Then, from behind the stag skull, it spoke in a harsh whisper that hissed right through the glass, “It waits for you, Raelynn. It waits in the deep dark place.”
I slammed on the gas. I didn’t care if I crunched their boney bodies under my tires, but as my car sped toward them, they leapt out of the way, their speed nothing like the slow, hobbling gait I’d witnessed from the first one. I was swerving, the steering wheel wobbling as my tires struggled with my speed and the wet road. The car bottomed out as I hit the dirt driveway toward the cabin, jostling me as I sped over the bumps and potholes.
I didn’t say a word to Inaya about it when I got back. I explained away my trembling hands with continual complaints of how cold it was. I claimed I was just celebrating the weekend when I poured myself another glass of wine before noon. I wanted to cry. I wanted to hide.
But I had to figure out how to fight.
I wasn’t going to die a sacrifice. I wasn’t going to disappear, forgotten into these godforsaken woods.
I couldn’t leave her. I’d resigned myself to it.
By day, I searched for the grimoire and the witch who’d stolen it. But I returned at night, watching Rae’s cabin in the dark, to make sure the beasts didn’t get too close. They were hungry. So damn hungry, they were crawling out of the ground like maggots the colder and wetter it got. The radio began to crackle with reports of missing hikers, and I knew the beasts were feeding but it wouldn’t keep them occupied for long.
Things were getting worse.
The Gollums had woken up. The whole forest smelled like their rot. Mushrooms were sprouting up like mad. If the God’s human servants weren’t giving It what It wanted, then It would send the Gollums to do it instead: pale white beings that stalked the forest in silence, their intelligence far beyond that of the Eld.
I could only hope they didn’t find her.
I’d park my truck at the road and stand back in the darkness of the trees. I’d watch her shadow move past the lit windows, I’d listen to her hum as she cooked dinner and the way her socked feet shuffled across the wooden floor when she danced.
I knew better than to fall for a human. Humans were meant to be toys, not treasures. But it ached. Fuck, it ached.
Not even monsters could convince her to accept eternity. Perhaps I was simply too inhuman to understand the terror of forever, the dread that gripped mankind when faced with making decisions for the afterlife.
Demons swore bonds to each other at a mere glance sometimes, yet she couldn’t just…
She couldn’t. There was no use in dwelling on it. She couldn’t, and I would have been wise to stay away from her.
But I couldn’t.
Just a fucking fantastic predicament all around.
The skulls I’d placed to scare the Eld had rotted away, so I left the only other thing I knew of that could deter them: one of the vile little trinkets the Libiri so loved. Sticks, bones, string — and a fish eye, symbolizing the eye of the Deep One, would usually get the Eld spooked.
It spooked Raelynn too, but at least it made her vacate the house for a few days. With her hidden away at an apartment in town, she’d be harder to find. Safer, at least for a little while. Which meant I could hunt for the witch in earnest.
Everly was proving hard to find. She wasn’t with the Hadleighs anymore, having somehow managed to escape Kent’s careful watch over her. Every whiff I’d get of her would blow away as quickly as the wind, and I’d never been very good at the slow, steady art of tracking. I’d never had the patience, and now that I needed it, I simply didn’t have the skill.
But I knew someone who did.
It was near one in the morning when I met Zane by the bay. The rain had slowed to a misty drizzle, like static through the fog slowly rolling in off the water. The world was soft and pale, and the cherry on Zane’s joint flared in the dark.
“I’m surprised you’re still here.” Zane let the smoke curl from his lips as he spoke. “I thought you’d bail out the moment you got the grimoire.”
“I’d planned to. Problem is, I don’t have the damn thing. It was stolen from her, from Raelynn.” Zane glanced over at me, wide-eyed. He knew how important that wretched book was, how all my freedom hinged on destroying my name from its pages. “But I know who’s got it, and I’m hoping you can help me find her. Something is hiding her scent.” I frowned. I didn’t like to admit I wasn’t the best hunter, but Zane already knew it. It wasn’t shame that made me avoid placing all the blame on myself.