Page 18 of The Grip of Death
“Jackson,” Xander said, his voice softer, yet somehow steelier. “Don’t go there. Don’t.”
Hecate tilted her head. “No, Jackson Pryde. Please, do go on. Please tell us all that you’ve observed about our ‘explosive’ and ‘bombastic’ behavior.”
Xander’s eyes stared pleadingly into mine. We both knew that the best course of action was to hold my tongue. Like a fool, I opened my mouth.
“The Halls of Making,” I said, looking straight into the inky-black pools of Hecate’s eyes. “The original Halls of Making, theblast that destroyed the guild. You had something to do with it, didn’t you?”
If there was a change in Hecate’s mood, it was imperceptible. She folded her arms across her chest, her reaction still impossible to place.
“You do wound us, fleshling. Twice now you’ve injured us with your words. You understand that we only permit this because of our fondness for you, yes? But the Halls of Making — quite the baseless accusation you’ve made. And hurtful, too. All we know is that the detonation on that fateful day was indeed of a magical nature.”
How could I stop my mouth from running now? “So you don’t deny it, then? You were involved somehow.”
“Jackson,” Xander shouted. “That’s quite enough.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I — I can’t let go of this. You owe me the truth, Hecate.”
The goddess scoffed. “You’re a far smarter man than this, Jackson Pryde. You are an artificer, are you not? One who experiments to determine what is and isn’t. What should and shouldn’t be. What would your parents think of your scattershot approach to finding facts, to targeting the truth?”
“Don’t bring my parents into this,” I snarled. “For all I know, you could have been responsible for their deaths, for all of those pointless deaths at the old guild.”
Hecate clucked her tongue. “Octavian would never have made such an elementary mistake. Luciana would have known to shine the light of her intellect elsewhere. And neither of them would have made something quite so shoddy as these rudimentary boots of flying that you’ve fashioned for yourself.”
My stomach lurched before I had a chance to say a single word. Xander’s fingernails bit into my skin, piercing through my clothing as the pair of us wobbled unsteadily in the air. My heart thumped against my ribcage. What the hell was happening?
“If this is your doing, Hecate, I swear — ”
“You swear what, fleshling? And to whom? To all the gods above and below? Save us your pitiful mewling. Focus now on saving yourself and one of our most prized students from death by catastrophic failure.”
My nose wrinkled at the smell of smoke. What the fuck? I glanced down, eyes widening when I saw the trails of black emanating from the soles of my boots. How could Hecate stoop so low?
And speaking of low — we were still an uncomfortably lethal distance off the ground. If my boots continued to malfunction, we would never make it down alive.
“Hang on tight,” I told Xander.
He nodded, hugging me harder than ever, his chin digging into my shoulder, his breath hot on my ear as he barked the words to a spell.
“Arma grandia.”
Red light gleamed in a bubble around us, the force field slowly shrinking until it fused with our bodies, encasing each of us in a protective barrier of magic. And right there was yet another reason I couldn’t wait to marry this man. He was always two steps ahead.
I swallowed hard, fighting the stab of fear in my chest. We were going to make it out of this alive, one way or another. We had a wedding to attend. I closed my eyes, steadying my breath as we continued to fall.
The armor spell might help to absorb part of the impact, but we still had to brace ourselves for the possibility of grievous injury. Broken bones weren’t out of the question. Then Xander tugged on the back of my shirt. I opened my eyes, glancing down where he was pointing.
My stomach did a flipflop. Far below, down where the third copy of Hecate was waiting, something was rising up from thedry earth, punching through dirt and rock. My jaw dropped when I recognized the shape rising out of the deep and heading straight toward us: a massive hand formed completely out of rock.
Without comparing with the goddess’s form I already knew that this was an enormously scaled-up version of her own hand. Where had the other images of Hecate gone? I blinked. The third one on the ground had disappeared, too. And upward, ever upward the hand of stone sped, open as if ready to grasp — ready to crush. I held Xander in my arms, cradled his head against my chest.
And then a gentle slowing in our fall. Cautiously I opened my eyes, shocked to find that the rocky hand had indeed rushed up to collect us in its grip, but without the intent to pulverize. Delicately, between elegantly sculpted fingers thicker than my legs, the hand held the pair of us like wounded birds.
Within moments the hand had delivered us to the ground. It kept descending, disappearing underground, leaving the reddened earth as smooth and unblemished as before.
I sat on the ground with my legs splayed. “What the hell just happened? Did she suddenly decide we weren’t worth killing? She’s playing with us, isn’t she?”
“Jack,” Xander said, crossing his legs underneath him. “Look.”
He pointed at my hovering boots. One of them had a gash in the sole, exposing the precious metal wiring, the crystals that powered the enchantment of partial flight.
