Page 69 of Shadow Weaver
“Where’s Henrich?”
“They’ve lost contact with several bases. Communications to the Academy are down too. Uncle has taken a few men and headed to the Academy to fetch Madam Latrou.”
“How long ago did he leave?”
Deana licked her lips and looked nervous. “Deana? How long ago?”
“Two hours. You’ve been out for three hours.”
Two hours. “If he’d gotten help, he’d have been back over an hour ago.” I stood and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Back into the mist. I have to get to the others. I have to stop this.”
“How? By now, those things will have infected everyone. Can you cleanse them all? You passed out for three hours after cleansing Mr. Stonewall.”
Shit, she was right. I reached inside myself, searching for my connection to the weave to find only a flicker of light. I was drained. I needed to recharge, and I couldn’t do that without an amulet, and I couldn’t fucking use an amulet. My training with Latrou hadn’t progressed as far as learning to recharge directly from the weave. I’d demanded help, manipulated the weave, and it had exacted its price by knocking me on my ass. I was useless right now.
“The knights have their orders,” Deana continued. “We’re to remain in the fortress. The grounds are warded against those things, as is the Academy.”
Warded against them … “You know what they are?”
“No. I didn’t, not until today. Uncle told me.”
“Tell me what we’re dealing with.”
“Have you heard of will-o-the-wisps?”
“Huh? Yeah, but those things were not will-o-the-wisps.”
“They were. Once. During the wars between the Tuatha and the fomorians, the Tuatha created a supernatural virus, an infection that affected anyone with fomorian genes. They used the wisps as carriers of the virus. They called it rage. It affects the minds of the fomorians, and it drives them to kill anyone and anything. They would unleash it in small areas, populated by fomorians, and in a matter of hours, the villagers would have killed each other. Wipeout. And the Tuatha didn’t have to lift a finger.”
“What is it doing here?”
“They used it centuries ago when the shadow knights fought the fomorians. Orion gave us rage to use as a weapon, but something went wrong. It had evolved. It started infecting not only the fomorians but the shadow knights and the Tuatha too. It began to speak through its victims. It wanted to live. It wanted a body.”
“Oh, shit. What did the Tuatha do?”
“Employed the aid of the most powerful weavers to bind rage to an object and bury the object hundreds of feet beneath the earth.”
“They buried a supernatural virus here? In the fucking mist?”
“It was the safest option. No one was likely to dig it up.”
“No, except maybe a critter or two. Shit. The explosions probably busted the thing wide open.”
She nodded. “Henrich only knows all this because the knowledge is passed down from shadow master to shadow master.”
“Shame he didn’t think about it when he ordered fucking explosives.”
“People make mistakes,” Deana snapped back.
“Yeah, and some of those mistakes cost people their lives.” I headed for the door. “I need to do something. I can’t just sit here twiddling my thumbs.” I began to pace. The thing was bound, and we needed a weaver to rebind it, which was why Henrich had gone to get Madam Latrou, but he obviously hadn’t made it. I needed to get her and tell her what was happening. I needed the weavers.
The ideal thing would be to shadow cast to the Academy, right to Madam Latrou, but I didn’t have enough energy to establish a connection to the weave right now. I didn’t know how to reach for it. Fuck, if only I’d had a few more lessons.
There had to be a fast way to the Academy … A safe way … An idea bloomed in my mind. “Does rage affect fomorian hounds?”
