I didn’t know where the real Kael was, but I wouldn’t be able to worry about that until I dealt with this imposter.
My grip tightened on Chaucer. I jumped at the man and plunged the knife into his chest.
The blade pierced the sturdy, muscle-wrapped shifter more easily than it should have. It sank hilt-deep, and his face contorted, but he didn’t make a sound. As the Kael in my vision had done, this one exploded into a cloud of dark gray ash. The soot filtered to the forest floor, and a laugh echoed through the trees, rocking through my skull and humming in the pit of my stomach.
I pulled in an unsteady breath.
The mage.
Was he really laughing from nearby, or was it in my head? Was he in my head? Reality was like motes of dust in a beam of light. I could see the fragments of it, but I couldn’t quite grasp anything to be sure what was real and what wasn’t.
“There you are.”
Kael, or at least someone who looked like him again, came jogging through the fog. His chest heaved as he bent to rest his hands on his knees.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere. What the hell are you doing?” He cast a curious glance at the knife in my hand, then peered around as if expecting an enemy.
Was he really Kael?
He came toward me, and I retreated a few steps.
The shifter cocked his head, and his forehead puckered. “Livvie, are you all right?”
Livvie. It was the real Kael.
I loosened the grip on the knife. “Yeah, I’m just…” I blew out a sharp sigh. “I guess I just got lost.”
“Are you sure that’s all?” he asked.
I couldn’t tell him about the visions. The man already looked worried enough, and if I told him about that, he’d want to know if I’d had other visions, or why the Kael in my vision had asked why I had to sacrifice him. “Yeah,” I lied. “Just glad you caught up to me.”
“Well, don’t get too excited. I’m still not sure where we go from here, and doesn’t seem like you’ve had any luck either. We can’t keep wandering around this place.” Kael grimaced at the mist-shrouded trees. “Everything seems to change with every step we take.”
Yeah, everything except that tree.
I gasped. “Stupid!”
“Yeah, it is stupid.”
I brushed past Kael. “No, I’m stupid.”
Kael followed as I stepped over to the old man tree. It was no longer shifting and writhing, but it still stared with the bulbous, knotty eyes.
“What do you mean?”
I stared at the twisting bark. “This tree is the only thing in this place that has remained the same from the moment we stepped foot here. That has to mean something. I should have seen it before.”
I put my knife away. The magic inside of me tingled, tapping to be free, and I let it blossom in my hand. The energy licked across my fingers as I placed my palm on the rough bark. There was something there, like a void waiting to be filled. I poured more magic into the emptiness and hoped that wasn’t a big mistake.
The forest around us groaned, as if it was some giant beast waking from slumber. Trees cracked around us, the large trunks shifting and swaying. Kael hovered beside me with his hand on my shoulder.
“Over there.” He pointed to the right.
A narrow strip of trees leaned away, and the fog rolled back to reveal a pathway. I withdrew my hand from the tree. The old man’s eyes were closed. Creepy. I released my magic and rubbed my palm on my pants.
Together, we started down the path. Once again, the key seemed to be tugging me forward. I feared we were in for a long walk, but the worry was unfounded as we soon came upon what must be our destination.
Either time or magic had hidden the ancient building before us, though I suspected the latter. Surely, if the crumbling abbey had been discovered, the general public would have known about it. The ruins stretched proudly upward through the trees, the archways rimmed in moss and the stones tinted with green. Great columns ran the length of the building. Though the roof had fallen long ago, most of the walls still stood.
Within those cracked and crumbling stones, the mage waited.
Kael stopped me as I started toward the ancient beauty. I threw him an impatient look.
He had better not tell me to wait here.
“I am stronger as a jaguar,” he said. “I’m going to shift.” He paused, then placed his hand on the side of my neck. “Be careful. Just get the key.” His eyes locked with mine. “No matter what it takes, or what you have to do, just get that key.”
Kael was smarter than I gave him credit for. No matter what it takes. Did he know about the sacrifice? He didn’t mean him, did he?
Before I could argue, he was shifting. I stuffed his clothes in my bag and then together we walked toward the ruins. We headed straight for the largest archway, right in the center. I had my hand on Kael’s back. He didn’t seem to mind my fingers resting on his soft fur. I couldn’t help but be half-afraid he would disappear again.
As we passed under the massive stretch of curving stone, I let my touch run across the cool, rough surface of the entrance. There were runes chiseled into the ancient wall. I caught a few words like “bound” and “sacrifice.” The same words that had been haunting me the entire trip.
We stepped out of the shadow of the entrance and paused inside. Rich, green grass carpeted much of the inside, broken only by the occasional scatter of stone. It looked peaceful, and yet it was cold, almost too still.
Despite the openness, the place felt like a tomb.
A low growl rumbled through Kael’s chest. The mage stood in the center of the massive space.
He was facing away from us, arms crossed behind his back as if he couldn’t be bothered with, or feel threatened by, intruders. I started forward. Beside me, Kael lowered his head, his sharp gaze fixed on the mage in complete stalking and throat-tearing mode.
The mage’s voice carried through the space, though his voice was quiet. “A pleasure that you could finally join me.”
He turned to face us. His long robes, edged in silver runes, swirled over the short grass. His violet eyes glowed as they locked on me. It was a struggle to keep the magic within me from lashing out under his gaze. An ancient and forgotten hate washed through me as I glared at him.
With all the grace and assurance of a king, the mage came toward us. Kael’s growls rolled louder, but he didn’t move. Together, we stared at the man.
He was less pale than I recalled. Admittedly, his dark hair, slanted eyebrows, and wings of gray at his temples gave him a sense of regal bearing. As he drew closer, the sense of familiarity I’d had about him the first time I had laid eyes on him came back to me, only this time much stronger. From deep within my mind, a name came to my lips.
“Vehrin.”
The corner of the mage’s lips lifted in a small smile. “And you are Olivia now, yes? It has been too long. In ages past, you were known as—”
“I don’t care,” I interrupted. The last thing I wanted was to know more about that part of me. I pulled my gaze from his deepening grin and let it drop to his chest.
The key. It was just hanging there on the front of Vehrin’s robes. He wasn’t more than eight feet away now.
“You have a new pet, I see. You always did have a fondness for cats.”
I glanced at Kael. His lips lifted to reveal his sharp fangs.
“He’s not a pet,” I snapped.
Vehrin waved a dismissive hand. “Well, he is certainly not the proud shifter guardian his ancestors once were.”
Kael snarled loudly. Oh yeah, the shifter was ready to tear into the mage.
Unfazed, Vehrin turned his attention back to me. “You have grown stronger since last we met, when you were so kind as to leave me the key. You even managed to retrieve the second one for me.”
My hand closed around the relic on my chest. Retrieve it for him? So that was why he hadn’t killed me, why he had led me on this chase. He knew I would get the key, and I had just brought it to him on a silver platter.
He held out his hand. “If you would so kindly give it to me.”
“No way.” I was picking a fight with the dark mage, but what else had I expected to happen? “You give me your key, and maybe Kael won’t rip into you.”
Kael huffed beside me. Okay, fat chance of that happening.
Vehrin laughed, sending chills down my neck and shoulders. “If you would like it, Olivia, come and get it.”
He held his hands out to the side, and when dark shadows twisted up from his palms, I couldn’t help but take a step back. The sense of his magic weighed heavily on me, the power of it astounding. It was vile, sliding over me like a thick coating of rancid oil. His magic almost felt alive itself, the twisting, dark wisps yearning to taint and consume everything and everyone in its path.
This was why he had to be bound, not killed. If I were to kill the mage, his magic would be free, and who knew where it would end up.
“It appears we have some business to attend to, but we wouldn’t want your shifter to feel left out, would we?”
Dark magic spilled from Vehrin’s hands and spread across the grass like a blanket. From the smoke rose a massive, ebony panther. I gaped at it. The cat had to be eight feet at the shoulder. It snarled, and the sound reverberated through my chest.
“To remind you of what you should have been, shifter.”
I cast a glance at Kael. Was the mage saying that Kael, back in ancient times, would have been that big?
The massive panther prowled closer. How was Kael going to fight it? He tilted his head toward me, and even though he was a jaguar, I could almost see the stubbornness in his spotted features. He dipped his head, and I gave him a nod, as well.
Kael uncoiled from where he stood and rushed toward the panther. I ran toward the mage.
I hardly dared to think, instead letting my magic wrap around my hands. I threw the energy at the mage. Vehrin merely laughed and dodged to the side as my attack hit the grass in a spray of earth.
The mage threw both hands forward, and a swirl of dark magic hit me hard in the chest. I grunted as I landed near a wall and managed to duck from another attack just in time. Stones crumbled around me, and I scrambled out of the way.
With a groan, I got to my feet. Kael was snarling. I glanced over to see him dodging the giant paws of the panther. My heart jumped as the giant cat took another swipe. Only a quick twisting of Kael’s body managed to save him from being skewered on the deadly claws of the panther. His ribcage was heaving in and out, and his steps seemed a bit too slow. If he wasn’t fast enough for just a second, he could be killed.
I cried out as another blast of magic slammed into me. It pushed me up against the rough wall of the ancient abbey.
Idiot, I told myself. I had let myself get distracted, let myself worry too much about Kael and not enough about the task at hand.
I struggled against the black wisps of magic pinning me to the wall, but to no avail. It tightened around me like a giant fist, crushing me. I gasped as the air was squeezed from my lungs. I tried to summon more of my magic, but the effort to just breathe kept making me falter.
Spots danced in front of my eyes. Somewhere beyond myself and the mage, the massive panther’s roars shook through the air.
The mage advanced. His steps were slow and certain. He knew the same thing I did as I fought for my last breaths.
After all this time, all this effort, I had failed.
I was going to die.