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"If you try to escape again, I will kill her The High Council wants you and your sister left alive, for now But this one…there is no need for her to live I could strip her flesh and shatter every bone I could bathe in her blood and they would not care I could give her to the guards or, better yet, to one of e"

The sorcerer tossed Julianna aside She cru for air Two Atlantean guards dragged Julianna into the cell with Collette and left her there As they departed, she sprang up and charged at them, mad hopelessness in her eyes

They slammed the door in her face, expressionless

Ty’Lis ratedin Oliver’s door Oliver wanted to thrust his hands out, to tear at the sorcerer’s eyes or throat, but he did not dare

"Behave," theinto the cell fro

Ted Halliwell tried to tell hih both only died in shalloater At times it seemed he broke the surface and those two senses became sharper

For the most part, those were his only senses Yet there was a third--the tactile--that troubled him Perhaps it would be more accurate to call it a sensation He could see hands reach out--long fingers with sharp talons--but he could neither control their movements nor feel what they touched

In the dark, he approached a srazed nearby, and they whinnied as he passed, a shiver running up their flanks They snorted, spooked as hell, and the terror in their eyes ild But he passed by and the sounds of their skittishness faded

Tent flaps danced in the breeze, as did the banners flying the colors of King Hunyadi Halliwell had , once, and had felt an i, yet fair and wise--ato follow into war In another world In another era

Now he couldn’t follow anyone

He could only drift along behind the eyes of another What troubled him most, however, wasn’t what he couldn’t feel, but what he could There was no weight to him, none of the burden of flesh he’d felt all his life But he still felt as though he had substance, and within that substance, he could feel sand, shifting It eroded his bones, sifting against his insides

Impossible, of course

Ted Halliwell couldn’t be the Sandh he existed only behind the monster’s putrid lemon eyes Somewhere within the creature’s mind, he could feel a third presence He knew that it could only be the Dustman

Halliwell had co to destroy one another Like a fool, he had interfered

Now he slid through the night toward the military encampment Sentries marched the peri, it was a whisper on the breeze Through the Sandman’s eyes, Halliwell saw a sentry yaidely, and he wondered if this was the presence of the monster or ently easing children off to sleep It was the savage fiend of older stories who punished little ones by plucking out their eyes and eating them

Halliwell tried to tell himself that he was alive

He are From that bit of information, he deduced that he couldn’t possibly be dead In the ordinary world--before crossing the Veil in pursuit of the answers he’d thought Oliver Bascoive him about a series of murders and disappearances--he’d been a sheriff’s detective Now his old life had been erased and he wished that he had not needed those answers so desperately Trapped beyond the Veil, Halliwell had co to hter, Sara They had fumbled their relationship badly, and Halliished for another chance

But he couldn’t go back

That truth had broken soht up to the Sandman, he had attacked the creature on his own The Sande battle with his brother, the Dustest mistake he had eversand and dust had scoured his flesh, strippingdown his throat Then, for the longest ti

Awareness had returned slowly At first it had all been darkness, and then he had begun to see, and to hear From time to time that skittery whisper of the Dusth from the black shadows at the bottom of a well

Halliwell had no idea if the Sandman kneas alive, inside All he knehat the monster felt, and that was hatred Oliver and Kitsune had turned his own brother against him and then, for a tieance No matter what his former masters asked of him, he had no desire other than the murder of Kitsune and Oliver Bascombe

And now he hunted

The Sand at the few of Hunyadi’s soldiers who sat in a tight circle, srim talk of war How far they were from the battle front, where this camp was in relation to the few other places he’d been in the Two Kingdoms, Halliwell had no idea Not that it mattered The Sandman moved from place to place with a hideous ease His sandcastle still existed in doms, replete with doors that allowed him to travel to a thousand points on both sides of the Veil sih the ’s banner flapped overhead For a terribleHunyadi himself, but then he sensed what the monster knew, and understood that this was simply the tent of the commander of this battalion

With a swirl of dust around his feet--and it could have been that just for a moment this was not sand, but dust, because after all, the Dustman was in here as well--he paused at the rear of the tent The night seemed quiet save for the distant susurrus of conversation and the flapping of the tents The Sandman reached out a clawed hand and sliced the fabric It split like flesh, pouting open

Hallianted to screah the Sandman’s mouth in hopes that the commander would hear him But he didn’t dare, for certainly the Sandman would hear him, too

So he kept silent Just in case

No Act Stop hinored hi Just as he could not prevent hi the tent As the Sandh the tear in the fabric, he felt the grit scraping against his bones again, felt the sand all around him, and wished the Dustman could understand

He was powerless to do anything but bear witness

He wondered if his daughter, Sara, was asleep somewhere in another world, and he prayed that she had found so As the Sandman entered, the man looked up, forehead creased in a frown at the intrusion Realization shot like lightning across his face and he started to rise, opened his mouth to shout even as he reached for his sword

Halliwell felt hatred and disgust well up within him and tried to exert some kind of control, to reach his consciousness out into the Sandman’s hands and stop as to co