Chapter 15
My willow came and went too quickly, turning as the dream smeared itself together in odd, offbeat colors and shapes, all of which I wanted no part in.
I demanded my body run, hide, but invisible glue held my bare feet firmly in place.
There I stood, exposed in the dead center of an abandoned suburban street.
I mentally chastised my tree for leaving me without shelter, but with or without my willow, I knew this was no place for me—no place for anyone.
The breeze reeked of decay and death.
My lungs labored as I combed the scene, the details filling in around me.
Ahead, a cul-de-sac gave way to sizable homes, their faces worn and deteriorated; the front yards dominated by weeds and overgrown bushes.
I edged down the cracked asphalt, an iron aroma biting in the wind: blood. My stomach tied itself in knots.
I need to get out of here now!
A murder of crows claimed the violet sky above me, their screeches more human than animal.
With them, they carried a blood rain. Drop after drop pelted me, the crimson beads soaking into my skin, and I choked back vomit.
Get out of sight! I swept across the nearest weed-riddled lawn and dove under the crumbled home’s rotten porch.
In horror, my gaze settled on the demented crows now circling a home at the drive’s end.
The way they flew was intentional, their synchronized movements sentient in a way that unsettled me to my bones.
One after the other they stopped, hovering in their positions until a giant, familiar symbol took shape: a vertical eye.
The very same one branded on Cillian’s leg.
In the same breath, the crows cried out in a shrill and piercing voice that made my ears ring.
I clapped my hands over my ears and watched as they thinned into a line, simultaneously funneling down the chimney.
Silence twisted in their wake, the bloody rain ceasing all at once.
My limbs began to shake as I waited for their next move, but as the seconds ticked away, it dawned on me that this might be my only chance to flee unseen.
Whatever had their attention inside that house, I wasn’t about to wait for it to come stumbling out into the street.
I jumped to my feet ready to dart when a rusty sliding door flew open, the screech carrying down the lane to my hideout.
I squeezed my eyes shut, cursing myself. Too late. I’d missed my chance.
I was trapped.
My fingers knotted in the weeds at my feet.
Grounded—I have to stay grounded if I want to find a way out of this.
A heavy fog leached out onto the sidewalk ahead, and the world around me stood still aside from a steadily rising, feminine hum.
A disturbed melody that sounded almost like—like being dragged underwater.
My heart sank as Margaret’s last journal entry flooded my memory and a figure emerged from the mist.
The violet-cloaked woman: Bethesda.
“From the hunger of forgotten Gods came the wrathful Ancient Lores,” she sang.
“Their bodies woven of humanity’s sins and rotten fleshy cores.
One night they crept where children wept for their fallen fathers and mothers, and in this grief secured a thief the waking world had smothered.
” The click of her heels drew closer. “A pact of blood and shattered heart befell one mourning mother, for on her daughter’s back the world would track through the open doors of slaughter. ”
The cloaked woman threw her head back not five feet from where I hid. “So, fight or flee the sleeping key and the beasts that claw and tear, for they will not cease until their souls’ release, restoring their rightful heir.”
She sniffed the air like a wolf searching for its next meal, and I hunched down. Don’t see me, please don’t see me. On hands and knees, I slid back in the dirt.
Her head snapped toward me. “There you are.”
With sure steps, she stalked in my direction and I attempted to recoil farther into the shadows, scouring for a hole in the porch’s lining to slip through, but … nothing. This was it. I was done for. My sorry excuse for luck had officially reached its end.
A buzz settled in my ears. I peeled my eyes back open in time to see the white wisp sweep onto the scene, headed straight for the cloaked woman.
She froze, studying the wisp as it shot toward the forest’s edge opposite my hiding place.
To my utter shock, Bethesda trailed behind it in a daze, pausing only briefly to steal one final glance in my direction before disappearing into the woods.
I didn’t hesitate this time and bolted to safety behind the deteriorated house.
Once in the concealment of the woods, I abandoned stealth and caveman-stomped my way through the trees in pursuit of my evasive willow.
Find it, hide, and wake up! I ducked through a clearing in the brush and hiked over a small embankment into an open field.
In its center, my motionless willow sat undisturbed.
Careful, I reached its safe branches and tucked myself inside.
I was almost home, I just needed to wake up and—a hand clasped around the back of my neck.
Shit, the beast! I’d forgotten about the beast!
I thrashed in its clutches. “Let me go, demon!”
“Demon?” It laughed sadistically, saliva running down its chin. “My queen warned me of your foolishness, but you are more naive than I had anticipated. I promise you this, I am far worse than any pesky hell crawler.”
Worse? What could be worse than a demon? My palms slicked, but I swallowed my fear and readied myself to ask the question to which I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer. “Then … what are you?”
It pulled me to its face, tracing its talons—coated in old crusted and fresh blood—across my jawline. I swallowed hard, my toes curling in the dirt.
“I am the thing that makes grown men weep. The original bump in the night. The magnificent essence of fear itself. The destroyer of sound minds.” The corners of its inhumanly wide smile rose clear up to its hollow eyes. “To answer your question plainly, I am your world’s worst nightmare.”
Fog swept in, fast and consuming. The beast tensed, its claws piercing through my collar as a figure drifted closer. I held my breath, prepared for the return of the cloaked woman, but reeled when striking white hair and a broad frame emerged instead.
“Drop her,” the man said, calm and collected. “Unless you have a death wish, in which case I would be more than happy to deliver, beast.”
The beast spat into the soil. “Make me, boy.”
Nearly imperceivable to the human eye, the man reached for his sword and hurled it through the air, hitting bone with a loud crack.
The monster crumbled to its knees, and I crawled from its reach with desperate hands.
Go, go, go! A firm grasp around my waist lifted me from the dirt, setting me on my feet.
I stared up into emerald eyes, the sensation of his touch lingering as a shockwave of goose bumps crawled up my spine. My stomach dropped: the wisp, made flesh. “You …”
“Me,” he winked.
“What are you doing here? Who—who are you?”
The beast snarled and pulled the blade from its ribs with a hiss. “You will regret that!”
“With all due respect,” the man said—words laced with an Irish lilt not too far removed from another curious stranger I’d met recently—guiding me behind him and lowering his stance, “might we save the questions for another time, maybe one less dire? I need to focus if I am to protect—”
The beast barreled forward in a mess of teeth and claws, taking him—and nearly me—to the ground.
I stood, hands clasped over my mouth, frozen in pure horror, like a layer of frost had bound my feet to the earth as I watched the man struggle.
Using every ounce of strength, he rolled the beast over and unsheathed a dagger at his hip.
“Fey, sweetheart,” he groaned through gritted teeth, shoving the dagger against the monster’s throat. “Now would be a fantastic time to run!”
I did. I ran, and ran, and ran, the beast’s painful howls dissipating in the distance, and those eerily familiar eyes tickling the back of my mind with each frantic step.