“I think it came from the maze.” Indigo pointed to the giant hedge maze stretched out next to us.
Ice crawled up my spine. “The gate to the Night Realm is at the center of that maze,” I said.
Another dull roar, and the ground shook again.
“I’m calling Chase.” Skye’s voice was tight with worry.
“I’ll call Lord Linus, then.” Indigo had her phone out and was speed dialing.
“Maybe I should call Rigel, so I don’t feel left out.” I laughed weakly at my own joke, but worry twisted my stomach when Skye nodded.
“A sound idea,” she said.
Before I could unearth my phone, a gate sprang out of the ground—a rounded archway made of stone with a familiar wrought-iron gate.
The gate was thrown open with such force it groaned and almost sagged on its hinges.
Three of my night mares—Eclipse, Solstice, and Blue Moon—burst through the gate. Solstice and Blue Moon were honking with the hoarse, bark-like sound the night mares used to warn off trouble. Eclipse, however, screamed loudly enough to shatter ear drums.
Kevin and Steve came bursting out of the mansion, and Whiskers and Muffin appeared from the maze shadows where they’d been lounging.
Blue Moon charged back through the gate, the shades and glooms behind him.
“Something’s wrong with the Night Realm,” I said. “Get Chase, Rigel, and the guards, and come through after us—Solstice, wait for them before you come after us.”
“What are you going to do?” Indigo demanded as Skye started shouting into her phone.
“I’m going to find out what’s going on.” I grimly threw myself on Eclipse’s back. The mare’s spine was bony and uncomfortable to sit on, and I didn’t have a helmet, but there wasn’t time to remedy either situation at the moment, so I’d have to deal with it.
I clung to Eclipse’s neck as the mare turned in a tight circle. “Let’s go,” I urged her.
She shot through the gate, taking me to the Night Realm before I’d even had the chance to register the gate’s magic.
The realm was in chaos.
The ground shook, and a horrible, whistling noise that sounded like the wind screaming through trees violently sliced through the air. Night mares—both mine and the ones that had chosen to remain wild—were galloping around. I even saw Bagel and Fax in the mix.
I turned Eclipse in a circle before I saw it: the monster.
With a pale, paper white skull that glowed in the darkness of the Night Realm, and feathers and fur the same color as blood, the monster was a sickening mash of animals. The skull of a cow was melded to the front shoulders that resembled a lion. Its legs turned into the clawed feet of a hawk, and its torso narrowed into a scaled and feathered tail that was vaguely reminiscent of a snake. Two sets of antelope horns jutted out of its skull, and a pair of prominent fangs jutted from its jaws.
It was massive—easily as big as a two-story house—and shadows danced and writhed around it, connecting the body parts together to form the entire creature.
It was dead—magic was powering it. The sticky, whispery sensation of fae magic brushed my mind, but as it had been for the snakes that attacked me in the theater, the shadow monsters that attacked me at the supernatural market, and the monster Myron set on me in the Midsummer Derby, I could feel another magic underneath it. An ancient, foreign magic that felt simultaneously wild and controlled. It was sharp like the edge of a blade, and filled the air so strongly it made my teeth ache as the thing jerked around like a puppet on strings.
But how did it get here?
I activated my prism and started filtering the wild magic in the air.
“Of course, you’d overestimate your abilities and try to fight thatthing.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Leila
Iwhipped Eclipse around and was shocked to find Fell, holding the bridle of a glowing sun stallion, standing behind me. “Fell?” I said. “What are you doing here?”
Fell smirked at me. “I brought that,” he nodded to the creature. “It’s mygiftto you. I saw it in the Autumn Realm and decided, since you’re intent on playing hero,youcould deal with it. Though you won’t be able to.”
