He covered his ears, and behind him, so did Uri. The tune was muted now, barely there.
I jerked my head in a let’s-move gesture. Keon nodded, but Uri was a few paces behind him, expression dazed. His hands slowly slipped from his ears.
“Uriel. Don’t—”
He dove off the path and into the fog.
“No!” I made to run after him, but Keon grabbed me around the waist, pulling me to his chest.
He yanked my wrist, forcing me to unplug one ear. “It’s stopped. Although I don’t think it was for us anyway.”
“They wanted him.”
“Yes.”
“We have to go after him.”
“No.”
Had I heard him right? “What?”
“We came here for the power source. We have to stay on mission.” He grabbed my hand and tugged me away from the edge of the trail.
“No.” I twisted my hand out of his grip. “We don’t leave a man behind.”
“We don’t have time to go chasing after him and whatever has him,” Keon said. “In case you’ve forgotten, we’re on the clock. Tick. Fucking tock.”
He was right, of course. We had to put the greater good first. I had to focus on the mission.
You’d let your friend die? Tut, tut.
I shook my head slightly. That voice…
“We leave now,” Keon said.
I couldn’t let my friend die. “And if I’d been taken, what then?”
Keon’s jaw ticked.
“You’d have taken the time to come after me, wouldn’t you?” I took a step away from him and toward the edge of the path. “You’d have tried to save me.”
“Fee, don’t do this.” Keon bared his fangs and advanced on me.
I turned and ran into the fog.
“Uri? Uri, where are you?” I ran through the fog, boots crunching on stuff I couldn’t see.
“Fee!” Keon was hot on my heels. “Damn you, woman.”
Crap, if he caught me, he’d drag me back to the path. This was my only shot at finding Uriel and getting him out. I wouldn’t lose him. I couldn’t.
“Uriel!”
A strange silence descended on me, pressing down on me, its weight a palpable force pushing me to my knees.
“What?” My voice was a gasp. I couldn’t breathe. “Keon…” The word was a vise trying to squeeze the life out of me. I was going to die. “Please, God…”
The pressure eased suddenly, and air rushed into my lungs. I fell forward, hands braced on the earth, gasping in lungsful of sweet air. Oh, God. I… Fuck. Wait…What the hell?
The fog was gone, leaving me in a clearing by a river. Slender trees stood proudly around me, the canopy of dark, lush leaves reaching for a night sky dappled with stars.
“You shouldn’t be here,” a male voice said.
I scrambled up, dagger at the ready, to find a man dressed in rags sitting on a fallen log by the tree line. In his hands was a pipe…A flute or some kind of musical instrument.
Wait a second… “You played the music?”
“Come closer, child,” he said.
“Not likely.”
“Now, is that any way to speak to someone who just saved your life?”
He’d stopped the vise?
He canted his head and smiled. He had a pleasant face, a trustworthy face, but his eyes were dark pools of sorrow, and his shoulders slumped as if he was carrying the problems of the world on them.
His brows flicked up slightly. “Well? Gratitude is a humble emotion.”
“Thank you for saving me, but you took my friend.”
He sighed. “No, child, that wasn’t me, and this?” He held up the flute. “Isn’t mine. I found it here. The spirits love mischief, and it seems they’ve taken a liking to your friend. They enjoy new playthings.”
“He’s not a plaything, and I want him back.”
He studied me for a long beat. “Why are you here?”
“Why are you here?”
He let out a bark of laughter, then pressed his lips together as if shocked by his reaction. “I asked first.”
Maybe if I played nice, he’d help me. “Fine, if you must know, the Beyond is dying, and I need a power source. Rumor has it there’s one here.”
“Here?” He looked amused. “In this place filled with the ancient dead?”
“So I’ve been told, and I’m running out of time.”
“Yet you came after your friend?”
What? “Yes, of course. I can’t just abandon him?”
“Even if it means the world might perish.”
“Oh God, you sound like Keon.”
“Your daemon companion.”
“You’ve been watching us.”
“Maybe. But answer me this, is he not right? Are the souls of the many not more important than one soul?”
“It doesn’t work that way for me. Every soul matters. Every soul has worth. I won’t sacrifice one to save another. I refuse to do it.”
His dark eyes lit up with excitement. “And what if you have no choice?”
“There is always a choice.” What the heck? Why was I having this conversation with this…whoever he was. “Who are you?”
He sighed. “No one. But.” He held up a finger. “I can help you. The power source you seek is due east.” He pointed left. “Follow the river, and you shall find it.”
Oh, thank God.
“And your friend was taken due west.” He pointed right. “The spirits move fast, but if you hurry, you might catch him. However, I cannot say if he will be intact when you do. The ancients like taking souls apart, especially celestial ones. But I should warn you that time works differently here. Sometimes it moves forward, and sometimes it stumbles back upon itself. Sometimes a day can seem like a month, and at others, an hour is a minute. Right now, we are in accelerated time.”
Oh fuck. If Keon were here, we could have split up, so one of us went after the power and the other after Uriel, but now it was up to me. I needed to make a choice, and I needed to decide fast.
The man on the log watched me from beneath his lashes while fiddling with the flute in his hands.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. It was my fault Uriel was here. He was my responsibility. I had to try and save him first.
“If my friend Keon comes this way, please tell him which direction the power source is in.”
I turned and headed west.
The forest grew thicker around me as I jogged, calling Uri’s name. He had to be close by. The fucking spirits were going to pay when I got hold of them. Had Keon made it into the clearing? Had he gone after the power source?
Shit, what was I doing? This was insane, but it felt right. It was the right thing to do. I had to try.
I caught sight of movement up ahead. “Uriel?”
I broke into a sprint, weaving through the trees in an attempt to catch up to whoever was up ahead, and then the ground dipped, and I careened out of the tree line into a clearing. A river wound away from me, and a log sat on its side to my left.
What the actual fuck?
This was the same clearing I’d started in. Panic flared in my chest, and then the crunch of boots had me falling into a defensive stance. Keon appeared behind the log and skidded to a halt at the sight of me.
He held up his hands. “Fee, stop. We have to go after the power source.”
My head felt suddenly fuzzy. “What took you so long?”
“What?” He looked confused. “I was right behind you.”
“No, you weren’t. I was here, and I met a man, and he…he…Fuck. This place is fucking with us.”
“Let’s get back to the path.” Keon beckoned me.
I looked east, upriver, the direction that the man had told me the power was. He’d also told me Uriel had been taken west, and all that had done was spit me back out here. But maybe that was this place playing tricks. Maybe his information was correct.
“Fee?” Keon approached warily.
“I’m not going to bolt, okay. But we’re not going back to the path. We go this way. The power source is this way.”
Keon pressed his lips together and nodded. “And Uriel?”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. I’d tried to get to him, but this place was a bitch, and if the man was right, then hours could have passed already. We couldn’t waste more time.
“We’ll get him out. Once we find the power source and deliver it, we’ll come back for him.”
With a final look west, I headed upriver toward what I hoped was our salvation.
Please be safe, Uriel. Please hold on.
Chapter Thirteen
The river either went on forever or time was fucking with us. I wasn’t sure which. There weren’t many landmarks to go on. Everything looked the fucking same here, and the gloom and shadows didn’t help. The stars might be bright above us, but their light didn’t seem to make it down here.
Keon walked beside me in silence. He had a fluid way of moving, as if he could launch himself into a run, or leap or pounce at any moment. I got the impression that the clothes he was wearing were an encumbrance, and I was totally distracting myself from the fact that he was pissed at me. I was damned if I’d apologize for going after Uriel, though.
He needed to understand that where I came from, we didn’t walk away from the people we cared about.
“I’d have done the same for you.” I glanced across at him to catch the slight flinch to his features. “I would have gone after you too.”
“You’re an idiot,” he snapped. “You could have been hurt. Killed.”
“And Lilith would have been affected. I know, I get it, but I had to try.”
He was silent for a long beat. “You could have been hurt…” His tone had dropped, and there was a slight edge of uncertainty to it as if he was testing out the words and examining their meaning, and it hit me that he’d been worried about me. Just me, and not what my demise would do to his queen. For some reason, that made me feel warm.