Chapter 16 #2
His gaze softened as he moved his hand back and the trees parted, providing a green mossy path. It was still a bit eerie of a setting, but when he looked back, I saw acceptance in his gaze.
“You may go to Peace, but stay on the path. It’s the only place I can keep other nightmares from going,” he stated in a relaxed tone. “I am trusting you, human. Do not make me regret it.”
I nodded as he stepped back, and his form transformed back into the towering terror that rose above the trees, offering us one more glance before disappearing into the mist. I looked towards Damian with interest, his eyes fastened to my face.
“How did he know we were here?” I asked curiously.
“Terrors all carry a power signature, and the group of us has an especially strong one,” he said, moving his tail so I was pressed against his chest, and then kissed my forehead.
He grasped my jaw and added, “Arabella, sometimes I really want to just tie your ass up so that you can’t go talking to nightmares like that.
I mean, fuck, I don’t want you interacting with any of those motherfuckers. You don’t need to handle it, we can—”
“I want to handle it,” I interrupted before he could get even more carried away.
“Damian, I understand I don’t have the same physicality as you guys, but I love nightmares of all kinds, and I am going to do whatever I can to protect them.
You guys are everything to me, and I won’t let anyone take that away from me, so if we need to talk to whoever the heck it is that can help us fix this, then we will.
I refuse to not make a stand for our family… and our future family.”
His eyes warmed as he surged forward and kissed me, transforming back into his human form as I clutched onto him.
When he pulled back, his fingers brushed over my neck and he spoke honestly.
“I don’t know how to express how I feel, Arabella.
I am not good at this shit… It’s like all the words sound fucking stupid the minute they come out of my mouth. ”
“How do you feel? Don’t worry about the words,” I pressed softly.
“I feel like you’re my entire goddamn world.”
I couldn’t help the smile that broke onto my face. I kissed him again, and when a low rumble left his chest, I jolted as one echoed back from the forest. Damian narrowed his eyes there before looking back at the RV.
“If we are going in there, then we should get the others up. There won’t be much light in there, but it will be even worse at night.”
Somehow, I didn’t think that was going to matter.
“What are you humming?” Zain asked curiously, walking next to me as we began our way down the path.
It had unsurprisingly taken an hour to get everyone on board and then ready for our expedition, but after laying out all my reasoning for why this was a good idea, there had only been one thing left to combat.
They had wanted me to stay in the RV.
I had completely ignored that idea, filled my backpack up with all my files, anything else important information-wise, and then shrugged on my jacket.
I was about halfway to the path before they had caught up with me and realized how serious I was.
Now that we were settled and walking down the path, I was wondering what they had been so concerned about.
“I can put up some light,” Damian offered again before I could answer Zain, cutting off my humming.
I turned and looked at him in question. “I can see perfectly fine… In fact, if anything”—I took off my glasses and began to clean them on my shirt—“it’s my glasses that are the problem.”
“You can see in this dark of lighting?” Razar came to a stop in front of me, and I snapped my head up. My eyes widened as I realized that without my glasses, his face was completely clear to me.
“It wasn’t like that this morning when I was driving,” I murmured, confused, moving my glasses on and off my face again just to be sure.
“Maybe you can just see better in the dark, not in the light,” Zain pointed out.
I looked at him and realized I could see both of them in far more clarity than usual.
In fact, I was noticing things I never would have before, from how many eyelashes Zain had to the slightly longer piece of hair, by maybe a half a centimeter, on top of Razar’s head.
Was this how they always saw me? If so, I was positive that they could see everything down to the pores on my chin. And they were still into me?
Still in disbelief, I tried to put my glasses back on, and my men turned blurry.
I took them off and squinted my uninjured eye, and my vision hyper-focused on everything around me.
I opened both eyes and it lessened slightly, so I squinted my injured eye…
and everything was blurry. So it was my injured eye that I could see out of better?
What the hell?
“I can see perfectly out of this eye,” I pointed and then referenced the other, “but not this one.” I gasped. “Oh my god, will I have to start wearing a monocle? That’s sorta cool.”
“Maybe this is a side effect of our magic,” Blackwell hypothesized, completely ignoring my monocle question, much to my frustration.
“Why wouldn’t it affect my other eye?”
“Because it was caused by a nightmare…” Cy’s words drew to a stop, his eyes flickering up as a weird glowing light suddenly filled the space.
My head snapped up, and my eyes widened in shock.
Now, I had seen many unique things in the past week, let alone my entire life…
but a whale-sized fish floating through the large trees above us like it was in water?
That took the cake. The entire scaled pattern that covered its body was highlighted by the light that glowed from its underbelly and the purple scales seemed to shift and shimmer under the light that barely broke through the treetops from above.
It paid zero attention to us as it turned away from the path and continued on its way.
I swallowed and offered all of them an incredulous look.
“Alright, this place is a bit odder than normal,” Saint admitted. You knew it was bad if Saint was saying something was weird.
“Do all of them have human forms?” I asked, curious for the sake of easy communication.
“It depends. Most are born that way because it’s a genetic defensive adaptation, but there are some that don’t have that or lose the ability to over time,” Cy explained, coming to walk next to Zain and me as we continued forward along the path.
“This place just feels so much more saturated with magic and life,” I said as I began to look around the forest, outside of the path we were on.
The mist had fine sparkles of different color in it, and shadows moved in and out, glowing eyes occasionally appearing only to disappear moments later. An exhilarated chill ran up my spine as I heard whistles on the wind that weren’t natural but almost sounded like a beckoning call.
Before I could say anything else, footsteps were pounding through the space, and a large figure appeared seemingly out of nowhere, crouching down at the edge of the path and bringing us all to a stop.
I arched a brow at the humanoid form, its green skin seeming to have mist coming off of it like the man before, but this creature had its hands spread like it was on all fours, its mouth hinged open while watching us.
Sharp teeth glinted as saliva dripped down and flooded the edge of the path, the silver texture making me quickly move out of the way, the terror’s white eyes following me with interest.
“Do…do we say something?” I asked. Razar shook his head and pointed for me to continue.
Before I could do that, a howl echoed, vibrating through every element of my bones, and the creature screamed, running off and breaking the trees in its path.
My eyes snapped to the werewolf-like creatures that were now chasing after it, seemingly hundreds of them made of shadows.
“This is actually really cool,” I murmured.
“This is actually really cool,” a soft, feminine voice mocked.
I turned to find someone in our pathway.
It was a young woman, probably around my age in appearance, and she was staring at me with disdain.
I swallowed uncomfortably as she began sauntering towards us with glowing white eyes, her nude body seemingly covered in ash.
I had the sudden urge to cover all my mates’ eyes, but instead I kept my gaze on her, knowing that it wasn’t a good idea to look away.
See? And my men said I didn’t have a sense of self-preservation!
“You can’t be on this path,” I said, and she hissed like I had slapped her.
“I can’t hurt you on it.” She appeared in front of me and tilted up my jaw, making Saint let out a snarl. “I don’t want to hurt you though. I want to know what a human is doing with all of these terrors. You must be rather interesting for them to pay attention to you.”
Grabbing her wrist, I gently moved her hand away and stepped forward. “You should go.”
“Why?” The nightmare narrowed her eyes.
“Because I can’t stop them if you keep touching me,” I pointed out. Her eyes flickered over my shoulder, and she disappeared in a snap at whatever she had seen.
I deflated and shook my head, not understanding these nightmares nearly as much as I normally did.
I didn’t mind that in theory, but I was just worried that I would mess this up somehow.
One of the reasons I was so comfortable at the institute was that I understood the procedures and what could and couldn’t be done… But not here.
“They aren’t normal terrors. Well, they are…but not the type you are used to,” Cy explained, intertwining our fingers.
That was very clear, and while I was eager for more of an explanation, I found myself keeping quiet so I could focus on the world around me. I wasn’t used to having my sight heightened like this, and I was almost positive that I was hearing better as well.
Which is how I heard the soft song that began playing. The first beat of the drum caused me to jolt and stumble near the edge of the path.