Page 41 of Hunted

“Please, dear,” she said, “Take a step back. I need to shore up our defenses.”

Nodding, I did what she asked, because there wasn’t much else I could do. Backing away, I bumped into Valerian’s tall, muscular, immovable body. He rested a hand on my shoulder. Tallin came up beside me, sitting by my feet. All three of us were transfixed on what was happening in front of us—on what my grandmother was doing.

I watched her wave her hands in a circle above her head, I heard her utter an incantation in an old, human tongue I had never heard before, and I saw her fingertips glow bright green. Three of her sigils had turned black by now, but one of them started to sputter and glow again, returning to full force after a moment.

“She’s only delaying it,” said Valerian in a voice low enough that I would be able to hear him, but my grandmother wouldn’t.

“I know,” I said. “There has to be something we can do.”

“I am out of my depth, here. Even with Arcadian magic, my skills were limited.”

“I still remember the way you put that creature down during the trial back at the castle.”

“That was not magic. That was knowledge.”

“I don’t suppose you happen to have any knowledge here that could help?” asked Tallin from below.

“When it comes to this creature, I know about as much as you do.”

“Light works,” I said, “Light keeps it at bay. And we know it’s relentless.”

“How does the second part help?” Tallin asked.

“It doesn’t, but we can at least count on its actions. It will do whatever it can to get to me. To get to the two of us.”

“I still don’t see how that helps.”

“It means this creature is inflexible in its thinking,” Valerian said. “It is goal driven, and its goal is a simple one.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s going to achieve that goal eventually. The crescent moon isn’t for a few days still… Amara’s grandmothers can’t stand here defending their house for that long.”

“Maybe they can.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want that for them,” I said.

There was only one thing to do, and I knew what it was, the only problem was, I had no idea how to do it. The Magic Box sat at the end of an alley, and the creature was coming toward us from the other side of that alley. There were no backdoors, no secret hatches, only protective sigils and a magical, emergency shelter.

As far as I knew, we were trapped in here, with Fate about to break down our walls.

How did I know that?

Two more of my grandmother’s sigils had burnt out.

I watched her whip her hands around, I heard a lashing sound followed by a thundercrack, and saw a spark of green magic erupt from her fingertips. I thought I heard something like a groan, something like a cry of… maybe pain? I wasn’t sure. It was an awful sound that I didn’t care for, that didn’t want to listen to, but it gave me information.

My grandmother had lashed out at the creature with magic, and she had hurt it somehow.

Upstairs, I could hear Evie and Pepper singing their own, separate incantations. I heard them charge up their spells, felt the push and pull of their magic, then the sudden force with which they attacked the creature. Another unearthly groan, another dark howl of pain, but still, more sigils burned themselves out.

No matter what they did to it, it was still breaking through; and it seemed to be breaking through far quicker now than it had been at the beginning.

“We have to leave!” I yelled over the rising sound of magical attacks.

“Go?!” Tallin asked. “Go where?”

“Away from here!” I backed up away from my grandmother.

When she turned her head to the side to look at me, her eyes were glowing bright green. “Go to the workroom,” she said.