“I am Sentur’na.” This time, my voice boomed like Bandur’s. My eyes glowed bright as two blood-red stars. “Let himgo.”
Sentur’na.They bowed, obeying me and backing away from Edan.
“Kill him!” Bandur screamed. “She is not the guardian yet!”
They rallied at the demon’s command, but Edan had spun away and was now making for the top of the tower. The ghosts surged after him.
My heart clenched. We’d both known the risks of coming to Lapzur.
“If we go,”I’d told him,“then we go with the intent to destroy Bandur. For good. Even if that means one of us—or both of us—doesn’t make it.”
I uncurled my fingers from the amulet, and my demon sight broke.
A flash of teeth and claws was my only warning before Bandur slammed into me. I screamed and almost pitched into the well, but the demon caught my wrist, pulling me toward him.
“Now we complete the ceremony, Sentur’na.” He gashed my arm with his nail, sharp as the edge of a sword, and blood oozed from my wound. “Once the blood offering to Lapzur has been made, you will be the new guardian.”
He held my arm over the well. My sleeves flailed against him, sparks shooting from the fabric as it singed his gray fur. In a beastly rage, he clawed at my dress and snatched at his amulet, but I held it out of reach over the well.
“Give me the amulet.”
His words chafed my ears, cruel as a knife sharpening against bone. They echoed down into the well, ringing off the endless stone walls.
“The last time we encountered each other, I traded you your amulet for a vial,” I told him. “I will not be so foolish again.”
“You drop it, and you’ll die along with me.”
I looked down. Below was darkness, blacker than the bottom of the sea and as endless as the night. The rippling folds of my dress shimmered, but even their luminous starlight could not penetrate the abyss.
Bandur’s amulet dangled, swaying to the drumbeat of my heart. Too late I saw the dark rivulet trickling across my arm, collecting into one thick bead at the slope of my elbow. I jerked to the side, and it splashed against the stones. But there was nothing I could do to stop my blood from running down, down—once it touched the bottom I’d be the guardian of Lapzur.
Knowing he saw it too, I faced Bandur with my steeliest smile. “So be it.”
And I dropped his amulet into the well.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
In a whirl of shadow and smoke, Bandur vaulted into the well after his amulet.
Panic knifed through me. I couldn’t let him get it back.
I threw myself after him, scrabbling at flashes of gray fur. The battle, fought in the pitch black of the well’s oblivion, was frantic. Bandur was stronger, but I was more determined.
Then Bandur’s flesh flickered, and I dug my nails into his fur, knowing I’d caught him. I dragged him out of the well and held on until I heard the amulet break the surface and sink into the well’s murky depths.
Then another plop. My blood.
Bandur twisted violently out of my grasp and seized my neck, dangling me over the well.
He held me close, so close I could smell the ash on his breath, the smoke whistling from the singed layer of his fur. The folds of my dress took on a life of their own, flailing against him, a storm of stars and light whipping at his demon flesh. His red eyes burned wild with anger, and his claws tightened around my neck.
Why wasn’t he dead? I’d destroyed his amulet.
“Congratulations,Sentur’na,” he rasped. “You are now the guardian of Lapzur.”
I couldn’t be the guardian of Lapzur. The well had devoured his amuletbeforeit’d taken my blood. It should have killed him!
My fear escalated to terror. I grabbed the scissors from my belt and thrust uselessly at his hands, his heart, his throat.
