Hunter: Faction 10: The Isa Fae Collection

by Angela Fristoe

  “You’re right, Freddie,” she said, using his nickname so he'd know she wasn’t angry. “Let’s go.”

  Her scream trilled through the air as her feet were yanked from beneath her. Frederick’s hand was ripped from hers as she fell to her back. The branches of the weeping willow had torn them apart.

  “Thora!” Frederick’s cry echoed around her, but she couldn’t see him as she was dragged across the cold ground.

  Twisting on to her belly, Thora grabbed frantically at the sparse patches of grass she passed. Her eyes squeezed shut at the sting of the dirt puffing up to her face. Around her waist, her skirt bunched and rocks scraped the bare skin of her legs.

  As suddenly as she'd been snatched, she was released. The weeping willow branches gone, she gasped for breath, and the pain of every scratch was a stinging reminder that she was alive. Her eyes opened and she glanced around, but in the unnatural darkness, she couldn’t even see her hand in front of her face. She struggled to her feet and spun in a circle, but the wood was not her friend and shielded the pale moonlight from her.

  “Frederick! Where are you?” she screamed, panic setting in. How could she have been so stupid? She should have listened to Frederick. To her mother. “Frederick!”

  “Thora!”

  She nearly collapsed in relief at the sound of his voice. Staggering in his direction, she called his name repeatedly and used his return cries to guide her through the throng of trees. She fell over something and caught herself with her hands. A sliver of light revealed Frederick sitting against a tree. Thora scrambled up and ran to him.

  “Oh, Freddie. I am so sorry. You were right.” She cried, falling to her knees, and dropped her head to his soft chest.

  “Thora,” he said, and she loved how soft her name was on his lips. She was wrong to judge him only from the outside. Frederick was a good boy. A good man. It didn’t matter if his belly jiggled like the special jelly her grandmother used to make.

  “Let’s go home,” Thora whispered, and took his hand. It lay limp in hers, and she worried he had finally had enough of her. “Freddie, I really am sorry.”

  “Thora, you need to go home.”

  “I know. Let’s go.” She started to rise, but he didn’t move.

  “No. You need to go. I will stay here.” He was scared, as was she, yet there was something more in his voice that made her think she didn’t truly understand fear yet.

  “What are you talking about?” She used her free hand to turn his face toward her. It was heavy in her palm. Dread crawled within her veins.

  “You need to go without me,” he said, wheezing.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I…I cannot move.”

  “What? Did you break your leg?” She let go of him and ran her hands along his legs, but felt no break. She looked back up at him, his head flopped forward, chin pressed to his shoulder at an awkward angle. His eyes, though, were focused on her. Bile gathered in her throat. “Oh, Freddie. What have I done?”

  She gathered his face in her hands and let her thumbs wipe away the tears sliding down his chubby cheeks. There was nothing for her to do. No one would enter the forest. Even if she got him out of the woods and over the hill, there were no doctors in the village, and with the use of magic forbidden there was no hope for him.

  The darkness sheltered them, and she could no longer make out the shape of his face. She leaned in to him, resting her forehead against his. Then a burst of purple light flared around them, and the leaves began a steady rustling. A twig snapped to her left, and in the fading purple glow, she met Frederick’s eyes. There was something out there.

  “You must leave. You need to get out of here. Tell my mother what happened to me,” he whispered.

  “I’m not leaving you.” She pressed her lips to his, needing him to feel her despair at what she'd done. To know the love she had for him. Even if it was not the love he wished for, it was all she had to give him.

  “You don’t have a choice,” he said. “There is no way you can carry me, or even drag me.”

  A sob escaped Thora, and she brushed her lips against his again. She trembled, though not from the pleasure she once imagined from her first kiss. More twigs snapped in every direction, and she gazed desperately in to the pitch-blackness. Lights exploded around them, and the sudden brightness made it impossible to see anything except the brilliant colors.

  Frederick, though, saw something. Something that caught his breath and brought pure terror to his eyes.

  “Run, Thora. Run!”

  She ran.

  The silence scared her more than the dark. Even in the dead of night, she had always been comforted by the sounds of her parents and sister surrounding her. Soft snores and muffled words whispered in dreams had never been more missed than in that moment.

  When the flashing lights had long faded, Thora crouched beside a tree trunk. The rough bark scraped at her face, but she continued to rub against it, needing to feel something to assure her that she existed. That the world around her existed.

  Eyes pressed tightly closed, she created the illusion that she controlled the darkness. Behind her eyelids, she saw a remembrance of light, of the sun glinting off the roof of the old tractor that sat rusting in the field behind their house. Britta and Frederick sat on a blanket, a picnic spread before them, their waving hands calling her over. That was the day she knew Frederick loved her in a way she would never be able to return. That was the day she realized she needed to search for her father within the wood.

  Moving her face along the bark again, guilt seeped through her. Frederick would never return home, and Britta would be left forever wondering what happened to her older sister.

  * * *

  Time passed, and Thora was unsure how long she sat clutching the tree. She must have slept, though her mind felt as if it never shut off. She couldn’t feel the harsh rasp of the bark, but rather a damp softness beneath her cheek. The smell of fresh moss filled her nose. Her eyes opened, and she took in the sunlit forest floor she rested against.

  A bird tweeted above her, fluttering its wings, then took off across the sky. She sat up and groaned at the aching of every bone in her body. Her feet hurt the worst. Somehow, despite all her scheming and planning, she'd managed to leave home and enter the wood with no shoes, only the flimsiest of sandals. How could she have been so dim? Brushing dirt from their soles, she examined the small cuts marring her feet.

  She stood and tried to gather her bearings, which was impossible, really. The sun was high, and there was no way to tell where it had risen from even if she were able to see through the trees. A close look at the ground showed the direction she'd come from, her tracks of broken leaves and twigs as visible as the partial footprint she found a yard away.

  The tracks would lead her back to Frederick.

  She followed the trail she’d left. It was a lucky thing that she was so careless last night as it made the signs of her flight simple to track.

  A swirling pattern in the dirt had her pausing. Was that where she had fallen after leaving Frederick? He must have been nearby.

  “Freddie? Freddie? Can you hear me?” She spun in a tight circle. Nothing. She cried out again, spinning until dizziness had her stumbling in to trees.

  She collapsed to her knees, gasping through the sobs that racked her. Then a faint moan broke through the sound of her crying, and she held her breath, listening.

  Her eyes pinpointed a tree about thirty or forty feet away. It was wide, but there, on the side, a faint bit of pale blue, so out of place in the greens and browns that surrounded her. Frederick’s shirt.

  She rose and took a step toward him when a twig cracked behind her. She froze. Something was there. If it were an animal, it would chase her. If it was something else? She wasn’t sure she wanted to face what else it could be.

  “You don’t want to go over there.”

  She pivoted on her heel. A tall man leaned against a massive elm, broken twig in hand. She peeked over her
shoulder to where Frederick was then focused back on the stranger. As much as she wanted to go to Frederick, she didn’t dare turn her back to the stranger.

  “Who are you? Where did you come from?” Thora asked.

  “Garrett Zannis. I come from the Oozara.” He said it as if it should have been obvious. That everyone came from there. He smiled, tipping up one corner of his mouth, and she saw how handsome he was. Dark hair curled around his ears, and he had a strong, square jaw.

  “I meant now. Where did you just come from?”

  “Well, I’ve been tracking you for a while now. I figured you were lost, wandering in a ragged pattern.” His dark, heavy brows pulled low over his eyes. “Don’t go over there.”

  “That’s my friend. He was hurt last night. Please, I need to get him home. Can you help us? Please?”

  “Which way is home?”

  She glanced around, hoping for something familiar, mayhap a glimpse of the fence, but she saw nothing. Not even the sun could provide her guidance.

  “I…I don’t know. It is on the other side of the fence.”

  He straightened and looked at her closely, taking in her clothing and bare feet. “It is too late for him. I know of a safe place for you.”

  “I heard him. He’s alive. I have to get him home.”

  “Don’t do it,” Garrett repeated.

  “Why?”

  “The forest is taking him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The moan came again, and she could no longer ignore it. She moved toward Frederick, glancing back at Garrett. He closed in on her and gripped her arm, pulling her to a stop a few yards from Frederick.

  “Now I truly believe you are not of the wood, or from any Fae city within the faction.” He shook his head, his face filled with pity. “This is not a sight you want to see. Your friend is part of the forest now.”

  She kept her eyes on the spot where Frederick was. One of his legs twitched.

  “Freddie?”

  The only response was another moan, so pain-filled that it ripped through her.

  She pulled loose of Garrett’s hold and moved around the tree. The sight before her was beyond any horror she might have imagined.

  The tree was growing through Frederick. Not just piercing his skin, but growing inside him. His pinkish skin had darkened, and underneath, there was the rough vertical impression of bark pressing outward. His eyes darted around and blinked rapidly as if trying to halt the slow creeping of the bark across them. They locked on Thora, and another moan escaped him. She didn’t know what to do, so she fell to her knees and clasped his still limp hand.

  He was partially suspended, and as she watched, he seemed to be sucked up and in to the tree a bit more.

  “Help him!” she screamed over her shoulder at Garrett.

  “He is lost.”

  “He’s alive! Please, do something.”

  Frederick’s fingers tightened around hers. At first, she thought he was able to move again, then the grip became painful. She tugged on his hold, but that only secured his grip. She clawed at his fingers with her other hand. A hardness had replaced the fat beneath his once squishy flesh. She screamed as she realized her fate may be the same as Frederick’s.

  Then Garrett’s hands were there, resting atop hers. “You need to calm down. The tree is feeding off your fear. The more fearful you are, the faster it grows. Take a deep breath and close your eyes.”

  Thora did what he said and focused on the deep murmurs he made. She wondered if he was speaking to her or the tree. His hands moved along hers, rubbing and pressing against the skin where Frederick’s hold was still tight until, gradually, it loosened.

  When she was free, she pulled her hand to her chest and massaged the tender flesh. Vivid red bands marked the hold Frederick had. They would surely bruise by the end of the day.

  She looked up, and all thoughts of bruises vanished. How petty was she to worry about such a thing when her only friend was dying a horrific death?

  “He’s not alive,” Garrett said, and she thought he might have been reading her mind. “The movement of his legs and hands, even the blinking, is the tree.”

  “He was making noises. He was in pain.”

  Garrett lifted his hand and stroked Frederick’s arm that hung like a branch.

  “No. It’s the tree.” He placed his fingers on Frederick’s chest and pressed, producing a low moaning sound.

  Thora collapsed to the ground, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around her head. “This is not possible. I am having a nightmare. That is all. This is not possible.”

  “Have you not seen this before? Have you not heard the stories?” Garrett asked. She raised her head, eyes glancing off Frederick’s body before landing on Garrett.

  “Everyone hears the stories about the forest. People go in, but they never come out. There are no stories of trees eating men.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “What will I tell his mother? This will devastate her.”

  “That is not a concern. It is as you said. People come in, but they do not leave.”

  “That will be little comfort for his mother, thank you very much.” She took a deep, shaky breath and rose to her feet. “And I fully intend to go back home.”

  Garrett gripped her arm, steadying her as she wobbled while stepping over a puddle. “Do you?”

  Chapter 2

  She was a little thing. Barely reaching his chin and slender to the point he wondered if a gust of wind could bend her over. Strands of blonde ringlets stuck out from her braid in wild disarray, and delicate sandals did little to protect her feet. She wouldn’t last long in the woods. He considered leaving her there with her friend, but such fate would be too cruel.

  Garrett was the grandson of Tatiana, the last of the Fae Queens, brother to the reigning head of the Zannis family, and a member of Atern Depository Board. He was bound by law to provide assistance to all subjects of the Neraida Faction. Above all, though, he had made an oath to the Fae Queen’s soul star that he would devote his life to ensuring the breeds were protected.

  The woods were treacherous, and in the nearly seven years he’d been hunting in them, he’d never run across anyone, let alone a young woman on her own. Something in the way her eyes flitted from tree to tree, as if memorizing each twig and leaf, made him think she was not there by accident.

  “You entered the woods, knowing there would be no return,” he said. “I think you are looking for something.”

  “My father.”

  He stared at her, letting the weight of her words settle. They were too light to hold much truth. “I think you are looking for something more than your father.”

  Her eyes settled on the ground, and the loose strands of her hair fell across her cheek. “It doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters now is going home.”

  Again there was no truth to her words, though guilt was, in the way the words trembled like leaves in the wind.

  “But it does,” he said. “The woods will hold you until you are deemed found.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shook his head. “Until you find what you are looking for, the woods will not let you leave.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I’ll simply walk east until I reach the fence.”

  “East, is it? And which direction would that be?”

  She looked toward the sky, searching for the sun, yet the trees blocked her view. She stepped to the side, still peering up, and a ray of light hit her hair. It shone like a golden crown.

  He wanted to look away, pretend he had not seen it, but denial was not in his nature. Neither was letting his prey go.

  “You say you’re from beyond the fence?” he asked, walking in a wide circle around her.

  She nodded, still distracted by her search for the sun.

  “Is that near Oozara?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “How can you not know? Oozara is the largest city in the Faction.”

  “I’ve never le
ft the village.”

  His chin pulled in with surprise. “Why not?”

  Her head tipped to the side as she peered at him closely. “You have many questions. Perhaps I should be asking you.”

  He bowed low at the waist, sweeping an inviting arm toward her. “I await your inquiry.”

  He nearly missed the slightest tipping of the corner of her lips, before it vanished and sadness cloaked her face.

  “How did you know about the tree and what it would do?”

  “This is not the first time I’ve been in these woods.”

  “So there is a way out?” Hope lightened her face for a moment.

  “Yes and no. As I said, only when you’ve been deemed found will you be let out, and it is not always in the place you had thought to go.”

  He stepped closer to her, until he could reach out and tenderly run his fingers over the back of her hand. He curled his lips into a suggestive smile, and her eyes widened in response. He could hear the increased beat of her heart; see the sudden flush that crept across her cheeks. He’d been right about her.

  “You never told me your name.” He slid his fingers between hers.

  “Thora. Thora Barrou,” she said with a breathy voice.

  “Thora.” He let her name roll off his tongue slowly as if savoring each sound. “Shall we walk a bit? Perhaps you’ll see something that looks familiar.”

  “Oh… okay,” she said, her answer one more of confusion than agreement.

  Garrett waited until she began moving and led him through the trees. He had no doubt about who she was. What she was. All that was left was for her to lead him back to her village so he could determine how many more like her there were.

  She hesitated, and he felt the gradual rise of tension in the firming of her grip. With his free hand, he brushed a finger across the side of her face, looping a stray hair behind her ear. She sighed at the gentle touch. He paused as he examined the softly rounded tip before letting the hair fall over it again.

  “Let’s keep going,” he suggested.

  She nodded and turned sharply to the right. Their path was erratic, but he could see the tracks she’d made at some point in her frantic run through the woods.