Blackbird Broken (The Witch King's Crown #2) - Keri Arthur Page 0,24

I swung around and followed the other side of the drain for several seconds. Still no sign of the man.

I circled around and, after a brief hesitation, dropped low enough to view the large storm pipe that ran under the road. Nothing there, either. Nothing other than dripping water and thick strings of moss.

He couldn’t have disappeared. He was a halfling, and incapable of magic. There had to be something here I was missing.

I eyed the drain warily for a few more seconds, then changed and dropped to the ground, brushing my fingers lightly against the wet grass to catch my balance. My appearance didn’t draw any sort of response, and yet trepidation nevertheless stirred. I reached into my pocket to turn down my phone—the last thing I needed was it inadvertently ringing and advertising my presence—then cautiously walked on. The closer I got, the louder the steady drip of water seemed to get. It ate at my nerves and sent my heartbeat soaring.

I stopped again at the edge of the concrete pipe and brushed aside a slimy string of moss. There was absolutely nothing here.

And yet …

I flared my nostrils and drew in a deep breath. I wasn’t imagining it—the air now held a hint of acidity, and that meant there was at least one demon close by.

But where?

Other than this drain, there was no logical place for a creature that would be ashed by sunlight to hide, so why the hell couldn’t I see him?

He couldn’t be using a purchased concealment spell, because I’d see the threads of it. Mo might not have been able to teach me to cast spells, thanks to the inner lack of all magic aside from shifting, but she had taught me to how to see and track them. There was no spell—purchased or created—here.

Which left me with one other option—a hidden gateway.

I took a cautious step into the drain, my body practically vibrating with tension. Nothing jumped out at me. The water continued to drip, and that wisp of acidity remained faint.

Another step. Then another. Still nothing. I flexed my fingers and walked in deeper. The smell of rot and dampness now dominated the air; moss clung to the walls of the pipe, and it was a surprisingly lush forest of green. In fact, it was almost too lush—too thick and perfect. I frowned and lightly touched it. It felt like regular moss, though it was perhaps a bit more spongy than usual. I picked a bit off and examined it—and discovered it wasn’t moss but rather some sort of artificial material. I walked a bit further down and picked off another piece, with the same result. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to cover the inside of this pipe with this stuff.

I did another quick scan, my heart beating so hard if felt like there was a mad drummer inside my chest. The fake moss covered the middle section of the pipe and faded out toward the ends, but there was nothing here that immediately screamed door, hidden or otherwise.

I continued on, my fingers pressed lightly against the mossy wall. There was no seam in the artificial material, no break of any kind. If there was a gate on this side of the pipe it was very well hidden.

I moved across to the other side and repeated the process. Just off the middle of the drain, my fingers slid across a thin crack. The minute they did, the moss shimmered and disappeared.

Revealing a door into Darkside.

I sucked in a deep breath and fought the urge to run. While the gateway was unlocked—in fact, there was nothing to indicate witch magic had ever been used to lock it down—the door itself was closed rather than open. That could change in a heartbeat, of course, but given the thing looked and felt like it was made out of concrete, I doubted it’d open with any sort of speed.

And, of course, having thought that, the total opposite would now prove to be true.

I sucked in another deep breath that did nothing to calm my racing heart and studied the gate. It was six feet high, but rather than the doorframe being made of the otherworldly blue-black stone used in every other one I’d come across, this used simple concrete. The images carved into it, however, were as grotesque as ever, depicting demons of all kinds and shapes both cavorting with and destroying human figures. I could almost hear the screaming of all