my body, taking the first of the steps out of the cave. It didn’t take long, but I could feel magic in the air and I knew that the floaty charcoal thing was magical and operated independently of the Flayer. I had a bad feeling that whatever it was, it made Shimon Bar-Judas the Flayer of Mithrans, the Soul of Darkness, the Son of Deception, the Son of Shadows, et al. Son of Shadows. Right.
At the bottom I positioned my feet so I could move in any direction. “Toss him.”
Stacey tossed EJ over the lip of the cave. Time did that battlefield slowdown where everything happens in slow motion. I saw the cape flutter. Saw EJ’s hand flop out. Saw his bare feet. Saw when his body started to spin. I angled myself to the right and caught him, dropping down with him so gravity didn’t break his bones against my arms. I carried him across the rocks to the flat floor of the crevice and placed him on a wide, moss-covered boulder, retied the cloak over him, and went back to my place. “Jump.”
Except there was no one there. No one replied. And I realized that Stacey had been taken by the Flayer of Mithrans. I raced to the stone and picked up my godson, tossed him over my left shoulder, and rushed back along the crevasse toward the point where I had dropped down in Anzu form.
CHAPTER 21
Tossed the Girl to the Rocks
Stomach rumbling, body quivering from hunger, I dashed along the bottom of the crevasse. Deep in the hole, it was darker than any night I had ever experienced in my lives, both of them. Only with the enhanced night vision gifted to me by Beast did I manage to avoid deadfall, shattered stone, and openings and holes in the rock beneath me. But fear was a tangible presence at my back as I ran.
I kept glancing up, looking for a faster way to the surface, one I could climb three-limbed, holding EJ. I finally saw one, and just hoped the rocks held. Tightening my arm around my godson, I leaped. Caught a rock protrusion. Swung to the toehold and shoved up. Trying to ignore the pain in my belly, I began the arduous climb to the surface.
* * *
* * *
I fell on the snow, the cold agonizing at the top of the split in the earth. My lungs strained, breath painful. Gasping. When I could breathe, I rolled to my back and saw stars and the moon overhead. The clouds were breaking. I adjusted EJ on top of me for what warmth I could provide to him, and pulled the gobag off my chest. Found the cell. The call had been dropped, but I now had a signal. I dialed Alex. Felt into my middle. My fingers met something hard and pointed. Dudley. Dang. The tumor had found this shape too.
“Jane!” Alex shouted into my cell.
“I got EJ,” I said between hard breaths. “He’s spelled asleep but he’s breathing and nothing seems broken. At my current coordinates.”
“Thank God,” Molly said over the connection. And she burst into tears.
“Eli, Bruiser, and team are less then fifteen hundred feet from your current location,” Alex said. “But Molly talked to the local witches again and they admitted one of them was missing. The fanghead has a fifteen-year-old witch.”
“Stacey. Yeah. I know. Which is why I’m leaving EJ here with the cell and going back down.”
“Don’t you leave my baby!” Molly growled into the connection.
“I have to buy Eli time to get him away. Only way to do that is to leave EJ and take on the Flayer.”
“Jane, don’t,” Alex said.
“We broke the circle at the Arboretum,” Evan said. “Even the humans are flayed. We think he can skin anything for his magic.”
Anything. Even me. “Yeah. Okay.” Knowing that gave me more incentive to go back down, to get Stacey and to keep my people safe until they could get away. Gathering what little strength I still had, I rolled to my feet and started shuffling through the snow looking for a deep pile of fall leaves. It was dark, but my Beast-eyes had adjusted and the night seemed lighter than it really was. Quickly I found a depression filled with leaves and covered by snow, kicked it around to make sure nothing was nesting in it, then buried EJ, wrapped in his cape, in the leaves. I placed the cell on a branch near him and made sure