Into the Fire (The Unseelie Court Book 4) by Gwen Rivers (free ebooks romance novels .TXT) 📗

time I saw him. Which I hoped would be soon.

Snag

“It’s gone,” Liam breathes as he touches the wall that had been an in-between.

Cold chills travel down Aiden’s spine. “Underhill must have moved it. She knows we’re here.”

The wolves stare at him, waiting. He doesn’t know what to tell them. If Underhill didn’t know where they are, she’ll soon find out. There is only one path left to them.

“We’ll have to cross through the tear,” he says. “Follow me.”

Taking off at top speed, Aiden runs down the hall to the kitchen. The pack is hot on his heels. They burst through the kitchen, startling cooks into dropping their spoons and leaping onto counters. Most of the servants are enthralled humans, like the FBI. But some are low magic fey who work for the scraps that fall from the royal tables.

“It’s him,” one fey woman cries. “The one Underhill has been hunting!”

Shit. Aiden picks up speed. Liam is less than a pace behind, the three other wolves flanking them.

“Take her.” Without slowing, Aiden shoves Gretchen into Liam’s outstretched arms. “I’ll try to lead them away.”

Fey lights flare in the darkness outside the underground palace.

“Stay with us!” Liam yells. “Aiden, it’s too risky!”

“I won’t let them catch me.” He’s the one they want, there’s no doubt in his mind. He shifts to sparks, flitting up over the underground lake, rising higher and higher through the gossamer strands of reflective webbing and into the fresh air beyond.

Even with Underhill’s ability to change the landscape, he can still feel the tear to the east. The wrongness of it, the sucking void of darkness. He heads north, planning to double back once he is sure Liam and the others have had enough time to pass through to Midgard.

Up and up he drifts into the night sky. Behind him, all sorts of winged creatures take flight, following, tracking him. Their wings blot out the moon as they swarm behind him.

He dives down into the icy mountain peaks, his sparks barely clustering together enough to keep him intact. One hundred feet from the snowline, then fifty, twenty. At ten feet he shifts again into his wolf form, his pads hitting the snow with enough force to make the peak shake.

Aiden runs. He charges down the hill, ducking into the trees to keep the winged fey at a disadvantage. Spells are hurled in his direction, bright balls of light igniting like fireworks in the blue-black haze of the night.

He runs harder, zig-zagging across the ground. The evergreens thin out into an open space. There are more trees dead ahead if only he can reach them.

He hears the crack first and thinks the fey have brought down trees to block his path. And then the ice beneath his paws splinters. He tumbles into the frigid water.

The cold penetrates to his marrow. He struggles and fights, but his head dips down beneath the water, then bumps up against the intact ice at the far side of the fissure.

He tries to shift but the wolf’s panic bubbles up. The beast hates water deeper than his knees. He bucks and struggles, trying to fight his way free.

We’re both going to die if you don’t stop, Aiden tells the beast.

The wolf relents enough and allows him to shift.

The sparks lift up again. All the water stays in the pond.

“Gotcha.” A gossamer net falls over him.

The chains force another shift on him. He crashes to the ground in his human aspect. Naked and freezing on the ice.

A face looms over him.

Rodrick.

“Somebody wants a word with you.”

Angrboda lands in her giantess form on the far side of the tear.

The land beyond her writhes with bodies of the dead. Some intact, others with visible mortal wounds. Still others nothing more than bones. It is the magic which animates them the evil magic of the runes.

The giantess pulls her ax from across her back and releases the hold on her glamour. She grows larger, towering over the army of corpses.

The dead don’t move forward, don’t move at all.

As if they are waiting for something.

“I told you never to come back here,” Underhill murmurs.

Angrboda stares down at the small female figure who strides out from the ranks. She’s a beautiful woman, with hair the color of midnight under a new moon. Her dark eyes though are as dead as her army.

“You won’t win, Pharaildis.”

“I already have, Hag of the Ironwood. I have Loki’s son.”

Angrboda swallows. Váli and the others are lost.

She turns, planning to leap back inside the tear and warn Nic, but with a snap of her fingers, Underhill alters the world around them. The plain disappears. Instead, they stand in a frozen wasteland.

“What do you want?” Angrboda faces the threat.

“From you? Nothing but your death.”

“You’ll have to do better than this puny army,” Angrboda grows larger still, letting her powers have free reign. For a moment she basks in the free magic, there for the taking. Midgard is nothing like this.

But Underhill’s smile never fades. “Goodbye, Hag of the Ironwood.”

She strides off through the dead, who close ranks around her.

And then they too begin to grow. With each step, their height increases until they become taller than the trees, the mountains.

Taller than her.

She swings her ax, connects. But weapons can’t kill what is already dead. Desperate she strikes out with her magic, blasting those nearest her away.

She is grabbed from behind, tossed down hard enough to make the ground tremble.

The ground shakes as the swarm over her tear into her. And carried on the wind is her former lover’s mad laughter….

I awake, the scream bursting from my lips. No. No. It can’t be real, it can’t.

Yet it felt real.

My palms are saturated with sweat and my hands tremble. Throwing off the covers, I head into my bathroom and turn on the light.

My blue eyes look haunted.

These hallucinations can’t be real.

Yet what had Harmony said about the gifts of those who’ve been snatched away from the clutches of death? They manifest in different ways.