Lord of the Abyss - By Nalini Singh Page 0,62

them just smart enough to comprehend danger and respond to it in a logical fashion. Now, they fell back - waiting rather than wasting time by circling around the line. They knew her blood wasn't as strong as their master's, didn't taste of innocent sacrifice, wouldn't last long.

Already, her arms were trembling. "Micah."

"When I give the word, Liliana, you must let it fall."

She nodded, biting the inside of her mouth to spill blood onto her tongue as she tried to find the strength to hold her ground. When her legs shook, she went to her knees, but maintained the shield.

"Now."

Her arms dropped and so did the acidic haze.

Shrieking, the Arachdem rolled forward. She scrambled backward on her hands, screaming for Micah to run. But he ignored her, standing rooted to the ground as the spiders arced up on their back legs above him, poisonous claws ready to slice down. Sobbing, she scrambled forward, thinking to create a desperate blood-circle to protect him. Her hand had just brushed his calf when a fury of knife-sharp black spikes taller than a man rose up in front of him. The spikes ranged deeper than the width of the Whispering Forest...covering the area where so many of the Arachdem had amassed.

Stunned at the sheer depth of his power, she sat silent, watching as the hideous creatures were impaled, their putrid yellow blood staining the earth.

Micah pulsed with power, with the heartbeat of the Abyss. But beyond the roar was another - that of memory. Of seeing the Arachdem advancing on his home. Their eyes had been red embers in the gray time before true dawn, their furred bodies making a susur-rating sound as the razors on their legs cut through those who tried so valiantly to defend the castle and its inhabitants. His father was out there, he knew, holding the line. His mother had put him in this room, told him to stay put. She was in another part of the castle, healing the injured, helping those she could. He knew that because Nanny had told him.

"Nanny," he said, his fingers turning white on the windowsill. "Why are the monsters coming to get us?"

Nanny's hands were warm and wrinkled on his shoulders. "Because the Blood Sorcerer wants to steal Elden."

"He can't, can he?"

"No," Nanny said, but Micah heard a hesitation in her voice, and it scared him.

Below them, the horrible monsters crushed the soldiers, and though Micah knew he was supposed to love his subjects as family, he was only a child who knew the man who was the foundation of his world fought below. "Father," he whispered. "Father."

"He'll be fine," Nanny said, her hands tightening on Micah's shoulders. "He is the king and kings do not fall." The absolute conviction in her voice convinced him, but he couldn't turn his eyes from the carnage below, the air filled with screams and scents that made his stomach churn.

It was as the Elden forces began to fall back that Micah saw the man in the center of the chaos of spiders. Tall and spidery thin himself, he held a staff of twisted and blackened wood, his fingers appearing like claws to Micah's suddenly crystal-clear vision.

Magic, he'd realize as an adult; it had been magic that had let him see so clearly, forged from his natural connection to Elden. But that night, all he knew was that he could see the monster within the other monsters, and a chill came into his heart, his young mind comprehending that that one was the worst of them all.

Then the man with the nightmare face looked up, his gaze zeroing in on the window from where Micah watched. It was a child's urge to hide, to turn away, but he locked his eyes with those of dirty ice and saw the bad man's lips form the words, "I'll get you, boy."

"No," Micah whispered. "You never will."
Chapter 20
The memory fractured, but it was all there now, just waiting for him to look, to see. As the Arachdem who hadn't been impaled screamed and scuttled away, giving up the fight, he opened the mental doorway a little. Names and places, scents and sounds, and pain, such pain rocketed through him. He'd been thrown through time and space itself, his body locked in a spell meant to protect and cast in desperation as Elden fell.

His mother's spell had found unlikely expression in the cool, quiet room below the Black Castle, where it was said the new Guardian always appeared when it