Mistress of the Night - Don Bassingthwaite [95]
Something shifted in the shadows.
She froze, watching the darkness, but nothing moved.
But there had been something. Feena rose slowly, her heart beating faster. Her lips pulled back from her teeth One hand sought the paperweight she had cast her light onto. She lifted it and waited.
When the shadows shifted again, she hurled it.
Illumination streaked across bookshelves and scroll racks, sliced through shadows-but revealed nothing. The glowing paperweight arced across empty space until it hit a wall and bounced to the floor. Crack. Clatter. Rrrollll…
For a moment, the archives were silent again. Then sound tickled Feena's ear, a sound that grew and condensed like mist on leaves. Whispers. She could almost make out words-almost, but not quite. And behind the words was some force-something dark and alive-something ancient. The hair on her neck rose.
I know this, Feena realized. Moonmaiden's grace, this is Dhauna's dream!
The light of the paperweight vanished like a torch plunged into water. She hurled herself to the side out of instinct and felt a cold breeze as the sound of whispers rushed past. She gasped, shaken. If it was a dream, it was like nothing she'd ever felt before.
"Wake up, Feena," she told herself. "Wake up!"
Nothing happened.
In the darkness, whispers surged like waves on the sea. Dhauna had described feeling as if the whispers were going to overcome her, that whatever ancient force lurked behind them would consume her. The whispers shivered through Feena, tugging on her body and her spirit. Fear wrenched her heart.
The shadows shifted again. Feena dodged once more.
Whispers whirled and tore at her. If the force behind them expected her to flee as Dhauna had, though, it was wrong.
Feena came to her feet howling with a wolfs voice.
It had to be a dream. Her human form flowed into her hybrid wolf-woman shape with barely a thought. She leaped into the darkness, tearing at it ferociously. Her claws shredded through the shadow. Feena tumbled free and snarled triumphantly. For a moment, the whispers stretched thin, like strained voices-then rushed back in a thunderous roar.
Feena's snarl died. She threw herself away but the dark thunder slammed into a bookcase behind her. The shelf exploded into splinters and tatters of paper. Flying wood pierced her like a tiny arrows, spattering pain against her hide. Feena yelped in sudden alarm. The force-whatever it might have been-was too powerful. She couldn't fight it face to face. She needed to get away.
A growl answered her unspoken need: Here!
She twisted. A long gray tail was just vanishing into the archive's maze of shelves. A wolfs tail!
Feena hesitated for a heartbeat, then scrambled after it. Behind her, the roaring darkness lashed at the floor where she had stood, gouging long strips out of it.
The moment she plunged in among the stacks, though, the roar seemed to sweep away into the distance. A glance over her shoulder showed what seemed like a corridor of books stretching out behind her until it twisted around a corner. How had she moved so far? She looked back around. The tail she had glimpsed was gone again and not even her wolfs nose could sniff out anything more than dust and crumbling parchment. Had she imagined the other wolf? The whispers were building again, growing in volume as if the dark force had plunged into the maze after her. If it caught her…
She whined desperately, Help!
Here!
She moved forward. Growls guided her through turns and at intersection with other book-lined corridors.
Here! Here!
She followed, though she saw nothing. She had to run to keep up-at least until the same flowing transformation as before caught her a second time. Suddenly she was a wolf, loping along easily on four legs.
But as she dashed past one intersection, the whispers surged and shadows boiled out. The darkness had found her. Feena half-turned, ready to meet it, but before she could, a form flashed past