Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Fae dragged me through the forest, ignoring the way I tried to prise his fingers from my hand and dig my heels into the mud.
I cursed him, kicking out at his knee, but he only turned a savage glare on me before hauling me onwards again.
It was impossible to tell much of his expression with the hood shrouding his eyes and mask pulled up to cover the lower half of his face but there was no mistaking the prowling, powerful body of this beast. He was twice my size and then some, his height towering over my own so that I was forced to tip my head back to look up at him.
His body was thick with muscle in a way I’d never seen on a human man and something in the depths of my gut made my hackles rise at his mere presence.
Every instinct in me was screaming a warning to run the hell away from him, telling me that this male was one thing and one thing alone.
Hunter.
And I wasn’t going to become his prey.
I stopped fighting, allowing him to tug me further into the trees, away from the clearing and the pool of water where my last ally had met with death.
I was alone out here now. Colton’s death was a brutal, harsh stab of reality which had burst my final bubble of security like the flimsy fabrication it had been.
Because of course I hadn’t been safe in Colton’s company despite how powerful he had seemed.
And now I was going to have to face the horrors of this cursed place alone.
But maybe that was for the best. I hadn’t come here expecting any form of help.
I’d come to win the forest’s boon for myself and I needed to be more ruthless in doing so.
I may have been trapped in the company of this beast, but I refused to remain so for long. I could have wept for my stupidity in not claiming the Bear faster but snatching it while Colton’s body was still warm had felt like a betrayal. I wouldn’t allow such soft sentiment to rule me again.
The moment Hendrix’s posture signalled his belief in his victory over me, I lunged forward and sank my teeth into the fingers which were coiled tightly around my wrist.
The Fae cursed, snatching his hand away and I wasted no time in launching myself into the trees, his blood staining my lips and adrenaline flooding my limbs.
The forest shivered and hissed amusement, the leaves whispering with each other like a thousand expressions of laughter.
Hendrix’s footsteps pounded after me but the trees seemed keen on encouraging this chase, roots slipping out of my path and then snapping into his.
I chanced a look over my shoulder as his boot snagged on one and he almost tripped, his hand colliding with the thick trunk of a tree as he caught himself.
“Stop!” he bellowed in a tone which told me he expected the entire world to bend to his commands, but I was no follower of Fae.
Grief clung to me as I ran on, the memory of Colton’s corpse and the Fae who had caused his death spurring me on faster, urging me to escape. I wouldn’t bend to whatever ploy that bastard had in mind for me and I would face the darkness of the forest before I bowed to his orders.
But his footsteps were gaining on me.
“Please,” I begged the spirits, the trees, the dirt beneath my feet, anything which might heed my plea in this place of powerful magic. “Help me.”
Shrubs parted, vines whipping aside as the forest opened up a pathway for me to follow and for once I was willing to take its lead.
Whatever these trees might have in store for me couldn’t possibly match the wild wrath I found burning in the eyes of my pursuer as I glanced back to find him hindered by the same plants which were helping me.
I leapt over a fallen log, vaulted a small stream and weaved through a coppice of saplings which tangled themselves together in my wake, blocking me from his view.
“You can’t think you can truly outrun me!” he roared, but his voice was wrapped in the whispering of the trees, a flash of darkness overhead making me wonder if more than just the forest was watching me flee.
“Thank you,” I gasped between laboured breaths, uncertain if it was madness to converse with the trees or simply good manners. They were helping me after all.
I almost screamed as I came upon one of the Damned Ones, the woman’s body almost entirely engulfed in the bark of a large horse chestnut tree ahead of me.
“Beneath these trees your fate will rise. Beware the one with silvered eyes!” she wailed at me.
I lurched away from her at speed, rounding a great, weathered oak and spied a ramshackle building with a mouldering roof and walls of grey stone. It looked to have once been a stable if the row of stalls was anything to go by and I wasted no time in hurling myself through the closest door.
Darkness was encroaching on the forest, night drawing near, and if I had any luck at all, then perhaps he wouldn’t find this place and would be caught out there when it fell, the beasts of the midnight hours consuming him for me.
I crept deeper into the stall, my feet snagging on mildewed hay as I sought a way into the rest of the building. Thankfully there was another door at the back of the stable, leading into a wide hall where saddles coated in mould and bridles with rusted bits hung forgotten.
“Do you really think you can escape me?!” Hendrix shouted from somewhere in the trees and I flinched, pressing deeper into the dim building and spying a ladder which led to a hayloft above.
I gripped the ladder, feeling the silken moss on the rungs beneath my fingertips. The wood flexed beneath my hold and a pang of dread resounded through my bones. But it would have to do.
Without allowing a single doubt to cross my mind, I began to climb, my eyes on the square opening which led into the hayloft beyond. Six rungs, seven, eight, nine –
I barely stifled a scream as the tenth split beneath my weight and fell with a clatter to the flagstones below, leaving me dangling by my fingers above a drop which may not have killed me but would certainly hurt like a bitch.
My legs swung wildly as I fought to heave myself up and get a foot on the next rung.
Footsteps crunched across dead leaves far too close for my liking and I prayed to all the spirits in the forest for aid.
With a surge of strength, I managed to pull myself higher, my foot finding purchase at last and allowing me to reach for the edge of the hayloft’s entrance.
I scrambled inside and then dragged the ladder up behind me, cursing as it groaned at the imposition and made my arms strain at the effort. I dug my heels into the wooden platform beneath me and with a final haul, the ladder thumped down on the mouldy hay beside me, knocking me back with it.
My breaths came in shaky rasps but I froze in place as a solid thump punctuated the opening of a nearby door.
“Has no one ever told you that its foolish to run from a Fae?” he rumbled, his low baritone sending a tremor of fear through my flesh.
His question was a taunt but I knew better than to answer it.
He couldn’t be certain I was here. I’d been too far ahead of him and the dry ground hadn’t provided a place for me to have left tracks.
All I had to do was stay silent and wait him out.
His boots thumped slowly across the floor, his pace a prowl, his aura oppressive. It was like the air itself was shifting aside to make room for him as he entered, knowing that it was nothing in comparison to him. He oozed power like a physical force, its weight cloying, suffocating.
Strands of hay tickled my face, trembling against my lips with each stilted breath I allowed past them.
My bed was far from comfortable, every stalk prodding me with purposeful precision while the scent of damp and mould choked me.
But I refused to move an inch. He’d hear me if I did.
I knew that much about his kind. Their senses were razor sharp, their instincts more like a beast’s than a man’s.
They had powers too, each of them born with a single gift which manifested itself when they reached adulthood.
I’d heard of Fae who could call the light of the sun from their palms, converse with animals and bend them to their will, toss shadows from their fingertips or spin silk from nothing but the wind.
I only hoped the brute hunting me didn’t possess the ability to track down prey at will because it certainly felt like he was doing just that, his presence encompassing this entire building like he might scent me in the dark.
His boots thumped slowly around the stable and he hummed a low tune which turned my blood to ice in my veins. I painted an X in the scratchy hay at my side but superstition had never saved me before.
Something scratched against the walls, the roof, like the scurrying of tiny claws moving closer.
In the rafters overhead a shadow moved and my heart leapt in fear as I felt eyes upon me. But he couldn’t be up there. It had to be a rat or a mouse, the scratching marking its movements. But if he were anointed with the power over creatures-
Something struck the rotting wood of the hay loft right beneath me, the jolt of the impact rattling through my bones before the whole thing groaned and began to give way.
I scrambled to get up, reaching for a knotted rope which hung against the wall. My fingers brushed it as the floor beneath me collapsed and I leapt for it, a small window beyond offering my only chance of escape.
My foot struck the beam at the edge of the window but my boot slipped on the coil of rope.
I screamed as I pitched backwards, my fingers knotting in the rope like it might somehow save me – and in a way it did.
I still fell but as I yanked the rope tight it snared my foot and hoisted me skyward by my ankle before jamming against the rafter.
I jerked to a halt upside down, dangling by one foot, a swathe of dark hair filled with strands of mouldy hay blanketing my face.
I spun wildly before a hand caught my shoulder, jerking me to a halt.