That odd roaring got louder and I suddenly realized what it was. It was Amaya, screaming a warning, screaming for blood.
It was then that I saw them—Ania. And this time, there weren't only six or so. This time, there were so many that it looked like an ethereal tower of white speeding toward me.
A hand wrapped around my arm and yanked me upright. My heart just about jumped out of my chest, even though instinct and something else—something that was infinitely deeper and decidedly scarier—told me it was Azriel.
Power surged as he pulled me close and wrapped his other arm around my waist. Valdis blazed at his back, as eager as Amaya to fight, but neither sword was getting its wish today. Azriel's power burned around me—through me—sweeping us both from flesh to energy. A second later we were on the gray fields, but they weren't the fields that I knew. My gray fields were a place of shadows, a place where things not sighted in the real world suddenly gained substance. But in Azriel's arms, the fields were vast and beautiful, filled with structures and life that were delicate and unworldly.
Then the brightness and warmth of his world was gone, replaced by a darkness that felt damp and smelled faintly of rot and excrement. The sewers, I thought dazedly. Why the hell were we in the sewers?
"Because this is the last place the Ania or the Raziq will think to look for us," Azriel said.
He shifted his grip and guided me down onto a chair. Which was a smart move, because if he'd simply let go I think I would have fallen. My legs were like jelly and my whole body was shaking.
I looked around. Wherever we were, it didn't actually look like a sewer. It actually resembled a small control room of some sort, filled with computers and what looked to be some kind of projector…
Memory stirred, and I suddenly realized that this was the control room where Ike Foreman had held me and questioned me about the keys for the portals of hell—although we still had no clear idea for whom he'd been working. He'd died in the sewer just beyond the main doorway, shot by Lucian. The image of Foreman's face—and the surprise that had flitted across it a second before he died—rose, and I suddenly found myself wondering why he'd been so shocked. It wasn't the fact that death had found him; of that I was sure.
"We'll just be here long enough to stop this bleeding," Azriel continued, drawing me out of my thoughts. But his attention was focused on the helmet that had saved me, and after a moment he unsheathed Valdis. "Stay still."
I tightened my fingers around the arms of the chair, suddenly fighting the urge to flee. "What the hell are you intending to do?"
"Your helmet shattered when you hit the pole, and there are several pieces embedded in your head."
Well, that would certainly explain the pain in my head and the blood on my cheek. "So just take them out and then remove the helmet. There's no need to try to cut it off—"
"I suspect moving the shards will cause greater bleeding. Valdis will obliterate the shards and heal the wound at the same time." He paused, and his gaze met mine. There was something unyielding in his eyes, almost as if he were drawing a line in the sand. "You said you trusted me."
I licked my lips. "I do, but using Valdis to dig them out seems a little like using a jackhammer to hit home a nail."