Page 55 of Claimed By Fangs and Darkness
I was on my feet in an instant. “Princeton’s spell room. Why?”
“I don’t know—it doesn’t make sense.” Harmony’s tan skin was flushed, her eyes glassy. “An entire building on campus was scourged from the earth, reduced to nothing but ash. Students were in there, a great many of whom were potential initiates. The sky turned dark and rained blood.”
My heart shattered immediately for the lives lost. “You saw this with your own eyes?”
She shook her head. “But other turned did. And the evidence is there for all to see.”
Harmony’s face crumpled, and Blade reached for her hand.
“Why did you ask where Evie was?” I demanded, my emotions raw in the face of this tragedy.
“The born aren’t claiming this. No one saw who or what did it.” Her tone was increasingly urgent. “And you just told the clan that all acts of the gods belonged to Evie.”
Understanding dropped low in my gut, my blood pumping fast and hard.
“This was an act of the gods,” Harmony said. “We know Evie didn’t do this, but… we don’t know whatdid. This wasn’t born magick. It was something more.”
It was becoming harder to think straight as my mind flashed through several emotions, possibilities, and future events in quick succession.
“I’ll go get her.” I paused, unleashing a curse. “They slaughtered a building of university students as if it were a move on a fucking chessboard.”
Disgust and rage and horror warred in the space. Shadows curled at our feet, hissing and hungry.
“Phineas is torturing our newest born prisoners in the dungeons,” Harmony hissed. “It’s rare. But we know they crack every once in a while. Even if they don’t mean to.”
“I’ll head there next. I’ll think about our official statement while I cut off someone’s fucking appendages,” I said as I stormed out of the room.
I quickly accessed Evie’s location through the blood bond.
My stomach sank.Fuck.
Evie was above ground. On Etherdale University’s campus.
19
EVIE
On a cliff’s edge, I practiced writing important clan sigils—sigils Princeton had used for wards, glamours, and initiation rituals, and new symbols I was creating with Hekate.
Behind me wisps of light floated about a dark forest of tall evergreens, and creatures, earthen and otherworldly, roamed.
My body was back in Princeton’s spell room, safe within a circle of salt. Here in the spirit world, I was open to far greater magickal influence.
I used a pen with a wide tip to draw on my sketchpad until the ink began to move on its own.
The ink split into hundreds of threads that flowed across the page in all directions. My finger brushed across the page, and the thin lines of ink swirled in a circular formation around my touch.
Fate weaver,something whispered, a presence at my back.
I lifted my finger. The threads of ink coalesced and formed The Magician tarot card, number one in the major arcana. The creator. The weaver.
This time when I touched the page, the threads pulled apart and moved vertically.
Weave,I commanded.
They braided together, intertwined, creating a tapestry of connection that covered the page.
Something powerful curled up my spine. I set down the sketchbook and turned, finding several non-corporeal entities. Some were balls of light, others hazy, nearly translucent outlines. One was a black hound.
