me. Something scrabbled at my skull, thrusting through, pushing on the dark places of my mind. The Flayer had other titles, the Son of Shadows. The shadow had to be the thing that had been racing around in the Regal at our first meeting, and again in the cave. It didn’t perfectly fit the definition of a ghost. Early on I had gotten the impression that it was a creature, was alive. I turned my magic to see the thing better.
The shadow shaped into a spear point and pierced into my mind. In a single instant it all came clear. The memory/vision of the bloody body on the bloody wood asthe Sons of Darkness sacrificed their sister to bring their father back. Biting through her fingers. The Son of Shadows had eaten the girl alive. Black magic. Blood magic. The most heinous of dark magics. And by that rite, he had taken in the soul of his sister. She was the insane shadow in his mind. The trapped soul of his sister.
Had the witch circle given her autonomy? Had the time magics Shimon was using given her extra power too?
Shimon encircled my throat and began to crush the life out of me. Not just suffocate me. But crush my head from my shoulders.
I had one weapon left. I slid my brain-sludged hand down my body, into my pocket. Grabbed the Glob. My star magics stuttered. Twisted. Pain shot through me as my magics, now cut through with the steel blade, tried to realign and sought out the power in the Glob. When it wanted to, the Glob absorbed magical energies, and the shadow was energy. Not a magic I had ever seen, but still, energy. With the last of my strength, I shoved the Glob into the cranial cavity of the Son of Darkness, the Flayer of Mithrans.
Instantly the stone and its components heated, began to suck the power from the Flayer.
Something grabbed my wrist. It wasn’t the Flayer.
