Dark Oracle by Alayna Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

she could see the anger shining in his expression.
    “This is the part where you tell me this is your investigation, and not to cut you down in front of the enemy?” Tara tried to cross her arms, but Li gripped her elbow too tightly. She narrowed her eyes, gulped in air. Her hands were balled into fists. She couldn’t take any more of feeling trapped.
    “Yeah. This is that part.” Li’s breath fogged his mask. “Don’t you ever undercut me like that again.”
    “Look. I’ll be brutally honest. I don’t particularly care about your ego, your feelings, or your rules. I’ll do whatever it takes to get the job done. If that means eating some crow or petting Gabriel like a purse dog, then that’s what I’ll do.” She snarled the last sentence at him.
    She shook off his arm, hearing a rip in the shoulder of her suit. She stalked away. She’d gotten sick of this kind of ego-driven territory surfing long ago. She didn’t realize how incensed she was until the cool air crawled up her neck and into her face, bracing her.
    Breathe.
    “Oh,” she exhaled. It was the most glorious feeling. She could smell the sunlit ash purely, now. The chill air wrapped its hands around her neck, caressing her face and freezing the sweat on her skin.
    In the corner of her eye, she glimpsed something shining on the ground, a spark of violet and chrome. She bent to look, but the glare from the setting sun obliterated everything in her vision through the damned mask.
    She opened the collar of her suit, pulled off the hood. Cold air washed over her, flash-freezing the sweat glossing her face. Her hair was drenched, and she shivered as the wind tore through it. She breathed deeply, slowly, of the ash and sun. A snowflake brushed out of the molten light and landed on her cheek, dissolving instantly. She felt like she was an incredible heat, meeting cold, pure air. Vapor steamed from the face, as if she’d just stepped out of a hot bath. She reached down for the glint in the grasses. Her gloves felt clumsy, and she was unable to feel anything through the thick plastic. She stripped off her glove, let her fingers comb the grasses, searching. . .
    She could hear Li running up behind her, yelling at her, his voice muffled by the filter. He grabbed her shoulder as her hand grasped the shining thing on the ground. She gasped when her hand closed around it and metal and static electricity bristled through her bare hand.
    She opened her steaming hand to show it to him, as her breath frosted the face of the stainless steel watch, its hands frozen behind the glass.
    T HROUGHOUT TIME, ORACLES HAD ALWAYS GATHERED AROUND the four elements. Whether it was the original brazier in the Temple of Apollo burning over the sea, or bonfires before caves through which shamans tossed sparkling powders and cast shadow figures of animals with their hands, the elements always tugged at invisible lines drawing them together. The Daughters of Delphi were no different.
    Her sandals tied together and slung over her shoulder, Sophia walked into the darkness of the dunes. Sand squished between her toes and swirled around the rolled-up cuffs of her jeans. Arthritis creaked in her right knee, but she ignored it. She’d parked her car a mile back on the road, coming to this inaccessible place by foot, climbing dunes and wending her way around the sharp roots of sea oats.
    Sophia breathed deeply of the coastal air. The salt seemed to settle deep in her lungs. She could smell the sea long before she climbed down the last rise of dune to the black ocean. Wind drove the smoke from a bonfire over the sea. Around the fire, she could see the other Daughters of Delphi gathered. . . at least, those able to travel to this hemisphere on short notice. It seemed to her, over the time she’d been in the order, their numbers had shrunk. When she was a child, she remembered dozens of women ranging around fires in groves. Today, there were less than thirty. And most of those women were