Mother Mage…
Letting the beacon of my soul pull my physical body across the space, I crossed the rocks in human form, stumbling and clutching at my stomach, and let the two halves of myself merge.
I sat up with a gasp of pain, hands clutched around the hilt of the knife, ready to yank it out.
“Ah … here you are,” the queen said. She was a blur of action as she zoomed into my space and raked her claws over my face.
Pain sliced along my cheeks, and I screamed, but the agony evaporated as well as the wound as my shields absorbed it.
‘Nai!’Rage’s voice came through our bond.‘Where are you?’
‘Get the teams off the cliff!’I shouted at him.
He shouted something back, but it didn’t register because, at the same time, I ripped the shard of celestite out of my stomach, and white-hot agony exploded in my mind. The pain disappeared once again, and then I lunged for the queen. She darted away, a mere blur of movement, appearing once more in front of me.
The realization hit me; I couldn’t outrun her, not without canceling her magic. I reached for the last of the bombs Jakko had made … but it was no longer tucked in the band at my waist. The carefully wrapped powder bomb now lay ruined in the mud where that damn celestite shard had pierced through!
Time for a new plan.
My mind raced, and my only thoughts were those of desperation.
‘Rage!’I shouted into his mind. ‘Tell Carson to tear the cliff from the mountain, and let it go into the water. Now! Trust me!’
If Rage responded, I missed it as a vicious growl demanded my attention. I spotted Reyna closing in on the queen and Kalama. She snapped and lunged for the blood mage rulers, providing the distraction I needed to execute my cobbled-together plan B. I was pleased to see her wolf was still alive, though bleeding from the stomach and muzzle from my wounds.
Once more, I pictured a location for a portal. This one, I’d been to only a few times before, and I could only hope the owner wouldn’t mind.Much. I was out of options, and the queen and her daughter were going to be nearly impossible to kill and just as hard to contain. If we didn’t get them before they jumped off the ledge…
My spirit slid from my body, and I opened my eyes to find my spectral form standing next to the Adonis-like figure of the Keeper of the Dead.
“Nai?” He narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing here?”
In my physical form, I brought my hands together—and then buckled forward as something struck me from behind. My physical body was being attacked back on the cliff, and I could feel it in my spirit.
“I’m … going … to … open a … portal,” I told the Keeper.
He pursed his lips and then shook his head. “Well, you’d better hurry, or your physical body will be dead.”
I glanced at my hands,my spirit hands, and saw they were covered in blood. What the…? How? I looked further down, to my chest and my stomach, and both were sinking in—which meant my body…
Please, Mother Mage, let Rage and Carson be helping my plan come to fruition.
Thunder rumbled, and I looked up to the Keeper. “What … was … that … noise?”
“I hear nothing,” he told me. “Whatever sound you hear is where your body resides. And if you can hear it there, your spirit and body are merging.”
I couldn’t let that happen until the portal to the Realm of the Dead was opened.
So with every last shred of energy still coursing through me, I yanked my hands apart.
The explosion was like a bomb going off.
Chapter Nineteen
“Nooo!”The queen’s shrill scream tore through the air as my soul and body merged again. The second my spirit slammed into my body, I was falling. Everything was moving too fast to know if my plan worked—the world around me a mere blur. I slammed into the ground. Dust kicked up in a plume, and I blinked up into the pale lavender sky of the Realm of the Dead. Groaning, I rolled to my side; the blood from the wound in my abdomen saturated my shirt and covered my hands. I coughed, propping myself up, only to find the wound on my stomach was healed. My head snapped to the right, and I gulped.
Well. My plan had worked. Mostly.
Like 89.5%.
