Page 114 of Death Warden
* * *
LOGAN
There’s no way to reason with her, no way to stop her before she’s gone. Curo’s bellow of distress stabs at my soul.
I shift back to male and grab his shoulder. “We have to find the body.”
“What?” He looks at me as if I’ve suggested we go have afternoon tea.
“It’s what she said before she went…” I look at the spot where the fracture was a moment ago. It’s gone and so are Finley and Adi. “We have to destroy Dralos’s body. Now.”
Curo looks torn, but then he nods sharply and runs toward the house. I shift and follow.
* * *
ADI
The spirit plane swallowed us, sucking us into the ashy landscape. I hit the ground hard and looked up to find Finley lying not too far from me. His eyes were closed, chest rising and falling evenly. Alive.
A figure rose behind him, twisted dark limbs, hunched back, and powerful thighs. It was a monster who had Finley’s eyes. No, not Finley’s eyes, Dralos’s eyes. This was the bastard’s true form, one he hid on the mortal plane.
“Come to me,” he ordered.
I stood and faced him, surreptitiously scanning the landscape for the red door. Shit, where was it?
“You will come to me!” His voice was a boom that rattled my mind, and I was moving toward him before I could stop myself. He grabbed me by the throat, huge hand closing around my neck all the way to hold me still, but he didn’t squeeze.
“I could snap you in two,” he said. “Kill you effortlessly. If only it were that easy to get what I need. A trade unfulfilled is a burr. Look at me. Look at what you’ve done, Loralie.”
Loralie?
“You brought me here. You pulled me to this world. You promised me your body. Your life force. You vowed we would be bound and then you changed the rules. I let you. I let you deceive me because even then I believed…” He made a sound of exasperation. “But it was a lie. You never loved me. You wanted what I could give you and you took it. I should have killed you then.” His jagged mouth turned down. “I should have ended you, but I let you go. I let you live for a time before coming back to you…hoping… and you did this.” He closed his eyes briefly.
Oh, God. My ancestor had done this. She’d played with the heart of a monster.
“You stripped my power,” he continued. “You made me this. Even then I hoped. I returned to you, but you failed to see me. You failed to give me back what was mine. Instead, you locked me away.” He ran a claw down my cheek. “Why, Loralie?”
“I’m not Loralie. I’m Adienne. I didn’t do any of that shit to you. She did.”
He blinked sharply and shook his head. “Yes. You are not her. She is dead. But you have her blood. And her blood must pay.”
His grip on me tightened at the same time the red door appeared several meters behind him. But it was too late. He was hauling me off my feet, squeezing so hard my mouth popped open.
“Time to feed.”
* * *
CURO
The house is empty and dilapidated. I find the basement, and I’m halfway down the stairs with my hellhound buddy at my back when my chest goes tight and my connection to Adi vibrates.
Logan growls.
He feels it too.
She’s in danger.
I take the rest of the stairs at a run. The basement is a huge space with an arcane circle drawn in the center. Metal pegs stick out of the ground along with the remnants of thick rope. This is where they held Finley. But where’s Dralos’s body?
