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His expression wasn’t what I expected. Gone was the fear, the fatigue, the pain. All that looked back at me was … emptiness. He was blank.

“Found it!” Maxar called from up ahead. I tried to move, to pull Drak along, but my shoes had glued themselves to the ground. “Come on!” He shouted again.

I swallowed again, staring up at Drak, pleading with him with my eyes to follow. He nodded, and for the moment, that was all the reassurance I needed, and knew, I would get from him. But it was enough. I released his hand.

Zandren stood up. Only rather than taking my hand, he scooped me into his arms, throwing me over his shoulder like a caveman. Fair enough, his strides were longer than mine and he was faster. I wasn’t about to argue when the man was saving my life. I hedged a quick glance up and was relieved to find Drak running just behind us. At least he wasn’t giving up and letting the monsters in the darkness take him.

We reached Maxar, who waited for us at the mouth of a narrow passageway through the mountains, just as the sound of giant wings beating overhead anda screech loud and high-pitched enough to burst your eardrums, echoed above.

“In. Now!” Maxar hollered, ushering us all forward, having to yell over the screeching, and enormous beating wings. Sharp, hot gusts of air from the beast’s wings wafted toward us, bringing with it a coppery, putrid scent so powerful I had to hold my breath, otherwise I would taste it too.

More rocks tumbled down the flat mountain face and I peeked up again as I bounced against Zandren’s back, just in time to see tremendous claws come barreling behind us and into the passageway. But the beast was too big to fit, and we were deep enough inside that it couldn’t reach us.

Another harsh screech of frustration penetrated the night, and the monster pushed off from the rocks, allowing me to see its silhouette against the last remaining slivers of daylight in the sky.

I thought at first that maybe it was a dragon, but no. The beast had wide, scallop-edged wings like a bat, but a beak like a bird, and body and limbs like a … giant cat? It was a silhouette, so I couldn’t really see, but that’s what it seemed like.

Either way, it was infinitely bigger than all of us and could have devoured each of us in a few bites.

Now I understood Maxar’s panic about getting across the desert before nightfall.

The narrow passage was pitch black as we carefully made our way through. Pitch black, that is, until my handy fire-mage snapped his magical fingers and handed us each a blue-flamed torch—since blue flames weren’t hot, and used almost solely for illumination—so we could see where we were going.

The corridor through the mountain was long and windy. Just when I thought the next corner would spit us out on the other side, we’d have another turn or straightaway to go.

Nobody said anything, and it was probably for the best.

What was there to say?

We didn’t want to be here. We were in literal Hell. Like lobsters in a soup pot and someone just turned the heat on to medium. The end was nigh, but it was going to take a while. Because the chef was a sadistic motherfucker.

Who the chef was in this scenario, I wasn’t sure. My brain was so hot, my metaphors weren’t even making sense.

“Can we just … can we stop for a sip of water for a moment?” I asked, wishing that maybe Zandren hadn’t put me down once we were out of the open desert.

“Quickly,” Maxar said.

Nodding, I dug around in my backpack for a water bottle and took a sip, then offered it up to the guys, who all took sips as well.

“It’s not desert on the other side before civilization, is it?” I asked. “Or do we need to sleep in this passageway so that the bat-winged thing doesn’t eat us?”

“Bat-winged?” Zandren asked. “You saw it?”

“Only it’s silhouette. It was massive. Scalloped wings like a bat, beak like a bird, body like a large cat.”

Zandren growled at the mention of a cat.

“Abisibra,” Drak murmured, causing all of us to face him. He merely shrugged. “Learned about them in school.”

“Vampire school?” I asked.

“Something like that.” More with the muttering.

My brows lifted. “And they like to eat—”

“Everything,” he said. “They hunt only at night. Their eyesight is terrible, so they hunt by sound and smell. They’re also known to be cannibalistic if desperate.”

“Wonderful,” I said sarcastically. “Just fucking peachy.”