28. Wild, Untamed, and Violent – Rosemary
Wild, Untamed, and Violent
ROSEMARY
The bird… was Elias.
The bird was Elias.
My mind spun as I studied him, cradled in my hands.
Beady black eyes stared up, watching as I struggled to comprehend the discovery.
How could this bird be Elias? I shook my head; it didn’t matter.
Nothing changed. He’d abandoned me, left me exposed and defenseless, again.
Hurt, betrayal, and anger churned in my chest. I shook the bird from my hands without a second thought, not caring as he fell.
He steadied himself with a few flaps of his wide wings, then landed softly on the mossy floor.
An owl hooted a haunting call into the night, the hollowed sound echoing through the forest, reminding me of the danger around us.
We had done nothing to seek shelter before night fell.
A chill snaked up my spine as I cast a weary glance through the trees and into the darkness.
The silver light of the moon cast only an eerie glow across the distance, but from where it hung in the sky, I knew dawn wasn’t far off.
“Why?” The word crept up my throat and through my lips unbidden.
The crow, Elias, tilted his head as if he had the audacity to be perplexed by my question. The silence stretched for a moment until he cawed, and I jolted, the sudden burst of sound unexpected. The forest had fallen silent as if it, too, wanted to hear our lover’s quarrel.
My anger ignited further, hot and suffocating, and I swooshed my foot toward him, letting the hem of my dress force him back.
“You know what? I don’t care.” I crossed my arms over my chest, glaring down at the crow.
“You should have woken me up. You should have told me. You should have done a dozen things other than leaving me sleeping unprotected in the middle of the night in the Everland Forest!” I shoved my palm at him, the one with the dark lines of his vow to me tattooed into my skin. “Does this mean nothing to you?”
He hopped back a step, his wings beating at the air wildly, but he didn’t fly away.
I shooed him away again, but he grew frantic.
He twitched his head to the side, his beady eyes fixing onto the branches of the tree we’d made love against then back to me.
He hopped closer to the tree, his wings shaking in the air as he cawed into the silent night.
Even the air seemed still as he launched himself into it, flying erratically around my head.
I lifted my hands to protect my face from his clawed feet and growled at him as he snapped a strand of my hair with his beak, tugging my head into the direction of that tree again.
My stomach dropped at the sudden silence of the woods, hinting at lurking danger.
My heart stuttered as nearby bushes rustled, the sound deafening in the still night.
Instinctively, I spun and clawed into the tree bark, hoisting myself into its branches as quickly as possible.
I didn't dare look down when something burst from the bushes, but it grazed my foot, hard and prickly like porcupine needles.
I scrambled upward, hoping it couldn't follow me.
When I made it to the top of the tree to where the branches became too thin to hold my weight, I stopped.
My lungs burned for air, and I breathed heavily while Elias perched next to me, his beady gaze watching me with concern.
I glanced down at the ground, to where I could hear something massive pacing back and forth, but I saw nothing.
With my back pressed against the trunk of the tree, my hands went to my hip, to where my pack sat…
except, nothing was there. I bolted upright, my sudden movement sending the branch I sat upon wavering.
A slight crack sounded, and Elias cawed his displeasure.
I shifted along the branch until I could peer down at where I’d stupidly left my pack, and the slightest bit of relief settled over me as I realized it still lay a safe distance away.
The creature, whatever it was, hadn’t noticed it.
The daemonacus flower, or what was left of it, was still safely hidden away.
Hours crawled by as my fingers nearly bled from clutching the tree so tightly.
Below, the creature paced and growled, occasionally slamming into the trunk, making branches rattle and bark chip away.
Leaves and twigs scattered around the base.
I feared the tree might shatter or snap, uncertain how much more we could withstand this monster's siege.
I glanced at the crow beside me, anxious for the moment he'd shift back into the man I relied on.
Elias stayed silent beside me, so I followed suit.
Each time the tree trembled, I bit my lip to stifle a cry.
My eyes fixed on the ground, scanning for any trace of what lurked below.
I thought I glimpsed the prints of a huge paw crushing the dirt, yet what could do that and remain unseen?
My focus shifted to the pack, still untouched, still secure. Gods, I needed that pack.
The sky gradually shifted from an inky black to a deep indigo, with faint streaks of pink and orange hinting at the coming dawn.
The oppressive darkness began to lift, revealing the silhouettes of trees around me.
I sat frozen, my heart pounding in my chest as I focused intently on any sound that might signal the creature's departure.
Finally, the soft rustling of leaves receded into the distance, a sign that whatever had haunted the night was moving away.
The sounds of its pacing no longer beneath us; the growling and snarling gone.
Again, I stared down at my pack, wanting so badly to go retrieve it, but terrified that whatever had prowled the entire night below our tree would return.
The sky gradually shifted from a deep indigo to a pale gray as the stars faded one by one, leaving only the silhouette of the trees against the horizon.
My gut twisted with the need to get my pack.
If I went now, I could always make it back up into the tree if I needed to.
Briar needed what was in that pack, and so I decided to risk it. Without that flower, I had no hope of saving her life. I had watched her skin pale and her hair fade for the past several months. I didn’t know if she had another decade to wait for the next time this flower would bloom.
Branch by branch, I lowered myself down the tree, not allowing my fear to talk me out of this.
Elias shook his wings, frantically hopping from the branch and following me down.
His beak opened and closed as if he wanted to speak, but he remained silent, not making a single sound as he fluttered around me.
“Stop it,” I hissed, my attention focused on my next handhold. “You’ll call that thing back to us!”
He didn’t stop it; instead, he grew more agitated.
My feet hit the soft mossy ground, and Elias went still on the lowest branch, his wings tucked in as his beady eyes tracked my movements.
I couldn’t worry about him now. I turned and raced toward my pack, my first step landing in a large indent.
I stared down, wide-eyed, at the massive paw print beneath me.
Without hesitating, I rushed forward, my fingers quickly grasping the strap of my pack.
The skin along the nape of my neck prickled, and I paused for only a second before I scooped my pack up into the air and raced toward the nearest tree, my legs pumping as fast as they could.
The air shifted next to me, and then a growl reverberated through the dawning morning, stopping me before I ever reached its base.
The creature had never left.
Elias cut through the air, his wings outstretched and his claws reaching as he screeched.
His blue-black feathers glinted in the soft glittering light of the morning sun.
Something howled, and the bright flash of crimson glistened against Elias’s clawed feet.
The air rippled, and for the briefest of moments, the beast flickered into being.
My heart plummeted at the sight. It was monstrous.
Sharp, blade-like needles jutted from nearly every surface of its massive body, resembling something between a dog and a rat.
But its face was what truly terrified me.
The face of nightmares. Deep-set eyes, like black, fathomless pools, stared out from its skull.
Its broad snout had two grotesque slits, and it opened its mouth impossibly wide to reveal rows of razor-sharp teeth.
Massive, meaty paws ended in thick claws, slicing the dirt with each step.
I’d heard of this creature before. The unseelie queen’s own creation.
One of her faithful pets. My mother had told me stories of this creature in warning because I always wanted to play in the woods where the flowers and herbs grew in abundance.
The unaki. The devourer of flesh and souls.
Vicious, and about impossible to kill. To hear my mother tell it, no one had ever walked away from one of them alive.
Everything you were, any promise of an afterlife, all of it gone. A soul-eater.
The unaki here, now, could only mean one thing. The unseelie queen knew where I was, and she was hunting me. How could she know where I was after all these years? I’d been so careful.
It raised onto its powerful hind legs and swatted at the air, its massive paw slamming into Elias’s delicate crow form with a thunk. My breath halted in my throat as his feathered body spun in the air until it smashed into a nearby trunk and thudded to the ground in an unmoving heap.
“Elias!” I cried as a new kind of fear seized me. He was so still. Too still.