Blackbird Crowned (The Witch King's Crown #3) - Keri Arthur Page 0,69

was moving toward the surface. Rusting metal tracks appeared on the floor, and there were pockets of deeper darkness pressed into the walls. They weren’t tunnels but rather some sort of wait spaces. Maybe this tunnel had been part of a mine at some point … Out of the corner of my eye I caught the briefest glint of silver. I swore and twisted around, automatically raising Elysian to protect my body. Steel clashed against steel and sparks flew, reflecting brightly in the red eyes of a demon. I swore again and pushed Elysian down the demon’s blade, severing his fingers and partially slicing his arm. As the sword clattered to the floor, he snarled and lunged forward. I jumped back, shifted Elysian, and allowed the demon to impale himself. He died between one breath and another.

But as I kicked his body free from the blade, I became aware of the weight of footsteps behind me.

Demons. Lots of demons.

I half leapt, half stumbled over the body and raced on. The trembling in the earth was so bad now, thick clouds of dust and stone were swirling around me, making it nigh on impossible to see. I had no idea how to stop it—not without physically pressing my hand against the ground, as I had on King Island, and with the speed of the demons behind me that could prove deadly.

I sucked in another breath and only then realized the air no longer burned my throat and lungs. Instead of thick foulness, it smelled and felt electric—the sort of sensation you got just before a major storm hit.

And that had to mean there was an opening to the world above somewhere ahead.

The knowledge sent a fresh spurt of energy into my aching legs. As I raced on through the muck, the darkness eased and the deeper chill in the air dissipated. But the demons were drawing closer, the walls around me were cracking, and big chunks of the ceiling were now falling. I raised Elysian above my head in the vague hope that she would protect me and ran on.

Another long, sweeping corner. The heavy steps of the demons echoed through the stone under my feet. They were so damn close that if I turned, I’d see the glow of their eyes. It didn’t matter. The bastards were not going to catch me now. If I had to push every last ounce of strength into getting free from this place, I would.

I sucked in another useless breath, then gathered together the flickering remnants of my inner lightning and flung it behind me. The shadows lit up as the multiple forks shot back down the tunnel. A few seconds later, the footsteps stilled and the stench of burning flesh filled the air.

I had minutes, if that, to escape.

I slid to a halt in front of the crack. It was a long, thin channel that promised freedom and yet, at the same time, withheld it. Even my blackbird form wasn’t going to get through it. I had to widen the damn thing.

I plunged Elysian into the crack and called on the earth to widen it. She responded fiercely, her power burning into the soles of my feet, through my body, down Elysian’s blade, and into the stone. The channel’s walls started to glow with a fierce yellow-white light that reminded me somewhat of lava, and then, ever so slowly, the gap began to widen.

Hurry, hurry, I wanted to scream, but there was little point.

My gaze darted back to the tunnel. They were coming.

Fuck.

The channel remained too narrow. I was out of time and out of choices. I swore, briefly closed my eyes against the sting of useless tears, then ripped Elysian free and shoved her through the stone and into the earth underneath. Awareness hit; the heavy weight of over a dozen feet pounding on stone, the ruins of the tunnels I’d destroyed, and the foul stain of blood surrounding a stone pillar driven like a knife into the earth. And, in the deeper distance, something that sat like a whisper on the earth, radiating an energy that was of this world and yet not. That was dark, and yet not.

A gateway?

Elysian pulsed, and something within me sharpened. An odd sort of mist blurred my vision, reminding me of the gray, though I was very definitely anchored to this world, not the other.

The whisper of the gate’s weight on the earth drew me closer—mentally rather than physically—and suddenly I was there, in front