by Jasmine Walt
Hours later, Vanessa creeps back into the cave. She’s worse for wear, twigs tangled in her hair and dirtier than she was when she left. If that’s even possible.
“Don’t worry,” she whispers. “They can’t see us from where they are, and even if they knew we were here, they would never figure out how to get here.”
I press my lips together and nod. “But I do need to leave soon.”
“Of course.”
“Alone,” I say apologetically. “I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye, though. Will you be all right?”
“Absolutely,” she says, patting my knee. “You’ve done enough for me.”
“And you for me,” I offer.
The night air is so cold that even Vanessa—with all the warmth the Strigoi are known to have—is shivering. It strikes me it’s not just the cold that makes her body tremble, though. It’s the loss of her child.
“Are you sure you’re going to be all right?” I ask again.
“I’ve spent the last eight months living as a mortal. So I wouldn’t...well . . .” She chokes up. “You know we can’t shift when we’re pregnant, or—”
“I understand,” I say, so she doesn’t have to say it. I don’t think she wants to, and I don’t want to hear it, to be haunted any further than I already am by the image of her stillborn child.
“Those months have made me weaker,” she says, “but you see how fast I have recovered already. In a few days, I’ll be fit to leave here.”
I hope I will recover as easily. My pain has ebbed, but I’m still not myself. The aches coursing through every limb in my body are nauseating. But I can’t let that slow me down; I need to make some ground tonight.
“You’ll do great,” she adds. “You were made for this.”
I sigh my doubts. “I’m not sure.”
“You made it this far.”
“With your help,” I point out.
“You may not have needed my help if you hadn’t been trying to save me. I’ll never forget you, Abigail.”
“Cordovae,” I say. “My name, in my heart and in your world, is Cordovae.”
Sharing this with her makes me feel as though we’re closer. As though we can keep a connection even if we never see each other again.
“Well, then, Cordovae—thank you. For everything.”
I nod and, before I realize what I’ve done, my arms are wrapped around her. I release her and bend to lift the wreath I made her from the ground. I place it on her head like a halo. She smiles, and I return the gesture. But the soft moment withers as anxiety creeps through my veins.
“Stay safe,” I say sharply, as though it’s a command. I grab her for another hug, then turn away, not pausing to look in her the eye. If I look at her again, I will cry.
I have to leave.
So I head out of the cave alone, into the night of a world that wants me dead.
20
Last Day of February, 1692
The sharp night air is like ice melting on my skin, easing away my pain, stirring an energy in me that slowly renews my strength. A strange calm washes through me, though my heart does not steady. Determination takes hold in my core, thumping within me, and all over again it’s like the first night I met Tess and William. As though the earth is a beating drum.
The air is soiled by the pungently sweet scent of rotten fruit and the musk of a skunk. I lift some overripe winter berries from the ground. The bumpy, crinkled skin of the fruit turns smooth as my touch heals them to a fresher state. I pop them in my mouth. They roll over my tongue, velvety and cool. A few Daphne berries are all it takes to kill a small child, but to me, they are a lifeline. Eating them has the same warming effect as drinking alcohol, and my whole body relaxes and reenergizes.
Time stretches ahead of me, though I feel the urgency of needing to travel such a great distance before sunrise. Normally my senses lead the way, but with my mind racing with fear that I’ll waste time heading in the wrong direction, I have to stop to think.
Tess said to go west. I study the land around me, the trees, the stones. Moss grows on the north. From that, I determine my westerly path and trek steadily in what I hope is the right direction.
Nighttime casts a whitish blue ambience over my world, and the towering trees with their knobby bark send the flutters of a fragment through my mind.
I’m a child peeking over my freckled shoulder at Ma’s smiling face. She reaches past me and brushes a new stroke of color onto a small canvas.
The trees in the woods tonight have the same clumpy appearance as Ma’s painting. She was the one who taught me about art. And when the Morts stole my parents, it was the art that made me feel safe. I can remember the night the Morts came.
Ma stays home to do her pottery while Pa takes me to see the horses. We’re on our way back from the farm when he loses control of the car.
As I float in and out of consciousness, dark figures dangle in the corners of my vision. The Shadow Men. One of the times I wake, I startle with a gasp, roll to my side, and check on Pa. He isn’t breathing. I grab his wrist to check his pulse. It’s fading. Fading...
I slip back into sleep.
An ambulance never comes.
Then, as though it was all a dream, I wake, and Pa is driving us home. Quiet. Eyes focused on the road. But it hadn’t been a dream. A wound at his temple is still bleeding. My body still aches, and my shoulder and hips are bruised from the seatbelt. A new kind of darkness surrounded us, shadows whipping by the windows as Pa drives.
Suddenly, I feel helplessly alone.
I keep saying, “Pa, are you okay? Pa? Please talk to me, Pa.”
But he doesn’t say a word.
When we arrive home, Ma’s pottery sits unfinished. She lies on the couch, her hands muted and pale from the clay.
The Shadow Men never left, and my parents never returned.
Now, tonight, the woods are plagued by such Morts as those—Morts that watch me from between the trees. They are the shadows left behind by the shells they once inhabited—some good, many bad—but each of them instinctively wary of what I might do to them. None of them knowing what kind of future would await them if they come in contact with an Ankou. But although my Ankou abilities have finally returned—finally tingle for my acknowledgment from deep within—tonight is not the night I will determine their fate. Tonight I will not allow them to unsettle me. Tonight, they can watch...but they can’t hurt me.
There were many like them who had destroyed me in my life as Rose, but now I know there were some who had tried to protect me as well.
Movement in the underbrush rustles the leaves, and I gasp. I hold my breath, frozen, until a small raccoon scurries past. How am I to handle the Morts and Cruor and Marked Strigoi if I am so easily taken off guard by a small nocturnal animal? I shake my head, scolding myself to toughen up and keep going. I need to get through this for Anna.
I step over a fallen tree and cross an abandoned campfire. Ashes and debris stir in a pit surrounded by stones, and I recognize a piece of torn fabric dangling from a low lying branch of a nearby oak. Tess and William must have come through this way. That means I’m on the right path, but it also means that the Morts and Cruor in this area will be on high alert if they know this is where Tess and William passed by undetected.
As I near the edge of the forest, I suck in the icy night air, preparing myself for the worst.
But there’s nothing.
Relief doesn’t swoop in to comfort me. Instead, panic rises in my chest.
It’s eerily empty.
I want to push myself forward, but I step back. I must be missing something. I look as far as I can see, but all I see is a cold, low-lying fog rolling in the open land beyond the edges of the forest and wisping between the trees.
You can do this, Cord. You have to.
I creep out of the forest, into the open now. The next step is harder. Every step after that is taking me farther from the cover of the woods.
Here, I am the deer
in the field.
I am the prey.
With my apple-red hair and dark dress, and the golden sheen of my skin in the moonlight, I am a fire burning in the middle of this world of gray and brown, crunching footprints across a field dusted in white. I caress the birthmark on my wrist. It makes me feel closer to Anna and reminds me why I’m doing this.
I pull my invisible wings around me, hoping I have done so correctly, the way Tess had shown me all those weeks ago. It won’t hide me completely, but it will make me unseen to the Morts, and that means one less elemental race to deal with.
My breathing drowns out the sounds of the forest, until I realize I’ve been holding my breath all this time. I freeze a moment longer, taking this realization in. I’m not breathing. But someone else is.
I dart away, not sure where I’m running or what lies ahead. At this point, I’m sure every preternatural being can hear me, see me, notice me. Footsteps snap in the snow behind me. Several loud thumps startle me, and I can’t help it—I look back.
A tall, dark-haired Cruor, fangs snapped out, is charging at me, and three more have just cracked down beside him. At least a dozen more are breaking out from the forest I’ve just escaped. I can’t fight them all, I can’t outrun them. I have no choice but to travel. Tess warned me not to, told me of the risks, but if I don’t, I will certainly either die or lead them where I am heading. I have to choose between a hopeless choice and risky one.
Within moments, I break away. I’m in a tunnel of dark. When I snap out, I crash into something.
My lungs ache as I gasp for air and force my eyes open. A man with shoulder length knotted blond hair and broad shoulders stares at me with extended fangs. He wastes no time reaching out to grab my hair. When I try to pull back, he sweeps my legs, knocking me down and landing on top of me, pinning me down. He’s sitting on my chest and his hands are pressing my shoulders into the ground. If I could breathe, he would only be marginally stronger than me, but right now my body betrays me.
I freeze, unsure what to do until he lifts his hand to strike. I have only a few moments to act, and I need to use his uneven balance to my advantage. I grab the wrist of the hand that’s still pinning me down and, with my other hand, I push his shoulder on the same arm. At the same time, I pull up my opposite knee and turn my hips.
He flips to the side, and I roll on top of him, landing between his legs. He’s struggling beneath me, and I’m not sure how long I can keep him here. My hands slip to catch my balance on the ground, and before I can react, he pummels hard against my chest and sends me flying back. I crash into the snow. The aches pounding through my body drain me. I try to lift myself, but my arms offer little support after the blows I took to my chest.
The Cruor stalks toward me. I don’t have the strength to travel, especially not so soon after my last. I can’t run from this. I have to fight. And I have to win.
It takes everything in me to pick myself off the ground. This only incites the Cruor to laughter, but I waste no time—I lunge forward and tackle him to the ground, following immediately with a blow to his head. Then another, and another. His nose dribbles blood, but heals just as quickly. With no stake, no sword, and no fire, I am not equipped to kill a Cruor. Any damage I inflict won’t last long.
He pushes me away again, but this time with less force. I roll away and slip back to my feet. We crouch opposite of one another, walking a slow, circular dance, as though a large animal paces between us. I should travel again, but I can’t find a window of opportunity. Faster than I can blink, he’s grabbing me by the throat and slamming me to the ground.
I clasp his wrist and pull it to my chest, hook my leg around the back of his neck, and then lock my feet together at my ankles. He’s stuck now, choking against his own arm, but it doesn’t stop him. He just stands up, lifting his arm, and slams me back to the ground. Pain thuds through me, pulsing, spreading. I try to breathe, but air won’t come in. My whole body is radiating with pain, but I have to force my way through it. Finally, I suck in a huge gasp of air and force my way through the pain to twist out from beneath him. When I’m free, I kick him in the ankles, then pounce on him, sending us back into a rolling battle across the snow.
He lands hits to the side of my face and multiple blows to my upper body. My sides are on fire with pain, and my face numbs from the swelling in my cheek. My hands ache. My lungs feel even tighter than before.
I manage to roll him beneath me once more, then jump to my feet and run as far and fast as I can. New forest juts against the night sky in the distance and, just beyond that, the mountains roll along the horizon. He’s right behind me when we hit the forest wall. If I can create a little more distance from him, I can travel without worry of him stopping me. For now, I run alongside the woods, looking for something I can use as a weapon.
How many times has William told me? Whatever you do, fight. Yet I’m running. What else am I supposed to do when a fight can’t be won?
There must be a loose piece of wood that could be used as a stake somewhere, but with him so close behind me, I’m not sure if I would be able to grab a weapon fast enough even if I found one. Instead, I start willing as many Morts out from between the trees as I can, sending them all back for the Cruor.
I stop to watch for the payoff, but they pass right through him, like the ghosts that they are. But then, in the blink of an eye, he drops, his own decapitated head at his side. I’m too stunned to react.
“Morts can’t possess an immortal,” a voice says calmly behind me.
Not my attacker, though. The voice is female.
I look back—a woman with silky black hair tied in a long pony tail stands behind me, the tip of a bloodied sword poking into the pink-splattered snow beneath her. I step away, creating distance between us as I try to take it all in.
A few feet back in the other direction lays the beheaded body of the Cruor, the Morts having cleared way to return to the forest. The warm wind of early spring blows away his existence, his body slowly flaking away until nothing is left.
“They call me Grace,” the woman says, drawing my attention back to her. She extends her hand.
I take in her gleaming violet eyes, porcelain skin with the same golden shimmer as my own, and easy smile. She’s petite—frail—with round eyes, a small nose, and thin lips. She is nearly dwarfed by the sword she carries, yet she took down the Cruor chasing me and hadn’t even broken a sweat.
“This is where you introduce yourself,” she instructs, the same cheery smile still brightening her face. I don’t shake her hand, and she drops it back to her side. “A person in your shoes might even say thank you, you know, for me saving them.”
“Thank...you,” I manage, still stunned. “I’m Cordovae.”
That wasn’t my best idea. Why would I tell her that name, the name that means the most to who and what I am? I shouldn’t trust her, can’t trust her, even if I wanted to, even if she saved my life. For all I know, she only wants to keep my alive so I can lead her to William and Tess.
“Nice to meet you, Cordovae,” Grace says. “You really shouldn’t travel alone around here, you know. Where you off to?”
“Uh...”
“That’s fine,” she says too easily. “You don’t need to tell me. But us Ankou, we ought to stick together.”
That would explain her speed—quick enough to make the kill without being seen, only to pop up behind me when she was done. But...Tess said I shouldn’t trust anyone. I should assume that means even people who come to my rescue. Part of me feels so strongly I can trust this woman, but my better sense reminds me that I’ve already defied Tess’ advice by traveling, and that didn’t work out so well.
Grace’s gaze slides over me, and she purses her lips. “Did you come from Salem? I heard about Sarah Good and Tituba being accused of witchcraft today. Is that why you’re on the run?”
I try to put faces to names. Sarah Good. I don’t know her. I think I remember Tituba, if she was the Indian servant I’d seen around to
wn a few times. Talk of these accusations has me even further on guard, though. Were they accused because I escaped? Would Grace try to bring me back to Salem if she knew?
“Not the talking type?” she asks. “That’s all right. I’m used to doing the talking.” Grace grabs my arm and pulling me into the woods, the sword in her other hand dragging a trail through the snow behind her. “Let’s take a look at your wounds, shall we?”
As she leads me away from the open land, I can’t stop looking back, at the dead Cruor wasting away, carelessly left behind.
I shouldn’t go anywhere with this woman.
Grace brings me to her camp, revitalizing me with more herbs, and applies some directly to my wounds to speed my healing. I should be thinking how kind she is—and that thought does pass through my mind—but more so I am considering how to get away from her.
Here is this kind woman who put her life on the line for me, and I can’t seem to get away from her fast enough. As though she is who I needed to escape from, when in reality I would likely benefit from her help.
Still, I can’t take any chances.
It’s the same old battle. My mind tells me that my heart cannot be trusted. Tess has planted a seed of distrust in my mind to only further compact my doubt about my instincts.
Maybe there is a way for me learn if she’s someone I can trust. As she brews a fresh batch of herbal tea, I ponder ways I might accomplish testing her, but no idea brings me peace. I’ve always struggled to trust people—that is, until I met William and Tess, who I’ve managed to trust beyond reason. And now I just can’t bear the idea of finding out someone I want to trust cannot be trusted.
If I leave now, the possibility that Grace can be trusted will remain open, and that is exactly the kind of hope I need right now.