The Secret of Spellshadow Manor 4 by Bella Forrest (life books to read TXT) 📕

Alex drew his anti-magic back into himself as he plummeted through the air, folding his body in on itself just in time, everything disappearing in a rush of wind. He emerged again with a heavy thump on the grass beside the gatehouse. It was an ungainly, hard landing, and Alex was convinced he’d broken something as a jolt of pain seared through his nerves.

He got up quickly, feeling another sudden sting in his ankle, though less painful than the last. Lifting the edge of his pant leg, he saw that the flesh beneath his sock was swollen, and guessed he must have unwittingly rolled his ankle when he fell. Wincing, he turned back toward the window he had jumped from. The flash of something pale and eerie moved in the distant room. Hollow eyes and a gaping mouth appeared in the vacant frame. A scream shivered through the air toward him, pressing him on as he hurried off toward the derelict town he knew rested in the distance, offering the hope of a safe haven.

I didn’t look them in the eyes, he vowed to himself as he ran. I definitely didn’t look one in the eye.

He ran and ran, dragging his leg behind him after feeling it buckle a few times, making him wonder if he hadn’t broken something after all. Emerging through the tree-line, he saw the familiar sight of the abandoned buildings up ahead, and proceeded onward, past the tumbledown tavern, past the crumbling shops and ancient houses, past Thunder Road, and up toward the mountains. Lightning cracked at the summit, a shard of bright light hurtling toward the great hunk of rock from the maelstrom of black clouds that swirled around the unseen peaks.

It didn’t seem particularly welcoming, but he could make out the ancient scaffold of a structure near the peak, and knew it would be the perfect vantage point from which to survey the whole area and keep an eye out for any approaching enemies. On higher ground, he’d have a better chance of survival.

Trying to ignore the dull throb of his foot, he walked toward the entrance to the steep mountain path. At the start of it, a cracked, peeling signpost stood up from a cluster of rocks, pointing the way. Alex paused to look at it, reading the name written across the damp, warped wood.

“Tempest Mountain,” it read. “Do not feed the birds.”

The name seemed familiar to Alex, but he couldn’t quite pinpoint why as he began the long climb upward, toward the skeleton of an outpost. He just hoped it would prove sheltered enough for him to hide in while he came up with his next plan of action, and prayed that those wispy sprites weren’t going to come after him. Right now, his brain was too frazzled by recent events to even begin to function properly, but he knew he’d have to come up with something soon, unless he wanted to stay trapped in this realm.

Up in the highest reaches, the wind whipped around Alex in biting blasts of ice-cold air. His lungs burned from the exertion of the climb and the thinning oxygen, and though the view was stunning from where he stood, the wind stung his eyes every time he opened them wide enough to see it. The forest stretched away into the distance, dipping where the keep stood, distinctly medieval and looming in the center of it all. But there were other dips too, giving away the locations of settlements nearby. A river glittered on the horizon, snaking through the forest and out to sea, farther than the eye could make out. Alex wondered if the other settlements were in the same state of dereliction as the town below the mountain—a smattering of ghost towns, echoing with the memory of bygone lives.

The outpost still lay ahead, never seeming to get any closer, and desperation for its protection pushed him onward. Turning back around, Alex continued to climb, his face numb from the cold, his path reaching ever higher until the rocks he grasped for were covered in thick ice and the ground below his feet was smothered in several inches of snow. Feeling anxious about how slippery everything had become, he paused to catch his breath, holding tight to a dry ridge of stone as he heaved in as much oxygen as he could, drawing deep for the strength to push on.

A shadow darkened the snow-covered shelf of rock in front of him. Someone was standing behind him. Despair made his heart sink—he had been caught. It took all the strength he had left to turn around, expecting to see Caius standing there behind him, having somehow evaded Vincent and his spirits, or even Vincent himself, possessed by the soul of a wispy devil, intent on killing him.

To his shock, it was neither.

Perched on the ledge behind him, head cocked, stood a gigantic bird, though Alex didn’t feel as if the word “bird” did the magnificent creature justice. It stood at around ten feet tall, towering over Alex with a full plumage of beautiful, glistening feathers. They began as a pale silver around its head, flowing seamlessly down through a medley of pale blues, into a darker shade of teal, and then toward the cobalt end of the blue spectrum, which bled into the gargantuan wings, though the tip of each wing was colored a regal gold.

She was like nothing he had ever seen, except in paintings and illustrations.

He didn’t know how he knew she was female either; he just thought she looked decidedly female as she dipped her head toward him, making him stagger back into the ice shelf. Above his head, he noticed strands of grass and branches sticking out, nest-like, from the ledge of rock.

Alex gasped with a mixture of awe and fear as she edged closer to him, and his eyes took in the stunning creature once more,