Into Their Woods (The Eerie, #1)(10)

The bite on my leg throbs in time with my racing heart. I look down to see that my calf is bloody, but it doesn’t look completely mangled like I was afraid it would. Survival instinct slaps me across the face, and I roll to my stomach and start crawling away. I’ve barely managed to go half a foot when the burning ache in my leg morphs into a full-blown inferno.

I gasp at the sudden change in sensation, but that’s all I can do before I’m engulfed in white hot agony.

I scream—or at least I think I do—as pain shreds me.

My muscles feel like they’re tearing away from my bones. And my bones feel like they’re snapping apart, only to be fit back together so they can break again.

Mindless and lost to the anguish, I beg the moon and the stars, every god I’ve ever heard of. I even beg the four colossal wolves themselves that are now standing above me watching…waiting.

Stop! Please make it stop!

I plead and keen and writhe, but it doesn’t stop.

Inside my chest, my heart blasts off like a missile, rocketing faster than it ever has—until it feels like it will break the sound barrier.

BOOM.

My chest bursts apart and suffering seizes my voice, contracting my throat as torment tugs at every part of me.

The forest all around me is suddenly gone, and flashes of confusing images strobe behind my eyes. I blink and I’m walking up the steps of my first foster home. Then I’m pulled further back in time—making pancakes with my mom in our kitchen.

Pain flares, searing me from the inside out, and the vision of my memories is replaced by a dingy warehouse. I search my strange, fuzzy surroundings for anything familiar, but all I see is a large man angrily striding away. He yanks a door open, and the sunlight blazes in and swallows his silhouette.

Torment flickers through my limbs, and I’m strangely aware that even though my mind is focused on this dreary warehouse, my body is elsewhere suffering. It’s as though I’ve fractured somehow—and I’m terrified I’ll never come back together.

A whimper pulls me from my frenzied, agony-filled thoughts, and I turn to see a group of kids huddling in a far corner. They’re dirty and thin, and their fearful gazes toggle between the door the man disappeared through and me. My eyes land on a boy who has his back to me. I think he has bruises running up his side, but it’s hard to tell under the grime layering every exposed inch of him. His hair looks dark. Black maybe when it’s absent of dust and debris.

My heart aches for him. I feel it deeper than the ripping misery currently attacking my body.

I need him to turn. I need it more than I need this agony to stop. I need it in a way that doesn’t make sense, because this seems like a memory, though none of it’s familiar. None of this…except for him. The longing inside of me expands and grows, blooms into a thudding ache of its own.

The boy’s head tilts. I’m desperate to see him, like his face is the key to my salvation. He pivots. I stop breathing, holding it in against the crescendo of physical pain.

Then suddenly it stops.

Shocked, I look down at my body, but it’s not mine, it belongs to a child. Before I can look up to find the boy again, before I can discover who he is or why he feels so important to me, I’m hooked through my middle by some unseen force and yanked away from the memory.

I drop back into myself, and everything is dark. I’m leaden, dead weight, and I think I’m being carried. A tiny whimper slips out of me, and I’m pulled tighter against something warm and hard.

“It’s okay, we’ve got you. You’re going to be just fine,” a deep, soothing voice comforts.

I don’t know what’s happened to me or who we is, but for some reason I believe him.

I’m going to be just fine.





3





NOAH





Consciousness slowly trickles in, little droplets of sensation seeping into my mind as I realize I’m warm and more comfortable than I think I’ve ever been in my life. The cottony softness of a perfect dream seems to cloud my mind as I press deeper into a downy pillow and lush bedding. I feel dazed, kind of out of it, but I can’t find it in me to really care. I’m too comfy. I snooze, half awake, half not, as I try to recall what my perfect dream was about, but it slips through my fingers like strips of silk.

I hear low male voices mumbling words that are far too hazy for me to make out.

Maybe I’m still dreaming?

This might be one of those dreams where you know it’s not real and yet you’re stuck until your subconscious ejects you. The voices are deep and decadent, the tones dripping over me like warm candle wax. I want them to be closer, and the dream suddenly responds to my desire.

The muffled thud of footsteps draw nearer, and a delicious baritone floats in the air somewhere above me. “Ellery was called in for an emergency, but he said to stay close and watch for any signs of Fading.” The voice has a rich soothing quality to it, like warm honeyed tea, and I want to sip on it.

“Not a problem,” a gravelly voice agrees from behind me, and I slowly become aware of a large, hard male body that’s pressed close to my back. “I’ve never been happier to lay around in bed all day.”

An arm tightens around my waist, pressing me closer to the person spooning me—someone with very defined pecs. As much as I like it, something about the sensation gives me pause. I try to work through what’s pinging my instincts, but my soggy brain is lagging. My entire body feels like mushy cereal that’s sat in a bowl of milk for too long. There’s something I should be paying attention to, but I can’t figure out what it is.