Page 15 of Soulbound Shadows: Part 1

I stared at the statue thoughtfully. “I don’t know how much I’ll be able to hurt something made of stone, but I can draw its focus so the two of you can have space to work.”

“I think I have a plan,” Evangeline said. “Can you get up the cliff?”

The cliff was jagged white stone with plenty of handholds. I nodded. “It shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Perfect,” she said. “Once you’re up there, I need you to get its attention, then I’ll drop the darkness spell. Once we get this thing trapped, I’m going to need you to get a picture of the inscription.”

I ran for the cliff and clambered up quickly. Standing at its full height, the statue was tall enough that it was shoulder height to the cliff. There was a tearing noise as it broke free from the vines binding its leg, and the two witches began to fire spell after spell at it, slowly driving it backward toward the cliff face.

“Now!” Evangeline shouted once it was only a few yards away from me. I hefted the biggest stone I could find and threw it at the creature’s head. I couldn’t see where its face was in the sphere of darkness, but I heard the solid crash of the rock connecting with something. The statue turned to face me with a sound like an avalanche, and Evangeline dropped the darkness spell.

All five of the statue’s glowing eyes locked onto me, but before it could reach out, there was a massive rumbling. Evangeline had twisted up two mounds of earth around the statue’s feet, reaching up to mid-shin. She made a gesture, and the mounds slid backward, unbalancing the statue. It flung one huge arm against the cliff to try to steady itself, and that was when Isabella swung into action. She pulled thick, twining tree roots from the cliff face that wrapped around the statue’s wrist, its neck, grabbing onto any part of it they could find purchase on. Then they pulled, yanking the statue forward.

The great stone creature was pinned, its legs dragged out behind it, and its arms bound to the cliff. Its neck was bent at an unnatural angle, its chin resting on the lip of the cliff right in front of me. Both witches were visibly straining with the effort of keeping it pinned. I was distantly aware that I was shocked, but I pushed that aside. There would be time for that later.

I snapped half a dozen pictures of the markings on the metal in quick succession, briefly checked to make sure at least one of them wasn’t blurry, then leaped down the cliff, skidding down the stones.

“I’ve got what you needed,” I said, rushing over to the panting witches. There was the sudden sound of tortured wood splitting behind me. When I glanced back, I saw the statue had managed to tear its hand free. “Time to go, don’t you think?”

We ran through the woods toward the city. Evangeline took the lead, and I took up the rear. With my senses, it would be easier for me to tell if something was following after us, and with the witches in front, I wouldn’t accidentally outpace them.

As soon as we crossed the border from the Ravening Vale into the normal woods, we stopped to give the witches a chance to catch their breath. In a shady area at the base of a gigantic tree, Evangeline and Isabella both collapsed down onto the roots.

“So,” I said, once they’d taken long, desperate gulps from water bottles Isabella had pulled from her bag. “Would anyone care to tell me what the point of that was?”

“That thing was guarding a prophecy about the artifact I’m looking into,” Evangeline said, pushing her sweaty hair out of her face. Even after a fight, she looked radiant. I tried not to stare directly at her, but it didn’t help. “Speaking of, I’m going to need to see those pictures you got.”

I pulled them up and handed over my phone obligingly. “Don’t look at my other pictures.”

“What, do you have pictures of all the humans you drain?” Isabella asked.

I stared at her, trying to find the energy to explain that I didn’t feed on humans. “No,” I said finally. “I have pictures of other things.” There was absolutely no way I was going to explain the number of pictures I took of myself. Without being able to use mirrors, pictures were the easiest way to see how I looked, and I never remembered to delete them.

Evangeline, bent over the screen, ignoring us. “I don’t recognize the script,” she murmured. “But maybe Marcus can translate for me?”

I went to her side so I could look at the picture over her shoulder. “There’s no need for that,” I said. “It’s Glagolitic script. A variant of Old Church Slavonic.”

“You can read this?” Evangeline asked, looking up at me.

“I can,” I confirmed. “It’s one of the languages my mother prefers to write in. A holdover from her days in the Byzantine empire.”

I perched on the root next to Evangeline and looked closer at the image.

“It’s complicated,” I admitted. “I might need some time to translate it properly. With prophecies there are often double meanings, so I’ll need to be careful with it. How important is it that I try to preserve the rhyme scheme?”

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s not very important,” Isabella said.

Evangeline was looking at me oddly. As soon as I met her eyes, she looked away, and the back of her neck went faintly pink. She had a birth mark in the shape of a crescent moon curving around one of the delicate knobs of her spine.

I forced myself to look back at the phone. “Either way, I’d like to make sure my translation is accurate. Perhaps I could translate it tonight, then stop by your office in the morning?”

“I mean, if you wouldn’t mind,” Evangeline started, but Isabella nudged her with an elbow.

“That would be great,” she said firmly. “Evangeline would be really grateful for your help.”

“And in the meantime, you should avoid any more excursions into the Ravening Vale,” I said. “This place would gladly devour a witch as powerful as you, Ms. Summers.”

“The Ravening Vale?” Evangeline said. “Witches call it the Valley of the Forgotten.”

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