Page 72 of Lion's Share
His voice echoed in my mind as Ben and I came closer. Light-bringer, the shadow-eaters grow bold. They gather in the deep woods, preparing for greater hunt.
The blood in my veins might as well have been ice. I’d encountered shadow stalkers twice now, and both times had been terrifying. The thought of them organizing, preparing for some kind of coordinated attack….
“How many?” I asked, and Ben shot me a worried look.
“What’s he telling you?” he asked.
“I’ll give you the recap later.”
Right then, it seemed more important to hear what the griffin wanted to say rather than pausing to give Ben a blow-by-blow.
More than before, the huge, lion-like creature went on. Portal energies still unstable. The tears between worlds call to them.
I closed my eyes and reached out with those strange new abilities, trying to sense what the griffin was describing. It took a moment, since I still didn’t really know what I was doing, but then I felt it — a wrongness in the forest, like a cold spot in the center of a warm room. And within that wrongness, movement. Hunger. Inhuman intelligence planning something terrible.
“They’re not just randomly hunting anymore,” I said, opening my eyes to see both Ben and the griffin watching me intently. “The shadow stalkers are working together…and they’re focused on something specific.”
Yes. They seek the one who opened the way home. They know your power now, know your scent. Will not stop until they have consumed what makes you bright.
The griffin’s meaning was clear enough. The shadow stalkers were hunting me specifically, drawn by the energy I’d been unwittingly broadcasting this whole time. And if they were gathering in numbers….
“They’re coming after me,” I said. Oddly, I felt almost blank at the prospect, as if the last few days had drained so much from me that I couldn’t allow myself to get too concerned about the whole thing.
Ben, however, seemed plenty worried for both of us. “Then we need to do something,” he said at once. “We can’t just sit around and wait for them to attack.”
Before I could respond, the sound of purposeful feet crunching through the underbrush interrupted us. My heart sank as I saw Dr. Rosenthal come striding through the trees. Today, only two agents accompanied her, and they moved with less of the aggressive confidence I’d come to expect from DAPI personnel.
“I thought Agent Morse said they were backing off,” Ben muttered.
“Ms. Lowell,” Dr. Rosenthal called out as she approached. Her voice sounded crisp and no-nonsense as usual, despite her reduced entourage…and her oddly casual jeans and hiking boots and khaki shirt. “We need to talk.”
“I thought we covered everything last night,” I replied, not budging from my position beside the griffin. I had no idea what I could do to protect him if Rosenthal’s lackeys went on the attack, but something about having him standing there next to me gave me some much-needed courage.
“The situation has evolved.” Her dark gaze — partially hidden behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses — flicked to the griffin, and I saw at once how she struggled to maintain her professional composure. Even after witnessing everything that had gone down last night at the Henderson farm, it seemed clear to me that she was still having trouble dealing with what her eyes were telling her. Voice even brisker, she went on, “Our monitoring equipment has detected increased electromagnetic activity in the forest — activity that suggests whatever you did last night has had unintended consequences.”
“Those ‘unintended consequences’ aren’t from my little demonstration last night,” I said, my tone firm. “They’re from a bunch of you not understanding what you’re messing with.”
Her nostrils flared. “Nevertheless, the readings suggest an imminent threat to public safety. We’re prepared to offer you full federal protection in exchange for your cooperation in neutralizing that threat.”
Beside me, Ben stiffened. “‘Federal protection.’ Yeah, right.”
“I mean a chance to put your friend’s abilities to use for the greater good,” Dr. Rosenthal replied smoothly, her gaze still fixed on me, even though she was responding to Ben’s comment. “The alternative is leaving the two of you here to face whatever’s coming on your own.”
She speaks truth about the danger, the griffin’s voice whispered in my mind. But her protection would be a cage of a different kind. Better to face shadow-eaters with freedom than safety without.
Before I could respond to either Dr. Rosenthal or the griffin, a new telepathic flash hit me —not the unwanted glimpses into someone’s thoughts that I’d been experiencing lately, but something else entirely. A sending, direct and urgent.
Guardian. The time comes. They move now, while daylight fades. You must choose — fight here among the innocent, or draw them away to where the battle belongs.
The voice was ancient, wise, and completely unfamiliar. But somehow I knew exactly who it belonged to.
“The unicorn,” I breathed, hardly realizing that I was speaking aloud.
Ben’s head immediately snapped toward me. “What about the unicorn?”
“He’s warning us,” I said, the words coming out more impatiently than I’d intended, even though I knew I needed to keep Ben up to speed on what was happening. “The shadow stalkers are moving now, and if we don’t do something, they’ll keep coming. Innocent people could get hurt.”
Dr. Rosenthal listened to this exchange with obvious fascination, appearing to make mental notes about everything she was witnessing. The clinical way she watched us, like we were specimens in a particularly interesting experiment, made my skin crawl.
