Theo hesitated, stiffening, then seemed to bite the bullet.
“The waterfall’s stopped.”
Silence. Not even Oz had a pithy remark. Everyone looked at one another, as if trying to assure themselves that they had actually heard Theo correctly. The identical looks of horror, bewilderment, and confusion on everyone’s faces told me that we had all indeed heard him correctly.
“What do you mean, exactly?” Elias demanded, his voice even despite the edge to the words. The intensity of his stare would have made any number of shifters whither and shrink away.
“I mean that one second, the waterfall was going fine. The next, it slowed to a trickle. Then, it stopped altogether,” Theo said.
“But that’s impossible,” Sam said. “There’s no way that the waterfall could just stop like that.”
“Well, impossible or not, it’s happened,” Theo said. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
Elias was already moving toward the door. “Let’s go,” he growled.
***
When we got to the oasis, a huge crowd had formed, surrounding the water as they craned their neck to stare up at the mountain where the water normally descended. There was not a drop of water to be seen. The stone where the water trickled down, normally dark and damp from splattered water, was bone-dry, the sun having baked the rock.
The oasis itself was still. The water, which normally rippled and churned slightly from the waterfall, was nothing more than a glassy surface.
The growing crowd murmured their unease, their confused and discordant conversation swelling as more people arrived. When one person caught sight of Elias and called out his name, the other heads whipped toward us. A second later, we were surrounded by dozens of concerned pack members, every one of them peppering us with their fears and concerns, the cacophony so loud and chaotic that none of us could parse any one question.
Elias held up his hand, but it still took another long moment before the cluster quieted down enough for him to actually speak.
“Right now, we don’t know what’s going on,” Elias said. “We’re looking into it. I’m going to ask everyone to please remain calm. Once we know more about what’s going on, then we’ll give you an update.”
“Is it the wraith?” a woman asked, clutching her child to her chest.
“We don’t know,” Elias repeated. “We’re going to see what we can find out, okay?”
It took us some time to actually clear the throng. An hour had passed by the time we had blocked off the oasis and were able to examine it properly. We hunted for signs of a blockage upstream, but found nothing. The water had just vanished.
“It reminds me of the riverbed we found,” I said. “I wonder if that was some sort of trial for whatever happened here.” I turned to Elias. “Any thoughts?”
“I don’t know what’s going on precisely,” Elias muttered, running his fingers through his hair.
“Something happened to the underground spring,” I said. “That’s the only explanation.”
Elias grimaced as he deliberated. “It makes the most sense,” he admitted. “But at the same time, it’s almost impossible. We have guards up there at all times. They would have…”
He trailed off, going pale.
I nodded. The guards at the underground spring should have come to get us the second they realized something was wrong. The fact that they hadn’t could only mean one thing.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Giving Theo and a couple of others orders to stay nearby and keep an eye on the oasis, the rest of us shifted and followed Elias in a race toward the tunnels and the underground spring, already knowing what we would see but praying we were wrong, anyway.
We raced along the side of the mountain, running as fast as our paws could carry us across the desert. It seemed to take aneternity. My heart pounded as my wolf snarled and thrashed in agitation with every extra moment it took.
We saw the two lifeless forms on the ground long before we reached the base of the tunnel. My nostrils caught the stench of death mixed with blood, all but masking the scents of the two shifters who were supposed to be on guard. One of the forms was a wolf, and it seemed the other hadn’t had enough time to shift. Blood stained the ground, dark against the dry, sandy surface.
Dread made my stomach plummet as my wolf raged. Still, I held out the slightest hope that maybe these weren’t the men who were supposed to be protecting the tunnels, even as I could already tell that was a pipe dream. There was no one else they could be.
As we neared the bodies, enough to confirm that they were the two guards on duty, a high-pitched cackling sounded overhead.
I didn’t even get the chance to turn toward the sound before something slammed into my back, right between my shoulder blades. It forced me to the ground as several sharp needles dug into my flesh. Not needles—claws. I howled as they buried into me, gripping tight. More cackling sounded, and within a handful of seconds, the entire area was filled with imps.
