Chapter 7 #3
Made entirely of ash wood with a slanted roof, it had no windows to see out and only the one door, which was always unlocked unless the cabin was occupied.
Bran approached it, testing the knob, gaze drifting up to where witchmarks were carved over the doorframe and lining the edge of the wall near the eaves.
He could pick out the iron nails used to build the cabin, another layer of protection against what hunted in the woods.
The knob turned easily, and Bran pushed the door open.
The air inside was hot and stale, but the cabin was empty of occupants.
The single twin bed tucked into a corner was the same kind in every cabin.
An unused compost toilet was in the other.
A low cabinet held packets of energy bars, jerky, and bags of mixed nuts and dried fruit.
Jugs and smaller bottles of water were tucked away on the bottom shelf, with plastic cups stacked neatly beside them.
None of the seals appeared to be broken.
Bran automatically checked the clipboard hanging on the inside of the cabinet door, throat catching at the sight of his mother’s neat handwriting from over the years, interspersed with others.
Part of their duties as witches was to make sure the cabins were secured, that the witchmarks were all whole, and that supplies were readily available.
The rangers helped as well, with the checks happening every six months, usually in the spring and fall, but it was a witch’s duty to ensure the cabins could stand against the lights and what followed them.
“Do you think we’ll be in the forest long enough for you to need all that?” Cillian asked.
Bran didn’t respond and kept dropping packets of food into his backpack, adding three bottles of water as well before tossing Cillian one. “Here. You’ll need some, too. Don’t take everything, though.”
They still needed to leave enough supplies to aid whoever might end up in the cabin next.
Theft wasn’t an issue from regular hikers, as all the locals knew never to take unless they were staying in the cabin.
Those with ill intentions never found the supplies, courtesy of the witchmarks carved into the shelves, the ones that meant do not see.
He ran his fingers over one of them, sensing his mother’s magic within the shape of it, and he closed his eyes for a few seconds.
Someday in the near future, once they’d returned with Aisling, it would be his duty to trek from cabin to cabin and ensure the witchmarks were all functioning as they should. But not today.
Bran stood, closed the cabinet doors, then slung the backpack over both shoulders. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“Do you even know where we’re going?” Cillian asked.
“Into the forest.”
“The Quabbin Reservoir wilderness isn’t like Yellowstone or Yosemite. It’s not like we’re trekking into backcountry. Where are we going?”
Bran headed for the cabin’s door. “I said you didn’t have to come.”
A strong, callused hand wrapped around his arm, jerking him to a stop. It was, Bran realized in a heart-stopping moment, the first time Cillian had touched him since the kiss that had cleaved them apart when they were younger.
Cillian’s grip was firm, the strength behind it impossible to ignore as he carefully pulled Bran around to face him.
They stood so close that Bran could smell the sweat on the other man, the tang of it hitting his nose.
A half-hysterical thought bubbled up through his mind—he didn’t want Cillian to stop touching him.
Cillian stared down at him with those blue-gray eyes of his, the color like a winter storm, a shade Bran had never seen in anyone else’s eyes. He’d always looked for it over the years and came away wanting. “What do you think you’re going to find out here in the forest?”
Bran steeled himself to pull away, and Cillian let him. “Keep your iron with you.”
He turned on his feet and hurried out of the cabin, the spot on his arm where Cillian had touched him burning through his awareness.
Cillian followed after a moment, his footsteps heavy on the hardwood floor.
Bran closed the door to the cabin, and they started down the forest path again.
He was acutely aware of Cillian walking beside him, skin still prickling from his touch.
Bran resisted the urge to fold his fingers over where Cillian had grabbed him.
They followed the path deeper into the woods, the branches overhead keeping the sunlight at bay but doing nothing for the heat. Bran’s shirt was sticking to his skin well before noon, and the hiking pants he wore were damp at the waistband when they finally stopped for a quick lunch of energy bars.
Seated on a fallen tree, Bran looked up at what he could see of the sky through the trees, listening to the sounds of the forest. The rustle of leaves and cries of birds were vastly different from the sounds of Boston.
But nothing in Boston wanted to kill him, and he knew what dwelled in the forest.
“You still haven’t said where we’re heading,” Cillian said, the first words he’d spoken in hours.
Jupiter cawed nearby, impatience in the sound. She wanted them to keep moving. “I’ll know when I find it.”
The Quabbin Reservoir wilderness was hilly terrain, and Bran’s calves already ached from the hours they’d trekked. He was, admittedly, out of practice, but aching muscles weren’t going to stop him.
Bran picked up the last crumb from the energy bar, ate it, then crumpled up the wrapper and shoved it into his backpack. He’d never in his life littered in the woods, the “carry out what you carry in” ethos drilled into him by his mother since he was a kid.
“Mac says it’s always bears when we get attacks like this,” Cillian said quietly. “It’s not, is it?”
“No,” Bran agreed after a moment. “It’s not.”
He didn’t say what it was, didn’t name them. Nothing good ever came of naming them.
“So the stories are true? About the lights in the woods?”
“What do you think?”
“I think whatever attacked wanted you dead, and I don’t know why you aren’t, but I’m glad they didn’t kill you.
” Bran startled at the feel of Cillian’s hand resting on his shoulder, head jerking around.
Cillian stared back at him, looking as sweaty as Bran felt and still so handsome.
“I’m sorry about what happened to your mother and Ray and Aisling, but for once, I was happy you were gone. It meant you were alive.”
Bran didn’t know what to say to that. Cillian patted Bran’s shoulder before picking up his rifle and getting to his feet, offering his hand.
Bran thought about ignoring it, but he gave in.
Cillian’s hand was cool, unlike his own warm, slightly sweaty one, but his grip was strong in a way Bran wouldn’t have minded if they were in a bedroom and not a forest, if they didn’t have seven years of silence stretched between them.
Resentment still simmered, low and deep with anger at how Cillian had pushed him away as a teenager, but the pain of losing his best friend still cut deeper.
He’d thought about Cillian almost every day since, even when he didn’t want to.
It was maddening, sometimes, the absence of the other man while Bran learned to live without him, hating it all the while.
It always felt like he was missing his other half.
Now, he had Cillian back in his life, and Bran didn’t want to let him go again.
“Come on. Lead the way,” Cillian said.
Bran picked up his backpack and pulled the straps over both shoulders.
He bounced it a couple of times to settle the weight, ignoring the faint tightness of the muscles in his back.
It’d been a while since he had to hike with gear.
Jupiter cawed from up ahead. Bran watched as she launched herself off a branch, flying low beneath the tree canopy.
The path they followed wasn’t one most hikers would ever get to enjoy.
Most of the wilderness was off-limits, but people still found their way into land they shouldn’t trek through.
The paths connecting the cabins weren’t found on any map handed out to the public.
Bran remembered them only because of the years he’d walked every last one with his mother.
The path they were on twisted through the woods from cabin to cabin in the area they were in, the way designated by subtle witchmarks, until the hilly terrain dipped toward the Quabbin Reservoir itself.
They arrived on a muddy, rocky shore, the sun more than halfway to the western horizon behind them.
Bran stared across the calm blue water, at the trees on the other side and the distant rising slope of Prescott Hill. The land out here was pristine, restricted in order to keep the water clean. That hadn’t stopped his coven from carving out paths to do their duty.
“I didn’t know this was here,” Cillian said.
Bran looked over at the long wooden storage compartment tucked between two trees, clearly not part of the ecology.
Cillian had undone the latches and opened it, revealing the canoe stored inside.
Bran stepped close and reached for the tarp that covered the canoe, peeling it off.
The fiberglass hull appeared intact, though it looked like it hadn’t been used in ages. “It’s not for anyone else’s use.”
“Just your family?” Bran wouldn’t look at him. “Right. You know water recreation is restricted.”
“You call what we’re doing fun? Help me get the canoe into the water.”
Cillian sighed heavily and did as he was told.
They lifted the canoe out, the paddles in the bottom of the hull rattling as they carried it down the shore.
They got it in the water, and Bran held it steady while Cillian climbed in, making sure not to drop his rifle or backpack.
Bran followed, and once he was settled on a bench, he passed an oar to Cillian and took the other.
With a bit of effort, they pushed off into the water.
“Where to now?” Cillian asked.
Bran pointed with one hand across the water. “East.”
They could’ve hiked north and gone around the reservoir over land to get where Bran was aiming for, but cutting directly across the man-made lake was quicker.
The way through the wyrding wouldn’t be close to the roads anyway.
Part of the land jutted south, nearly bisecting the deep water in two, and it was that area of the forest Bran needed to get to.
Rangers always warned hikers away from that area, but not everyone listened.
Locals knew to steer clear, though, knew it was where all the superstitions stemmed from and the reason iron was something everyone carried in Pelham.
Bran’s arms burned from exertion by the time the canoe slid onto the far shore. He threw down his oar with a groan before shaking out his arms, muscles aching. “I’m used to driving, not paddling.”
“It’s not that bad,” Cillian said mildly.
Bran didn’t even dignify that with an answer. He had spent the entire trip across staring at the way Cillian’s biceps had flexed. It’d been super distracting.
He scrambled out of the canoe with his backpack, boots sinking into mud on the shore.
Cillian followed him out, and Bran paused only long enough to orient himself through Jupiter.
She cawed from deeper in the woods, this way pulsing through their connection.
Bran followed where she flew through the birch and oak trees stretching out before them.
Cillian stuck beside him as Bran located another path.
A witchmark caught Bran’s eye, and he came to a sudden stop.
“What is it?” Cillian asked.
Bran crunched his way through fallen leaves and brittle twigs, getting closer to the birch tree in question.
The white-washed bark had a witchmark carved in at head height, but cutting through it were long scratches that went deep into the trees, something like sap oozing out of it, but it was too black to be that.
He reached for the broken witchmark, fingers hovering over it, sensing no magic in the damaged lines, only something rotten.
He tilted his head back, looking up, seeing how the leaves on the branches above were becoming brown and brittle, at odds with the summer greenery on the neighboring trees.
Cillian came up beside him, frowning at the sticky blackness streaking the tree bark. “I’ve never seen damage like that before in a tree.”
Bran made a fist and dropped his hand back down to his side. “Let’s go.”
“Would you at least tell me where we’re going? Sunset is only a couple of hours away. It’s too late to head back the way we came. We’ll need to find a cabin for the night.”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Bran said, regretting the words the moment they left his lips.
“Try me.”
Bran moved away from the tree. “Let’s keep walking.”
“Bran—”
“You wanted to come, but I didn’t ask you to. Now, I can’t leave you behind, so would you start walking?”
“Are you looking for the lights?”
Bran shook his head, anger leaving him hotter than the weather. “I’m looking for my sister.”
Hours later, when the sun was impossible to see through the branches and the soft shadows of twilight crept through the woods, the air went quiet.
Still. Birds quit chirping, and the soft sound of crickets that had been background noise in Bran’s ears abruptly stopped.
A fissure of fear shot through his bond with Jupiter, the raven quiet in the treetops.
He rocked to a halt on the forest path, breath suddenly loud in his ears.
Cillian stopped beside him, slowly pulling his rifle off his shoulder.
For a moment, deep in the darkening forest, it was just the two of them.
Then Bran’s eyes caught on something far ahead, off to their left—something bright and glowing as it passed between trees, the stuff of nightmares come out to hunt once more.
“Run,” Bran choked out. “Run!”