Corbbmacc’s gaze returned to the silent town before them, then flicked to Celine. He was nearly supporting all her weight now as she slumped against him. Rascal sat at her feet, the wicked sting of his tail quivering over his back like that of a scorpion, and his ears laid flat against his skull. His gaze flicked back and forth between the sky and the town, as if he was trying to make up his mind which constituted the greater danger.
“There’s no time to be careful,” Corbbmacc said, and he scooped Celine into his arms and started to run.
“Goddammit, Corbb!” Emily hissed, hurrying after him. She wanted to say more, wanted to chew him out about the trouble his headstrong, act-first attitude had gotten them into before, when a high-pitched whine split the stillness, bringing with it a gust of wind that slammed into their backs with sudden, shocking ferocity. It pounded the breath from her lungs and stole the words from her tongue, sending them tumbling across the road with the gold and amber leaves.
And then the rain began to fall.
It didn’t build to a crescendo; it was as though the heavens had simply been torn asunder, unleashing a frigid torrent upon the hapless creatures below.
Emily couldn’t see the others through the downpour; she couldn’t see anything at all. The world was lost in a swirl of dark rain and the deafening howl of the wind.
So fast, she thought vaguely. So fast…
And then all thoughts fled, leaving nothing behind but the primitive creature of instinct intent on a sole imperative—survival.
She stumbled onward, feeling the temperature plummet, and as it did, hail and sleet began to sting her face. Some of the stones struck hard enough to leave welts that sang with bright agony. Icy water streamed out of her hair, and she blinked rapidly, trying to clear her eyes. Not that it mattered; she could see almost nothing. Where were the others? Was she even still on the road?
As though in answer, lightning bloomed overhead again, and in the brief instant of its glare, she dimly registered that she was veering off toward the road’s shoulder. She turned, weaving her way back toward the center and scanning ahead, but all she saw were dark shadows on every side as the clouds rolled in, blotting out the sun that hovered over the western horizon; the soft, golden glow of early evening had been replaced in moments by night.
Find shelter, the frightened animal inside her chanted. Find the others.
From somewhere up ahead, she thought she heard the piercing soprano of a scream. It rose like the shriek of the doomed girls in every horror film ever made, blending and melding with the constant whine of the wind. Was it Celine? An animal? Perhaps the coyote she’d heard earlier?
Terror for her friends tore at her, warring with the thing that just wanted to run and take cover—find shelter—anywhere.
She knew it was only a few hundred yards, and yet the journey to the town’s edge seemed interminable. Emily blundered through the dark, calling out incoherently for Corbbmacc and Celine as water streamed down her face. Once, she thought she saw the flickering shadow of a bat-like wing and called out to Rascal, thinking that surely it was him, but the kitsper did not come. He probably couldn’t hear her over the thunder and the rain. Hell, she could hardly hear herself.
Run…run…run…
Lightning crackled and flashed; thunder roared, vibrating up through the very soles of her boots as her feet pounded on the now sodden road. Mud sucked at her heels, the formerly dry and dusty earth now seemingly as consumed with hunger as it was with thirst.
She stumbled and fell to her knees, sending bolts of extraordinary pain up her thighs. A scream escaped her, raw and bestial, but the sound was swallowed up and swept away.
As she struggled to stand again, a fork of white lightning cut through the shadows mere feet to her left, and an old tree, a twisted and dead-looking thing, exploded into flames. She could feel the heat of the fire as it roared to life in harmony with the thunder that, for a moment, drowned out the wind’s maniacal cry. She watched the flames sway and dance in the wind, looking for all the world like the very fingers of the devil reaching to reclaim the heavens.
In their light, she could just make out the archway before her, only twenty paces away. The stone snakes seemed to undulate in the flickering firelight, their tongues wagging and their eyes rolling madly in their sockets.
And there, just beyond it, she could see Corbbmacc’s dark shape.
Emily ran forward, grateful for the light and praying that the torrential downpour would not extinguish the burning tree before she reached him.
“Corbbmacc!” she shouted, but he still couldn’t hear her.
As she passed beneath the snakes, a fresh bolt of lightning forked across the sky, and for a moment, Corbbmacc’s form was thrust into sharp relief.
Only something was very wrong. He stood, stooped forward, his shoulders hunched. His arms looked unnaturally long, hanging at his sides, and his entire body seemed to be covered in thick, matted fur.
Emily screamed, and this time, she was close enough for the figure ahead of her to take note.
It turned toward her, raising one grotesquely elongated hand, as the thunder rolled over them both, and they were plunged into pitch darkness once more.
Not Corbbmacc, she thought wildly. It can’t be.
She staggered to her left, desperate to get off the road, more certain with every passing second that the thing was reaching toward her with those long, monstrous arms. Her foot hit something hard, and she fell again to her hands and knees.
She felt cold, smooth cobbles beneath her hands, slick with the rain, and she scrambled wildly for purchase before both her arms and legs went out from under her. She fell flat on her face.
Pain shot through her head as her chin struck the ground. Her teeth clicked together, catching her tongue between them. As her mouth filled with the coppery taste of blood, the world seemed to slip away from her.
But then there was a sharper, fresher pain, and reality came rushing back. Her eyes sprang open, though she couldn’t remember having closed them.
Another bright lance of pain tore across her scalp, and she forced herself to scramble up onto her knees, reaching for her streaming hair.
Two silver eyes blinked at her from the darkness, and she felt the pain lessen as the kitsper shook his claws loose from her sodden locks.
He turned away, and Emily crawled after him.
“Wait, Rascal,” she called, but her throat was raw and her tongue felt sore and oversized amidst her teeth. Fresh blood pooled in her mouth, and she had to turn her head and spit to clear it.
When she looked back, Rascal’s eyes still gleamed in the darkness ahead of her, waiting.
Emily got unsteadily to her feet, the weight of the pack and Garrett’s bow on her shoulders nearly causing her to overbalance. She desperately scanned the darkness, but she could still see nothing. What if that thing was still out here? What if it was still looking for her? And where the fuck were Corbbmacc and Celine?
She returned her gaze to the kitsper. His disembodied eyes were farther away now, looking back at her, and she started toward him through the wind and rain.
He led her this way and that, the light of his silvery eyes a guide through the void. The world was only pain, and rain, and the sting of sleet against her face. Twice more she fell to her knees, and each time Rascal waited as she picked herself up again. How long did it go on? A minute? An hour? She didn’t know. All she knew was the horrific disorientation of the total dark and Rascal’s eyes as they floated in it.
He stopped at last, and Emily stumbled up a pair of unseen steps to stand beside him, reaching out to probe the blackness with her hands.
Her fingers found rough wood, cold and slick with rain. Her hands explored further. A door, it seemed. No, a pair of doors. Shelter, at last. At her feet, Rascal hissed impatiently and batted at her ankle with one paw.
Relieved, she pushed on the doors. Their old and rusted hinges let out a terrible squall.
She fell over the t
hreshold, Rascal flapping in behind her. Dimly, she heard the doors swing shut behind them, muffling the roar of the storm. She rolled over, grimacing as Garrett’s bow dug into her back and not caring.
“Emily? Is that you?”
Corbbmacc’s voice came to her out of the darkness, and she heard his footfalls on the bare planks of the floor, moving toward her.
“Yeah,” she croaked. Her voice didn’t sound like her own at all.
She heard him stop, saw Rascal move to stand by her shoulder, and then Corbbmacc came toward them, guided by the kitsper’s luminescent eyes.
“Are you okay?” he asked, kneeling down beside her. She felt his hand, light and tentative on her stomach as he tried to orient himself in the dark. He started to pull away, but she reached out and caught his fingers, wanting to feel the reality of his presence—wanting to make certain—absolutely certain—that his hands were not overly long and covered in coarse fur.
“I’ve been better,” she slurred, and she turned her face away to spit out more blood. In truth, she felt like she’d just finished a particularly brutal game against Kennedy High. She was tired and she hurt, but here, safe and sheltered now from the raging storm, it felt good in a strange sort of way.
“Why do you sound like that?”
“Bit my tongue.”
It sounded utterly, deliciously ludicrous after what they’d just been through, and Emily couldn’t help it—she started to laugh.
“And here I was thinkin’ yeh got struck by feckin’ lightnin’,” Celine said in the darkness, her voice weak but full of a relieved amusement.
“Come on,” Corbbmacc said, and he helped Emily back to her feet. She swayed a little, raising a hand to her sore jaw. She didn’t want to think about how black and blue she was going to be tomorrow.
He led her slowly through the dark, carefully feeling for obstacles as they went. Their voices and shuffling movements echoed mildly around them, giving a distinct impression of a large open space. A tavern, maybe?
They found their way to Celine and sat huddled against the wall. A collection of small loose rugs were piled in the corner, and they wrapped them around their shoulders like blankets. There was nothing they could do about their dripping clothes except wait for them to dry.
“Where are we, do you think?” Emily asked.
“Some kind of inn, I think. This room is full of tables and chairs and stuff,” Corbbmacc said, leaning back against the wall beside her. “We fell over a thousand of them when we came in.”
“Ain’t no one about,” Celine said from her other side. “No one for miles.”
Silence stretched out between them for a moment.
“I saw someone,” Emily said uncertainly. Actually, she wasn’t sure at all that she’d seen anyone now. Now that they were safely sheltered, with the rumble of the thunder and the pounding rain shut away outside, she thought perhaps she’d only imagined the thing she’d seen in the dancing flames.
“Where? I couldn’t see anything out there,” Corbbmacc said.
“Just inside the arch. Someone big. I thought it was you at first, Corbb, but then…” She trailed off. “But then I saw it was huge and hairy like a big-ass gorilla” would sound ridiculous, and she couldn’t bring herself to say it.
“Did he see you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe it was nothing. Probably just shadows. Lightning struck one of the trees out there, and I only saw it for a moment in the light of the flames before the rain doused the fire.”
“Well,” Celine said, “I don’t reckon it matters. We ain’t goin’ back out tonight, and they ain’t gonna be comin’ lookin’ for us neither.”
“Yeah.”
Silence fell between them once more. Emily sat, hugging herself and listening to the endless hiss of the rain, the clatter of hailstones on the roof, the shriek of the wind, and the rumble of the constant thunder.
After a while, Celine wordlessly stretched out on one of the rugs and seemed to fall asleep. That was good. God knew the girl needed rest.
“We should try to get some rest, too,” Corbbmacc said softly.
“Yeah. I guess.”
Emily made herself as comfortable as she could on the floor beside her friends, sure that between her wet clothes and the adrenaline still pumping in her veins, she’d never fall asleep.
As it turned out, she was wrong about that. She drifted off into a thin sleep almost at once.
At some point during the wee hours of the morning, a particularly loud crash of thunder shook the building, bringing Emily just over the threshold of wakefulness. She found herself against Corbbmacc’s warm body, his arms around her and their legs entwined. She didn’t move away. She lay still, listening to his slow and steady breaths until she slipped into a deeper sleep, not waking again until dawn.
CHAPTER TWELVE
When Emily awoke, meager light, lifeless and gray, was filtering in through the windows. Rain still pounded on the roof and the streets outside, and thunder still rumbled, but both had slackened, painting an auditory backdrop of white noise on the world around her. Corbbmacc was a warm presence against her side, his face buried in her hair. She could feel the weight of his arm around her and the heat of his breath against her neck, causing strands of her tangled locks to flutter against her cheek. It felt good.
Gently, she disentangled herself from him, surprised to find that she felt no embarrassment at waking this way. How Casey would tease her if only she were here to see this. Emily Haven, always content to keep the world at arm’s length, waking up in the arms of a boy with Corbbmacc’s movie star good looks. Casey would either rupture herself laughing or die of jealousy; Emily thought it was fifty-fifty.
Casey was the only person who’d ever managed to crack Emily’s hardened shell back in that old life. And yet, here she was, two months since finding herself in this crazy world, and already Celine had slipped beneath Emily’s defenses; and now Corbbmacc seemed to be doing the same. Was that all it had taken to break down the wall she’d carefully constructed around herself for all those years? To be released from the bonds of her old life and allowed to start again? A sort of rebirth?
She pushed those unanswerable questions away and looked down at Corbbmacc where he lay, still sleeping, buried beneath the pile of loose rugs, his head pillowed on the thick wood of the bow Garrett had given her. In slumber, years seemed to be stripped away from him, the lines of his face smoothed out to almost nothing, leaving only the boy behind. She saw the kid he’d been once more, reflected in the dirty pane of glass in the vision they’d shared, and it made the similarity to Miraculum even more striking.
She watched the steady rise and fall of the rugs as he breathed, the dull light that filtered in from outside giving him the stark, simple look of an old black-and-white photo.
Something, perhaps a sound, made her look around, raising a hand to rub the sleep from her eyes.
Rascal was watching her from where he lay beside Celine. There was a glint in his eyes; was it amusement? His gaze shifted, ever so slightly, toward Corbbmacc, and then back to meet hers, as if he was saying, “Aha. I thought it would happen sooner or later. It’s about time, missy.” He winked one of his large silver eyes at her.
“Fuck off,” she mouthed at him, grinning. Rascal sighed, closed his eyes, and appeared to go back to sleep.
Emily slowly got to her feet, grimacing at the stiff soreness in her muscles. Running through the storm as it struck, followed by a night spent on the hard, cold floor, had not done her body any favors. Still, it had felt good in its way, reminding her she was still alive.
Carefully, she stepped over Corbbmacc’s legs and began wending her way through the dim interior of their shelter. She moved tentatively, trying to avoid disturbing the others.
This building did, indeed, seem to be a tavern of some kind. A long bar ran the length of the back wall, curving to continue down the far side of the room as well. Perhaps “had been a tavern” was more accurate; the ba
r’s surface was scuffed and coated with a thick layer of dust, and the whole place had the air of long abandonment.
The rest of the room was filled with small round tables and chairs, most of which were overturned. Some were broken, little more than piles of kindling between the legs of their fellows.
She heard the click click click of Rascal’s claws as he padded over to join her in the middle of the room, leaving tiny feline paw prints in the thick carpet of grit that covered everything.
Emily crouched down and stroked the fur between his wings, finding just the right spot that she knew he liked. Lazily, he stretched out his wings to their fullest extent, settled down onto the floor beside her, and began to purr. He, like Corbbmacc and Celine, had managed to find a chink in her armor. She’d gone from finding him disquieting, even repulsive, to counting him a member of their little band.
“Thanks, boy,” she whispered in his ear. “You saved my life last night, you know?”
Rascal cocked his head, looking up at her with an expression of self-satisfied smugness.
Whispering the words had caused her tongue to start throbbing again and reminded her just how thirsty she was. Her gaze flicked to the windows at the front of the tavern. They were nearly opaque with the sheets of rain that continued unabated, hurled against the glass by the gale-force winds outside.
Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.
Well, maybe she could do something about that.
Rascal let out a discontented sniff as she straightened, stretching to work some of the kinks out of her back. He opened his eyes, gave her a dirty look, but got up to pad along beside her as she continued across the room.
The floor behind the bar was littered with broken glass, shards of crockery, splinters of wood, and other bits of detritus that she couldn’t begin to identify. Dark stains, which she devoutly hoped were spilled ale and nothing more, spotted the bare and dusty boards. A large beetle, much like the one with which Dalivan had tried to bully her, had gotten itself caught in one of the pools, who knew how many years ago. Its long, brittle body had largely turned to dust, but its head, one wing, and part of its thorax remained. She could see into its strange alien guts, as dry and delicate as tissue paper now. It reminded her of one of those cut-away pictures used in biology class, only this creature had never appeared in any textbook—not at Lindsey High, anyway.
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