9
“So where is this not-friend of yours?” I wondered as we stepped out into the warm sun.
Shade stopped and lifted his eyes to the top of the pit some fifty feet above our heads. An angry eyebrow nearly obliterated his sharp eye. “Hold still.”
I frowned. “Why-”
“Just do it!” he snapped.
I clapped my mouth shut and. The bird on my shoulder, however, wasn’t quite as cooperative. “What are you on-what the-!”
I didn’t get to hear his avian swearing before something flung itself out of the water and hugged its body to the shoreline. The thing lay only three feet from us, and when it looked up I let out a scream that echoed around the pit. Whatever it was in front of us, it was dead. Dead and angry.
Shade pushed me behind him as the dead thing climbed out of the water. The thing,
