EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy by Terah Edun, Anna Zaires, Dima Zales, Lindsay Buroker, C. Greenwood, Jeff Gunzel, Daniel Arenson, Megg Jensen, Joseph Lallo, Annie Bellet, Edward W. Robertson, Mande Matthews, K. J. Colt, Brian D. Anderson, David Adams Read Free Book Online Page A

amber acorn to him and watched as he caught it after a few fumbles. Just before he caught it, the priceless artifact almost hit the floor. Again.

Chapter V

    “S TAY INSIDE ,” S ARA TOLD E ZEKIEL . She took a calm breath and strode out the door. Her back was stiff and her gait was sure, but inside she was quaking with doubt. This was the first time she had deliberately flouted the law and her mother’s rules at the same time. Come hell or high water, for the next two days she would defend this warehouse with her life. She would just have to send a messenger home to her mom saying that she had agreed to work the overnight shift. But she hoped to the gods’ own lives that her mother never found out what she was really doing. She wouldn’t survive that confrontation, she was sure of it.
    Sara shook her head to clear her mind of the grim thoughts. With a wary hand on her knife, she paced the exterior of the building, checking for obvious entrances, holes in the wall and damage put there by thieves. She saw none while she paced around all four sides. She noted however that the building was built of some kind of thin metal sheeting. Small, rectangular windows were interspersed regularly high up near the ceiling. Sara could tell in a glance that they were much too small for anyone to climb through, and besides, they were clearly sealed shut. The entire building had four walls, a peaked roof, and stood in a long, rectangular shape. The only entrance was the one she and Ezekiel had entered through. Even the magical protections surrounding it were impenetrable. Which left only two explanations. They had gotten in through the roof or through the front door.
    She stepped back from the front entrance until she had a clear view of the sloping roof. She couldn’t see much from here, but she had feeling that five sets of thieves had known something that she currently did not. Sara paced around the walls one more time. On this circuit she looked for a tear or irregularity in the roofing structure. Halfway down and on the ocean side of the building facing away from the fisherman’s wharf, she found it.
    It wasn’t all that obvious, if you weren’t looking for it. But she was.
    Sara grunted in satisfaction while she kept her eyes on the small metal pole protruding from the sloped roof. It was no bigger than her hand but she had the feeling it was strong enough to hold the weight of a person climbing up the walls. Excited, she trotted back to the front and into the warehouse. As she sprinted between the benches to see if her theory of a hole in the roof was true, she stopped cold. She felt something weird. Like a presence that her instincts were telling her not to ignore. Not the mention the fact that her curator was gone. She knew Ezekiel would have never left the artifacts alone, not of his own volition. If he’d been forced to leave through the front door, the man should have at least known enough to scream and catch her attention. She would have come running.
    So Sara carefully assessed the rows in front of her. Nerves alive, she looked for what her eyes couldn’t see. She opened her ears and sharpened her hearing. She heard the pants of muffled breathing in front of her.
    “Might as well come out,” she said. “I know you’re here.”
    Then the cloak fell. A man stood in front of her. Ezekiel stood in front of him with a sharp knife held at his throat. The man was gripping him tightly. Sara quickly spotted one other man with his back turned to the three of them about six rows back.
    “Nice trick,” she said. She carefully took in the situation. She wondered if she was dealing with a mage, but she didn’t think so. Her battle instincts told her she was dealing with a normal man. Those instincts were almost never wrong. However, there was something magical about him. Narrowing her eyes, she realized it was the pendant around his neck. It was giving off an aura of old magic. She was impressed.
    Haven’t seen one of those