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“What’s wrong?”
Juniper frowned. “I thought I felt something.”
“What kind of something?” Dane asked, now standing several feet away. “I felt nothing except lightness.”
Adriel stepped forward. “Try it with me and see if you feel it again.”
“Okay.” Juniper turned her attention to Adriel’s smaller form. Maybe it was like lifting weights and she needed to build up her strength for someone of Dane’s size. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
She concentrated, and up Adriel went. She was definitely lighter and easier to carry. Her laughter echoed much like Dane’s until she was too far above the spray to hear. She deposited her at the top of the gorge, where a cliff protruded.
“There it is again.” Juniper sucked in a sharp breath, unsure of what caused the chill. It was cold, like ice floating in the air. It slithered into her bones with a rheumatoid ache. “Ade?” Her eyes squinted as she listened closely for Adriel’s voice.
“Do you hear anything?”
“Just water.”
“Adriel?” She and Dane shouted, moving up the path toward the top of the cliff where she’d deposited Adriel. “Adriel, answer us!”
The air chilled again, and Juniper’s worry doubled. Something wasn’t right.
She rushed up the mud path, her heart pounding when they continued to call without a single answer from Adriel.
“Adriel!”
She lost her footing and slipped in a mire of leaves and sludge, falling hard and smashing her knee on a protruding root. “Shit!”
“Are you all right?” Dane pulled her up, his breath ragged from climbing the steep incline.
Her jeans had ripped and her knee was now bleeding. “Something’s wrong.” Anxiety spiked in her tight chest. The sky darkened and the dense tree coverage blocked the moonlight, making it hard to see the trail.
“Adriel!”
Thunder cracked, but no light webbed the sky. Blackness bled into the trees and a whisper of unease skated over her skin, snaking through the forest like a toxic gas until fear was all she could breathe.
“Why isn’t she answering us?”
“This isn’t right.” The bitter taste of dark sorcery soured her tongue. That was not her magick or any kind of magick she recognized. The obscure sense of danger seeped from the shadows. “Something else is out there. We need to get to the?—
A blood-curdling scream shattered her concentration.
“Shit!” Dane cursed as they bolted toward the sound of Adriel’s cry.
The trees crowded them like silent sentinels, blocking their path and making it impossible to run as fast as she wanted. She thought the sound of Adriel’s scream the worse sound in the world, until her cries stopped and silence was all they heard.
“Fuck! Come on!” She rushed forward, thenturned, confused which way led to the top of the gorges. “I’m all turned around.”
“Me too. What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know.Adriel!”
“Wait, we both have her blood in our system. Can’t we track her that way?”
“Do you know how?”
“No.”
