GATHERING STORM

CHAPTER 11

The cave walls pulsed like a living throat around them.

Catriona pressed her palm flat against the damp stone and felt it throb beneath her fingers. Each heartbeat sent another trickle of thick, milky fluid oozing from cracks in the rock. The air tasted metallic, coating her tongue with the flavor of old blood and lightning.

Mandalee sagged against her, the assassin's breathing coming in wet, ragged gasps. Her broken arm hung at a sickening angle, the makeshift splint doing little to help. Every step made her hiss through clenched teeth.

"Don't stop," Mandalee whispered. "It's tasting our fear."

Catriona didn't ask how she knew. The blue mushrooms lighting their path pulsed faster as they passed, their glow revealing long scratches in the stone - not from claws, but from something with too many joints in its fingers.

A sound like cracking bone echoed through the tunnel. The wall behind them bulged inward, stone stretching like rotting flesh. Five elongated fingers pressed against the other side, the tips blackened and peeling.

The wall held.

For now.

"Here!" Catriona gasped, spotting a narrow crevice ahead where the blue glow burned brightest. They squeezed through sideways, jagged stone tearing at their clothes and skin. The rock felt warm. Alive.

The crevice opened into a cavern so vast its ceiling vanished in the gloom. Before them stood the White Tower - not built by hands, but grown from some impossible crystal that shifted between solid and liquid. Its spires twisted like frozen screams, their surfaces reflecting distorted versions of their own terrified faces.

At the tower's base stood the Wardens. Dozens of them, encased in clear stone like insects in amber. Warriors frozen mid-swing, their faces locked in eternal agony. One woman's mouth gaped in a silent scream, her palms pressed against the inside of her crystalline prison.

Mandalee touched the nearest figure. "They volunteered for this," she breathed. "Chose to be eaten slowly so the hunger would stay contained."

A child's laughter rang out from inside the tower. High and sweet and wrong.

The massive crystal door stood slightly ajar. From within came the unmistakable sound of bare feet slapping against stone.

"Mother? You came back!"

Catriona's staff flared to life without her command, casting jagged shadows across the frozen Wardens. The light revealed words carved into the tower's base:

Here lies the hunger

Here stands the feast

The door creaked open wider. Darkness spilled out like blood from a fresh wound.

A small boy stood silhouetted in the doorway. He couldn't have been more than six years old. His nightshirt was too large, the sleeves swallowing his tiny hands. When he smiled, Catriona saw Daelen's eyes staring back at her.

Mandalee made a choked sound. "That's impossible."

The boy stepped forward, revealing what he cradled in his arms - a still-beating heart wrapped in silver wire. Blood dripped between his fingers, vanishing before it hit the ground.

"I kept it warm for you," he said, offering the pulsing organ. "Will you play with me now?"

Behind them, the cave wall split open with a wet tearing sound that vibrated in Catriona's teeth.

The boy's smile widened until the corners of his mouth touched his earlobes. "Oh good. Uncle's awake."

From the ruptured tunnel behind them came a sound like a thousand bones being ground to dust. The blue mushrooms began dying one by one, their light snuffing out as something vast and hungry dragged itself closer. The stone itself seemed to recoil from its passing.

The boy grabbed Catriona's hand. His fingers were freezing. "Hurry mother," he whispered, his breath smelling of old graves. "The feast is about to start."

He pulled her toward the open door where the darkness waited.

Mandalee lunged forward, her good hand closing around Catriona's wrist. "Don't!" she gasped. "That's not a -"

The boy turned his head. Just his head. The rest of his body stayed perfectly still as he rotated his neck a full 180 degrees to smile at Mandalee.

"Shhh," he whispered. "The grown-ups are talking."

Mandalee's mouth snapped shut with an audible click. Her eyes widened in terror as invisible forces dragged her backward toward the broken wall. Toward the sounds of grinding bones and wet tearing.

The boy's grip on Catriona's hand tightened. "Come see what I made for you," he said, his voice sweet as poisoned honey. "I used all the pretty lights."

Behind them, Mandalee screamed.