Page 57 of A Shade Too Far
I shook my hands and stomped my feet, desperate to activate my shadow weapon against the return of the weird phantom that I’d encountered the first time I traveled the Kefitzat Haderech.
“Abomination!” Its voice sounded like dry leaves skittering over rotting wood. It unhinged its jaw to reveal pointed teeth that could crunch through bone.
The wolf leapt at it, snarling.
A skeleton hand appeared in midair, made of the same smoke as its huge face. It lifted the wolf in its palm, weighing him. Judging him.
My lungs had seized up, and my legs didn’t want to work properly, but I lurched over to Pyotr, who hunched on the slab containing the socks with his wings covering him like a blanket. I banged on his back with my fist. “Help me.”
His wings quivered but he didn’t respond.
“Who brought the sullied one into my hallowed space?” Smoky squeezed its palm and a high-pitched yowl tore from Laurent’s throat.
The light rippling over the wolf’s fur tightened into barbed wire, lashing him. Blood dripped in a steady plop on the ground from all the gashes on the animal’s body.
Every protective urge I had went into overdrive and I stormed over to the face. “I brought him, and he’s not sullied. Banim Shovavim are not abominations!”
Delilah puffed up, almost filling the entire space behind me.
Yes, Laurent possessed some Banim Shovavim magic, but this reaction was completely uncalled for. I refused to let some shadowy douchebag make this bullshit pronouncement and get everyone wound up.
The face zoomed in close to me and although I swallowed a sour metallic taste, I held my ground.
“Ohrists are the abominations! And this one has taken powers it should not,” it proclaimed.
I blinked. “Say what now?”
“Kefitzat Haderech is Banim Shovavim space,” Pyotr stage-whispered.
Of course. That’s why the sign had given me that riddle to see past the conditions that the angels had cursed Lilith’s progeny with. If I solved it, I wouldn’t wander the darkness in eternal torment.
Oh fuck. I’d been afraid of the wrong thing.
Smoky dropped the wolf onto the ground—spine-down—with a painful-sounding thud, but the animal still thrashed against the barbed-wire light mangling his fur. He flipped onto his side with a keening sound that tore at my heart.
I edged in front of the wolf to protect him. “He took on our magic at great cost to himself because he kills dybbuks, the same as we do. He’s on our side.”
“How dare he think himself worthy of that?” Even without lips, it conveyed a sneer, which was remarkable. Its hand turned into a scythe that was as large as I was. Not that I had size issues but come on. “The wolf dies.”
“Wait!” My hand crept to the zipper of my purse. “What if I got rid of his Ohrist magic? Would you accept his presence?”
“You speak in hypotheticals.” It swung the scythe.
Without thinking, I flung myself over Laurent, knocking us sideways. The blade whistled past my ear slicing off a lock of my hair, which drifted onto the cave floor.
Smoky’s cry of rage thundered off the walls, but I didn’t dare spare a second to see what he was doing. I forced Laurent’s muzzle open and dumped the vial down his throat.
One of his canines nicked my finger and I jerked, my shoulder hitting the scythe’s blade.
There was a second of pain and then nothing.
My spine had been severed.
Or…the blade had turned to smoke the second I hit it. I patted my shoulder to ensure it was intact.
I jumped at a loud crack, but it wasn’t another assault. Laurent’s arms and legs had reformed without any transition. He howled, curling in on himself and pawing at the ground with his hands and feet, because he was in too much pain to realize he’d partially shifted back.
The skeleton face, the neon sign face, and the gargoyle all stared slack-jawed at Laurent as his wolf body elongated and then snapped like a rubber band into human form. White fur rained to the ground.
