I ran to a snowdrift, but when I brushed the snow away, it revealed only fallen yew branches. Another drift hid the grave of Washington Allston, whoever the Helheim he was.
A bloodcurdling cry echoed in the distance. I paused, listening. The draugr were calling to each other in their horrible voices. I needed to hurry.
At last, I found the old reverend’s tomb, buried under a drift in the shadows of a frozen oak. With a single swipe, I brushed the snow off the lid. I skipped the inscription, instead ripping the ancient slab away. Amongst a frozen pile of bones rested an iron key. My key.
I snatched it from the grave.
In the distance, the draugr howled, and fear trickled over my bones again. She’d be all right, wouldn’t she? From what I’d seen, she was fast and cunning, and she had some sort of spell to travel through space in an instant.
I paused as an idea came to me. Quickly, I turned back to the grave, frowning down at the skeleton. After a pause, I snatched up one of Wadsworth’s femurs.
With the winter winds whipping over me, I sprinted back toward the theater where I’d left the Night Elf.
As I ran, I tried to remember those buried memories—the flickering images that had come into my mind when I’d been close to my soul. Something with birds, I thought. Ravens.
As a warm spark lit in my frozen chest, a new image flickered.
I needed to get back to her, to that light she held within her body. I picked up speed until I was faster than the wind, a shadow in the white snow. As I ran to her, dread slid through my blood at the sight of draugr milling around, their eyebrows frosted with snow.
I sniffed the air. There it was, under the scent of the draugr. The faint odor of gasoline.
I turned to a great pile of snow, the remains of an ancient automobile, and punched my fist through it. My hand slammed though snow, then ice, then metal, until it reached the SUV’s gas tank. I ripped it out, throwing it on the street in front of me. Thousand-year-old sludge, that once had been gasoline, sloshed on the asphalt. I hope this is still flammable.
Ripping a strip of cloth from my shirt, I wrapped it round the end of Reverend Wadsworth’s femur, then dipped it into the puddle. I blocked out any worry I had for the Night Elf, raising my hand to trace the rune for fire.
As I moved my finger through the air, the curse kindled. Nearly instantly, my skin felt as if it were on fire—and it had nothing to do with the spell I was trying to cast. I could still use basic magic with my curse, but it meant that I felt as if I were burning alive.
I doubled over, my muscles spasming involuntarily, but I continued to write in the air to form the rune. The skin at my fingertip began to glow.
I touched it to the end of the femur. Instantly, the cloth wrapped around bone burst into flame.
With my macabre torch, I charged up Peabody Street, toward the Night Elf and the sea of draugr surrounding her.
She held my soul and memories in her body. She was my mate, and I hadn’t even learned her name yet.
Chapter 13
Ali
The draugr circled, closer and closer, staring at me with yellowed eyes. There were hundreds of them now, dark shapes against the icy landscape. Snowflakes drifted down, dusting their upturned faces.
I pulled my hood up, the acrylic fur tickling my cheeks. My feet were painfully frozen in my socks now, the frost creeping over my toes. Any longer out here and they’d be going black with frostbite. The only idea I could come up with was taking off my coat to wrap them in it, but then the rest of me would be cold.
I’d set out to bring back treasure for the Shadow Lords, something that would help free my people. And it seemed I’d be heading to the Shadow Caverns empty-handed, with nothing to show for my adventure but frostbitten feet. If I headed back home at all.
Marroc had ripped away the lower steps of the fire escape, leaving the bottom platform about four feet above the heads of the hungry corpses. He’d left me safe, but trapped.
Before, I’d been sure he was protecting me, but now it looked like I would freeze to death above a throng of draugr.