Chapter Twenty-Six TESNI
TWENTY-SIX
TESNI
The rapid crunching of snow is loud beneath our boots, but I hardly hear it over the hoarse grating of my breaths.
The snow is ankle-deep but thick enough that our running steps are hiked, and we have to force our legs upwards too high for each propelled step.
The exhaustion is wearing me down.
Beside me, Emily sounds as though her airways have been dragged over cheese graters.
I wonder if she’s getting dizzy like I am, if her sight is warping with vertigo and stars are starting to speckle her vision. Our damaged lungs from the black plague work against us, but we still chase up the length of the lake—and I will until I either pass out or reach Bee.
It must have been thirty minutes ago since her panicked whisper came through the CB.
Not a peep since.
Not a word, not a signal, not a fucking breath.
Just static.
I don’t let the panic distort me.
I stay focused on the other sounds I don’t hear.
Screams, gunshots, the war cries of the fae.
I hold onto that, a rope in the dark, because if I let go of that tether…
I can’t even think about it.
Can’t consider for a fucking second what it would do to me if I lost Bee.
So I do all that I can with the distance between us.
I run.
I run through the tightness of my muscles, my thighs starting to strain against my movements.
I run through the ragged pain in my chest, the hoarseness of my breathing.
I run through the dizziness of my head, the distortion of my vision in the dark.
Emily’s torchlight bobs with our chase.
It washes over the edge of the lake, frozen, then the greyish snow packed onto the path, before drifting over the border of the woods, trees once lush and green now powdered with winter.
My gloved fingers are gripped tight onto the shotgun, but it swings back and forth with my rushed run.
Emily aims the light ahead, just metres of blackness pierced through with her heavy-duty torch, the kind that weighs her down too much.
But it’s useful, and it shows us the edge of the lake—where the waters end, frozen, and meet a snow-dusted shore.
The light only just wisps over the shore before a sudden cry splits the still air.
I tumble over my boots.
Emily flinches into a stagger beside me, and the torchlight is quick to flick off.
We freeze, crouched statues on the path bordering the lake.
The cry came and went.
It’s silent now.
It came from somewhere in the distance, maybe the end of the lake, but it was short-lived.
Even then, I heard enough of it—we both did—to reach out for each other in the dark.
Emily’s hand finds mine.
Our grips are tight, gloved, and damp.
We wait.
The cry was female, no doubt about it, and it was surprised. The quick shrill shout of a fright.
It silences, but it’s only some moments before it’s replaced by raining bootsteps in the distance.
I’m bolted in place.
Crouched, tucked in the blackout, I watch as the faintest red orb bounces far ahead—and my blood runs cold.
I would recognise the dusty crimson of those nightlights anywhere.
“Bee,” I whisper, guttural.
In answer, Emily’s grip tightens on my hand.
I push up, dragging her with me, and inch along to the edge of the path where an abandoned boat is perched on stilts. My torchlight is flimsy, but we can’t risk Emily’s stronger one—not until we know what the fuck is going on.
I tug Emily behind the boat.
Her weight unbalances me as she leans too much into my side, the panic tensing her against me.
I steel myself against her and peer over the edge of the boat.
The three nightlights blend into a crimson glow bobbing onto the frozen surface of the lake—closer and closer and closer.
But that’s all I really see.
The light isn’t strong enough.
I fumble for the torch first, flick it off, then reach for the CB. Teeth biting down on the edge of my lip, I dance my fingers on the button.
One. Pause. One, two.
Light.
The red gleam is swerving through the air, like Bee is running—but it falters… it stills, then in a blink, a burst of white light erupts over the lake.
Her torch.
The light illuminates a bubble around her, fighting against the darkness.
I squint against the glare—but it is quick to swerve away from me.
The light turns on the other direction, up the lake, and I can make out enough to know that Bee’s staggering around… to face something.
I trace the light to where it blends into darkness, like ropes of shadows lash at it. And I watch a pair of boots crafted from fine, thin leather step into the bubble.
My insides run cold.
That’s what she runs from.
A dark warrior.
Emily’s gasp is soft at my ear.
And I hate this about me, but the fear locks me in place, like I can’t move, like I can’t do anything to help Bee.
A part of me…
Some sick part, buried below, it whispers through me, run, run, run, save yourself…
My face twists against the shame of it.
If it were anyone else, I would. I would turn for the cover of the trees and get the fuck out of here.
But it’s Bee.
It’s Bee.
I can’t leave her.
I blink, and my mind locks onto the scraps of the world’s most basic-ass plan. But it’s all I have.
The dark fae is completely, utterly distracted.
His advance on Bee is menacing, but slow.
She has her back to the boat and aims her torchlight at him as though it’s a weapon.
She knows we’re at the lake. I gave her the code for the light—but she’s choosing to show me the threat.
Bee is pleading for help.
It twists my insides.
My plan, if I can even call it that, is… fucking shit. And we’re definitely all going to die because of it.
The only advantages I have are the light and his arrogant ignorance. He hasn’t noticed us yet, smelled us in the air, heard our hearts thumping away. But if he so much as shifts his focus off Bee for a second, looks our way, a swift glance of total disinterest, he’ll find us.
They do that.
The dark ones, they see in the blackout as though it’s not there at all, not blinding them as it blinds us.
Need to be quick.
I drop into a crouch.
Pulling on Emily’s shoulder, I guide her down with me.
Her breaths are too loud, too ragged, and she flattens the thick gloved palms to her mouth, muffling herself.
The look she throws at me is wide-eyed, a plea for me to do something.
I could shoot the dark fae. But that isn’t enough.
I’ve seen those warriors get hit with a grenade and stagger away. I’ve seen guns unload right into their chests, and nothing…
So maybe I don’t shoot him.
Maybe I just shoot the ice at his boots.
It’s all I have.
I chance a curt glance over the boat at the lake.
Still there. Facing off or talking, I can’t tell.
It’s hard to make it out exactly, but the light gleams on this dark fae, and I swear he’s just standing there in front of her, speaking.
Bee said she recognised a dark fae—and that he might have recognised her, too.
Dare.
This must be him.
Bee knows this fae.
But their history isn’t good.
That conversation isn’t limitless. Bee is running out of time. With each second I waste, I bring her closer to death.
I loosen an aching breath, fleetingly reminded of the inhaler I so desperately need right now, but that’s wasted time.
I elbow into Emily, a curt gesture.
“Rifle,” I mouth the word, then nudge the shotgun into her arm.
My gaze sweeps the dark pocket we’re tucked into, broken by the scraps of light wisping around the shape of the boat.
I flatten myself on the snow, belly-down, and peer out from under the boat, between the stilts.
Silent, Emily hands me the rifle, but her vibe reaches me, the tension burrowing in her.
I don’t doubt she’s thinking that bullets don’t work on these beasts.
We found that out when Ramona went all stupid trigger happy on them. I haven’t properly mourned her yet, I’m still so fucking angry at her for it. She would still be here if she hadn’t shot at them.
Famous last words.
I exhale a muffled, loaded breath, then tuck the butt of the rifle to my shoulder.
I aim around the stilts… but it’s no good.
I’m too low to the ground to shoot the ice. My aim isn’t reliable from this angle.
I’m not a fucking marksman. Everything I know I learned in the blackout.
I roll my weight onto my side, then clammer into a crouch. The chill prickles at my cheeks as I slowly rise from the shield of the boat and aim the rifle over the edge.
But they aren’t standing still anymore.
One silhouette moves in a slow, steady circle on the ice—and after a lengthy exhale of cold, misty breath, I realise he’s circling her.
One hand cupping the underside of the rifle, I tap my finger on the CB button.
One, two.
Wait.
I narrow my eyes on the distance as though it’ll help me see better. It doesn’t, not at all.
Bee doesn’t reveal anything. Her silhouette, her mere outline, doesn’t give away if she heard me or not.
But the dark warrior…
Oh, he heard it.
He stops in his tracks.
Washed in torchlight, his head is cocked to the side, still facing Bee, and I wonder if he’s looking at her or the radio clasped to her belt.
Whatever made him stop circling her, it came at the exact moment I sent the code through the static.
I loosen a steadying breath, then readjust my aim. One stray bullet, one panicked shot, one drifted aim, and I might hit Bee.
Worse, I might hit the ice beneath her, and then she’s gone. No saving her once the water gets her.
I shift the aim of the barrel to the dark one’s boots—at the heels.
My finger slips around the trigger, a ghost of a touch, gloved but cold to the bone.
I swallow, thick.
A ball is lodged in my throat, bobbing with my heartbeats, like my heart has shrunk to the size of a fruit pit, then got itself stuck in there.
The panic is cold.
I fight it with deep, shuddering breaths I try to steady. But if I get this wrong… even if my aim is faithful, if I get this wrong, and the dark male doesn’t get swept away by the waters beneath…
I shudder with the risk.
Emily does, too.
I hear her rapid breaths muffled against her gloved palm. I can almost taste the salt of her tears in the air between us.
The dark male moves.
His silhouette, tall, looming, powerful, it moves for the smaller silhouette, the slighter frame with wide hips—
I don’t think.
I just act.
My lungs swell with the inhale, and I release it with an explosive shout, “Ruuunn!”
The dark fae whips his face to me—but I’m already firing at his boots.
The bullets strike the ice, over and over and over.
There’s nothing triumphant about it.
The blast of gunfire bolts my muscles to my bones, grits my teeth in a bared snarl, and I just squeeze the trigger.
Ice and water and snow erupt all around the dark male’s boots. If he throws a snarling glare at me, a look of lethal promises, I don’t see it, not before the ice gives out beneath him—
And he’s gone.
All that’s left on the ice is a bobbing silhouette and her torchlight bouncing with her.
I lower the rifle.
Bee races in the direction of the path.
“Torch,” I breathe the word, then turn on Emily in the darkness. “She can’t see us, aim the fucking torch!”
She does.
The moment I bark the order at her, the fumble of a shotgun and a heavy torch starts to clatter in the darkness. Then the light blasts at me.
I cringe against it, blinded in white, my vision seared. I cringe, still, even when the torchlight is swept away from me, and Emily is calling Bee to the boat.
I turn my face to my shoulder and press my squeezed eyes to the warmth of my snow-jacket, and I wait it out, the blindness that starts to trickle away like dying stars.
Bee sees it and alters her direction.
By the time I’m peeling my face away from the shoulder of my parka, the punishing sound of her bootsteps hitting the snowy earth is drawing closer.
She doesn’t stop, doesn’t slow down.
Her shout is a cry. “Run!”
And in a blink, she’s grabbing me by the arm, and Emily’s hand snatches a fistful of my parka, and we’re barrelling into the woods.
My boots slip over the frosty foliage.
The rifle clatters as I swing the strap over my shoulder.
I don’t fight the rush.
If Bee decides it’s still not safe, even with the dark fae underwater, buried beneath ice, then yeah, I’m running.
I have no interest in hanging around for the wrath of a soaking wet, inconvenienced dark warrior.