Wicked Wings (Lizzie Grace #5) - Keri Arthur Page 0,104

clothes and skin in my desperation to escape.

A third swoop. I swore and dropped low. Felt her claws snag my hair and rip a chunk free. I bellowed and flicked the whip after her. Its end caught her tail and she squawked as feather remnants rained down.

It didn’t stop her. Even as I watched, she curved around and arrowed toward me, low and fast.

I once again pushed to my feet and ran on. Felt the surge of Vita’s magic to my right; saw, out of the corner of my eye, the flare of an incoming sphere. It didn’t hold the fierceness of her original bolt, and I could only hope that it would be strong enough to kill.

If it hit, that was. She didn’t appear to have the ability to alter the trajectory of her spell after it had been launched

Which meant I had to hold the Empusae’s attention, and the only hope of ensuring that was for me to allow her to get closer.

My skin crawled at the thought. I gripped my whip fiercely, but fought the need to use it, fought the desire to spin around and slash the thing across her face, to scar her as she’d scarred me. But the whip wasn’t designed to kill, and that was what mattered most right now. The bait had no choice but to run on.

At the very last minute, the Empusae must have sensed Vita’s sphere, because she flung herself skyward. This time, she wasn’t fast enough. The sphere hit and exploded, and the feathered fury was sent tumbling back into the darkness.

I skidded to a halt, my breath a harsh rasp that echoed across the night, and my heart a rapid-fire gun pulsing high in my throat. For several minutes, I simply stood there, scanning the nearby trees, every sense—human and psychic—searching for some sign of the demon. Vita stirred to my left, her force faint and filled with uncertainty. If she wasn’t sure if she’d killed her quarry, then it was doubtful we had.

I bit my lip and continued to scan the area, hoping against hope that I was wrong, that the elder was dead and that we didn’t have to worry about her anymore.

The soft breeze stirred, teasing my nostrils with the scent of blood and ash combined.

Then there was movement.

It was little more than a flicker—a flash of gold against the shadows of the night—but it was enough. The Empusae was injured but not dead.

I took a deep breath, gathering courage, the whip still gleaming brightly in one hand, then followed the scent of blood into the scrub.

But I’d barely taken three steps when the ground underneath me gave way and I tumbled forward into deep, dank darkness.

Fourteen

A mine.

Another fucking mine.

Horror and fear surged, but I ruthlessly thrust them aside and threw out my hands, trying to find something, anything, to latch on to before I fell too far and too deep. My left dug into the soft sides of the shaft but didn’t catch. My right scraped against wood that crumbled away at my touch.

Below me, there was nothing but darkness. Then, out of that ink, loomed a deeper shadow. An old support beam, sticking out at an angle from the wall; it was right in the path of my fall.

I hit it just above my belly, and with such force it knocked the air from my lungs and cracked something inside. A tide of pain washed through me, and oblivion threatened. But if I gave in to the siren call of unconscious, I’d fall and die.

I’ve just contacted Aiden; he’s ordering search and rescue out as we speak. Belle’s mental tone was filled with tension and fear. How secure is that beam you’re wrapped around?

I have no idea. And no immediate desire to move and find out. Not when it felt like someone had lit a fire inside my chest.

That could be the pressure of your weight against your ribs. You probably cracked one or two of them when you hit.

If that was all I’d done, I’d be damned lucky. I wriggled fingers and toes just to be sure, and they all responded. Relief swept through me, though I was a long way from safe.

My breathing was fast and shallow—the absolute wrong thing to do if I had cracked ribs—but with the pressure of the old beam digging in I had little other choice. I carefully turned my head and inspected the length of it. From the little I could see in the