Page 42 of Hollow

Crane’s grip on my shoulders tightens. “What are you doing?” he whispers.

But I can’t answer. All I can do is keep repeating those words and thinking of Brom and hoping he’ll lead me to him. Even if he’s still alive, maybe I can reach him this way.

Come home to me, Brom, I think.

“Kat,” Crane hisses. “What are you doing? What do you see? Don’t you feel that?”

It takes me a moment to process what Crane is saying. To realize that beyond this void, there is the real world.

But then I feel it too.

A dark, sinister power seeping into the void. Slowly, slowly, coming on hoofbeats that get louder and louder. Coming for us, coming for me.

And then it appears. A black horse leaps across the void, on its back a horseman with no head. It smells of decay and brimstone, and it’s coming to me, bringing with it a world of evil. A world where souls are trapped and screaming to die.

The horse gallops right up to me, and though the horseman has no head, I still feel its eyes. I feel it looking into my heart and soul.

It’s looking for something.

Someone.

But it isn’t me.

Then it abruptly turns, rears up, and gallops away, disappearing into the darkness.

And I’m falling backward into Crane’s arms, the blindfold ripped off my face as I’m placed on the cold ground, his hands tapping at my cheek.

“Kat! Kat, Katrina, Kat!”

My eyes fly open, and I stare up at Crane’s anguished face peering down at me.

“I don’t know what happened,” I manage to say. For some reason, it hurts to talk.

He puts his arms around my shoulders and helps me sit up, crouching beside me. “What did you see?”

I try and think, but it feels like moving through a swamp. “I don’t know. Something big and…bad. It was very bad. It was evil.”

A violent shiver rocks through me.

“I knew it! I had sensed it around us,” Crane says, talking fast, that excitable look in his eyes, like a mad scientist.

A mad mage, I think.

“I sensed it, and I knew it was being drawn to you. What happened? Did it get you, touch you?” He runs his hand over my cheek. It feels warm and full of life, and I close my eyes to it for a moment until he takes his hand away.

“It just stared at me. I can’t even tell you what it looked like anymore, but it looked at me, inside and out. Inside my soul. It looked at me, and it moved on.”

“You don’t feel it…hitched a ride somewhere inside you?”

I shake my head, though that gives me a splitting headache. “No. No, it left. Can’t you feel it did?”

He looks around for a moment, at the stars, at the dark lake, and nods. “Yes. It’s gone. Come on. Let’s get you up and get you home.”

“Get me home?” I ask as he lifts me to my feet.

“Mmhmm,” he says, brushing a strand of hair off my face, my skin singing at his touch. “I’m going with you.”

Chapter 14