“We have to go,” I said to the girl. She was short and not in shape. I’d be lucky if she could keep up, even with a sick me carrying EJ. Who took after his dad. Not a tiny four-year-old-ish kid. “Can you drop the cave shield?”
“It’s mine, so, yeah.”
I looked back at Shimon’s body. A stub was growing at the neck stump and the rock was being pushed out of the torso from the inside. Something dark gray flew across the back cave wall. “Get to it. And hurry. I got a bad feeling.”
I made it to EJ and fell to my knees, the pain growing, and I nearly passed out as I tied the velvet cape around him to keep him warm and struggled to get him over my shoulder. I didn’t make it and he lay on my lap, limbs splayed.
“Shield’s down. And no offense, but you look like shit. Like you’re gonna die any second,” Stacey said, from my side.
“Pretty much,” I huffed, breathless from even that much exertion. “Cancer. Can you carry him?”
“Yeah.” Stacey got EJ up and over her shoulder, grunting with the effort. She clearly wasn’t accustomed to being hungry, thirsty, or carrying a stout, heavy kid.
At the entrance, we looked down a good fifteen feet to the floor of the crevice. It was covered with shattered rock and debris that had fallen from the cave and from overhead. I had no rope. No way could I get down and then catch either of my charges. Beast. You gotta give me half-form. I looked back over my shoulder. The head of the Flayer of Mithrans was no longer where I had placed it. The charcoal shadow moved across the back wall. Fast. Red eyes caught the firelight.
“Holy crap,” I whispered, understanding at last. Kicking off my shoes, I demanded to Beast, “Shift!”
“What?” Stacey said.
“I’m a shape-shifter. I—”
Beast opened the Gray Between. A tornado of knives opened with it. I began to shift. As I fell to the cave floor, the Flayer of Mithrans opened his eyes, watching me.
* * *
* * *
It took way too long and I was beyond starving when I finally settled into my half-form, gagging from the pain, too bony, too skinny, and too sick to move. I was huffing and puffing and feeling as if I had been held down and suffocated with a pillow while being beaten with a baseball bat.
“I put a stake in the belly of Beetle Man, but it popped out and hit me in the head.”
I managed to get my eyes open, sort of focused, and looked up at Stacey, who had been talking. “Oh?”
“I tossed his head out of the cave and ten minutes later it was back. And you got fur and fangs, just in case you didn’t know.”
I managed some kind of a smile. “I noticed.” Ten minutes. I’d been out awhile. “And just so you know, we aren’t alone in here. We have a ghost, not that I believe in ghosts. But we have one.”
“A gho—Oh. You mean the dark shadow.”
I shook my head and made it to my feet. Strapped the gobag around me. I tore open the remaining jerky and shoved it in my mouth, which was too dry to soften the dried meat, but the taste was fantastic—which showed me how sick and calorie deprived I really was. I swallowed the leathery stuff whole and said, “I’m going to jump down. You’re going to toss EJ to me. I’ll set him down; then you jump. I’ll catch you.”
“No way in hell.”
“Fine. Then I’ll carry the kid down with me and leave you here.”
Stacey gave me a scowl worthy of Molly. I’d have laughed if I’d had the energy. “I don’t know you,” she said, “but so far I don’t like you much.”
I tightened the tie at the waist of my sweatpants. “Don’t care, but remember this. I didn’t come for you. I came for the kid. You’re just icing on the cake.” I bent to pick up EJ.
“Fine. But if your hair falls out or you grow warts, you can blame me. I’m a witch and I’m pissed.”
“Watch your language,” I said as I helped her with EJ, adjusting him in her arms. “Kid present.”
“He’s asleep. And you sound like my mother.”
“Good.” I leaned out the opening and chose how I’d get down. There were plenty of handholds and toeholds to the crevice floor. I grabbed the gobag holding the cell phone and pivoted