Bramble and Blood by Ashley Beasley

Author:Ashley Beasley [Beasley, Ashley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chirping Bird Publications
Published: 2019-01-07T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Getting the body to her truck was the easy part. Ben picked it up like it weighed nothing and carried it. Eve worried more about getting onto the grounds of Sanctuary. It had been almost four years since her banishment from the grounds but the creatures guarding Sanctuary had long memories.

She spotted the grounds while they were still several blocks away. She couldn’t miss the trees that soared above the old houses sitting around its park. Bare trees stood so thick she couldn’t see through them to the grounds proper. The huge park encompassed several blocks’ worth of real estate and magic hummed along her skin, caressing her and beckoning her home as she drove down the street beside the grounds.

Her stomach twisted. Coming here was a bad idea.

Ben directed her to the entrance they needed. The grounds were always open to foot traffic, and they were a popular tourist destination, but she wasn’t using a tourist entrance. A massive briar gate loomed up in front of the entrance Ben wanted her to take. The thorny limbs that made up the gate were flanked on both sides by guards, all of them accompanied by a familiar, whether a dryad or treeling. She saw movement in the trees just above the gate and saw several shifters on patrol.

She stopped and rolled down her window, holding her breath. It’s not like there are a lot of necromancers running around the city and she couldn’t glamour and hide what she was from the guards.

Ben leaned across her as a guard walked up to the truck and barked, “We’ve got a body in the back. Let us through and call into the main hub. Let the Speaker’s team know they’re needed topside at the civilian lab.”

The guard opened his mouth like he would argue but Ben growled and made Eve wish she weren’t sitting in between the two men. The guard took a step back and waved toward the gate. Silently the thorny vines unwound revealing an access road and another of the guards motioned them through.

Despite the sun’s rays, the grounds of Sanctuary on the inside looked like a winter wonderland. Sparkling frost coated every single branch and plant on either side of the small access road. The wind blew glittering snow across their path. Eve took a curve in the road and she glimpsed the main square and the buildings of Sanctuary Topside.

The main building spiraled up into the air, part cathedral, part fortress, all beautiful. She couldn’t make out the pictures the stained glass windows depicted from her distance from them, but the sun hit them and made them glitter like jewels against the frost covered stone of the building. Several other buildings sat around the square. All of them looked similar to the main building but in a smaller scale. A glass building rose at one corner of the square, a greenhouse full of magical plants for the public’s viewing.

But Topside was just the public front of Sanctuary. It was below those buildings she considered her real home.

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