Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
FOX
F ox probably should have known that lying down wasn’t a good idea. But as he stared into the fire, mesmerized by the dancing flames, his body felt too heavy to hold up. His muscles were giving up, slowly at first, and then altogether. He told himself when he laid down, that it would be easier to stay awake, taking away the pressure for his body to stay upright would leave energy for keeping his eyes open.
Sofia wasn’t sleeping either and he couldn’t help but wonder if she was waiting for his eyes to close before she jumped him and slit his throat. Or maybe she’d just tie him up and drag him back to their base. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. So when his body gave up and the fire went from an undulating heat to a burned-out shadow in the clearing, his first instinct was to jump up in fear.
Another second of blinking and he realized he could still see Sofia’s shadowed form on the other side of the fire. She was shaking, but clearly asleep, completely unperturbed by his movement.
He wanted to close his eyes. Sofia was dead to the world and no longer a threat. He’d promised to watch for the night, but they both knew their argument had only been a thinly veiled refusal for either of them to be the first to fall asleep. But even with the cloak wrapped around his shoulders, watching Sofia’s body trembling in the cold made his own skin prickle with discomfort. The temperature had only dropped as the night progressed and the wind was cutting through the thick trees with icy knives.
He would light the fire and then he’d sleep, comfortable in his knowledge that she couldn’t kill him while she slept, too.
As he slipped through the night, it baffled him how the forest could feel so dark and yet so familiar. He felt a sense of knowing as he walked, stepping over roots and finding branches. The tunnel had been inky black devoid of all senses, but the forest felt like a living thing, a breathing world.
Maybe that was why it didn’t surprise him when he heard the soft feminine cry somewhere beyond the darkness. He assumed Sofia had woken from a nightmare to the dark clearing, but the cries were coming from a different direction—farther into the trees.
Half-asleep and numb with cold, he moved. Stepping deeper into the shadows, he chased after the cries, driven to help whoever it was. After what may have been two seconds or two hours, he caught a glimpse of white between the trees; a white so clean and bright it almost glowed. He moved with more confidence as he chased after the crying and the white and the woman.
And then she was there, sitting on a fallen tree, only a few feet from where he stood. She wore a thin slip of a dress, the fabric as pale as moonlight against umber skin. Her hair was as black as the night. It hung long and limp, almost covering her face, but he could still see the fine bone structure beneath. She was beautiful. Not in a way the women around town that his father introduced him to were. It wasn’t in the shape of her body or the tilt of her lips. It was something else, as if whatever had shaped her had done so without the imperfection of humanity.
“Are you okay?” he asked, a dozen other questions moving through his mind at the same time: what was she doing out here, was she cold, what had happened to her, did she need his cloak?
She looked up, meeting his eyes from across the small clearing, as if she hadn’t noticed him there. As if she hadn’t known he’d been following her though the trees. For a moment, he thought her eyes flashed red, but then he saw they were silver, nearly glowing with their own internal light.
She didn’t say anything. She simply stared, lips pulled down in a tight frown.
“Are you hurt?” He took a step closer, hands raised to show her he was no threat. She looked like a frightened rabbit, eyes wide as he approached.
He thought as he moved closer her features would come into view, and the imperfections would become more obvious. How could she be so clean?
Just as the thought passed through his mind, he saw the mud streaks, almost as if they’d materialized on her dress. Her face was smeared with mud and tears.
It did nothing to take away from her beauty though, only emphasizing the fine structure of her chin and curve of her nose.
Another step and he was almost within touching distance. She had stopped crying now and was just staring at him as he approached. She didn’t look afraid, but neither did she look relieved to see him. Her head tilted and there was a hunger in her gaze.
But no—that was just the glint of another tear cradled in the waterline of her eyes.
“Take a step back, Ocon,” a voice said, coming to him as if through water. “Don’t get any closer to it.”
He turned slowly, as if his body weren’t responding to him alone. The air was thick around him, and a white mist swirled, encircling him. It nearly enveloped him from the waist down, and he could see Sofia only a few yards from him.
“Sofia?” he said, voice as slow as his body. As slow as the swirl of mist. What was she doing here?
“Get away from it,” she said again, her arms raising, the bow held firmly in her grip.
“What are you doing?” he asked, mind catching up to what he was seeing. “Don’t shoot her!”
“Whatever you think you see, I promise it’s not real,” she said again, looking past him, staring at the woman as if she were an evil and ugly thing.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he stepped to the side, trying to block her view of the woman.
For her part, the woman in white hadn’t moved. She still sat on the log, staring at Sofia with something between disinterest and annoyance.
“You can’t just go around killing people.”
“Ocon,” Sofia said, in the tone his mother often used on him. “That is not people .”
He laughed. He couldn’t help it at hearing the absurdity of the words even as her face remained serious and her stance firm. He took a step back as her fingers twitched on the bow, worried she’d shoot him out of frustration for not getting the joke.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking?—”
Before he could finish the statement, a rough hand wrapped around his neck and he was pulled back against the body of something hard and cold. He choked on the smell of iron and decay, and he couldn’t stop the tremor that worked its way through his body.
“Don’t let her hurt me,” a soft voice said. But when he turned, it wasn’t the woman he saw holding him, but a monster whose face mocked humanity. Small red eyes sat high on its head and its mouth was opened wide, red lips stretched across sharp black teeth. Mist poured from its mouth and wrapped around him tighter, making his body go heavy even as he struggled against its grasp.
The woman—the thing—let out a high-pitched laugh as he shoved his elbow back, trying to break its hold on him.
Shit shit shit shit.
“Just shoot it!” he screamed, moving to the side as best he could with the arms braced around his waist and neck.
Sofia let her arrow fly. There was a whistle and a soft thud and he looked down at a thin wood rod protruding from the thing’s chest a mere inch from Fox’s arm. But its grip didn’t weaken and it let out a throaty growl, letting go of Fox with one hand to pull the arrow out and toss it to the side. All Fox could do was watch in abject horror as mist poured from the wound and the skin folded itself back together, the hole gone a moment later.
He turned to see Sofia looking just as horrified as he did, the bow hung limply by her side.
“Shoot it again!”
“I don’t think that’s going to work,” she snapped.
“Kill it!”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” she yelled back.
Before he could retort, the touch of something icy and wet on his neck froze him. His eyes moved sideways of their own accord and he saw the creature’s black mouth opened wide. Its teeth scraped across his neck again, hard enough to draw blood and a thin black tongue licked out across his skin. His vision went white for a second, not from pain, but fear.
“Iron,” he said, the word trembling from his lips, eyes seeking out Sofia.
She was pale, eyes wide. “I don’t have?—”
“The blade I stole,” he said, lips barely moving as he spoke. “The larger one.”
He saw the recognition in her face in the same moment that the creature moved to sink its teeth into his neck. He moved fast, lurching forward and biting down hard into the arm that gripped him. The creature screamed as he tasted decay, black sludge coating his tongue. It pulled its arm away, knocking Fox to his knees with its other arm, clawed fingers biting into his shoulder.
“Ocon, catch!”
He looked up just in time to see the iron dagger spinning toward him, catching it by the hilt a second before it stabbed through his chest. He braced himself and turned, arching his arm toward the creature behind him and hitting his target. The blade slid through skin and sinew more easily than he expected and mist poured from the slash. The creature barely seemed to notice the wound.
“Aim for its heart!”
“I was trying.”
“You missed,” she said, blunt as always.
“I was a little distracted by the fangs,” he snapped, seeing where the blade had gone in a few inches higher than where its heart probably sat. Although he was also basing this off human anatomy and hoping for the best.
He still gripped the dagger, a black something staining the blade. He moved again, trying not to see the black hole that was the creature’s mouth as it leaned toward him. The dagger sunk into its flesh with a squelch and the smell of rot enveloped him. An instant later, the cold thing beneath his hands melted away into nothing but mist. The dagger fell to the ground with nothing left to hold it.