Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
They came out in shadows that seemed to stick to Bran’s skin, a chill in the air making him wish he hadn’t lost his sweatshirt in the woods back home.
His palms skidded against damp earth as he clawed his way free of the dark, gasping as he came into the Otherworld.
A flail of his arm sent a bone shard skittering away, and he gagged.
Bran stumbled to his feet, swallowing against the nausea from the passage through the wyrding and the sound of bone crunching underfoot.
He steadied himself with a couple of deep breaths, stepping out of the way so Cillian had room to crawl through after him.
He looked around, taking in the area they had arrived in, the wyrding a strange place of shadows that lingered.
The day seemed gray through the fog crawling over everything, muffling the Otherworld.
The air was cold and damp when he breathed it in, tinged with that same scent of rot that had existed in and around the tree back home.
Large gray standing stones shot through with brilliant blue lines jutted up in a circle around the low mound they’d crawled out of.
Bran thought the lines might mean something—they seemed too purposeful to be of nature—but he couldn’t be sure.
The Otherworld wasn’t natural.
He stepped forward, and his heel came down on something that snapped beneath it.
He looked down at the gray bone he’d broken in half, not recognizing the shape of it.
He followed the curved length to a flared end, the spine it should have connected to nowhere to be seen.
Bran swallowed, tasting bile at the back of his throat.
Wrenching his gaze away from the bones, he looked back at the entrance surrounded by the same tiny crimson flowers.
Bran wiped at the sticky black sap-like substance that had dripped from both entrances, hoping it wasn’t poison.
It smeared over his skin, leaving his fingers tacky.
Cillian came to stand beside him, staring in shock at the place they’d stepped into, voice hushed when he spoke. “I have to admit, I keep thinking this isn’t real.”
“It’s real, and we’ll be dead if we don’t get moving. The wyrding let us out in a boneyard, and we should find some cover before whatever eats here comes back.”
Jupiter flew through the fog toward them, startling Bran even though he’d sensed her approach through their bond.
He stepped back out of reflex, running into Cillian, who steadied him with a warm hand against his hip.
Bran had a split second of wanting to stay in Cillian’s hands before hastily putting some distance between them.
Jupiter made no sound, no greeting, as she circled them overhead before flying off again.
Bran followed her without reservation, hoping she knew a safe path away from the boneyard they’d arrived in.
Cillian kept pace, still clutching his rifle, and Bran wasn’t sure how useful it would be there in the Otherworld.
Mortal technology didn’t work here, and the loud sound of the rifle would surely make them targets.
“I wouldn’t use your rifle right now. It’ll draw too much attention,” Bran said in a low voice.
Cillian gave him a disbelieving look. “I’m pretty sure a high-velocity bullet is better than me throwing rocks.”
Bran waggled his fingers at Cillian. “I’ll keep you safe.”
“The lights hunt witches. What makes you think they won’t find us because of your magic?”
He had a point. “Then let’s keep moving.”
“And go where? Have you ever even been here before?”
“No,” Bran admitted. “But I know my coven’s history.”
“Well, I don’t, so maybe you could share.”
“Now? When we don’t know what’s around that could hear us?”
Cillian grimaced but tipped his head in agreement. “How do you plan to find Aisling?”
Bran fingered the beads on the bracelet wrapped around his wrist, his mother’s magic embedded in them a cool wash of comfort. “It requires magic.”
Cillian’s earlier words haunted him, though, and for all the stories that had been passed down through the generations, Bran had never experienced crossing the wyrding to the Otherworld before now.
But this was where Aisling had been brought, and he’d fight to get her back, even if it killed him, which was a distinct possibility.
“Jupiter seems to know where she’s going,” Cillian said.
“Yeah.”
In a strange land filled with Fae who wouldn’t think twice about murdering a witch, Bran didn’t have the time to question why Jupiter seemed intent on the direction she was flying in.
The sooner they found Aisling, the quicker they could leave.
First, they had to survive, which was easier said than done.
They crept out of the boneyard, passing by skeletons of animals neither of them recognized, stripped clean down to bone, and a few half-buried kills that buzzed with clouds of insects.
The stench coming off those corpses made Bran gag and cover his mouth, lengthening his stride to get clear of the dead.
“The bodies look like deer,” Cillian said.
Bran thought of the monster that had battered down the Shoppe’s door only to disappear, letting a Fae lord walk inside. He didn’t know if they were one and the same, but both were dangerous. “I wouldn’t trust any animal in this place.”
They reached the edge of the clearing in the gray forest, passing the last standing stone with its strange blue lines that appeared carved into it.
A faint vibration seemed to emanate from it, a thrum Bran felt in his teeth more than anything else.
It made him hunch his shoulders, as if that would be enough to shield him from the sensation.
Cillian didn’t seem affected, or if he was, it didn’t bother him.
Jupiter alighted on a branch up ahead, waiting for them.
Bran and Cillian hurried to reach her, the dirt they walked on less muddy beneath the skeletal trees.
He was glad neither of them wore any bright colors that might attract attention.
Jupiter spread her wings a little and hopped on the branch.
She didn’t make a sound, but Bran heard her clear enough through the bond.
Danger comes.
He grabbed Cillian by the arm and dragged the other man with him over to a fallen tree trunk split in the middle by a boulder jutting out of the ground.
When Cillian looked as if he might speak, Bran frantically shook his head.
Cillian clamped his teeth together and didn’t fight when Bran pulled him into a crouch behind the tree trunk.
Bran looked up at Jupiter, his familiar having tucked herself tight against the spot where the branch met the tree, an unmoving statue that would look like a shadow from a distance.
Bran shrugged off his backpack and carefully lay down on the cold ground, shifting so that he was underneath the fallen tree trunk.
He turned his head to the side so he could see through the narrow space between the tree trunk and the ground, face hopefully hidden enough by the scraggly weeds growing in the slimy moss.
At first, he couldn’t see what had made Jupiter give out her warning.
Then, on the far side of the clearing, beyond the circle of standing stones and deep in the spindly trees, if he squinted, he could see a light.
Floating higher than the ones that had chased them through the forest, Bran watched it grow larger as it approached the clearing, casting an eerie brightness through the cold fog.
It coalesced into something huge, fog peeling away from its terrifying form.
The creature was tall, even though it was hunched over, dragging its arms along the ground as it walked.
No, Bran realized as he lay there in the dirt, rigid and trying not to breathe.
It dragged prey.
The creature’s skin was gray and wrinkled, sagging at its joints.
Its face was an elongated nightmare with four eyes, two on each side of the mouth full of teeth bisecting its skull from jaw to top.
The sound it made was a rasp like nails being scraped over metal.
It gripped in its hands two massive deerlike creatures with deep russet hides, much larger in scale than any deer Bran had ever seen.
Both bodies had broken antlers and ripped-open bellies, their intestines hanging from the death wounds and dragging behind them.
Bran thought the might-be-deer were too brightly colored to call the wyrding home.
Nothing about this place screamed the living abided within it, but he was certain the animals hadn’t come from the mortal world.
He watched as the creature tossed first one and then the other into the boneyard.
Then it reared back and roared, the sound making Bran wish he could cover his ears.
Cillian’s hand gripped his leg right above the top of his hiking boot, fingers digging in hard.
Bran didn’t dare move, and he couldn’t close his eyes, not if he wanted to make sure they weren’t seen.
So he lay there and watched the monstrous creature crouch over its kill and tear flesh from bone with its vicious teeth.
Blood coated its body, shockingly red against its gray skin, even from a distance.
As the creature ate its fill, focused as it was on the bodies, Bran finally unclenched a hand from the dirt and weeds, carefully rolling to his side so he could reach for Cillian.
Cool fingers gripped his, and Bran tugged at him, not needing to tell Cillian to move quietly and slowly.
With great care, Cillian stretched out on the ground beside Bran, sliding beneath the broken tree trunk with him amid the sound of crunching bone.