Free The Unforgiven by Joy Nash

eyes.
    “Are you okay, Ms. Durant?” Josh asked.
    She drew a deep breath. Thankfully, this time the strange auras around the boys disappeared. The excavation pit was as it had been. For one disoriented moment, all she could think was how oddly normal everything looked. Flat. Two-dimensional. Heartbreakingly dismal.
    The well was dark.
    “Ms. Durant?”
    She inhaled and pushed to her feet, cheeks flooding with heat. She was the adult here.
    Breaking contact with Josh’s supporting hand, she forced a laugh and reached for her canteen. “Sorry. Got a little light headed all of a sudden. I haven’t been drinking enough water.” She lifted the canteen for emphasis. “Let that be a lesson to all of you. It’s very easy to get dehydrated here in the desert and not even realize it until you’re ready to fall over. You have to drink before you get thirsty. Everyone have their water bottles? Good. We’ll all take a drink and get back to work.”
    The teenagers dutifully guzzled mouthfuls of water and returned to their scraping. Maddie gripped her own troweland struggled to collect herself. Thankfully, the visual disturbances—the glowing and the weird 3-D movie effect—didn’t return.
    Unless her suddenly 20-20 vision qualified as a visual disturbance. Though her glasses remained in her pocket, she could see better than she ever had. Weird. Really weird.
    She tipped her head back. Her eyes collided with Cade Leucetius’s intense blue gaze. How long had he been standing there, not ten feet from the edge of the pit, looking down at her? Had he witnessed her dizzy spell? For some reason, the thought that he’d seen her so vulnerable scared her.
    She frowned. Then, without waiting for his reaction, she turned her back. She assumed what she hoped was a casual demeanor and stepped over to supervise the teens.
    “Find anything interesting?”
    “Not a darn thing.” Jake sighed, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. “Just dirt and more dirt. You know, Ms. Durant, I thought archeology would be fun. But this is really kind of boring.”
    “
Kind of
boring?” Ben groaned. “More like totally boring.”
    “Yeah,” Josh said. “And just think, we’ve got two more weeks of this. I can’t wait to get to the pool.”
    Maddie laughed. “You’ll have time to swim tonight. Just remember, though, you can swim at home. You can’t dig up five-thousand-year-old history in your backyard. This dig is something you’ll remember the rest of your life.”
    Ben had the grace to look sheepish. “I guess it won’t be so bad if we find something.” The other boys muttered in agreement.
    “Looks like you guys have about had it for your first day.” She consulted her watch. “Tell you what. It’s almost five. The bus’ll be here at six. Want to pack it in early and get some sodas from the cooler?”
    “Are you kidding?” A general stampede for the ladder ensued.
    “Be sure to clean off your tools and stow them in the tool hut,” Maddie called after them, amused. Despite her pep talk, she didn’t begrudge the kids a bit of whining. Archeology was 99.9 percent brain-numbing boredom.
    She scraped a damp curl off her forehead. She really should follow to make sure the boys’ tools were cleaned and put away correctly. But when she turned to collect her own tools, she froze.
    The light was back. It glowed—
pulsed
, actually—a brilliant, otherworldly red. And . . . it wanted her to approach.
    An absurd thought but true. How or why she knew that, she couldn’t say. But her obedience was immediate. Before she could even form her next thought, she found herself stepping toward it.
    A blast of hot wind rushed her face. Pain stabbed behind her eyes. The pit, the shade canopy, the desert beyond—all bubbled like boiling water. Burning sand peppered her skin. Wood smoke, acrid and pungent, seared her nostrils, and reality transformed . . .

 
     
     
    Azazel taught Man to make swords, knives, shields, and breastplates. He taught