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timidly.
     
    Gavin was the Warrior at the gate, which he had already lowered. I checked the invisible rope that tethered Soraya and Catherine to me. They were getting closer, but they couldn’t move fast enough. I turned to Victoria.
     
    Turn into your Wolf. Retrieve them. Go.
     
    Victoria loped off, shifting into a wolf mid-run, following the thread that showed her the way, my mental grasp slapping at her hind quarters like a coach driver’s whip. The rest of us began to cross the bridge that Gavin had lowered. Two Rivers slept behind us. King William slept, too, but not for much longer. The night swirled around me, the stars above becoming white streaks in a black sky, the trees of Pine Barrens clumping together in a mass, the souls thrumming and pulsing. We crossed the bridge.
     
    That existence in the distance, the one that seemed to me like a small sun, so glorious, beckoned me still. My new companions stopped and stared, seeing it for the first time. The same question rattled through their heads.
     
    What is that?
     
    It was moving closer, but still at a good distance away. I had no answer for this question. I knew what they knew: that it was beautiful, and that I wanted to reach it. I felt myself stretch forward to touch it, knowing that it was too far away for me to hold. But if I could just brush my fingers over it…
     
    A huge wolf appeared from out of the trees. Victoria, her fur the pale blond color of her hair, her massive chest heaving at the exhaustion of the run she’d just taken. Soraya and Catherine sat atop her massive back, their hands wrapped around her neck and fingers dug deeply into the fur there. Victoria stopped and let out a howl that vibrated in my bones. It said: I’ve got them! I’ve got them! And I couldn’t help but smile, sending waves of approval toward Victoria, like patting a dog on the head for rolling over.
     
    Wrong, wrong, wrong…
     
    I didn’t care.
     
    Lead us to the van, Camillia, I commanded, and as one, we all moved forward, entering the thick stand of pines and being consumed by the darkness that dwelled there. The only light now ahead of us that strange, tiny sun far off in the distance, miles and miles away. I reached for it again, its pull magnetic. It was too far away, so I drew in the energy that radiated from me and forced it to come together in a direct, whole beam, aimed at that tiny sun. And I touched it, for just a tiny moment, I touched it, and I cared.
     
    Then I felt the souls of the people who I had taken with me, the people I had taken, go rigid with fear.
     
    A pack of some fifteen Lamias appeared from all sides of us. I released a hiss that bounced from tree to tree, ear to ear, and the Lamias reciprocated with howled hisses of their own.
     

 
     
     
     
    Alexa
     
    Kayden handled the Mercedes the way he handled his sword, weaving through and around cars, zipping by with the speed and grace of a beam of light. By the grace of God, my Mother had fallen asleep in the back seat, so I didn’t have to listen to her words, fuel to a fire that was already ablaze with in me. I knew we had to hurry. The tight knot in my gut was proof enough of that.
     
    I reached out and placed my hand on Kayden’s thigh, as thick and hard as a tree trunk, and felt his tense muscles relax a fraction along with my own. Both of his hands gripped the steering wheel as if strangling it, the knuckles on his fingers standing out white and bloodless.
     
    That’s when it happened.
     
    Something touched me. Not like the physical sensation of contact with the skin, but the sensation of something reaching deep within, touching what could not be touched, skimming the very surface of my soul. My body jerked and my knees banged the glove compartment hard enough to make me gasp and wince. The tiny hairs all over my body stood on end, soldiers at attention to this uninvited assault on my soul. I took a moment to catch my breath. When I looked over at Kayden, I saw that his