“All dead,” one woman had gasped as she came up to them and they caught her in their arms. “Killed, every one of them. Killed by him, by the Seraphic! He lied to us. He deceived us all.”

Another had repeated the words, bitter and enraged and devastated by what had happened. That one, too, had gone on. Aislinne had given each of them water to drink and a bit of food and told them to wait inside the pass for help to come. Where it would come from, she had no idea. But it was all Prue or she could do. The scarlet dove flew on, and they were committed to following it to where they would find Panterra Qu and whatever fate awaited them all.

Now they were in hiding at the far end of the pass and had seen for themselves the source of the horrific stories related by the ragged people they had encountered earlier. Not a hundred yards from where they crouched the killing field began, a span of several acres covered by the mingled corpses of Drouj and people from Glensk Wood alike sprawled everywhere across the slopes. Neither she nor Aislinne had ever seen so many dead people before, and the enormity of it was appalling. Human men, women, and children and Drouj soldiers, their blood dark and stiff on their skin and clothing, their limbs twisted and fixed, their eyes blank and staring. Many of these were people they had known; some had been friends and neighbors. None had deserved this.

In the midst of this carnage, Skeal Eile sat waiting, his back to them and his eyes on the countryside beyond. They had seen his features clearly when they had crept through the shadows of the defile to their hiding place, not daring to come any closer than they were. He had been moving about then, glancing this way and that, his nose lifting as if he were testing the air for scent. They knew he wasn’t who he seemed—he wasn’t Skeal Eile at all, but the demon that had tracked them both. They could feel what he was in their bones—Prue in particular, her instincts screaming at her, shivers running up and down her spine. They looked at each other, their breathing labored and harsh in their throats, and they knew.