Guardian by Sam Cheever Read Free Book Online Page B

him.
    “This really isn’t the place or time, Monad,” he murmured huskily, “but I’m game if you are.”
    “Shut up.”
    The air in the cavern was thick with the putrid harpy stench. I slammed my lips shut in regret as soon as I’d spoken. I could almost feel the smell as a coating on my tongue. My gag reflex kicked in but I fought it back.
    It’s just odor. I told myself. It can’t really be crawling into my nose, my lips, my eyes. But it was so heavy in the air it felt as if it were alive. I wanted to ask Ian about it, but I was reluctant to open my mouth again.
    Ian’s body jerked to a stop suddenly and I slammed into him. It wasn’t an altogether horrible experience.
    He cursed softly and began fumbling in his breeches for something. Finally a soft click preceded a small illumination on the ground in front of us. We looked down and saw a huge skull on the ground at our feet. The fangs jutting out from the skull were easily six inches long and curved together at the sides of a wide jaw. It looked like it had been a gargoyle.
    Ian stepped over the thing and kept the small, beamstick focused on the ground as we walked. It was a good thing he’d pulled it out. The ground in the cavern was a veritable minefield of bones and rotting parts.
    Well, at least that explained the stench.
    Finally, I couldn’t help myself. I had to talk. “Did you come in this way?”
    Ian’s body swayed as he shook his head. “I came in at the other end of the wood. But this is closer to Tana’s kingdom. I’m getting short on time and decided it was worth the risk.”
    I frowned. “Short on time? For what?”
    He stopped suddenly. “Did you hear that?”
    I listened, casting my eyes blindly around as I strained to hear what he thought he’d heard.
    “I don’t hear anything.”
    After a few beats he started walking again. I followed in silence for a while and then commented. “This seems like a lot of carnage for two harpies doesn’t it?”
    He stiffened and stopped again.
    That time I heard it too. It was a small shifting sound. Like claws against rock. A tiny breeze swept over us, thick with the stench of harpy. And a whisper of sound followed it.
    Wings.
    Ian lifted the tiny beam of light toward the ceiling of the cavern and, at first, I thought the ceiling was alive. It appeared to be filled with roiling purple shadows that shifted smoothly against the light of Ian’s beamstick. But then the small circle of light halted on something that was definitely a face.
    Or at least it was the eyes of a face, but its bottom half appeared to be all jagged, deadly looking teeth.
    A soft warbling sound filled the air and the ceiling roiled in a wavelike fashion as what looked like thousands of harpies shifted into movement. Then one of them detached herself from the rock and hung above us, her nearly black wings stretching to their full width and her talons curving in anticipation. She looked huge, at least fifteen feet long. She threw back her head and screeched.
    The place exploded into sound.
    Ian and I covered our ears and fell to our knees into the carnage beneath us. Beyond the terrible sound of their screeching, I could just barely hear the thunderous drone of thousands of enormous wings beating the air above us.
    I fell to my back, blown over by the force of the wind they were creating in the confined space. Ian barely managed to stay upright, but he had to fight to regain his feet. I pushed myself into a crouch, but found it difficult to stand under the pounding wall of air.
    Dragging the long knife from my waistband where I’d stuffed it only moments earlier, I said a silent prayer and forced my legs to straighten. I’d faced death many times, both as a human and then later, as a warrior spirit. But never had my mortality been so close.
    Ian and I were dead. We were just a few breaths away from being a little more carnage on the horrible goriness of that cavern floor. And no one would ever know where we’d gone or what