Page 25 of The Shade of Things
Jumping puddles of ooze, Pyotr ran to the stone slab and flung socks at me. “Go! Go! Don’t keep waiting.”
My pulse spiked in the face of the gargoyle’s hysteria.
The narrow green exit appeared across the cave, and I sprinted out, adrenaline giving me an extra burst of speed, and the door crashed shut behind me.
I careened down the dimly lit path, almost running through Smoky Ghost Face, who sprang up out of nowhere, and pulled up short, my heart thundering even faster.
Its eyeless sockets seemed to bore into me.
“Protect me,” I pleaded.
The skeleton face’s grim expression softened for a fraction of a second, then in a whirlwind of motion, the smoke vanished and the rock face in front of me slid away.
I wiped my sweaty palms on my dress and stepped through.
This place was nothing like the rest of the Kefitzat Haderech. I stood in a room that reeked of wet compost, blinking dizzily against the walls, ceiling, and floor that were painted in jagged black and white stripes.
The space was the size of a soccer field—and the stripes were moving.
Black slowly seeped from the dark stripes into the white ones. As the viscous liquid drained from one side to the other, light glinted off what I’d taken to be the glossy finish but was actually a translucent membrane enclosing the room like shrink-wrap.
Or like the skin of the tormented Banim Shovavim female that I’d once met here.
The pile of socks I held hit the ground.
Out in the middle of the floor was a tangle of black and white—light so bright it hurt to look at it contrasted against an all-encompassing darkness. It was like staring into the heart of the sun and an endless void at the same time.
Blood trickled out of one nostril, and I jerked my gaze away, spinning around for the exit.
It was gone.
As was my magic.
I bit back a scream, attempting to get my trembling under control.
“You enquired after me?” The disembodied voice was that of a soft-spoken old man.
The tangle in the center flared both brighter and darker, and the floor tilted, sliding me forward in invitation.
I’d been in a lot of dangerous situations since I reclaimed my magic. I’d fended off vampires, broken demon illusions, and would soon have to tell an insanely powerful woman that my parents were responsible for the worst moment of her life.
Never had I experienced fear like a knife twisting in my gut and slicing upward with one barbaric thrust.
I dug my heels in, fighting to remain in place, but a primal part of me yearned to stand before that abomination, an urge as violent as a raging hurricane that would batter me until there was nothing left.
Was my fear because of this insanity stretching out before me or because of my desire to get closer? The terror was a weapon, and I wasn’t sure which of us wielded it.
Blood continued to drip from my nose, so I pinched my nostrils together, walking with my head thrown back.
The stripes had completely flipped colors by the time I got within twenty feet of the thing in the center of the floor. I stepped back into some invisible safe zone where it no longer felt like my brain was dripping the same black ooze that had come out of the cave walls earlier.
Thanks to my nosebleed, I’d been looking up this entire time, and I had to steel myself to lower my eyes. I managed to look at the tangle for only half a second at best, but that was enough to see the ruined outline of an elderly man made only of burbling black and white, like a plume of water in a fountain.
“What happened to you?”
“I tried to fly with the angels.” Arlo’s voice turned dreamy.
I frowned. “Do you mean Senoi, Sansenoi, and Sammaneglof?”
