Chapter 1
Colt
“You’re where?”
I grin beneath my helmet as I stare at the wall of trees stretching in front of me, their branches tangled together so tightly that the last of the evening light struggles to reach the ground beyond them.
“Hoia Baciu.”
Silence fills my helmet.
I glance down at the small display mounted near my handlebars to make sure the call hasn’t disconnected, but Mike’s name is still sitting in the corner of the screen.
“Mike?”
“I’m here.”
“Then why the fuck aren’t you talking?”
“Because I’m trying to decide if my English is bad or you just said you’re at Hoia Baciu.”
I laugh and lean forward, resting my arms across the handlebars while the engine vibrates beneath me.
“Your English is better than mine, mate. Get your bike and come meet me.”
“No.”
The answer comes so quickly that I straighten.
“No?”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“You told me where you are. I know exactly what you were going to say.”
“I’m offended.”
“You should be in a hotel.”
“Hotels are boring.”
“You landed in Romania yesterday.”
“Exactly. I’ve wasted enough time.”
Mike mutters something in Romanian that I don’t understand. The only word I recognize is pula. Coincidentally, it’s also the only Romanian word he ever bothered to teach me.
His real name is Mihai—Mihai Stan, but after listening to me pronounce it three different ways during our first mission together, he told me to call him Mike before he put a bullet through my tongue.
I thought the threat was excessive, considering I was making an effort, but Romanian men seem particularly sensitive about their names.
He still insists that Mihai is easy to pronounce. I insist that Mike is easier. So far, neither of us has died over it.
I look toward the forest again. The trail disappearing between the trees is narrow, covered in mud and probably a terrible idea after the rain we’ve had since I arrived.
Deep tire tracks cut through the ground near the entrance before disappearing farther ahead, proving I’m not the first idiot to look at this place and see an opportunity instead of a warning.
Perfect.
“Come on,” I say. “A few hours on the bikes. That trail looks fucking beautiful.”
“You are not taking your bike into Hoia Baciu.”
“Pretty sure I am.” I reply, as I glance down at the machine between my legs.
“Colt.”
“Mike.”
“Mihai.”
“Not the time for this argument.”
“It is never the time for this argument because you are too stupid to learn one Romanian name.”
“I learned Hoia Baciu.”
“You are currently about to ride into it after dark. I don’t think that counts as learning.”
I laugh and straighten on the bike, turning my head to study the edge of the forest. There is something different about the silence here, although I’m not sure I would have noticed it if Mike hadn’t suddenly started acting like my grandmother.
No birds, no distant cars and not even the sound of wind moving through the branches, leaving nothing but my engine and Mike breathing into my helmet like he’s trying to stop himself from reaching through the call and strangling me.
“People disappear there,” he says.
“People disappear everywhere.”
“People lose hours.”
“I lose hours every time I drink tequila. Still drink it.”
“This isn’t funny.” The sharpness in his voice finally makes me pause.
I’ve known Mike long enough to recognize when he’s fucking with me, and there is usually laughter hiding somewhere behind his words, even when we’re standing over a body and trying to decide which one of us is responsible for cleaning the blood off the walls.
There is none now.
“You actually believe that shit?” I ask.
“I believe there are some things you don’t fuck with simply because you don’t understand them.”
“Mike, you kill people for a living.” I say, trying to hold my laughter as much as I can.
“So do you.”
“Exactly, which is why I’m struggling to understand how a man who shot someone through the eye from two hundred meters away is currently afraid of a few trees and some stories invented to stop children wandering away from their parents.”
“Skullbound Legion is different.”
“Of course it is.”
“It is,” he insists. “I get a name and I know exactly what I’m hunting. Rapists, murderers, men who beat their wives until they cannot stand, people who hurt children. They bleed, Colt. They die when I shoot them.”
“Usually.”
“They always die when I shoot them.”
“There he is. I was worried the forest had stolen your confidence.” I grin beneath the helmet.
“Fuck you.”
“See? Much better.”
Mike exhales sharply, but I hear the irritation in his voice before he speaks again.
“The Legion sends me after monsters who look human. That doesn’t mean I want to meet a fucking ancient witch who, according to every story I’ve heard since I was a child, cannot be killed.”
“Can’t be killed?”
“That’s the part you heard?”
“It’s an interesting detail.”
“The interesting detail is that people enter Hoia Baciu and don’t come back.”
“People enter your apartment and don’t come back.”
“That happened once.”
“Twice.”
“The second one left.”
“In several bags.”
“Technically, he left,” Mike says.
I laugh so hard that my goggles fog at the edges.
“You’re afraid of a made-up story,” I say once I can breathe properly. “A man who dismembers murderers for money is scared of a witch his grandmother probably invented because you were an annoying child.”
“I was not an annoying child.”
“You’re an annoying adult. I assumed there was a pattern.”
“Go fuck yourself, Colt.”
“There he is again.”
“I believe my grandmother when she tells me never to enter that forest after dark, and if you had met her, you would too.” His sigh crackles through my helmet once again.
I look at the sky before turning my attention back to the trees. The sun is still visible between the branches, although barely.
“Well, technically, it’s not dark yet.”
“Colt.”
“I’m looking at the sun right now.”
“You’re looking at the last five minutes of it.”
“Five minutes is plenty of time.”
“To do what?”
“Enter the forest before dark.”
Mike goes quiet again, and the silence makes me smile more than it should.
“Go back to the hotel,” he finally says.
“You sound like my mother.”
“I spoke to your mother once. She sounds smarter than you.”
“That woman thinks Wi-Fi causes cancer.”
“And somehow, still smarter than you.”
I laugh as I sit upright and wrap my fingers around the handlebars.
“Last chance. You coming?”
“No.”
“Pussy.”
“Alive pussy.”
“That’s not how that word works.”
“You know what I mean.”
I shake my head and look at the forest again, studying the narrow trail while something familiar begins crawling beneath my skin—excitement.
There are few things in this world capable of silencing my head completely, but a bike has always been one of them.
The moment the engine becomes louder than my thoughts and the ground starts moving too quickly beneath me, everything else disappears.
No names, no faces and no photographs arriving on a phone I keep turned off when I’m not working.
No instructions telling me where to go, who to find or how much of them needs to remain recognizable when I’m finished.
Just me and the possibility of making one wrong decision at exactly the right speed.
“You know what?” Mike says. “I’m calling D.”
My smile disappears. “You fucking wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
“You don’t even have his number.”
“I have the same number you have.”
“That’s not his number. That’s the Legion’s number.”
“Then I call the Legion and tell them one of their assassins is about to get eaten by a Romanian witch.”
“I’m on holiday.” I scoff.
“Killers don’t get holidays.”
“Paid assassins absolutely get holidays. I checked my contract.”
“You don’t have a contract.”
“Exactly. No clause against holidays.”
Mike sighs, and I can almost picture him pinching the bridge of his nose.
I met him three years ago in Prague with a gun pressed against the back of his head because D had apparently decided sending two men who had never met to kill the same target was an amusing way to encourage teamwork. Mike broke my nose before we realized we were there for the same reason.
We’ve been friends ever since. Or something close to it.
Friendship becomes difficult to define when you know how many bodies the other person has buried.
“You think D will care?” I ask.
“I think D will be annoyed when he has to replace you.”
“That almost sounded affectionate.”
“It wasn’t.”
“He likes me.”
“D doesn’t like anyone.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You don’t know him.”
Neither do I. None of us do. D is a single letter attached to untraceable emails and encrypted messages, with money hitting my account before I have the opportunity to ask questions.
Sometimes I get a photograph, sometimes a name, and occasionally, a location with a single sentence explaining why the person in front of me no longer deserves to breathe.
I’ve never met the man behind the initial. I’ve never asked to.
The Skullbound Legion pays well, the targets are always cunts, and I get to sleep at night without wondering whether I put a bullet through the wrong skull. Most of the time, anyway.
“Fine,” Mike says. “Send me your location.”
“Thought you weren’t coming.”
“I’m not. I want to know where to tell the Legion to search for your body.”
“I don’t think D or my criminal colleagues know how to kill a witch.”
“Neither do you.”
“Good thing I’m not trying to kill one.”
“You’re entering her forest.”
“Allegedly.”
“The forest is real, Colt. You’re staring at it.”
“The witch is alleged.”
“My grandmother believes in her.”
“Your grandmother also thinks I’m possessed.”
“She met you for four minutes.”
“Judgmental woman.”
“She was right.”
I laugh as I reach toward the small screen and send Mike my location.
“There. Happy?”
“No.”
“Story of your life.”
“Colt, listen to me for once. If something feels wrong, turn around.”
I glance at the forest again. Something moves between the trees. I straighten slightly, focusing on the place where I thought I saw it, but there is nothing there except fog beginning to collect between the trunks. Probably an animal.
“If something feels wrong, I’ll call you.”
“To do what?”
“Provide emotional support.”
“I live forty minutes away.”
“Then drive fast.”
“I fucking hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I will when I have to explain to D that one of his assassins disappeared because he wanted to play with his motorcycle in a cursed forest.”
My fingers pause over the throttle.
“Cursed?”
Mike exhales. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, you definitely should have started with that.”
“Go back to the hotel.”
“What kind of curse?”
“Colt.”
“People losing hours is boring. You buried the interesting part.”
“There are stories about the forest.”
“What kind of stories?”
“Disappearances, lights between the trees and people hearing voices when nobody is there. Some say the forest changes around you once you enter.”
I stare ahead with considerably more interest than I had thirty seconds ago.
“And the witch?”
Silence.
“Mike?”
“My grandmother calls her the Witch of the Forest.”
“Creative.” I huff out a quiet laugh.
“According to the stories, she lures people deeper into Hoia Baciu.”
“Why?”
“So she can kill them.”
“Bit antisocial.”
“Colt.”
“What?”
“Go back to your hotel.”
“Is she hot?” I ask, giving his request approximately two seconds of consideration.
The call disconnects.
I stare at Mike’s name until it vanishes from the display, a grin creeping onto my face.
“A fucking witch.”
The sun sinks farther behind the trees, and the trail ahead darkens until I can barely see beyond the first bend. Somewhere in the distance, a branch snaps loudly enough to carry through the silence.
I should probably turn around. Mike is Romanian, grew up less than an hour from this place and has killed enough people to make fear an unusual reaction for him.
If a man like that refuses to enter a forest because his grandmother told him not to, perhaps I should consider the possibility that he knows something I don’t. But instead, I twist the throttle.
The engine roars beneath me, loud enough to disturb the silence hanging between the trees, and the familiar rush hits my blood before the bike even moves.
“If you’re in there,” I mutter, lowering my goggles, “Mike says hello.”
Then I ride into the forest.