Chapter 15
Alice
The woods are dark and deep. We’re only a few minutes up the road, but it feels like we’ve left all the sunlight back in the downtown area, towering trees swallowing up the brightness of high noon. Mist creeps along the ground, reaching toward the truck with pale gray fingers.
“I’m dropping you off at the house, Fallon,” Wyatt says, flipping on the fog lights. “We’re running over to Cade’s and I’m not taking the chance you get him all riled up this close to the full moon.”
“The full moon?” I echo, lurching forward to peer at the siblings. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“You’re gonna find out real soon,” Fallon tells me with a wild grin, patting my shoulder. Then she turns to Wyatt and asks, “What would make you think I’d get our dear little brother wound up?”
“Yeah, come on, it’s not like she’s ever done anything insane, Wyatt,” I add, fighting to keep my expression neutral.
He cruises the truck to a stop sign and then presses his forehead into the steering wheel as if we’ve defeated him entirely. “I can handle one of you,” he says, his gaze fixed straight ahead. “Not both of you. Not with everything else going on.”
“I thought you were a stronger man than that.” Fallon sniffs, scratching Fern’s ears in a precise spot that makes the big dog thump her foot happily.
“A weaker man,” Wyatt mutters, turning off the road onto a familiar drive, “would’ve throttled you both by now. You slapped somebody right on Main Street, Alice. And Fallon, you had her by her goddamn hair. In the middle of the damn day.”
“She deserved it!” Fallon and I shout at the same time.
Fern apparently agrees, because she throws her head back and howls.
All of us—even Wyatt—dissolve into laughter.
We fall into a comfortable silence, Fallon’s shoulder pressed into mine, Fern’s legs splayed across my lap as she settles in for the ride.
I lean my head against the window, feeling better thanks to the burrito and the fact that I’ll get to let my parents know I’m alive.
If they don’t hear from me, they might contact the university, and I just don’t feel like explaining it all to them right now.
I mean—I don’t know how to explain any of it to them.
I guess I’ll tell them I’m safe, taking a weekend trip with some friends.
I don’t have any friends besides the people (and dog) in this truck, but they might be so happy at the prospect I’ve made some that they’ll buy the rest of it.
The cab of the truck is still warm from sitting in the sun next to the town hall, so I crank a window down. Wyatt’s catching Fallon up on everything we did this morning, and my attention wanders. I stare out the window, appreciating the beauty unfolding all around me.
A copse of silver birches catches my attention, and I take them in with delight as we draw closer.
The meager sunlight that manages to pierce the thick tree canopy coats the slim, pretty trees like molasses, turning them into bronze sculptures.
Except for one, I think—it’s a strange hue of spring-green, moving in some unseen breeze.
I open my mouth to point it out, but then a horrible stench overtakes my senses, and I retch.
“What in the fuck?” Fallon asks just before Wyatt slams on the brakes. My head glances off the truck’s frame—that’s what I get for hanging out the window like a damn dog, I guess. I blink, trying to get my bearings, and then I realize the movement I see up ahead isn’t just the mist.
It’s a sleek black creature, all taut muscle and long limbs, utterly otherworldly. I lean forward onto the dash, peering closer. My brain protests what I’m seeing, trying to convince me the pitch-colored hound doesn’t have its jaws unhinged at an impossible, snake-like angle.
“Shh,” Wyatt hushes when Fern lets out a quiet whine.
Fallon comes to life all at once, reaching over me to pull a pistol out of the glovebox. The creature takes no notice of us, shaking its head violently before tearing a limb from its victim.
Biting down my tongue, I force myself to look closer through the writhing fog.
For a moment, I’m terrified it’s a person, but then I understand it’s only vaguely humanoid.
It’s a little smaller than me, I think, and its skin is an impossible gray hue, patchy and scarred.
A bright slash of red catches my attention, and I squint, academic curiosity overcoming any sort of self-preservation or disgust.
A decapitated head lolls on the dirt road. Its features are almost human, but not quite. Its eyes are open corpse-wide, the pupils and irises an impossible black. Pointed ears knife through stringy hair. On its head is a red hat, made of a strange fabric.
Oh. Not fabric, I realize, the nausea rising up my throat now. Skin. “A redcap,” I breathe.
“I’ll be damned,” Fallon murmurs.
“I am begging you,” Wyatt pleads in a barely-there whisper. “Shut. Up.”
The dirt road is damp with dew and viscera, a trail of red-black blood trickling down into the grass like run-off during a summer storm.
The feasting creature—it’s a hellhound, I realize all at once—pays us no mind, biting into the redcap’s head.
Gore bursts forth like fountain, gray brain matter dribbling down the hellhound’s chin.
Its maw isn’t any kind of canine mouth. Instead, its entire jaw is lined with razor-sharp teeth, and the way it moves is wrong.
Or at least my brain tells me—screams at me—that it’s wrong, wrong, wrong.
My entire body buzzes, and my heart thrashes like a living thing caged by my ribs.
Distantly, I realize I’ve never felt flight or fight quite like this before, as if there’s always been a bottomless well of primal fear inside me waiting for the right moment to activate.
The hellhound finishes off the redcap’s head and then fastens its teeth around a torn-off limb—an arm, maybe?
All at once, it straightens and turns toward the truck, its eyes gleaming like a predator’s in the dark, even though daylight still leaks through the treetops.
I notice an interruption in its sleek, black coat—a white scar on its shoulder, like a half-moon, almost. And then it’s gone.
Not the way a dog runs away, bounding off into a field.
The hellhound is there, and then it just melts away, leaving nothing more than a smear of gore on the abandoned dirt road.
All four of us breathe out in a collective exhale. As the adrenaline fades, the stench overpowers me and I retch again, reaching over to crank the window back up.
“Shouldn’t be any redcaps this close to town,” Fallon says, an edge in her voice.
“No,” Wyatt agrees, beginning to slowly inch the truck forward. “No, there damn well shouldn’t be.”
The first thing I do in the yard of Caden Hayes’s surprisingly cute cottage is vomit.
“Well,” Wyatt says as he kneels beside me, “least it’s not in my truck.” I would probably laugh at his dry tone were I not puking my guts up, trying to avoid the potted mums and the porch steps.
Fingertips brush the nape of my neck—Wyatt’s, I realize, as he gathers my hair back. Despite the nausea, despite the fact I’m literally on my fucking knees in damp grass, dry-heaving on a stranger’s lawn, something bright and warm flutters beneath my breastbone.
More contradictory feelings flood my body as I lurch forward again and throw up whatever was left of my poor, beautiful burrito.
A hand ghosts up and down my back in a comforting stroke.
I want to melt into it, into him, but I’m preoccupied at the moment.
And it’s so stupid, I know, but I hope he’s not judging me for tossing my breakfast at my first sight of Them.
I rock back on my heels and shiver. It’s way colder up in the hills, particularly with this weird, midday mist. Wyatt stays next to me, reaching into his coat pocket for a square of fabric. It’s Black Watch plaid, I think, forever unable to turn my brain off, as he offers it to me.
“Oh my god,” I say in a strained voice. “You carry around a fucking handkerchief.”
“Do you want to wipe your mouth off or not?” he demands, one eyebrow arching.
“Whatever,” I grumble, taking the handkerchief and doing exactly that. My mouth is sour as he helps me to my feet. Despite the projectile vomiting, I’m pretty steady, but I’m not gonna ruin the moment.
I drag the back of my hand across my forehead and glance at Caden’s door.
To my utter delight, a group of tiny winged creatures is lined up on the porch railing.
They shimmer with some kind of iridescence or maybe even bioluminescence, blue-tinged and lovely.
Their wings are gossamer-thin, and maybe I’m seeing things, but I swear They’re dressed in little outfits that look like flower petals.
“See!” I near-shout, whipping around to stare at Wyatt as I point toward the porch. “That’s what I thought They were gonna look like! Cute little guys! In little flower dresses! Not decapitated corpses!”
Wyatt looks between me and the pixies. “They’re laughing at you, I think,” he says.
“Rude,” I reply, pulling my coat closer as I shiver again. “Can you tell Them I’ve just been through something very traumatic and also deeply gross?”
He shoves his hands in his pockets and shakes his head.
“We can’t speak to most of Them, pixies included,” he explains.
“We don’t know Their language, and They’ve no interest in learning ours.
Most of the witches can communicate with Them due to their Changeling blood, and there’s some hedgerider records of Them occasionally choosing to speak with us, but it’s always on Their terms and usually temporary. ”
“Huh,” I say, watching one of the pixies dive off the porch railing and zip around the yard. “Do They have any written records? And if so, has anyone tried translating?”