Page 202 of The Demon Tide

I lurch toward her. “Ariel, kill me,” I rasp. “Vogel’s taking over my power and my mind.” I hold up a Shadow-fasted hand and blanch, undulating loops of smoke slithering over it.

“What did he do?” Ariel growls.

A more vicious rush of Vogel’s power blasts into me, slicing over my affinity lines in a razing tide. I cry out and fall to the forest floor.

As soon as my Shadow-fasted palms make contact with the ground, Ariel and the Wyvernfire-lit forest snap out of sight. Alarm shocks through me as a new scene flashes into view. I’m staring through another’s eyes, glancing at familiar Shadow fastlines looping over a masculine, green-glimmering hand.

Havoc barrels through me.

Vogel.

I scream out my rage against his mind but he pays me no heed, dragging my will inside him and walking briskly through a downward-slanting tunnel of stone, the sounds of warfare fading behind us. A portal appears ahead, its frame made of Shadow runes, its interior filled with quivering smoke. Four military envoys with horns and glowing red eyes bracket it.

Raving out my protest, I’m dragged by Vogel into the portal’s smoking center...and out into another scene.

An impossibly huge alabaster cavern. Much bigger than the hollowed-out Vo Mountain Range. Its pale walls seem to rise forever, covered with hives as far as the eye can see, the cells filled with countless Shadow soldiers. Marfoir Elves scuttle over the cave’s expanse, their ivory forms blending with the stone, countless multi-eyed creatures amongst them.

Where are we?I growl against Vogel’s hold on my mind.

Silence, Elloren.

A slash of Vogel’s wrath constricts my lines, his desire for retribution flowing hot through his power as he makes a sharp turn, strides up to the pale, rocky wall before us, and touches his Wand to it. The stone dissolves and he steps through, forcing me into a pale corridor, a knot of Level Five Mage soldiers with Gardnerian-green eyes coming into view, the young men saluting Vogel as he passes and walks to the corridor’s end and out into the night.

Stars glisten overhead, torchlit military structures formed from Ironwood spread out over the forest-surrounded clearing ahead, dark branches tangling over their roofs.

“Your Excellency, we’ve gotten hold of her.”

Vogel turns toward the horribly familiar voice, a smiling Damion Bane coming up beside us, an imperious-looking Fallon Bane flanking him. The siblings wear the silver-banded cloaks of Mage Commanders. Damion flicks his wand and a tightly vine-bound prisoner slides over the dark earth, coming to rest on the ground before their feet.

Valasca Xanthrir’s blue eyes glare murderously up at us.

My pulse climbs into my throat, my horror at finding her here notching even higher as I take in the Northern Spine rising up behind the scene, its jagged white peaks gleaming in the moonlight, these landmasses dwarfing all other mountain ranges in sheer size and length. I realize, in a sickening flash, that what Vogel built in the Eastern Realm’s Vo Mountains is but a small, experimental taste of what’s coming.

Vogel’s spite ripples through me as I’m filled with the will-siphoning, fury-inducing sensation of his power intimately caressing my lines.

My fastmate, he croons as he runs our eyes over the mammoth Northern Spine.Did you truly imagine you could run from the Ancient One’s Holy Will?Thisis your destiny, Elloren.Your army.

His focus on me sharpens, like a spike-strike straight between my eyes.

I know where you are.

CHAPTER SIX

DOWNFALL

Elloren Vogel

Vo Forest

Vogel abruptly releases his thrall over me and I snap back into myself.

I pant for air, down on my hands and knees, my grayed vision intensified, everything taking on a lurid, steely glow. Ariel is on one knee beside me, clasping my arm, her conjured ball of fire hovering above her shoulder as she jostles me, saying my name over and over.

Vogel’s attention inside me makes a raptor-hard turn toward every dead branch.

My wand hand flexes of its own accord and I wrench it toward my chest, stark terror snapping through me. I grasp hold of Ariel. “Kill me now! And warn Naga and the Vu Trin... Vogel’s filling the Spine, theentire Spine, with his Shadow hive army!”

“I know!” Ariel growls back, glancing toward the flock of ravens massed in the trees surrounding us, all of their gleaming midnight eyes set on me. “Wynter’s kindreds from the West told me. We need to go west to fight him and find Wynter!”

---