18. Cory
18
CORY
W ith that, I broke into a jog, leaving my friends behind. I didn’t stop until I’d been swallowed by the forest. At first, I could see and hear dark shapes moving through the shadows in front of me, and off to the side. But I was surprised by how little time it took for me to feel completely alone.
It didn’t take me long to start feeling silly. It was dark in the woods, and Min had been right—the night was frigid. I wished I’d gotten a better look at the maps Sean and his friends had been looking at. But when I’d gone back to check them a day later, I wasn’t even sure I was looking at the right maps, let alone how I was supposed to triangulate them.
Nothing in the rules said we couldn’t walk on any of the paths that crisscrossed Vesperwood’s grounds, but I didn’t think a magical spring was likely to appear in the middle of one of them. Unfortunately, that meant that I had to stumble my way through the trees, my feet catching on rocks and roots, my hands constantly flailing for the nearest trunk to hold myself upright when I tripped.
What was I proving exactly, if I stayed out here all night, by myself? It wasn’t like Sean was around to see it. All I’d managed so far was to get my shoes and the cuffs of my jeans wet with snow, and to inconvenience my friends, who I wasn’t even with now.
I hoped they’d decide to give it up soon. None of them had seemed all that excited about being out here. I was sure if Ash suggested they go back inside and join Min, Keelan and Felix wouldn’t be hard to convince. I smiled, thinking of them back in the ballroom, the bonfire roaring, fiddles playing into the early hours of the morning. I hoped they had a good rest of the night.
It was hard to mark time out here in the dark. If I’d been smart, I would have brought a watch and a flashlight. As it was, I was walking by the faint light of stars that shone down through occasional breaks in the tree cover. If there was a moon, I had yet to see it.
I crossed paths sometimes, sinuous ones that curved through the woods on campus, but I never turned to walk down any of them. Something told me to keep pressing into the woods.
The air was still and silent. If I weren’t out in it, rapidly growing colder and more nervous, I might have said it was a beautiful night. Dark, sure, but peaceful. The kind of night you wanted to wrap yourself up in like a blanket.
I shook my head, trying to focus on the task at hand. The problem was, the task at hand was likely impossible.
God, you’re stupid .
The words echoed in the back of my mind, and for once, they didn’t come from the traitorous little voice I carried around with me. No, this time, I heard them in my father’s voice.
I shuddered.
To the best of my ability, I was walking in a straight line, but I didn’t know if that was even a good idea. If it wasn’t, then I supposed I should be grateful for the hummocks of earth and long, downed tree trunks that lay in my way, forcing me to go around them when I couldn’t scramble over. A compass would have been a good thing to bring, too. Too late now, though.
I couldn’t tell if I’d been outside for fifteen minutes or an hour. Time bled into itself in the dark. I couldn’t hear the Vesperwood bell, and I stopped for a moment, trying to work out when it should ring next. As I paused, I heard something.
A crack of wood, and a crunch of snow, followed faintly by a whoosh-whoosh that was a little too rhythmic to be the wind.
My mind conjured up a menagerie of horrors. Moraghin, tenelkiri, nightmare shapes I’d never seen clearly. Who knew what could be lurking out here, hunting us as we hunted the spring? Something could be stalking me right now.
The whoosh-whoosh got closer, and louder, and up ahead, in a tiny patch of starlight, I caught sight of—was that someone’s jacket?
Relief washed through me, though I felt like an idiot. A jacket made way more sense than anything else I’d imagined.
If Felix were here, he could probably have told me exactly how much more likely it was that I’d hear another student, rather than an unknown monster. The snap I’d heard was probably a footstep on a twig, and the whooshing sound had been someone’s thick jacket sleeve brushing their torso as they worked their way through the forest.
After a moment, I decided to follow the person I’d seen, whoever they were. They were well ahead of me, and moving perpendicular to the direction I’d been going. But I didn’t mind changing direction—it wasn’t like I really had a plan. And even if I didn’t join up with them, it was nice to know I wasn’t totally alone out here. It would be nice to see another human face, if only for a minute.
Unless it was Sean. I should probably be cautious, until I knew for sure.
A large mass reared up out of the night, taking me by surprise. That’s what I got for not looking right in front of me. I could just make out roots, inches from my face, and realized I was looking at the rootball of an enormous pine that had toppled over sometime in the past.
I squinted up ahead. The tree cover was deep here, but I could just make out a dark shape clambering over the massive trunk. I groaned. I’d been going around trees like this, when I’d come upon them, but I didn’t want to get too far behind whoever I was following.
With a grimace, I threw myself onto the trunk like a beached whale. I landed about a third of the way across, just far enough that my feet were lifted off the ground, but I couldn’t lever myself any farther. I shimmied instead, feeling my jacket ride up, little bits of bark digging into my skin as I wriggled my way up to the top of the log before sliding down the other side.
Full of grace, I was.
I was about twenty feet behind the figure now, still moving through the trees with a determined stride. Well, as determined as you could get in this mess. The figure ducked and dodged, weaving around thickets of brambles and tight stands of trees, and I poured on speed, gaining on them.
As I made my way around yet another boulder, I gauged the distance. I was about fifteen feet behind now, and surprised that the figure hadn’t turned around to see who was following them. I wasn’t exactly being quiet. But they never turned.
When I was ten feet away, the trees thinned out and created an open space in the forest. A birch tree with three trunks stood at the edge of the clearing, one of the trunks growing out practically horizontal. A large boulder sat next to the left of the tree, almost as tall as I was.
The figure clambered over the birch trunk and stepped into the clearing. Clearing wasn’t even really the word for it. That made it sound larger than it was. It was just forty feet or so of snow where there happened not to be any trees. But the forest pressed in from all sides.
I raised my hand, ready to call out. The figure pushed down the hood of their jacket, and I blinked. It was Erika.
“Hey!” I called, my voice carrying over the stillness of the snow. “Erika, it’s Cory.”
She didn’t turn to look at me. She didn’t even seem to have heard me. She just stood in the clearing, looking straight ahead, removing her heavy gloves. I watched as she shoved them into the pockets of her jacket.
I stepped forward, right up to the edge of the trees. “Erika, hey! It’s me.”
Then she pulled out a knife.
My eyes widened. What did she need a knife for out here? I mean, yeah, just a few minutes ago I’d been worried about hypothetical monsters stalking me. But there was something about Erika’s face that told me she hadn’t drawn it for self-defense.
It wasn’t just that she was ignoring me, or not hearing me. It was like she wasn’t hearing anything at all. Her features were slack. Her mouth hung open, her brows loose, her eyes heavy-lidded. She looked two seconds away from falling asleep.
She looks like she’s asleep already , said the voice in the back of my mind, and for once, I didn’t argue with it. Whatever Erika was doing, I didn’t think she was conscious of it.
“Hey, Erika,” I said, crawling over the birch trunk and joining her in the clearing. “Erika, are you okay?”
I slogged through the snow, my feet freezing. Nerves sang through my body. Something was wrong. I didn’t know what , yet. But I knew something was.
I put a hand on her shoulder when I reached her. “Erika, it’s Cory. Are you—God, what am I even saying, of course you’re not okay. Can you hear me at all?”
I took my hand from her shoulder and waved it in front of her face. That, at least, got a reaction, but since the reaction was Erika shoving me so hard I fell on my ass, I wasn’t happy about it. She didn’t even look at me as I fell. What the hell was going on with her?
I still couldn’t control my incubus powers, but I had more experience than most people with trances and dream states, and I knew what it was like to feel trapped. I had no idea if the real Erika was still in there, trapped behind whatever force was piloting her body right now. But I knew she wouldn’t be happy about what was happening.
I pushed myself up and walked back to her. Worry spread from my stomach, radiating through my limbs. My whole body was infected with it. It felt colder than it should have been, even on a winter’s night in February.
I put a hand on her elbow. “Erika, can you look at me? Can you—can you come with me? I think we need to get you back to the manor.”
I looked over my shoulder at the forest. I didn’t relish getting her back through all of that, but my gut said neither of us should be out here right now. Who knew what else was watching from the dark?
I waved my hand in front of her face again, but she didn’t react at all this time. I stepped in front of her and grabbed for the knife, and the next thing I knew, she turned and brandished it in my face. For the first time, her eyes were focused and alert, but they were focused on bringing that knife to my throat.
“Easy,” I said, taking a step back, then another, trying my best not to fall on my ass again. I swallowed. “Easy, it’s okay. I won’t try to take it again.”
Erika kept glaring at me, her face twisted into a snarl, until I’d backed up all the way to the clearing’s edge. Only when I stepped back into the woods, drawing halfway behind a pine tree, did she turn away from me.
Fuck. I let out a sound that was half relief, half desperation. Would she really have cut me if I hadn’t backed off? Would she have been willing to hurt me? I eyed her nervously. I was starting to get a creepy feeling about this. Hell, not starting. I was all the way there.
But I didn’t feel right leaving her alone.
Dammit, why had I insisted on doing the hunt by myself? I would have given anything for Felix’s rationality right now, or even Ash’s irrepressible energy. For someone to help me figure out what to do.
All I could think was to watch and wait, and to be ready to help if her trance broke.
Not if , I told myself. When . It would break. I was not giving up on her.
Erika, for her part, seemed to have forgotten I existed. She was facing front again, her features once more calm and slack. She held the knife out in front of her and traced a shape in the air. A circle, crossed twice from right to left and top to bottom. Then came four X’s in a square surrounding the circle.
She crossed the square from corner to corner, then brought the knife back to her body. She muttered something, and her left hand rose to meet her right. Without warning, she slashed the blade across her left palm, opening a bloody gash in her skin.
I gasped, but she didn’t. If she felt any pain at all, it didn’t show. She held her left hand out now, droplets of blood falling into the snow at her feet. She retraced the shape in the air, then brought her bloody hand across the shape in a harsh motion, left to right. Finally, she stuck her hand forward, closed it into a fist, and twisted, like she was opening a door.
I sucked in another sharp breath as the air in front of Erika began to shimmer. I took another step back, too, pressing myself against the tree. I wasn’t going to leave her alone, but some deep, lizard-brain part of me whispered that it was a bad idea to be exposed right now.
The shimmering intensified, pressing itself into a vertical line, hovering a foot off the ground. Then it widened, and even Erika took a step back at that point. When it was a rectangle three feet wide, something appeared in the middle. Something dark and solid and—was that a person?
The shape pushed through, first an elbow, then a shoulder and wrist, then torso, then an entire man. He stepped out of the door in the air and into the snow in front of Erika, straightening the lapels of his overcoat as he did so. The door remained open behind him, sparkling.
The man wore all black, or at least all dark colors. It was hard to tell in this light. He wore a heavy overcoat that reached below his knees, single breasted and buttoned up against the snow. Dark trousers showed beneath it, and a nice-looking pair of wing-tip shoes beneath those, all wrong for standing in the snow. A wool scarf was tucked into the neckline of his coat, and a felted trilby hat topped his head. He looked very dapper, and very out of place in the middle of the woods.
His face was ordinary looking. Loosely cropped black hair, dense with curls. Dark eyes, though they could have been any color in the daylight. His features were pleasant—high cheekbones, a broad nose, and lips that looked like they enjoyed smiling.
He did smile, in fact, as he looked at Erika standing before him.
“Thank you, dear,” he said. He reached out and stroked a hand across the top of her head, the way you’d pet a dog. He brought one long braid over her shoulder and patted it down. “I appreciate all you’ve done. I’ll be taking that now.”
He took the knife from Erika. She didn’t resist him at all. Didn’t even seem to know what was happening. She was still in her trance, whatever it was. The man slipped the knife into his coat pocket.
Sweat broke out on my face, despite the cold. Who was this guy? Where had he come from, and why? He didn’t seem overtly monstrous. If anything, there was something vaguely familiar about him, but I was pretty sure I would have remembered meeting him before.
He had the type of face you wanted to trust, and yet I wasn’t sure I should. The man had been kind to Erika so far, but all my senses still screamed that something was wrong.
The man raised his hand to her face, pressing the backs of his fingers to her cheek like a concerned mother. His other hand moved in his coat pocket. He pulled out a gun.
“A pity I have to kill you now,” he said softly. “I promise, it’s nothing personal.”