There was a marking on the map, a tiny X with a dotted trail leading away from it, deep into a vast expanse of forestland a few hours northwest of Abelaum. The trees were thick, their roots tangled and covered with the thorny brambles of blackberry bushes. We passed a few hiking trails, with dirt lots beside them where hikers could park before they began their journey, but Zane said the areas didn’t feel right.
“It won’t be that simple,” he said, eyes scanning the trees as we kept driving. “We need to find the right way in.”
I wasn’t sure what the hell that meant, but considering we were dealing with witches and magic, I was going to assume Zane knew more about all that than I did.
When we finally stopped the car, I didn’t need any assurance we’d found the right place.
The trees had grown utterly wild. Many of them were bent, as if they’d endured a heavy wind as they grew. Some were twisted over each other, their boughs hanging low to brush the ground. It was late in the year to bloom, but thick clusters of wildflowers stretched back into the trees: purple, white, yellow, and pink. These flowers shouldn’t have been blooming at the same time, let alone in the same place. Every inch of the ground — every rock, limb, and fallen tree — was covered with a thick blanket of moss.
It was like staring into a terrarium: everything was too thick, too clustered. As if the forest was trying to draw itself together, creating a cocoon around whatever was inside.
Zane sighed heavily, shaking his head. “This is a bad fucking idea.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Probably.”
A narrow, winding dirt trail led back into the forest. The thick, gnarled limbs of the maple trees curved over the path, their mossy limbs dripping with the drizzling rain. Goosebumps prickled over my arms, and I nervously laid my hand over the knife strapped to my thigh. The rain collected on the leaves above and formed heavy drops that dripped slowly to the ground. That was the only sound in there: the dripping rain. The trees didn’t groan, they didn’t move in the breeze, the birds didn’t sing. There was just the slow, steady drip of the rain.
Zane stepped ahead of me. “Stay close,” he said. “And be cautious. Not everything you see is as it appears.”
Fabulous. Exactly what I wanted to hear.
We walked for an hour. Then two hours. Neither of us spoke: not because we had nothing to say, but because we didn’t dare to make a sound. It was too quiet, and breaking the silence felt sacrilegious — or dangerous.
I hadn’t seen or heard anything, but I still felt like we were being watched.
The smell of the wildflowers, pleasant at first, was unbearably heavy in the air. It was cloying in my nose and made my head ache. The vibrancy of the greenery around us was dizzying. Was I imagining it, or did everything look the same?
We’d been walking for two hours, but this looked…familiar.
“We must have passed it,” I finally said softly, and paused to rummage the map out of my backpack. Zane kept walking.
“Don’t stop,” he said sharply. “Stay close.”
I didn’t miss the note of alarm in his voice. I jogged to catch back up with him, and popped open the top of my pistol’s holster to be ready. The noise made Zane flinch, and he glanced back, wide-eyed.
“Whatever you do,” he said, “don’t take that fucking gun out.”
I blinked rapidly in disbelief. “Don’t…don’t take out my gun?”
He shook his head rapidly. “No. Don’t do it, Juniper. Don’t do anything threatening.”
“Why?”
“We’re being watched.”
That seemed like a damn good point at which to pull out my gun. My fingers twitched with the need for it, and I grit my teeth as I fought the urge. “What the hell does that mean, Zane?”
He didn’t say anything. His claws were out, he was walking fast, and his movements were twitchy. We weren’t moving nearly as fast as he wanted to, and that scared me more than anything. If Zane felt the need to run, then what the hell was —
He stopped abruptly. A massive tree was bent low over the trail ahead, curved into an arch. Flowers were clustered everywhere, their perfume unbearably heavy, but there was another scent too: like iron and coal.
Zane growled low in his chest, and I followed his gaze up to the tree curved over the path. Someone — something — was crouched on the mossy trunk. Long limbs, pale skin cut through with a webbing of ink black veins, and black eyes. Solid black eyes and long sharp teeth.
Zane managed to get out a single word.
“Fuck.”
The creature moved. I blinked and it vanished, and Zane was suddenly thrown back. He slammed into the trunk of a tree nearly fifty yards away, cracking it, the violent sound of splintering wood ringing out in the eerily silent forest.
I reached for my gun, but I wasn’t fast enough.
The creature slammed into me, knocking me flat on the ground and flinging my pistol from my hands. I scrambled up, gasping for the air that had been forced from my aching lungs, grasping for my weapon. The forest had plunged into darkness and I was discombobulated, stumbling. There was yelling — ragged, pained yelling — and then something seized me from behind.
One hand on the back of my skull. One hand on my jaw. Claws digging into my skin. My head throbbed, as if a speaker had been turned up full-volume against my head and was pounding bass into my skull. The voice that chuckled in my ear, so deep and dark it couldn’t possibly be human, said, “Lights out, girl.”
I was going to die.
It was going to snap my neck.
There was another impact, and this one ripped the creature off me. I was thrown to my stomach, and I couldn’t see my gun in the dark, but I could see Zane locked in combat with the creature. Not just a creature — a demon unlike any I’d ever seen.
It threw Zane off and slammed its foot down on his face with a sickening crunch. Laughter reverberated through the forest, laughter that was utterly cold and cruel. Suddenly the demon was right in front of me, black eyes staring into mine, its teeth too long and sharp to fully shut its mouth.
Leathery black wings extended from its back, cocooning me into total darkness. It smelled like the flowers were burning.
“He was right, you know. Coming here was a very bad idea.”
I was struck hard, and darkness enveloped me.
