Page 35 of Claim the Twilight
“So what do we do?” Padma asks.
Holly shakes her head. “The earth is what wards draw power from and—” Her eyes fly wide, and revelation punches me in the chest.
“Oh god…”
“What?” both Merry and Padma ask.
Jacqueline speaks for the first time in an hour. “The wards around Dracul are going to be affected, aren’t they?”
Ice trickles through my veins, but when I speak, my voice is steady and more confident than I feel. “Eventually. When this taint spreads that far. But we have crystals in play for the territory wards. Those won’t fall so quickly.”
“How much time do we have?”
The breaches opened two days ago, and the soil here in Old Town is already affected. It could be a matter of days before the infection reaches the territory wards, or less if Loviator manages to punch another breach into the walls between our worlds. “I don’t know.” It pains me to say it, but it’s the truth. “It could be days, it could be weeks. There are too many factors to consider.”
“Then we’d best work fast,” Padma says, her gaze traveling to the clock. “They should be back soon.”
“What about the wards here?” Merry asks. “We still need them, right? For the castle to be safe?”
“We have no source of power to anchor the wards to,” Holly says. “The earth generates energy we hoped to use to bind our spell to. Without it, I’m not sure what we can use.”
“I thought magic was in the air,” Padma says. “Can’t we somehow siphon it?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Jacqueline says with more than a little bite to her tone. “The magic needed to activate the spell comes from the weave, but in the case of wards, the spell must be grounded. You cannot ground the air.”
“So no wards, then.” Padma chewed on her cheeks. “Shit, what about Brimswood Park and its wards?”
“A different kind of magic,” Jacqueline answers before I can. “Pure fae magic that comes from an entirely different source, but even their wards will eventually fall.”
It looks like there is no haven in Dracul any longer. Not for long, anyway.
The wards were meant to last for months. Enough time for the white wings to push Loviator back into her prison. We’ll be lucky to get a week or two from our wards, which means that if the entity fails to provide us with the answers we need, then Plan B will need to be activated immediately—beforeour wards fall.
Hemlock will die along with almost everyone in Dracul because we don’t have the white wing army to transport everyone outside the wards in time.
“What are we going to do?” Merry asks no one and everyone.
“There is only one thing we can do,” Padma says with a heavy sigh. “Hope.”
Chapter 15
ORINA
Ordell slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting a figure as it dashed across the road. I jerked forward in my seat before whipping back against the leather. The taste of iron filled my mouth and coated my teeth for a moment, acting like a jolt of adrenaline that heightened everything around me.
The moonlit street came into harsh focus, terrified figures running back and forth across the road to escape the horrific beasts intent on tearing into their homes. Glass shattered and wood snapped and cracked, the sounds sharp and lethal as the cold ones burst through windows and crashed through doors.
Screams ripped the air—some shrill, some the guttural cries of the dying.
“Move!” I shoved at Ezekiel. “We have to help them.”
Ezekiel shoved open the door and climbed out. I grabbed my sword and scrambled after him just as another flash of blue light lit up the night.
It cleared to reveal two more beasts. Not cold ones but huge shadow monsters that seemed to have no set form. They movedlike dark blobs, eating at the light and crawling across the street to devour any tulpa in their path.
A child with huge dark eyes and a mournful expression ran toward me, arms out in a plea. Recognition lit up my mind. She was the Diago kid. The one whose father had been taken by Christian.
A cold one barreled after her.
