The Bitterwine Oath

by Hannah West

A burning sob built up in my throat. Kate pulled me close, pinning me against her. “The strength they stole from us must have allowed them to work quickly. They’ve Shadowed the rest of their victims. All twelve. After tomorrow, whatever happens, we may need to find a way to clear out San Solano forever. Have the town condemned or something. I don’t know.”

  “But then what happens?” I asked, raising my voice. I looked at Lindsey, who cast her eyes to the floor. “Do they take it over? Grow their dominion until they can reach the people in the next town, and the next? Where does this end, Kate? I need to know where this ends.”

  “I don’t know.” Tears sprang into her green eyes. “I don’t know. But there’s nothing else we can do besides be ready tomorrow night. Go be with your family for now. We’ve done what we could.”

  The screen door made a racket when I stepped inside. I could hear my parents doing dishes in the kitchen. It sounded like Dad was teasing Mom for taking the prayer meeting so seriously. When I stepped around the corner, he was trying not to laugh at her pretending-to-be-offended face.

  “Ah! It worked!” he said, throwing a dish towel over his shoulder and clapping his hands. “The food summoned her again.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I said feebly.

  But he was already heaping food onto a plate for me, assembling a hodge-podge meal out of everyone’s pooled leftovers, mostly carbs masquerading as vegetables. And there it was, in the bright kitchen light: a second shadow on the wall. An ordinary person would have thought it was nothing but a trick of the light. But I felt the presence of unknowable darkness. Here, in the house Grandma Kerry and I had worked so hard to protect.

  Bile rose in my throat. I needed my strength, though, and forced myself to eat.

  “Are the jalapeño poppers too spicy?” Mom asked, and I almost laughed at the absurd triviality of the question until I realized a drop of sweat was coursing down my forehead.

  I said no and she bounced to the next thought, determined to be conversational despite my mood. “You seem to be wearing a lot of dark clothes these days. It’s a shame. You look so pretty in summery colors.”

  Leave it to her to think a pair of black boots called for motherly intervention. In truth, I wanted more concern. The beguilement and my watertight alibis protected me from their prying, but I almost wished they would dig deeper so I would have an excuse to crack and confess. If there were ever a time to break a solemnly sworn oath…

  “The prayer meeting was interesting today,” Dad said, filling the silence. “I think some people are getting real antsy about the anniversary.”

  “Some of them just came to complain about the crowding,” Mom said, lifting an eyebrow in disapproval. “But that’s nothing to complain about. Tourists bring good business.”

  “I see their point, though,” Dad said. “I’m getting fed up with it myself. Can’t get a cup of coffee without hearing all about our haunted town.” He did a dorky boogeyman impression that normally would have made me laugh out of embarrassment. Now, I just managed a smile as I stabbed around at my green bean casserole.

  “Let’s hope the crowding is our biggest worry,” Mom said.

  “Nothing’s going to happen, Jodes, I promise,” he said, overconfident. Dad’s biggest, most lovable flaw was his overconfidence. Thankfully, he approached his veterinary work with a little more humility and scientific curiosity than he did everything else. “As much as tourists and journalists would like to think otherwise.”

  “No one is wishing for murder. They’re just being realistic. The missing animal problem is concerning.”

  I wondered if word of the carcasses piled at the cabin had spread around. It seemed like something the police might want to keep under wraps if they’d seen it, to prevent panic. Surely, I would have caught wind of that gossip if it’d gotten out.

  Then again, I hadn’t even noticed that my own father was Shadowed.

  “Have you seen the lost-and-found board in my office?” Dad said. “Pets run away or get lost all the time. There’s nothing unusual going on.”

  As if to refute his statement, the dogs picked up barking like hellhounds. Every muscle in my body tensed. My weapons were outside, but I didn’t want to leave Ranger and Maverick vulnerable for even the time it took to retrieve them and cast a beguilement spell.

  “I’m going to let them inside.” I pushed back from the table.

  “I think that’s best.” Mom’s consent spoke volumes. Normally she would complain about the shedding.

  After closing the back door behind me, I took cautious strides into the darkness. But the sound of a terrified whimper made me break into a sprint.

  Maverick was huddled in the corner of the dog run. There was a jagged hole in the chain-link fence. I traipsed closer and found blood in the grass outside the enclosure.

  Ranger was nowhere in sight.

  For a moment, I wasn’t a warrior. I stood helpless, weaponless, chest heaving, tears burning in my eyes. Why had I not been more careful? I should have known this massacre would happen exactly like the one before. I should have holed up in my house with my family and my dogs and tracked their every move. If the Wardens could do nothing to stop the killings, I’d do everything in my power to make sure the people I cared about didn’t suffer. Would it have been selfish? Yes. Would I care? Not one bit.

  Grandma Kerry’s warning nagged at me, merciless. The farther you stay away from them, the safer the people you love will be.

  I should have listened.

  My fear contorted into rage. Teeth gritted, I charged back to the porch, opened the back door and barked at poor Maverick to get inside. He obeyed my command with a quiet whine. Once he was safe indoors, I slashed across the yard toward the black clumps of trees in the distance.

  As I stepped into the wild tangles, my eyes adjusted, picking out the expected shapes around me. A stir of warm wind carried the tang of blood and the sound of suckling. Of feeding. My heart fluttered against my ribcage as I ducked under a branch and saw a Woodwalker stooped over the ground with its back to me.

  Hearing my approach, the creature turned to hiss in my direction, revealing a devastating array of sharp teeth, a protruding ivory snout, and a body that looked like decomposed human remains. Antlers jutted out at all angles from its head, and blood dripped from the mutilated animal parts it had carelessly stuffed together.

  Ranger lay limp on the ground. Blood matted the hair on his hip and back leg, but his side swelled and collapsed with shaky breaths.

  A growl ripped out of my throat as I charged at the monster and attacked with my bare hands. I clung to its antlers and tore at its empty eye sockets, prodding around for something deeper inside it that I could twist and punish. I finally pushed through to its warm, dead heart and yanked, sealing my victory.

  But before the shadow animating the odious body retreated, the creature raked its long claws vengefully across my back, slicing through my skin.

  I crumpled face-first on the ground, a distant scream echoing wildly in my ears. I realized it was mine. Blood surged from the wounds.

  I knew what would happen to me—and to Ranger—if I didn’t manage to get help. But my battered body wouldn’t obey my command to move, and I realized I’d left my phone sitting on the table in the kitchen.

  A quiet whimper gave me the will to turn my head, barely. Ranger limped toward me with great effort and settled down against my flank, his face so close to mine that his pointed ear tickled my cheek. Tears rolled sideways down my face and into his coarse hair.

  My voice cracked as I called for help. I swallowed and tried again. No response. My parents wouldn’t think much of me taking my time, since Ranger could be stubborn.

  I closed my eyes, slipping into the stillness of unconsciousness. But the sound of scratchy breaths soon forced me to attention with a feverish jolt.

  With one cheek pressed to the earth, I couldn’t make out the shape moving in my peripheral vision. I didn’t have to see it to know what it was. Another Woodw
alker. I envisioned myself moving to attack, but even the twitch of readiness from my muscles pushed a devastated groan from my lips. My eyelids pressed closed again, releasing more tears. This is the end.

  Hot, stinking breaths gusted over the side of my face and into my ear. My bare nerves shivered, bringing on a fresh wave of pain. The Woodwalker gripped my arm and goaded my limp body into rolling over. I sobbed as my open cuts pressed against the dirt and the torn fabric of my shirt.

  Face-to-face with the Woodwalker now, I looked up into the dead eyes of a putrefying black bear skull. I felt the monster’s hunger for the waning life inside me, darkness pressing in from all sides.

  A black void consumed me. I smelled the stale earth and decay. The magic within me began to quiver as it joined with the darkness, braiding together to become one strand. I breathed a farewell, made peace with the knowledge that the ones I loved most might never know why this happened to me.

  But the world didn’t fade entirely. A change writhed under the Woodwalker’s shadowed form, quick as a lightning strike on a murky night. Beneath the death and darkness, beneath the evil, I saw something neither human nor Woodwalker, something shapeless and taking the shape of everything at once, effulgent gold and a void of shadows, coexisting.

  A high-pitched crossover of a screech and a howl pierced my ears. The Woodwalker was calling the others toward it so that they could share in the feast, gorge themselves on the power inside me.

  It wasn’t over yet, but it would be soon.

  And then the Woodwalker’s sweltering breaths retreated. A rustling of leaves marked its departure.

  Within seconds, someone arrived to cradle my head. I blinked my eyes open to find Lindsey kneeling over me.

  “We’re going to get you safe, okay?” she said, lifting my upper body with the kind of tenderness that told me just how bad my injuries were. I whimpered as she shifted on her knees and slid me onto her back in a fireman’s carry.

  “Ranger,” I murmured.

  “Levi!” Lindsey called out as she stood up. I heard his answering footsteps. Running. Urgent.

  “Oh my god,” he whispered.

  “Bring Ranger to her dad. Tell him…” She cursed under her breath. “Tell him she couldn’t carry him, so she asked you to help while she went to tell the authorities. So no one else could get hurt. Leave before he asks questions. Meet us at the church.”

  Levi’s soft touch trailed along my cheek. When he pulled away, I opened my eyes to see him hunkering down to lift Ranger.

  Before I sank away from the jarring pain into unconsciousness, I wondered if I had imagined the glimpse into the Woodwalker’s being.

  More than one pair of hands gentled me onto a bunk in the basement. The taut silence in the room—the kind you hear in a hospital—made the agony in my body and the pounding in my ears that much more intense.

  Sofia banished the tension of uncertainty with a steady stream of commands. She cut my shirt and sports bra with a knife and peeled the fabric away from my flayed skin. When I cried out, Lindsey gripped my hand and squeezed. They brought me to the claw-foot tub in the bathroom, where I sobbed at the burn of the water, but nothing compared to the sting of alcohol once I was back on the bed. It lit every nerve in my body ablaze and forced sobs out of my dry lips.

  The agony was soothed slightly by the pressure of a cool herb poultice stretching across my back. Lindsey tipped a glass of water to my lips and then traded it out for something stringent, a tincture of some sort. I faded away, the memory of my bizarre encounter with the Woodwalker burning like an ember in my coal-black delirium.

  My return to consciousness was a slow, unsteady climb. I heard soft voices. One was deeper than the other, masculine. Here, in the hideout? I thought, before realizing it belonged to Levi. His words slipped through the clouds of my mind before I could capture and examine them.

  I heard shifting and the creak of a chair beside me. “I know you do,” Maggie said in answer to Levi’s mysterious statement. “That’s why you’re here, instead of anywhere else, on what could be the last night of your life.” A deep sigh. “Your involvement is unprecedented. I didn’t know what to do with you. So I shut you out entirely, and that was unfair to you.”

  Levi’s hand closed over mine. I wanted to comfort him, but even breathing felt like scaling a mountain.

  “There’s something I haven’t told you,” Maggie said after a moment. “When we failed to save the victims of the last Claiming, Nora surrendered herself to the Woodwalkers. She let down her defenses and let them feast on her magic and life until she died. She helped them become stronger.”

  The silence after Maggie’s words stretched on for so long that I nearly drifted back to sleep. Finally, Levi responded. “Nat said she did it because she thought she could break the curse. What made her think that?”

  “To understand that, you have to understand the source of our magic. The power in the woods has always been there, neither light nor dark. It imparted Malachi with magnificent magic when it revived her in her mother’s womb. On the night Malachi cast the curse, she yoked aspects of that magic to the evil souls of the murderers and abusers.”

  “So…the magic of the Woodwalkers and your magic come from the same source?”

  “Yes, we are cut from the same magical cloth,” Maggie confirmed. “But it’s where Kerry and Nora went with that that boggles the mind.”

  “Nat’s grandma, too?” Levi asked.

  I was careful not to twitch. I had no idea my grandma had been part of Nora’s plan.

  “Yes. We didn’t know exactly what was coming before the anniversary. We just knew it would be awful. Malachi dying before the confrontation made us feel hopeless. That’s when Kerry and Nora got a wild hair that they could break the curse by separating the evil from the magic that had given it life and power.”

  “So…they believed there was something redeemable about the Woodwalkers?”

  Maggie thought for a moment. “No, it wasn’t about redemption. It was about liberation. Giving the Wardens’ share of the power in the woods back. And maybe there’s an ounce of logic there, but their methods were too risky. They wanted everyone to do it. They said it would take us banding together, holding strong. But we couldn’t consider their unthinkable approach. Purposefully giving power to our enemies, can you imagine? Kerry accepted our refusal, but Nora treated us like the villains for doubting her and struck out on her own. I hate that it happened, that I couldn’t save my own cousin,” she said, grief thick in her voice. “I want to assure you, though: Nora had her issues, but she was a capable woman, and she loved fiercely. It was her head, not her heart, that was in the wrong place. She loved her son with everything she had. It overjoyed me to see Mike carry on that love to his kids. Both of them would be so proud of you.”

  A shaky breath revealed to me that Levi was crying. The pain inside me surpassed even the constant ache that crawled over my torn skin.

  I heard Maggie stand up and pat Levi’s shoulder. After a while his breaths evened out.

  “I’ll make you some tea,” Maggie said. “Hot tea always makes a long night easier.”

  Muted clanking kept me straddling the line of sleep and wakefulness. Levi stroked the skin between my forefinger and thumb.

  In the quiet I played back the beginning of their conversation. I know you do, Maggie had said.

  My echoic memory recalled something I hadn’t realized I’d heard Levi say: I love her.

  When Maggie returned, he asked, “So this—this whole hidden world, the Woodwalkers and the Wardens—began with magic in the sacred glade?”

  “This didn’t start with magic, hon,” she replied, sounding like an old seer as she settled back into her seat. “It started with darkness in men’s hearts.”

  EXCERPT:

  PAGANS OF THE PINES: THE UNTOLD STORY OF MALACHI RIVERS

  Lillian Pickard, 1968

  By the time the trial began in early 1922, I hadn’t seen Malachi for several weeks. Rumors went ar
ound that she wouldn’t show. My parents wavered on whether her absence would be good or bad for my prospects. On the one hand, it would denote her guilt and further support the perception that she was an unruly young woman who had swept up the rest of us hysterical girls in her lunacy.

  On the other, the town’s ire might fall on us in her stead. My father said that people liked to have someone to punish when bad things happened. It didn’t always matter whom.

  That winter morning I rode my bicycle to the cabin in hopes of finding her and was relieved to see her sitting inside the sacred circle. But my relief was short-lived. A strong wind could have blown her away. Her lips were chapped to the point of bleeding. She wasn’t attired for the cold, and her thin dress was filthy. She smelled like a vagrant. I didn’t know how long she’d been there.

  “Are you coming to the trial?” I asked her, and was struck by the haunted look in her eyes.

  “Trial?” she said. “Oh, I’d forgotten.”

  “If you don’t come, you know they’ll do their best to blame Dorothy for everything,” I said, but truly, I feared for myself more.

  “I won’t let anything happen to Dorothy,” she said, and I felt she meant it. “Or any of you.”

  This assurance brought me comfort, and suddenly I pitied her. “Have you even been eating, Malachi?”

  “Not since…” She couldn’t seem to remember.

  “What have you been doing out here?” I asked.

  She stood up. She was skin and bones, like a ghost that had wasted to nothing. I could already see my father formulating a sympathy argument on her behalf: the accusations and the loss of her father had so upset her that they had impacted her health, and besides, there was no evidence pointing to this pretty, grieving girl and her friends. He would want her groomed, of course, and insist that she borrow one of my dresses. We didn’t have much time.

  I tried another approach. “Jack Morton has been asking about you. He was disappointed when you left school. I think he’d like to see you again. A lot of girls fancy him, you know. He’s grown handsome.”