Veiled Innocence (Book One, The Soul Cycle) (33 page)

“Shhhhhhhaaaaahhhhrrraaaaahhhhhh,” it gurgled. 

Her pendant pulsed in time with her fluttering heart. “What?”  

“Shhhhaaaahhhrrrraaaahhhh,” it repeated, its sinuous voice changing into a beautiful melody. Immediately, Lian felt the heavy pull of sleep as the creature sang. White fog danced at the corner of her eyes. 

“You did this,” she gasped, clutching at the teardrop. Almost instantly, the pull of sleep lessened
,
and her senses cleared.

The song abruptly stopped. Lian pried one eye open to find the creature staring at the teardrop with wild longing. Its grip tightened to an almost painful degree around her ankle as
it leaned closer, pulling her fa
rther into the water. 

“Shahrah,” it said, followed by a winding stream of syllables she had never heard before.

“This?” Lian lifted the teardrop with two fingers. “Is this what you want?”

Its eyes widened
,
and its huge fish lips parted slightly as it moaned with desire. 

Lian glanced at the white crystal dangling from her fingertips.
First Vishka, now this creature.
What’s so special about
this
? 

She looked back to the creature. Its body shimmered as it turned into pure water, rolling and turning in on itself. Before she knew what happened, it crushed her ankle and jerked her forward.
An agonized scream slipped from her throat
as she slid across the bank into the water.  

She clawed at t
he dirt as the thing drug her fa
rther into the river, but t
he creature maintained its vice-
like grip. She kicked out but to no effect. Her foot passed right through it. 

“Help!” she shouted. “Vishka! Rowan! Anybody!”

The water-woman hissed, its face materializing just long enough to flash a row of small pointy black teeth. Lian was close enough now to see the crystal reflected in its soulless black eyes. She could feel the water around her chest. In a few minutes, she would be totally submerged.

Her hand brushed something hard
,
and she turned her head. It was a rock, just out of her reach. She leaned o
ver, nudging it with her finger
tips until
it was close enough to grab.
She swung it hard at the creature’s head, but he
r hand passed straight through. T
he sudden forward momentum was all the creature needed to pull her completely into the water. 

The creature quickly overpowered her, dragging her under before she could barely get a sip of air. She fought against it, clutching the crystal as she bucked wildly, bu
t it didn’t make any difference. T
his creature was not whole the way a human or murdel was whole. It was made from something else entirely, almost as if a piece of the river had come to life.

It grappled with her, the force of the water crushing her small body to the bottom of the river. Her lungs burned for oxygen, and white spots fired before her e
yes. Though all she wanted to do was panic, she forced herself to stopped struggling in order to conserve oxygen.

Help me! If there are g
ods, please help me out of this! 

Suddenly, the water erupted into a flash of brilliant white light
,
and the pressure eased, enough that she could swim to the surface. Those terrible black eyes and claws vanished, chased away by the warm white light coming from the crystal. 

Lian desperately held onto consciousness as she kicked downward, pushing her body up. 

Keep kicking. Keep swimming.

She had swam before, when she was younger, in the garden fountain. Her governess had quickly put an end to that.

Her will was growing weaker, but the water around her lightened with the sun’s first light as she drew closer to the surface, giving her hope.

When she surfaced, she gulped for air and flailed her arms and feet around, trying to stay afloat. The current had picked up, pulling her faster around the bend. She didn’
t recognize anything around her, meaning s
he must be much fa
rther down the river.

“Rowan! Vishka!”

A massive rumbling swallowed up her hoarse voice. It was steadily growing louder.

She squinted her eyes as her head bobbed in and out of the rapids. In the distance, it looked like the river dropped into the sky.

And that’s when she realized the horrible truth.

It was a waterfall.

***

ROWAN AWOKE TO HER
screams filling the forest.
Rolling over with a start, h
e turned his head to find only a rumpled blanket a few feet beside him.

Lianora.

He stood up so fast that his vision spotted and his head swam. He staggered around, straining to hear the screams again as his head cleared. Then he heard it again, and without looking for Vishka,
he
took off through the forest.

Thorny plants cut at his calves, and he stumbled more than once on
exposed roots and hidden vines. A
ll he could hear
was
her screams. He heard something cutti
ng through the brush behind him
and caught a flash of black hair from the corner of his eye. 

Vishka bounded be
side him. “The river,” she said
and slipped past him. His eyes widened as she pulled farther ahead.

Gods, she’s fast
, he thought as he felt a branch claw at his face. It burned as he
passed, and a second later
something hot and wet dripped down his cheek. 

The sounds of running water drew closer as he followed Vishka, now no more than a speck. Every muscle in his body ached and protested, but he kept going. Lianora’s face flashed before his eyes
,
and he gritted his teeth. “Come on, come on.”

When he first broke through the trees, all he saw was a
river
flowin
g to the east.
Vishka stood
on the
riverbank
,
flagging him over.

“This way!” she called, and he bounded after her back into the trees. They ran alongside the river, which was growing wider and more turbulent. Ahead of him, Lian screamed again, only louder this time. “Hold on, Lianora!” he yelled, praying she could hear him. 

He turned the bend
,
and the trees opened up. That’s when he saw her, her little blonde head bobbing up and down in the white surf.

“Lianora!” he yelled, racing
to the water’s edge. “Keep trying to swim toward the
bank
! I’m coming!”

He stretched his arms over his head, prepping to dive in, when Vishka grabbed his shoulder. “Don’t,” she said. “You’re no match for those rapids.”

He shook his head, his heartbeat making him nauseous. “We have to pull her out.”

Vishka ran over to a nearby tree and snapped
off
a long branch. “Here.” She tossed it to him. He ran alongside Lian on the shore. “Try to swim this way!” he called, running ahead of her. 

Lian looked exhausted from fighting the current, but she gave it her all, kicking and stroking with everything she had left. She was only a few feet from the
riverbank
now. 

He dropped to his knees and extended the branch. “Grab on!” he yelled, stretching his arm as far as it would go.

Lian lunged
,
and for a brief moment
, they made contact; however,
her hand was too wet
,
and it slipped from the branch. He watched in horror as her small body was lost to the white foam of the rolling waves.

“She’s going to go over!” he yelled, looking to Vishka and back again.  

Just as he turned his head
,
Lian screamed
,
and he watched, powerless, as she tumbled over the waterfall into the air.

Dracor

“NO!” ROWAN SCREAMED, STOPPING
short of the cliff’s edge.

Vishka ran to him and placed a firm hand on his shoulder, shouting, “There’s nothing more you can do!”

He panted hard, his brown eyes darting every which way as they searched the pool below. It was a long drop, several hundred feet or so, that ended in a bed of jagged black rocks.
Even if she survived the fall…

He doubled over and vomited.

Vishka squeezed his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

He retched for so long that he almost missed the flapping of wings and the bone-chilling screech of an enormous black creature that swooped above them and dove into the falls. A shower of oily black feathers fell around them. A second later, it emerged from the cascading water with a sagging body in its talons. 

Lianora.

“No,” he breathed.

Not him. Anyone but him.

Water sprayed from its wings as it gained altitude, floating on the wind that coursed through the ravine until it disappeared down the river.

His body sagged to the ground. “I failed her.” His voice shook. “I… I promised…” A thousand emotions welled up inside of him.

He clenched his fists and screamed as hard as he could until his voice was raw. His scream echoed around the valley, finally fading away altogether. The sky was growing brighter, turning from a pale blue to a vibrant orange as the sun crested the horizon. 

Vishka growled
,
and he jumped. She had been so quiet he had forgotten she was there.

“A D
racor.” Her voice was sharp as a blade. “I thought they could not enter Dreaka’s Forest. It’s sacred land.”

He stumbled to his feet. “This must be the edge of the forest,” he said, dipping his hand into the water and running it over his mouth. 

She nodded and shielded her eyes as sunlight poured into the valley. “If you’re done, we need to go,” she said. “Tracking it will be hard enough without it gaining half a day’s lead on us because you couldn’t control your stomach.”

Rowan looked back at the river as she stalked away from him, still seeing Lian’s tiny body in the claws of the gigantic winged beast.

He
closed his eyes. “Please be alive,” he whispered. 

Then he entered the wood
s
after Vishka, silently praying the monster was not who he thought it was. Otherwise, things wer
e about to get very complicated
and very ugly.

***

THERE ARE NO WORDS
to describe the sensation of flying, of the crisp breeze in
her
face, how the trees raced away from her bare feet, and of how the morning sun glinted in her eyes as if she was one with the sky. Something sharp dug into her back, but her body was so cold and numb that she didn’t notice it as more than a prick. She couldn’t feel it; she couldn’t feel much of anything. 

Her mind dipped in and out of consciousness in much the same way the creature that carried her swooped through the air. She would be coasting along one moment only to dive back into the darkness at another.

It was so hard to breathe, like she had swallowed sand. Her back was resting on a cool stone slab, and she was surrounded by darkness, only it wasn’t completely in her mind this time. She could barely make out the sun and the mountain peaks through the wide gaping hole to her right. 

Her head lolled from side to side, and when she thought a moan might escape her chapped lips, she choked on her own breath.

She felt pressure on her chest in rhythmic intervals. Someone
said
her name. The voice was low pitched, but that was all she could make out. Two large hands squeezed on her chest until at last her throat erupted with water. 

Someone tilted her head to the
side so that
,
when she coughed, the water passed onto the table instead of back into her throat. The pressure in her lungs began to ease, though it was still difficult to breathe. Her throat felt raw
,
and she could only draw breath in short, thin rasps. She closed her eyes, suddenly very tired. 

She was aware of a tall, broad-shouldered silhouette standing against the morning light. 

Who are you?
she wanted to ask, but her body would not let her. She wandered into an exhausted sleep.

***

THE SUN WAS HIGH
in the sky by the time they stopped to rest for any substantial amount of time. Rowan had traced its pattern with his eyes all morning and into the afternoon, pushing himself to keep going until he absolutely had to have a break longer than five minutes.

“Please, s
top,” he called breathlessly to Vishka. He suspected she was intentionally keeping her pace in check so he could keep up, but it wasn’t enough. His side was killing him, and his stomach rolled with every jarring step he took.