Into the Woods: Tales From the Hollows and Beyond

by Kim Harrison

  Oh God, he was touching her again, his hands slipping under her shirt to grip her waist, his thumbs pushing at her midriff, massaging, hinting at what he might do.

  “You will be my world,” he whispered, his words moving her hair, and she wanted to believe. “I will love you forever, and we will do everything, go everywhere.”

  She pushed back, blinking when she saw Kevin’s brown eyes, not Penn’s golden ones, but the confident smile and heat of passion were there, and she knew it was the spirit. “Show me,” she demanded, and his smile widened as he bent to her, lips parted.

  She gave in to her desires, meeting his passion with her own, standing in the shadowed sun between earth and sky as he met her mouth, hungry for all, for everything. To live, she thought, feeling everything as sharp and new as if she’d never felt the kiss of the sun or caress of the wind. Each touch was a shock through her, each soft sound drove her to more daring, more freedom. His hands were a demanding pressure, and she pressed into him, feeling a rising desire.

  His hands rose, a thumb running under the curve of her breast, and she pulled away as a thrill of adrenaline ran though her. Wild, his eyes met hers, enticing, daring, promising more as his hands moved unceasing, and she panted, wanting it to never end. But it would. They all screwed it up in the end. “Do you promise?” she breathed, a trembling hand shifting a lock of hair from his eyes. “I want to hear it.”

  “Everything,” he whispered, and she ran her hands down his body to feel him, to see his response, shuddering his delight at her touch.

  It was enough, and she hooked a finger in the top of his jeans, pulling him deeper into the cave. Only now did she allow a wicked smile to play about her lips, and seeing it, he held her tighter as they moved, his hands always shifting, changing pressure and demand like the pulse of the world across her. “Tell me you’re not a ghost,” she said as they found the comforting dark of the back, and her shoulders pressed into rock. “That you’ll never leave me.”

  The heat of him covered her, and he kissed her neck, his teeth sending jolts through her. “Give me this, and I’ll be beside you every morning. I promise.”

  It was what she wanted to hear. His hand tugged at the hem of her shirt, and she moved sinuously, raising her arms and letting him take it from her. The darkness brushed her, raising tingles, and then his lips as he found her. Her head flung back, and she gripped his hair, encouraging him as her leg twined about him.

  “You are everything to me, Lilly,” he said, her breast going cool where his lips had been. “Everything. I promise you everything.”

  His lips found her again, and she arched her back as his hand ran lower, finding the curve of her back, and then lower yet, tugging her into him. All but oblivious with desire, she found his zipper and lowered it tantalizingly slowly as he pulled upon her, mirroring her tease. She was gasping when the zipper would move no more, and almost she was willing to abandon herself to the lie of Penn to have this . . . forever.

  And with that thought, her resolve came rushing back. It was a lie. Nothing was forever.

  “Wait. Wait!” she gasped, and he made a growl of frustration, pinning her shoulder to the wall.

  “I have waited forever,” he said, his eyes inches from hers, the glow of her passion reflected in them.

  “Then you can wait thirty seconds more,” she said, reaching past his zipper to find him. “Wait.”

  Eyes shut, he trembled as she touched him. Slowly they opened as she reluctantly left him, and he moved aside and let go of her shoulder to make it clear he was indeed . . . waiting. “I have watched you grow up, Lilly. I have seen your tears, and I have dried them. I will wait,” he said as she pushed herself in motion, her pace unsteady and her pulse fast as she moved from him. Every step was hard, every motion cried out that she was a fool. Yes, men lied. Yes, they were stupid. But the way he had made her feel, the power she had over him . . . The power he had over her . . .

  She turned, seeing his eyes glowing gold at the back of the cave. Her thoughts turned to Meg and Em, to her mother a tender fourteen. He was a monster. It would end here.

  “But I will not wait forever,” he said, and staggering, she picked her shirt up.

  “You won’t have to.” Feet stumbling on the uneven floor, she fumbled for a candle, lighting it from the lantern still glowing by the door.

  “Lilly?”

  Shaking, she lit the fuse, the sparks as it ignited making her resolute fear easy to see.

  “Lilly.”

  He was unsure but clueless, and she steadily paced to the front of the cave, her blood cooling and her ardor already ash. “Good-bye, Penn.”

  “Lilly!” he shouted, but she ducked outside, putting her back to the wall as the earth shook and a billow of cool dust and rock-chip cloud exploded from the opening.

  “Lilly!” he screamed, but she wasn’t sure if it was real or in her mind.

  The second explosion was stronger, and she fell, arms grasping for anything, finding nothing to hold as she was thrown down the steep incline. Her breath came out in a cry as she slammed into a tree, and she looked up in awe as the rock face high above cracked and slid down, covering the opening that the first explosion had sealed.

  Lilly!

  The rumble of earth was only in her memory, and the waving trees stilled. In the near distance, a jay screamed. She stared at the raw cut of stone, seeing the shimmering line of a spider ballooning on the early rising air. The perfect fragility of it was shocking against the raw destruction. It glinted blood red in the sun, going invisible as it touched the stone now covering the opening and seemed to vanish. Another joined it, and then a third.

  Lilly turned away. Her shirt was in her hand, and she looked at it numbly. Slowly, arms aching and thigh bruised, she put her shirt back on and turned her face away from the woods and to the sun. Her children waited. Her mother would be worried.

  Blinking, Lilly picked her way back to the open meadow. Before her the sun rose like a goddess, powerful, uncaring, and blood-red.

  FIVE

  The creek’s chatter was absent as Lilly emerged from the forest, trudging past the barn to the house. Damp rocks glistened in the bright sun, the bridge spanning an empty gully. The water was gone.

  Her mother had not been in the henhouse when she had gone by, and there was a clatter of silverware and cheerful, high-pitched voices coming through the kitchen window. Numb and depressed, Lilly wearily walked up the porch steps, hesitating at the top a moment before going in. The scent of fresh biscuits and eggs drifted out, making her stomach clench.

  Pepper whined at the screen door, and her mother looked up from the counter, a damp cloth in her hand and an apron around her waist. Her hair was in an unusual disarray, and she glared at Lilly, understandably angry. Behind her, the kitchen table was empty of all but one place setting. Lilly pulled the screen door open, not responding when the girls at the sink splashed each other. Em was on a stool but still almost chest high with the counter as she studiously washed their breakfast plates.

  “I’m sorry,” Lilly said, her eyes rising from the unused plate on the table, and her mother went to the girls, her lips pressed tight as her old hands lightly touched their backs in an expression of security.

  “I’ll get the rest, loves. You go on out to the barn. Make a fort out of the straw bales or something. Your mother and I will finish cleaning up.”

  In a happy chatter and dropping suds, they flowed out of the kitchen, long hair and cries of “Hi, Mom!” streaming behind them.

  The screen door slammed shut, and still Lilly stood, just inside the door of her mother’s house, her arms around her middle. Penn was trapped, doomed to die maybe if he stayed out of a tree long enough. So why did she feel like a little girl who had hidden the broken cookie jar? He had been so beautiful, so dangerous.

  “I can’t believe you locked me in the chicken coop.” Motions abrupt, her mother went to the sink to finish the dishes.

  “I said I was sorry.” Coming i
n, she tried to wash her hands to help, only to find herself rebuffed. “I didn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

  “Like crawling through that chicken hole was easy? I could have used your help this morning out at Rock Island.”

  Lilly’s head came up. “Doing what?”

  Her mother huffed, setting the last rinsed plate to drip. “What do you think? I managed okay, but we’re going to need to let a nest or two of eggs go to hatching. I was up all night thinking of how we could snare Penn without having to burn the woods.” Her gaze went distant as she looked out at the fields, seeing nothing. “I love that woods.”

  She turned as the dishwater gurgled out. “Running water will hold him as much as stone, so I forced him into that tree on Rock Island, and once he was there, I shifted the water course back where it was when your grandparents moved here. The dam was almost rotted anyway. We lost the creek running by the house, but that’s a small price to pay. Even in drought, Rock Island is going to be surrounded.” Her expression softened. “The girls are safe. We all are.”

  Then who did I trap in the cave?

  Seeing her horror and not understanding, her mother reached out and touched her shoulder. “Honey, it’s okay. It’s not the first time I’ve been locked in a henhouse.”

  Lilly reached for the table, her balance leaving her. Kevin. She hadn’t killed him, had she? “You couldn’t have trapped him in a tree. I trapped him in a cave,” she said, feeling nauseated and sinking down on her chair at the table.

  Her mother turned from putting the plates away, her confident smile fading. “What?”

  What if she’d been wrong? She looked up, blinking. “He was with me this morning. At the caves by the north pasture. I trapped Penn in it behind a rock slide.”

  “You couldn’t have,” her mother said, her face pale. “I trapped him on Rock Island.”

  Lilly looked at the table, her fingers spanning the little red apples the plastic and felt tablecloth was decorated with, horror making it hard to breathe.

  “Lilly . . .”

  Had she killed Kevin by mistake? Oh God, what if she had!

  Her mother’s hand was shaking as it touched her shoulder, the older woman looking out through the kitchen window when a dusty police car eased into the yard. “It’s Aaron,” she said, her voice quavering.

  Kevin’s dad? Oh God.

  Her mother gave her shoulder a warning squeeze. “We don’t know that wasn’t Penn in the cave. He might have escaped before I got the water to rise. You did good, Lilly. I’m proud of you.”

  Lilly stood, her chair scraping. “But it might have been Kevin! Mom, he might still be trapped. Alive!”

  “What does Kevin have to do with this?”

  A car door slammed, and Lilly scooted closer to her mother, almost frantic. “Penn looked like Kevin. Mom, what if it really was him?”

  Lips a thin line, her mother flicked her attention to the porch. “It wasn’t. Hush up!”

  “Mom!”

  “I said hush up!” It was an angry hiss of a sound, and Lilly jerked as her mother pinched her shoulder painfully. “What are the chances that I could trap him a second time? I’m an old woman, and he doesn’t love me. Penn was with you. That was Penn with you before sunrise. If we open that cave up now, Penn will escape and he will be on Meg and Em before the moon rises. Now stop looking guilty!”

  The last was accompanied by a savage squeeze, and then her mother let go, beaming a welcoming smile at the heavy steps on the porch and a soft knock at the screen door.

  “Aaron, come on in!” her mother almost crowed, wiping her hands off on her apron and going to the door. “Let me get you a cup of coffee. What brings you out here this morning?”

  The man looked tired as he pushed open the screen door, his officer uniform hanging wrinkled and a little loose on him. He was her mother’s age, and working mostly because he knew everyone and he couldn’t bring himself to retire. Pepper had gone to him, and he absently fondled the dog’s ears as he nodded first at her mother, then Lilly. “Morning, Em. Lilly. You haven’t seen Kevin this morning, have you?” he drawled, his cigarette-rough voice holding a hint of worry as he glanced at the unused place setting.

  Fear struck Lilly, and she froze. They would take her children. Lock her away. “Last night, why?” she managed as she gathered the silverware, her fingers shaking. Behind her, her mother went to the coffeepot.

  Aaron shifted from foot to foot, looking nothing like a police officer and everything like a worried father. “We found his truck this morning over at Perrot’s pasture, his thermos of coffee still warm. You saw him last night?”

  Oh God. She’d killed him. What if she had invented Penn all along, a delusion fueled by her anger and her mother’s dementia, striking out at Kevin instead. Maybe she had wanted to kill him. What if she was crazy herself? “About nine,” she heard herself say as she carefully put the knife and fork away, marveling at the even tone of her voice. “The girls were going to bed. I wanted to talk to him about . . .” She hesitated, not wanting to mention her earlier worries about her mother being crazy. “. . . something,” she finished as she turned and went back for the pale white plate. “But he left. He didn’t make it home last night?”

  “By the looks of it, yes. You know anything about the explosion I heard this morning?” he said, and fear shifted through her.

  “That was us, I’m afraid,” her mother said, setting a steaming cup of coffee at table and putting a warning hand upon her shoulder. “I know I should have gotten a permit, but I was hoping that if we blew the dam early enough, no one would notice.”

  Lilly marveled at her mother’s calm lie, wondering if she had ever known her at all.

  “We shifted the creek back to its original bed this morning,” she said as she gave Lilly’s shoulder one last squeeze and returned to the coffeepot. “The girls are getting older, and I want to try beans in the lower field next year. We have enough to get by, but Meg is going to need tuition in a few years, and the creek isn’t making us any money running in front of our house.”

  “You were both at Rock Island?”

  Aaron didn’t sound convinced, and Lilly turned to him, somehow managing a smile as she leaned back against the counter, the dust and dirt of the explosion covering her like the lies she was saying. “All morning. You’re not going to turn us in, are you? That was the last of the dynamite.”

  Aaron’s gaze shifted to her mother, then back to her. “Lilly, I know you and he had words.”

  Fear flashed through her. They would take her, lock her up. She’d never see her girls again. “He wanted to know how he could make it better. I told him to leave,” she said evenly.

  “I would hope so!” her mother said as she forced a steaming cup of coffee into Lilly’s grip and putting a hand upon her shoulder. “I love your son as if he were my own, Aaron, but he’s a fool who doesn’t know how to keep his pants zipped. If he’s not hightailed it out of Greenwood out of pure embarrassment, I’m sure he’ll show up before long. I poured you a cup. You want to sit a spell?”

  Aaron took a long look at her mother standing beside her. From outside, the sound of the girls playing in the drying creek came in, and Pepper whined, wanting to join them. “Thank you, Em. Don’t mind if I do,” he finally said, his eyes narrowing in mistrust as he sat down.

  “I’ve got some biscuits,” Lilly said, heart thudding. “Fresh out of the oven, Officer Aaron. Let me get you a plate.”

  And smiling, Lilly held it out to him, proud that her hand didn’t tremble at all.

  Grace

  The character of Grace has a curious history. She began before the Hollows found publication in a preindustrial setting that had far more scope than I gave her here. Her world was originally smaller and the narration of her story was split between the protagonist and antagonist. I had intended to leave those first hundred pages of text forgotten in the back of my closet after I fell in love with the faster pace and more modern feel of urban fantasy, but the ch
aracters of Grace, her lover, and the protagonist refused to be forgotten and Grace successfully made the jump from medieval to modern, proving to me at least that the character is all and the setting is just the framework of the tale. Originally Grace came to me as an older character, but I give you a glimpse of her now when she is young and full of hope so you can understand her better when she falls.

  ONE

  Ears down, Hoc hung back as Grace and Boyd got out of the shiny black sedan with its one-way-locking back doors and secondary restraints masquerading as seat belts. Most times they didn’t need the extra precautions, but the dog’s behavior as he reluctantly jumped from the front seat and padded alongside Grace told her that this was not going to be an easy acquisition. Not that any of them were.

  “Hoc’s edgy.”

  Grace gave Boyd a wry smile. The thin, older man was almost a head taller than she was, a bad cop to her more youthful good cop—at least that was the appearance they usually went with. Sun glinted in his silvering hair, and his long legs easily took up the distance as he came around the car to meet her on the sidewalk. They weren’t cops, but the thought was there, especially since they were both in dark navy suits, the stark white of Boyd’s cuffs and collar matching her blouse in an almost uniform consistency.

  “I noticed.” Grace waited, her hand on Hoc’s head, soothing her canine partner with a gentle warming flow of energy. He was agitated at something in the house. It wasn’t the same excitement he showed when they visited kindergartners looking for unregistered throws among the kids, oblivious that their lives might change if Hoc loved them too much. Like a drug dog, he would go into doggy delight when finding an unbalanced throw, attracted to the tiny surges of electricity most gave off. No, this was something else, and Grace squinted up at the two-story, four-bedroom, two-car garage house.

  Suburbia at its best, and she felt a brief pang. She’d grown up somewhere very close to this—until it had all fallen apart.