“This willnae be pleasant fer either of us, but ’tis necessary. The body must release to allow the spirit the freedom to depart. Only the pain and the blood can be doin’ that. Are yie ready?”

Stark nodded. Pressing his hands against the hot skin of the stone, he sucked in a deep breath that smelled of cedar.

“Wait! Before you cut him, tell him something that’ll help. Don’t just let his soul flail about moronically in the Otherworld. You’re a Shaman, so Shaman him,” Aphrodite said.

Seoras looked at Aphrodite and then glanced from her to his queen. Stark couldn’t see Sgiach, but whatever passed between the two of them made her Guardian’s lips curl up in the slightest hint of a smile when his eyes went back to Aphrodite.

“Well, ma wee queen. I’ll be telling yer friend this: when a soul wants to truly know what it is to be good, and I do mean purely good for unselfish reasons, that is when the basest of our nature gives in to the desire fer love and peace and harmony. That surrender is a powerful force.”

“That’s too poetic for me, but Stark’s a reader. Maybe he’ll have a clue what you’re talking about,” Aphrodite said.

“Aphrodite, would you do me a favor?” Stark asked.

“Maybe.”

“Stop. Talking.” He looked up at Seoras. “Thanks for the advice. I’ll remember it.”

Seoras met his gaze. “You must do this on yer own, laddie. I cannae even hold yie down. If you cannae bear it, you willnae make it through the gate anyway, and best to be puttin’ this tae an end now, before yie think tae begin.”

“I’m not going to move,” Stark said.

“The heartbeat of the Seol ne Gigh will lead you to the Otherworld. Getting back, ach, well, that’ll be a path yie must be findin’ fer yur-self.”

Stark nodded and spread his hands against the surface of the marble, trying to absorb its heat into his suddenly chilled body.

Seoras lifted the dagger and struck Stark so fast the movement of the Guardian’s hand was a blur. The initial pain of the wound that slashed from his waist to the top of the right side of his rib cage was little more than a hot line in his skin.

The second cut was almost identical to the first, only it made a weeping red line across his left ribs.

And that was when the pain began. Its heat seared him. His blood felt like lava as it poured from his sides, pooling on the top of the stone. Seoras worked the razor-edged dirk methodically from one side of Stark’s body to the other, until Stark’s blood crested the edge of the rock as if at the corner of a giant’s eyes. It hesitated there and finally poured over and down, weeping scarlet tears in the intricate knot-work and then dripping to fill the horn-shaped trenches.

Stark had never felt such pain.

Not when he’d died.

Not when he’d un-died and thought only of thirst and violence.

Not when he’d almost died from his own arrow.

The pain the Guardian made him feel was more than physical. It burned his body, but it also seared his soul. The agony was liquid and interminable. It was a wave he couldn’t escape, which battered him over and over. He was drowning in it.

Stark automatically fought. He knew he couldn’t move, but still he struggled to retain hold on his consciousness. If I let go I’m dead.

“Trust me, laddie. Let go.”

Seoras was standing above him, bending again and again over his body to slice his skin, but the Guardian’s voice was a distant anchor, hardly discernible.

“Trust me . . .”

Stark had already made the choice. All he had to do was to follow through with it.

“I trust you,” he heard himself whisper. The world turned gray, then scarlet, then black. All Stark was aware of was the heat of the pain and the liquid of his blood. The two merged, and he was suddenly outside his body, sinking into the stone, dripping down the carved sides, and washing into the horns.

Surrounded only by pain and darkness, Stark fought against panic, but strangely, after only a moment, the terror was replaced with a numb acceptance that was kinda comforting. On second thought, this darkness wasn’t so bad. At least the pain was going away. Actually, the pain seemed almost a memory . . .

“Do not fucking give up, moron! Zoey needs you!”

Aphrodite’s voice? Goddess, it was irritating that even detached from his body, she could still bother him.

Detached from my body. He’d done it! The exhilaration that came with the realization was quickly followed by confusion.

He was out of his body.

He could see nothing. Feel nothing. Hear nothing. The blackness was absolute.

Stark had no idea where he was. His spirit fluttered and, like a trapped bird, it battered against nothingness.

What is it Seoras had said to him? What had been his advice?

. . . surrender is a powerful force.

Stark quit fighting and quieted his spirit, and a small memory shone through the blackness, that of his soul, pouring with his blood into two troughs shaped like horns.

Horns.

Stark focused on the only tangible idea in his mind, and he imagined himself grabbing hold of those horns.

The creature came out of the absolute darkness. He was a different kind of black than that which had engulfed Stark. He was the black of a new moon sky—deep, night-resting water—and half-forgotten midnight dreams.

I accept your blood sacrifice, Warrior. Face me and move on, if you dare.

I dare! Stark shouted, accepting the challenge.

The bull charged him. Acting purely on instinct, Stark didn’t run. He didn’t jump aside. Instead, he faced the bull, head-on. Screaming his anger and rage and fear, Stark ran at the bull. The creature lowered his massive head as if he would gore Stark.

No! Stark leaped at the bull, and with a motion that was dreamlike, grabbed his horns. At the same instant the creature threw up his head, and Stark vaulted over his body. He felt like he was diving from an impossibly high cliff as he hurled forward farther and farther, and somewhere, behind him in the black soullessness, he heard the bull’s voice echoing three words: Well done, Guardian . . .

Then there was an explosion of light around him just before he tumbled onto a hard-packed piece of ground. Stark picked himself up slowly, thinking how weird it was that even though he was nothing but spirit, he still had the form and feeling of his body, and looked around.

In front of him was a grove, identical to the one that grew near Sgiach’s castle. There was even a hanging tree before it, decorated with strips of cloth too numerous to count. As he watched, the cloth changed, taking on different colors and lengths and shimmering like Christmas tree tinsel.

The Otherworld—this had to be the entrance to Nyx’s realm. Nothing else could look this magickal.

Before stepping forward, Stark glanced behind him, thinking it couldn’t be this easy to get in and expecting the giant black bull to materialize and this time gore him for real.

All that was behind him was the black nothingness from where he’d come. If that wasn’t creepy enough, the segment of ground he’d been dumped onto was a small, half circle patch of red dirt that reminded him unexpectedly of Oklahoma, and in the center of the patch a gleaming sword was stuck halfway up to the hilt. It took two hands to pull the sword free, and then, as Stark automatically wiped the otherwise spotless blade on his jeans to clean it, he realized that, like the Seol ne Gigh, the original color of the ground had been tainted by blood.

He finished wiping the blade hastily, for some reason not liking the thought of blood staining it, and then he turned his attention to what was in front of him. That was where he needed to go. His mind, heart, and spirit knew it.

“Zoey, I’m here. I’m coming to you,” he said, and stepped forward, running into an invisible barrier hard as a brick wall. “What the hell?” he muttered, moving back and looking up to see that a stone archway had suddenly appeared.