Well, that hadn’t gone the way I wanted.

“You can get up now.”

“Thank you, master.”

Deira jumped up.

“Why?”

Namtur spared me a look. “I am old and tired.”

Yeah right.

“Who will take care of you when I’m gone?”

“She’s a little girl.”

“She named herself Marten after a small vicious killer. She didn’t name herself after a meek rabbit.”

Magic pulsed through me. Someone was at my front door. I dissolved the outer ward. A moment later Derek walked into the inner chamber. Finally.

I grabbed Dakkan, my bag, and my bow and quiver.

“I will raise the Enki shield,” I told Namtur. “Should the ma’avirim arrive, use the tunnel. Everything here can be replaced except you and Deira.”

“Should they break through, I will bring this place down on their heads. It shall become their tomb. If that happens, the child and I will wait for you where your grandmother gave up her life. Make your kingdom proud.”

“I will, Great Uncle.”

“I’ll keep her safe, old man,” Derek said.

Namtur fixed Derek with his stare. It was cold and dark, and it promised death. “Pah. Keep yourself safe, Shepherd of the Wolves. And if the danger is too great, hide behind her. Dananu Edes-Shinar has no need of your puny protection.”

Derek’s eyes shone with gold. He looked like he wanted to say something. The last thing I needed right now was the two of them getting into it.

“Let’s go.” I marched to the door.

Derek followed me. We exited into the hallway, crossed the house, and went out the front door.

Six shapeshifters waited by my porch, four men and two women. Zahar I already knew. The rest I had seen on the street when Derek and Ascanio had almost had their idiotic showdown, but aside from that, none of them looked familiar.

I turned around and strained. Magic broke free of me, pulsing through the wall of my house and sparking on the tappum, the clay tablets with ancient cuneiform I had affixed around the inner chamber. The Enki shield snapped into being with an audible thrum, and for a second the translucent dome towered over the house. It faded almost instantly, an invisible, impenetrable barrier.

“Cool alarm system,” Zahar said. “Where can I buy one?”

We turned down 17th street, heading straight into Unicorn Lane.

“What happened with the Beast Lord?” I asked.

“The usual,” Derek said.

Derek Gaunt, chatty Cathy. “Could you elaborate?”

“We have three days to conclude our business in the city,” Zahar told me. “If we overstay our welcome, there will be consequences nobody will like.”

If we survived, Derek would leave in three days.

“Not a lot of time,” someone said behind me.

“It’s enough,” Derek said.

We were a hundred feet into Unicorn Lane when Derek picked up the beggar’s scent and the nearest lamppost sprouted teeth and claws and tried to eat his face.

17

The portal measured about six feet wide and ten feet tall. It wavered, its edges ragged and glowing softly, hidden deep inside a ruined parking garage. Inside the portal a wide plain stretched, awash with green grasses, and in the middle of it, a good couple of miles off, a house rose on a low hill.

Around me the shapeshifters formed a circle, all still human. It had taken us half an hour to get to this spot, and they paid for it with blood. Their flesh wounds knitted closed, but one of the men had a broken arm, and one of the women, a tall redhead, had taken a giant insect pincher to the abdomen. She was breathing in short, shallow gasps. I was pretty sure her intestines were lacerated.

“What is this?” the other woman asked. “Is this an illusion? It doesn’t smell like an illusion.”

It smelled like the steppe, of grass, and wind, and water meandering from a hidden stream.

“It’s the home of the man we’re looking for,” Derek said. “It’s his refuge. He always was a coward.”

“I don’t understand,” a short male shapeshifter said. “If we go through this, where are we going to end up? Is this someplace far away but on this planet?”

They looked at me. Apparently, I was the designated tear-in-the-fabric-of-reality expert.

“I don’t know,” I told them. “It could be. It could also be a naturally occurring pocket of deep magic or a crafted realm, something a powerful being made for themselves.”

“He isn’t that powerful,” Derek said. “Most likely he found it, and he’s squatting there.”

“Or,” I told him, “he may have made a deal with whoever crafted it, and the moment we go through it, they’ll dump a meteor shower on our heads.”

“Are we going in?” Zahar asked.

“I’m going in,” I told them. “I can better protect myself from magic. I’ll tell you if it’s safe.”

They would follow me. The ma’avirim hadn’t found this hidey hole, because the house wasn’t on fire, but Derek knew they would be coming. If we could find it, they could too, and leaving shapeshifters by the entrance to face Moloch’s priests alone would be stupid.