Chapter 19 #2
A truck droned close by, its engine groaning against the high-grade road over the mountain.
I could picture its exact path just from the sound thanks to my new senses, and I laughed again as my brain mapped out the land around me just from that piece of information.
The vehicle hit the high point of the road just past Mr. Freedman’s land, and then it hummed as gravity took over.
I angled my body a few more degrees to the east and quickened my pace, now confident in exactly where I was going.
With the promise of home so close, I could ignore my exhaustion.
Voices spilled down the mountainside. Little Hunter sisters.
Based on the soft thuds, they were training.
I followed the sound, my legs picking up speed, fueled by the hope of comfort, and possibly even a shower.
I’d never come upon the empty swath of training grounds from this angle, and I had to slow to make it over the last few yards where the mountain steepened before it flattened out.
I took each step carefully, finding footholds, using trees as support.
Soft little cries between dull slaps drew my curiosity and stopped me when I was only half up the scramble, just enough to peek over.
Three older girls armed with wooden staffs took turns striking a younger one stuck between them. She arched forward when a staff slammed into her lower back, then tripped when one jabbed her ankle. She fell to the ground and was struck on the shoulder.
“Stop that!” I shouted, and all four girls jumped and turned to me in surprise. The young one on the ground limped to her feet.
The training dummy. Right. She’d been the weak link of the day, and this was her punishment, as it had been mine until I’d fought hard enough to avoid it.
The girls — all of them still girls, even the three older ones — stared at me like I was one of the creatures from that pit.
I likely looked like one. I pushed myself the rest of the way up to the training area and swayed on the solid, flat ground.
“Fallon Hunter.” Sarah Jane stamped over from where she’d been observing and giving orders. Her tone struck me the same way it did my little sisters, like I was no older or wiser than they were. “Go home. Now.”
“Yes, Mother.” I walked straight there on the longest strides I could manage, keeping my head down.
That poor girl. I’d been in her position before, and then I’d been in the other position, and seeing it like an out-of-body experience left me feeling even more slimy than crawling around in that cave.
It didn’t feel right. But this was the way it had always been done. Nothing was fair about being a Hunter.
I was likely dangerously dehydrated, so as soon as the Hunter house was in sight, I rushed to my car where I’d left my water bottle.
I sank to the ground beside the opened door so I didn’t get any muck on my seats and downed every last drop, even though it was unpleasantly warm and tinged with a metallic bitterness.
Was even my sense of taste amplified? My parched mouth was mildly soothed, but I needed more if I expected to get through any other trials.
I contemplated what I was meant to do next.
Knock on the door? I leaned on my car to stand and took the black stone from my pocket. Could I call out to Cora this way?
“You made it.”
The screen door clattered shut, and Jo stepped onto the patio. She looked me over from her vantage point before coming down the steps.
“Did I do it right, then?” I asked with a small, sarcastic smile. “I wasn’t left with much in the way of instructions.”
“You’re here, aren’t you?” She held out an uncapped mason jar of water filled to the lip.
I was careful not to spill a drop as I took hold of it and drank.
I could taste the dull hint of minerals and the sharp residue of soap that clung to the glass.
I’d have to get used to this, too. I gave the jar back to Jo once I’d emptied it, and the look we shared was heavy with unspoken significance.
“Those were demons.” I slumped against the hood of my car and stared ahead at the ground, not really seeing what was in front of me as those dancing shadows played across my head. When Jo didn’t answer, I added, “Weren’t they?”
“They aren’t your concern. Remember that.” She spoke as if it was a secret she wanted no one else to overhear. Her mouth formed a serious line. “Evil takes many shapes in this world, Fallon. What you saw was one of its basest forms.”
“Demons.”
“Yes. Demons, trapped in the underworld just below us, eternally fighting to escape.”
“What can we do?” I bolted back to my feet.
Jo shook her head.
“Nothing?” I looked down, where below me demons were writhing and screaming and fighting to get out. “What’s stopping them? What was that barrier?”
“Answers bigger than us. This is what it is to be a Hunter. You will fight, but it will never stop, and it will always be bigger than you. Do you understand?”
No. The answer jumped from my heart, but I didn’t give it sound. “Is that what the trial was about? Facing that?”
“What do you think? It’s up to you to find your conclusions.” Jo’s hand on my shoulder made me jump, and she pulled it back. “There’s another practical reason for this trial. Maybe you were a bit too quick about it.”
“Sensory deprivation after pumping up my senses?” I scrubbed at my hairline, where sweat tickled.
It had been easier in the cave in some ways, with its steady lack of light, its cool internal climate, the smooth rock, the peace only ruined by the cries of demons below.
I shuddered again, then looked up when a thought struck me. “How long was I gone?”
“Three days. It’s typical. You’ll need to wash up in the outdoor shower. I’ll bring you some food, and then I’ll show you to where you’ll sleep for the night.”
Three days? How had I lost three days in there?
I couldn’t ask before Jo was gone. My body moved all on its own, collecting a new set of clothes and a few toiletries from my duffel bag and finding its way to the shower, if it could be called that, at the back of the house.
Really, it was a partially obscured stall with a garden hose strung up to the top.
The water was cold, not that I really registered it, and though I’d been taught to conserve and use as little water as possible, I was caked with sludge and took as long as I needed to remove that grit.
Once I was dry and dressed in clean clothes, I wandered back to the front of the house and sat on the cracked wood of the front porch steps, under the pressure of exhaustion.
“Fallon.”
I looked up to see a meal in front of me. Josephine was back. I took the fork and supported the plate with my hand spread below it and ignored the odd intensity of the taste, shoveling the food into my mouth without even examining what I was eating. I hadn’t eaten in three days.
“You’ll adjust,” Jo assured me.
“I’m not staying in the house?”
“No. Not during the trials. There’s a cot for you to sleep in the shed.”
“That’s how it’s done?” I scraped the remains of the plate into my mouth before handing it back over. Jo replaced it with another jar of water, and I only sipped at this one so my stomach didn’t rebel against the sudden fullness.
Of course that was how the trials were done, though. When I’d been a Hunter in training, I’d always been aware of my sisters facing the trials, even though I’d never actually seen them during those periods.
“Come on.”
I followed Josephine around the house and waited for her to unlock the shed.
The chair was tucked into a corner, and a folded cot waited for me.
Jo left again, and I attempted to unfold it and lock the frame into place so it didn’t collapse.
I wasn’t sure if the difficulty was because of my exhaustion or because the cot was too big for the shed.
It took some adjustment, setting it at the right angle, but the metal clicked into place, and finally, it was a bed.
Jo returned with sheets and a blanket, not having seen my pathetic struggle.
“Get some rest. You’ll need it.”
I watched her leave, listening to the steady thuds of her footsteps around the house until she turned the corner to the front.
I was alone again. I made my temporary bed, closed the shed door, then lay in a rasping cot of tumultuous unrest. Everything was loud and coarse, and my mouth tasted of rot.
All my limbs ached, and my eyes pulsated with pain. I’d seen demons.
I kept as still as I could, even trying to slow my breathing so my skin didn’t brush against the sheets with every inhalation.
Loneliness and grief crawled around in my chest, and every thought and feeling led back to that pit of demons.
If sleep found me, it wasn’t the restful kind.
There wasn’t much triumph in the aftermath of completing my first trial as a Hunter.