Chapter 29
Bitten
E
Soon after we fold up camp and set out on another day of traveling, the trail gives way beneath our feet, dissolving into a scatter of massive stones peppered with damp moss.
Rust-colored water churns beside us, its current grinding against the rocks with a dull, relentless roar.
The river has morphed into rapids crashing down the hill, the bank steep enough that one wrong step would send us tumbling straight into the rushing water below, where the current would swallow us whole and carry us out of sight for good. So we veer away from the riverbank.
The sky hangs low and gray, enhancing the feeling that I’m carrying something heavy on my shoulders. This new body feels foreign, but I don’t feel the soreness or fatigue I would expect from muscles that haven’t been used in decades. Somehow, I’m dead, but still in shape.
“I’m impressed you can keep up, Casper,” Nick finally says, leading the expedition while I close the march a few feet behind Max.
“Is that fatigue I hear in your voice?” I tease him, his breath shallower than it was a couple of hours ago.
“Not at all.”
He’s struggling, but Max is struggling even more.
“Well, I can’t keep this up for much longer,” she grunts, uncorking her water bottle. “We’re going to have to take a break or seriously reduce the pace.”
The steep hill is full of tall pines and deciduous trees in shades of burnt orange, ochre, and deep red, but the rocky slant doesn’t offer much space to make camp.
Max ties her jacket at her waist, a hint of sweat shining on her forehead.
“You let yourself go, sis,” Nick teases. “All those long shifts at the hospital made you soft.”
She pauses for a second to catch her breath before showing all her teeth. “Bite me.”
Nick presses his lips together, his gaze darting from his sister to the hillside, then to the river. “We need to get to the top before nightfall, or we won’t have much fun sleeping tonight. We can go another thirty minutes or so, then take a break.”
Max is barely a step ahead of me when she cries out.
She jerks away from the rock with a sharp ow, her balance slipping. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she hisses, reaching down to her leg before falling onto her ass.
A flash of light moves at her feet.
The golden snake recoils from her ankle, its scales shrinking and expanding as it rushes off toward a crack between the rocks.
I lunge forward, pin it with my boot, and bring a loose stone down hard on its neck. The creature’s tail whips as I sever its head.
Max slides off the rock and hops on one leg toward the line of trees, her face pulled in a tight, painful frown. “Fucking hells. It stings.”
“Don’t worry, it’s dead now.”
I catch her around the waist before she loses her balance, then lift her fully into my arms.
“No, you shouldn’t have!” she says quickly. “Poor beast. I’m the dumb human who stepped on it in the first place.”
“Let us not mourn the poisonous snake, yes?”
Nick climbs back down to where we are. “Poisonous?” He pinches the snake between his index finger and thumb. “Good thing you killed it, Casper. I’ve never seen a snake like this before. How do you know it’s poisonous?”
“It’s—” I hesitate.
“Instinct,” both of them grunt in unison.
“Yeah. Bright-colored creatures in Faerie are never harmless.”
I carry Max off the unstable rocks, my boots slipping over a treacherous mix of pebbles, wet leaves, and grimy moss that refuse to hold underfoot.
I head toward a shallow nook beneath a towering pine, where exposed roots claw out of the slope and knot together to form a rough, natural cradle.
The ground there softens into a thick bed of needles.
I lower my little fox carefully, easing her down into the hollow between the roots.
She mumbles a curse through tight lips and finally cries out. “Fucking hells! What do they put in those fangs?”
I kneel in front of her. “Let me see.”
“Ow, careful,” she snaps.
Nick drops beside me, already reaching for her pant leg. He peels the fabric up, exposing the bite just above the cuff of her boot—two punctures, dark with blood.
I brush the blood away from the bite, trying to get a clearer look. A nasty swelling is already spreading from the bite in a purplish-red circle.
“Should we try to suck the venom out?” Nick asks.
“No. That’s a myth. Venom works too fast for that to be useful,” Max explains.
Lady shifts in the sling, rolling and hissing over Max’s chest, and I pry the pet carrier off of her.
“What’s wrong, little Lady?” I ask the cat.
I’ve never seen her this agitated, raising all hells and in danger of tumbling down the cliffs if she keeps it up. I pass the carrier to Nick.
“What’s wrong with her? She didn’t get bitten, right?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No way.”
“Ahhh.” Max draws a sharp intake of air. A thick sheen of sweat gathers on her neck, forehead, and cheeks, her skin a shade paler than it was a minute ago.
My heart screeches to a halt when her head lolls to the side.
“Hey, Max. Are you still with us?” Nick rushes out.
She nods weakly. “Water.”
He brings his water bottle to her lips, and she tries to take a sip but chokes, the water spraying everywhere.
I grip her hand and squeeze. “Take it easy.”
Nick unpacks his bag and rummages for Mabel’s grimoires. “There should be something in here about snakes. I’m sure I flipped through a chapter on the local fauna last night.”
A spasm thunders through Max’s limbs before flames lick up the sleeve of her jacket. Her fire sparks again and again—wild, uncontrolled—bleeding out of her skin in brief flashes, like her magic is misfiring beneath the surface.
“Fuck!” I shout.
“So hot— I’m too hot.” She moves frantically, trying to remove her clothes.
“Easy, easy—” I wrap my hands around her upper arms, forcing her to stay still as the tremors keep coming. “You’re alright. I’ve got you.”
“What’s happening?” Nick demands, glancing up from the grimoire.
“I don’t know. I think she’s going into shock. Hurry up.”
Nick reaches for his sister and yelps as the flames sear his skin a hot shade of pink. “Shit—”
“Well? What does the book say?” I bark.
He whips the pages with frantic fingers, then his voice comes out rough, fraying at the edges.
“It’s more than poisonous. Lethal, really. There’s a recipe for an antidote, here, but it would take hours to make, if I even had all of the ingredients.”
Another spasm rocks her body, and I pin down her arms.
“Work with me,” I bite out. “What can I do?”
Nick slams the book shut. “It says the venom kills in less than half an hour. There’s nothing you can do.”
No. No, that can’t—
Max burns up in my embrace, heat pouring off her in waves as her body convulses. I lock my arms around her, holding her through it, keeping her from hurting herself or slipping out of my grasp and disappearing down the hillside.
Nick grabs his forehead, the fire coming from Max giving off intense heat, forcing him to retreat a few inches. “Fucking hells.”
I feel my clothes burning, too. My skin. My fucking heart.
Death is meant to be familiar ground, yet she’s hurtling toward it, and I can’t follow. If she goes, I’ll be left here, anchored to a world she’s no longer in. It will destroy me if I can’t go with her.
Without another word, Nick draws one of his daggers and slices it across his wrist in one clean motion. Dark blood wells, then spills freely. He turns his palm downward, letting his blood shower the soil. “Dark one, heed my prayers.”
Don’t take her from me.
Save her from this venom.
I beg you.”
Nick goes very still, one hand clasping Max’s wound despite the flames, the other flat over her heart as if listening for something deeper than her pulse.
“Lord of the Hollow,
Ancient one of bark, shadow, and buried hunger,
Hear me.
I know this forest remembers blood.
So remember ours.”
Then he presses his bloody palms to the earth. “Dark One.” His tone dips into an unnatural rasp, a voice that doesn’t belong to him alone. “Help me. I beg you.”
The forest answers. Shadows rush from trunk to trunk, swallowing what little gray light remains until the darkness becomes thick—almost alive.
A voice that seems to belong to fifty instead of one resonates through the air. “Mac an Té Faoi na Fréamhacha. We serve the one beneath the roots.”
Nick searches the dark for a face, something he can see, but there’s nothing. “Save my sister. Please.”
“Who do you serve?” the voices hiss.
Nick doesn’t hesitate. “I serve the one beneath the roots, too,” he declares solemnly.
“And what are you willing to sacrifice?”
“Everything.”
There’s a pause. Then, the voices return. Softer and satisfied. “So be it.”
A tremor shakes the pine needles below my knees, then the ground stirs in earnest. Fine red tendrils push up from the soil before thickening, darkening, and winding toward Max. They crawl over her boots to the skin of her calf.
Max’s fire vanishes as the roots coil gently around her leg, circling the bite in tightening spirals.
Above us, the pine tree sheds all its needles in one quick, terrible shiver.
Its trunk splits along a hairline seam, and a thick red sap oozes from within.
It doesn’t drip so much as bleed in a slow, viscous trail that patters onto the forest floor.
The roots collect the sap and glide toward the wound, finally reaching their destination and slipping into the puncture wounds.
Into Max.
“Easy,” Nick says, though I can’t tell if it’s meant for her or for whatever he’s called up from the depths of this place.
Max gasps, her fingers digging into my sleeve. The fire still devouring what’s left of her clothes gutters and dies, shrinking back into her skin like it was never there.
For a second, nothing moves. Then her chest rises again. Slower this time. Deeper.
The roots finally retreat, out of her body and back into the ground. The flush of sickness drains from her skin, replaced by a faint, returning warmth as color creeps back into her cheeks. The tension in her limbs eases.
“She’s safe,” Nick declares.
“Nick?” Max croaks.
Her voice is rough, barely there, but it’s hers.
“I’m here, sis. Just rest, alright? I’m going to figure this out.”
“Where’s E?”
I squeeze her hand, still kneeling in front of her. “I’m right here, little fox.”
She smiles and nods. “Yes, I can feel you now.”
Relief crashes through me so violently that it leaves me shaking. I press my nose to her temple, her cheek, her hair. I kiss her there, again and again.
She sighs and lets her lids fall, slipping back into unconsciousness but still alive, still breathing, the two puncture wounds and purplish swelling gone from her ankle.
My eyes sting, and heavy tears fall into her hair as I hold her tighter. I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t do anything but watch her slip away.
“Thank you. Thank you,” I tell Nick.
This wasn’t simple healing, but a bargain, and Nick essentially wrote a blank check to whatever power pulses underground, but I don’t care.
Nick wraps the cut on his wrist in gauze from his backpack, his eyes bright and wet with unshed tears. He looks shaken to his core and stripped of his usual bravado. “You really love her.”
“More than anything.”
“You know, I was wrong about you, Casper. You’re not so bad.” Nick’s eyes soften. “Please, let this be our secret—for now. I don’t want Max to feel guilty about what I had to do.”
“What do you think the price of her life will be?” I ask gravely.
Nick shrugs, as though the price is irrelevant. “Whatever it is…” His eyes don’t leave his twin's sleeping frame as he adds, “It was worth it.”