Chapter Thirteen
He pulled up a portal and dragged her into it.
It was possible to hate a moment in its entirety, from the way it sounded, looked, and smelled to the way it felt. In every angle, depth, and perception, it was possible to inject pure and unadultered loathing in a single section of existence, in a single trice of time.
For Eva, that moment was now.
He had her in relentless grip, and her neck was beginning to hurt from where his fingers wrapped around her throat. She knew there was still something left inside her, some final corner she hadn’t yet cleaned out, a door she hadn’t ever opened – that true and final dragon form she’d never changed into – and with all her might, she wished she could access it now. But it eluded her.
Run, Mimi, she thought desperately, willing the young dragon to hear her. Hide! Find Calidum! He will protect you!
It was a strange thing for her to think about the man who had destroyed her family all those years ago, a man she had been so certain she hated. But she hadn’t the mental capacity to ruminate on how odd her choice was, how contradictory. She only knew that out there – with Calidum and the Thirteen Kings – was safety. It was better.
In here, with this monster of a man, there was only pain, and the promise of more of it.
Eva thought of the redhead girl who had befriended her, and her misery ratcheted up a notch. “Ar…rach,” she gritted out with the minimal air the bastard was allowing her.
He sneered down at her as the portal swirled around them both. “Do you have something to say to me, my queen? You’d like to apologize, perhaps?”
She nodded.
He loosened his grip on her throat, letting her go. Clearly he wanted to allow her to verbally bow and scrape as he obviously felt any woman should. He even moved back a little, perhaps curious what she would do.
Eva bent at the waist, bracing her arms on her knees, and took a moment to get the air back into her lungs. She closed her eyes against the dizzying weakness that was moving through her. Anger, she thought desperately. Fury, feed me.
Then she swallowed hard and from her bent position, looked back up at her enemy. “If you harm a single hair on that girl’s head, Arach,” she told him softly but clearly as she straightened so she could deliver her ultimatum standing. “I will skin you, tan the skin, and make you into a new handbag.”
Arach simply looked down at her for several long seconds before he finally said, “He told me you would be fun to break. And now I can see what he meant.” He shook his head, then raised his hand, giving her a quick glimpse of his knuckles before they descended toward her cheek. She closed her eyes, knowing she wouldn’t be able to move out of the way in time.
But the sound that came next wasn’t his flesh against hers, nor was it the explosion of pain she was fully expecting between her ears. She opened her eyes in confusion, blinking several times at the scene before her.
Calidum had stepped through the swirling walls of the portal, and his fingers were wrapped tightly around Arach’s wrist, rendering his blow inert.
Eva stepped back, shock giving her the strength she’d been looking for seconds earlier. He’d stepped through a portal wall!
“You’re so predictable,” Cal told the Traitor, his gray fire eyes flashing with red lightning. Then he hauled his right arm back, and with strength and speed that became a charcoal gray blur, punched Arach in the face.
The Traitor stumbled and spun, and blood sprayed the walls of the portal. Cal moved with the same blurring gray power, closing the distance between him and Eva until he was taking her wrists gently but firmly in his hands. “Hang in there,” he whispered. “And stay close.”
He spun again, lifting one hand toward the portal wall. The wall’s swirling colors separated, allowing him passage. He stepped through a second time, pulling Eva close in his wake.
She felt the air heat up behind her as she passed through, and a sense of drastic urgency drove her to increased speed through the exit. She jumped out, using Cal’s grip on her to steady her wobbly legs, and found her boots touching down on concrete.
A second portal was opened in front of them just as quickly as the first had appeared, and Calidum pulled her through that as well.
Then a third.
They moved from portal to portal, coming out in an alley at one point, a parking lot at another, on a mountaintop third, and finally they were stepping out into an honest to goodness vast, sandy desert. Warm wind touched her cheek.
“Where the hell are we?” she asked, glancing around as the last portal closed behind her.
“The Sahara. But we aren’t finished yet.”
He opened yet another portal, but this one looked different from the others, and it took longer to form. “Step back, Eva,” he commanded. But the command was softly spoken and laced with honest concern, so Eva, as weak and exhausted as she was, simply stepped back.
The teleportation spell always begins with a rippling effect in the air in front of the caster. That rippling then spreads to a small opening, like a whirlpool forming in a body of water. The opening will sparkle and swirl with random colors, depending on the caster and destination. It will then widen, and as it does, a tunnel becomes apparent beyond the entrance. When it’s large enough, the caster steps into the portal and is whisked through time and space, as if through a wormhole, to his or her destination.
This time, however, the air did not ripple. Instead, it grew darker, as if a tiny bit of twilight were appearing in a very specific bit of space in front of Calidum. It was like a shadow without anything blocking the sun. That shadow continued to darken, until an actual hole had formed in front of him. Not a portal. But a hole.
Eva took another step back, just in case, and watched in fascination as the hole widened, becoming large enough for a person to step inside. There was no visible destination at the other end of the tunnel. There was no tunnel to have an other end. It was simply a hole.
“You know,” she said, “the term ‘crawl into a hole and hide,’ isn’t meant to be taken literally.”
Calidum glanced at her over his broad shoulder, flashing a beautiful smile. It caught her off guard, that smile. “Take my hand,” he told her, holding is right hand out to her. “We haven’t much time. I can feel Arach moments behind.”
Arach managed to follow us? Trace us? A Legendary and a half Nomad? Through all of those portals? Her mind was spinning with bewildered questions. But it also seemed to be spinning with its own answer: Of course he did, Eva. You blasted him with some of your most powerful magic and it didn’t put a dent in him. He’s changed.
Going with Calidum someplace wholly unknown is dangerous, she thought warily. And then she realized… she didn’t really care. She was too tired, too scared, and too hungry. She took his hand.