Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
Normal woods, even on a moonless night, didn’t scare me. Usually I was the scariest thing in the dark. But clearly there was a rift here, albeit a small one, so there could be things, like Rulaine and Sola, that could kill me. And I was getting really tired of having vargrs skulking around.
“We should have brought the dogs with us,” Lorne said, letting me go, walking through the doorway of the barn. “Hey, careful. There’s no floor in here, just a huge hole.”
Fortunately, he wasn’t the type to charge ahead or he would have been hurt. When I stuck my head inside, I saw there was a narrow lip around the hole, and Lorne was testing each step to see if it would support his weight. He was careful, another of many excellent qualities he possessed.
“The dogs are bound to Corvus,” I told him as he walked farther around the hole. “They can’t leave the property. They’re tethered to it as long as they stay with me.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because as spectral dogs, they might wreak havoc around town,” I said, smiling at him.
“Who do they belong to?”
“The master of the hunt.”
His scowl looked even darker in the shadows of the room. “You can’t just tell me?”
“I don’t think I should in here. We don’t know who might be listening.”
“Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Can you do the light thing again so we can see what’s down there?”
That was strange… We should’ve had more light. My small floating fireballs were all still in place outside—they would not extinguish until I closed my hand with the words to cease—so it was concerning that the ones I’d sent into the barn had gone out.
Thinking quickly, instead of an illumination spell, I used a protection one and called on the corners to grant me shelter. Ancient magic was worded strangely sometimes—shelter could mean warmth, which meant fire.
Heat surrounded me as I spoke the words, and I sent the fire downward into the hole. When Lorne and I looked down over the edge, the fire had stopped near the ground but had not reached the bottom, shimmering off a transparent barrier above what appeared to be a mass grave.
“The fireballs were absorbed,” I told Lorne. “And I think I know why.”
“Then tell me, because that down there looks horrible.”
“I need to check that I’m right first.” I picked up a small rock and tossed it into the hole. The barrier absorbed it, as I thought it would, the rock gone from sight.
Lorne was reciting the Lord’s Prayer, and I was glad he found comfort in that.
“Are you all right?” I asked him.
“No,” he said simply, barely getting out the one word.
“All right, well, I need to see if the barrier is a slip or a hoard.”
“You could get stuck in a slip,” he reminded me.
“Normally, yes. But I can see you, so I can get right back.”
“It’s not a good idea,” he cautioned me.
“I’ll be fine,” I promised him. I had to see, to get closer. I didn’t have a choice. It was imperative to know what we were dealing with. Stripping fast, I prepared to shift.
“I don’t want you down there. I forbid it,” Lorne ordered, walking back along the lip of the gutted building to reach me. “Wait. Wait.”
“It’s fine. I’m just going to fly down there and take a look,” I told him, leaping into the air above the hole and, as always, thinking fly.
I was a flock of ravens in the blink of an eye, dropping down into the chasm and immediately hitting the barrier. It felt like a membrane, stretching and stretching so very thin, and then, finally, it popped, allowing me through while it remained intact. As I was living, the barrier couldn’t absorb me, so I passed through unharmed. It was strong, far more robustly made than others I’d seen, but those had all been much smaller. The moment I breached it, I had to adjust in midair, out of my dive, and then I landed gently between bodies on the dirt floor.
As my fire could go where I went, it followed me through the barricade, and now I could see that the bodies weren’t stacked haphazardly, one atop the other. They hadn’t been thrown down into the hole; they had to have been individually lowered and placed. Each corpse was carefully positioned, one next to the other, gently, reverently, hands crossed on their chests, both men and women, and their clothes, which looked to be from the mid-1800s, were in immaculate condition. The bodies themselves all appeared to be sleeping, not dead, so much so that for a moment my brain ridiculously concluded that Lorne and I had discovered a nest of vampires.
I wasn’t in a slip, it wasn’t a trap, but rather a hoard, as I’d initially thought to be far more likely. Someone had wanted these bodies to remain here undisturbed. In theory, they had planned for them to be there only a short time, as I’d never heard of a hoard being a long-term plan. Clearly, something had gone awry.