for stare.
“At home where it is safe.” he says icily. “I will deal with you later.”
“Whoa, whoa, hold it. Deal with me?” I shoot back. My voice is shaking, and it isn’t all rage.
He whirls away from me, cloak swirling, and glances at the Mirror. Tension jolts through him, and he jerks his eyes away.
Concern and an intense, morbid sort of curiosity rise up, but I let my anger burn it away.
“Did you find Saffron?” I ask.
“Not yet.” He wipes his blade on his cloak. “Come this way.” He marches down the steps.
The bubble of hope that’s been sitting in my chest bursts painfully. “Where the heck did you come from anyway?” I let Hagor go first and then follow. “How did you know we were even here?”
“I came through here.” He leads the way to an archway I never noticed before. “As to how I knew you two were here, I felt you, and I heard him screaming.” He jerks his thumb at Hagor. “Even if I hadn’t, the Ak’tar would have led me here. It started signaling a few moments ago.”
When that thing started choking me.
At the arch, Arcayos pulls me close to his side, his hand big and warm in mine. I tense, and when he scrunches his brows at me, I ignore it.
His grip feels like iron all of a sudden.
A long, dimly lit hall lined with torches stretches out before us. The chill makes me shiver, and the darkness feels too close. The smell of decay is gag inducing.
“Talk to me.” He leans down, his voice soft and tender now. “What is wrong?”
“Later.”
He sighs. “Thank you for coming to my aid. I did not need it, but thank you.”
“Hagor said you were in trouble.”
Arcayos growls at him. “Hagor knows not of what he speaks. He is nothing but trouble.”
But his tone lacks force.
“I thought you were in danger, Arc.” Hagor shrugs. “Word went out over the wire that the Guardians knew you were coming.”
“The what?” I say.
“Those creatures,” Arcayos answers.
Farther down the hall, the darkness is less, more torches lighting the way. Strange shadows dance on the walls, seeming alive. I press closer to the warrior. Hagor’s breathing is heavy again.
A few feet away, large shapes lie on the stone floor. I recoil, stifling a scream as firelight flickers across a dozen dead faces. The bodies of humans lay everywhere, heads detached, eyes staring blankly.
Demons, I hope. Demons who have turned human after death.
“Did you do all this?” I whisper.
There are a few of those tentacled creatures and one or two demons that have the same sort of facial type as Arcayos and Hagor. Why haven’t they turned human?
“Yes.” His voice echoes softly in the hall.
“They ambushed you,” Hagor says before I can say it.
“I handled it.”
At the end of a passage, two demons grab hold of me and Hagor. Hagor cries out. So do I.
Arcayos slices them both in two. I clutch my chest, heart racing.
We step into a large cavern with a huge, high, domed ceiling and polished black walls. Strange writing in sharp lettering flickers in the torchlight, all of it in long, vertical rows. Circles interweave with them, and lines connect others. High above, instead of a ceiling, swirling black fog billows and seethes.
“What is this place?” My whisper echoes.
“Cassidy, look out!” Arcayos pushes me behind him, shoving Hagor to the wall. The Sword of Shadows flashes.
My head snaps up. The ceiling—or rather that black fog—coalesces into dozens of huge bat-like creatures, all of them flying at us at once.
My gun is in my hand. Bullets go off, zinging off the walls. Arcayos moves about the room lightning fast, sword swinging. Half a dozen of the creatures drop to the floor, dead, but there are more. So many more.
Claws sink into my shoulders, and suddenly I’m lifted off the ground. Two of the bat things lift me up and up, their wings flapping like thunder.
“Arcayos!” I shriek. I kick and twist, but those claws cut and slice into my skin. “Arcayos!”
Angry growls and the clang and scrape of a sword against stone fill the chamber.
Panic seizes me. I look up. The foggy ceiling has given way to a real ceiling, stone inlaid with panes of glass in the shape of elongated teardrops, forming a kind of flower.
There is someone up there, a body floating high above me, but still a good ten feet from the glass. The body hovers as one might in water, dark blond curls drifting about her small,