The Crossing (Immortals) Read Online Free Page A

moon, the exhilaration of flight.
    It was all hers now. Stolen in the most underhanded,
shameful way.
    Her grip on the stone tightened. Pain sliced through
her palm. She did not let go.
    She deserved to be hurt. Deserved contempt and loathing.
What she was doing was wrong, but she'd never meant it
to go this far. Normally, she excluded the young ones
from her spells, but today she'd decided to cast her net a
little wider. Time was running out, and she'd wanted this
to be the last village.

    It hadn't seemed so bad when she started. Faerie life
essence was so strong-an embarrassment of magical riches,
really. She took so little from each village, relatively speaking. Until now, the effects of her theft had been negligible. A headache here, a pain there. Vague anxiety, soon
forgotten. With each magical heist, the moonstone glowed
a little brighter-and what, really, had been the cost to the
faeries? Nothing. The last six villages hadn't even known
they'd been robbed.
    But none of those villages had had an infant.
    It hadn't even occurred to her to look for a baby in this
one. Faerie births were extremely rare. The youngest children she'd encountered so far had appeared eight or nine
years old; in reality, they were probably fifty human years
or more. Never in a million years had she expected this
village to have had so recent a birth.
    She'd been wrong.
    Gods. She'd made a ton of mistakes since she'd come to
Scotland, but this one? This one was off the charts.
    She could fix it.
    But if she did that, she'd need to siphon an equal amount
of life essence from another faerie village, very quickly.
There was so little time. Just over a day. And faerie settlements were notoriously difficult to find. Clueless American that she was, Artemis hadn't realized just how difficult
until she'd arrived in the Highlands four months ago and
started hunting. Sure, she'd been able to map out Scotland's major ley lines easily enough, but what she hadn't
realized was that faeries preferred to nestle their villages
on tributaries of the main power channels, on magical
paths as faint and delicate as spider's silk. Hard to see, easily broken. She'd had to execute some fiendishly complex
spell-work in order to reveal them.
    It had taken three weeks to locate this last village. She
didn't have three weeks-or even three days-to find another. Tomorrow was Samhain. She had to be ready by sunset. If the next twenty-six precious hours passed and
she wasn't ready...

    Her chest squeezed so tightly, she couldn't breathe. The
stone in her fingers burned. Stars danced before her eyes.
She stared through the streaked windshield of her rented
Vauxhall Corsa, fighting back tears of pure panic.
    Would she do even this to attain her goal? Let a baby
die? What had she become?
    She pried open her fingers. The moonstone glittered,
luminous with life. Artemis's hand began to shake. Breath
hissed painfully from her lungs, like air from a tire pierced
by a small, sharp blade.
    Everything depended on the life essence contained in
the moonstone. Everything. But how could she sacrifice an
innocent life for her cause?
    How could she not?
    Mac abandoned the Norton by the side of the road and set
off across the meadow, wading through waist-high grass.
Gilraen flew grimly beside him, translucent wings buzzing,
his pointed-toe leaf shoes grazing the tops of drooping
seed-heads. His village wasn't visible to most eyes, though
it was not far away at all. A human on a country ramble
could easily come within inches of the faerie settlement
and have no idea at all that it was there. Unless that human
had very powerful magic and was looking very carefully.
    The community was good-sized by faerie standardsfifty human paces across. Hidden behind multiple glamour
spells, the cluster of huts nestled on the meadow's upper
slope, round thatched roofs mingling in perfect harmony
with the carpet of yellow-gold grasses laid out before
them. Walls of