Stars of Fortune (The Guardians Trilogy 1)

“Bones. Human bones piled over here.” Sawyer turned from them.

“Can you hear them screaming?” Sasha fisted her hands over her ears. “The children. She craved the children. The youth. The innocence.”

“I’m getting her out of here.”

“Wait, just wait,” Riley snapped at Bran. “I can read this. ‘In blood taken. In blood given. So she may live, so she may rise. In the name of Nerezza.’”

As she spoke the name, came a stirring, the dry rustling overhead.

“Just bats. Don’t panic.”

Riley’s warning came seconds before the screams, and the dark flood of wings.

Instinctively Sasha covered her head and face, curled up to make herself smaller. She felt the spidery wings brush her hair, shuddered.

Just bats, she told herself. Just bats.

She gasped at the quick pain as something sliced her arm. Grabbing it, she felt the warm, wet flow of her own blood.

“They bite!”

“They’re not just bats.” Riley pulled a gun from the holster snugged at the small of her back. “Run.” She shot one flying toward her face, and the sound crashed through the chamber.

Echoed by another as Sawyer fired another gun.

Blood fell on the ground, splattered on the altar.

And the ground shook.

Bats circled, looking down with hungry, somehow human eyes.

She formed out of the dark. The black robe swirled around her, and her hair, dense as midnight, curled in sleek coils around her face.

The face formed in the stone, and she smiled with terrible beauty.

“I have waited.” While the bats swooped and squealed, she lifted her hands. In one she held the glass ball. “I have watched.”

Her voice rang over the chaos, over the ring of bullets, of shouts and screams. Armed with only her flashlight, Sasha swung out to defend herself, saw Sawyer pivot to take aim at a bat diving toward Annika.

In a liquid blur of movement, Annika flipped back, pushed off with her hands and sent the bat smashing into the cave wall with a powerful thrust of her legs.

“Your blood.” She stepped off a pedestal, bent gracefully to run her finger through the blood that had dripped from Sasha’s arm to the cave floor. “It is warm,” she said as she licked it delicately from her finger as she might a dab of rich chocolate or cream.

“Your power is strong and . . . tasty. Through your blood I will drink that power. Through that power the path to the stars.”

Trapped, fighting to avoid fangs, claws, wings, Sasha stumbled back only to find herself pressed against the wall.

Across the chamber, Riley shouted, fired. But the bullets passed through the figure walking toward Sasha.

Something gripped her mind, something cold and fierce. She fought to pry it loose, felt it give, just a little.

“Very strong.”

Now that same force, the cold and fierce, gripped her throat, cutting off her air. All she felt was her own fear, and pushing against it dark hate, bottomless greed.

“Come with me, and live.”

Lies. The mother of lies. Nerezza.