18. Gummer
Iran like the hounds of hell were chasing after me.
I fucking knew we shouldn’t have come here tonight. Something was wrong, I’d felt it in the air from the moment we’d gotten out of the truck.
But I stupidly just thought it was simply this wretched place and now my brother was out here somewhere, his flare had been activated, and he needed me.
This cursed place was marked with evil and we would be coming back here to salt all of the earth. I didn’t give a fuck what either Raven or Rain had to say about it.
“Liam!” I screamed.
I could see the bright blue light of his flare up ahead of me. Though it kept blurring out of sight as several bodies moved around it.
Fuck. Either he’d found our missing people or they’d found him.
Either way, my brother was in danger. It wasn’t just the flare that had told me so but the sour feeling in my gut. He needed me and I couldn’t get there fast enough.
Romero got to them at the same time as I did and he was panting and out of breath.
He let out a sound that reminded me of an enraged animal as he charged at one of the grubby men and tackled him to the ground.
Two others were on the ground moaning and clutching at their heads. I was betting my brother had hit them as hard as he could with his magic and that’s what had dropped them.
A fourth assailant was standing over Liam with a large stick held in his raised hand. It turned my stomach to see that the end of the stick was already covered in blood.
My brothers fucking blood.
My brother who was not moving and looked far too lifeless for me.
I threw my magic at the man in a ball of energy and he let out an enraged scream as it hit him dead center in the chest. He crumpled to the ground like he was nothing and he didn’t so much as twitch.
I hoped he was dead but I knew I hadn’t hit him with enough of my magic to kill him. What a pity.
I knelt down beside Liam, rolled him over onto his back, and checked for a pulse. It was there. Thank fuck it was there.
I shouldered off my backpack. I unzipped it and dug through to my emergency kit that Raven had made me pack just to be safe. I was so thankful right now for his ways and how he always thought of everything. Just another thing that proved he was a damn good leader.
I opened the jar of healing salve and scooped out a decent glob of it. I dropped the jar and gently lifted Liam’s head off of the ground. I rubbed the salve all over the back of his head. When I pulled my fingers away I wasn’t shocked to see them covered in blood, but the sight did sour my stomach.
I gently laid his head back down on the ground. I wasn’t worried about infection or anything like that because the magic in the salve would protect him against that.
I heard an alarming animalistic noise that had me looking around for something else to come out of the woods and attack us next. What I saw wasn’t an animal at all but Romero, and those noises were coming from him.
He was standing over the crumpled man on the ground and he was beating him relentlessly with a stick he more than likely took from the man.
How poetic.
I wasn’t worried about him beating the man to death. We had three others for questioning, if Rain even still felt it necessary for that. And they were likely going to be put down afterwards anyways.
We didn’t have the time to be out here doing this right now though. What if there were more of them and they showed up? Not that I didn’t think we could handle them but I really didn’t want to deal with anymore assholes tonight of the psychotic variety and I really needed to get my brother home where it was safe. He needed looking after until he woke up.
“Romero, stop it,” I heard and my head snapped up and I looked behind me to see Rain and Ariel standing there.
Where the fuck had those two come from?
Christ, this was turning into the longest night of my life so far and it was fucking bizarre.
“Rome. I’m pretty sure he’s dead. You can stop now, seriously.”
Ariel knelt down beside me and immediately reached out to check Liam’s pulse.
“He’s alive,” I stated gruffly. “What are you two doing here?”
She looked at me and smiled, which kind of creeped me out. “Autumn sent us. She told me you needed help and here we are. Though, it looks like you two had it under control and you didn’t actually need us after all. That witch is freaking strong, that’s for sure. And she’s already feeling a connection with your coven. I see good things for you guys with her.”
“Right,” I muttered, unwilling to speak of Autumn while here in this place where she’d been terrorized her whole fucking life. I didn’t know why but it felt wrong to be discussing her here.
“We need to get everyone out of here and back to the truck. And then out of this wretched place.”
Ariel nodded and she stood back up. She closed her eyes and clapped her hands. Vines came down from the trees and began to wrap themselves all around the four men who had attacked my brother.
Ariel clapped her hands again and the vines dragged the men off into the woods.
“Where are they taking them?” I asked her curiously.
“Back to the vehicles. They’ll keep them tied up until we get there. I figured you’d want us to help you carry Liam instead of having him travel like that. This place really has some bad juju though and, if you don’t mind, I’d rather not hang around here any longer than necessary.”
“There might be more of them out here,” Rain said from behind me.
Ariel’s eyes flashed an eery white for a second before turning back to their normal green. “There’s no-one else alive in these woods. The dead have claimed it for themselves. It’s time for us to leave now.”
Well, that wasn’t fucking creepy or anything.
But she was right about one thing. It was time to get the fuck out of these woods.
Hopefully for good this time.