Windwitch (The Witchlands 2)

It was then, as Cam led them onto a side street, that Merik felt it—a cold draft from an unlit hearth. A frost to trickle against his ever-present rage.

He spun toward the sensation, and just as he knew he would find, just as he felt tugging in his belly, a wall of shadows met his eyes. It towered above the buildings. Blacked out the entire city, the entire cavern.

The wall moved this way.

“Run.” The command fell from Merik’s tongue, alive. Undulating like the creature he knew came toward them. Then louder, “Run!”

He grabbed for Cam, tugging her faster toward Pin’s Keep—or whatever might lie ahead. But definitely away from the shadow man.

No one argued. Everyone ran.

Each step made Merik’s chest clench. He was a fish on the line being reeled the wrong way. Block after block. Trying to keep panic at bay.

A distant voice began chanting.

It carried the words Merik had grown used to, the song that lived inside him now. These were the verses he’d forgotten, or perhaps never heard, and the song came from the city’s heart. Far away, yet frizzing ever nearer.

“So on they swam deeper, till darkness took hold

and the only sound was click-click.

Daret feared it the sound of her claws,

but Filip assured him it wasn’t.”

Cam almost tripped. Merik caught her, keeping his arm sturdily at her back.

“What was that?” Vivia asked.

Merik didn’t answer. He simply spurred them on, for the wall of darkness was catching up.

“Then fool brother Filip swam faster ahead,

forgetting his brother was blind.

For fool brother Filip had heard tales of gold

that Queen Crab hoarded inside.”

The voice had reached a nearby street. The shadows grew thicker. Any moment now, they would roll over Merik and Vivia and Cam too, leaving all of them blind. Leaving all of them trapped.

“Queen Crab avoids fishes, she only hoards riches—

at least so Filip believed.

He also believed that money bought love,

and that riches could make him a king.”

The road ended ahead, and a curl of air kissed Merik’s face. A breeze. Cool, refreshing …

“Turn right,” Merik barked, and Vivia and Cam obeyed.

“But this is the secret of Queen Crab’s long reign:

she knows what all fishes want.

The lure of the shiny, the power of more,

the hunger we all feel for love.”

Two more streets, two more turns, and more cold wind slithered over Merik. Yet as his lips parted to holler that they veer left, he realized—with a punch of dread in his belly—that he had taken them in a circle. That now, somehow, the wall of black waited directly ahead.

This was a trap. The baited line of Queen Crab, and he was indeed the fool brother. This wind he had been following belonged to the shadow man.

“Stop.” The word slipped from Merik’s throat as he skittered to a clumsy halt, pulling Cam closer. “I’ve led us wrong.”

Cam kept her calm even as she bled. “That way.” She jerked her chin toward a new street. Thirty paces later, they hit the cavern’s farthest wall, where a door waited.

Just in time, for the shadows were almost to them. Tendrils reached outward, like death across the sea floor. Heavy. Hungry. Unnatural.

Vivia shoved through the door first, with Merik and Cam behind. The stone passage looped up in sharp spirals before it abruptly reached a flurry of floods. Just like the Cisterns, the water funneled past at a speed no man could fight. Vivia lunged forward, as if to try.

“Wait!” Cam shouted. “The flood stops! Every sixty heartbeats, it stops for ten! You just gotta know how to count!”

“But we don’t know how many heartbeats have already passed!” Vivia shouted. “In case you missed it, there’s a monster hunting us!”

As if in reply, the shadow man’s laugh oozed down the tunnel. “You need not fear me.”

“I don’t,” Merik said, though he wasn’t sure why he answered. He wasn’t sure why he even heard that voice atop the water’s boom.

It was then that the floods broke off. A tail of choppy white flung past, leaving damp stones and a matching tunnel ten paces beyond.

Cam pulled free from Merik and ran. Vivia followed.

Merik did not.

Oh, he tried to follow, yet his feet felt bolted to the floor. It took monumental effort to manage one step. A second.

Then it was too late. The shadow man reached him.

Black crushed over Merik, just as it had in Linday’s greenhouse, but tenfold stronger. A thousandfold stronger. This was not the soft snuff of a pinched wick or the gentle shrink of a Firewitched flame. This was sudden, and it was complete. One moment, Merik could see the tunnel ahead, could see Cam and Vivia wheeling into it.

The next moment, Merik was trapped in black. No up. No down. No sensing where he ended and the shadows began. Eclipse. That sensation of light where there was none, of pain with no source.

He fumbled forward, but there was no wall to guide him. Nothing at all to grab hold of. Only the words slinking up from behind.

“That song isn’t Nubrevnan, you know.” The voice was so close. A claw to scrape down Merik’s spine. “The fool brothers are older than this city, their tale brought down through the mountains. Back when I had a different name. Back before I became the saint you call the Fury.”

A wind trickled against Merik’s face. He inhaled deep, letting air circle to him. Letting magic gather in. He could feel the tunnel now. Could feel the floods approaching to his right. All he had to do was run.