Page 65 of Hunted

“No, dear. You have already given enough of yourself. I will deal with it when the time comes. For now, concentrate on keeping your eyes open. When the creature arrives, we won’t have much time left. Time is short, and I must prepare.”

My grandmother hurried around the stone dais we were standing on, moving counterclockwise and counting her steps. I wasn’t exactly sure what she was doing, but I stood away from her, pulling Tallin and Valerian with me so we wouldn’t be in her way.

“If this doesn’t work…” Valerian said, then paused. “There has to be another way for us to escape. There has to be.”

“The creature is already close, Valerian,” I said. “The last time we got away from it when it was this close, I had to take us across worlds. There’s nowhere left to run. This has to work.”

“And we have to hope it doesn’t attack your grandmothers as we go through the portal.”

“I don’t even want to think about that,” I said, shaking my head. “But it won’t. I don’t think it will. As soon as that thing opens, I’m going to tell my grandmothers to get out of here. To get as far away from here as they can.”

“A portal opens, they escape, we step through… and then…”

“We deal with whatever’s waiting for us on the other side…” I subtly took Valerian’s hand and squeezed it. “Together.”

He nodded at me, offering a slight smile. “Together,” he echoed.

“Guys,” Tallin called out.

I looked over at him, and realized he had one of his paws directed out, across the way, toward what looked like a darkening of the horizon. I walked up to Tallin, my eyes fixed on this dark cloud, watching it crawl across the landscape, blotting out stars and snow alike as it moved toward us.

“It’s coming,” I said. “That was fast.”

“How are our defenses?” Helen called out.

“Almost done,” Pepper said. She was standing a few feet away from the dais, drawing sigils into the four pillars that surrounded this place. “But I don’t know how long they’ll hold.”

“Every second counts. Keep at it, sister.”

“I don’t like this,” I said to Tallin. “I feel useless again.”

“I know how you feel,” Tallin said. “Ever since we got here, I have found little use for my abilities. Everything that has happened, I have had to watch happen… powerless to affect any kind of change. I feel like I am failing you.”

“You aren’t failing me… don’t ever think that.”

“I’ll try.”

Valerian joined us both. “I still can’t see the creature,” he said, “Or creatures…”

“They’re in that darkness, somewhere,” I said. “I really don’t know if my grandmothers’ defenses will hold long enough.”

“We’ll just have to buy them some time.”

Evie clapped her hands once, loudly, and one of the four pillars lit up like it was covered in fluorescent lights. Pepper did the same, setting another stone pillar alight. From far away, they probably looked like they were covered in spotlights, but it was the sigils etched onto the pillars themselves that were glowing, creating a bubble of light to beat back the darkness.

As soon as those two pillars were up, Evie and Pepper rushed to the other side of the portal area and began working on the other two. They were trying to set up a shield, something that would keep the creature from getting to us for a time, at least.

Valerian watched them work, but his eyes were grave. “It’s not going to work…” he said.

“Why not?” I asked. “This creature hates light.”

“I know, but I think it’s past that now, look.”

Across the way, where the light touched the encroaching darkness, I noticed that inky, dark tendrils were trying to poke their way into the light. It wasn’t stopping, only slowing down… and not by much. Worse, the light emanating from the pillars cast their light on two, unmoving figures standing amidst the gloom.

I approached the pillars, with Valerian at my side. There must have been thirty feet of light shining ahead of us, but it was already being bitten into by the foul magic these monsters radiated.

“We need to stall them,” Valerian said.