Read Online Blazing the Trail by Deborah Cooke - Free Book Online

that I lost it.
    I struggled and I twisted. I fought and I kicked and I swore and I screamed. None of it made any difference. Trevor and Adrian sang a nasty spell, one that I’d heard before and liked even less this time. As soon as they started, golden ropes of spells appeared in the air, growing longer and thicker as they wound all around me. I was trussed up in no time and powerless to escape, just like a shifter I’d seen sacrificed when I infiltrated the Mages’ hive memory; just like Jessica and the guys had been in the fall.
    And my blue shimmer was AWOL.
    I didn’t stop trying to summon it, even though I knew it wasn’t going to answer. Meanwhile, Trevor and Adrian hauled me ever deeper into the vacant lot, the one that wasn’t very vacant after all. They joined in the chant with the other kid, making the globe overhead get bigger and brighter, the silhouettes inside moving with greater agitation. The ShadowEaters pressed against the barrier of the spell orb, so close that I could see their eyes.
    They glowed orange, just like in my dream. They had no pupils, no irises, nothing but orange spell light shining like beacons where their eyes should have been. TheShadowEaters could have been just skins filled with orange spell light. It was like the light in Adrian’s eyes but a hundred times worse, and a thousand times more terrifying.
    They were going to eat my shadow and destroy me, and there wasn’t one thing I could do about it.
    Except panic. I had that covered.
    And my terror only increased when I saw Kohana.
    The Thunderbird shifter who had tried to betray my kind to the Mages the previous spring, who had attacked me in the fall, and who had worked with me under protest to destroy the Mages’ collective memory sauntered toward us, working his way through the broken bottles and discarded car fenders and busted furniture.
    He still had dark hair and dark eyes, a secretive smile, and a tight pair of jeans. He was wearing a dark T-shirt this time, one that covered the feather tattoo I knew he had on his shoulder, and it seemed to me that his expression was a little bit mean.
    Was he enchanted? I dared to hope, but there was no spell light around Kohana.
    My heart stopped cold when I saw that he had the NightBlade, the weapon he had stolen from the Mages in November. He’d said then that he was going to destroy it, as it was the tool they used to cut the shadows away from the bodies of their victims, the better to offer sacrifices to the ShadowEaters. But he was back, he still had it, and it didn’t look damaged in the least.
    Plus he held it up, as if intending to use it.
    This was how they were going to complete the ceremony—they
had
the NightBlade. Kohana had brought it to them.
    No! Kohana’s expression turned resolute, and my very bad feeling became forty-seven thousand times worse.
    Because it didn’t take much to figure out whose shadow was the plat du jour.
    T HE S HADOW E ATERS CLEARLY KNEW WHAT
was going to happen. Their forms were moving more quickly, shifting and shimmering, vibrating with excitement and anticipation. The orb was being stretched in every direction as they fought to become free. And there was a point in the orb where they strained toward Kohana, their fingers grasping in the direction of the NightBlade.
    Even though they were still inside that orb of spell light that had conjured them, I could hear them salivating, licking their lips and clicking their teeth together. I swear their bellies growled—even though they didn’t appear to have any.
    They were the stuff of nightmares.
    I struggled as I heard Trevor and Adrian and the other kid sing the spell of sacrifice. I knew I was next, that I was feeling the same horror and futility the other sacrificed shifters must have felt. I did not want to know how it felt to be eaten alive by ShadowEaters.
    If they took me out, as Wyvern of the
Pyr
, I feared the rest of the dragon shifters would lose heart. My dad would be easy to trap