Chapter 30 #2
Jacob pauses, hushing us. I freeze, listening.
At first, all I hear is the sighing of the trees as the wind rushes through the pines, but then I catch something else.
Maybe it’s from the lack of other noises in the forest. The cicadas are silent, and the bullfrogs don’t croak.
Or maybe it’s that bird-part of me emerging.
A pad of footsteps. Sniffing.
“Something hunts us,” I whisper, my muscles screaming to turn around and run. “Wolves.”
Jacob’s eyebrow lifts as if in surprise.
“I hear nothing,” Fritz says.
My heart pounds as the padding of paws breaks into a gallop. “They’re coming and fast,” I say breathlessly.
“Run!” Jacob orders.
We take off at a sprint, ducking under branches and leaping over logs.
Twigs snap against my cheeks and tear at my skirts, but I refuse to slow my pace.
My feet fly across the ground as if I’m lighter than air.
I bound over fallen logs and duck under low boughs.
A giant wall rises before us, blocking our path.
“If we can get over this wall,” Jacob says, “we’ll be safe from the wolves.”
He holds out his hands before him, indicating for me to step into them. I comply and find myself catapulted upward to the ledge of the stone wall. My nails scrape along the surface, but I pull myself up. I turn around and reach over the edge, helping Fritz up next as Jacob shoves him toward me.
Shadows fly across the ground like phantoms, meters from Jacob and Wilhelm below.
“Hurry!” I call down as Jacob helps Wilhelm up. “They’re coming.”
Growls cut through the air. Once Wilhelm joins us on top of the wall, both he and Fritz reach down and yank Jacob up. One wolf leaps into the air. It clamps its maw onto Jacob’s leg. As Jacob bellies on the wall, I stab the beast, and it lets go of Jacob’s leg.
“Are you all right?” I ask, grabbing his arm.
“It was nothing,” he says. “A mere scratch.”
“That looked like more than a scratch,” Fritz warns. “The wolf sank its teeth into your skin and then chewed on it.”
Horror spears me. “Let me bind it up,” I offer.
“I’m fine,” he says, brushing his injury aside as if it’s nothing. “Let’s keep moving.”
He drops onto the other side of the wall like it’s not a fifteen-foot drop. Wilhelm follows effortlessly while Fritz lands with a crash in the bushes, grunting in pain. My boots touch the edge of the wall when it’s my turn.
“I’ll catch you,” Jacob offers, holding out his hands.
My heart hammers, but I jump. Strong arms swoop around my body, pulling me against his solid chest.
“See? I told you I’d catch you.” His breath is hot against my ear, his grip unyielding. There are wolves hunting us, we’re in the backyard of a man I’m determined to never marry, and yet in his arms, I feel safer than I’ve ever felt in my life.
By the time he sets me on the ground, I’m breathless. It has nothing to do with the terrors on the other side of the wall.
“What kind of place is this?” Fritz asks. “And what’s that dreadful smell?”
I rip my gaze from Jacob to see what he’s talking about.
“I’ve no idea,” Jacob says. “But I don’t like it.”
Mist slithers across the ground, masking our forms. We thread our way across what looks like once were gardens but now appear more like a graveyard.
Thin, bone-white trees grow across an otherwise barren yard.
There’s something sinister about the grounds with hundreds of naked trees, boughs clawing for the moon as if begging for life.
Brown grass crunches beneath my boots as I creep closer to the house.
The stench of rotting flesh permeates the area, forcing me to press my handkerchief to my face to stop the wretched smell.
Wolves cry from the other side of the wall, and their claws scuff at the stone.
My foot stumbles on something. I fall to the ground. Jacob rushes to my side and reaches a hand to help me up, but my whole body is frozen. Right beside my cheek lies a bone, smooth and white as pearls.
My mouth opens in a scream, but Jacob’s hand clamps over my lips with a gentle hush of a warning to keep silent.
I nod, whimpering despite myself. He lifts me off the cursed soil.
We take off running again, darting around the skeleton trees, moonlight illuminating their limbs so they look like dancing ghosts.
My hand squeezes Jacob’s tighter. I don’t want to ever let go.
Finally, we reach the far end of the yard, panting and gasping for air.
We’re in a carpenter’s work area, the ground littered in sawdust and the roof covered by a wooden slab.
Saws hang in the workshop, and long boards are stretched out for the workers.
“Didn’t Wissen mention he only dabbled in carpentry work now?” Wilhelm asks. “Looks as if he’s in full operation.”
“And these axes.” Jacob studies a row of them dangling from the roof. “Looks like the same make as the one we found by the attack on the weapons delivery.”
“You found the culprit,” Fritz says, his voice trembling. “Excellent work. I say we leave this instant and have the king send in his men at first light.”
“When I fell,” I say, “I landed next to a bone. There’s something odd about a bone lying in the yard, isn’t there?”
“Maybe. Or perhaps it was just one of the doctor’s dog’s bones,” Wilhelm says, but his eyebrows are raised as he stares at my hand tucked into Jacob’s.
It takes all my willpower to let go.
“Come,” Jacob snaps at Wilhelm, clearly angry and annoyed. “For the entrance to Hell is just over there. Fritz and Ella, you two stay here. Fritz, if so much as a hair falls from her head, I’ll kill you.”
“You can’t talk to me like that,” Fritz says loftily.
“Seems like I just did,” Jacob replies.
“I’m going in there with you.” I plant my fists on my hips, mainly to keep them from shaking. “I need to destroy that newly made marriage contract they’re making right now.”
Jacob stares at me for a moment, the muscle line in his jaw tightening, like he’s considering me. “Fine. But stick close.”
He storms into the manor without a backward glance.