I’m guessing ‘borrowed’ for the kidnapping and returned, as it wasn’t reported stolen. I haven’t found any record of the others being taken.”
“Melker. He doesn’t look like a Melker,” I squawked, thinking. What if Legolas had gone back to the place he had been injured, and backtracked Beast’s trail to the rift? I hadn’t looked to see if that had happened. It hadn’t crossed my mind. What if Lego knew where I had been? If Lego had found the rift, and if its location had been clear and bright in his mind when Shimon took him and flayed his body, then Shimon knew about the deep blue pool. Lots of ifs. But I figured the Flayer knew everything Lego did. What if the Flayer guessed that the watery opening into the earth was a rift? What if one of them had seen another arcenciel emerge from the pool of water?
Crap. Crap, crap, crap.
I crossed hills and dipped out of the near-balmy rain, into ravines, the colors of night vivid in Anzu eyes. The mountain ridge I was looking for came into view in my Anzu eyes, the crests shrouded in clouds below me. I dipped my flight into the cloud cover. The roads in were unplowed and now buried beneath more snow, showing no tracks. To follow the road, I soared lower, into the layer of freezing rain and sleet. It struck my eyes and buried sharp-edged barbs in my down, gathering and freezing on my wings and the feathers of my face.
“He has the senza onore?” I asked.
“That’s my best guess,” Alex said.
I dropped even lower, skimming the tops of pine and dead fir, and lower again until I was angling along the roadway. The turnoff came up quickly and I whipped left, over the small clearing where we had parked, back what seemed a long time ago. My wings stroked the air higher, now climbing hard to my right, searching for the rift. But tired. So very tired.
The rift had been left unprotected—not that I could think of a way to keep it safe—when I carried Eli back for healing. I had left Legolas arrow-staked and bleeding in the snow, but any vamp, once the arrow was removed and he was healed by drinking lots of blood, would have been able to trace Beast’s scent or tracks back to the crevasse. I had been so focused on the Flayer that I hadn’t considered where Lego-Melker fit in. I was an idiot.
He had challenged me when he ripped out Shiloh’s throat, but before that, he had bled and read her. He had known all about the witches in Asheville from her. He’d had the senza onore, the pyro, and somehow he got her to work with him and burned down Molly’s house, and yet, even with all he knew, all the alliances he had made, he had still ended up in a circle, flayed and true-dead. Once I took care of the Flayer, I’d track down the woman, the senza onore, but first things first.
Ice was building up on my wings. Feathered birds are not built to fly in snow and sleet. The part of me that would have been shoulders had I been human ached with exhaustion, burned with overuse. I was growing clumsy. If I was wrong about my interpretation of events, I wouldn’t have time or energy to regroup and search for EJ anywhere else. I needed water and food and—
I glimpsed a glow that disappeared just as fast. I circled that way, the tops of trees brushing along my chest and belly. The glow didn’t reappear. But the chasm in the ground materialized below me, black in the snow, as if a huge blade had ripped into the earth.
I folded my wings and plummeted, a heart-wrenching nosedive between branches, to spread my wings just above the earth and align myself above the narrow cleft, looking for the best entry point. Wings providing a slight draft, I slowed and dived into the crevasse.
The air instantly warmed, heated by the earth itself. Little snow or ice clung to the rock face as I dropped into the dark, green ferns clinging to the cracks between rocks, moss in a dozen different shades of green cleaving to the rock itself. Even partially folded, my wings brushed the rock faces to either side. I dodged downed trees that braced across the chasm. Dove beneath fallen rock that spanned the width of the cleft. Gaining speed, too fast. Not easily able