Page 3 (1/2)

But Lucan had his orders

The , he loosed his grip upon the branch As she leaped for the lower branches, he spread his wings and sprang upward, bursting up through rustling leaves of the oak and taking to the sky

There were shouts from below, threats hurled skyward, but the Jaculus did not slon If the trickster shifted into bird-shape and followed, Lucan could kill him easily And the winter ed serpent was over the top of the ae were excellent spies, but Ty’Lis and Hinque had asked Lucan to come himself to be sure that there were no mistakes, that someone was there to report the outcome of the Myth Hunters’ attack Now they and the others would be waiting for word The Bascoo, and the Borderkind who had allied themselves with him as well These were simple measures, precautions to be taken before the rest of the plan could be put into action

But it was too late now The whispers had begun, the violence would follow shortly, and then there would be war And in the midst of that, the Bascombes and the Borderkind would be little ht

Yet Lucan knew that, to Ty’Lis, nothing would be as ierous enemies The rest of the Borderkind had to be exterminated, no matter howwith the filthy myths he had befriended

The Veil itself depended upon their deaths

And an eraves

CHAPTER 2

In the darkness, surrounded by the whisper of the shifting sands, Collette could see nothing except the glowing sphere of white light that waxed and waned and danced in her cell in the Sandman’s castle Sometimes it disappeared entirely, but it always came back From time to ti deed of all the luck she had accu to abandon her because it sensed she would soon die

It had become her only friend

Collette needed a friend now, in the madness of this impossible world, for she lived in terror, and her dreahtainst the rounded wall of the cha it from her mouth Her scalp itched like et all the sand froh water to drink, and trying to use it for personal hygiene would have been idiotic But still, the itch was un to itch as well and the stale smell that came from her every pore made her nostrils flare in revulsion Collette often tookunclean

But it was as if itin the corner of the cha that the need had brought her to tears Then, when she could not hold off any longer, she took off her pajaht of her abduction--and simply here she stood

She camped elsewhere in the chamber from then on, and that spot had become the spot For a couple of days she had tried to eat as little as possible of the fruit and cheese and bread the Sand that it would eventually nity What unsettled her even more was that after she had relieved herself, the sand always shifted and the offending waste disappeared, disposed of soun to fray, she had begun to think of the spot as "the litter box"

When she slept, curled into fetal position, the sand felt as though it crept across her bare flesh At night, the sand was still war some of the heat of the day When the sun was up, however, the heat was terrible The round chamber ide and airy, with no doors but a dozen tall, arched s set at intervals all around her There was no glass, the opening to the outside world tantalizing to her, but they were twenty-five feet from the soft sand beneath her, and the walls were hard-packed sand like granite Even in her few hopefulable to climb up there to escape

The days seeer, so that she knew her i she had been ih, told her the only thing thatThe muscles in her neck and back and shoulders were knotted fro on the sand and the rest of her was stiff just froainst the wall

Now, every few hours, she spent twentythe dayfrom one shadow to another Atfrom the sun when it was directly above and it was best not to exert herself then

After dark, the walking continued

The sand shifted beneath her feet as she ave way Her arches were bands of pain, but she ignored the up near theas though watching her, and it spurred her on The walking kept her fro to die She would not surrender that easily It was both a tiny bit ofthat staved off the deeper madness that awaited

Step after step, she followed the circular wall, somehoays aware of the spot she had made her litter box No matter that the sand drew the shit and piss down into itself, leaving no trace; she still circumvented that spot on her walks

When she had first awoken to find herself captive, she had found comfort in her memories of her favorite films Movies were a vital part of her life, so often she lost herself in theain now, herHill, to LA Confidential and Rear Window, to The Philadelphia Story and The Godfather But the Vittora was inside her hts and so about those fils she appreciated most in the movies Some of them had monsters, but all of the monsters were human She’d never had an interest in the other sort…could not invest any real fear in them, because she did not believe

But Collette believed in monsters now

One of them had murdered her father and torn his eyes out, and kept her captive even now Fro down at her from one of the ith those filthy leers Soers were covered with blood He had spoken to her shortly after he had first captured her, but never since

Now only the Vittora spoke

"Put one foot in front of the other," it said in a singsong voice that scraped off of the sound all around the cha out the door"

Collette shuddered, eyesfrom her mind, some snippet from one of the Christirl The edge in its voice ht have been irony or comfort or mockery, or some combination of all three Clearly, the Vittora did not think she would be walking out the door, or it would not have appeared It was the harbinger of her death, and though hts, there was a morbid amusement in its tone that made her want to screaht in the darkness and edy, but the observation of tragedy It was the ringing phone in thewith dread, but still only the ht foot, she moved in that dreadful circle Soon she would sleep, but for the moment, she walked just to feel alive