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“Auuggghhh!”we all yelled, even Bodil, because she’d lived a long time and probably done crazier things than I had, but it didn’t look like she’d done this.And then it got weirder.

The floor surged up at us in a bubbling field of mud because it was tunneling under the river now, leaving us sloshing around as the tunnel played hide and seek with a god.We could see him intermittently as the flood of golden light he was giving off strobed the mad little hallway.But every time I thought he’d almost caught up, and we were all screaming our guts out, a dirt wall slammed into his face as we and our mud pit were flung in another direction.

Strobe, scream, slam; strobe, scream, slam; strobe, scream—fall when the floor abruptly gave way again.The mages we’d been traveling with had disappeared, whether eaten or buried, I didn’t know, but our little knot kept slinging back and forth and plummeting down, down, down, like we were off the train and on the world’s weirdest elevator.If elevators also shot ahead at random intervals, or to the side, or up and over some impediment before dropping wildly again.

“I’m gonna be sick,” Butch Cut said thickly, her eyes huge and her fingers white as she clung to her rock.

Until we came to an abrupt halt and were sent tumbling along with an ocean of mud down a short flight of steps and into a large room with a bright blue portal thrumming on the opposite wall.Which promptly ate the god who tore out right on our heels, leaped over our prone bodies in his hurry, and stumbled straight into the portal’s hungry maw.Which caught him even as he tried to fight it, as he turned and struggled back toward us, as a great golden arm stuck out of the sea of churning, vibrant bluereaching, reaching, reaching—

Until the light suddenly increased, probably because Bodil was reaching out, too, lying on the floor covered in mud, and no longer appearing quite so regal.But putting everything she had left into increasing the portal’s power, turning it from royal to brilliant azure, and to my shock, it was enough.The furious god was sucked backward, still bellowing, and sent somewhere frigid, judging by the icy air blowing in at us for a second.

That was all the time I had to take it in, along with a glimpse of Pritkin off to one side of the portal with his hair standing straight up and his eyes gone crazy bright.He was with a bunch of wild-looking men in war mage gear, one of whom flipped a lever on the wall while the rest started for us.And before I could ask what the hell, we were snatched up and flung into the heart of the now bright green portal.

I felt it grab me, swallow me down, and send me spinning toward a destination I couldn’t see with an all-encompassing glare searing my eyeballs, and didn’t even care about.

Because anything was better than here!

Chapter Twelve

The portal ejected me out of the other side into a sea of sand.The violence of what had to be a seriously malfunctioning gateway sent me flying and then rolling, and came close to flipping me end over end before I grabbed hold of the ground and desperately hung on.And looked up into wildly whipping sand, blowing so hard that it felt like it etched my skin.

Visibility was practically zero, and I was half-buried before I understood what was happening.I thrashed around, trying to get to my feet, but the dunes beneath me were unstable, plunging me up to my knees in shifting soil and all but immobilizing me as soon as I tried to go anywhere.It didn’t help that I could see nothing past scouring yellow veils, hear over the roar of the winds, or feel beyond the lash of the grit-filled gale.

Until a fist of air punched me in the back, sending me sliding down a massive dune along with half of the hillside.But someone else was there at the bottom, someone who was still standing.And who grabbed me as I careened by, scooped me up, and started to run.

I knew without asking that it was Alphonse, as no human could have managed that feat in those conditions.I’d lost track of him in everything, but trust a vampire to have somehow found his way.And to be able to battle a path across a blinding hellscape while holding my head against his chest with one big hand to shield me.

It wasn’t enough—nothing could have been—but the familiar touch was calming.Something that was especially important when I had no idea who else had gotten out of HQ—or if anyone had.There’d been two more of those creatures behind the first, and if one could figure out how to get to us—

The light suddenly dimmed, and the lashing winds cut off as abruptly as if someone had slammed a door.And maybe they had; I couldn’t tell as the damned sand had welded my eyes shut, caked my nose, and left me struggling to breathe out of lungs that felt like they’d been scoured, too.I fought with the crusty mess, finally getting enough out of the way to let me draw in some oxygen and blink around at a small cave.

“You okay?”Alphonse rasped.

I tried to answer, but a coughing fit took me, leaving me hacking up a bunch of sand onto the darker earth of the floor.It joined a thick sifting that had already scattered over everything in sight, but at least that terrible wind wasn’t tearing at us anymore.I couldn’t even see it, as we’d gone around a bend from wherever the door was, but I could hear a loud roar like all the banshees in hell were after us.

It became progressively softer when Alphonse decided that I wasn’t dead yet and started carting me down a tunnel.I didn’t ask where we were going.I was too busy coughing and spitting, trying to get the rest of the dirt out of my lungs and from between my teeth.

It wasn’t easy, as the stuff was everywhere, and the fact that I’d been covered in mud before landing didn’t help.The sand had stuck to the mud, and the mud had stuck to me, and nothing seemed likely to change that.There was also very little light in here, or maybe that was merely the contrast from the blinding glare outside.

Or maybe not.Alphonse must have been finding his way by scent or hearing because my eyes could only pick up dim flickers on the sides of rough stone walls, which got dimmer as we got further away from the chaos.But here and there, I glimpsed watchful shadows, war mages crouched in alcoves or the mouths of tunnels above us, almost lost in the darkness of a higher-than-normal ceiling, although none of them impeded our passage.

It was like something out of time, I thought, staring.The mages, what little I could see of them, were bundled up like Bedouins with long robes, turbans, and heavy scarves hanging in front of their faces, where I guessed they could be drawn up at a moment’s notice to shield them from the sand.In the darkness, they could have been assassins straight out of the Middle Ages, waiting to fall on their enemies with murderous intent.

But I knew what they were; I could feel their magic peppering my skin as we passed by underneath, even when I couldn’t see them.I swallowed a few times in a completely dry throat and felt Alphonse’s hands clench on me slightly.He didn’t like being under their eyes, either.

At least this tunnel wasn’t moving, and it eventually let out into a large, roundish cave with actual spell light ringing the walls and war mages striding about as if they had somewhere to be.Unlike the ones at HQ or the creepy watchers in the tunnel, these wore regular clothes and appeared relatively well-fed.They were also calm, with the usual stoicism on full display, whereas I was about to lose my shit because I hadn’t seen—

“Pritkin?”I gasped at Alphonse as he swung me down.“Where’s—”

Another coughing fit cut me off when I changed position, and we spent a while with the big vamp pounding me on the back.I hacked up sand, mud, and God knew what while he held my hair back from my face like a concerned boyfriend outside a bar.I didn’t care, not about what I looked like, the watching mages, or any of it.

I just wanted tobreathe.

I stayed there for a minute afterward, hunched over and gasping, waiting for more.But nothing else came out, including whatever had remained of my breakfast.I was unsure whether that was because I’d been expelling stuff from my lungs instead of my stomach or whether my body had learned the hard way to hold onto food, but either way, I was grateful.

And when I finally looked up, I glimpsed some of the guys intended for the gallows staggering in with a couple of the Bedouins and collapsing by one wall.

They didn’t look any better than I felt, with even the ones still on their feet leaning against the rock as if they’d fall down without it and trembling.All of them were in loincloths or nude, although it almost didn’t matter as they were as caked in mud and sand as I was and so bony that all I saw when I looked at them was a row of dirt-covered skeletons.One of which was cursing.