Page 25 of Lost and Stolen Gods
Another elite approached and folded his epic frame into a crouch so he could look me in the eye. His brown skin was marked with tattoos, that ran up the sides of his cheeks and onto his forehead. When he spoke, I recognized his voice as the one who’d been bantering with Dharma earlier.
“Are you hurt?” he asked. His tone was neutral, giving me no clue as to the sincerity of his enquiry.
“My tailbone and my pride.”
“You’re lucky it isn’t more,” he snapped. “You’re lucky he did not accidentally drop you in the vortex.” His eyes lit up as if he was relishing the thought then went dull and flat a second later. “Stay away from him if you value your life.”
“That’s enough, Jasha,” Umbra said, clipping over to join us. “You are dismissed.”
The look he gave her could have curdled milkwhile it was still in the cow. But she held her ground, and he slowly stood and rolled his shoulders. “You cannot dismiss that which you do not command,tantrik.” He said the word as if it was a curse, and Umbra’s left eye flinched.
He walked off, leaving me to pull myself off the floor with Dharma’s help and finally get a proper look at my surroundings.
We were on a gray stone bridge surrounded by mist. The air was thinner so that I found myself having to take deeper breaths. Wait…We’d been swept up into a vortex. Into the sky, so were we?—
“Are we in the clouds?” someone asked.
“Slightly above,” Umbra replied, “but we need to climb farther. Don’t worry about the breathlessness. It will pass once your essence asserts itself. Follow me.”
She set off before I could ask what she meant aboutessence asserting itself. We followed, keeping to the center of the bridge because none of us wanted to find out if we could float.
Mist billowed and swallowed Umbra. “Hurry up,” she called from within.
Once we were in it, it wasn’t so bad. A little wet, and it smelled odd, but visibility was about seventy percent, and I was sure we were on an incline.
The mist began to thin.
Yep, definitely an incline.
But damn was it hard on my lungs. My steps slowed as we climbed and climbed, Umbra walkingahead as if she was on a fucking stroll. Her staff was now clipped to her back by a fancy holster. She’d had ghosts coming out of that thing. How the heck was that possible?
So many questions.
The mist chose that moment to drop, leaving us on a bridge with no barriers, surrounded by clear blue skies and…Oh…wow…Bridges on bridges wove together and intersected to create weaving paths that connected and diverged, leading to landmasses in the sky that housed spires and turrets, domes and arches. This…this was a whole world.
Umbra turned to us and opened her arms. “Welcome to Aakaash Sansaar, the domain of the Asura and now, your new home.”
Chapter 10
A WHOLE NEW WORLD
This time yesterday, I’d been trying on the lingerie I’d bought to surprise Matt with, and the only thing I’d had to look forward to was more shifts at the restaurant and a future as Mrs. Whittell. Now I was standing in a city in the fucking sky which I’d ridden a vortex to get to. This was insane.
“What’s an Asura?” someone asked.
“Why do we have to stay?” someone else said.
“I want to go home. Please let me go home.”
“This is bullshit. You can’t keep us here.”
“When do I get powers?”
The questions were flung Umbra’s way in quick succession.
“Enough!” a voice boomed, rising above the cacophony.
The group fell into silence as we searched for the speaker. He materialized a moment later, a wingedmale, rising from the edge of the bridge, arms crossed over his chest and a face like thunder. Gentle gusts of air washed over us in time with the beat of his wings.
