Page 15 of Forever Frenzy
Magic pulsing from the other side of the stone told me he was trying to escape. “Stand back,” I warned, and she nodded and backed away from the wall.
I flattened my palms against the warm stone and let my power flow; scraping, sliding. Losing track of time, I felt Mom pull me backward. “There’s an opening,” she said quietly, trying not to startle me. She had once, and I’d zapped her so hard she flew across the room and landed on the floor on her back.
I pulled my power back, my vision clearing. When I concentrated on my magic, everything remained unfocused but the object in my mind. I realized one of the large blocks had backed out of its space. I looked inside, using my fingers to illuminate the inside of the building. Tage was on the floor.
“Are you okay?” I climbed inside to help him up.
He chuckled. “Yeah. I guess I pushed too hard. I’ve been trying to find the door out of here since Sekhmet sent me here.”
I realized the walls inside the building weren’t walls at all. Every inch was lined with doors of all different shapes and colors; some with bent handles, round ones, or ones that you pushed and pulled.
“Where do they all lead?”
“To the center of this room. It was maddening. I’d step through one door just to end up where I started, but I thought it was a puzzle. If I just found the right door, I’d find the way out, but now I think she was trying to make me lose my mind. There was no way out.”
Mom climbed into the room, marveling at the floor to ceiling doors.
Tage was in front of her in an instant, holding her face in his hands. “Why did you come here?” he demanded.
“I had to help find you,” she replied, gently removing his hands from her skin. “Tage, Sekhmet is out. She left The Sand. She bitSeth and escaped.”
Tage’s face darkened. “She bit him?”
“She said I was stronger than she imagined,” I added. “And then she went after Mom.”
“It’s going to take both of us working together to end her for good, but that’s what has to happen,” Tage said in a low, menacing voice.
As soon as we stepped out of the stone building Sekhmet had locked me in, everything melted away but the darkness. The blackness grew hands – thousands, millions of them, all clawing at our legs and feet, trying to drag us down into the tarry pit with them. I grabbed Seth’s and Porschia’s hands and we ran like hell, stumbling over the grasping fingers, slimy as tentacles.
But there was nowhere to go, and we had no choice but to let them take us. I ground to a stop. “Don’t fight them!” I yelled. “Gounder, but hold onto me. Got it?”
Seth looked unsure, but he agreed. Porschia squeezed my hand, her eyes wide at the hands slowly tugging her beneath the surface. We descended slowly into the thick tar, gasping for air until the last second.
We were drowning in a clawing, angry torrent of souls. Beneath the surface, we were being pulled apart, and then Seth’s hand began to slip. Porschia squeezed tight, but our hands couldn’t hold in the slippery fluid.
When we let go, it ended.
We were back in The Sand, landing on our bottoms with an oomph, with the breath knocked out of us. Seth’s leg was twisted under my back, while Porschia was trying to stand a few feet away. “Saul?” she yelled, frantically running from one side of the dune to the other. “Where is the tent, Seth? Where is he?”
I sat up so he could move and we went out in search of Saul. Hearing his name sent a wave of unpleasant emotions tearing through me. I couldn’t help how I felt. He got tolive. He got to raise my son and be with Porschia every single day, while I sat in the Sand watching them, loving her from afar.
“Let’s split up,” I suggested. “He has to be here. He was bound.”
Porschia took off to the grove of palm trees, Seth toward the doorway, and I looked over the dunes, leaving footsteps across the highest peaks of shifting sand.
The sun was setting, casting bright streaks of orange and pink across the sky. In the distance, there was a dark shadow. I shielded my eyes to see it better, but it was useless. Picking up the pace, I jogged ahead and stepped lightly down the steepest side of the dune until I could see what it was. A jacket…Saul’s jacket.
But why would it be out here?
“I found something!” I yelled.
Seth formed in front of me in an instant. “Dad’s coat,” he said, crouching down to pick up the thick fabric. “He wouldn’t have left it. Mom made it for him.”
Seth’s eyes were troubled, and an unsettled feeling bubbled in the pit of my stomach. That feeling boiled over when Porschia letout a wail that I felt stab into every cell of my body all at once. Seth grabbed my hand and we transported to her. She was on her knees, bent over, holding her stomach, while heaving sobs wracked her body as she rocked back and forth.
Just beyond her was Saul’s prone body with two large fang marks on his neck. He hadn’t been dead long, and we all knew who drained him. We just had to find her.
Seth held Porschia and tried to drag her away, but she fought him. “No!” She pulled Saul close, his head lolling onto her lap. “Saul? Come on, baby. Wake up. Saul?”
